"I don't believe you," she said out right, and I curled my hand into a fist, letting my nails bite into my palm so I had something else to focus on.
"I am telling you I'm fine," I said.
"Where's Ash? Is she here?"
"No. She's at her own home."
I tried to keep my tone even, to not let the bitterness come out when I talked about her, but even I could hear it, and I knew Eve would pick up on it.
"Is... everything okay there?"
I let out a sigh. It was easy to keep denying that anything was wrong and just get to what I had called her over for, but... maybe that wasn't the best way to deal with this. Maybe digging the hole deeper would just make it hurt worse when it came down to it.
"I don't know," I finally replied. "We're... having a fight, I think."
"Oh. About what? Sorry, that might be too personal. Is that too personal?"
"Probably, but I don't..." I trailed off, not sure how to finish that sentence. I knew what was going through my head. The fact that I didn't have anyone else to talk about it with. I wasn't close enough to anyone to tell them about the arrangement, and I knew Ash didn't want Eve to know either, so I'd have to come up with a way to talk around it.
I wasn't one for talking about my feelings. I never had been. My mother had made damned sure of that when she mocked me for even having feelings in the first place.
I told myself these days that I didn't need to talk about things because they were fine. I was fine. I was handling everything well enough, and I was successful, which was a clear measure of how good I was doing.
And yet some of the taunts my mother threw out there when I went to see her landed harder than others, and I knew there was truth to some of them.
Eve was standing there, looking earnest as ever and like she wanted to help, and I realized I'd never so much as even really been friends with the women I dominated.
Ash was the first exception to that rule, and I wondered if that was half the problem.
"Fine," I said with a sigh. "I'm frazzled. Ash is being impossible, and I don't know how to tell her to knock it off without coming off like an asshole."
There was a moment where she looked nervous, but then she smiled softly. "I think Ash is used to you being an asshole."
It was surprising, to hear her say something like that, and it startled a laugh out of me.
Eve and Ash didn't spend that much time together, but clearly when they did, Ash was rubbing off on her. I found I didn't mind that all that much.
"I suppose not," I said, sighing.
Eve looked at me, concern clear on her face. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"There's not much to say, really. We're terrible at communicating with each other. She hears what she wants to hear, I say the wrong things. It's just part of the package."
"I won't pretend like I completely understand what's going on with the two of you," Eve said. "But that sounds like something you need to work on if there's ever going to be anything bigger going on."
"Bigger?"
"More than whatever it is you have now."
"Who said that was what I wanted? Or what she wanted for that matter?" I asked her.
Eve shrugged. "It's a guess, I suppose. You're both very similar, but also pretty different, and I don't know either of you that well. But you have this... chemistry."
"Chemistry?" I arched an eyebrow and thought back. Maybe she was right. We spent most of our time together arguing about this or that, but maybe that was part of the dynamic. It translated into amazing sex most of the time, so there were no complaints from me, except for times like this when we were both being stubborn and it caused fights.
"You're good together," Eve continued. "Even when she's saying you're an asshole and you get on her nerves or whatever, there's a fondness there. She puts up with you, which means she has to like you at least a little."
"Ah," I replied. "I suppose so."
Only of course it wasn't that simple. She put up with me because she had to. Because the arrangement as I'd set it up meant that if she wanted the money, she had to deal with me. And once that was no longer the case, she was probably going to run as fast as she could away from me. To get back to her life.
"You know the two of us aren't exclusive," I said because I felt like I needed to say something.
Eve nodded. "I know. That's why I'm allowed to be here."
"The thing is..." I started, but I didn't know how to finish that sentence.
"You want to be," Eve said, filling in the blank.
I sighed. No use hiding it. "Yes. I think so. But maybe for the wrong reasons. She seems to think they're the wrong reasons."
"What reasons?"
"She met someone."
"Oh."
Eve frowned, and I could see the gears working in her head as she thought about what to say to that. If Eve, who was sweet and open and definitely one of the women who were prone to fawning over me, thought I was an asshole for that move, then I supposed I really was one.
She was quiet for a long moment, and I sighed because that said it all, didn't it?
"I'm aware it's not really fair," I added, just so she didn't think I was some blind idiot on top of it.
"That's good," Eve said. "Because it's not. I don't... it's none of my business, and I
