Naughty November

Chapter 3

THREE

MAX JENSEN

Even though I remembered those days, it never ceased to amaze me how much a fifteen-year-old boy could eat. This was his third or fourth serving. And we’d had Sunday lunch at my folks’ today, where he’d scarfed down half a chicken casserole.

“So when are you coming back?” he asked.

“Thursday morning,” I replied. “Are you gonna be able to finish all that, son?”

It was the last of the meatloaf and a mountain of mashed potatoes and gravy.

He adjusted his glasses and smirked. “Have you learned nothing?”

I laughed and leaned back in my chair.

I loved having him here. He brought life and color to the place. Sometimes literally. The other week, he’d come home with painted pots from a pottery class. A birthday gift he’d given Monica. Back in June, he’d come over with an actual gerbil, which was thankfully at his moms’ place now.

Alex chowed down, and I just sat there, soaking up the last moments. We usually made the switch after school on Monday, but since Reid and I were flying to Florida first thing in the morning, I’d rather not wake Alex up at three AM.

If it weren’t for Alex being here this week, I wasn’t sure I would’ve survived with my sanity intact. Old Town was officially closed, with the last members having dropped by the attic today to clear the rest of the inventory of rope and toys.

The whole situation felt like…having lost the map to a treasure that may or may not exist. I’d lived on the hope that maybe … Maybe I’d eventually discover what role felt like more than a role. I mean, I fucking loved kink—why was it so hard? Why was it so exhausting?

I’d felt things click into place perfectly three times in my life. The first one—well, it was a series of small clicks, rather. When my big brother brought his buddy home. Meeting Reid. Befriending him. Little moments of getting to know him. A party here and there, getting stoned once or twice, discovering we were both into running and biking in rough terrain… He had this devilish grin that promised a good ride to hell, and I’d been four years younger and impressionable. Man, did I become his personal stalker. I’d wanted to be him, and I’d wanted to be with him. Back then, just a flash of that grin or a calculating look in his warm green eyes, and I’d been cooked and done.

The second time was obviously when my other best friend announced she wanted to be a mom, and she and her girlfriend stammered their way through their wish to have me as the father.

I hadn’t even hesitated, and the first time I’d held Alex in my arms—I couldn’t describe that feeling.

Lastly, when Reid and I decided to start Old Town. It’d felt so damn perfect, like I was finally on the right path to figuring things out. With him by my side, the world had looked like a place of opportunities. And we’d had so much fun together over the years. I’d learned so much. I’d had experiences I never could’ve dreamed of if it weren’t for Reid. Because he was a traveler, a late-night reader, and he had that mindfucky brain of his. He’d always known things. Two days could pass, and the next time we saw each other, he’d read up on psychological warfare and signed us up for a seminar at a kink community in Chicago the following month.

Shit like that .

It was how we’d eventually become a part of a group of friends from all corners of the country, and we met up once a year down in Florida for some primal fun.

After I’d dropped Alex off at his moms’ place, I came home to an empty condo that’d started suffocating me. My son wasn’t here to keep the darkness at bay anymore, so I aimed for the living room and the liquor cabinet.

I didn’t bother turning on the lights. The walls were too empty, not counting the space the entertainment unit occupied. That was where my mother had put all the family pictures. Alex had his video games there too.

I went to get ice, and then I sat down on the couch with a bottle of vodka and a glass.

I contemplated putting on a movie, but in the end, I texted Reid.

Did you pack?

I was gonna do that before bed. Or in the morning. I hadn’t decided.

Rather than texting back, he called me.

“I packed yesterday,” he yawned.

Well, good for him.

I dug out my earbuds, not liking the sound of someone on speaker.

“Did you drop off Alex?”

“Yeah.” I poured a glass and took that first burning swig. “Did you get the final head count for the trip?”

He hummed, and I heard him rummaging around for something in the background. “Printed the list and everythin’.” That was so him. He’d never liked to keep things on his phone. Instead, he had an impressive collection of Post-its and printouts. “Uh, let’s see… We got the Chicago crew, the Clara Hill triad, Sam, Carl, Garrick, and…right, LC and Joey—they confirmed this mornin’. Eight Tops, including you and me, and six bottoms.”

