Page 179 of The Menagerie

“What?”

“We’ve been dancin’ around it for months, man. I can tell you wanna do it as bad asIwant you to do it.”

“Mal, we can’t—” Rowan starts, about to remind Mal of the club’s rules against choking and breath play which he clearly very well knows, when Mal cuts him off.

“Come over.”

And Rowan’s…. Rowan’s brain stops. Because did Mal just ask him to…?

“Come… over? Like to your apartment?”

Mal rolls his eyes, but Rowan can tell it’s in that fond way of his. When Rowan’s being an idiot and doesn’t realize it. “Yeah, dumbass.”

Rowan knows all the signs of heart attacks in men—shortness of breath, the feeling of a heavy weight crushing your chest, dizziness, nausea—and he’s in great shape, but he’s not ruling it out as the cause for the stuttering tightness behind his ribs. He wants to do a stupid dance and shoutDear fucking God,Yes!, But all he can think to do is sit there gaping, and all he can think to say is: “But I don’t know where you live,” like Mal was going to make Rowan guess that information rather than giving him his address.

“Jesus Christ, Red,” Mal says, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger.

He pulls out his phone, types a quick message, and Rowan’s phone vibrates a few seconds later.

“Next week? Same time?” Mal’s tone sounds somehow both hopeful and fearful.

“Ye-yeah. Course.”

Rowan shoves a french fry in his mouth and can’t keep the smile off his face.

AS SOONas Rowan wakes the next morning, he takes his meds and Googlessexual asphyxiation.

He’s aware in theory how to do it safely, partly from having done it in the past, and partly from his training as a paramedic. Avoid the trachea, the larynx, and the hyoid bone and squeeze gently at the carotid arteries to slow the flow of blood to the brain. Always press on the sides of the neck, never the front. He’s done it a little bit with some partners in the past, but this isMal, and Rowan doesn’t want to risk his well-being for anything.

There are dozens of articles on it, some sketchy and some legitimate. He opens a few tabs and begins reading: The history behind it, the cultural taboo around it, the inclusion (or exclusion) of it in some BDSM circles… there’ssomuch information. Some of it he can tell immediately is crap, reminding him of when Mal had sent him a list of BDSM books to read and warned him against stuff that was total bullshit.

He reads the copious warnings carefully. There are common side effects, including muscle weakness, loss of coordination, dizziness, and coughing, which can be expected if done for too long a period of time. Then there’s the chance for permanent brain damage, lung damage, artery damage, or even death in some cases (though most often when done to oneself). The list goes on and on and makes his head spin. He won’t lie, heisworried about the potential consequences, and those warnings should be a full-stop deterrent, but….

The thought of getting Mal to a state of extreme bliss—that rush of dopamine and serotonin and endorphins straight to the brain—is so tempting. It’s tangible, literally right at his fingertips. Rowan wants to get him to the point of giving complete control over to Rowan and trusting, trusting, trusting him to see him safely through to the other side. And he knows that Mal wants it as badly as he does. Asked him tocome overso they could do it away from the Menagerie in the safety and privacy of his own home.

Rowan remembers way back to their first meeting after the gangbang. About how Mal had said he goes to the club—never invites anyone over to his apartment—because itkeeps shit separate. That must mean that things between him and Rowanaren’tseparate. Must mean there’s something more, right? Rowan would bet his life on it.

Or, he thinks painfully, Mal just really wants to get choked out. Break his own rule badly enough to have Rowan come over rather than breaking the club’s rule against choking and breath play.

Rowan shakes the negative thoughts out of his head. He knows by now that he and Mal have something special. Mal admitted as much to him on the phone a few weeks ago, and they’ve only grown closer since then. Their scenes have continued to evolve from largely impersonal, like they were at the start, to more and more intimate, and it sets Rowan’s heart ablaze knowing how far they’ve come since they first met each other.

He keeps reading, watching a few videos he’d found on a kink-related Reddit page that shows how to choke someone out safely—well, safer.

Once he’s comfortable with the motions in theory, he tries them out on himself. Wraps his hand around his own throat and positions his thumb and the rest of his fingers on opposite sides of his neck, gently starting to squeeze until he can feel his pulse in his fingertips. In barely a minute, he feels the light-headed rush that everyone online swears is better than an orgasm. In truth, it doesn’t do much for him—kind of makes him panic a little bit, honestly—but he can easily see how the tingling he’s feeling from his cheeks down to his toes could be pleasurable.

He can easily seeMalfinding it pleasurable. Getting off on the danger of it as much as the physical sensations. And all at once, Rowan feels his cock stir. He releases his neck, trails his hand down his body and over the hardening bulge in his briefs. It shouldn’t be so easy to rile him up, but God, even the thought of Mal gets him going like nothing else. As he loses the battle to not jerk off—twice in a row—he pictures what Mal’s face will look like when Rowan finally gets a hand around his neck.

ROWAN WANTSso badly to tell someone about Mal. About how heasked him to come over, but the harsh reality is that he can’t exactly do that without revealing that they’ve only been seeing each other at a BDSM club.

He thinks about telling Jay, but there are some things that family shouldn’t know, even if he’d known about Rowan’s illicit club days when he was younger.

He thinks about telling Addison, but he doesn’t think he’d live down the humiliation of admitting the same thing to her. And shedoesn’tknow about his past.

Hell, he even thinks about telling Aubrey, who’s as open about sex as Rowan himself is, but he’s really only mentioned Mal to her in passingas a friend, and he doesn’t want to get into the whole story.

Which is why he finds himself at the Menagerie on a Thursday night. He already knows that he’s not going to need to use one of his four monthly visits this Saturday—because he’ll beat Mal’s, his brain reminds him helpfully—so he doesn’t care about wasting it on seeking advice.

He’s never been here on a Thursday before, but the place ispacked. As Rowan makes his way to the bar, he’s leered at constantly and groped no fewer than five times, some probably unintentional as he moves through the throng of people, but somedefinitelyintentional.

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