Finding Master Right

Visions of Kate in white, marrying one of his two best friends had to be pushed aside before he lost his shit. “If the two of you fall in love, maybe this mess in my head will mellow out. Maybe I’ll get over her if I see your collar on her neck.”

“But I don’t get it! Why is my collar on her neck okay and yours isn’t? ‘Slave’ is just a word. Why don’t you call it something else and keep her?”

He’d been awake all night trying to make himself okay with that very idea. “Sneaking in the side door isn’t how I’m made. You’re willing to bend on what you want from a submissive, but I’m not. I can’t trick her into being my slave by using pretty words to disguise it, or our whole relationship will be based on lies. She doesn’t want my cage.” He rubbed at his forehead. “The feelings I have for her won’t fix differences this big. Eventually, it would end our relationship. Better to cut our losses now, before the real suffering starts.”

“Fuuuuuuck.” Ambrose leaned back on the patio chair and sipped at his iced tea. “You really do love her, don’t you?”

He thought of her face, the expressiveness of her eyes, and for a moment he couldn’t draw breath. The things they talked about in the dark, in the wee hours, had nothing to do with the way their bodies fit together or the way she responded to his touch or his dominance.

Kate was a deep, complicated woman whose soul was filled with reverence for the other souls of the world. Cruelty and nastiness weren’t part of her makeup. Her spirit was lively and kind, and her humor and strength of character shone from her, even when she was silent. His attic workspace was slowly filling with canvases of her—asleep, awake, smiling, serious, radiant. She’d become his muse and his obsession, and she’d done it all by accident.

Ba

Ambrose sighed. “You need to figure out how to bend, jackass. You’re going to give her away and regret it, but by then it’ll be too late.”

“It’s what’s best for her. She needs someone that appreciates her the way she is, without wanting to change her.”

He shook his head then looked out across the green expanse of his parklike lawn. “I’ll do this for you for now, to keep you sane. I’ll hang on to her until you pull your idiot head out of your ass.” He leveled a frustrated glare on Ba

***

The late-afternoon air was still but cool enough to keep them from feeling as if they were baking among the trees at the end of his mother’s property. Rook squinted despite the shade.

“I really prefer admiring the outdoors from inside the house. It’s like my own private terrarium.” They had just set their easels up, but Rook probably wouldn’t want to stay out for long.

They settled in, and Ba

“What’s the deal with you today? I feel like I’m talking to myself.” The kid laughed but looked concerned. He was too perceptive for his own good sometimes.

“Relationship stuff. Sorry I’m distracted.” He shrugged and reorganized his workspace for the second time.

“I’ve never seen you this messed up about a girl. It’s probably good for your enormous ego.” Rook gri

“Yeah, things with her are done though. I’m hooking her up with Ambrose, and then I can move on and stop being a creepy stalker.” He chewed on the end of a paintbrush and thought of her trembling under his hands as he drew a brush over her smooth skin. Would memories like that ever fade, or would they plague him every second of every day?

“Getting her to date Ambrose is going to fix how you feel about her?”

“Shh. Of course it is.”

Rook shook his head sympathetically. “If you believe that, maybe you’re the one who should be seeing Dr. Clarke.”

Counseling? No, thanks. Time for a change of subject.

“How’s school?”

Rook’s expression went from concerned to shuttered. “It’s school. I’m sure college will be better. The one I’m hoping to get into seems a lot more open-minded.”

“Kids can be idiots.” Ba

Ba

“Dr. Clarke wants to put me on a mood stabilizer.”

He sighed. Why medicate a kid because society didn’t get him? Rook didn’t have a mood disorder, he just had to stop dealing with asshats.

“Well, that’ll be up to you and Mom. Do you feel like you need one?”

“I don’t know. It won’t make me straight, and it won’t make the other kids leave me alone.” He shrugged. “So I get fog and side effects, and they get to keep being idiots.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m not switching schools again. It didn’t work last time. There’ll be homophobes in my face for the rest of my life. I just have to learn how to deal with them.”

Ba

“Stop looking at me like that. Moving me into your place and having me homeschooled won’t fix anything. I don’t belong in a bubble. Are you going to hire me to work for you from home when I grow up, so that I’ll never have to deal with people?” He turned away and drew some bold charcoal lines on his canvas.

He watched his baby brother as the landscape blossomed from his hand onto the canvas. Only blacks and grays. It was fu

Rook laughed humorlessly. “Eventually, I’ll have to leave the house for something, and I’ll have to deal with the same crap. There’s no hiding from it. If I was taller I could get some respect, but being small, femme, and gay? I’m a walking stereotype. Although I do fight the stereotype that gay men always dress well.”

“You’re killing me. Why won’t you take self-defense classes? I could hire you a bodyguard for certain parts of the day, if you think it’d help.” He grabbed Rook in a one-armed hug when his charcoal left the paper and rested his chin on the kid’s head.

“It’s only comments now, Ba

“But you have Dylan. And me.”

“Yes, and Ambrose and Konstanin. Meadow isn’t ready for me to come out to her, I don’t think, but her heart is in the right place. Eventually, I’ll tell her. And Mom, well, I don’t know if she can handle more right now. Her life needs to be easy and happy.”

Ba

“I just want you to remember that I’m in your corner, no matter what. If you need to talk or if you need help, you call me.”

Around them, birds sang. A weird, cheerful mask dropped into place on Rook’s expressive face.

“I can’t lean on you forever. Don’t worry about me. I’m the master of my own fate.”

Rook turned back to his work. The sun was warm in the clearing, but something about the boy’s demeanor chilled Ba