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“No. Well, she’s always been a flake, I guess? But I didn’t notice so much when I was really young. I had a lot of freedom, because she wasn’t on my case all the time. She ignored me most of the time, which wasn’t always bad.”
I didn’t tell him about having to forage in the beat-up refrigerator for whatever food she’d happened to put in there on any given week. Or how my friends had offered me things from their lunches that they’d said they didn’t want, but I had known were given to me on the suspicion that I might not have enough to eat at home.
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. I could have gotten into so much trouble. But I guess I’m…not that kind of a person? I don’t know. I worried a lot—about her, aboutus.Maybe…I felt more like the parent?”
“God. That’s a lot to deal with.”
“It felt normal to me.” Except on the days it had felt awful and unfair. “It helped having a friend like Esther. Anyway, when I had my growth spurt was when things went downhill. My mom has a lot of issues with men. She doesn’t trust them, for one thing, but I guess I can’t blame her for that. Then again, when she does trust them, she always trusts the wrong ones. You know?”
“Huh,” Alastair said, digging his fingers into my muscles in the most exquisite way.
“Like that guy we saw… He was probably her drug dealer or just another junkie she’d convinced to help her out. I guess she has to be loaded or high to trust a man, but that brings its own problems, right?”
“Right,” he said, agreeing with me, even though he didn’t understand the whole situation with my mom. But he never would. I didn’t even understand it. I knew she’d been through a lot. Her parents had not been the nicest people.
“God. My childhood seems likeHowdy Doodynext to yours.”
I craned my head to give him a look.
“Howdywhaty?”
He laughed. “Howdy Doody. It was some show in the fifties, I don’t know. All crazy wholesome and pure, I guess?”
“Was that the kind of childhood you had?”
“Well, it wasn’t perfect. My parents both worked, so they weren’t around very much, either. But they made sure I felt loved and was cared for, which seems pretty luxurious to me right now.”
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “It is. You’re lucky.”
“I’m starting to figure that out.”
“My life wasn’tterrible. I’m sure a lot of kids had it way worse. It made me a stronger person. Although the evidence for that is sorely lacking at the moment.”
“What do you mean?”
The man was rubbing cream into the skin of my ass because he’d told me to bend over a desk and I’d let him beat me with a ruler. It didn’t exactly make me feel strong and powerful.
“Well, look at me.”
He stopped the rubbing and squeezed my butt cheek, making me gasp. He sat on the bed beside me, using a towel to wipe the remnants of the soothing gel from his fingers.
“Toby, you know the submissive has all the power, right?”
I blinked. “Well, I… Really?”
He smiled. “The Dom is the one telling the sub what to do, but the Dom has to work within the boundaries that the submissive has already laid out. And at any time, the submissive can stop everything with one word.”
“Well, so can the Dom. That’s what you said.”
“True. It’s important that everyone has a way to tap out.”
“Yeah.”
“The fact that you put yourself in that vulnerable situation, went to the Bordello with me, submitted to things you had never experienced before because you thought it might be fun?” he shook his head. “It takes a certain amount of courage to do that, Toby.”
“Huh.”
