Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 74803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74803 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 374(@200wpm)___ 299(@250wpm)___ 249(@300wpm)
He nodded against me, muscles finally relaxing. “Why is the limits discussion so important to you? I should’ve realized it earlier, but it’s not casual to you.”
Bingo.
There was my smart cookie coming out.
“Yeah.” Settling deeper into the couch, I snuggled him as tight as I could without actually making him trapped. “My first attempt at a relationship with BDSM elements was my sophomore year. This is the best place for meeting other kinky people, but the one area where it’s lacking is BDSM education.”
Ruslan gave a dry chuckle. “Yeah, it’s easy to hint about being an open-minded university because people gossip about that kind of stuff online, but actually making sure all the kinksters know what they’re doing is harder.”
Oh yes. “I understood the basics as much as a young guy could, and I knew about safewords and limits. I’d even made sure that the guy I was talking to knew what I was curious about. I thought I’d covered all the bases.”
I had not.
“I take it things didn’t go like you thought they would?” Ruslan’s question made me sigh.
“No, they did not.” But since I wanted Ruslan to understand where I was coming from, I didn’t brush over the issues. “We’d gone on our first real date. Pizza and a movie. So fancy.”
He got his giggles quickly under control, but it’d broken the tension like I’d hoped.
“I was feeling ten feet tall. It was my first date with a guy and I thought it’d gone fabulous so far.” And to be fair, it probably had up until we got to the second half of the date. “We’d been talking since freshman year and he knew what I was curious about.”
My being honest about that had chased a few potential dates off, but I’d thought that was better than springing it on someone.
I still maintained that was true, and even looking back, I hadn’t sprung anything odd on him.
“He didn’t have any experience with BDSM but talking about it turned him on, and he even had things he wanted to explore.” Teenage me hadn’t been able to see how everything had gone so wrong. “But we didn’t talk about limits as clearly as we should have.”
I just hadn’t understood that.
“It was all maybes and vague mentions of things we were curious about.” He’d known I was exploring being a Daddy and that my biggest fantasy was spanking him…and I’d known he was just as curious about the spankings and that he had a binkie hidden in his closet. “I thought that was enough because I knew we were going to have longer conversations once we tried to do an actual scene.”
I just hadn’t realized that those conversations needed to come a lot earlier sometimes.
Ruslan must’ve heard the stress in my voice because he slowly started petting my chest as I waded into the memory again. “We headed back to my dorm and we were sitting together on my bed. I kissed him.”
No safeword, no denial…hell, he’d slipped his tongue in my mouth.
“He’d been out since high school so that part didn’t freak him out. We were basically at like a PG rating when I wrapped my arms around him.” And pandemonium had ensued. “The arm that went around his front draped across his lower stomach and was probably closer to his dick than I realized.”
Groaning, Ruslan hugged me. “I’m sorry.”
Kissing his head again, I let out a breath. “I had no intention of touching him like that because I wasn’t ready for it. He was my first date with a guy. Touching his dick at that point would’ve given me hives.”
Ruslan was trying not to giggle but it was impossible. “I know. I’m smooth now, but at that point, dating a guy seemed like stepping into another world.”
“Yeah, I remember my first time dating guys. I get it.” Ruslan finally stopped hiding and kissed my cheek. “What happened next?”
“Chaos.” That wasn’t even a dramatic explanation. “He jumped up and went on this religious tirade that still doesn’t make sense because I’m pretty sure he was talking about God from the point of view of several major religions, and he accused me of going too fast and there was something about sin. I panicked at that point, so I don’t know if there was another trauma I wasn’t aware of or what, but the date ended and we never talked again.”
I’d thought about it a lot over the years, and I still wasn’t sure how much more we should’ve talked before we started kissing, but I’d never made assumptions again. Even now, none of it made sense and I couldn’t decide if he’d just changed his mind once he thought about actually trying BDSM.
“That sounds…” He let out a breath. “Stressful.”
Oh, the understatement.
“Yeah, I’m still not sure what happened and he transferred schools the next year. Maybe I did something wrong, and maybe I didn’t, but that’s why making sure I understand your limits and what you’re expecting from me needs to be very clear.” That was the point where I worried and overthought, so his hiding what he wanted was a nonnegotiable point.