Author's Note: Just a handful of chapters left until we close Book Two. The ride will be wild and bump -- look out! Thanks for your generous time spent reading and providing feedback. I'm grateful for it.
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We were a week away from moving into the new house. It had been a whirlwind of ordering furniture, setting up packers and movers, and coordinating all the logistics so we could move out of the apartment and into our new home the day we closed. I was exhausted as I sat down with Jess to go over her schedule for the next day. Kat had gone to bed early, since she had to be up for work the next day.
"Jess," I said. "I don't want to do this anymore."
A panicked look washed over her face.
"Don't want to do what anymore?" she asked timidly.
"This schedule bullshit," I said. "We've done it for six weeks, and it's exhausting. I'm not a dominant. It was a fun experiment, okay? I've enjoyed it. But it's tedious now. I don't want to manage all your decisions."
"Are you serious?" she asked.
"I am," I said. "I don't think you like it, either. I've been considering this a lot. I've thought about it nonstop the past few days. I'm a hedonist. You're a hedonist. And I overreacted a little bit."
Jess simply stared at me. Her eyes were drinking me in, her face placid and beautiful.
"We aren't going to make it if we keep this draconian, fake dominance thing going," I said. "You'll end up disobeying me at some point just because you get bored. It's self-defeating. And it's not true to who we are. That's not to say I don't want you to be honest with me. It is important to me, and I want you to respect that."
"I get it," she said. "But I also really, really do enjoy being dominated sometimes. I won't lie. This has been tedious, like you said, even boring. I just want a guy to occasionally, I don't know how to put it exactly. I want someone who will just abuse me for a night and make me feel cheap and worthless. I can't think of any other way to say it. It's not something I need nonstop, every day."
I sensed there was more, so I pushed her. "What aren't you saying?" I asked. "There's something more, I can feel it."
"I want the freedom to act on opportunities," she said. "The Johnny Burris thing? Oh my god, John, what would you do if you had a chance to fuck your favorite cheerleader? You'd never pass up that chance. You know what it's like in those moments. It doesn't matter how much I love you. It was Johnny Burris, and he was going to ravage me. This is who I am."
"I know," I said. "And I'm glad you mentioned that. Because I've realized that doing this whole permission thing and all." I paused. "The effect of it is trying to change who you are, and that's not going to work. Because it occurred to me that I don't want to change you. I love you for you."
"So what does this mean?" Jess inquired.
"Let's throw all of this away," I said. "Everything is starting fresh. No more permission. No more fucking bullshit. All the limits? All the rules? They're gone. I don't want us getting stuck in a rut, which is what all the rules were doing. We need to push to new highs. That doesn't mean I don't want you to tell me what you're doing."
Her eyes lit up. "Unchecked hedonism, is that is, baby?" she said.
I nodded. She crawled across the crouch and put her lips tantalizingly close to mine. "No rules? At all?" she said.
"None," I said.
"That doesn't scare you?" she said.
"You can't get real thrills without some fear," I said. "You have to walk along the edge. But I will say this. You are going in eyes-open. You know what will hurt me. So if you do those things? Expect punishment."
"Let's get right up to the edge without tumbling over," she said. She kissed me lightly. "Your rules on me were like putting a speed restrictor on a sports car. Why would you do it?"
"I don't know," I said. "I felt like I needed to feel in control."
Jess was activated. I could see fire in her eyes. A flush crept up her neck.
"What you should understand, John," she said, "is that the only rule for us is to expect the unexpected. To always push the boundaries. To go higher and get higher."
I kissed her back between sentences.
"This is going to become one big game, isn't it?" I said. I smiled. There was a sense of excitement that reminded me of when we had first gotten together, all those years ago. "You're going to be a bad girl, aren't you?"