Chapter 39

Squatch.

Kitty wasn’t comfortable with Lee. At all. To her credit, she didn’t say anything, but she also wouldn’t look in her general direction.

Khan ordered Lee a water, and he fed her bites of his burger. She didn’t drink her water unless he lifted the glass and put the straw to her mouth. Way too much energy to put into power exchange, if you ask me, but Khan’s hard core. He runs the BDSM portion of our spa, meaning he oversees the pro-submissives, and watches over the scene while the paying Doms work them over. He knows his shit, which is why we’d asked for him to come up. Technically, he’s still on loan from the Mobile chapter, but we all hope he decides to stay.

He’d shown up at club functions with a lovely little submissive deer shifter named Nuli a few times, so the club gossip was going strong, but I’d known he wasn’t ready to settle down. I was pretty sure this little hawk shifter was just a plaything as well.

No, not just playthings. He cared about them and likely had a good deal of time invested in training them, but I didn’t see him settling down with either of them.

We parked our bikes in Magnum’s huge garage and walked down to the water without going through his house. He’d had a nice job before going to jail for nearly beating someone to death, but had lost it when he was convicted. Not many companies want to trust an ex-convict with their money, so he’d joined us when he got out, and now he handles our computers and helps Frost with the contract stuff at the construction company. He’ll eventually help Frost handle the club’s money, but not yet. We’re getting there.

Magnum’s pontoon boat can easily handle a dozen people. I reached my hand out to help Kitty from the dock to the boat, but she didn’t even notice my hand. Silly me, helping a cat keep balance. What was I thinking?

Khan had put a leash on Lee when we got to the garage, and a piece of black stretchy cloth around her wrists, holding them at her back. He held her upper arm as she stepped from the dock to the seat to the floor of the boat, and then pointed to his feet and she gracefully dropped to her knees.

Magnum stood and looked at her a few seconds, a stack of towels in his left hand, a cooler of beer in his right.

“She can’t be restrained on the boat. It isn’t safe.”

Khan lifted an eyebrow at Magnum and then looked to the girl at his feet. “Show him, pet.”

Lee brought her hands to her front and offered the black stretchy piece of fabric to Magnum, who shook his head and looked back to Khan. “Sorry, brother. I should’ve known you wouldn’t put her at risk, but why bother at all?”

“I want her arms behind her back. Out of the way. I could require her to hold them there, but it requires a lot of expended energy. Offering a binding is a kindness. She can get out of it, but she won’t unless I instruct her to. She’s almost always a good girl.” He looked down and grinned. “But when she’s bad, she’s very, very bad.”

Lee looked at his feet. “I’m sorry, Master. Sometimes I can’t help myself.”

He rubbed his hand across the top of her head. “I know, Pet. No one can behave all the time. I’m glad you’re here, even if only for two weeks.”

Before sunscreen lotion was a thing, I’m told shapeshifter had to change every couple of days in the summer. A wolf who only changed on the full moon would lose an entire month’s worth of tan, which was hard to explain. I went to put sunscreen on Kitty, but she waved me away. “I want to absorb the sunshine. Besides, I’m going to Brooke’s in a few days. I know she said I didn’t have to, since...” She let that hang, not wanting to mention Brooke feeding from us the night of Mike’s execution in front of the others. “But she didn’t get much so I insisted I come again. We still need to plan to take her out, too.”

She sat near the front, clearly looking forward to her first boat ride, and I kissed her forehead and walked back to Magnum. “Talk me through what it takes to drive this thing. I watched you before, and it seems to me the biggest challenge is the lack of brakes.”

“Biggest challenge is knowing the underwater topography, so you don’t hit a stump, or go to ground on shallows.” He looked at Kitty and smiled. “There are life vests under the seats. Law says there has to be one for every person on board, but you don’t have to wear it. I’m assuming you can swim?”

She nodded, and he continued. “Stay seated when we’re moving fast. You’re in front of the windscreen, so you’ll get some spray and a lot of wind. When I slow down, you can change seats if you want. Otherwise, you’re stuck there. If I think you’re about to freak, I’ll stop, but you can yell for me to stop if you need me to.”

“I’ll let you know if she’s not dealing well, but she’ll be fine.” I hadn’t told my brothers we could speak telepathically, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to. It felt private. But we’d be able to check in with each other in our heads, no matter how loud the engine and wind noise got.

