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CHAPTER ONE
Heidi Dowd flicked a bit of floating cork out of her white wine and tilted her head toward the flashing red light on her ex-brother-in-law’s desk. “You’ve got an alert, Clay.”
Clay gave the light panel a cursory glance and turned his attention back to the stim wand he was putting batteries into. “Mm-hmm. Knew that was coming.”
Heidi crossed her legs at the ankles and took a sip. “You gonna answer it?”
“Yeah. I guess.”
Though he may have possessed the will to respond to his client’s appeal, he didn’t have the urgency. Taking his time, he inserted the rechargeable batteries and then tightened the end cap. After pressing the power switch, he peered speculatively at the shock device. “Hate these things.”
Heidi lazily lifted a shoulder and sniffed the wine. “Not a huge fan, myself. Floats a few of the boats out there, though.” She nodded vaguely toward the office door and the private gathering beyond. A packed house, as always.
Clay opened his boondocks home to like-minded sexual thrill-seekers twice every month. Locals who sought thrills beyond the pleasures of vanilla spent the Friday evenings socializing, learning, and playing. Most of the invitation owners for the Down and Dirty gatherings appeared only a few times of the year when they were between partners or simply in need of a period of extra stimulation. A handful of regulars, though, attended almost every event, some out of sheer habit. Heidi was one. She rarely even took her clothes off anymore. It wasn’t that the membership was getting stale. Heidi’s problem was that the submissives who sought her out behaved the same way in the end without fail. She’d had to turn over a new leaf: she only played if she could be anonymous. She’d been finding that enriching despite everything else.
“You let someone use one of these on you?” Clay asked.
“Years ago, but only so I’d be able to describe the sensation.”
“Yeah, I was gonna say. Doesn’t seem like something you’d volunteer for.”
Light Number Two on Clay’s intercom panel stopped and started flashing again.
Heidi took another sip.
“What do you think of the wine?” Clay asked.
“It’s awful. Limey.”
“Shit.” Scowling, he picked up the bottle and peered at the faded label. “Valerie told me to cull some bottles. Gotta transfer all that shit out of the root cellar so she can get the contractors in to fix the foundation.”
“Are you going to lose the cellar?”
He shrugged and set the wand onto the bookcase behind him.
Clay always had a bit of a mad scientist vibe about him—a mad scientist who wore brocade robes instead of lab coats and whose experiments tended to involve edging.
Not that she knew from personal experience. She’d never played with Clay. He definitely wasn’t her type, and she’d once been married to his brother.
In the end, Tim hadn’t been her type, either, but that was for the best. She loved his brain and cherished his friendship, but his masculinity was incompatible with her innate programming. To be the son of dyed-in-the-wool Eastern North Carolinian farmers, he’d been surprisingly mellow about her “Timmy, we can’t keep doing this. I think I’m a lesbian,” pronouncement many years into their marriage.
They’d gotten a kid out of the pairing and had built a thriving business together. All was well. They’d just needed to be related to each other in a different way.
Tim had finally remarried. His wife, Valerie, didn’t care that the other Mrs. Dowd had a key to their house and sometimes let herself in to borrow their newborn, Naomi. Heidi’s baby shop may have been closed, but she still appreciated the new baby smell. Her and Tim’s son, Kevin, was nineteen, and Kevin rarely smelled like new…anything. The internet informed her that there was little she could do about that beyond encouraging him to have a healthy relationship with showering. Perhaps there were people in some parts of the country who could get away with a gentle, soapless dance beneath the showerhead, but Eastern North Carolina’s humidity was comprised ten percent by other people’s sweat to start with. They had to govern themselves accordingly.
“Val’s doing some brainstorming,” Clay said. “When the house was built, they didn’t give too much thought to flooding, I guess. Every time we get more than a couple inches of rain now, I end up with standing water down there. Gonna fill it in and forget about that one. Might make sense to build something slanted in the other direction, but we’ll see. These fucking antebellum houses weren’t built with ease of renovation in mind.”
The light stopped and then started once more.
“You probably should get that,” Heidi said.
“You’d think that by now, they wouldn’t need to hold my hand for every little thing, right?”
“I thought you liked them helpless and dependent on you.” Heidi smiled behind her glass.
“Only on the days I’ve collected dues. The rest of the time, I could take ’em or leave ’em. Getting too old for this shit.”
Heidi chose not to comment on his age. She and the Dowd brothers had graduated around the same time, and she didn’t particularly need any additional reminders of her mortality. She got enough of those pulling AARP missives out of her mailbox.
