Texas, Our Texas 9

Texas, Our Texas

Chapter 9

Jonah stared up at the ceiling, his hands clasped behind his head. Finally a minute alone. He’d come back with Milton, not that he’d been given any choice or at least not really. Samuel was here, and short of kidnapping Samuel and running for parts unknown this was the only way he could be with his partner. Samuel was his partner. Shit! Jonah grabbed the extra pillow and tossed it across the room, watching it bounce harmlessly against the wall. He was a grown man. What was he doing? He’d resisted marrying the girl next door to the point that his father’s screaming had shaken the walls, and he’d let Milton and Gordon bully him into this arrangement.

Gordon could be intimidating, something about his expression and the set of his shoulders gave the impression of a man to be reckoned with. Milton had it too, but there was something a little different about Milton. Maybe it was Sheldon and Blade. No man could be as formidable as Milton appeared at first glance and let those two boys run wild. They’d started a fight at dinner last night that had ended up with apple pieces lobbed across the table before Milton had sent both redheads to the corner. Little boy punishment. Jonah’s father would have put stripes across their tails and rightly so. Infantile behavior.

Jonah gritted his teeth and stared back at the ceiling. A fan hung silent and not moving in the air, waiting for the promise of summer. It was nice as far as guest rooms went, far better than the boys’ room with Braxton. Gordon had inspected that room daily, something about service and duty. Keeping a room tidy wasn’t a hardship for Jonah, but Braxton had seemed genetically incapable of keeping his clothes off the floor or making proper corners with the linen. Here they knocked before they came in, at least the tops did. Blade just barged in as if he’d never understood the meaning of doors. It was Tilden though who Jonah usually saw; the room was right across from Tilden’s and his two boys.

Two. Jonah had never seen anything like that in Texas; he’d never even thought of it. They acted like it was normal here or at least not abnormal. Back home, the commentators would have had a field day with it. Let gay people get married and look they’re polygamous. What next--pedophilia, bestiality, incest? Jonah didn’t want to think about Blade and Sheldon with Milton. He hadn’t seen anything, but they touched enough and in ways that should only happen behind closed doors.

“Vsyo normal’no?” Tilden stood in the door, his satchel still over his shoulder, his strange colored eyes studying Jonah. “Are you OK?”

At least that was English. Tilden taught Russian; he didn't have to wander around jabbering it all the time. “Fine.” Jonah said, keeping his eyes on the icon by Tilden’s head. If Jonah looked too hard at those inquisitive eyes, he couldn’t pretend everything was all right.

“Come have some tea with me.” No matter how gently it was said it wasn’t an invitation; it was an order.

“No.” Jonah knew that single word was rude, but he also knew if he said more it would all come tumbling out incoherently. Didn’t they understand he was hanging on by a thread?

“Tea.” Tilden held out his hand. He didn’t grab the way Milton or Gordon did. It still had the veneer of an invitation. “It’s quiet. I want company. Come on.”

 Jonah looked at Tilden or maybe he glared, Samuel said he glared. 

“Jonah, do I need to make you?”

“Leave me alone.” The tone was belligerent, whining, awful. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t a child. He’d been an adult, holding down an important and at least somewhat prestigious job. Now he was nothing,: no job, no home, no family, and he sounded like a petulant child. He was one of Milton’s boys, whatever that meant.

“Jonah, I can be the heavy. Do you need me to be that role?”

Tilden was asking. Milton and Gordon didn’t ask; they just insisted. Did he want that? Did he want to be told, to be treated like one of the boys? Milton had been clear, very clear, Jonah thought. Do this or there are consequences. Even thinking about it made Jonah flush. Jonah hardly remembered the incident this morning at breakfast, but he remembered the dreaded consequences. He’d been sent to eat breakfast by himself in the study, and Milton had come in after breakfast and sat on the desk, his arms crossed and expression stern.

“Did you not get enough this morning?” Tilden stepped closer, his hand outstretched, but he didn’t wrap his fingers around Jonah’s wrist and tug him from the bed. He only looked down at Jonah in polite enquiry. 

“You wouldn’t?” He didn’t want to push Tilden there, did he? Was he asking for it?

“Tea. I’m much better at these conversations with tea.” This time Tilden did grab Jonah’s hand and pull him up. It wasn’t hard enough that Jonah couldn’t pull away, but he followed like a lamb, or maybe that should be like a boy.

The kitchen always smelled of baked goods, warm and peculiarly comforting. Jonah had spent one summer with his grandmother. He really didn’t remember much; he’d been very small, but he remembered the smell of cinnamon and rolling the extra piecrust into tiny rolls.

