“Roughly,” Hudson said with a shrug. “But yeah, our lives are honestly fine, when put in a greater context. I’m still going to complain, though.”
“Me too.”
Delilah arrived home, and Inara greeted her with several meows.
“I’m employed!” she announced.
Hudson and I cheered, rushing to give her congratulatory hugs.
“It only took eight months! And one-hundred-and-seventy applications! And my studio apartment! And my self-esteem and mental health and self-worth! And I’ll be doing something entirely unrelated to my only passion in life! But I will now have my own money again and stop being a financial burden on my parents! So… yay!”
“Yay!” I said.
“Yay!” Hudson agreed.
I lifted the grass-fed beef into the air. “Tonight, we eat like kings!”
On the way home from a comedy show, Wes called me. I was already buzzing with good energy, my money worries swept away after an hour of laughter.
“I’m taking you to Third House when I get back,” he said. “I want you to meet my chosen family.”
My heart warmed. “Okay, but only if you pick me up at my place first so you can meet mine.”
“Deal. Pleasure doing business with you.”
I watched as a driver yelled at a biker who was yelling at a pedestrian in the bike lane. Ah, the circle of life. I loved New York.
“Where are you?” Wes asked.
Something about the question turned me on, and I wondered if that was toxic of me.
I shrugged to myself.Oh, well.
“Park Slope. Decided to take a shortcut and walk to the Fulton G.”
“I’ll stay on the phone with you until you get there,” he said softly.
I smiled, but my heart panged, knowing where his protectiveness came from. “I finishedTheStory of O.”
“And?”
“The ending was rough. Until I found out there was an even rougher ending they cut,” I said, referencing the alternate ending in which O tells her Master she would take her own life ifhe ended things with her, and he said he was cool with that, so she did.
“Say more.”
“I hated René,” I said. “He was a fake Dom.”
Wes laughed.
“I know the central theme was about the lengths O was willing to go for love, and I know it was more of a dark erotic fantasy than anywhere close to a romance, but… yeah, fuck René. He pawned O off like she meant nothing to him. And the branding and genital piercing part was an intense read.”
“Hard limits?”
“I’d say so. Maybe a tattoo.”
“You would let a Dom tattoo you?” Wes asked, a dark edge in his voice.
I blushed. “Maybe. But only after, like, ten years of marriage.”
