He chuckled. “I do.”
“What about you two?” I wondered. “Aside from the lifestyle dynamic.”
He scratched his stubbly jaw and peered over at the house. His stubble glinted silver in the sun. “Regression play would be the one,” he responded. “I dislike the word play, but it’s what we have. It’s nothing we can do every hour of the day for a very long time.”
I didn’t know enough about it. “That’s when the submissive regresses mentally, right? Like, even in his mind, he becomes younger.”
King inclined his head. “That’s exactly what it is. To various degrees, depending on the Little. Camden regresses pretty heavily.”
“Does he have a set age when he regresses?” I knew Moshe had talked about that.
He shook his head. “No, and…” He let out a small laugh. “He bounces from one side of the spectrum to the other when he’s really little. It can be a struggle to keep up. He’s good at communicating, thankfully. He’ll let me know if he wants to do ‘grown-up stuff’ or if he’s in a nonsexual mind-set.”
Madonn’, grown-up stuff—that one hit me right in the gut. It was impossible not to picture it. Camden, that sweet, mischievous boy, telling Daddy if he wanted to do inappropriate things or not.
My God.
I took a long swig from my beer and forced myself to pull back. Time for a reality check. I needed to take a leak too.
King smirked and scrubbed a hand over his mouth and jaw. “Now that’s somethin’ I didn’t think I’d discuss with one of the winners of an online contest for a cooking class.”
I coughed around a laugh. “I was just thinking the same.” On the other hand, was all this really so weird? We were just talking. I’d been balls deep in a guy five minutes after meeting him in a bar. “I guess it depends when you think about it. The time and place—I didn’t think in a million years I’d be discussing BDSM with August King today, that’s for damn sure. But when I was young and dumb, going to a bar and introducing myself as ‘Hey, wanna get outta here?’ was kinda my style.”
King’s eyes lit up with laughter. “Young and dumb, huh?”
I inclined my head. “Now I’m old and dumb.” I grunted as I rose from the lounger, as if to prove a point. “Where can I find a bathroom in this castle?”
He stood up too. “There’s a guest bath in each entryway. I might as well check in on Camden.”
“And like I said, youse don’t gotta hide for my sake,” I said on the way in. “Let the boy be a boy if that’s what makes him happy.”
“Youse,” he chuckled under his breath. “That has to be the most New York thing I’ve heard.”
I made a face. “I usually clean up my language a bit more and leave the slang to my brother.”
“I find it endearing.” He brushed a hand over my back as we reached the kitchen, and he gestured toward the entryway. “Bathroom’s right around that corner. I’ll be back in a minute or two—without Camden. I appreciate what you said, but if he wants to be there at the festival tomorrow, he’ll need to decompress today.”
I nodded in understanding.
King and I got another hour of chilling outside before he said it was time to prepare for the barbecue. During that hour, he’d steered the conversation to me and what I did for a living, and he seemed genuinely curious about the Initiative, which I wasn’t used to. Though, that was mainly my bad relationship with Shawn speaking. I had supportive friends and family. It was just my ex who’d never given a shit.
Family happened to be the next topic, once I’d mentioned that I now ran the Initiative together with Nicky. King learned that my family consisted of my father, grandmother, and brother. And I found out King had two older sisters, one who lived here on Littlefield, and one who lived with her family in Chicago.
Their parents had passed away, but I got the feeling the only parent who’d mattered was their mother.
“My immediate family was always on the small side,” King said. “Countless cousins, aunts, and uncles, but no one we see often. Camden, on the other hand. He’s the youngest of eight siblings.”
“Damn.”
“Mm.” King busied himself in the kitchen, pulling out bags from the fridge, and bowls and whatnot from cupboards and drawers. “They’re all scattered across the country too, so the reunions are loud affairs. Loud and…full of fightin’.” He was smiling to himself, so it didn’t sound too serious.
“Loud is the default setting in my family,” I admitted. “Gideon, my brother-in-law, thought we fought a lot before Nicky explained to him that we just don’t know how to use our indoor voices.”
King smiled briefly, then tilted his head at me. “Your brother’s also gay?”
“Aye.” I pointed to what he was doing, prepping the vegetables and whatever. “Can I help? Nicky puts me on salad duty when he cooks.”
“Has he no faith in you?”
“None,” I laughed. “You’d be an idiot to trust me with anything of significance.”
Fuck me. The way his eyes changed made it clear that he was up for the challenge.
“Come here, then,” he ordered. “Let me see what I have to work with.”
That wasn’t wise. People were actually going to eat this food in a few hours, and I was more likely to pay attention to his hands and how he sounded when he combined his Southern drawl with that low, commanding voice.
I joined him at his side, and he shifted the cutting board and knife closer to me. He explained that the easiest job came first. A bunch
