Chapter 2

Zale

"Fuck it, Zale. Stop looking down on everyone and maybe you'll find the right guy," Errol said.

"I'm taller than everyone, I can't help looking down."

He punched me in the arm which, through muscle and my leather jacket, I barely felt.

"Get that chip off your shoulder. Let's have some fun. Are you open to it all?"

I frowned. "Not all. I agreed to come with you and not judge, that's all."

The Red Door was before us and indeed the entrance actually was a red door. I wanted to laugh but held my cool. I could be completely cool. I'd done some kink in the past, but nothing I really needed to repeat. I wasn't going to be surprised. Or embarrassed. My biggest fear was being left behind while Errol hooked up with some gorgeous sadist. Errol was a masochist who loved humiliation kink and to be flogged.

We'd met at a bar two years ago and had one date before we realized we were completely incompatible since I didn't really get off on inflicting pain or telling someone to lick my boots. Somehow, though, we grew to be friends. He was a riot, as well as entertaining, supportive, and the one person in my life I actually trusted to be there if I needed it.

Errol and I had had some pretty decent heart-to-hearts. He'd been a bit brutal when he told me I was too picky and that was why I was alone.

"You don't know what you're looking for and you find flaws in every date you have," he had said. "You're either too shallow or too deep and nothing will ever be good enough. Give yourself room to fall in love if that's what you want."

"If it hasn't happened by age thirty-three, it's not going to," I'd replied.

"You never know."

At the door, someone checked us off a digital list on a tablet. We'd already signed our privacy and consent forms and paid online so there was no holdup. Errol waltzed into the club like he owned the place.

The club was busy for such a secret, hidden place with an unmarked scarlet door. I immediately saw a large bar and headed for it. Half the guys we passed were wearing leather, some in harnesses and chaps, some in jackets like me. Even though our desires didn't match, it was a comfort. My size, six-four and two-hundred forty pounds of hard muscle always made me stand out, even feel awkward, but I could hold my own when it came to this crowd.

Errol came up alongside me and ordered a beer. I preferred harder stuff when I was not the driver and put in for a rum and Coke.

"Come on." Errol picked up his drink. "Let's have a look around."

The main level held the bar, a dance floor, bathrooms, and several large party rooms.

"Those rooms can be rented for private parties," Errol said. "But some are more public than private."

I noticed the doors were open to three of the rooms. One room had tons of balloons and streamers, and people in all modes of dress milling about a large cake shaped like a naked man with accurate anatomy. Impressive. Maybe tasty, too.

Another room had a small stage where naked male dancers were giving an energetic performance to a loud industrial beat. The sign on the door said, Morrow Construction Employees Welcome.

We moved on.

The third room had a sign that said, Keats and Tomlin Wedding Party. It was a reception. Of sorts. The big cake had a huge dildo on top, the tip of which was set on fire.

"This place is busy."

"The weekend is never boring here." Errol led me to another door.

Overhead, the archway was painted red with the words THE CELLAR on it.

"Downstairs is where most of the kink actually happens," Errol said.

"Figured." I was new here, but not to kink clubs in general.

Errol opened the door, and I followed him down a narrow stairway dimly lit by overhead orange lights. The walls were brick, the air cool. It smelled loamy at first. But when I stepped off the last step and turned the corner, I was assaulted with a mix of men's cologne, sweat, sex and bleach.

The hallway stretched ahead of us, white brick and clean white tile. Fluorescents bathed the area with a harshness I'd not expected. It was like a school hall, or a hospital, with windowed doors and more windows to the sides so a person could peep into any of the rooms without going inside.

There were peepers standing around, some talking, some staring. They ignored us as we moved forward. I noticed hand sanitizer units at every entrance, as well as in-built shelves offering bowls of condoms and lube packets. Everything was spic and span, gleaming like new. It was almost silent, but through the thick walls and glass I heard a few distant shouts and groans.

At the far end of the hall were changing rooms, and signs with arrows that pointed to more bathrooms.

Errol turned to me. "Well, that's the tour. Something for everyone."

"Yep."

The lure of sex permeated the air, especially psychically. I had always been sensitive to the moods of others in close proximity. But nothing called out to me. I wasn't sure where to start. I was still very much in my mind tonight, my body failing to rule me as it did so much in my early twenties.

"You okay for a while?" Errol asked.

"Fine."

He wandered off. I couldn't blame him. He'd led me downstairs not to show off but for his own selfish reasons. I'd agreed ahead of time that we would separate.

I leaned against the frame of a window, peeking inside an orgy room. Orgies were the sort of thing that were fascinating at first, but after a while they got rather repetitive. The really creative ones required directors, and that rarely happened in a spontaneous place like a kink club. If someone wanted a real performance, there were places for that, secretive and underground.

Behind me, two leather daddies were holding a conversation about boys and littles. Though it was personal, they were not being quiet about their criticism and comparing notes.

"The twinky boys are sweet, but the littles are so strange sometimes," said one.

"I like the littles okay, but I had Tam—he's the one in the center of the room playing with the trucks—for two weeks and he wouldn't warm up to me."

"They definitely take more work. I'd love to get my hands on Franklin, though."

"Oh yeah. Me, too. But he's got a daddy and they're monogamous. I swear they come here every weekend just to tease the single daddies with Franklin's need to flirt."

"Right? His daddy never leaves his side."

"Why is it all the good ones are always taken?"

"Well, that one in the corner reading a picture book by himself is single. You know Travis? He took him out on a date. Says the boy won't put out. Like he's ace or something."

"Yep, Travis still talks about it. Uses the word ace to describe him. Cute little who won't let his pants down. Kenzie or Kenji or something."

"Kendry. Yep. Total daddy-tease."

I couldn't help my own curiosity. I moved to the window where the two men stood and peered inside.

The room was filled with littles and boys, far more than I expected to see. Daddies congregated together at one end of the big room near a glass fridge full of juice boxes and chocolate milk. They sat around a big table or on couches, leather dudes, bears, gray foxes, all kinds. The room looked chaotic, reminding me that in this community daddies and boys were a very popular kink. Actual littles were rarer, but to look at that crowd there certainly seemed to be a lot of onesie-wearing boys with pacifier necklaces tied about their necks.

I couldn't help my wandering eye. Who was this Kendry these two were talking about? Watching now, I honed in on the cute factor, something I'd never allowed myself to do before. I'd convinced myself early on, with some amount of peer pressure, that littles were trouble, and a bit perplexing. I wanted to be an adult and have adult relationships. I wanted kink, but in a more straight-forward manner.

Well, these boys—littles—were adults. I could see it clearly. And they seemed quite straight-forward about their kink, hiding nothing, uninhibited. There was something refreshing about their "take me or leave me" attitudes that kept me watching in this moment.

I hunted the room for the one in the corner who was reading. The one these two leather daddies called Kendry. And there he was sitting in a tiny chair with a reading light trained on the large picture book in his lap. It was as if a spotlight lit him up just for me. Beneath thick, dark brows, his features were as delicate as a doll's, with a pinched chin, button nose, and big eyes. I couldn't detect their color from here, but I could see his bright pink lips, rosy cheeks and soft brown hair.

He was pretty. Like an angel.

My body perked up as if it saw something it wanted. Yet it wasn't my cock that throbbed, but something inside my chest. Like a weird hitch in my lungs, an itch, a shiver of the heart. It was confusing. And fascinating.

I reached out and opened the door to the room.