Free Desire by Ember Chase

didn’t.”
    I’m not sure I want to know if he’s lying about that. “Did they have feelings for you?”
    “I cut i t off if I suspected that they did and they were usually still hung up on someone else, so it wasn’t much of an issue. I trained them to understand what it was like to have a say in what was going on, helped them be honest about what they enjoyed and what they didn’t, and get over the fear of using safewords. Then once they were ready, Sloane would hook them up with a real Dom.”
    “Wow.” I get up from the table and walk into the living room, unsure why I feel so betrayed. It’s not like he knew me. But it just sounds so intimate, like he’s been deceptive.
    “Maya, I—”
    “Just give me a se cond.” Not wanting him to see me upset, I disappear into the bathroom and splash cool water on my face. I guess it’s a good thing, really. I hate thinking about how miserable his life is, it’s almost nice to know that he had some kind of happiness. But the thought of him touching someone else, comforting her, caring about her, kissing her… this whole time I thought it was all new to him and I’ve felt so special. How fucking naïve.
    “Maya, please come out of there.” His feet break the light under the door. “Baby, obviously it’s not going to happen ever again.” I can’t answer him. “ Goddammit,” he snaps, his voice full of a frustration I just can’t handle right now. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
    If I don’t pull myself together, he’ll never tell me something that he doesn’t want to say. He’ll tell himself it’s to protect me from my own emotions, he’ll have the perfect excuse. We’re even now, I suppose. It has to be hard for him to think about me and Luke and I wasn’t exactly sensitive when I dropped that fuck buddy bomb on him. Taking a deep breath, I open the door, making sure my expression is neutral. Our eyes lock for a moment but he turns away, cursing himself.
    “It’s alright, Isaac,” I reassure him.
    “Yeah, that completely explains why you ran away from me,” he says sarcastically.
    “This has been a rather intense conversation, I needed a minute to process what you just said.”
    “Well, what did you come up with?”
    “I think it’s nice that you help those abandoned women regain some kind of a normal life. Really nice. Sweet. Very… you. But it sort of knocked the wind out of me to think about you being with someone else like that.”
    “It’s not the same thing. It really isn’t, I swear. And I feel like that all the time whenever I think of you with him. Well, them now.”
    “I shouldn’t have dropped it on you like that.”
    “I was being a dick.”
    “You weren’t… okay, a little bit. I got defensive when you talked about Luke controlling me. You keep saying I’m smart, but socially and emotionally, I am really fucking stupid.”
    “You’re not. Anyone can be—”
    “No, Isaac. Trust me on this one. As in, been to a therapist or eight and diagnosed as such. And it’s a real sore spot for me, okay? So I probably will end up doing whatever you tell me to do, if I can, because I have no idea how to handle him. Not a clue. I have never stood up to him. He’s got such a temper, I hardly ever see it, but when I do… I was terrified when I told him that I wouldn’t fuck his friend, he made me feel so awful about it that I agreed to do it anyway, then he told me not to bother because I would just embarrass him like I did the last time. He was so pissed off that he barely spoke to me for a month and a half and that was the only reason I came here. Which was probably his plan.”
    “When did he tell you about this?”
    “About a month ago before.”
    “Fuck,” Isaac whispers under his breath. “This has been on my schedule for almost four months.”
    “What?” My heart slams against my ribs. “But that was even before the first guy.”
    “It’s going to be okay.”
    “Are you just saying that?”
    “ No .