Page 15 of Playing By Their Rules

“You think she’s been with other people?” I say, ignoring the electric ball of anger in my chest at the thought. “So what if she has. We’d still want her.”

“We can’t want her.” His voice is low and he looks like he’s going to squeeze his coffee mug until it shatters. “Move on, Ethan. That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Fuck, what happened to you?” I ask. “You’re grumpier than I am.”

He opens his mouth, then shakes his head.

Fine, if he doesn’t want to tell me, I guess I don’t want to know. Probably another of his students tried seducing him during his office hours yesterday. It happens at least once a semester with that guy. I’m lucky in that it happens less often. Maybe I’m less attractive. Or maybe my attitude puts them off. I don’t know and I don’t care.

“Look at her,” I say, nodding toward a group of three women. One of them has dark hair like Maisie’s, and her stance is similar, sweet and sexy at the same time. “Blue dress, big earrings.”

Chance looks, but he turns back to me quickly. “Nah.”

If he had approved of her, I probably would have changed my mind, anyway. Because as much as she reminds me of Maisie, she isn’t actually Maisie.

It’s fucked how obsessed we’ve become with her. We should have forgotten her after that night.

Impossible.

As we watch, a Dom approaches the group and propositions the woman in the blue dress. She looks up at him from beneath her lashes and offers him a shy smile. They move to a table away from her friends to talk.

I try to make small talk with Chance about the first week of classes, but he’s giving me distracted, one-syllable answers, like he’s turned into a sullen teenager all of a sudden. Shrugging, I give up. If we can’t talk, at least we can enjoy the visuals. The Dom and Blue Dress are sitting closer, and if I’m not mistaken, his hand is under her skirt. I stop trying to see what he’s doing to her and study her face instead. Shocked arousal and bliss war on her features. I wonder if he’ll let her come, or make her wait.

“I can’t fucking take this anymore,” Chance says, tearing his gaze away from the couple. “I’m going home.”

To jerk off to thoughts of Maisie, probably. I know that’s what I’ll be doing as soon as I’m back in my own place.

I’m not ready to go, though. I want to find out if Blue Dress gets off, or if her partner makes her wait. He’s definitely drawing this out, which is exactly what I would do. Her eyes have fluttered shut, and he leans over and whispers in her ear. If that were me and Maisie, I’d be instructing her to open her eyes and look around the club. I’d tell her to make eye contact with the first man she sees staring, and watch him while I make her come.

Betty, the bartender who’s been working here for years, approaches my table and sits in Chance’s vacated seat. “I didn’t want to interrupt earlier, but Ethan, how the hell are you?”

“I’m good. The semester just started, so Chance and I stopped by to blow off steam.”

“Yet he already left.”

“Yeah.” I don’t have an explanation, so I don’t offer one.

“Ethan.” She leans her elbows on the table and looks directly into my eyes. Her hot pink hair, cropped short, looks brighter up close, and the diamond studs in her ears glitter. As much as she looks like a punk rock fairy, it would be foolish of anyone to not take her seriously. “What is going on? It’s been years since you and Chance took a partner. There are more subs than Doms. It’d be a community service if you two would take someone, even just to train her up.”

“We’ve trained Doms,” I say.

“Someone broke your heart.” She stares at me as she speaks, trying to get the truth from my expression.

My face gives nothing away.

She shakes her head. As she stands up, she says, “You two remaining single is a crime against humanity.”

We’re not single, I want to tell her as she walks back to the bar. We’re obsessed with a woman who is too young for us.

A woman who was too young for us.

Now that woman is old enough, but hooking up with her would be inappropriate.

Not that propriety has ever stopped me from doing what I truly want. Our rules…though our rules do stop me from doing what I want. Because without them, I’d be fucking twenty-year-old virgins. Twenty is simply too young for those kinds of games.

If we’d taken Maisie that night, she might have never forgiven us.

Then again, from the way she’s been acting, showing up in our classes wearing those clothes and sucking that lollipop like she wished it was my dick, she seems intent on torturing us, punishing us. Maybe she won’t forgive us, either way.

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