“What the fuck,Cass? Are you serious?”
Daisy stared at me from across the table in my apartment, her violet eyes wide with shock.
Not that I blamed her: I’d just told her about the Hunt, about how I’d lost to the Hawks.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
She made motherhood look good. It was more than just her face, always so pretty but fuller now than it had been before the baby. She was more relaxed, more at peace with all the things that had tormented her since her brother Blake’s murder.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I figured you’d try to stop me.”
She sighed. “I probably would have, but you know I would have supported you in the end.”
And she would have. Daisy, Sarai, and I had been best friends since high school. There was nothing we wouldn’t do for each other, which was why I’d invited her to my place for lunch so I could spill my guts.
She’d stopped to pick up sandwiches and we’d come upstairs to eat while Kaylee managed the shop.
“I think maybe I was afraid I might actually let someone talk me out of it.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “It sounds terrifying, even the sex stuff.”
She’d been silent when I’d told her about being chained to the wall naked, when I’d told her what the Hawks had done to me in the tunnels.
“It was,” I said. “But also kind of… exciting.” I watched her face for judgment and didn’t find any. “Does that make me sick?”
Daisy shook her head. “If it’s one thing I’ve learned from the guys, it’s that nothing is sick between the sheets. Everything is allowed if it feels good and you want to do it.”
She was speaking her truth, relevant since she’d been worried about judgement in Blackwell Falls when she’d hooked up with the men known as the Blackwell Beasts and was now in a relationship with all three of them.
It had been a real scandal for a hundred reasons, not the least of which was the fact that Daisy’s family was practically local royalty.
“You might not say that if you knew what they were into,” I said.
She took a bite of her sandwich “What are they into?”
“I’m still figuring it out,” I said. “But they seem to like… toys.”
She stopped chewing. “Like…toystoys?”
“Yeah. There was the chain thing with the clamps in the tunnels, and then when I was with Jagger the other night he blindfolded me and used some kind of… wheel on me.”
“What kind of wheel?”
I laughed. “I don’t actually know since I was blindfolded, and I was too… relaxed after to ask to see it.”
Daisy laughed. “Oh I bet you were super relaxed. How does it compare?”
I took a swig of my iced tea, pilfered from the shop. “How does what compare?”
“The sex!” Daisy said. “It sounds like they know what they’re doing.”
I bit my lip, not quite sure how to tell Daisy the truth. “Thing is, I don’t actually have anything to compare it to.”
Daisy scowled, clearly confused, which was unsurprising because I’d lied to her and Sarai when I told them I’d lost my virginity in high school.
“But you said… I thought you lost your virginity to Matt Hager junior year? And what about all the guys you’ve dated?”
