Manties in a Twist (The Subs Club Book 3) (16 page)

Dave stared, trying not to laugh. “Herb hacks? Who
are
you?”

We talked a while longer, and then when things were winding down, Dave looked right at Ryan and said, “I’m really glad you made it to a meeting, man.”

That made me so incredibly freaking happy.

Ryan grinned. “Me too. I always forget how fun you all are together.”

Dave nodded. “We’re super fun, and the best of friends. Like the Baby-Sitters Club.”

“I had to watch that movie eight hundred times with my little sister when I was younger. Which one of you is Dawn?”

“Is she the blond one?” Dave glanced around the table. “I think we all want to be Dawn.”

Maya raised her hand. “I do
not
want to be Dawn.”

“Though Stacey’s blond too. And she’s the smart one, so I guess that’s Miles. And Gould’s totally the shy one—Mary Anne? So I’m Dawn. And Maya, you’re the one who gets added later—Abby?”

Ryan grinned at me. “And Kamen’s Claudia. Because he’s creative.” He ruffled my hair and looked back at the group. “So who’s Kristy?”

Dave made a face. “Nobody wants to be Kristy. She’s too controlling.”

We all stared at him. “You sure you’re Dawn?” Gould asked, grinning.

Dave mock-sighed. “I’m
not
controlling. I’m just a born leader.”

“It’s okay,” Maya said. “Kristy is actually an astute and assertive businesswoman who doesn’t take shit.”

“Well that’s me all over. Not the astute and assertive part, but businesswoman, for sure. You should see my collection of professional blouses.”

That made me press my legs together for a second. Which was
weird
, because I’d gone my whole life seeing women’s clothes or hearing about them without getting boners. Why all of a sudden was a blouse the world’s most exciting thing to me?

Maya reached for her glass of water. “Nobody uses the term ‘blouse’ anymore. Except old people.”

Dave ignored her. “Let’s all put our hands in and do a one-two-three Subs Club.”

We all groaned.

“Come on, come on,” Dave urged us. “I feel like we have to. I mean, we don’t have a theme song because Kamen promised to write one and never did. So the least we can do is a hands-in.”

We all leaned forward and put our hands on top of one another. Then we one-two-three-ed, and everyone yelled something different, from “bacon” to “enema buckets.”

It was a pretty beautiful moment.

“Do
you
think Bill should be forgiven?” I asked Ryan later. We were in our room, sitting on the edge of the bed, dicking around on our phones.

He glanced at me. “I don’t know him. At all.”

“But based on what I’ve told you?”

Ryan frowned at his screen for a second. “Based on what you’ve told me, he’s a shitty dom. But maybe it’s better that they’re teaching him how not to be a shitty dom, rather than just letting him serve some time and then releasing him back into the wild.”

“If you were counseling him, what kind of stuff would you say to him?”

Ryan had worked briefly as an advocate in San Francisco for doms who’d been accused of overstepping boundaries and, I dunno, needed help processing their guilt or something.

“I’d try to get his perspective on what happened. Find out if he’s remorseful. If he blames Hal or himself.”

I wanted to know that too. “And if he blames himself, are you supposed to, like, reassure him?”

He went back to his phone. “Not exactly. But we’d talk about how he could move forward and have healthier partnerships in the future.”

“But he, like,
killed
someone. By breaking a really basic rule.”

He shrugged. “I never had to be an advocate for anyone who’d killed someone. Honestly, you know what the most common scenario was? Doms would come in because their partner had safeworded, and they’d stopped.”

“What do you mean?”

He set his phone aside. “I mean they were just really shaken up that they’d been on a different page than their partner. Like, there’d be these guys—mostly, but sometimes women—who’d been topping and having a great time and thinking their partner was having an equally awesome time—and then suddenly the partner safeworded, and they were like, ‘Holy shit, how did I not realize she was reaching that point?’ or whatever.”

