‘I will never bring our child here,’ she said as they ducked at last into the lobby of their hotel.
He looked down at her with a smile that widened as she watched. ‘Our child?’
She knew he wanted kids, probably a few, but they’d never talked much about it. ‘Don’t get ahead of yourself. Let’s make it through this party tonight before we worry about getting me knocked up.’
He squeezed her hand and looked as though he were about to say something, then just nodded. The tux rental place was in the lower level, close to some of the convention rooms. The ones in use for the FetCon, Leah realised as they rode to the bottom of the elevator and the attire of the guests mingling in the public areas changed drastically from T-shirts and shorts to lots and lots of leather and vinyl.
Leah lifted her chin even as her lip curled. She couldn’t help it. Mike had taken her to a convention like this once. He’d wanted her to wear a mask with a zipper over the mouth and a bra cut to show her nipples. She hadn’t done it, but she’d gone along with him. She could still feel the collar he’d made her try on.
‘Let’s find another place,’ Leah said.
‘No. Wait.’ Brandon’s hand anchored her and Leah, not wishing to make a scene, didn’t pull away. ‘I want to check this out.’
‘It’s a vendor room. With … demonstrations.’ Again, Leah’s lip curled. She knew what was inside that room. Booths offering sex toys, fetish gear and all sorts of lotions and potions. Books, movies, adult film stars. Hundreds of people with their sexuality on display not just for the world to see but to shove it in everyone else’s faces.
‘No,’ she said.
‘Please,’ Brandon asked quietly and waited until she looked at him before continuing. ‘I know how you feel about this stuff –’
She’d told him only tiny pieces of her life with Mike, and never about the conventions or the sex clubs.
‘But I’ve never been to something like this,’ he finished before she could protest.
Fuck, he was giving her the puppy-dog eyes.
‘It’s only ten bucks to get in,’ he said. ‘C’mon, Leah. Consider it an educational opportunity for me.’
Damn it, he knew she couldn’t resist that look. ‘I would prefer to be in charge of your education, Brandon.’
He grinned but didn’t give up. He looked at the door, where a large man in a leather biker cap and vest was taking money for admission. Then he looked at her, amusement glinting in his gaze. And something else, too … interest. Curiosity. Arousal.
It was unfair of her to say no, Leah thought as she sighed and nodded and let herself be smothered in Brandon’s embrace. It was as unreasonable of her to expect Brandon to not be interested in what other people did as it had been for Mike to be too concerned with it.
‘Two, please,’ Brandon said at the door and pulled out his wallet to hand the guy a twenty.
The guy took the money and gave them both a serious look. ‘This isn’t for looky lous, kids. You both over eighteen?’
Leah sniffed. She might get carded every once in a long, long while at a bar, but there was no way she looked under eighteen. ‘Of course.’
‘How ’bout you, sonny?’
‘He is, too.’
The door guy grinned, giving her a different sort of look. ‘Pardon me, ma’am. You both go right on in.’
He stepped aside to let them pass through the double doors. Just inside was an entry way created from portable fabric panels hung with drapes of heavy velvet – probably to keep casual gawkers from getting a glimpse when the doors opened. Brandon, still holding her hand, pushed through the hanging material and they both stepped into another world.
The space had been set up much like any other vendor room with booths and a stage set up on one end, currently empty. The difference here was that all the booths were decorated with hanging bits of leather and lace and vinyl, and instead of slideshow presentations and demonstrators in business suits, the vendors all wore typical fetish gear.
Or, nothing at all.
‘Wow,’ Brandon said after a minute. He had to talk loud enough to be heard over the heavy industrial beat of background music.
Leah breathed in deep, waiting for a wave of anxious nostalgia to wash over her … but it didn’t. The last time she’d gone to something like this, she’d been forcing herself into a role that didn’t really fit, with a man who’d done nothing to make it work. This time, she was here with Brandon, and the sounds, the smells, the sights were all different. Or maybe just she was.
The creak of leather and the sound of a muffled cry of pain turned her head. To their left and just down the aisle, a vendor demonstrating a selection of upscale restraints had cuffed a young woman over a padded bench. The guy demonstrating wore blue jeans, no shirt, his nipples pierced and tattoos covering him all over in a swirl of colour. A bandanna held his hair off his face, and his chipped black nail polish matched the thick black eyeliner. The girl, her mouth gagged by a complicated-looking contraption of leather straps, wore a schoolgirl outfit, the skirt pulled up to reveal white cotton panties. Her ankles had been strapped to the bench legs.
‘See how comfortable she is?’ the vendor said to the small crowd paused there. ‘Felicia can’t move or even wiggle, but because of the padding she can stay in this position for hours.’
‘Wow,’ Brandon said again in a thick voice. ‘Umm …’
‘Let’s go this way,’ Leah said.
She didn’t give him enough credit, she realised as they wandered the aisles, and she ought to know better. He gave off a gee-whiz vibe but Brandon could hold his own. Even here, among the floggers and the handcuffs.
‘Hold on.’ He stopped in front of a small booth decorated with purple fairy lights.
Leah