“Sit.” Tilden pulled out the chair and reached across to the counter for the plate of muffins. “You probably didn’t have much breakfast.”

Tilden was right; Jonah hadn’t eaten. He’d pushed his eggs around, dumped them in the trash, and buried them under several sheets of paper. Childish, Jonah berated himself in retrospect.

“Muffin. Tea. Talk.”

There was something indescribably reassuring about those simple words and instructions. The muffin was inviting, blueberry or maybe even cherry. Mace had found out he liked cherry pie, and they’d been magically appearing almost every other night at dinner. The tea was hot; steam wafted from those strange glasses and silver cup holders that Tilden insisted was the only proper way to serve tea. 

Jonah broke a small piece of muffin off and put it in his mouth. He was eating; that at least followed some of Tilden’s orders. They were orders; at least Jonah thought they were orders. It was harder with Tilden with his gentle voice and sweet smile. Gordon had glared, and well, Milton was just intimidating. Tilden was like his colleagues in Texas, or like the good ones, not the awful ones who told off colored jokes and parroted the government line. Even his best colleagues, the few friends Jonah had in the department hadn’t been like Tilden. They’d been resolutely straight, never a waiver nor hint of anything else, and Jonah had buried that side of himself. He’d even had a picture of an imaginary girlfriend in his wallet and an elaborate story of how she’d been called to missionary work.  Tilden was openly gay, very openly gay. He and his two partners were always touching, and Milton touched him in that proprietary way of his, the kiss on the cheek, the firm squeeze on the shoulder, the hand across the table.

“Eat the muffin. Don’t disassemble it.”

Jonah jerked his head up and flinched at the sharpness of the tone.

“I can do all the top dances if that’s what you need: corner time, spanking, lectures, looking bossy, but I’d rather just talk to you.”

Jonah didn’t want to talk. That was the problem. Gordon had forced him, upside down with his backside bare and vulnerable. He could do it that way. The choice gone or at least he could pretend it was gone. Milton had tried to explain to him that the choice was never entirely gone. It was his choice to make the choice seem gone, or at least that’s what Jonah thought he understood. It was all irreducibly complex.

“Jonah.” Tilden grabbed the plate of pulverized muffin and pulled it to his side of the table. “I’m not feeding you crumbs. Is it this hard to talk to me?”

Yes. Tilden would want to talk about all those things that weren’t talked about. They weren’t even thought about. They all talked about these things like it was so fucking normal. Couldn’t they understand that if Jonah had breathed a word to his colleagues it would have been over, and that was without the kink business? He was a submissive. God, he knew it. He wouldn’t say it; he wouldn’t even think it. Forbidden. Impossible. Stupid.

“Twenty questions it is, I see.” Tilden swept Jonah’s destroyed muffing into the trash and placed a fresh muffin on the plate, cutting it into precise eighths and keeping the plate on his side of the table. “Are you sick?” Tilden handed Jonah one of those precise eighths. “Eat the piece. That is the amount of thinking time you have.”

“No.” Jonah said and swallowed the muffin. It was cherry. He could tell now that the piece was big enough to taste.

“Did Josh send you home?”

That was more than a one word answer. “No electricity,” Jonah muttered and swallowed the next piece. It Josh had known no one was going to be here; he wouldn’t have let Jonah go. Jonah wasn’t stupid; he might be many other things, but a lack of intelligence wasn’t one of his short comings. He knew damn well this working for Josh on petty construction projects was to keep him watched. He’d left one country because he was treated like a felon, and now he felt like a kid always in need of supervision. He was an adult.

“Did Josh know that you’d be here alone?”

Jonah hadn’t told him. He’d known Josh would take him home. They’d build bookshelves or some other totally unneeded project. Less than two weeks and he’d already figured out their game.

“You didn’t tell him?” Tilden asked gently.

“No. I’m not a kid. I can stay home alone,” Jonah snapped.

“Is that what this feels like to you? You feel as if we’re treating you as a child? This is not what this is about, and I think you know that. This is about you giving us control, not because you’re a child, not because you’re ill, not because you’re addled in mind or spirit, or any other derogative adjective you’d like to place beside it. This is about wanting to give up control and allowing yourself to do what you want. You’ve spent a lifetime denying your wants and needs, and now we’re saying go for it, grab for the brass ring. You’re in culture shock. Don’t think that we don’t understand and that we don’t sympathize. We do, but hiding in your room and telling half-truths is not the way to deal with it, and it certainly is not the adult way. Constructive engagement, Jonah, not hiding behind fortifications of your own making.”