I thought about this for a moment. “It would probably be awesome if all sexual partnerships had a magic word that was a polite way of saying, ‘Cool it. This isn’t going as good as you think.’”

“Have you ever safeworded?” he asked.

“Yeah. When I was twenty. I thought flogging looked cool, because all my friends were doing it. So this guy starts whipping me, and I’m kinda like, ‘Okay . . . yeah . . . ow . . . This isn’t . . .’” I laughed. “And I kept waiting for it to get better, but it didn’t. So finally I just straightened up and was like, ‘Nope, nope . . .’ And he stopped at the first nope. So I didn’t actually have to safeword.”

He nodded. “I guess it’s just hard for me to imagine all this predator stuff your friends talk about, because it’s never happened to me. Like, all these shitty doms you apparently have around here . . . In San Francisco there were one or two I was warned about, but I never felt like there was an abuse epidemic.”

“Dude, you worked with shitty doms.”

“No. I just told you, I worked with people who made mistakes and were willing to admit it.” He yawned, holding the back of his hand over his mouth for a moment. “Whatever. I’m not a great fit for activism. I learned that a long time ago. I’ve always wanted a relationship more than I’ve wanted a community.”

I climbed up onto my knees on the bed. “That’s always kind of how I’ve been too. I mean, I like going to Riddle and seeing people I know.” I flopped on my back, setting my phone on my chest. “But I’m just as happy here with you.”

“Well.” He stretched out on his stomach beside me. “When I have someone who’s willing to do
anything
. . .”

I turned my head toward him. “Do you think we should try more stuff besides panties?”

He bumped his head against my shoulder. “Like what?”

“I’m thinking costumes. In general.”

“What kind of costumes?”

“Is there anything you wanna see me in?”

“Like, girl clothes?”

“Any kind of clothes. Uniforms, maybe?”

Ryan was silent for a second, and I was a little freaked that maybe he wasn’t into this. But then he said, firmly, “Military.”

I grinned. “Yeah?”

He leaned closer to me and whispered. “A suit.”

“Huh?”

“You’d look so fucking hot in a suit.”

I think maybe I blushed. “You should talk. I get so hot when you dress formal.”

He laughed. “I know. We should try, like, dirty-altar-boy stuff too.”

“Let’s just make a deal to try anything we can think of that doesn’t hurt. Except pooping. If you ever poop on me, I’ll leave you.”

“What about pissing?”

“Ewww!” I pulled my head back to look at him, and my phone slid onto the bed. “Are you into that?”

“Not
into
it. But what if I wanted to?”

“
Do
you want to?”

“Not particularly. But, like, I don’t know. Maybe it would be fun.”

I thought for a moment. “I guess it’s not off the table. I don’t even understand how it
works
, though. Like, what’s the thrill?”

“Everyone I know who does it, it’s like a human-toilet kind of thing.”

It took me a few seconds. “Oh,
hell
no! I wouldn’t let you do it in my mouth. But my body, I guess it wouldn’t be a huge deal.”

“But would it turn you on?”

“I don’t know.” I rubbed his back. “A lot of stuff turns me on. You?”

“I did it once when I first started domming, and it was pretty good.”

I pinched him. “Oh, so you’ve
done
it before, and you were just gonna pretend you’d never really thought about it—”

He jerked away, laughing. “I just haven’t really thought about it with
you
.”

“Because I’m so pure and innocent?”

He stopped laughing. Gazed at me real seriously. “Because this stuff is totally different for me with someone I love.”

I didn’t answer right away. I knew from past conversations I was the only guy Ryan had ever been in love with, aside from some boy when he was eighteen that he thought, looking back, probably wasn’t really love.

I also knew from Subs Club discussions that it was insulting to say that if you were a dom and really loved someone, you shouldn’t want to hurt or humiliate them, even as a game. I agreed with calling bullshit on that, but wasn’t it different for everyone? Like, it made total sense to me that it would be easier for some doms to hurt or humiliate partners they didn’t love. I remember Kel talking once at the roundtables about lending GK out to other women so she could watch him get topped, because she knew other women would be harder on her husband than she was.

