Total pages in book: 31
Estimated words: 29591 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 148(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 99(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 29591 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 148(@200wpm)___ 118(@250wpm)___ 99(@300wpm)
I took another sip and closed my eyes.
I’d officially hit the sweet spot, where I was warm and halfway to drowsy. Life was good, I was chill, and I was ready for a few days in the sun with Reid.
“I don’t need to give you my two cents on the matter again, do I?”
Two cents on what? “On my inability to connect with a kink? And someone else, for that matter? I’m not sure you ever gave me your two cents.”
“Or you just tuned it out,” he chuckled lazily. He drank from something too. Probably whiskey. He was a whiskey guy. “You were always overthinkin’ shit.”
He was wrong.
“Easy for you to say,” I muttered. “You knew who you were in kink the moment you discovered it.”
“Not true. It took me over six months.”
Christ. Jackass.
He laughed a little. At least someone laughed at his sense of humor…
“That’s not what I was talkin’ about,” he said. “I mean… We always tell newbies not to box themselves in. Don’t worry about labels, ’cause chances are you’ll find several that’ll fit you to some extent.”
He had a point. We’d given hundreds of those speeches.
“Some obviously do identify strongly with a certain label,” he went on. “Whether it’s a Sadist, a high-protocol Master, a Little—whatever. But you don’t, and you seem to wanna force somethin’ that ain’t there. I never understood why.”
I scowled at nothing. “So I could meet someone like-minded, of course. So I could feel at home in my core kink—so I could have a core kink.”
He blew out a breath. “This is what I’m talkin’ ’bout. You’re overthinking. You act like a life without fittin’ inside one of these boxes makes you incomplete or somethin’, and unless you find a core kink, you’re not gonna click with someone. It’s horseshit.”
Fuck you.
He didn’t get it.
The fucker wasn’t done either. “I want you to listen to me, Max. Someone who lives and breathes high-protocol is more likely to connect with someone similar. It’s obviously not foolproof, but we’re talking the likeliest scenarios. A Master is drawn to slaves, yeah? Just like I’m drawn to masos and primal players. It’s in my damn DNA. It’s what attracts me. And you… Let’s say you’re a fetishist. You love BDSM, you love primal play, you’re a great Top, you’re both sadistic and nurturing. Do you fuckin’ need another box? Or can you stop and smell the roses for one goddamn moment and let that be enough? You already have an identity in kink.”
If that was true, how come I’d struggled to maintain a relationship?
Hell, my longest had lasted about a year.
I’d like to think I was good-looking. I wasn’t unpleasant to be around. I had hobbies and a solid career. I paid attention.
I’d never been cheated on, to my knowledge. No dramatic heartbreaks or relationships shattering to pieces. They’d simply…fizzled out. After weeks or months, I’d stand there with a partner, both realizing something was missing. And we’d part ways.
“Maybe I don’t wanna find a fellow fetishist,” I grumbled.
Reid snorted under his breath. “Because you want everythin’ black-and-white? Don’t answer that. You’re missing the point again. Fuck kinks, Max—connect with a person, not a fucking kink. With the right chemistry, you don’t know what the kinks are gonna look like beforehand anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean that we change with the person we’re with,” he answered. “To a degree, at least. Take Corey, for instance. Y’all were good together, but you were basically friends. Your kinks lined up, and still, nothing. You lasted, what, two months?”
If that.
“If you’re trying to recruit me to vanilla dating, don’t bother,” I said. “I want BDSM in my life.”
He groaned through a chuckle, clearly frustrated with me. “All I’m sayin’, you stubborn motherfucker, is that once you click with someone, your chemistry is going to make shit real simple. That’s why I never bothered lookin’ for someone within a specific kink box. It doesn’t fuckin’ matter—and I trust myself to be drawn to men who want pain in some capacity. But even if I didn’t…? Hell. I don’t know.” He sighed. “I don’t know.”
He didn’t know.
“I just think…” He cleared his throat. “Once you meet someone you want more of, you won’t care if it’s a sub, a regressing masochist, an every-now-and-then bottom, or a switchy primal player.”
I wasn’t gonna give him shit. I did understand what he was getting at.
“When you mix two components, you don’t know what the chemical reaction’s gonna be,” he finished.
I stared down into my glass, watching the ice melt into rounded cubes.
Water mixing with vodka.
When you mix two components…
I’d had some explosive chemical reactions, and of-fucking-course, most of them involved Reid. Mostly group play. When we found each other playing close together, and we sort of gravitated toward each other…
One memory stood out. Maybe three years ago, when we’d all rented a big house in the Keys. We’d essentially had a three-day-long fuckfest.