Page 3 of The Menagerie

He hits Send before he can think better of it. Takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, mentally going through his emotional checklist to make sure the impulsive decision isn’t a sign of an impending depressive episode. And he isn’t irritated, isn’t antsy, isn’t out of his mind horny—he’s okay. His eyes flick to the pill box on his nightstand, Tuesday a.m. and p.m. boxes both empty.

He’s okay.

He clicks through a few more pages on the website, reading the latest blog entry and looking at the extensive BDSM educational references. By the time he finds himself reading an article on the best kinds of knots to use for a full-body shibari rig, it’s well past midnight.

Fuck.

He has to work in the morning. He closes his laptop, climbs into bed, and tries not to think too hard about how long he’ll have to wait for a reply.

But as he’s lying there, staring up at the blackness of his ceiling, lit in stripes by the faint blue moonlight shining around the edges of his curtains, he’s reminded of the lights in the club and feels the familiar trickle of heat low in his belly.

Feels his cock start to harden as images of strong thighs and sinfully curving spines race through his mind. His legs spread on their own, hips hitching up a fraction of an inch to get any amount of friction on his cock.

He wills himself to calm down because he has to be up in less than five hours, but he’s never been good at denying himself pleasure.

More thoughts flood his mind, each making him breathe a little faster, a little shallower.Sweat-slicked skin. Ragged breaths. A warm mouth. A clenching hole. A hand around a throat.

And all at once he’s going down, down, down the rabbit hole of memories of dark clubs and back alleys and bathroom stalls and hotel rooms far too nice for what they were being used for. Of pushing his body to the limit and his mind well past it. But he’s in a good place. He’s okay. He can handle it. The thoughts no longer make him spiral into shame and self-loathing—now they make him throb with need.

The phantom taste of a pill on his tongue and a buzzing under his skin is all it takes for his hand to follow his thoughts, down, down, down his torso to slip into his briefs.

The first contact of his cool hand on his hot cock makes him gasp in the quiet. He wants to tease himself, play with his balls and trail his fingertips down the length of his shaft, slide his thumb over the head and draw out the pleasure until he’s aching and desperate.

But he’s too far gone already, too turned on, too aware that he finally has his shit together and can’t risk fucking it all up again by getting sucked back into fantasies.

So he spreads the precome around the head, enough to slick his hand and ease his movements as he strokes himself. He tightens his grip, twisting his hand on each upstroke and flicking his index finger over the head on the downstroke.

In no time at all, he feels his thighs start to tense, then tremble, then quake as he works himself faster. But the friction that he’d loved a few minutes ago is too much, too intense. He wrenches his hand off his cock and spits into it, still a poor substitute for actual lube but far better than precome alone.

The pleasure doubles instantly as he grips himself tighter, hips bucking up into his fist, heat spreading to his limbs. He roves his free hand over his chest, skirting over his nipples and imagining it’s someone else, someone grasping at him while he fucks into them faster, faster, faster—

Rowan climaxes with a low groan, coating his fingers and the inside of his briefs in ropes of come, stroking himself through it as his body trembles with the flood of endorphins. Sweat from his hairline trickles down the side of his face, but it does little to cool the heat of his skin.

When he’s fully spent and his cock begins to soften, he wipes his hand on his briefs, flinging the comforter and sheets off his upper half to avoid getting them dirty. And he has every intention of getting up and changing into fresh underwear, washing his hands and face, but his eyes won’t stay open as his body sinks deeper into the mattress and he drifts off to sleep.

DESPITE THElate night, Rowan wakes the next morning before his alarm goes off. To his surprise, when he checks the time on his phone, he sees an email icon. After swiping open the app, he gawks at the reply from the club, sent an hour after he’d sent his email.

Good evening, Rowan,

Thank you for your interest in The Menagerie! We are always accepting new members. Attached you will find our info sheet, club rules, and application form. If you are interested in applying, simply fill out the PDF application and email it back.

Please know that if accepted, we require all members to submit a driver’s license, a credit card to keep on file, and monthly negative STI test results from a physician’s office or clinic. While positive results do not preclude membership, there are additional steps we require to keep all of our members safe.

Please reach out with any questions you may have and we’ll be happy to answer!

Best,

Clover Monroe

Membership Coordinator

The Menagerie

He’s about to download the attachments, but as he stretches out his legs, he remembers he’d come in his underwear last night like a teenager. His lower half is a mess, dried come and spit clinging to the fabric of his briefs. He hops out of bed and showers quickly, despite having more time than usual to get ready this morning.

Freshly changed in record time, he downloads the attachments and opens the info sheet first. Because the one thing that he hadn’t learned from the website was thecostof becoming a member. And really, that’s going to be the determining factor of whether he fills out the application or not. He skims down the page, heart beating perhaps a little too fast for 6:00 a.m. asBoston’s Most Exclusive BDSM Dungeon & Clubrattles around in his head. The wordexclusiveis almost always synonymous withexpensive.

But when he finds the membership fees several pages down, it’s not as bad as he was imagining, though it certainly isn’t cheap.

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