“I’m not a boy. Quit telling me what to do.” Jonah lurched up from the table. “I’ll be in my room.”

“No you won’t. You’ll be sitting here talking to me, or I’ll take you into the study and explain myself more clearly. I do not make idle threats, young man.”

Jonah spun back toward Tilden. “You wouldn’t dare?”

“Why not? I’m too nice? I remind you too much of colleagues you left behind, or I seem like the average Joe running into the grocery for the forgotten bottle of milk? I am a top. I may not saber rattle, but never the less I am a top. You are a novice submissive: overwhelmed, scared, and all the things anyone with a half a modicum of sense feels when thrown into the terrifying melange of a power exchange. I am a top. You are subject to my authority. Do you understand that? That is it. That is what all this means. I hardly know you. I don’t want to physically discipline you. I want to talk to you. Now sit down and let me talk to you.”

Jonah swallowed hard and stared at his feet. Would Tilden spank him? Did he want Tilden to spank him? “I’m not a submissive” Even to his own ears the denial sounded half-hearted, and he was still standing, rooted in place, not striding confidently to his bedroom. He was standing frozen, swallowing hard and looking at the floor. All things that screamed submissive.

“I understand the difficulty in accepting the identity,” Tilden said very gently. “It took me years to start to accept that I was a top, that I wanted to dominate, and that I enjoyed at times inflicting controlled pain. I hurt the men I love. I can still see my initial horror, and I understand the reservations in the world around us. I understand that my partners wish to be dominated and even wish for a controlled application of pain, but I understand and will always understand the revulsion. You wish to submit, but from time immemorial men have been taught that they don’t submit. Voicing that desire may be impossible at the moment. I understand that, but do not deny who you are. Start by sitting down and listening to me.”

Jonah moved back toward the chair. He should just walk away, deny all this, run from all this, but this was who he was. He sat down and buried his head in his arms. He couldn’t talk about it, not yet, maybe never. He was gay; that was hard enough. He couldn’t admit to this; he couldn’t admit to this kink. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Tilden must have slipped around behind him; his voice was directly in his ear.

“Let me talk. Accept this. For you, it’s bad enough being gay. Being kinked is almost beyond the imagination, and you are a submissive, a role that you have been taught to revile. You are a boy. You find Milton reassuring, not frightening nor irritating, and you’re finding my softer approach unsettling.” Tilden’s hand ran down Jonah’s back and then Jonah heard a clink of glasses and the sound of a spoon swirling in liquid and scraping the side. “Drink this. It’s hot and sweet.”

Was eating something or wearing something supposed to make a difference? Trent was always handing Jonah another sausage or more potatoes; Milton would tell him to put on a coat or take a sweater. Jonah could read the weather report as well as the next person. He knew if it was raining or if he was hungry. They didn’t have to tell him. 

“Drink. I can teach you the Russian if that would help.”

 Please don’t. Jonah had known obsessed professors, but Tilden was the champion. Learning hello, goodbye, and how are you was more than adequate. Jonah reached forward and took the glass, his eyes still half shielded by his arm. He’d capitulated; he didn’t want to look at the victor.

“Thank you.”

At least Tilden hadn’t called him a good boy. Jonah took another swallow of tea. 

“Josh didn’t know you were going to be home alone. You do know we value honesty in this house?”

Here it comes, the lecture on being truthful. They hadn’t lived in Texas; they hadn’t guarded every word. Samuel had found it so hard; he wanted to trust everybody. You couldn’t trust. Trust led to pain and hurt. Jonah was different; he had to hide that.”

“Jonah, I asked you a question.” Tilden’s voice wasn’t loud or sharp, but all the same it demanded an answer.

“Yes.” Jonah gulped more tea. He could maybe manage one word answers. There was no way he could do more; he couldn’t explain the terror.

 “You don’t have to hide anymore. We all know. You’re gay; you’re a submissive. You and Blade can drive us all to despair.”

“I’m not Blade.”

“No, you’re not,” Tilden said with quiet calm, “but it wouldn’t hurt for you to have some fun, and Blade knows how to have fun.”

“I’m not an immature freak,” Jonah said, gripping his glass with white knuckles.

“Is that what you think Blade is?”

“He throws food at dinner.”

“Only until Milton makes him quit. Have another muffin.”

