Page 74 of Coiled Tight
“I don’t think it was a mistake. What you did with Roy.” Cam frowned. He twiddled with his thumbs as he slouched forward. “I think we’re all responsible for our own mental health and what we do with it. We’re not at fault for being fucked up, and people should give each other more grace, but at the end of the day, it’s what we do with it. Right?”
“Right.” I paused when I saw the same woman coming to us with a set of plates and cutlery. Gave her a smile and a tilt of the head while she set everything on the table, then breathed out when she headed back to the back kitchen. “Daddies can be irrational, too, huh?”
I didn’t quite believe the words, but experience had taught me they were the most efficient way to drop the topic. I wasn’t going to stop living because of what happened. But no one was going to talk me into being less cautious or absolving me of all responsibility.
I’d been an adult—seen the signs, seen what was going on—and I hadn’t done a single thing.
“Not funny,” Cam mumbled. He dropped the subject, though, taking a sip of the tea instead. By his scrunched-up face, I assumed it had too much sugar. He’d complained about it plenty over the past couple of weeks. It had been pure luck that I’d kept him from opening his mouth in front of the wrong person. “Did you punish him? Roy?”
I cocked my head to the side before bidding my time by sipping some of my own tea. It wasn’t as sweet as his face had led me to believe, but he was more sensitive to those things than I was. I only cared that a drink had enough ice and freshened me up.
“No.” I tried to imagine it, wonder if it would’ve changed anything, but I didn’t think it would have. “It wasn’t part of our dynamic.”
“Has it ever been?” Cam kept splitting his questions in two. “Part of your dynamic with someone?”
I cleared my throat. “Can you call a one-night stand a dynamic?”
After Roy, that was all I’d had. I hadn’t been celibate. I went through phases, but I didn’t go for anything that would last, that would create attachments and endanger everything again—until Cam, but I was trying to stay in the present instead of spiraling like I’d started doing in the car. There was no room for the two of us to do the same thing.
“Depends on how intense it was, I think.” Cam bit his lip. “Some of the best scenes I’ve had were just that.”
“And I’ll ask you more about them later, but…” Once again, I was interrupted by the server waltzing in from the kitchen with a big platter of nachos for us. I tracked her movements until she was well out of earshot. “A single scene isn’t the time or place for a punishment, is it?”
“I don’t know,” he mused. “I bet there are people out there who want to be punished without any attachments.”
“And I bet they’re considered walking red flags by most Doms in a ten-mile radius.”
For good reason, too, but I doubted he needed the clarification. Instead, I stuffed my face full of the loaded nachos. There was a decent amount of jalapeños, and the pico de gallo and cheese looked decent, but the tortilla chips were quite soggy.
Oh, well. We just needed some carbs before we were back on the road. It would do.
“Why the interrogation on punishments, Cam?”
“It’s not what you think,” he grumbled right away. I hadn’t been thinking anything specific, but the comment had me quirking an eyebrow. “I was just thinking about it earlier.”
“Uh-huh.”
Pushing Cam only got his anxiety spiking, so I ate some more and let him get his thoughts sorted out. I did my best to avoid the server’s gaze, too, whenever she tried to make eye contact. It was obvious she was the kind to come by and ask how we were liking our food, and my whole life, everyone had drilled it into me that I was a terrible liar. I wanted to think I’d outgrown that flaw a decade or so ago, but I didn’t want to test it. I just wanted to finish up here so that I could actually get Cam on my lap.
I should’ve done that before leaving the truck.
Hindsight.
“I don’t think it would help,” he said eventually, rubbing at his arms. He’d grabbed some of the nachos, using the fork to avoid the tortilla chips. It was pretty smart. I’d copy him if I wasn’t committed now to ignoring the texture. “But like, people talk about it. It works for them.”
“Sure.”
I cracked my knuckles. The thought of punishing Cam? Itwasn’t appealing. If it was what he needed, though? Would I be able to respect it? To give it to him?
No. I shook my head. The idea might make sense in a fantasy setting, but this was real life. I might not have all the experience other Doms had, but I understood hurt. I understood the kind of firm but gentle hand that was needed to heal. Ihadexperience there. It didn’t matter if the experience pertained to four-legged animals. The concept had to be the same.
Punishing Roy wouldn’t have helped.
Punishing Cam—in a literal sense of the word, that didn’t have to do with his desire and pleasure? It wouldn’t work, either. It would add more wounds for me to patch over, to kiss better.
I wasn’t interested.
“Get in the back of the truck when we finish this thing.”
