CHAPTER 14
Nate
Zaid lifted his mug, the coffee steaming in the cool morning air. The sun rose in the distance, shimmering on the lake. I had enough money to buy a beachfront mansion in a tropical paradise, but I had come here, to Lake Mead. Las Vegas. The reckless nature of gambling. The kinds of people that were drawn to it. Where money and power were outrageously intertwined. It was where I called home.
A new scar decorated the side of Zaid’s face. He was ten or so years my junior, but that didn’t stop our friendship. The Afterglow had brought us together, and since then, when we got the chance, we enjoyed a drink together before the world started.
“The thru-hike ended sooner than I expected,” I said.
Zaid grinned. “We didn’t do much hiking. We’ll have to time the next attempt with a long-term orgasm denial scene.” He looked off into the distance, then turned to me. “Will you be attending the ceremony?”
“Definitely,” I said. I took a sip of my drink. “Have you made the official plans?”
“Almost everything is settled,” he said. “Only a few weeks away.”
“Am I invited to both parts?” I was referring to the wedding and the collaring ceremony. I knew the latter was a guarantee.
Zaid laughed. “Of course,” he said. It was good to hear him laugh; it wasn’t a sound he made often. His fiancée, Heather, had brought a lightness to his life that he desperately needed. She had changed him, like Mara was changing me.
Mara. Why had I thought of her then?
“Has Hazel been showing up to tutoring?” he asked, breaking my thoughts.
“Here and there,” I said. Tutoring Hazel was a favor to Zaid; Hazel was Heather’s sister. “Mara invited her to the Afterglow. She didn’t show.”
Zaid nodded thoughtfully. “She’s Grant’s charge,” he said. The subtext was that he could no longer interfere; Hazel was Grant’s responsibility and under his protection alone. “Mara. You’ve mentioned her name before. Who is she?”
“A…” I trailed off. What was Mara to me? “A partner.” That was the term that made the most sense. It was what I had called us at the Afterglow the other night. Technically, we were working on the Crossing Collaborations Contest together, as partners, as equals in academia. And yet she was more than that.
In addition to the collar, I had bought her a rare item, a rather expensive gift, a diary of handwritten theoretical notes from Florence Berkley. I told myself that I would read it before giving it to her, which was an excuse so that it would not be a gift, but a hand-me-down item. But the truth was that I didn’t plan on reading it. I had bought itfor Mara.
It was more than an academic partnership.
“A new play partner?”
“Yes,” I said hesitantly. A play partner was someone you could casually meet in a local dungeon, a person that you could take or leave. But I couldn’t leave Mara alone. These last few weeks had proven that. “She’s a student,” I added. Hell, I should have been more specific than that. “A graduate student.” Though the clarification didn’t mean much when Mara had barely turned twenty-one.
“Younger?” Zaid asked.
“More twenty years,” I said.
“Intellectually,” Zaid paused, then lifted his drink, “Intellectually, I trust that she is not younger.”
“No.”
“Does the age difference bother you?”
It was strange to hear the words aloud, to be asked point-blank. She was twenty-one; I was almost twenty-two years older than her. I was old enough to be her father. And yet when we were together, I didn’t think of that. I just thought of her.
“No,” I said.
“Does it bother her?”
I had made sure, without a doubt, that Mara wanted to do these things with me. But that didn’t guarantee that my age did not bother her.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “She’s given her verbal consent multiple times.”
“But she is your student?”