“I’m not hungry.” Jonah turned away from Tilden, his eye catching the window to the backyard. He could just make out the tops of the trees, now almost fully in leaf. The sky was gray as usual, a perfect fit for his mood.

“Is refusing to eat when I know you must be hungry any more mature than lobbing an apple across the table?” Tilden asked softly.

Jonah spun back around. He wanted to be angry. He wasn’t a stupid kid like Blade, but Tilden was sitting so calmly, his long legs crossed at the ankles, his thin fingers resting on the table. It was impossible to be angry with someone who looked so harmless. “No,” Jonah whispered and reached for the piece of muffin. What had he just admitted to? Was he like Blade?

“I wouldn’t call either action mature or immature. Those are adjectives that poorly fit the situation. They are both actions of a boy who wants and needs a dominant’s attention. Blade only does it in ten foot high, flashing neon letters more suited to the Las Vegas skyline than a house. You, on the other hand, are more subtle; you hide in your room or you stop eating. It’s all the same behavior. It’s not wrong or bad; it’s who you are.”

“I don’t want to be.” The admission was whispered. If anyone else had been home, Tilden wouldn’t have heard it. “I want to be normal.” 

“How often did you beg God not to be gay?” Tilden asked, his eyes steady on Jonah.

“Every day.” Jonah rubbed his finger along the glass. He couldn’t look at Tilden. He swallowed hard against the cold lump in his throat. No, he wasn’t crying. He bit his cheek hard, tasting the tang of fresh blood against his tongue. 

“You are not broken. Look at me.” Tilden’s voice wasn’t loud; it was quiet and demanding. “Look at me. You are not broken. Don’t give up on us.”

“I can’t do this.” Jonah heard the tinkle of glass on the floor and across the table. He didn’t remembered smashing the glass against the side of the table or crushing it in his hand. He must have smashed it. He didn’t know. He’d seen his father obliterate a champagne flute in his big hand, overcome with sudden rage. He hadn’t felt the glass cut his palm that was now dripping onto the table drop by red drop. He didn’t move; he just watched the drops pool on the table and spatter the napkin in red polka dots.

“Don’t you ever do that again!”

Jonah scrambled to his feet, trying to escape the choking pressure on the back of his neck. He jerked forward, cracking his knee into the table leg. Tilden was hitting him; it hurt. Jonah tried to lunge away but the smacks were chasing him, on his thighs, on his backside.

“Stop! It hurts!” The howl sounded strange to Jonah’s ears. He reached back, feeling whatever Tilden was using sting across his fingers. “Please. Don’t.” The tears were wet and painful, cutting rivulets down his cheeks. “Don’t hurt me.”

Jonah’s hand was under a cool stream of water. He was in the bathroom. Had he walked or had Tilden dragged him there? He didn’t know.

“Shh. Don’t move.”

Jonah couldn’t understand the rest. It had to be Russian, soft with rolling r’s and lots of vowels. 

“It’s not deep.”

Jonah watched in a haze as if it wasn’t his hand or his body as Tilden dried Jonah’s hand, put some kind of ointment on it and bandaged it with tape and gauze. Jonah let Tilden grab his waist and place his arm over the top’s shoulder as they made the slow shuffle back to his room.

“Undress. Bed.”

Jonah wanted to protest that it was broad daylight, but he couldn’t seem to get his tongue around the words. He stumbled over his shirt buttons until Tilden batted his hands away and undressed him, stripping him of his shirt and pants but leaving his undershirt and boxers.

“Get in.” Tilden held the corner of the coverlet back.

Jonah sat, hunched over his own knees, curled in a small ball. His face felt wet and sticky despite Tilden’s ministrations in the bathroom.

“Jonah, this is not up for debate.” Tilden’s hand landed on Jonah’s hip, a steady tattoo of light slaps. “Under the covers.”

Jonah scrambled for the covers, burying his head in the pillows, and hiding the embarrassment of fresh tears that scorched down his cheeks.

“It will be OK.” Tilden’s hand rested on Jonah’s back, heavy and comforting through the coverlet.

