"You don't need one."
They lay there. The sun moved across the bed. Amani's hand found Nero's hand and tangled their fingers and neither of them spoke. Eventually Nero got up and brought a damp washcloth from the bathroom. They cleaned up and got back into bed. Amani pulled the sheet up over both of them and settled against Nero's side with his head on Nero's shoulder.
"I have to work at eight," Amani said.
"Okay."
"I'm going to sleep until seven."
"Okay."
"You have to wake me up."
"I will."
A pause. Then, quietly, with his face against Nero's neck: "Thank you."
Nero's arm tightened around him for one second and then loosened, the pressure a whole sentence on its own.
"Go to sleep, Amani."
Chapter Twenty-Two
Amani wanted a scene.
He told Nero three weeks after their first bedroom encounter. They'd been sleeping together, in both senses, most nights by then, sometimes at Nero's place and sometimes at Amani's loft, which Amani had slowly been reclaiming, the hoodies pushed to the back of the closet, the blackout curtains replaced by regular ones that let in the morning light. The sex had been good. Better than good. Amani had forgotten what it was like to want someone whose hands he trusted, and the remembering had been a kind of healing that no amount of therapy or time would have accomplished on its own.
But the sex wasn't a scene. They hadn't played yet. Amani had held that boundary for weeks, carefully, because scenes were specific. The thoughts of scenes triggered his body’s strongest memory of captivity, and he wasn't going to do it until he knew he could. Nero hadn't pushed. Nero had never pushed. But finally, Amani was ready, or thought he was.
Sitting across from Nero at Nero's kitchen table on a Wednesday morning over coffee, he said: "I want to do a scene."
Nero set his mug down. Attention sharpened. "At the club?"
"Private room three. Off-hours. Just us. I want to do it when the club's closed."
"Okay. What do you want to do?"
Amani had thought about this. A lot. He'd been thinking about it for weeks, reading himself, testing the edges, figuring out what his body would let him ask for and what was still too close to the bone.
"Flogger," he said. "On the back. Not hard, not the first time. But a real scene. Negotiation, setup, aftercare. I want to feel like a sub again. I want to feel like me again."
Nero considered him. "Have you used a flogger with someone you trusted before?"
"Once. At KK, about two years ago. A Dom named Rafael, he was visiting from Phoenix. It was good."
"Hard limits?"
"No restraints. At all. Nothing on my wrists, nothing on my ankles, nothing holding me in place. I need to be able to step out of the scene physically at any moment."
"Agreed."
"And no blindfold. Lights on. I need to see you."
"Agreed."
Amani drew a breath. This was the harder one. "And if I use the safe word, you stop and you don't come near me. Not to check on me, not to hold me, not to do aftercare. I need you to step back and let me come to you. Not because I don't trust you. Because I need my body to know, completely, that I control when the distance closes."
Nero didn't flinch. He nodded once. "Lioness still?"
