I shoulda known that. Nonna always brought out the ingredients in the morning if she was baking later in the afternoon.
I expected to be hit by a chill when we stepped out onto the patio, but I was greeted by the opposite. The afternoon sun blanketed the area in warmth, and it wasn’t very humid at all. It was perfect.
The big dining area near the grill was probably where we’d eat tonight, but right now, I had my eyes set on the cushy loungers around the pool. There were a lot of them too, at least a dozen. Hadn’t King said they weren’t used to entertaining? How big was his sister’s family? Or maybe when you were loaded, you simply had to have multiples of something. The pool belonged in a hotel, not someone’s backyard.
There was a pool house, to boot.
Out on the hills, I spied horses. And a barn, far away on the horizon.
Trees here and there, from massive heavy oaks to smaller ones that looked like they’d bear fruit in the summer. Apple, maybe.
King slumped down in a lounger with a long sigh of contentment, and I set my beer on the side table between us before I got comfortable too.
I was a long way from New York…
Jesus Christ, this was nice. The faint smell of manure didn’t even bother me. The air was already ten times cleaner than I was used to. And I could quite fucking happily sleep in one of these loungers.
“You didn’t leave New York today, did you?” King murmured.
“Last night,” I replied. “Stopped somewhere in Virginia around midnight.”
He hummed and took a swig of his beer. “I like New York. I lived there for a while in the eighties.”
I’d never really reflected on my feelings about New York, other than…it was home. It was home, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. But this place, a ranch in Tennessee—I had no words. It was peaceful and stunning.
“The eighties were good,” I mused. “Not a care in the world. I was just a punk scraping together money to upgrade my guitar.”
King chuckled drowsily. “I’m surrounded by children. In the eighties, I was bustin’ my rear deliverin’ food to businessmen in skyscrapers and doing catering at upstate weddings.”
It seemed like a good moment to ask. “How old are you?”
“Fifty-four. You?”
“Forty-three. Just turned.” I hesitated before asking again. “And Camden?”
He cleared his throat. “He’ll be twenty-seven this year.”
Seriously? Well, he pulled off eighteen great for that age.
Their age difference was an incredible turn-on too. It’d been the biggest draw for Charles and me.
“Yeah, he’s a youngling.” King was misinterpreting my silence.
“One of my first boyfriends was thirty years older than me,” I said.
“Oh?” That’d surprised him.
“What can I say, I always liked mature men.” I smirked lazily, too comfortable for words, and lolled my head against the cushion to read his expression.
“Is that a fact.” He didn’t phrase it as a question, and his gaze was unreadable. Perhaps I should take a step back and change the topic. “You mentioned you have friends in the lifestyle… It’s nothing for you, I take it?”
Or maybe we didn’t change the subject at all.
“Not really,” I admitted, stifling a yawn. “I’m never on just one side. There are situations in life where I prefer to follow, some where I feel more comfortable taking charge, but most of all, it comes down to chemistry with a person.” I paused and tried to come up with the quickest way to explain. This wasn’t a normal topic for two people who’d just met, so I didn’t wanna get into it too much. “I’m a pleaser through and through, but that sometimes translates into leading someone—knowing what’s best for them and pushing them toward it.”
I’d tried it with Shawn when we first met. He’d been in between jobs and without ambitions. Then I’d discovered that he had no interest in anything other than being seen by people; he wanted all the attention he could get, and he wanted to look pretty on the arm that provided for him.
I wasn’t sugar daddy material.
“It’s interesting that you speak in terms of who you are,” King said pensively. “You’re not bringing up kinks or specific playtimes, but rather how a relationship of that kind would fit your personality.”
I wasn’t entirely sure I knew exactly what he was talking about, but I ventured a guess. “I never understood fetishes as an added spice. Unless you have to, of course. My buddies, for example. They reserve their Daddy/Little Boy time for when they’re alone, because they have children together. They have a vanilla life that comes first, so to speak. But if dominance and submission is that big of a part of who you are, how can you turn it on and off and save it for the weekends?”
King smiled ruefully. “It’s not easy.” Ah. He was talking about earlier, how Camden wasn’t able to… Something about regression. I knew the gist of it. “Camden and I aim for a lifestyle dynamic, but of course, life gets in the way sometimes. We both have full-time jobs, even though we’re lucky to be able to manage most of that from home.” He shifted in his lounger to sit on the edge. “I suppose you have to separate fun kinks from core kinks. Take a Sadist and a masochist, for instance. I don’t think anyone into pain wants it twenty-four seven. It’s something that requires specific playtimes. But the same Sadist and masochist might also be into D/s, and that’s something you can incorporate into your everyday life much easier.”
I nodded slowly. It made sense. Separate the mind from the body. If you were only into impact play—I believed that was the term—then it was easier to save kink for when you had the time.
“I guess I don’t have any fun kinks,
