Page 40 of The Cartographer

I dig my thumbs into some particularly stubborn spots alongside his spine, and he groans. “I won’t go over them all right now, but you ought to know the first at least.”

“Rey Walter’s Rules of Conduct for Polite Society?”

He says it in a posh accent that makes me shake my head. “Hardly. These are rules for my clients.”

“I’m not your client.”

“True,” I say, easing the slight tightening around his shoulders. “Clients and lovers, then. You like rules, Hart?”

I appreciate the beat of consideration he takes before answering. “I like knowing expectations.”

Ah, yes.

“That’s convenient because I like setting expectations.”

“So what are these rules of yours?”

“Rule number one: You never have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

His ear twitches. “Never?”

“Within reason, of course. There are going to be things I ask you for that you don’t particularly want to give, but you’ll hand them over anyhow because you want to please me.”

“Then how—”

“I said within reason. If there’s ever anything you’re absolutely dead set against, you’re allowed to have boundaries. As am I.”

“Like not getting fucked?”

My jaw tightens involuntarily, and I have to consciously loosen it. “Sure. Like that. The point is you’re allowed to say no and you’re allowed to change your mind. If something upsets you, I want to know. No one—not anyone—has the right to force you into anything. Do you understand?”

“Not even you?”

He’s teasing, so I reach behind and pinch his firm buttock.

“Not even me. Of course it’s fun to play that way sometimes, which is why god invented safewords. So you can yell and whine and protest—‘please, no, anything but that’—because it’s fun, and still I’ll ‘force’ you to do it.” I’ve put verbal air quotes around force so he gets it. From the slight shift of him underneath me, he more than gets it. “Does that sound like fun?”

“Maybe,” he grants and shifts more.

“So would you like to pick a safeword?”

“That’s a lot of pressure,” he mumbles from where he’s pressed his face into the pillow.

“A lot of people use colors. Red stops everything immediately, yellow means you’re approaching your limit or you need to check in, and green means go. We could start there.”

“’Kay.”

He’s silent for a few minutes. Is he regretting this already? What’s going through that head of his? He’s not gone rigid so he’s not terribly upset, but it’s sending me into a fit of pique not to know.

“What’s on your mind, Hart?”

“Just thinking about rules.”

Interesting. I wait for him to expound, to give me more of the information I so desperately crave, but he stays silent, pensive. I’m generally excruciatingly patient, but I don’t get the feeling he’s withholding on purpose, merely not convinced I’d be interested. I am. Very much so. “And?”

“Your rules are different from the ones I’m used to.”

I’d hope so. I’ve been accused of leading a cult, but surely my rules are preferable to the ones he’s experienced before. “Tell me.”

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