Vulnerable [Suncoast Society] (Suncoast Society #29)(22)

Toward the end, when he knew he had to leave the marriage, when he’d tried to get Eva to step up and take a more active role in things to prepare her for being on her own again, he suspected she deliberately forced him to make decisions just so she could later abdicate responsibility and lay blame on him.

It was something she’d done a lot over the course of their relationship. He’d never called her out on it before, knowing with the dysfunction in her family it was probably how her parents had done things.

Even Eva admitted her parents should have divorced years ago. She and her two sisters, one older and one younger, couldn’t understand why her parents were still married. And from what Leo knew, it would have been best for everyone had they divorced early on.

Especially for Eva.

Another thing Leo couldn’t help but notice—everyone at the table seemed relatively…normal. They could be any average Joe or Jane, ranging from middle class to wealthy. They blended in with anyone else in the restaurant. Tilly’s husband and other partner, Landry and Cris, were in attendance. Another case of a gay man with a woman partner. No judgment from Leo, but his days of trying to fake his way through sex with a woman were done. It wasn’t fair to Eva and hadn’t been for years, even though she didn’t know it at the time.

He wouldn’t put someone else through that.

He wasn’t even sure he could get it up for a woman now that he’d fully embraced the truth. Despite not having warm and fuzzy feelings about his two encounters with guys so far, it had cemented the fact that yes, he wanted—needed—a male partner.

Life was too short to settle.

And it was only getting shorter.

Another thing he noticed, that everyone seemed to welcome him into their group. He didn’t feel self-conscious in the least. They didn’t care that he was gay. They didn’t care that he was a fledgling kinkster. As his questions begat more questions of them, they answered him as best they could, without making him feel stupid for asking.

It did feel like a family, in a way.

One he actually wanted to be a part of.

As dinner drew to a close, he also realized he could sit there all night talking to everyone. The conversation had flowed easily, without any hesitation.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d just gotten together with a group of people and felt so at ease. When he and Eva were with friends, he always felt like he’d had to buffer her with their friends. She had a tendency to withdraw when she felt overwhelmed, and he frequently found himself carrying conversational weight while she smiled and nodded next to him.

It’d been tiring.

More tiring than he’d ever realized.

Especially when talking with Jesse felt more like an effortless dance, easy, free-flowing…

Fun.

When was the last time he’d had fun with Eva? At least, when it’d been fun for him and not just for her?

The sad thing was, unless it’d involved doing something with Laurel, he couldn’t remember. Eva had always professed her happiness, even when he’d look at things and be miserable.

After their checks were paid, they headed out to the parking lot as a group. Keith leaned in. “Loren just told me you passed.”

“Passed what?”

“That was the earlier mass exodus,” he joked. “When they all went to the bathroom? They were discussing you. The general consensus is that they like you.”

“Well, I’m glad about that.”

“You should be. They’re very hard to impress sometimes. I’ve seen a flock of them metaphorically pick the bones clean of the most uber-Dom in a matter of minutes. Especially when Tilly’s leading the pack.”

“She sounds…vicious.”

“She can be,” Jesse said. “But only in the good ways.”





Chapter Nine


Driving away from the restaurant, Jesse knew the grin on his face looked as silly as it felt and he didn’t give a shit who saw it.

Leo had passed the first barrier—winning over his friends. He had asked intelligent, thoughtful questions about the BDSM lifestyle all throughout dinner, questions that showed he was serious about learning more, about taking his time, about doing things the right way.

It didn’t hurt that Leo admitted he wasn’t poly.

Maybe it would have been different if Mario had wanted a loving kind of poly dynamic, but that was not what he’d wanted.

He’d wanted full control over Jesse and who he slept and played with—including ordering him to sleep or play with someone—and Mario had the right to do whatever—and whoever—the hell he’d wanted.

Fortunately, things had ended before Mario could order Jesse to sleep with someone else. Not that Jesse would have done it. He’d honestly thought Mario had been joking about making him play with others if he ordered it. A loyalty test. One of Jesse’s hard limits was control over who he played and slept with, being able to safeword.

Apparently, Mario thought otherwise, believing the collar around Jesse’s neck superseded any hard limit.

Maybe in some dynamics that was the case, and okay, if the participants agreed to that, more power to them.

He’d specifically told Mario before accepting the collar that his hard limits, for now, were still in place.

He’d thought Mario had agreed to that. At least, that’s what Mario had said at the time.