******

Tilden stared at the figure in the bed, vulnerable and innocent in sleep, one arm spread across the coverlet, the injured hand tucked under his face. It had taken thirty minutes to get Jonah asleep. Tilden ran his fingers through his short hair. He felt as exhausted as Jonah looked. They all knew Jonah hadn’t been sleeping well. The dark shadows around his eyes and the tight lines around his mouth were telltale signs of a man consumed by anxiety. The haunted look and either the cold hardness or the twitching and spookiness in public spoke loudly of his failure to adjust. Tilden had read volumes of memoirs, histories, and news reports to understand the life both Jonah and Samuel had shared in the supposed republic to the south. It was the way Tilden handled problems; he gathered and synthesized information. He could understand on an intellectual level; he could probably even give a learned paper on the subject, but the emotions and the hurt on the individual level he didn’t want to contemplate. He’d seen it today with Jonah smashing the glass, his hand catching the ragged shards without a flinch or any acknowledgment. Tilden had seen the faraway drugged look as he reached for Jonah. He’d hit this boy. Bozhe moy! A man drowning in his own suffering and Tilden had hit him. 

Jonah was quiet now, but had Tilden made it worse? He rubbed his hand over his face. He wasn’t trained for this. He wasn’t a specialist in post-traumatic stress disorder or whatever the experts called it. He was a Russian teacher, safe and boring. He was a husband to two men. That wasn’t quite so safe or sane, but it didn’t prepare him for this, and he was a top. But being a top was about mutual choices made with someone who could understand those choices. Jonah couldn’t make those choices. Tilden had hit someone who was mentally defenseless.

“Tilden.” The voice was soft, not more than a whisper. “Luke came to get me when you didn’t show up for class,” Milton said, answering Tilden’s unasked question. “Come into the kitchen.”

“It’s a mess,” Tilden said automatically.

“I saw. Come. We’ll hear him if he wakes.” Milton wrapped his arm around Tilden and guided him into the kitchen. “Your blood or Jonah’s?”

“Jonah’s. The glass.” Tilden knew he should explain more fully, knew that Milton would insist.

“Sit. I’ll clean up.”

“I’ll get it,” Tilden said reaching for the tea towel.

“Sit,” Milton growled and pushed Tilden into the chair.

“Milton, I’m not in the mood for this. I don’t want to play these games.”

“Who said I was playing? You’re as pale as a sheet. I can see your hands shaking from here. Sit down before you fall down. There’s enough blood already in the kitchen.”

Tilden sat, clasping his hands together to stop the shaking. “I hit him.”

“Knowing Jonah, he damn well deserved it.”

“He can’t consent.” 

“He’s here; that’s consent. He knew what to expect.” Milton placed a full mug of tea in front of Tilden. “I’ve already added your jam; now drink up.”

Tilden reached for the mug, wrapping his hands around it and blowing on the steaming liquid. 

“What happen?” Milton had cleaned up the mess and was now straddling a chair, his elbows on the table, his expression genial but with a studied look that Tilden recognized as no escape without every excruciating detail.

“I hit him,” Tilden said, his eyes on the tea.

“Why?”

“I was trying to talk to him, and he smashed the glass on the side of the table and cut himself. I was angry. He’d hurt himself. I didn’t know what else to do. He wasn’t hearing me. I don’t know if he even saw me.”

“What did you do?”

It was Milton’s quiet, matter of fact tone that allowed Tilden to answer. If Milton hadn’t been calm, Tilden would never have managed. “I grabbed a spoon off the counter and went at him.”

“You swatted him a few times with a wooden spoon over his clothes?”

Tilden nodded. It didn’t sound horrible described in that fashion.

“Jonah’s a big man. He was fully dressed. I hardly think you hurt him.”

“But--”

“Yes, it wasn’t negotiated. It was messy, and desperate, and all the things a good dominant like you doesn’t want to do. Tilden, don’t think that I don’t lie awake at night thinking all the same things. I’ve pulled him over my knee. He hasn’t told me he’s a boy; he hasn’t truly even given me permission. I told him accept it or stay away from Samuel. Talk about coercion and blackmail and God only knows what else.” Milton took his glasses off and wiped them across his shirt. “Should we be doing any of this? Maybe there’s a special hell for a top that oversteps his bounds, but I know there’s a special hell if we don’t try to help him.”

“We’re not trained.”

“No we’re not,” Milton said swiftly. “But how many people are? Adam maybe, but Gordon said Jonah was uncommunicative with Adam, and I think that was Gordon speak for flipping, and Gordon was comfortable putting more pressure on Jonah than I am. If Gordon couldn’t pry Jonah’s tongue loose, I don’t have more leverage.”

“There are other people.”

“Yes and how many are kink accepting or even kink aware? That boy’s a submissive. Do we deny that comfort because it makes us squeamish, because we can’t have perfect negotiations and consent, because we know he’s been traumatized in ways I don’t want to contemplate? We have to give him that comfort; it’s the only thing he has to hang onto right now.”

