Clyde:
You got it, boss.
He checked the time and tucked his phone into his jacket pocket. Zack stared at the snow-covered trees; the mounting anticipation that thrummed through his veins was becoming harder to ignore.
The more the miles ticked away, the closer he was getting home. Back to his space andthem. No matter how hard it was becoming to deny.
A flash of color in the snow caught his eye. He glanced out quickly before the train roared past. There, half buried at the edge of the highway, was a single, vibrant red mitten. A child’s mitten, its thumb pointing toward the sky like a tiny, defiant flag. Alone. Separated from its other half, from the small, warm hand it was meant to protect. An image of Sophie, crying and spread wide on the floor, her face wet with tears, her body trembling, flashed through his mind.
“Please, Sir,” she had cried. “Please, may I come?”
The ache in his chest was sharp and sudden. He wasn’t just the storm. He was the lonely mitten at the side of the road, a useless, cold thing without its partner.
He grabbed his phone, the screen cold against his fingertips. He didn’t think. He just scrolled until he found her name. The call connected on the second ring.
“Hello?” Her voice was warm, slightly breathless. Music played faintly in the background.
“It’s Zack.”
A beat of silence and the beat of the music in the background softened. “Sir,” she corrected, a hint of something he couldn’t quite name in her voice. “Is everything okay?”
He should have said something cutting, something to reassert the distance.“Is that any way to answer your Dom?”But the words didn’t come. The silence stretched, filled with the hum of the train.
“I’m on my way back,” he said, the words coming out gruff, stripped of any emotion. He sounded like an idiot.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Was the trip… successful?”
“Profitable,” he clipped out. “Listen, I–” He stopped. What was he doing?
Just tell her you’re thinking of her, you pathetic fuck.
He pushed the thought away. “Where are you?” he demanded, his harshness a flimsy shield.
“At the club. With Claudia.”
The club. With her friend. A wave of something hot and ugly washed over him. She was out, having fun. While he was… what? Pining over a lost mitten like a sentimental fool. He was the storm. He didn’t pine.
“Have fun,” he bit out and ended the call.
He threw the phone onto the seat beside him.
“How’s that new sub you and Aiden acquired?” Wes stood in front of him, handing him a glass. Leave it to him to be the first one to pry.
“She’s fun and games.” Zack swallowed half his drink quickly, hoping it would wash away the bitterness those words left on his tongue.
“It’s a good thing the submissives aren’t around to hear that. Lexi would have clocked that.”
“You’re not above soaping, boy.” Nobody except Aiden ever called him this well. “It is fun and games, but things are slotting into place. It’s beginning to feel like we’re playing for keeps.”
“Even when you live to work, love has a way of finding you.”
Zack grunted and finished off his drink.Love.What he felt for her wasn’t love, it was obsession. A need to see her break, to seeher bend, to watch the light in her eyes flicker then blaze back to life, brighter and more intense for having been challenged. That was all. It had to be all.
“Sadists give as much as they take. What we do for our submissives is important. Impact isn’t finished after contact. You should know this, Zack.”
His mind and heart weren’t agreeing.
“It’s not about the bruises and welts we leave behind. The feeling that the sub gets is as great as the one they give you.”
