Breathless (The Game 3)

I didn’t want Levi mimicking TJ too much.

Aunt Mel’s street consisted of narrow townhouses painted in various colors, and hers was the red one, the fourth house on the right side.

“Do you need money, boys?” I asked. “Never mind.” I pulled out my wallet, knowing that at least Levi would say no. TJ was a shrugger. But they often found something they wanted when they were out, and I’d rather pay for it than have them ask Aunt Mel. “Here.” I gave them each a twenty.

“I still have some left from last week,” TJ said.

Levi grinned widely. “I don’t. I blew my savings on the PlayStation.”

I remembered. I’d been there. The look on his face when he grabbed the big box with the PlayStation in it… Christ, Mom and Dad should’ve been there to see it. He was ecstatic.

TJ ran up the steps to the house, and it was as if our aunt knew I had every intention of leaving right away. She opened the door and was holding my overnight bag hostage. I’d left it in the hallway so I could grab it quickly and make a dash.

“Did you boys have fun?” she asked, smiling at them as they entered the house.

“Yeah, but the museums were boring,” TJ replied.

“They were not boring!” Levi exclaimed.

TJ snorted and headed for the stairs, but not before he hurried back and fist-bumped me. “Thursday night?”

“I’ll be here with takeout,” I promised, taking out my lollipop. “Love you, kid.”

He smirked. “You too. Later.”

At least I had Levi… He wasn’t afraid to hug me regularly, and he snuck in and wrapped his arms around my middle.

“Bring pizza next Thursday, please.”

I chuckled and squeezed him back. “Pizza, it is. Love you.”

“Love you too!” Then he was gone, running up the stairs with TJ.

Then there were two…

I braced myself and gestured at my bag. “Can I have it?”

She pursed her lips and cocked her head. She shared a lot of features with Mom, but she’d inherited their father’s darker hair and brown eyes.

“You didn’t take the money I left you on the kitchen island for the groceries you bought,” she noted.

I raised a brow. And?

She huffed. “You’re taking this privacy thing a bit too far, Shay. You didn’t want me to ask about your job, so I promised I wouldn’t. You don’t want me to visit you where you live, so I’m not. But you’re making me worried.” She paused, and I suppressed a sigh. “In all the years you’ve trained, you’ve never come home with cuts. Bruises, sure. Sprained ankles, definitely. Muscle aches out of this world, many times. But right there—” She pointed to my jaw. “And the other week, you had scrapes all over your leg. Don’t tell me that’s the work of a freaking foam mat at the studio where you work out.”

“It is,” I lied. “I’m just trying something new. I’m sparring with someone.”

She just stared at me.

Maybe she didn’t believe me, but it didn’t really matter. I was an adult.

Eventually, she handed over my duffel to me. “Please be careful with whatever it is you’re doing, honey. You may be old enough to fend for yourself, but no one is ever too old to need extra care sometimes. I really wish you’d move back in here.”

Two talks about this in one day. Fuck, I’d thought I was safe.

“I’m being careful,” I insisted. I stuck the lollipop back into my mouth, trapping it against my cheek. “I know I can turn to you if I need it.”

“Good.” She wasn’t satisfied, but she knew it was as much as she was gonna get.The Tenley twins and their group could suck my dick.

All you had to do to join a White Rose party was pay twenty bucks and “consider” wearing something that displayed or hinted at your main fetish. Whoever ran those events was part of a more open community, and it was no wonder some three hundred people RSVP’d to attend every time.

I arrived around ten, wearing a pair of jeans and the same white tee I’d worn to the last four parties. It read “Masochistic Tendencies is an Understatement” and earned me a smirk at the door.

I knew from experience that the S/M crowd tended to stick to the third floor, so it was where I’d made plans to meet up with Isela, a fellow masochist who’d once dated one of the founding members of Reese and River’s self-righteous kink squad.

There were no contraptions or setups to speak of at the nightclub, but that didn’t stop people from engaging in play. As I reached the second floor, I spotted two Tops going to town after turning a bar table into a whipping bench for their two bottoms. Belts out, skirts pushed up, screams dancing in the air with the loud music.

Fuck, I hoped I’d get a beating before the night was over.