Page 19 of Temptation at Randy's

I wrinkled my nose. “I mean, you can.”

Claude dismissed it with the wave of a hand. “You know what I mean.”

I got the feeling that I didn’t, not completely. I should steer away from heavy topics, though. “Well, I’m glad you could make it anyway.”

“Sure.” Claude tilted their head to the side. “By the way, there’s a club not too far away. They open during the week, but they don’t have anything set up till the weekend, so it should be pretty quiet.”

Here I was, trying to avoid heavy topics. I supposed it was still better?

My throat dried up. “Have you been before?”

“A couple times,” Claude confirmed. “It’s tiny. Chill. I can ask Cin too, but the club they go to is more involved.”

“No.” I shook my head right away. “Tiny’s good.”

I couldn’t help but look around as I spoke. No one was paying us any mind, but it was still wild to think that I was talking about going to a kink club with someone in public.

“I thought so.” Claude grinned. They looked pleased with themselves. “Wednesday?”

Wednesday meant almost a week of imagining every possible scenario. It was probably better than the alternative of, say, going tomorrow, and the panic that came with having no time to prepare.

“Wednesday works. I mean, I’ll text you, but it should work.”

I foresaw a lot of baking this weekend. I was pretty sure that Dylan had said something about family visiting, so maybe I could offload it on him. His family had loved it last time when I’d set myself up to bake a three-tiered cake and miscalculated how much cake that would actually be.

Yeah.

It would be fine.

Zo arrived with the new carafe of coffee for Claude then, and a promise that the fries would come in shortly. I wasn’t too hungry, but maybe we could share a dessert or something, later. I didn’t always have the best appetite.

“Okay.” Claude smiled at Zo before turning that smile on me. The new hair color really highlighted their eyes. “Do you have any gear?”

Oh.

Um…

Goodbye, pretending to be moderately calm about this. “What were you planning to wear?”

“I usually just wear black clothes with a harness on top,” Claude said. It was their turn to squirm. I didn’t love that they were uncomfortable, but there was something about not being alone in that… feeling. “It’s pretty bad quality, but it does the work.”

“Right.” I swallowed. I was stupid. Who else wouldn’t think of the dress codes when thinking of going to a kink club? Ugh. “I think I can do that.”

If I remembered correctly, kink clubs were okay with goth clothes, right? I’d gone through a bit of a goth phase once. I was pretty sure I could reuse some of the clothes I hadn’t donated.

Worst case scenario, I could follow Claude’s lead and order some cheap harness online once I got home. It… It was fine.

“Cool.”

SIX

Claude

No, I had no idea what was going on anymore. I just knew I’d been munching on my fries, and Arlene had been talking about the baking shows she liked to watch. She got very passionate about it, and it was endearing. Apparently sometimes the advice the judges gave was plain wrong, and she got all red in the face and pouty when she tried to explain why it was irresponsible that they did that. She really got talking when it came to baking.

Anyway.

So, that was happening, then the fries were gone, and we mentioned dessert almost at the same time. For some reason, I’d suggested a crêperie right down by my apartment. But then all the tables were busy, so I had the brilliant idea that we grab them to go.

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