Page 97 of Puppy on a Leash

“I’m good.”

After I took a deep breath, I gritted out agreen, though.

He wouldn’t have let it go otherwise.

“That’s better.” Jaime preened.

He started walking up the stairs. The club was divided into two floors. The first floor had a more industrial feel to it, with only a locker room and a small bar for people who simply wanted to grab a bottle of water before heading straight to one of the themed rooms. A larger bar area and all the other rooms for play were upstairs, decorated in a more rustic, wood-heavy way. I’d been the one to suggest the wood. Even though most of the clubs I’d been to before joining Erika and Mónica were big in the industrial backgrounds and staleness, I appreciated the contrast and the mind games that came from having a warmer space.

“Pup,” I warned him before he shot up the stairs. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Jaime frowned. His ears turned red with uncalled for indignation as he rushed to me. “I already agreed to doing one of your high protocol events, but this is not it. I’m not going to walk behind you or any of that shit for a chill night out.”

I sighed. That had been impossibly predictable. A part of me felt disappointed by the fact.

Instead of giving him an answer right away, I untucked my hand from behind my back and held up to him the collar that matched his hood. It wasn’t the type of collar he could wear around people who were unfamiliar with kink—which is why I’d brought it here when we’d agreed to meet at the entrance of Plumas.

“Oh.” His mouth remained parted in a smallo. It was endearing. “Right. My bad.”

Especially because he’d been the one to say he wanted to wear the collar while hanging out with his friends.

I didn’t mention it. I just let him tilt his head up so that I could rest the leather around his neck before tightening it at the back. I checked I could stick one finger easily between his neck and the collar, then patted his cheek.

“That’s better,” I mimicked his words from before and started moving, effectively making him walk behind me.

I hadn’t cared about it earlier, but now I knew he was going to start huffing the moment he noticed what was going on.

Small pleasures.

“You’re in an awfully good mood,Sir.”

I snorted. If only he knew it was rather the opposite.

I’d willingly agreed to be surrounded by people who were either completely indifferent toward me or they had me on their most despised list. Their boys’ nights accepted all trans identities, and even cis women if they were in a crisis, as the description of the event read, but that still took out the one other person—apart from Jaime—who could’ve been in my corner. Even if Erika happened to be in crisis today, she wouldn’t be getting support from an event like this, anyway. We might not have grown to be that close, but I knew that much about her.

“What did you want to drink?”

“Just water’s good.”

I nodded.

Grabbing two bottles of water was easy, but it gave me something to do once we were closer to everyone. Space to see who exactly had come and the time to calculate where to sit.

Sergio and Abel were there, with Sergio perched on his Daddy’s lap. They pretended not to see me. It stung, but I did the same as I rounded the bar to grab the water from the minifridge there. We had water both refrigerated and room temperature,but I’d noticed Jaime liked his drinks with as much ice as possible, even when it was windy and miserable outside.

Danny and León were on the couch opposite the other two—no sign of their third today. Ev was curled up on a couch between them, which left a fourth couch free. They’d shifted them around so they created a sort of square. It wasn’t the most inviting shape, but I supposed it made sense if they kept things outside of the play rooms.

Of course, Jaime didn’t wait for me to sit down—or, rather, perch up on one of the arms of the couch. León was sitting the same way, actually.

I shook the thought off. The more I started analyzing the way they behaved and interacted as a group, the more I was going to stall.

Feeling like this was a first day at a new job, where I’d be scrutinized for every twitch and every word that came out of my mouth, wasn’t my favorite way to spend a Thursday evening.

It had to be done, I supposed.

I didn’t know if I imagined the suffocating silence around the open space, but I did my best to not acknowledge it. Jaime kept an eye on me as I sat beside him on the couch—like a normal, civilized person.

“Did you buy me stuffies?”

---