Good mix.

It was too easy to fall down a rabbit hole of memories with Reid. This would be our seventh trip with our buddies, and a lot had happened. Some had left when relationships had ended; some had joined when new ones had formed. I’d say we were closest with Sam, who was flying out from Portland, and Rome, Trey, and Cas from Clara Hill, a community in Pennsylvania.

By my third drink, life looked all right again, and Reid and I were chuckling our way through a memory from two years ago. When that sadistic bastard demonstrated how kinksters could safely use zip ties—otherwise, a restraint we didn’t recommend. They cut off the blood flow. But if you were a rough player who knew the risks and eliminated most of them, yeah, that’d been a hot night. A painful, hot night. Reid, Sam, me, and two subs who’d recently moved to Germany with their Owner.

“How come we always end up in an orgy down there?” I mused.

Reid chuckled. “Because you get drunk and very affectionate.”

Fuck.

I swallowed a mouthful of vodka and felt the heat of embarrassment rise within me.

Maybe half the blame was placed with me, but not fucking all of it. Reid changed when we traveled together too. For some reason, he thought our annual trips were an invitation for him to direct his sadism at me .

Not that he ever got sexual with me. At most, at best , we’d co-topped together—perhaps gotten a little grabby with each other, but I couldn’t recall us ever crossing a line. No kissing or anything. Plenty of hot moments, just…always with someone between us.

I kept convincing myself that was for the best. Because, aside from my son, Reid was…fuck, my whole world. And the thought of making shit awkward when things didn’t work out…? No. No way. Not happening. We wouldn’t be a good fit. He was into vanilla people on the submissive side of things, or straight-up bottoms, and I didn’t know what the fuck I wanted. Definitely not a sadistic Top.

No.

I refilled my drink and let out a breath.

My only frustration with this whole thing—with full-blown Sadists and primal Tops—was that I had a curiosity or two, and it bothered me to be drawn to a flame that would burn me too much. Considering I couldn’t actually call myself a masochist. Sadomasochist, possibly. When I was fighting my prey, I wanted him to fight back. I wanted to feel his resistance for days. Marks, bruises, cuts, and scrapes. I wanted all that. But in the end, I’d seen so many of the men Reid played with. Eventually, they surrendered and submitted. I couldn’t do that.

There wasn’t a submissive bone in my body.

“You okay, Max? Honestly.”

Honestly?

I laughed under my breath.

Leaning back against the cushions, I undid my jeans and pushed them down. “I’m fine—just lost as usual.” I hauled my tee over my head too, then leaned back once more with my drink in hand. “Even though I never figured shit out in our community, it felt like killing the possibility altogether when we closed.”

“I get it.”

I liked having his warm voice in my ears. Way better than the speaker function.

I took another sip and closed my eyes.

I’d officially hit the sweet spot, where I was warm and halfway to drowsy. Life was good, I was chill, and I was ready for a few days in the sun with Reid.

“I don’t need to give you my two cents on the matter again, do I?”

Two cents on what? “On my inability to connect with a kink? And someone else, for that matter? I’m not sure you ever gave me your two cents.”

“Or you just tuned it out,” he chuckled lazily. He drank from something too. Probably whiskey. He was a whiskey guy. “You were always overthinkin’ shit.”

He was wrong.

“Easy for you to say,” I muttered. “You knew who you were in kink the moment you discovered it.”

“Not true. It took me over six months.”

Christ. Jackass.

He laughed a little. At least someone laughed at his sense of humor …

“That’s not what I was talkin’ about,” he said. “I mean… We always tell newbies not to box themselves in. Don’t worry about labels, ’cause chances are you’ll find several that’ll fit you to some extent.”

He had a point. We’d given hundreds of those speeches.

