2. Alex

CHAPTER 2

ALEX

Dylan the bartender showed up on my front porch at two-forty-five in the morning. His hair was still a tangled mess, dark roots fading into bleached ends around his ears, and his eyes were green as a chunk of polished jade. He chewed nervously on the corner of his lip, and I leaned against the doorframe staring down at him, wondering if I was making a terrible mistake.

Paying a stranger for sex couldn’t be any worse of a decision than sleeping with one of my best friends, which I’d already done to disastrous results, so I shoved that worry as far out of my head as I could manage. It had been months since my friend Carter Royce IV—affectionately called Beamer—and I had accidentally fallen into bed together. He was an attractive man, but I’d known him for years and never once thought of him as more than one of my dearest friends.

We’d been up late drinking one night, partying long after the party should have stopped and he’d confided in me how miserable he was without someone to play with. I was a dominant, I always had been, and I knew Beamer absolutely was not. I’d never had difficulty finding people to play with—or to fuck—so I found it hard to believe that he was struggling to find a dominant man himself. Maybe it was the whiskey, but that night was the first time he told me, in detail, the ways he liked to play…the ways he wanted to fuck, and it so closely aligned with my own interests, I could have choked on my tongue.

Instead, I grabbed him around the throat, hauled him onto my lap, and I kissed him. I kissed him until we were both hard and naked and he was on his back and I couldn’t bring myself to call him by his nickname any longer. In my bedroom, on his knees for me, he was Carter, and he was so much more than I’d expected. We’d barely had a chance to get started when everything ended, when we all found out he was married, when he fell in love with his husband, when he moved to California…

The taste of pleasure I’d found with him had been enough to ensure I never settled again. But finding people who were down for my flavor of sex and kink was easier said than done. Even though there’d never been a shortage of willing subs wandering around The Black Door, it was always a fleeting kind of hookup. I could find someone who wanted the impact play I craved, but they didn’t have any interest in actual submission. Or if I found someone who wanted to submit, they were scared of the pain.

I wanted both.

And after having it with Carter…with Beamer…I needed it.

His move to California had sent me into a depression spiral so deep I didn’t see any of my friends for weeks. I couldn’t bring myself to justify what he and I had done together, nor did I want to. I didn’t expect them to understand and I didn’t have the energy to try and explain. It was easier to isolate and to mourn.

So I did.

My comment about paying for sex had been in passing, and Dylan was far from my usual type. I’d had a long week at work, and my friends were starting to get annoying about the fact I wasn’t hanging out anymore. I needed to blow off some steam and my right hand hadn’t been cutting it for weeks.

“Dylan.” I stared down at him, again wondering if this was all one mistake in a long line of them.

“I don’t think you ever told me your name,” he said, voice sounding as quiet as it had in the noisy bar.

“Alex Burke.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Should I text that to someone so they can find my body after you dig out my kidneys and leave me for dead in your bathtub?”

“Last I checked, I wasn’t in need of an organ transplant.”

“You could sell it,” he said, letting out a low laugh that vibrated straight through the base of my spine.

“I don’t need the money,” I told him.

Dylan’s smile fell away and he tilted his head back, checking out how many stories my house had. The answer was three, which must have been acceptable because he dropped his chin back toward his chest, his expression steely.

“I do,” he said.

I nodded and stepped out of the doorway to let him inside.

He was still in his work attire—a tight pair of black jeans with rips at the knees, a worn-down pair of black Vans, and a tight black t-shirt. He was slender, but strong, with tight muscles that wrapped around his arms and his thighs, testing the durability of his too-small clothes.

“Do you want a drink?” I asked.

Dylan bent down and untied his shoes, using his toes to push them toward the shoe rack just inside the door. We both looked down at our feet, his socked and mine bare.

“I don’t think so,” he mumbled.

I’d never paid for sex before, so I had no frame of reference about what to expect, but I was quickly getting the impression that Dylan had never been paid for sex either, which left us both at more of a disadvantage than I would have liked.

“Can we talk about limits?” I asked next, leading him to the couch and taking a seat. He followed after me, more nervous than not, but he was definitely trying to hold it together. I threaded my fingers together in my lap, hoping he wouldn’t see my hands shaking.

“I want to use condoms,” he blurted.

I chuckled. “That’s a given, I meant…”

Realization dawned, and Dylan’s eyes went wide. “Oh, you meant like…kinky limits?”

“Kinky limits,” I agreed.

“I don’t have a lot of experience with kink.”