Khan sat in the seat opposite Kitty’s, to her right, and Lee remained kneeling on the floor between them. He draped her leash over his knee, loose, and leaned in to say something to her. She handed him the cloth around her wrists and looped her arms around his bicep. As Magnum said, we all knew he’d make sure she was safe and secure. We trusted him with our club submissives, and I trusted him not to hurt the women who came to him of their own accord.

* * * *

Kitty Riding in a boat was everything I’d hoped it would be. The sun, the wind, the water, the smells. We rode fast for a while, the wind in our faces, and then Magnum pulled into an inlet and backed off the accelerator. Or whatever it is on a boat. Eventually, he shut the engine off and we coasted. I let my tiger rise to the surface enough to see the wildlife — birds, turtles, squirrels, and other small mammals that live near the water’s edge. I scented deer, raccoons, rats, lizards, snakes, and too many other animals to mention.

Magnum was explaining how to spot where the water is shallower, watching the way it moves and the change in color, but I was focused on the forest on three sides of us, and the life it encompassed.

I felt Khan looking at me, and I turned to him.

“If you want to cool off, we can swim here. It isn’t a good idea in the main channel, but it’s safe enough in the smaller slews.”

I looked around. “Slew? That’s what this is?”

“Yeah. I’m assuming you’re a strong swimmer. If you aren’t, you should grab a life vest.”

I shook my head and stood. “I’m a tiger. Swimming comes naturally in both my forms.”

Khan unhooked the leash from Lee’s collar and stowed it in a little compartment to the side of where he was sitting. I hadn’t noticed it before, and now I noted there were skis inside it. He pulled one out and walked it to the back of the boat.

“Kitty and I are going to swim a little and cool off,” he told Magnum and Squatch. “Lee’s going to sit back here with Freckles.” He looked at Lee. “You have permission to sit on the seat in the back while I’m skiing. If you need something, you have permission to let someone in the boat know.” He looked at me. “She’ll feel the most comfortable talking to you. Can I depend on you to see to it the others know of her needs, if she tells you?”

I nodded and looked to Lee. “We can sit on the back seat together and watch him ski. I’ve heard of people waterskiing, but I’ve only seen pictures. I’m looking forward to this.”

Khan left the ski on the back seat, stepped over it and onto a platform near the motor, and dove in. His thin, long-limbed body barely made a splash. I followed him, assuming no one would turn the huge engine back on while I was standing right beside it.

The water was colder than I expected, but not shockingly so. I kept my eyes squeezed closed under water, and opened them carefully. Humans can’t swim with contacts, but I don’t have to worry about infections like they do. I just have to make sure they aren’t washed away.

Khan motioned for me to swim towards the bank with him, and I followed. Earlier, I’d wished I dared ask him questions about his lifestyle, and now I wondered if I could pull it off.

When we were a good ways from the boat, he turned to the shore as if he were showing me something and said, “You had something you wanted to ask?”

“Is that a Dom thing? Knowing when women want to ask a question?”

“Maybe. We tend to pay more attention to nonverbal cues. I’m not prepared to answer personal questions, but I’ll talk to you about the lifestyle in general. If there’s something you want to know, ask. Nothing will embarrass me.”

“My therapist tells me that people who are abused as children...” I took a breath and told him what he needed to know to answer the question. “She says people who are basically trained as submissive as teens, rarely grow up to enjoy vanilla sex. It happens, but it isn’t the norm. However, she says the split for whether they are dominant or submissive is close to even, that most people are wired more towards one direction than the other, they just never move far enough from vanilla for it to matter that much. But, for those of us trained to it, we go the direction we’re wired, once we’re given a choice.”

“First, thank you for trusting me with your secret. Second, I have a limited data set, but of the friends in my life who were abused as children, some now choose to Top, some submit, and a few are switches.”

“Yeah, she mentioned that some switch, too. I forgot that part.”

“In my experience, sixty-ish percent are submissive, most of the rest Tops, and a lesser percentage switch. However, I’m guessing there are Tops I’m friends with who were abused and I don’t know it. I don’t tend to sit around and talk about that sort of thing with the other Doms, yet it’s important information for me to have before I play with a sub or switch.”

“You play with switches?”

“Some switches need a relationship where it’s a back-and-forth, turn-about-is-fair-play thing. I don’t play with them. Other switches have some people they Top, and other people they submit to. I have a few of those in my life.”

