Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 102578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 513(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102578 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 513(@200wpm)___ 410(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
“Has Greer ever mentioned an Archie to you?” Ivy asked curiously.
I chuckled. “I tolerate you sharing gossip, sassafras. I’m in no way participating.”
She hmphed.
But no, Greer had never mentioned an Archie to me. When we met up, he spoke of his dogs, nieces, nephews, and the kids of his best friend, whom he babysat quite a bit. Greer loved kids. He liked talking about the father of those kids, too; I didn’t recall his name right now, but it couldn’t be the one Ivy was referring to. Wait—Sloan. That was his name. Greer’s buddy’s name was Sloan, and he didn’t date. He had four kids and had spent the past few years putting out fires his ex-wife had started. The Archie guy had to be the boyfriend of another buddy. Greer had tons of them, much like Tate.
I wouldn’t be able to keep up with so much social interaction. With that many friends, when did they have time to read books?
“Without information, I can’t help him, Sir,” Ivy prodded carefully.
“Help him,” I repeated with a quiet laugh. “Like you and Shay helped Tate and me?”
She squared her shoulders and jutted her chin. “It worked, didn’t it?”
Although there was no denying that, I wasn’t going to aid her in meddling with Greer’s personal life.
I pointed my fork at her soup. “Finish your food. I gotta get back to work.”
“God, you’re impossible,” she muttered.
Was there anything as inaccurate as a teacher’s schedule?
I clocked out at four; I exchanged the company vehicle for my truck and made my way to Georgetown to pick up Tate. He officially got off at three, yet he wasn’t done by the time I parked in the faculty parking lot behind the school at four thirty.
I sent him a quick text.
I’m here.
Then I rolled down the window, lit up a smoke, and grabbed the book I was currently reading from the glovebox. A tattered copy of Fanny Hill I came back to every few years—the book that’d not only opened my eyes to sadomasochism and BDSM but had made me realize I was probably into guys. Which was ironic given that the homosexual scene in the book was viewed as despicable, a crime against nature.
I took a drag from my smoke and traveled back in time to when I’d been a clueless fourteen-year-old in Hawaii. It’d been the one deployment of my father’s where I’d found it impossible to make friends. I’d spent the first couple of months pissy as fuck, missing my friends in Okinawa. Then I’d turned to books. I’d mowed lawns, washed cars, and worked in a grocery store after school to buy banned, illicit books.
I’d come across Fanny Hill, and everything had changed.
This week, I’d found myself thinking back a lot. I wanted to know if there were any signs, any events, that’d triggered certain curiosities. And the more I thought about it… I kept circling back to my ex in Florida. Our relationship had been purely physical; I didn’t even remember his last name or the color of his eyes, but I did remember how he’d loved role-play revolving around me cheating on him. He’d gotten off on the humiliation of being replaced.
I flicked some ashes out the window and felt my phone buzz on my thigh. Message from Tate.
Five more minutes. Sorry!
Could Tate be into some type of humiliation after all? He’d always been rigidly against the fetish, but lately, just in the past few days, he’d admitted to having dreams and errant thoughts that put him in situations where he was emotionally humiliated.
I’d been into humiliation for as long as I’d practiced kink. Instead of whipping a nice ass, you reached into your partner’s heart and formed a fist around it. In retrospect, I knew that was why I’d wanted to listen more to Franklin that night in the bar. The mind of a humiliation slut was something else. He’d been awkward as fuck with me, but I’d still gotten the sense that this man knew what he wanted. He was mentally strong. Just…antsy, brand-new, and too eager.
I raked my teeth over my bottom lip and then took another drag from my smoke before I put it out in an old coffee cup in the door.
Maybe I was too eager as well, because I wanted to begin. Tate and I were relearning how to communicate properly, something that would take time, but I believed we’d fixed the biggest problems. With solid commitment in place, we’d opened the doors to a level of security I’d never felt before, and it made me bolder. I was more certain than ever that we would last. So…I was itching to reach new heights with him. I wanted to push my boy to the extremes and…
I caught movement in the corner of my eye and looked up.