20. Seth

SETH

The place might be crowded,but my eyes are glued to Bridget. She's standing at the bar with Abigail, waiting for the next round of drinks.

Her outfit is…fucking perfect. As usual.

It shouldn't be surprising a woman in the fashion industry knows how to dress, but ever since her training began, she's been dressing for me. Lots of blues, dresses that hug all her curves, makeup that highlights her full lips and big green eyes.

Tonight, she's all about the tropical vacation wear of Key West, wearing a halter top dress decorated with palm fronds and fruits.

No corny pattern could detract from her beauty. If anything, one of the printed fronds accentuates the curve of her ass just so…

Jack's voice infiltrates my focus. "What do you think about her?"

I follow his gaze across the bar.

His eyes are focused on an icy blonde pixie cut across the room. She's wearing a crop top and tiny shorts. Cute. Not my type, but cute.

She's standing at the lip of the karaoke stage, cheering on someone, maybe a friend, who is doing a rendition of The Stranger by Billy Joel. "Not a fan of short hair."

"God, how antiquated of you." Jack rolls his eyes.

"Do you like her?"

Jack bites his lip and leans back on our table, ticking the fingers on one hand. "She's hot."

"There you go. So, why didn't you just say that?"

"I don't know, Seth. Don't you think this whole trip is kinda stupid?" Jack's brown eyes look sad.

I gulp. "W-what do you mean?"

Jack looks over at the bar where Abigail and Bridget are still waiting for their drinks. "You know Abigail doesn't just want to fuck around and find out. This isn't just some hurrah for her. She wants to settle down the way everyone else has."

I frown. "Doesn't sound like Abigail…"

"Okay, she hasn't told me that outright, but–"

"She's still so young. She's got so much time. We all do." I don't say I don't want more time. I already know what I want.

"I just know it's kinda getting annoying for her that everyone is coupled or throupled up and–"

"Are you sure you're not projecting, Jack?" I raise an eyebrow.

My friend hesitates. "Well–"

"I understand, buddy." I smile.

He sighs. "Okay, fine. Fine. I would like to meet a woman to have a long-term relationship with. True. But I'm not going to find her in Key West! People here are from all over. Including Florida. And lord knows I'm not dating a Floridian."

I laugh. "You're ridiculous. What's wrong with Floridians?"

Jack shakes his head, eyes widening. "They're crazy, man. They've got a death wish."

"You want me to go talk to her?" I nod toward the blonde.

Jack sighs. "I don't know. I think this whole thing is–"

I notice Bridget moving through the crowd again out of the corner of my eye and all my attention is drawn back to her. I don't hear a thing Jac says. The universe pinpricks a spotlight on Bridget. She is the one and the only.

Since our session in the kitchen yesterday, the truth has become clearer every second. The thought I try to push away is refusing to be put swept aside.

I don't know if she realized this the way I did, but that was the first time we just…fucked. Not in scene. Not after a scene.

Just us out in the world, two people with pent up desperation, tearing each other to ribbons of pleasure.

That could be our life. Out of the Underground. Out in the world.

I know a life isn't made up of only sexual encounters.

That's somewhere we can start, though, right?

Here is the truth: if I don't make her mine, I'm afraid I'll be lost.

I've made the past ten years of my life all Bridget, all the time. I've come so far. To lose her now would…it would just kill me. And I'm not sure that's an exaggeration.

"Where's Abs?" Jack calls out as Bridget gets closer.

Bridget takes a sip of her strawberry daquiri, no doubt extra strawberry included. She smiles at the taste, then offers Jack an answer. "I don't know. She had to go do something."

"That sounds suspicious…"

Bridget giggles.

Oh, that giggle. Want it to be my ring tone.

She shrugs. "You know how she is."

"I do. Sneaky," Jack replies.

She laughs again before her eyes snap to me for a mere moment before traveling away. "Anyway…"

"See anything you like?" Jack asks Bridget.

My body bristles, every nerve pricking, goosebumps spreading across my skin.

