Page 19 of Kissing Kayley
I might be a Dominant but I’m also not an asshole. At least, I try not to be.
Which was another point we needed to hammer out. I didn’t want a doormat or a mindless slave. But thanks to lots of trial and a whole fuckton of error in past relationships, I knew I needed a submissive partner, and not just in bed.
Being submissive in bed and beingasubmissive outside of it were two different things. I didn’t want our relationship to morph into a battle of wills from us bumping heads.
I’d been able to let go of the submissive requirement because Kayley and I didn’t live together. We maximized our brief interludes by not worrying about a daily routine between us because we didn’t need to.
Yet to make a long-term relationship of that kind work, it first needed to be discussed and negotiated at great length.
Rawhide Ranch was well known for catering to and caring for Littles and their Bigs, protecting and nurturing unpartnered Littles and submissives, and providing a safe place for kinky folks to openly live out their fantasies or explore new aspects of their relationships. Sometimes the resort even unofficially played the role of matchmaker, facilitating the meeting of compatible and like-minded individuals, overseeing them spending time together in a controlled, safe environment.
I was smart enough to keep my nose out of my brother’s business when it came to intimate details about his marriage. His wife Terrie was a lovely woman, beloved by our family, and that’s all that mattered.
After Cedro’s time in the military, he spent a few years in the high-end private security sector before landing out here. All he revealed about his current job to our family and friendswho weren’t in the lifestyle was that he dealt with logistics and security for an exclusive, high-end private resort.
Yes, that generalization provided a lot of real estate for wiggle room on his part and gave him a genius-level excuse for not providing more details, much as my Secret Service career excuse did for me.
He’d confided more to me—not private deets about visitors and employees, of course—because he knew my relationship dynamic interests aligned more with his than with our vanilla siblings.
I had hoped to one day bring Kayley out here once Elliot left office and after we’d better defined the kinky part of our relationship.
Guess that would happen sooner than I’d intended.
“So what, exactly, am I going to see?” she asked while I drove.
“People being their authentic selves,” I said. “You need to keep Dr. Kayley Cruz locked in a box during our stay, all right? Once we get a good night’s sleep and can regroup, we might end up doing nothing but swimming, riding horses, or hiking. Or, we might delve into the kinky end of things that we haven’t been able to really explore before.”
“Ahh,thereit is,” she said, looking at me. “Why do you seem afraid to discuss that?”
“Not afraid, exactly. Wary.”
“Again, why?”
I thought about it. “Because I know we’re approaching an invisible deadline, Kay. I don’t want to lose what we have, but I know we have reached the point where we need to figure out if we can move forward together or need to go our separate ways.”
She squeezed my hand. “Have a little faith in me, huh?”
“I have a lot of faith in you, sweetheart. But I’m also a realist and have seen too many of my colleagues’ relationships crash and burn. This isn’t an easy job and it makes for an even rockierrelationship. Especially when it’s long-distance. We swore never to lie to each other, so there it is.”
We rode in silence for a moment. “I am absolutely willing to keep an open mind,” she said. “Because yes, I love you. Still, that doesn’t change how I feel about my career.”
“I know.” I stifled my disappointment. Lately, every time we said goodbye it hit me harder. “And I love you, too. This time away from everyone and everything, it’ll give us the space we need to figure that out. Right?”
“Agreed.”
We stopped at a large, wrought-iron gate where Derek rolled down his window and spoke to a man staffing the guard shack. Derek hooked his thumb back in our direction, and the guard looked, then nodded. When the gate swung open, we were waved through and followed Derek up the drive.
It was a couple of miles long, and in the darkness I knew pastures and land stretched beyond the reach of our headlights. Kayley went quiet, staring out the window as we drove.
I sensed her apprehension was as much about the day’s events as it was the deeper, personal ramifications of our vacation.
During our relationship we’d stayed closer to the shallower, vanilla end of the kinky pool. She loved me restraining her in bed with my hands, or simple rope work that loosely tied her hands to the headboard. A sleep mask as a blindfold. Light, playful swats on her ass. Biting. I suspected I’d dropped her into light subspace more than once.
WhatdidI truly hope for us to progress to?
Years ago I discovered I had a love for shibari, bondage, and impact play to supplement sexual fun. Not a heavy sadist despite my joking about that, but closer to the nurturing, yet playful bastard end of the spectrum of kink. Needing more in my relationship than a mere kinky weekend or two sprinkled on thecalendar here and there, but I was most definitelynotsomeone who only got off on his partner’s physical pain.
What I also realized was that I needed a partner who submitted to me outside the bedroom as well as in it. Not to micromanage their existence, but some rituals and protocols. A territorial protector of his woman, who within the confines of our personal relationship wouldn’t mind giving over control to me outside of the bedroom.
