Page 3 of Bound By Words

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I whined as I tried to tamp down my mortification.

“Are you alright?” His muffled voice carried through the door as I sat there, my hip aching from where I’d landed, and my dignity squashed under my cold—almost bare—ass.

“I’m fine,” I squeaked, wishing the ground would swallow me whole.

Nathan had gotten an eyeful before the door had closed, and the look in those eyes had me wishing it was a vibrator on my nightstand instead of a bottle of Willet.

Now, I needed a damn drink.

NATHAN

Minneapolis

Well. That was one way to start off the weekend.

When I’d decided to come to Chase and Evan’s wedding solo, I’d initially considered asking Marisa to go with me, but I couldn’t keep getting her hopes up. We wanted different things in life, and it was better if I stopped leading her on. I could tell her it was casual as much as I wanted, but she’d read too much into being my date to a wedding. It was hard enough putting boundaries on our dynamic until she vetted a new Dom.

I don’t know why I agreed to continue until she found my replacement. I’d made sure we documented the changes in our dynamic to reflect the discontinuation of our sexual and romantic relationship. It wasn’t so easy to turn off the emotional part. We’d been together for over a year within our play dynamic and six months romantically. While we’d agreed that the relationship wasn’t strictly exclusive, I hadn’t dated anyone else while I’d been with her.

It wasn’t my style to sleep with multiple partners. There wasn’t anything wrong with it; I just tended to be more content with some version of sexual monogamy. Some of the other acquaintances in my lifestyle thought it was old-fashioned, but I knew where my boundaries were, which was why things hadn’t worked out with Marisa.

My hesitancy to pursue multiple partners didn’t keep me from enjoying watching others at parties or engaging in one-off rope play without bringing sex into the equation, but I didn’t like to share in the physical sense.

My mentor, Emory, once called me a greedy motherfucker, but once he’d met his partner, Talia, he’d understood me and accepted it had a place without looking back. Monogamy within a kinky relationship was much more common than either of us had initially realized, and many widely embraced it and grew stable, loving relationships. You could still be kinky as fuck and have some boundaries in place.

A knock at my door interrupted where I’d been unpacking, and I dropped my socks back into the suitcase to put away later.

When I opened the door, Emory stood on the other side with a drink in his hand, Talia hot on his heels with a glass of wine in hers.

“See, I told you he’d be here,” she laughed as she perched herself on the edge of my bed. She still looked perfectly put together despite spending most of our morning stuck on airplanes. Her dark hair was pulled back into a sleek ponytail, and her makeup was as flawless as ever on her dark skin.

“Yup, here I am, all by myself.”

“Oh, quit,” Tal laughed, rolling her eyes at me. “You act like you’re the only one flying solo this weekend. I’m sure Chase has a single cousin around here somewhere. These Midwesterners seem to breed like rabbits. It wouldn’t hurt you to have a weekend fling.”

“Yeah, not sure that’s in the cards.”

After essentially breaking up with Marisa, I’d fallen back into a bad habit with Grace––a Domme who I’d played with infrequently over the last few years. We were the farthest thing from exclusive, and we’d technically never had sex. For some reason, I couldn’t stay away from her when I needed a rope session, more frequently in between dynamics.

She was a rigger too, or at least she had been before she’d developed her penchant for humiliation. But she was different when she played with me. Softer. The façade she wore around others dropped a little, and it was just about the two of us and the rope.

“Don’t tell me you…” Emory trailed off with a shake of his head. “You did, didn’t you?”

My jaw clenched, and I wished I had a drink.

“When are you going to realize that there are plenty of other partners out there who are just as talented a rigger as she is?”

“I know.” I’d tried out a few of them but couldn’t replicate the feelings she evoked in me. It was probably the dirty, degrading things she whispered in my ear once I was her bound captive. At first, I thought I’d hate it, but then I started to crave it. You would think someone who’d been in the scene for over a decade would know all of their kinks, but it appeared I had some untapped ones.

“Why do you keep doing this to yourself?” Tal added, tsking at me over the rim of her wine glass. “You know she’s just manipulating you.”

I did. I knew Grace was manipulating me; she thrived on controlling anyone who made it into her inner circle. It was an addiction. She toned down her usual blatant degradation and figured out how to get under my skin. I knew I should stop—finally tell her no for once—but I kept answering her texts, which were eerily timed to when I felt vulnerable. It was all consensual, and I freely agreed to her terms of our one-off dynamic, but it still felt like something was missing. She wasn’t a bad person. It was me who was starting to drift.

“Because she knows what she’s doing,” I shrugged. It was as simple as that. I craved the release of being tied, and she was good at it. Sometimes she was too good at it. But I’d drawn the line early on in our arrangement at being in any romantic relationship with Grace. I knew she was non-monogamous and was into much harder things than I could provide as a bottom, so I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—commit to something more with her.

We’d kissed infrequently, and in a scene I’d climaxed from the endorphin rush, but no penetration of any kind had ever happened between us. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. Nothing more.

“Your dependency on her keeps you from finding something more fulfilling.”

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