That was the part I hated to admit. I knew I was mercurial and I knew I was difficult. Hard to get along with and even harder to please. I didn’t think I asked for much, but I wanted everything and I wanted it given freely…willingly. I wanted trust. Of course, I was willing to work for it, but…
I had struggled for years to explain it.
It wasn’t a problem of taking the time and putting in the work to build something good with someone. But I wanted everything and I wanted it all at once. The rest would follow because how could you build a foundation if you didn’t have all the pieces? Grayson had told me more than once I was unreasonable, but I disagreed. Vehemently and often.
Because, for as demanding of a partner as I could be, I was also patient. I’d waited my whole adult life, up to that point, and I would keep waiting until I found the right person. That didn’t stop me from having fun in the meantime.
Lots of fun.
Maybe my quest forfunwas another way for me to try and search out the kind of partner I was after. Maybe he’d fall into my lap and it would be like magic. Equal parts ready to fight and fuck. I knew I wanted a lot, I knew I asked a lot, but I wouldn’t settle for less than.
“You ask for too much,” he said.
Quietly.
Like he didn’t want to say it or didn’t want me to hear it. Which one, I wasn’t sure.
“We’ll agree to disagree, friend.” I slapped my hand down on the top of his thigh.“Tell me about your date the other night.”
“It wasn’t a date.”
“Tell me anyway.” I snatched the wine bottle from the side table and topped off both of our mugs.
“Oh, is it that kind of night?” Gray laughed and took a drink. “I have work tomorrow, you know.”
“So do I.”
“You’re the boss, though.”
“No one is making you keep pace with me,” I reminded him. “And besides, don’t you set your own schedule?”
He rolled his eyes, exasperation marked across his features, then he took another drink.
“A couple weeks ago, I was meeting a client for dinner in Pasadena. There was an event somewhere and parking was shit, so I ended up parking almost a mile away from the restaurant—”
I cut him off, “No valet?”
“I didn’t pick it.”
That drew a laugh out of me. “Go on.”
“I’m walking to the restaurant, which was admittedly better than mediocre, but not deserving of a two mile round trip walk, and there was a church.”
“Don’t know if I like the turn this story just took.”
“It was a sex club.”
Shifting my weight on the couch, I turned to face him, mug still in hand. I cradled it close, like it was hot cocoa on a cold night instead of a three hundred dollar bottle of Pinot that I didn’t even remember buying.
“A sex club, in an old church.” Gray went on, tucking his mug between his legs and pulled his cell phone out of the pocket of his shorts. He tapped away at the screen and passed it over to me.
“Rapture.” I snorted. “Fitting.”
The website was achingly generic and nondescript, as I figured any good sex club website would be, but there were key words in the phrasing that made the intent of the establishment clear.
“It’s not a sex club, you idiot. It’s a kink club.”
“Same thing,” he said.
