Page 59 of The Menagerie

Mal pauses, fork halfway between the plate and his mouth, and bites his cheek quickly before releasing it.

“That’s different,” he says, quieter than Rowan would have expected. “Too personal.”

“I get it.”

And he does. As much as he’d love to get his lips on Mal’s, kissingispersonal. More so than sex, sometimes. Though if he ever does get the chance to kiss him, God knows he’ll take that privilege and fuckingrunwith it.

When the pie is nothing more than miniscule flakes of pastry on the plate, Rowan figures it’s time to bring up what he’s been wanting to talk about this whole time.

“So, what’d you think?” He can’t help the nerves tingling through him in asking, despite the fact that he’s still here and Mal hasn’t kicked him to the curb yet.

“About tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“It was good. Fuckin’great, if I’m bein’ honest, ’specially for a first scene, but I think we can do better as we ramp shit up.”

Nodding in agreement, Rowan adds, “Yeah. I don’t mind vanilla stuff, but I’m definitely looking forward to some’a the stuff we talked about last time.”

“Mmm. We’ll stick with exploring some kinks for now, maybe work in some restraints next time.”

Rowan doesn’t want to dwell on why, but relief floods through him at hearingnext time.Because there’s gonnabea next time. And fuck if that doesn’t nearly get him hard again right here in the diner. That and the image of Mal being restrained by something other than loose clothing.

He takes a—hopefully unnoticeable—shaky breath, reminding himself to get a grip. It’s not like he’s not gonna get another chance at fucking him. Theyjustestablished that that will very much be happening.

“I meant to ask earlier, but what do you wanna get out of our time together?” Rowan tries not to sound too much like he’s quoting from the BDSM material he’d found, but Mal sees right through it.

“Did some research, huh?” Thankfully, he doesn’t sound put out by it. “Good.”

“Good?”

“Practice is the best experience, obviously, but there’s a shitload’a books out there on it if you wanna get really deep in it.”

“Really?” Obviously there’s books on it.Idiot, Rowan thinks at himself.

Mal nods. “Yeah. Read a bunch of ’em.”

“You like to read?” He doesn’t know why that surprises him. Mal’s clearly very smart and well-versed in this stuff.

Mal’s lips twitch to the side like he’s chewing his cheek again. “Yeah. Audiobooks, though.”

“Oh, cool. I can never concentrate on those. They put me to sleep.”

“Yeah, well….” He clears his throat. “I can text ya a list of books if you want.”

“That’d be great, actually.”

“As for your question,” Mal starts, pausing to take a sip of his water. “I wanna get outta my head. Let someone else make the decisions for a change since I do that shit enough every day. And I wanna not feel guilty for likin’ what I like. Had some shit Doms in the past that tried to make it seem like wantin’ to get pushed around in bed made me a bitch the rest’a the time.”

There’s a story there, and Rowan wants to press, but he figures Mal is still more willing to share his food and his body than his past.

Rowan simply nods in understanding. As much as he’s a stickler for being in charge of things, there have definitely been times in the past where he’s wished someone else would take the reins and tell him what to do. And while there’s not as much stigma around topping as there is bottoming, anything that strays even slightly from vanilla sex is looked down on by some people.

So he gets it. And he’s glad Mal told him.

“How ’bout you?”

Blinking, Rowan’s brain stalls. “I, uh… guess I never really thought about it….” He winces. “I know that’s a shit answer.”

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