I cursed under my breath and reached into my pocket, ready to pay Dylan for his time and send him on his way. We were both in over our heads and the last thing I wanted was to traumatize or hurt someone who didn’t understand the entirety of what I was asking for in the bedroom.

“My best friend does,” he blurted, holding up both of his hands like he was ready to reach out and stop me.

“You aren’t him.”

“He’s talked to me about it. He likes to…do it really rough. Sometimes he comes home with bruises.”

I dragged my tongue across the front of my teeth. “Does he like that?”

“He’s had better.”

“Does the idea of getting hurt during sex make you hard?” I asked.

Dylan gave a small shrug.

“What about submitting?”

He snorted, rolling his eyes. “You mean like doing what I’m told? I’ve spent my whole life doing that.”

I opened my mouth and closed it again, pulling my lips in between my teeth to think. My hand was still in my pocket, curled around the money clip. When I’d told him at the bar I was ready to pay for it, I hadn’t meant I was in the market to walk a beginner through the ABC’s of BDSM.

“There’s safe words, right?” he asked, green eyes wide and half-filled with tears.

“Yes.”

“Give me one, then. And if it’s too much, I’ll use it. And is there like, I don’t know, a reverse safe word?”

I pulled my hand out of my pocket, and his shoulders noticeably relaxed. “What is a reverse safe word?”

“I don’t know,” he said with half a grin. “This is your scene, not mine. But I meant like… there’s one to stop, right? There should be one for more.”

Licking my lips, I swallowed nervously. My palms had started to sweat, which was entirely unlike me and far from the energy that I ever wanted to take into the bedroom. If I wasn’t steady and sure, how could a partner rely on me to handle them in the ways we were both after? Even though, in this case, it was more the ways that I was after. Dylan was in it for the cash, which needed to be fine for me.

“Green for more,” I told him, trying not to think about how many times Carter had cried out the color our first time together, constantly pushing me toward my own limits in his quest for more.

“And Juilliard to stop,” he said.

“Okay.”

This was still a mistake.

I pulled my money clip out of my pocket and pulled all the cash out of it, which had to be near a thousand dollars after what I’d left him at the bar. The bills were new and crisp, and I held them out to him. At the sight of the money, Dylan’s cheeks burned the most beautiful shade of crimson. He took the money, not even counting it, and shoved it into his pocket.

“What now?” he asked.

“You had said you wanted me to use condoms,” I said, looping us back to the basic part of the limits conversation we’d started with.

“For penetration.”

“Even in your mouth?”

His jaw went slack, giving me a peek at the tip of his tongue behind the backs of his teeth.

“Just don’t come in my mouth,” he said.

“My tests are clear, Dylan. I get checked monthly.”

He nodded.

“Better safe than sorry,” I said, matching his nod. “And I take PrEP.”

“So am I,” he rasped.

“Good boy.”

The red on his cheeks rushed down his throat.

Maybe it wasn’t such a horrible idea after all.

“Did you like that?” I asked. “When I just called you a good boy?”

Dylan shifted his weight on the couch, folding his hands in his lap. He was trying to hide his erection, which was adorable but entirely unnecessary considering what we were both there to do.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“How does it feel if I call you a whore?” I asked.

“Aren’t I?”

My lips twisted into a frown, and I shook my head. “That’s a backward way of thinking. There’s nothing wrong with sex work.”

He licked his lips. “You didn’t call me a whore. At least, not the way you’d called me a good boy.”

Dylan was cheeky, that was for sure. Even without his experience, he’d be a handful when it came to submission. And up until that moment, I hadn’t thought I wanted a challenge, but suddenly the potential that existed with breaking that attitude right out of him and molding him into the kind of partner I’d lost…

It felt like a reachable goal.

“You’re a whore, Dylan,” I said next, my own cock pressing insistently at the fly of my jeans. “Sitting on my couch, ready to take your clothes off and let me fuck you.”

His chest swelled as he sucked in a breath.

“You want it,” I went on. “I can see how hard your cock gets.”

“I like good boy better,” he whispered, blinking quickly and starting down at the erection I’d just teased him about.

“That’s good, Dylan.” I reached forward and touched him for the first time, cradling his cheek in my palm. He leaned into me like we’d been doing it for years. The relief that coursed through him was so palpable I felt it in my own bones, forcing me to let out a breath I’d been holding since my app pinged him at the bar. “I like good boys better too. I like when they listen and do what they’re told so I can come. You can listen, can’t you?”

“I can make you come too,” he said, lashes already damp, but he looked up at me, all earnest want and drive.

“I believe you,” I told him. “Now let’s go into the other room so you can prove it.”