Bridget scans the bar, then shakes her head. "'Fraid not. Everyone's a little too Jimmy Buffet-coded for me."

I try not to breathe an audible, obvious sigh of relief.

Jack raises his glass. "Rest in peace."

Bridget raises her daquiri too, and they clink glasses.

I feel like an audience member to my own life.

In the Underground, I always know what to say. But out in the real world, Bridget leaves me tongue-tied. I guess I've never been a man of too many words. Lots of thoughts, lots of action, but words have never been my specialty.

Especially not when it comes to my stepfather's daughter.

Even worse now that she's my lover.

Some jaunty piano starts up, and a voice blares through the microphone. "Jackieeeeeee!"

All three of us turn to the karaoke stage.

Abigail is standing center stage, one microphone to her mouth, another in her hand. She's waving our hands in our direction.

"Oh no," Jack groans.

I'm getting secondhand embarrassment for him.

"Come sing with m–" The first lyric to Thank You For Being a Friend, the opening theme song to The Golden Girls starts, and she just goes for it.

"Big Golden Girls fan, Jack?"

Jack's head dips lower. "She's butchering it."

Bridget and I exchange a look and then both laugh.

"Hold my beer." He forces it into my hand before barging through the crowd to join Abigail and save her from her poor performance.

Bridget and I watch for a few moments, neither willing to speak or acknowledge that we're alone, even in this sea of people.

"You should sit," I say in a soft voice and place my hand on Jack's stool.

"Alright."

I hold her daquiri as she shimmies onto the stool, trying not to stare at the beautiful profile of her cleavage as she does so.

I've seen her naked more times than I can count now and yet eyeing her in public feels taboo. Like someone might see and point at me, announce to the world that I'm sexualizing someone who in the eyes of society is my stepsister.

Except I said fuck you to that identifier since the moment we met.

As soon as Bridget is on her stool…we are silent again. Watching as Jack and Abigail fight over who has the next line on stage.

I clear my throat. "You having a good night?"

"Yeah. Are you?"

I nod and tap my fingers against my beer bottle. "Yeah, I am."

Bridget scans the room. "See anyone you like?"

My insides balk. "Don't insult me like that."

Her green eyes widen. "I–I'm sorry."

I scan our surroundings.

No one seems concerned with the two New Yorkers on the corner.

So, I dare. In a delicate fashion, I place my fingertips against her knee, clock her expression to see if my touch is welcomed.

Bridget's back straightens. She's not good at the subtle card. But she isn't saying no.

I increase my touch.

My fingers, my palm, splayed out on her knee.

"You know I'm only looking at you." I rub my thumb across the fabric of her dress.

Her skin heats through the fabric.

"May I say something? I don't want to upset you by speaking out of turn."

"We're not in the Underground, Bridget. There are rules, but not like that."

"Sometimes, I don't know what's allowed or not and that…" She bites her lower lip.

Fuck. I might be a good Dom behind closed doors but out in the world, our relationship has always been too complicated for me to treat her like this is something easy. "I don't want you to be scared of me, Bridget. That's not the point of any of this."

Her eyes are downcast into the daquiri. "I want to please you."

"You do. All the time. You always have." I smile and lean closer. Perhaps too close for people who are supposed to be siblings, but fuck that.

Jack and Abigail are the only people who know us here, and they're in the midst of a rousing, off-tune chorus.

"I didn't know that until we started training, though," Bridget says.

My heart is starting to race. The edges of a rejection fray her voice. Or maybe I'm imagining it.

"I still am not used to you…liking me…" Her blush is apparent even in the darkened tiki bar.

I swallow. "I guess we haven't had a lot of opportunities for me to show you out in the world how I feel about you."

"No, we haven't," she says in her soft, Bridget way.

I nibble on my lower lip for a few moments. What to say? How to say it?

"I know you're my Dom. I know that complicates things. But sometimes, I remember how things used to be, and while it feels so far away from what we have now, it's confusing." She tries to keep a smile on her face.

