Page 50 of Pretty ’n Peak

There. He’d done it. Hopefully they wouldn’t judge him too harshly.

“It’s OK to change what you’re interested in,” Jamie said gently. “If anything, the kink community should have shown you that people change, and it’s alright. Do you think you’re more submissive now? Or vanilla?”

“I mean… definitely not submissive. But I haven’t really been thinking about sex either.”

Neil’s softer voice rumbled through. “I’m not an expert, but do you think you might be depressed? I’ve felt that way before. Just… long periods of gray where nothing seems important.”

He’d considered it. “Maybe?” He laughed bleakly. “I work such long hours that I wouldn’t know the difference. I don’t have time for anything else. It’s the biggest reason why Cam left me.” His stomach turned, mentioning the name. Somehow, he hadn’t thought of him all day, and it left a sour taste in his mouth now.

“No, that’s not true. I didn’t always work such long hours, and some other things were rocky, too. But he signed up for a D/s relationship, and I couldn’t give that to him. I just… I never wanted to dominate him any more. First it was just in everyday things, then for scenes, too. I failed him. He… he had every right to be angry with me.” That was the hardest part to admit. The part that burned in his belly like a hot coal.

“That’s bullshit,” Carlos put in emphatically.

“What do you mean?”

“Partners communicate. They grow together, or they talk about it. But that boy didn’t want D/s. He doesn’t know what he wants.”

Austin shook his head. He could distinctly remember every whine from Cam about never wanting to play with him any more. Every accusation. Every tantrum that he didn’t have the energy to clean up. The way that their relationship fractured and broke like an old mirror, because he couldn’t be the Dom he was supposed to be.

“I don’t think you know him very well,” Austin finally replied. Just thinking about it was painful and exhausting.

Carlos’s usually loud voice was a little quieter now. “It’s true that I didn’t know him that well when you started dating him. He seemed OK. A little pushy.”

“He’s a brat,” Austin sighed. “He’s supposed to push.” He remembered Cam saying those exact words, on more than one occasion.

In fact, on every occasion when Cam didn’t like his style of correction or domination.

Carlos hummed in thought. “Brats are supposed to push limits because they want those limits enforced. They like to feel where the boundaries are, and know that they’re there to keep them safe.”

This was pretty much kink 101, but Austin heard it with new ears.

“That’s right,” Jamie agreed. “I’ll be the first to say that I’m a brat. And I love it. But I know when to turn it on and off. And I know where the limits are. Like today, Daddy said I wasn’t supposed to get up to anything naughty with Neil, because we were saving it for tonight. That’s a fun limit. Daddy knew I was going to push it, and it would be hot when we did. I wouldn’t challenge him on… I dunno, on how he makes decisions for the lodge or something. That would be a respectful conversation among equals.”

“And you think Cam didn’t do that?” They’d had conversations between equals. Or at least arguments. Times when they weren’t in their roles.

But Austin had assumed those moments were private, the signs of a decaying relationship.

At the club, everyone loved Cam. He was charming and fun, flirting around the room while Austin talked more sedately with one or two people and waited for him to come back.

Not to mention that Austin and Cam had done scenes with both Jamie and Carlos, and those seemed to go fine. What had happened?

Carlos seemed to read his thoughts. “I don’t know if you remember this, but there was a time that Martín and I were going to do a scene with you two. Maybe two years ago? We were planning things out before starting, going over the usual limits and interests. You asked Cam what he wanted to do, and he said he didn’t care and you should decide.”

“That sounds like Cam.” It got exhausting, which was never how he’d thought he’d feel about kink.

“So we started talking about what Martín wanted to get out of the scene. And every time you said something, Austin, Cam shot it down. And he wasn’t nice about it either. At first I thought it was a game you two were playing, but it didn’t look like you were having fun. That’s not being a brat. That’s being an asshole. After that, we decided not to scene with you any more.”

Austin’s mind was spinning. He could remember that exact evening, the vinyl couch gripped in his fingers because Cam was slipping out of his grasp. He could still feel the hot flush of embarrassment, that his sub was behaving so rudely in front of a couple that he respected, and with it, an urgent need to fix the situation, though he didn’t know how. He’d thought he hadn’t had the skills he needed. Should he have been harsher? Played it off like a game? There had been a growing sense of desperation that night, and even when Carlos had taken control of the whole scene, he’d never managed to shake it.

“Maybe he was an asshole because I wasn’t a good enough Dom.” That’s how he’d always felt.

Jamie hardly waited for him to finish the sentence. “Maybe he was an asshole because he was an asshole. You know, there was a reason he and Henri were so close.” Henri was the guy Sebastian and Jamie had been with before. Austin had never much liked him, either. He seemed artificial, looking down on everyone, including his partners.

Austin had put up with Henri because Cam liked him. And because he wanted to see more of Sebastian and Jamie.

Had Cam been like that? Henri was always so… cold and remote. Cam had run hot and feisty. But… fuck. Maybe there were some similarities.

“After Henri left us,” Jamie continued, “I started avoiding Cam. And I apologize that it meant we were avoiding you, too. I mean… God, that was a rough time for Sebastian and I anyway. But I couldn’t stand Cam because of the way he talked about your disability.”