Page 32 of After Hours

Arlo was a dangerous fucker. As a dangerous fucker himself, Zachary knew that type recognized type. Arlo had turned up in the neighborhood a few years back and didn’t think the fancy gym in his fancy Brooklyn Basin apartment building had what he needed. He’d come into the gym and praised the lack ofbullshit treadmills.

Over time, Zachary had also come to recognize that Arlo was kinky as fuck, too. Sooner or later that shit always made itself clear. Most of his regulars in the gym were on the Club app, these days. Arlo Finn distinguished himself by being one of thefew men Zachary had ever met that made him think that hell, Zachary might actually lose a fight if it came to that.

Not that he intended to put that to the test.

“What would you know about getting worked up over woman,” Zachary said now, with a laugh. “You work them over but that’s about it.”

“We’re not talking about me.” Arlo sat up. “Looks like your pretty little receptionist has you tied in knots.”

“The pretty little receptionist is perfect,” Zachary muttered, jack-knifing up and onto his feet. “It’s me that’s the problem. Always wanting more. Always wanting everything.”

“That’s basically what wanting submission means,” Arlo said with a laugh. “Go easy, brother.”

That struck a chord with Zachary, especially once the brutal workout was done and he had access to more oxygen.

It was true that submission was a yielding of everything. A true exchange. At least the kind of submission that he’d always dreamed about, the sort that fit his dominating like a hand in a glove. The kind of submission that he felt that he and Romily were so close to experiencing together. He could feel themright there,on the verge of it.

But the truth was, that didn’t happen in a vacuum. The kind of power exchange he wanted didn’t simplypresentitself. It was something they could only create together. That meant that if he wanted her to follow him over that last boundary, he needed to be willing to lead her where he wanted her to go.

And much as he loved to fuck, there were some things that some bondage and a butt plug couldn’t solve. Little as he wanted to admit that.

How could he expect Romily to bare her soul when he hadn’t done the same? If he didn’t show her the way, how would she know how to walk it? Maybe the mystery he should have been focused on solving was himself.

That was why, on a pretty Bay Area Saturday morning, Zachary packed her into his car—the one he parked next to the gym that no one around here dared vandalize, speaking of dangerous fuckers—and drove her across the water. He took her into San Francisco and then out again on the other side.

Then he drove her deep into the redwoods, where everything smelled like eucalyptus, deep shade, and hints of rosemary.

“I grew up here,” he told her as they drove through one of Marin County’s sweet little small town main streets. Self-consciously quaint these days, no doubt, but nostalgia didn’t much care about progress. It saw what it wanted. “I never knew my father. He was gone before I could walk.”

“Oh.” She frowned when she looked at him, her gold eyes filled with the kind of sympathy he didn’t want. “Did he die, or…?”

“He’s dead now,” Zachary said, a little flatly. He tried to get back to something a little steadier. “Back then, he just left. He fucked off to New Mexico, ruined other people’s lives, and died alone. By the time I hunted him down, it was already done and dusted.” And probably lucky for his father, given how edgy Zachary had been when he’d come out of prison. “That’s not the story I’m telling, though, it’s just a little background.”

Romily smiled at him. “I guess that’s good. It’s not a very happy story.”

He looked over at this woman who had turned his careful life on end. She turned her head again, staring out at the neighborhood they were driving through. He couldn’t blame her. Larkspur looked like something out of an enchanted forest. Mt. Tamalpais loomed high above bungalows tucked away in the dark shadows of the trees all around. Some were modern and gleamed with their newness. Others looked as if they’d been left untouched since the 1960s. It always seemed damp on some ofthese roads, mysterious and lush. It looked like the sort of forest that ought to be enchanted.

The reality was a different story.

And he couldn’t ask her to tell him all the dark things that lurked in her if he wasn’t prepared to share his own. Honesty was nothing more than a gesture if it didn’t go both ways. Zachary had always thought that control could never be absolute without a clear-eyed understanding of his own vulnerabilities.

He knew it was time he put his money where his mouth was—and what shocked him was how difficult it was, even when he knew it needed doing.

His respect for Romily and her beautiful, near-total surrender grew with every word he uttered.

“There were a bunch of boyfriends who came and went when I was little,” Zachary told her as light filtered through the trees far above, leaving them both dappled. “They were mostly forgettable, but then there was Pete.”

He didn’t even like to say that name, but Zachary forced himself to keep going. “Pete was a boyfriend for a while, then he was my stepfather. The important thing that you should know about Pete is that he was violent as hell when he was drunk. And when he wasn’t drunk, he was a dick. But he and my mom had some kind of connection. It didn’t matter what he did. How many times he beat her up. How many things they broke. They couldn’t stay away from each other.”

Beside him, Romily made a low noise of sympathy, and normally Zachary was allergic to that kind of thing. One of the reasons he and Frederick were so tight was because Frederick, as Zachary’s lawyer, had never insulted his client withsympathyabout the things Zachary had dealt with in the past.They’d met when Zachary was dismissed by most as an ex-con, but that wasn’t Frederick’s way. He’d always been about solutions.

Zachary had trusted him implicitly. Still did.

But sympathy from the woman sitting next to him, smelling like jasmine with her dark hair braided back from her face, felt like a kiss.

He wanted to stop the car and show her how that felt, but he knew if he did he wouldn’t keep going. And he’d promised himself he would do this.

So he kept going. “They followed the same pattern over and over again. The same cycle. The same highs and the same predictable lows. He would leave sometimes, or she would throw him out. As I got older, I realized that a lot of the push and pull was because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. And I guess he didn’t bother to conceal it. However it went, she always knew. And that would turn into another war until he stormed off, leaving blood and broken glass behind him every time. We’d clean it up just in time for him to turn up again. There was always some sob story and the next thing I knew, there he was again, sitting in the armchair in the living room, drinking his beers and calling my mother names.”

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