And luckily, she was also used to me being awkward and clumsy at all times, so she just kept right on talking a mile a minute—clearly still amped up from her performance—and shoveling cash at me.
“Are we, um, going back to the room now?” I asked, equal parts hopeful and worried. I felt totally out of place around so many confident, kinky people making eyes at each other… but back in the room, I’d have nowhere to go to calm myself down without Jules noticing.
He didn’t believe in boundaries, and since I didn’t believe in giving up any time he ever wanted to give me, that meant… well, it meant he’d follow me into the bathroom and just keep on talking if we went back to the room.
I swallowed hard, trying not to let myself think of touching myself while he stood outside the shower stall and filled the room with his endless chatter and enthusiasm. Thankfully—or maybe terrifyingly—he had other plans.
“Oh, no, honey,” Diva said, shaking her head and pulling out a few more stray bills from her padded bra. “We won’t be headed there for a while.” She gave me a disturbingly evil smile that--gulp--made my pants even tighter. “With any luck,youmight not be going back to the room at all tonight. Not our room, anyway.”
I blinked and stopped sorting the cash as her words sank in. I knew what she’dsaidshe intended for me this weekend, but surely that had just been talk, right?
“That’s right, sweetie. It’s time,” she said, reading my mind.
“Wait, what?” I blurted, my heart leaping up into my throat. “Whose room would I be in if not ours? I don’t think we should—”
“Just relax, Isaac,” Diva cut in, running one of her glittering talons up my jawline. “You trust me, right?”
That should have been a rhetorical question, but I nodded anyway because of course I did. I trusted Jules more than anyone else in the world. More than I trusted myself most of the time. He may have been larger than life, but he was also my safe place. The first person I’d ever come out to. The one friend who knew all my secrets—well, all but the one about how much in love with him I was—and who I trusted implicitly to always look out for me. The person who’d taken me in when my parents had kicked me out, and who’d kept me, all these years, content to let me take up a second bedroom wherever he lived and tag along in his life in general without really contributing anything other than my constant devotion.
“Isaac,” Diva said sharply, that talon digging in a little as her eyes flashed at me. “It wasn’t a trick question, honey.”
Oops. Sometimes, as fabulous as Jules was, I forgot that hedidseem to need my constant devotion. Or, at least, a little reassurance sometimes.
I honestly didn’t see how anyone could evernotlove him, but people were dumb, and despite Jules strutting through life giving anyone who side-eyed him a big middle finger even when he wasn’t being Diva, for some reason it seemed to make him feel better to hear that I was always in his corner.
Which I was.
Always.
Even now, when this whole night had been a giant leap outside my comfort zone—a zone which was basically limited to our little flat, my job at the offices of Chartered Accountants, and filling up Instagram with the antics of our cat, Pussy Galore.
I honestly wasn’t sure how much more I could handle before I started breaking out in hives. Going back to our room, ignoring the problem in my pants like I was usually so good at doing, and cuddling up on one of the beds to watch something cheesy together sounded like a great way to spend the rest of the night, as far as I was concerned. But if Jules really had other plans for me…
Gulp.
“You know I trust you,” I answered, since that was the only possible answer. I stacked all of Jules’ straightened bills and then folded them over to fit in my pocket, trying not to think too hard about what saying that was going to get me into. “It’s just that all of this…” I gestured to the crowd, the music, the queen currently on stage. “It’s a lot, you know? Um, more than I’m used to.”
“I know,” Diva purred, smiling again now that I’d agreed with her. She patted my cheek. “And that’s why we’re going to do something that will take your mind off all these distractions, okay?”
There was a mischievous look in her eyes that I knew all too well. She had some sort of scheme up her skin-tight sleeve, and it almost definitely didn’t involve room service and cuddling up in the room we’d been given for the weekend. I just… oh God. I just hoped it didn’t involve what she’d told me we were going to do this weekend.
Or, what she thoughtIshould do.
She’d been kidding, right?
Teasing me like she usually did?
“O-kay,” I said anyway, drawing the word out slowly. “Um, should I be worried?”
“Not at all.” Diva grinned, nudging my knees apart and grabbing both my cheeks in her hands as she moved between them and leaned in. “What you should do is kiss me.”
I made a truly embarrassing sound, my cheeks suddenly as hot as the stiffy pushing against my trousers. I opened my mouth to say something, but all the words I knew were suddenly gone. Poof! Like magic.
“I… you… what?” I finally managed, my heart pounding harder than the campy beat of the current song.
Diva fluttered all 30mm of her false lashes at me, running the tip of her talon over the seam of my lips. “I told you, I’m finding you a Daddy to finally pop that cherry of yours and take care of you the way you need, sweetie.”
That… explained nothing.
