I saw a pair of shoes walk up in my peripheral vision and stop nearby. Great, more onlookers. I enjoyed sexy times with people watching, but I didn’t enjoy sharing with them when I got in trouble.

“You want to see what it’s like to be with another Dom?” Nathaniel asked. “Is that what this new fascination with playing in public is leading to?”

“No, Master.” Where had that come from? How did he jump from playing in public to me being with another man? Surely he hadn’t got all that from my dancing.

“I don’t know if I believe you.”

“I don’t know how to prove it, Master.”

“You there,” Nathaniel said, and I realized he was talking to the man who stood nearby. “Want to help out?”

Oh my God, what is he doing?

The stranger grunted and from the sound alone, I couldn’t tell if it was an affirmative reply or a negative one. His shoes came closer to me, which I took to mean he’d agreed to be part of the scene.

“This is one of the men you were dancing with, Abigail.”

I’d have to take his word for it. I hadn’t exactly been looking at the guys’ shoes when I was dancing.

“I think he wanted to make sure you were okay. You have permission to speak to him.”

I kept my gaze focused on the floor. “I’m very much okay, Sir. Thank you for checking.”

“Is that your idea of thanks?” Nathaniel asked.

What the hell did he want me to do? Kiss the guy’s feet in thanks? “How should I thank him, Master?”

“Properly,” a gruff voice I recognized from the dance floor said.

My heart pounded and the blood rushing through my body buzzed in my ears. Everything seemed to fog over.

Did he mean what I thought he meant? And Nathaniel was going to allow it?

Somewhere in front of me a zipper was being lowered.

Though the fog that was still clearing in my brain, I suddenly became very aware of what and who was in front of me. It was a stranger and he was unbuttoning his pants. I didn’t want to look up and see him. I could do this, but I didn’t want to see his face. For whatever reason, that seemed important.

Slowly, he took his jeans down and I focused on his cock. It was sizable, and very erect. And pierced.

“You’re pierced.” I felt my cheeks flush as soon as the words left my mouth because of course he was. And of course he knew it.

“The submissives at the club seem to like it,” he said in a matter-of-fact way. But he might as well have poured ice-cold water over me because that simple sentence brought the image of one specific submissive kneeling at a club.

Charlene.

And it wasn’t a stranger she knelt before in my mind. It was Nathaniel.

Time stopped as I pictured him taking his pants down and her licking her lips, desperate for him. He stroked his cock. “Ready for a taste?”

But when she opened her mouth to engulf his cock, it wasn’t Charlene. It was me. I was Charlene.

The vision disappeared and the only thing in front of me was a cock that wasn’t Nathaniel’s.

Oh my God. I was Charlene.

“Stop. No! Red.”

“What the hell, man?” the stranger asked, and I realized I hadn’t been the one to safe-word. Nathaniel had done it.

“We’re leaving,” Nathaniel said, and his voice was shaky.

So he was upset. Good. I would hate to be alone in my pissed-off state.

“Whatever,” the stranger said. I kept my eyes on the floor as he zipped his pants back up and left.

“Are you okay?” Nathaniel held out a hand to me, but I jerked away from him.

“Don’t touch me,” I said. “You were trying to turn me into her.”

“What? Who?” Nathaniel asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Charlene,” I said, putting as much disdain as possible in that one word.

“What?” he asked again.

“How long have you really known she was submissive? You’ve known all along, haven’t you? And I bet you thought that if you could convince me to do a threesome, I wouldn’t be able to say anything if you wanted to play with her.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

“Look at it from my perspective. If you allow me to play with other men and you even go so far as to introduce a third, is it so far out there that you would come to me and say, ‘I’m bringing another woman into the playroom. You shouldn’t have a problem with it, since I brought another man in it for you’?”

“You’ve got it completely wrong. I don’t want Charlene. If I wanted to be with another woman, there are easier ways to go about doing it. And I don’t want to share you. I don’t want to bring anyone into our time. But I saw the look in your eyes. You needed more and more and soon you’d have wanted to try two men at a time and I was willing to do that for you. Not because I liked it. I hate it. I would do it for you!”

“Excuse me,” a Dungeon Monitor said. “Is everything okay here?”

Shit. I’d forgotten we were surrounded by people. The guy was looking at me, waiting for a response.

Of course a DM would stop by. Someone had safe-worded and then we’d been arguing.

“Everything’s fine.” I stood up. “We’re actually headed to our room.”

I started walking toward the exit, not checking to see if Nathaniel followed. I heard him say something to the DM and then follow behind me. He didn’t say anything, though. In fact, there wasn’t a word said until we made it into our room. Then I finally turned to face him.

“What the hell was that?” I asked once he had closed and locked the door.

He turned around and I was momentarily stunned. He was so pale.

“I’m so sorry, Abby.”

He was sorry and I was fucking furious. “You should be. You had no idea who that man was. How dare you let him tell me to thank him properly!”

“There’s no excuse for what I did. None.” He ran his hand through his hair. “I don’t know what got into me. It was watching you dance with those men and they kept coming up to join in. And I knew you liked being watched and I thought since you were dancing maybe you wanted to try a threesome and the thought of it killed me.”

“Because I enjoyed dancing, I obviously want to have sex with a stranger? That doesn’t even make sense. I have no clue how you thought that because I was dancing with a man I also wanted his dick in my mouth.”

“I know. You’re right.”

“Damn straight, I’m right.” He walked to the couch and sat down. I kept standing. “And tell me one more time how you found out Charlene was a submissive.”

He exhaled deeply. “The weekend we moved, I was meeting with her about the nonprofit. She asked if we could have dinner and I told her no. She kept asking. I finally let her know, in no uncertain terms, that I would be eating alone and to stop asking about it. She replied back with a ‘Yes, Sir’ that left me with no doubt she was submissive. Just as I’m sure she had no doubt I was a Dominant.”

“If that’s the whole story, I still don’t understand why you didn’t just tell me.”

“It seriously didn’t cross my mind. It was that unimportant to me.”

“Then why were you staring at her scene like you were last night? That’s hardly the behavior of someone who finds the entire subject unimportant.”

“I wanted to make sure it was her.”

“And you didn’t want to wait until she wasn’t in the middle of a Dom sandwich?”

“Like I said just now, I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

It would be so easy to forgive him. To say the words and go on with our weekend. Sweep it under the rug and pretend it didn’t happen. But I couldn’t do that. We’d worked too hard at our communication for me to let him go that easy. “You not thinking clearly could have put me in a dangerous position. What if I’d done it and he had a disease?”

I didn’t think it was possible, but he went even paler. “I called a stop to it.”

“I was seconds away from doing it myself. That’s beside the point.” I held a finger to his chest. “You’re the Dominant. It’s up to you to make sure we’re doing what we want to do, not just guess and throw something together at the last minute.”