That digging led me to a role I hadn’t even known existed before meeting Hayden. It explained so damn much. I dove into all the blogs and message boards I found about switches. I wanted to learn as much as possible.
Everything I read told me that this role, switch, fit me to a tee, but only with Hayden. I couldn’t deny I hadn’t always felt comfortable being the dominant partner with male-presenting people. I was only attracted to dominant males. Just not usually as dominant as Hayden.
With female-presenting people, I didn’t struggle as much. Call me sexist or old-fashioned if you please, but I’d been raised that females could do anything, including protect themselves, and it was my job to provide them with tools and training to do so. But it was also my job to then stand in front of them so they didn’t have to use those tools and training.
All the people I messaged and chatted with, and all the articles I read, told me being a switch was about balance and that it wouldn’t always be a challenge, but it also wouldn’t always be easy. It was literally like walking a tightrope stretched between two vastly differing personalities and gave the psych major in me a headache on a good day.
Today wasn’t a good day.
Be that as it may, this was my true identity when presented with a top more dominant than me. God knows that’s Hayden. The man didn’t have a submissive bone in his body.
How he’d done so well in the Marines, I’ll never know.
“Are you trying to use some Jedi mind trick to get all those clothes to hang their selves?”
My head turned toward him slowly like a video on half-speed before looking back at the open closet Hayden and I would now be sharing. We’d moved my stuff into his house today. I still hadn’t told him about the family. After everything that happened in the shower—and what the fuck was it with me trying to assert dominance in the shower—I convinced him I wanted to move in with him. And I did. I didn’t care if we lived in a mansion or a shack. I just wanted to be with him, but me moving in with him would limit him getting clued in even more than he already had been. When Gunny, who’d refused to let us turn down his offer of help when we started talking about it in the kitchen earlier, left, I’d told Hayden I was going to unpack because I hated to iron. It wasn’t a lie. I did hate to iron. Hayden offered to help, but I waved him off. He’d come back into the room a few times, making the offer, but I kept turning him down. I wanted some time to myself. The last time he leaned against the bedroom doorframe with his ankles and arms crossed, looking sexy as fuck, I’d asked him to run to the exchange for something for dinner.
Looking down at the shirts clutched in each hand, I couldn’t tell you how long I’d been standing there, lost in thought. I dropped onto the side of the bed, tossing the shirts onto the pillows with the others I had laid out.
“Vato? Are you okay?” he asked, his voice coming from the doorway.
I stared at my hands and murmured, “I think I’m a switch.”
He came over to me, moving silently as only someone trained to do so could pull off. I expected him to sit next to me on the bed, but instead, he squatted before me, his hands on my thighs.
“I think so, too.”
Crazy how this coming out felt more stressful than when I came out to my family as bisexual and then again when I had to explain what being pansexual was after someone was trying to hook up and mentioned the other person was bisexual too. And I blurted out I wasn’t bi, that I was pan.
Still unable to look at him, I said, “Actually, I know so.”
“I do, too.”
That got my attention. “Why haven’t you said anything?”
“Because it’s not my place to tell you how to identify yourself, carinõ. How you label yourself is your right, not mine.”
As dominant as he could be, and as much as we didn’t fit quite right, was it any wonder why I loved this man? So many people would have forced the observation on me, but not Hayden. His actions and my responses to him led me where I needed to be to accept the information.
We stayed still, like two statues, for the longest time, with only the sound of our breathing filling the room and the occasional din of kids playing outside in the street, interrupting the peaceful silence.
“Are you okay?” he asked again, and I nodded, my gaze still locked on my hands where they hung between my knees.
He stood, pulling me from the bed to stand with him. I thought he was going to hug me, but he grabbed all the hangers I’d gotten lost in thought hanging clothes on and tossed them in the chair between the nightstand and bed. I envisioned him sitting there in the mornings, fresh from a shower, tying on his boots.
“Hayden, they’re going to wrinkle.”
“Then I’ll fucking iron them, but I want to hold you. Is that okay with you?”
I nodded, emotion swelling until my chin trembled.
“I have a rule, though. No clothes in the bed. Boxers are fine until it’s time to sleep.”
I sighed, thankful it wasn’t something like no clothes at all in the house. A friend back home who was a sub had that rule. The number of times I stopped by their house and had to wait for him to put clothes on was crazy. He’d even been in the barn once, and his Daddy had to take clothes down to the barn for him so he could come back to the house.
I started undressing, but Hayden covered my hands, stilling my movements.
“I want to take care of you. Will you let me?”
