“Hey.” I turn to see him standing up on his porch like a fucking gargoyle. “I mean it, Z. This whole thing with you and her? What you decide to do next? It matters.”
I open my mouth to tell him to mind his own business, but the wrong words come out. “I know.”
“Youmatter.”
I snort. It hides my choppy breathing. “Jesus, bro,” I say, already heading down the garden path, through the squeaky gate, and between the two rows of vendors selling candles and leather and sex toys and blades. Pretty much anything you can get at a medieval festival or a sex shop or a saddlery. They’re packing up for the evening, probably heading out to eat and shower and dress up for a night in the dungeon or the hangar or the big Sex-o-drome tent. Maybe a queer orgy in someone’s cabin or a poker game.
I’ll do the same. But first, I need to assign faux Kidnappers to Victims, the way I do every year. We’ll go over the forms our self-proclaimed victims have handed in and figure out times and places and assailants, make up scripts. The works. It’s pretty fun, actually. I’m hoping it’ll distract me until dungeon time.
I pull out the sandwich. Salami. But also probably a half a pound of other meats, lettuce, cheese, peppers, onions, tomato. An Italian sub. My favorite. Clearly purchased from an actual deli. Probably at lunchtime. Probably by Grace when she went into town to do whatever she does when she’s not wielding a tattoo gun or running through the woods, trying to get Liev to tackle her. Making him happy, after so many years of shit.
I bite into the sandwich and sigh with pleasure. Even a couple hours old, it tastes fucking amazing. It’s gone in five bites, but there’s more in the bag. I reach in and grab the peanut butter cookie I figured I’d find in the bottom. Also my favorite.
Those jerks know me so damn well it hurts.
Ten minutes later, I come out into the field, walk by the pool without bothering to glance at the late afternoon sunbathers and swimmers, go into the now-empty clubhouse bar—was it only last night that everything fell apart here?—through a side door and up the stairs to the meeting room. There’s already a big group of longtime campers gathered, looking over forms filled out by potential kidnapping victims.
The atmosphere’s light and easy, the laughter flowing as it always does here. A low voice mumbles something and Jeanette—a fifty-something woman with a penchant for fisting, responds with a tried and true, “That’s what she said,” which turns the giggling up a notch.
The door behind me falls shut with a bang and everyone turns. The laughter stops so suddenly it’s got to be me.
Great. What’s happening now?
“Somebody die?” I ask, expecting at least a grin or two.
Instead, people I’ve known for well over a decade look down, scuff their feet, clear their throats.
“Aw, shit, y’all. Come on. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”
“He’s on the committee,” says Chatte Noire, a Domme I’ve known for ages. “Every committee member sees every request. It’s in the rules. We know that. We can either show him now or drag this out forever. Outcome’s the same.”
My pulse kicks up. Silently, I look around the group.
“Pretty sure you’re not gonna like this,” says Burn, a rigger I’ve always liked, but who I came close to maiming today when he offered to vertically suspend my wife. We had words, though, and he clearly understood the parameters because the suspension was a prime example of how to respect boundaries and keep a scene as nonsexual as possible.
Dammit. I inhale, though it doesn’t do shit to calm me. “What’d my wife do?”
“Here.” Chatte holds out a sheet of paper. “We’ll let her tell it in her own words.”
20
Twyla
Getting ready for an evening at kink camp feels like a countdown to the ultimate girls’ night out.
Except even better than that.
Camp Haven does that. It makes you feel like you can be anyone, do anything. It makes you feel gorgeous and absolutely free. There are no limits here. No expectations or judgments. Nothing you can’t be or do, no matter your gender, body type, skin-color, sexual orientation. None of it matters here.
It’s especially freeing after spending the last few weeks in Zion’s spotlight.
This freedom? It’s what brings Zion back every year. No doubt about it.
So, if Lamé and Max and Grace insist that I can get away with silver stretch bootie shorts that leave little to the imagination and a crystal tassel fringe halter that plays peekaboo with my nipples, then that’s what I’ll wear to tonight’s Share-n-Try at the Hangar.
The top, along with my crystal-studded medical mask, were purchased earlier from one of the craftspeople selling wares up at the top of the hill, near what I was told is Liev and Grace’s house.
It’s big and beautiful and mysterious, sort of like Grace and Liev themselves, and it sends a bittersweet envy through me that I try hard to ignore.
