“You recognize me as your Dom, and you’re subconsciously provoking him.” His voice is neutral, matter of fact, and I nod.
“So, what? Something inside me is just begging to be punished?” I ask, my brow furrowed.
“Have you ever heard the saying ‘bad attention is better than no attention?’” he asks, writing something down on his notepad.
I sit up straighter and try to look over his knee to see what it is, but he covers it with his fist holding the pen. I huff. “What, like a child throwing a tantrum when Mommy or Daddy isn’t paying them any mind?”
He tilts his head to the side, narrowing his eyes curiously. “For lack of a better example.”
I rest back in my seat. “Noted.” I switch my crossed legs and slip off my flip-flops, burying my toes in the rug beneath my foot. “So, Doc, please tell me about my sister,” I request, and I brace myself. Because God knows this is the true catalyst of why I’ve been in this… funk for the past year.
He pulls a leather folio off the side table, opens it up, and takes out printed papers that have been stapled together. “These are the actual notes from your sister’s sessions.” When I instantly reach for them, he pulls them against his chest, and I frown and sit back. “It’s in psychology jargon you wouldn’t understand.” I lift a brow indignantly. “Not because you’re not brilliant, god—” He clears his throat. “—Ms. Quill, but because unless one has a doctorate in these subjects, they likely wouldn’t understand it. It’s literally an entirely different language.”
“Fair enough,” I reply.
“All right.” He reads it over and then seems to translate it. “Session one. We talked about Twyla’s childhood. She grew up with two loving parents now married for twenty-eight—now twenty-nine years—and a sister who is two years older than her and who she is very close with.” He looks up from the paper. “Sound about right?” He sits up a little straighter. “Not that I’m wanting to double-check the accuracy of what she said, but I mean, was it the same for you? Is that how you remember it?”
“Oh. Um. I thought this was just going to be about Twy, but um… yeah. That’s accurate. Our parents are badass. I think you got to meet them at the wedding, right?” I ask.
“I did. Very lovely people. Your dad was very interested in my beach house,” he replies, and I smile.
“Sounds like Dad. California dude who moved to Florida. He’s an ocean guy through and through.” I nod.
He reads farther down the paper before flipping the page then back to the first again. “Session two, we talked about Twyla’s high school and college years, and her professional career as a chemical engineer. It was a first for me while initiating a member into Club Alias, because she was a virgin up until a few weeks before that point, so there was no sexual history for us to cover during this session. Session two is normally when a prospect and I delve into the reasons they are drawn to the BDSM lifestyle, but in Twyla’s case, it was a special circumstance—”
“My darling brother-in-love,” I finish for him with a smile, and he sighs good-naturedly and nods. “So, question. Seth only told me Club Alias is like fight club. Don’t talk about it and all that stuff. He didn’t say much else about it, and I never really picked Twyla’s brain after… yeah. In fact, I think the only reason I know about it at all is because Twyla told me about it when she was going to start taking lessons from Seth to learn the different toys she was supposed to be selling at Toys for Twats. And then, of course, the first time I met you, when Twyla scared the ever-loving shit out of me when she fainted at the club, and you came and got me.” A little smile pulls at his lips at the memory. I, however, don’t find that moment in time very amusing. “Anyway, it was during the day when I went to the club, and so it was completely empty aside from us and then Seth and Twyla up in his office. Then the twenty minutes I was there the night Brian and Clarice got engaged, no one had shown up yet, and we left before anyone did.”
“Right,” he prompts, waiting for the actual question.
“Um… well, are you able to give me any more information about what Club Alias is about? I mean, besides that it’s a super-secret BDSM club that’s apparently really freaking hard to get into. Because, trust me, I tried.” I roll my eyes.
That caught his attention. “You… tried? You mean you tried to come to the club…”
“And failed miserably. The dude at the door was having none of my shit. After Twyla told me she was going to these lessons, I couldn’t just let my virgin little sister run off to a fucking BDSM club without at least trying to scope out the place, make sure it wasn’t some nasty-ass sex club with this ‘Dom’ she was meeting up with who might eat her alive,” I reply. “What kind of sister would I be?”