Page 38 of Puppy on a Leash

OldSchoolDS

And you think that would work?

Correction. The ridiculous thing was the speed at which my heart started beating when Jaime finally answered.

PupJ

I’m willing to risk it

OldSchoolDS

So, if I tell you to meet me at Plumas tonight, you’ll do it?

PupJ

What are we doing there?

It was a good fucking question I didn’t have an answer for. I just wanted to see him. Ineededto make sure he was all right. And I owed it to myself to see if I could take things further with him. Even if Jaime wasn’t open to anything other than play because of his hangups with Domms—or his friendship with Sergio—it felt important. A milestone of sorts.

Yeah, the word made me cringe. I was too fucking old—and tired—for milestones. If the shoe fit, though…

Erika might be less on my case, too, if she saw me actively trying to live my life, as she’d put it. There were days she went too far into that muddy territory, telling me how to do shit, that made me want to lash out because she was not my Domme. I kept quiet, but I didn’t pay as much attention as any other person probably would.

I was getting better? It was debatable.

It was also not about Erika at all, if I took the time to dig deep. There was a chance that part of me was still resentful, still grappling with the fact that I didn’t ask for any of this. I didn’t ask to have to confront all the shit I kept buried or on the down-low—however people referred to it these days.

OldSchoolDS

Nothing you can’t handle.

It was a noncommittal answer. An easy way out, almost. My thumbs hovered over the keyboard. I should add something else.

The phone buzzed with Jaime’s answer before I could figure out what I would even type. What did I want, exactly, other than being face-to-face with him? There was too much I didn’t know about him yet—too much he wasn’t saying and too much I didn’t dare to ask.

After seeing how badly I’d read him the other day, I wasn’t taking the risk of just going with my observations of the pup.

PupJ

That tells me nothing

Do I wear gear? Should I send you a list with limits and shit?

OldSchoolDS

You can send that list, and yes, wear gear.

I dropped the phone then. Working on that list—and how much of it he wanted to share—was going to take him a while. At least, it should take him a while. I didn’t want to know if it didn’t, if I could suspect he wasn’t thinking about it hard enough. It wouldn’t be the first time I was accused of being selfish. It would be the first time I endangered a partner while doing so, which made bile rise to my throat.

I didn’t want to cancel on him, though, to have to give my reasoning while knowing he was thinking me a chickenshit.

Was it immature, to give a fuck about what a random person thought or didn’t think of me? Yes. It absolutely was.

It was a matter of principle. Of keeping the few shreds of a reputation that hadn’t been completely destroyed after Marga and Jen ended our arrangement and the gossip mill began. I didn’t know what had hurt more, that or the newspaper article. Or Sergio.

I had to talk to Sergio.

Maybe after I’d knocked out this part, that would be my next obstacle to conquer.

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