“Different how?”

“I don’t want to, like, degrade you.”

“Why?” I asked softly.

“Because it’s not what you’re into.”

“How do you know?”

He ran a hand down my chest and lifted the hem of my T-shirt. Put his cold, tiny hand under there and made me jump. “I just assumed. You don’t like being punished. And you . . . you really like . . .”

“What do I like?”

“Umm . . . you like to feel good.”

“Well, duh.”

“I mean mentally, I guess. And I don’t think being pissed on would make you feel great about yourself. Right?”

“I guess.” I wasn’t
surprised
, exactly, that he’d thought about what I liked or needed as a sub. But I was kind of embarrassed to realize I didn’t know what he wanted as a dom. So he’d enjoyed punishing and humiliating guys in the past, but he didn’t need to do that stuff with me? Then what
did
he want from me? “But everything we do is fun. So I don’t think I
would
feel bad about myself. You know? Even if you pissed on me.”

He drew circles around my belly button. I had an outie belly button that he always pretended he wasn’t creeped out by. I grabbed his hand and tried to make him touch it.

“Ahh!” He attempted to pull back.

“Touch it.”

“No.”

“Touch the weird belly nub.”

“Oh my God . . .” He yanked his hand free of mine and then poked my belly button with one finger. “There. Happy?”

I nodded, grinning.

He drummed my stomach with the flat of his hand. “You’re so weird.”

We were quiet a minute. I was thinking about what he’d said about what I was into. On one hand, I was sometimes better than my friends at knowing what I wanted. Because I didn’t overthink. On the other hand, I saw how deep they were able to go psychologically in their D/s relationships because they
did
think so much, and they
were
articulate about what they wanted. What if I couldn’t have that with anybody because I never thought about what submission meant, or how to get better at it?

“I would let you pee on me,” I said finally.

He glanced over at me. “Oh, come on. You would not.”

“Yes-huh! I said I want to try everything.”

“If I volunteered to pee on you right now, you’d freak out.”

“Try me.”

He stared at me. My heart pounded, and my dick stirred. I wasn’t really hot for the idea of watersports so much as I liked the idea of a challenge.

He stared back. “Okay. I’m gonna piss on you, then.”

He lay there like he was waiting for me to back down.

“Fine,” I said nonchalantly.

“Come
on
. You would so not let me.”

I stood. “Where do we do it?”

He laughed like he couldn’t fucking believe me. “Uhhh, in the bathtub, I guess. For easy cleaning.”

I pulled him up, and we headed into the bathroom. “So I just . . . get in the tub?”

“Yep. And if you don’t tell me right now that you’re kidding, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna pee all over you.”

“Good.” I stripped. “Because that’s what I want.”

I climbed into the tub.

“Welcome to the Watersports Event of the Year,” I said in a semisatanic pro wrestling announcer voice.

Ryan unzipped his fly. “This is gonna be one for the ages.”

“What position?” I leaned against the wall and threw an arm up over my head. “Gently reclining? Kneeling?”

“Um, how about kneeling?”

I knelt, facing him. The texturing of the tub floor hurt my knees a little. I grabbed the bar above the soap dish. Opened my mouth to make another joke, then stopped.

Tried to think about submission.

Gould always said submission was about knowing what you could give to your dom. So what could I give to Ryan? Like, was letting him humiliate me enough?

Except I never felt humiliated by him. And even though I liked doing what he said, I didn’t look to him as a leader—at least, not all the time. He was my best friend, and I loved him. But he didn’t feel like an authority figure. Was that okay?

Miles had said something a while back about how he wasn’t really submissive—he was a bottom who liked telling guys how to hurt him. Which made sense for Miles, since he was terrible at relaxing and letting other people handle shit. But I wasn’t like that. ’Cause I’d always liked guys telling me what to do at clubs. But then I didn’t have to
live
with them. They were just dudes I played games with sometimes.