Out of the Ashes (The Game 5)

“Great, now I’m horny,” Tate whispered under his breath.

I chuckled and kissed his neck again, needing a quick taste.

Watching Tate come home was more difficult than I’d anticipated. To be honest, I hadn’t given it much thought, and I should’ve. I felt a bit self-conscious as he took in the state I’d left our home in. A pile of laundry greeted him on the hallway floor. Dust particles danced in the sunlight beaming through the windows. Our plants needed a revival. Takeout containers filled the living room table and the bar in the kitchen. The sink was filled with beer bottles and utensils, and the smell was…off.

“Oh, Master.”

Yeah. I cleared my throat and set our two grocery bags on the kitchen counter. “I’ll take care of it.”

“No, you won’t. I wanna do it. This isn’t our brand of messy.” He came over to me and snuck in for a hug. “I’m done fucking up.”

“Hey.” I didn’t like the sound of that at all. I lifted his chin and frowned. “Breaking destructive patterns is one thing, but don’t become someone else. We will work through our shit together. Both of us.”

He swallowed and lowered his gaze, visibly uncomfortable. “I can’t shake the feeling that this is all my fault.”

“I can beat it out of you.” I wasn’t even kidding. I gripped his jaw and made him look at me again. “I’m dead serious, Tate. Our best team effort, aside from loving each other half to death, was screwing up. You didn’t talk to me about your insecurities, I didn’t talk to you about my own discomfort, we never renegotiated our terms, and we buried a shit-ton of issues in hopes they’d disappear. How the fuck is that all your fault?”

He made a face and tried to look away, but I didn’t let him.

“When you put it like that…” he muttered.

“Yeah. When I put it like that.” I dipped down and kissed him swiftly. “We’ll clean the place together. In the meantime, we can listen to music, open a bottle of wine, and talk.”

It was too early to think about dinner now anyway, and I wanted to analyze every aspect of our open relationship. I wanted to know what he’d been okay with, what he wanted more of, and what had to get thrown out the window, other than us no longer planning to play separately.

He’d said something back in Mclean that I couldn’t let go of, how he’d been obsessed with his own jealousy.

Obsession was a strong word.

“Okay.” He nodded once.

I tilted my head. “Okay, what?”

That warmed up his expression a little. “Yes, Master.”

“Good. I’ll start taking out the trash.” There was plenty of it.

I felt like an idiot every time our new open communication sealed a hole in the sinking ship that’d been us two. Communication was something we drilled into newbies every single demo. It wasn’t a new discovery.

It made me understand Tate better when he’d said our kink relationship had felt more solid. Because we’d communicated scenes and had our own strict protocol.

At the same time, our underlying problems stemmed from kink, but they’d seeped into the rest of our relationship, and it was both bewildering and understandable. Tate and I had always engaged in fairly heavy play—a lot of impact and prolonged sessions of everything from predicament bondage to mental torture. Aftercare naturally put focus on the effects different implements had caused.

As I cleared the hallway of the last trash, I felt my mood sink. The Dominant in me was taking a hit with each reminder of where we’d failed. Where I had failed—and I had. How many cues had I missed?

“You’re brooding, Sir.”

“Damn right.” I grunted and shut the door again, then wiped my forehead and surveyed the living room and dining room area. The space was already looking better. Tate had given our plants a shower in the bathroom, he’d straightened the cushions, dusted the bookshelves, and righted the rugs. “I think we need to redefine what’s sexual and not in a scene. I don’t know where you stand anymore.”

Feeling too hot, I took off my hoodie and T-shirt and threw them in with the rest of the laundry.

He bit his lip, uncertainty taking over, and he finished folding one of the blankets and draped it over the armrest of the couch. “I don’t think I’ve had any problems whatsoever with our scenes and demos. I thrive under your rule, Master.” That eased some of the tension in me, but it wasn’t enough. “But, um…okay, so we’ll take one of our most common scenes. You demonstrate whipping or flogging on a random sub, we have people watching, you command me to edge the sub somehow… Like, when you tell me to use a toy on him or—you know what I mean.” He waved a hand dismissively. “At the end of the scene, the sub gets off, and we stick around until he’s ready to return to his friends or Dom or whatever. Then you and I disappear into a playroom, and you screw my brains out.”