La Maison 4: Blue (Complete: BDSM manxboy)

Chapter 6: Raya

Tim hadn't been expecting the cozy and slightly rough-edged bar. Especially when it seemed their purpose was to order greasy burgers the size of their heads.

"You're surprised?" Raya asked.

"Thought we might be going to a club or something," he admitted.

"It's still daylight." But she laughed warmly and Tim didn't even feel stupid for his mistake. "Anyway, we can't talk about the stuff you need to know in a club. Especially the one I work in."

"Ooh, tell him about your job, Ray," Ange squeaked, handing over the bottled beers she'd collected from the bar.

Raya shrugged, a look Tim interpreted as being cross between nervous and swaggering.

"I'm a professional Dom. People – usually men but sometimes women too – pay me to dominate them. It's very 'Hollywood magic'."

"What does that mean?"

"You know, in movies where the woman wears a lot of leather and corsets and spike heels and carries a whip, and the sub crawls about on their knees and has to lick her shoes. All very stereotypical. But my customers are usually the ones who've come to it from that kind of awakening. The porn-effect. So they love it, and I'm happy to oblige."

"But it isn't real?"

"No. When I go home to my girlfriend it isn't like that at all. It's a scene, baby. Everyone's into different aspects, and you don't have to like all of it. It sounds like that's what your fella was trying to help you understand, by giving you all that information."

"But it's a bit much. I don't even know what he's into. And what happens if I go saying I hate something that he's into and I lose him before we've even started?"

"Maybe that's why he did it. No," she responded to Tim's wobbly lip, "I don't mean to push you away, I mean, if he's a good Dom, he isn't going to push you into something that's beyond what you're willing to do. Not until you've been able to establish some boundaries. And if you're subby, and I'd bet you are subby, it can be a natural instinct to try please your Dom any way you can, even if it makes you uncomfortable. He's trying to prevent that."

Tim took a swing of his beer, screwing his face up because he hated the taste, chasing it with the salt of a nearly cold fry. But students and beer – it had to be done. Or it was the easy choice, at least, to fit in. And maybe that was it. The easy choices between him and Xander might put him in danger, and Xander was trying to make sure that didn't happen.

"So what do I do? I want to try, with him."

"First, you read the stuff he asked you to read."

Tim could understand that, both because Xander's anger when he thought Tim hadn't put the effort into his schoolwork was fresh in his mind, but also because he wanted to show Xander he could do the right thing, and follow instructions.

"And then?"

"Then, you have two choices. And it might depend what you get out of your reading. You can let him lead everything. Maybe he'd like to do all the chasing."

Tim thought of Xander's reaction to discovering he'd prepared himself before going to his office earlier, and he thought the man clearly didn't mind when Tim showed him he was into it too. He didn't need Tim to be a total wallflower, of that he was fairly sure.

"Your other option is to go to him. Give him a list of what you're interested in. Be confident about what you aren't. Show him he doesn't have to worry as much, and then he'll let loose more. That can be fun. It depends whether you're ready for it though."