“There’s nothing wrong with ‘plain old’ sex. It’s just that most people don’t understand what BDSM is really about. It’s not about some twisted kink or the costumes. It’s not even about the spankings or bondage. All of that is just a means to an end.”
We passed by giant tanks of deep blue water as we talked, and Landon’s attention was split between me and the fish. He’d occasionally stop to rub his fingers over an informational plaque and glance at the words, but never read them—almost as if he already knew what they all said.
“A means to an end... And what end would that be?” I asked.
His expression darkened and he moved closer, raising his hand to touch my cheek. It should have been awkward, but he was so blindingly confident about the whole thing that I just felt mesmerized.
I let him touch his fingers to my face and devour me with his eyes.“Domination and submission. Control.” He watched his finger as he ran it in a slow, goose-bump inducing path across my cheek. “There are other ends, but those are the ones I find most interesting.”
He turned and looked back at the fish like he hadn’t just used some weird BDSM magic to make my whole body turn to jelly. I blinked a few times and tried to regain the ability to think straight. Except every time I started to form a thought, it brought me back to the image of his face just then and the curiosity about what it would be like to kiss a man like Landon.
“Okay,” I said. I needed to talk, I decided. Standing still and looking at him was just filling my head with bad ideas. Besides, I had to admit my curiosity about this whole BDSM thing was piqued, just slightly. “And what is so desirable about dominating somebody or controlling them? Like, I get why that could be exciting for the one doing the dominating. But who wants to be controlled?”
“I could try to explain it until I’m blue in the face, or I could show you.”
My skin prickled with heat. “What, like another one of those demonstrations in The Red Room at The Golden Pecker?”
“No. All you did was watch. You won’t understand unless you experience it.”
“With you?” I asked. “Is that what this is? Some convoluted scheme to get me to let you spank me on the ass with a ping pong paddle?”
“You said you wanted to proceed with the list, didn’t you?”
I studied the look in his eyes. There was a fire there. A need. I might still have trouble deciding how I felt about Landon, but there was no denying how my body did.
“I’d want to know exactly what you were planning to do before I officially agreed to anything.” My heart was pounding. It felt like jumping without knowing what lay below me.
He nodded. “We can sign a contract, if that makes you feel better.”
I laughed, but Landon didn’t even crack a smile. “You’re serious?”
“It’s not all that uncommon. The relationship between a dom and his submissive is a complicated one full of potential pitfalls. It’s critical to establish expectations ahead of time.”
“So, let me get this straight. The plan is to leave the aquarium and miss the awesome sounding dolphin encounter so you can have me sign a contract explaining what you can and cannot put in my butt?”
“Uh,” Landon said slowly. “No. The plan is we finish going through the aquarium because you haven’t even seen the great white shark jaws yet. Then we do the dolphin encounter because it’s amazing. Then we talk about what I can and can’t put up your butt.”
I stared back at him.
“That last part was a joke,” he said.
I let out a nervous laugh. “Sorry. Usually people smile when they tell jokes. You just kind of had this statue look going on.”
He flicked his eyebrows up and shrugged. “Humor has never been my specialty.”
“Yeah, no kidding.”
We sat across from each other in the aquarium’s cafeteria a little while later. A greasy red and white checkered tray of French fries stood between us. Gooey cheese coated the fries like a glorious, golden waterfall of calories. Would we like a side of liquid calories with our crunchy calorie sticks? Yes, yes, we would.
I picked one up and ate it, ignoring the way the hot cheese was practically melting my taste buds off.
Landon popped one in his mouth as well. He seemed to forget he was supposed to be a scary jerk for a moment, meeting my eyes and grinning as if to say, damn that tastes good. I supposed that wasn’t entirely fair. Landon had clearly been trying to be less of a scary jerk ever since he talked to me outside Rachel’s. Sure, he wasn’t exactly knocking that directive out of the park, but I could tell he was trying.