I squeeze her knee. "I was a jackass."

"Seth." She giggles.

"No, really, I was." I lean closer.

She leans away. As she should. We're not alone after all.

"I was a fucking emotionless robot, and I didn't know how to be normal around you because I wasn't supposed to feel the things I was feeling. So, I decided to push you away."

"And yet, try and keep men from me," she adds.

I start to respond, to defend myself, but stop in my track.

I want to tell her I was trying to protect her, but that doesn't measure up. There aren't good excuses.

I wasn't kind. I've confused her for ten years. That's not something I can erase in the matter of a month. Especially not when behind closed doors, I'm the Dom I've always wanted to be for her.

Out in the world, there are still so many questions for us. Ones I want to answer with my mouth and my hands and three words I've never said to any woman except my mother and certainly not in the way I'd like to.

I need to give her more than my dominance.

But I don't know if I'm anything more than that.

"Then let's be…" Lovers. Out in the open. For everyone to see. "Let's be friends. It's what my mom and Solomon have always wanted. Who cares if it's confusing to people? We can get to know each other in the light and in the dark."

Bridget's smile relaxes. "I'd like that."

It's a start. Not the what I want or need. But a start.

"I want to touch you so bad," I say in a low voice. "Want to stroke the backs of my fingers against your cheek and watch your eyes flutter shut."

Her head leans to the side almost like she's feeling the ghost of my hand.

"Want to kiss you," I mutter.

Bridget laughs, then pulls her knee out from under my hand, sipping her daquiri, which has become her nervous tick.

We're interrupted by cheering and clapping. Seems like Abigail and Jack's song has ended.

"Thank you! Thank you, you've been a great crowd," Abigail yells from the stage. She knows how to work a room even if her voice isn't up to snuff.

Jack is also eating up the applause from the crowd. He's blowing kisses across the room, one meant for Blonde Pixie cut who is only a short distance away from the stage with her friends.

She giggles.

Guess this trip isn't totally wasted.

Abigail's eyes search the room and land on me. "Your turn!"

"Oh, fuck no," I mutter.

"Please welcome to the stage, Seth and Bridget!" Abigail yells, then gestures to whoever is in charge of the karaoke to play the next song, her finger circling through the air.

Bridget and I look at each other, fear matching fear in our eyes.

I stand up, puff my chest, start to wave my hands. "No, we're not, we're–"

"Come on, get up there!" someone yelps and pushes on my shoulder.

"No, I can't sing, I really can't–" I begin but am drowned out by the opening notes of Under Pressure throbbing through the speakers.

Damn. That's a good song. I do know the words.

Before Bridget and I can get our footing, we're being borne through the crowd by encouraging words and hands until we're at the edge of the stage.

Abigail grins and holds her mic out to me. "I think you're the David Bowie."

"What's that supposed to–"

She shoves the mic toward my mouth. "Sing!"

I'm usually very in control of everything. It's why I'm a dominant. It's why my life has been all work and very limited play the past ten years.

Something about the power of Queen and Bowie combined, complemented by the tiki bar full of drunken vacationers, and the fact Bridget is beside me, grinning ear to ear as she accepts the mic from Jack hits me, and I start singing. Immediately. I can't explain it.

We both get on stage, lights blaring down on us.

There isn't a moment to collect or decide, we're already in the middle of the song, and we do it. We fucking do it. We blow them out of the water because even though I say I can't sing, I can carry a tune, and Bridget has a voice like an angel.

I don't care if that's not objectively true, it's true to me.

We have fun, singing together, the world drifting away.

I want thousands of moments like this with her. A lifetime-worth of them.

Behind closed doors, in the Underground of my dreams, she will submit to me. Be my good girl, the one I always wanted.

And out in the world…

We can have fun. All the time. Together.

I realize as we sing and laugh and the crowd eggs us on that I truly haven't had fun in years.

Not until Bridget. Not until I let my heart go.

I'm totally lost for her.