“I agreed to submit for stuff involving sex, but now Squatch has decided he can punish me for not following instruction about my safety. I’m not sure how to talk to him about that. I keep telling him that if I don’t agree to it, he can’t punish me, but...” I shook my head and looked back to the shoreline. “He’s bigger than me in human form, so he thinks he gets to make the rules. That isn’t the way it works.”

“From a lifestyle perspective, that’s unacceptable, but from a biker-werewolf perspective? I’m not sure you’re going to find a way to work your way around this one. He thought he lost you and he never wants to go through that again. Plus, the biker lifestyle says it’s our responsibility to keep you safe, and that you do as you’re told in exchange for our protection. You’re dealing with more than BDSM here. You might have to pick your battles with this one.”

“I fought hard for my freedom, and I’m not sure I can just roll over and accept this.”

“Then write him a letter. Put all of your emotions and issues and anger and sadness into the first draft, and then rewrite it in half as many words. Get it down to one typed page. Print it out, hand it to him, and then go take a shower. If he wants to argue and you don’t think he’s hearing you, hand him your first draft and explain what it is. Go cook something while he reads it. Or dry your hair, or whatever, but don’t sit there and watch. Walk away.”

“Right, because I’m giving it to him to decide what he’s going to do, but I already know what my decision is. If I can’t live with his rules, and he won’t budge, I’ll have to move out.”

“Are you prepared to throw your future life with him away over this?”

I shrugged. “Is he?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, but you need to be careful about making ultimatums. Neither the wolf nor the biker will react in a positive way.”

“It occurs to me that Squatch brought me out with two of his brothers I haven’t...” I couldn’t bring myself to say fucked out loud to him. I tried again. “Do you think he has an issue with me being around the ones I’ve had sex with?”

“If he does, he’ll need to get past it. Do you have any lifestyle questions? I’d like to be able to honestly tell him you wanted to ask questions about power exchange or kink.”

I sighed. “If there was something that was done to humiliate me when I was younger, but I’ve recently been given an opportunity to humiliate and hurt the asshole who hurt me using that... thing, and now I want Squatch to do it to me, but be nice when he does it, so this thing no longer has power over me...” I shook my head. “Fuck it. It’s enemas, okay? I have to give them to myself when I know I need to be clean inside, and I want them to stop being a reminder of bad times. If I can get him to be nice with them, will that work?”

“That isn’t your question. It’s the first part of it, because he does need to be gentle with you a few times, or at least once. Your question is whether he can ever give you the painful kind, and turn it into orgasms for you. You don’t want him to give them to you gently.”

“How could you know that?”

He smiled. “Observation. Doms learn how to tell when a subject is a turn-on, especially when the submissive isn’t sure she wants it to be a turn-on. Does Squatch know it’s a bad trigger for you?”

“No, but he was with me when I got to turn it around on my abuser.”

“He needs to know. You said you have a therapist? You may want to talk to her about this. Let her help you sort it out in your head. Or, if you’re certain of it, then talk to him. Tell him you want it to be part of sex, part of the scene, part of the power exchange. Many subs like the idea of their Top controlling something so basic. So base.”

Yes. That was it. “Mike controlled it. It’s like he owned me more than Squatch. I need Squatch to take charge of it.”

“Then tell him, but be clear he’s going to have to work you into it.”

“What will you tell Squatch when he wants to know what we talked about?”

“I’ll tell him to ask me again in two weeks, and if you haven’t told him then I will.”

That was as good as I was likely to get, and I was surprised he was offering even this much. I know how close the bikers are, how much loyalty they have.

“Thank you. You’re easy to talk to.”

He smiled. “I try. C’mon. I’ll race you back to the boat.”

I turned and kicked hard, engaged my arms, and sliced through the cool water towards the boat.

I didn’t expect to feel so protective of Lee, but she brought out something I can only describe as a mama-tiger feeling. Freckles was in the front of the boat when I returned, and I wondered if he’d made her nervous, or if she’d made him uncomfortable. Either way, it felt important for me to keep my eye on her while Khan slid across the water on a single ski.

But this was Khan, so there was more. He went back and forth behind the boat, jumping the v-shaped wave cast off behind us. I wondered what it would be like to slide across the lake like that, and hoped I’d get a chance to try, someday.