Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91635 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Vic smiled with a touch of tired cynicism as he took the offered pages. Even when he left work, work seemed to follow him one way or the other.
Contracts and terms, negotiations and agreements.
He sank back into the couch and flipped through the pages. It looked fairly straightforward for the most part—laying out in plain terms what they’d agreed to, the price, even the date, with suggested provisions for what might render the contract null and void. One night, one session, Amani named as the Dominant, Vic as the submissive, agreement to consenting sexual interplay and intercourse as mutually allowed by both parties, consent to possible bondage. He frowned, flicking to the next page.
“Are contracts really necessary?”
“I know,” Amani said dryly. “Not very arousing. Hardly a way to set the mood. But when money changes hands and dominance and submission can involve negotiating consent, not to mention scenarios that may cause injury?” When Vic’s eyes widened at scenarios that may cause injury, Amani chuckled. “See? The look on your face. That’s why contracts are necessary. It also guarantees your confidentiality. I’m sure you don’t want to be known as yet another rich man who hires expensive escorts.”
“It’s a way to make a living, isn’t it?” He flicked to the next page. “It get it now. It’s a CYA contract.”
“CYA?”
“Cover Your Arse. A waiver of liability. I sign a dozen of them a day for all kinds of things.” The next page, and he couldn’t help but smile. Amani had been so thorough, right down to defining terms in a glossary; he thought, underneath those mocking affectations, Amani was a very serious person who didn’t do anything by halves. “So this one’s just saying we’re both adults, we both agreed to this, and we accept any consequences of our decisions as long as we follow the rules laid out here?”
“Essentially.”
“How very Fifty Shades,” he murmured, earning him a completely disgusted look.
“Don’t do that.” Amani made an almost offended sound. “Contracts are standard for many kink scenarios, but you can’t bring one up without someone mentioning that book.”
Vic couldn’t help laughing, as he scanned down the next page. This might not be setting the most romantic mood…but just having Amani nearby was relaxing him, easing something painful inside him, taking his mind off the day, his job, the problems that would be waiting for him tomorrow morning and the morning after and the morning after. Right now the only thing he had to worry about was the young man at his side, and making sure he understood what he was getting into before he signed. Imprinting terms like Safe, Sane, and Consensual—SSC—and Risk-Aware Consenting King—RACK—on his brain when this was so completely outside his wheelhouse, and he hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to Google overly much. And he had to hesitate for a few moments, when the contract asked him if he wanted protection or no protection, if he had a clean bill of health.
No protection, he circled tentatively, and no known STDs, biting his lip at the thought of skin to skin, the risk he was taking…but to hell with it. Though he almost choked on a laugh as he reached a section with two checkboxes. Checkboxes, their names, and the almost ridiculously blunt question of:
If penetrative intercourse occurs, would you prefer to:
Penetrate
Be Penetrated
Amani had checked off Be Penetrated, and Vic couldn’t help glancing at him sidelong as he uncapped the pen and checked off Penetrate, letting his gaze trail over the lissome line of Amani’s body, wondering how it would feel to be inside him. Inside, heat and tightness all around him, and how would Amani look with his eyes glazed with passion and his back arched and every inch of naked, deep-burnished flesh bared to Vic’s touch, his gaze, his mouth? Heat washed over his face, prickled along his arms, pooled in his gut, and he caught his tongue between his teeth, making himself look back to the contract.
“You really didn’t leave a single stone unturned.” He skimmed the pen tip down to where a blank waited for him to write something in. “So this is interesting. I have to think of a safe word?”
“If you don’t,” Amani replied pointedly, “we aren’t doing anything.”
“And yours is…” He squinted at Amani’s handwriting on the line above. “Dolphin.”
“I was attacked by a bottlenose dolphin at SeaWorld when I was a child,” Amani said vehemently. “I hate those squeaky monsters. If you want to turn me off, that’s how.”
Vic laughed, then fell silent, mulling that over. A safe word. Something that would jerk them out of whatever scenario they were in to say this was real, this was now, and it was time to stop because something was wrong.
“Towel,” he said firmly, and scratched it into the blank.
Amani cocked his head with a birdlike little sound of curiosity. “Why towel?”