“I don’t know.” Something about the way he glanced over at me and quickly looked away said he was leaving out important details.
That wasn’t going to work, so I detoured us right over to a large chair in the corner and sat down, pulling him onto my lap.“This is going to be our conversation chair. It’s neutral. It’s not a punishment or a reward. It’s simply a space used just for us to communicate clearly about a topic.”
His sigh and dejected slump were adorable but I managed to keep a straight face. “I wasn’t rude.”
“You’re right.” Kissing his head, I did my best to show him a neutral expression so he wouldn’t get confused about how I felt. “You were polite.”
Because...
“Because you didn’t want to bring up the past since I might find that inappropriate.” I knew I was right when he went still. “I can understand why people you’ve dated in the past would’ve made that a limit, but it’s not one of mine.”
Slowly relaxing into me, I could almost hear his brain whirling as he processed the information. “As my Dom, you need to understand the details others might not want to hear.”
Just nodding had him letting out a deep breath. “Learning a new set of rules is difficult.”
Understandable.
“Let’s look at it like you’re learning a new language. The old one still applies but not in this situation.” He only went still for a moment that time before curling into me and arranging himself across my lap in a cuddle-the-baby kind of position. “Learning a new language is never easy unless you’ve got one of those brains where they just suck up new languages.”
He chuckled. “You sound worried about that.”
“I’m not saying they’re weird, but I really don’t understand it because I flunked high school Spanish twice.” Part of that was my teacher’s fault because she’d hated me passionately, but my dislike of the language didn’t help. “I managed to learn enough Chinese in college to pass that class, though.”
“I wonder if it’s about how different the written forms are. Do the characters end up filed away like pictures or words?” All Icould do was shrug but he didn’t mind. “I might have to research that, but not now.”
Thank goodness.
“But yes. I like the new language comparison.” He liked it enough to start petting my chest as his stress levels continued to go down. “I didn’t lie in the old language. You’re not a woman. I don’t know how I’ll respond with you.”
Brat.
“I will accept that answer as the truth for the sake of the discussion.” His long drawn-out sigh said he knew I wasn’t pleased with it. “Are you ready to give me a more complete answer?”
“Yes.” He wasn’t happy with the situation, though. “In past situations, I found I needed to be able to focus on one thing at a time, but I don’t have enough data to draw firm conclusions. I also don’t know if the differences in body types could be part of the problem.”
There could honestly be a variety of things that impacted the situation.
“Thank you for being clearer in your explanation, but look at me for a moment, boy.” That order got huffs and puffs that I fought to ignore, but eventually he inched back enough to look up at my face. “Good boy. I want you to remember that I am not upset that you have a past with women. I have no negative emotions about you needing to reference past partners to explain something. My focus is on us moving forward, but yes, I’m really loving being your first male partner. All of those can be true for me at the same time, though.”
Swallowing, he took a moment before nodding slowly. “The first men I found online to answer questions were in a BDSM group based around introducing new men to the lifestyle. But once they realized my past included women, they were quite...aggressive.”
Oh.
“I did more research after that and came to understand there are some men with...limits on that...but I don’t do well adapting once I’ve learned a lesson.” Taking a steadying breath, he seemed to try to push his emotions or confusion back. “I’ve been trying to work on that, but it hasn’t been successful.”
I could understand that.
“You’re doing a wonderful job of explaining that and we’ll adapt to that as we need to. All I ask is that you do your best to work on it once you realize that we’ve run into a lesson kind of issue.” We were lucky he hadn’t been researching on his own longer. “Did you leave that group?”
His enthusiastic nod made me smile. “Good boy. Would you like us to find you a group where the people are nicer?”
He froze.
“Um. I don’t know.” The way his face scrunched up had me kissing his forehead. “And that’s not an incomplete answer this time.”
A lie.
It wasn’t a lie.
