Liability (Suncoast Society #33)(10)

“Harumph!” Tilly rolled her eyes. “Fine.”

Mason leaned in again. “As you can see, friendships sort of blur the lines and become like adopted family. Even when idiots like me move away for a while and come back.”

“Hey, that was your fault, Mase,” Tilly said. “You should have known better than to try to move away from the kink capital of the world.”

“Sarasota?” Kim asked, now feeling really confused.

Nearly everyone laughed and again, in unison, said, “Florida.”





Chapter Five


Mason thought the new couple next to him was absolutely adorable. Leah and Seth had joined them at the table, as well as another newbie couple, and Tilly, Landry, and Cris.

If Tilly didn’t scare the newbies off, they’d probably keep coming around.

Cole and Kim had been dating for about two years, but even though they were in a stable, permanent relationship, they didn’t live together. There was a divorce alluded to in Kim’s past as to the reason she hadn’t yet moved in with Cole.

“So do you have a submissive?” Kim asked Mason.

It hadn’t come up yet that he was gay, so this seemed as good a time as any to put it out there. “No man in my life right now,” he said with a smile, hoping this didn’t freak them out. “Hoping to find a single and kinky submissive guy, now that I’m back in Florida.”

“I have a cousin who’s single,” Cole said. “But I can’t vouch for the fact that he’s kinky.” He smiled, a friendly, honest smile. The kind that put Mason at ease.

Mason felt a little tension roll from his shoulders. Question answered, they were open-minded. “We have a saying in the lifestyle, that you have to fish in the right pond. I’m hoping that being back in Florida means I start getting nibbles again.”

“I told you,” Landry drawled from across the table. “I’ll loan you Cris if you want to borrow an ass to stripe.”

“Don’t I get a say in that?” Cris joked.

“No,” Landry teased right back.

Even though Mason considered all three of them to be friends, Mason still couldn’t get past having first met and known Cris when Cris was Tilly’s Master…and then hearing how he’d up and left her. Yes, he knew the whole story now, as did all their friends, but Mason would leave striping Cris’ ass to Landry and Tilly.

“I appreciate that, Lan, but I’m sure compared to you he’d think I was just swatting flies off his rump. Not that it’s not a shapely rump, Cris. No offense.”

Cris, who’d been taking a sip of his iced tea, tipped his glass toward him. “None taken.”

The longer Mason talked with Kim and Cole, the more easily the conversation between the three of them flowed. They both asked a lot of questions, and he could tell from their questions that they were adorably clueless but eager to learn.

Just from watching them together, studying their body language, Mason could see how much Cole loved Kim, yet that she’d been the driving force in getting them there tonight. At least Cole appeared to be genuinely open-minded about this. Cole didn’t seem to be humoring Kim simply to shut her up, just based on the questions he was asking.

That boded well for their continued long-term success.

Lucky girl.

Cole had distracting blue eyes that Mason kept finding himself wanting to stare into the longer they talked.

Straight and taken, buddy. Forget it.

Now that Mason was living back on the Suncoast, and settled into his new condo and new job, he wanted to become active again in the local lifestyle community. If he didn’t meet anyone to date and play with that way, he’d start filtering into more events in the gay community.

But the first item on Mason’s list was to reconnect with all his old friends in the Suncoast Society and at Venture.

As he talked with Kim and Cole, he kept getting sidetracked by people coming up to talk to him, or going over to talk to other people. Tilly, Landry, and Cris, who’d been absent for a while working out in Los Angeles, were also playing social butterflies and hardly at their seats long enough to eat. Seth and Leah were busy talking with the other couple at their table.

Finally, about halfway through dinner, Mason made Cole and Kim an offer.

“Sorry it’s so busy tonight. A lot of people here I haven’t seen in a while. If you want, we can meet somewhere one night this week and have dinner and talk some more. Then I’d be able to give you my undivided attention.”

He watched Cole’s reaction more than Kim’s. The man immediately nodded. “That’d be nice, thank you. We’ll take you up on that. I’m sorry that I’m not better prepared tonight with questions. I honestly wasn’t sure where to start.”

“I kind of blindsided him with all of this,” Kim admitted.

Cole smiled. “Not exactly.”

They’d already voluntarily admitted some of their bedroom activities to Mason, and they were definitely falling closer to the vanilla end of the scale. Which was absolutely fine, nothing wrong with that. It was easier to educate someone who didn’t already have a bunch of deep-seated, wild-assed, unrealistic fantasies that could never be made real.

Mason suspected the fact that he was gay somewhat reassured both of them, although he hadn’t seen Cole react negatively to any of the other Doms in the room.