Page 2 of His for Hanukkah

He needed his routine.

Actually, what he needed was a Daddy.

He tried using one of the techniques his therapist had taught him. Breathe in while he touched his thumb slowly to the tip of each finger. Breathe out and repeat. Only it was hard to find a rhythm when there was so much noise everywhere.

Out on the drizzling street, some guy dressed in a Santa suit hollered Christmas greetings indiscriminately to the passing crowd. The man was ringing a handbell, and though its tone was sweet, it wasn’t like Adam had opted in to hearing it just by walking down the block.

It looked like the Santa was collecting money for something. Did anyone actually find this cheerful?

Somebody else bumped into Adam, and he just about lost it. His finger scraped roughly against the side of the building, and he barely heard the person’s rushed “sorry” amidst the noise.

He couldn’t tell if his finger was bleeding under his thin gloves. Keep it together. It’s just a scrape.

He’d always found it weird that little injuries like the scratch on his finger and the bruise to his shoulder could feel so unpleasant when an actual whipping could make him come.

He sometimes tried to make his body recategorize mundane injuries as something erotic, but it never worked. Bodies and brains were weird.

And there he was, thinking about submission for the hundredth time today. Maybe it was time to go back to Escape.

The thought was both exciting and defeating.

When he’d been with Jacob, it had been like his second home. There was a group of friends they regularly hung out with, and if he went on a Thursday night, Daddy night—though there were a share of Mommies, too—he was almost guaranteed to have a few friends there.

But then it had slowly fallen apart. Ethan and Martín had moved away to be all loved-up on the other side of the country. Kate and Susan, or Susie in her little persona, had decided to go 24/7 and mostly stopped playing at the club.

When Jacob had dumped him, Adam hadn’t been sure who their group of friends belonged to and if they even wanted to see him. So even when he went, he stayed on the sidelines of their rag-tag group.

And then Caroline had dumped Tate because she could apparently date super-masculine butch lesbians, but not trans men. That splintered the group until it wasn’t a group anymore.

He’d always thought Caroline was a bitch, anyway.

Adam slumped into his car and threw the shopping bag onto the passenger seat. Tate was the other problem with going back.

He vaguely recalled that Tate had moved away after breaking up with Caroline, or perhaps because he’d finished grad school. Adam had pretty much forgotten about him, overwhelmed with navigating the once-safe space without his circle of friends. He and Tate had never been close, mostly chatting about inconsequential things and sharing jokes that he could no longer remember.

But then Tate had come back.

It had taken Adam a few minutes to recognize him. Somehow, he’d gone from off-limits, dyke friend in a committed relationship to achingly hot, compellingly masculine, available Dominant. When he’d approached Adam to chat, of course Adam had done his deer-in-the-headlights routine and just gaped at the sexy man. He’d probably answered in monosyllables, if at all.

All he could think of was how warm those muscular shoulders would be under his hands, or how that trim, sexy beard would brush across his skin. Or better yet, how those strong, calloused hands would feel pinning him down.

To make matters worse, he was pretty sure that Tate was flirting with him. When they were talking, Adam’s mind had been screaming, Yes! Pick me! Please! His face had probably said, get me out of here because I don’t know what to do.

He always knew it was happening, but he didn’t know how to stop it.

That was the part of Escape that he hated. He was a bit introverted but totally capable of normal conversations in the rest of his life. He had friends, some closer than others, and he could hold his own at a party or at lunch with his colleagues. Hell, the reason he’d been promoted to team leader was because he was good at getting people to work together while they focused on the project. His team knew he could get a little frazzled, but at work he usually did a good job of keeping his stress to himself.

Flirting just made him freeze up. He wanted a Daddy to avoid all of that confusing flirting.

The fact that it had happened with Tate made it twice as bad. He liked Tate. He trusted Tate. And when Tate made a move, he’d forgotten how to talk. Not just once, but on three separate visits.

So, he’d kind of been avoiding the place. It wasn’t like he got to play very often, anyway, with his stricken response to interested Doms.

But tonight, tonight he really needed it. Maybe he could just force himself to talk like a normal person. Maybe he could ask Yi at the bar to set him up with a nice Dom. That usually worked.

Maybe he could even talk to Tate, his friend Tate, without being an idiot. Probably not, though.

If Tate was even there. Not that he was thinking about his dark eyes and commanding voice or anything.