Page 13 of Piece Us Together

For fuck’s sake, where’s the man who stood in the alley and promised it’d be okay? Promised he’d figure it out?

Just tell us what to do.

“Nolan, do you know what you’d want?” Hunter asks.

“Um…whatever Maison wants. I don’t want to be picky. It’s a big sacrifice he’s making.”

It wasn’t, until Hunter decided to fucking take himself out of the mix.

It’s not even that I like Hunter or anything—I barely know the dude. But I’ve doneextensiveresearch on him. And Travis trusts him.

And, well, he calmed me, that night in the alley. Somehow, despite making me feel all jittery and off-kilter most of the time, he’d made everything stop when he’d put his hand on me and promised to help. I wanted that for Nolan.I wanted that for…

Hunter touches my shoulder. “Maison?”

“Maybe this was a mistake,” I grit out. It feels like I’m going to vibrate out of my fucking skin, especially where he’s touching me. I jerk away from the touch—away fromhim. “This was a mistake. I can do it myself. I can be—”

“No,” Hunter says, his hand gripping the nape of my neck. My legs give out, my body melting into the chair as I stare at him, wide-eyed like a fucking puppy that just got scruffed. He relaxes his grip but doesn’t release it. “You’re not running from this, Maison. Neither of you. I won’t allow it. You’ve asked for my help. Now you’ll take it.”

“Except it’s notyourhelp, is it?” I point out, anger twisting inside of me, chasing away the moment of calm he’d managed to bring just now. “You’re going to hand us off to someotherdom to deal with. God fucking forbid you bother, right? Turn my world upside down with all your bullshit and then just walk away, hey?”

Hunter’s expression immediately softens, his lips even curling at the edges. It makes me want to punch him. Or cry. “Is that what’s got you so upset? You wantmeto be his dom?”

Hisdom.

Why the fuck does that hurt?

Because I hate that I can’t be that for Nolan, surely.What other reason could there be?It’s not like I’m jealous of Nolan. It’s not likeIwant a dom. Fuck that shit.

Ache in my chest aside, itiswhat I want—him as Nolan’s dom, I mean. Not—not anything else. “Yes, I want it to be you. I trust you. Not some fucking stranger.”

Instead of being amused like I expected, his gaze turns intense. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I wanted that too. I just didn’t want to seem like I was manipulating the two of you to try and get myself some action. It felt right to offer to outsource the help, so you guys don’t everfeel like I was working things to my advantage. This is for you and Nolan—not me.” He huffs a soft laugh. “But if you’re willing to have me, I’d love nothing more than to be the dom that helps you guys.”

“Really?”

“Really.” His gaze lingers on me for a few more seconds before he turns it to Nolan. I look too, finding Nolan standing there with his head tilted, a strange sort of smile on his lips. “What do you think of that, Nolan? Would you be interested in letting me try to be the one to help you?”

Nolan blinks, seeming to come out of an entirely different conversation he was having in his own head to join ours. His smile turns into something shy, then. Shy with a little bit of hope. “That’d be nice, yeah.”

“Alright.” Hunter sits back. He runs a hand over his jaw, eyeing Nolan, then me, then looking down at the counter in front of him. “Well, even though that does change things down the road, it doesn’t change what first needs to happen, which is the two of you deciding what you do and don’t want. There’s a packet that my community uses for new submissives and dominants. It’s almost painfully extensive, but it’s better that way, when starting out. There’s so much to think about, so much to educate yourselves on. It leaves very little room for things to fall through the cracks.”

“We looked at something sort of like that,” Nolan explains, his eyes nervously looking everywhere but at Hunter and me. He turns away from us, back to the food on his cutting board. “I doubt it was that extensive, though.”

“We also looked at it as a guide for what the two of us would do together. Obviously, we weren’t really thinking about someone else being involved,” I add. “So, we didn’t exactly get far with it.”

“How far did you get, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Nolan doesn’t seem interested in answering that, his shoulders hunching as he finishes with the same apple he’s been working on this whole time. There’s a pan on the stove to his left. I find it much safer to wonder what the fuck he plans on doing with a pan and an apple than to think about what Hunter wants to know.

Thankfully, Hunter picks up on the tension and allows us to pretend the question wasn’t asked. “Well, Nolan will have it easiest, as far as the packet goes. All you’ll need to focus on is filling out the packet in a way that reflects what you’ll be willing to do with me. There are three options, which reflect limits—if you’re familiar with those. There will be things you’ll be happy with, things you’re willing to consider—known as soft limits—and things that are absolutely not okay, which are hard limits.”

There’s cheese on the board now, being thinly sliced from a giant block. Apples, cheese—bread earlier—and a pan. What the fuck is this boy making us?

“As for you, Maison,” Hunter says, making me startle. He’s at least nice enough to hide his amusement when I look at him. It’s still there in his eyes, but he can’t help that. “Your packet will be more complicated. You’ll first need to decide how much you want to be involved in what Nolan and I do before you can really tackle it.”

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