For Real (Spires, #3)

by Alexis Hall

Besides, with the internet being what it was, you could get degrading sex with people you didn’t like delivered right to your doorstep.

A soft pulse of desire went through me, not for sex or pain or humiliation or some other release, but for this, this quiet closeness. Someone to hold in the dark.

“Not with nineteen-year-olds.” “Dude, if this was ancient Greece, you’d be buggering me senseless by now.” “Yes, well, we no longer live in a world of socially mandated pederasty.”

Little death, my arse. It’s a fucking massive death.

If only one could safeword out of a conversation.

“One of the few advantages of getting old is that you come to realise some things just aren’t worth worrying about.

But that’s sort of what love is, I guess. A perpetual state of semideranged partiality.

In the rush to console him for my carelessness, I’d stumbled over a piece of truth that was fundamental to me, held so deep in my heart I’d forgotten it was there. On instinct alone, I’d tried to give it to Toby, and instead given it back to myself. It’s not what you do, it’s what it means.

“It’s up to you, Toby, always. But I suppose it comes down to whether you think dominance and submission are about acts or about people.”

Laurie isn’t saying anything. I try to catch his eye, and when I do, he mouths, Who are you? at me. I mouth back, Yours.

These were the rosary beads of my submission. Though my only god was love.

I . . . don’t know what I’ve done to . . . get this. How I can possibly be what he wants? Especially now that I’ve basically had hysterics into some mayonnaise. Well, near some mayonnaise, but that doesn’t exactly make it better.

“You’re not a loser, Toby. You’re just lost. And it’s okay to be lost.”

All these still places in his soul that he disturbs for me.