“We’re hitting someone who has been abused.”

“We’re spanking him with a hell of a lot of love and support. He responds to it; I’m not going to deny him that comfort.” Milton ran his hand down his beard and gave Tilden a very small smile. “This scares the hell out of me, but I see no other solution. Do you?”

Tilden stared at the bottom of his mug. He didn’t like the last few swallows, thick with seeds and now gone cold. “No,” Tilden said softly, “but I don’t like it.”

“I hate it.” Milton’s smile was grim. “I’m supposed to know how to do this top thing and every time I lay a hand on Jonah I shudder. It feels wrong, but it works for that boy, and I won’t deny him that. Are you OK? I know you didn’t sign up for this.”

“Normal’no.”

“Tilden,” Milton warned. “Gordon isn’t the only one who knows that you use the Russian shtick to deflect attention from what’s going on in that complicated mind of yours. Are you OK?” The last was said with that same look that Milton gave Sheldon when he was interrogating him.

“What do I do when Jonah wakes up?”

“We punish him.”

“Why?” Tilden ran his hand through his hair which was now thoroughly askew.

“Jonah hurt himself intentionally. He wasn’t truthful.”

“I don’t think he hurt himself intentionally.” Tilden paused. “He looked spaced. I know that’s an inadequate expression, but you know what I mean.”

Milton laughed, a short sharp sound. “Is that the same expression that I see on my students when I hand out my first exam?”

“Milton, it’s not funny.”

“Tilden.” Milton reached across and squeezed Tilden’s knee. “I know it isn’t.” Milton’s voice was very soft, far gentler than most people ever heard it. “The responsibility is terrifying. Nothing I can say will make this less terrifying or more rational. We’re trying to fight fire with fire. Is it right? Is it ethical? Should we be committed? Tilden I study history, not psychology, not fortune telling. All I can say is we damn well care and that is more than Jonah has ever known.” 

“We’re forcing him.”

“Maybe, we are, and God help us if we’re wrong. But how many submissives can truly verbalize their wants and needs at this stage? And those are submissives who didn’t live in that hell hole. They grew up here where they could even see subs on the television.” Milton swallowed the last of his tea with a grimace. “Jonah’s a submissive. Everything about his body language says sub. Samuel isn’t, but it’s Samuel who would say the words if I pushed hard enough. If we make Jonah say the words will push him away. We’ll take the only thing he has to hang onto right now. I’m going to treat him like a spinning boy and hope by controlling one aspect of the chaos in his life that the rest will find some resolution. I know how to be a dominant, as do you. Neither of us knows how to be psychologists or trauma counselors. I suggest we concentrate on our strengths. I’m going to spank him silly and ground him until the devil’s having a snowball fight.” Milton ran his hand down his beard, a slight motion that was the only show of his tension. “He’s going to learn to be a good submissive if it kills me.”

“He was afraid when I swatted him. A boy shouldn’t be afraid.”

“Of you or his past? Tilden, he outweighs you by twenty kilograms. He would have fought you if he hadn’t wanted it at some level. We can’t deny him this side of ourselves because it’s not perfect protocol. Jonah deserves to be allowed to be who he really is. They’ve had to hide long enough. Jonah deserves to be allowed to toss his problems and anger at us, and for us to order it into the easy box of submissive foibles. It’s many things, but for Jonah the boy side will be understandable; it will let him conquer his demons. We can’t make him hide his submissiveness. He deserves his moment in the sun; they both deserve that.”

“We can’t set the world right.” Tilden said. Milton for all his solidness and ability to portray the ever calm top felt deeply, and Tilden could see the strain in his friend’s expressions and hear it in his words.”

“I know,” Milton said with a half smile. “Gordon would have already had me tossed across his lap for that statement. I do prefer your technique.” Milton stood and tugged Tilden to his feet, wrapping his arm around the other top. “Are you sure you’re OK?”

Tilden paused, taking an inventory of his true feelings. “I don’t know. It bothered me; it still bothers me.” Tilden paused and seemed to study Milton for a moment. “I think I’ll talk to Adam. He’s our expert.”

“His number’s in my study by the phone.”

“You’ve talked to him?”

“Several times.” Milton kissed Tilden’s cheek. “I told you I understood. I wasn’t making small talk, and I’ve been lucky enough not to face it head on. You did all any man could do, any dominant could do.”

“I just hope it was enough,” Tilden mumbled, letting himself enjoy the comfort of Milton’s arms around him.

“We will make it be enough. We are not going to lose this.”