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The outward tenderness in his voice belied a deeper possessiveness that had Jamie’s skin crawling. Worse still, as Jamie glanced around the table, everyone was staring at him.
“I am a firm believer in the fact that everyone should be in therapy,” he said, trying to make light of it. “We’re all a bit barmy, aren’t we?” he asked, reaching for his wine glass.
The others at the table laughed, and the momentary bump in tension subsided. Only Dr. Epstein remained tense as he stared at Jamie with a false smile.
Jamie hoped he’d averted disaster, but Ronny apparently wasn’t done yet.
“Therapy is good,” he said, pretending to go along with Jamie. “But I know you, along with many other people, engage in hobbies as a way to relieve the pressures of life.”
The bottom dropped out of Jamie’s stomach. “Don’t you dare,” he muttered under his breath to Ronny, using the excuse of opening his napkin and spreading it across his lap as a way to lean closer to him.
“Hobbies are a must,” the older, exceedingly wealthy man across the table from Jamie said with a smile. “In my youth, I was an avid skier. I used to fly down to the Alps nearly every weekend to tackle the slopes.”
“You tackled the snow bunnies as well, didn’t you, Clyde,” the other older man sitting next to him said, nudging his arm.
“That’s how I met my lovely wife,” Clyde said, raising his glass to the woman seated next to him.
Again, Jamie thought he was safe and that the table would move on to other things. And again, Ronny wasn’t ready to let it go.
“Jamison here blows off his steam in the kink scene,” he said.
The table went dead silent. Raging heat crept up Jamie’s neck to his face. His lungs refused to draw in air. The moment he’d dreaded for years had arrived.
“You wouldn’t believe how big of a masochist this one is,” Ronny went on with a smirk, gesturing with his thumb to Jamie, sitting rigidly beside him. Jamie felt the blood draining from his face. “Why, the things I’ve seen him take—”
“Enough,” Dr. Epstein snapped, quiet but firm.
Ronny blinked in surprised and jerked to sit a little straighter. He clearly hadn’t expected anyone other than Jamie to try to stop his undermining attacks. For the moment, he had the good sense to look startled over what he’d blurted, but Jamie was certain it would only be a moment before he tried some other avenue to cut him down.
“Excuse me,” Jamie said, pushing his chair back and standing. It was all over now anyhow, so fleeing wouldn’t make a difference. It would be better for the university if he removed himself from the donors, whose funding was so desperately needed, anyhow. “I…I see someone I should have a word with.”
It was a terrible excuse, and everyone at the table probably knew it was embarrassment that had driven him from his seat. Jamie didn’t even look at Ronny as he set his napkin on the table and stepped away. He nodded once more to the others at the table, sent a deeply apologetic look to Dr. Epstein, then walked away, heading to the hallway where he knew the restrooms were located.
That was it. He didn’t think it was possible to be more embarrassed. It wasn’t so much what was said as the fact that Ronny had said it in such a cavalier manner, putting Jamie down so thoroughly in front of others, while he was supposed to be doing his job.
That was the problem, really. It was the problem that had always existed and the reason the two of them had split. Ronny simply could not handle his sub garnering more attention and praise than he received. He was just the sort of man who thought it was his right to keep Jamie where he wanted him, and if that meant ruining his life, then so be it.
As he neared the hallway to the restrooms, Jamie caught sight of Aled rising from his table out of the corner of his eye. Twin feelings of relief and regret followed him down the hallway, away from the diners. Aled followed him as well.
“What happened?” Aled asked when they were almost all the way at the end of the hall, where it turned a corner and continued on to the kitchens. “You’re as pale as a sheet, and you looked shellshocked when you got up just now. You still look ghastly.”
“Ronny,” Jamie said, as though that were the only explanation needed. He pinched the bridge of his nose and paced restlessly at the end of the hall, trying to will himself to calm down.
“What did he do?” Aled asked, crossing his arms and puffing his chest a little.
Jamie managed a quick, weak smile for how beautifully defensive Aled looked on his behalf. He had no doubt that if Aled were as much of an immature muppet as Ronny was, he would storm back out into the banquet hall and punch Ronny’s smug face.
Jamie sighed and stopped his pacing, facing Aled and just breathing for a moment while staring at a spot on Aled’s chest. Then he raised his eyes to meet Aled’s. “He decided it would be a good idea to casually mention to a table full of important donors that I am a masochist involved in the kink scene, and he implied I need therapy because of it.”
Aled almost smiled, though he still had an air of anger about him, as he said, “That’s the pot calling the kettle black a little bit, don’t you think?”
Jamie huffed with laughter, and surprisingly, a good deal of the tension he’d been holding dropped away. “It most certainly is. But it will not mean the end of his career, only mine.”
Aled let his arms fall to his sides. “Is that why you were so weird with me when Dawn and I arrived?” he asked, far too much disappointment in his voice. “I thought the university didn’t mind that we were together.”
“Tolerating something and not minding it are different,” Jamie said. He hated sounding in any way like he would put anything above Aled, but the wound Ronny had just inflicted on him was still bleeding. “I’ve kept my kink side a secret from my colleagues. Being gay is one thing, but being a pain slut is, I fear, a few steps too far over that unspoken line of appropriate conduct for a professor. It’ll affect me, affect my suitability as a professor.”
“Not that I don’t care deeply for your happiness or understand your love for your job,” Aled said, crossing his arms, “but that seems like a load of absolute bollocks.”