“Some obviously do identify strongly with a certain fetish,” he went on. “Whether it’s a Sadist, a high-protocol Master, a Little—whatever. But you don’t , and you seem to wanna force somethin’ that ain’t there. I never understood why.”

I scowled at nothing. “So I could meet someone like-minded, of course. So I could feel at home in my core kink—so I could have a core kink.”

He blew out a breath. “This is what I’m talkin’ ’bout. You’re overthinking. You act like a life without fittin’ inside one of these boxes makes you incomplete or somethin’, and unless you find a core kink, you’re not gonna click with someone. It’s horseshit.”

Fuck you.

He didn’t get it.

The fucker wasn’t done either. “I want you to listen to me, Max. Someone who lives and breathes high-protocol is more likely to connect with someone similar. It’s obviously not foolproof, but we’re just talking the likeliest scenarios. A Master is drawn to slaves, yeah? Just like I’m drawn to masos and primal players. It’s in my damn DNA. It’s what attracts me. And you … Let’s say you’re a fetishist. You love BDSM, you love primal play, you’re a great Top, you’re both sadistic and nurturing. Do you fuckin’ need another box? Or can you stop and smell the roses for one goddamn moment and let that be enough? You already have an identity in kink.”

If that were true, how come I’d struggled to maintain a relationship?

Hell, my longest had lasted about a year.

I’d like to think I was good-looking. I wasn’t unpleasant to be around. I had hobbies and a solid career. I paid attention.

I’d never been cheated on, to my knowledge. No dramatic heartbreaks or relationships shattering to pieces. They’d simply…fizzled out. After weeks or months, I’d stand there with a partner, both realizing something was missing. And we’d part ways .

“Maybe I don’t wanna find a fellow fetishist,” I grumbled.

Reid snorted under his breath. “Because you want everythin’ black-and-white? Don’t answer that. You’re missing the point again. Fuck kinks, Max—connect with a person, not a fucking kink. With the right chemistry, you don’t know what the kinks are gonna look like beforehand anyway.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I mean that we change with the person we’re with,” he answered. “To a degree, at least. Take Corey, for instance. Y’all were good together, but you were basically friends. Your kinks lined up, and still, nothing. You lasted, what, two months?”

If that.

“If you’re trying to recruit me to vanilla dating, don’t bother,” I said. “I want BDSM in my life.”

He groaned through a chuckle, clearly frustrated with me. “All I’m sayin’, you stubborn motherfucker, is that once you click with someone, your chemistry is going to make shit real simple. That’s why I never bothered lookin’ for someone within a specific kink box. It doesn’t fuckin’ matter—and I trust myself to be drawn to men who want pain in some capacity. But even if I didn’t…? Hell. I don’t know.” He sighed. “I don’t know.”

He didn’t know.

“I just think…” He cleared his throat. “Once you meet someone you want more of, you won’t care if it’s a sub, a regressing masochist, an every-now-and-then bottom, or a switchy primal player.”

I wasn’t gonna give him shit. I did understand what he was getting at.

“When you mix two components, you don’t know what the chemical reaction’s gonna be,” he finished.

I stared down into my glass, watching the ice melt into rounded cubes.

Water mixing with vodka.

When you mix two components…

I’d had some explosive chemical reactions, and of-fucking-course, most of them involved Reid. Mostly group play. When we found each other playing close together, and we sort of gravitated toward each other…

One memory stood out. Maybe three years ago, when we’d all rented a big house in the Keys. We’d essentially had a three-day-long fuckfest.

“Do you remember when we had Joey between us in the hot tub?” I asked.

I finished my drink, and a slow dizzy spell rolled through me.

“You mean before he went monogamous with LC? Yeah, I remember.”

I furrowed my brow. “I’m monogamous too.”

“So am I, but it doesn’t make shit easy for group play.”

True enough.

“What about that night?” he asked.

I shrugged to myself and left the glass on the table. I was officially drunk, and I was done drinking. Otherwise, I’d never get up tomorrow.

“It was hot,” I said.

LC had filmed us in the water. It was back when they were just play partners. Sam had spotted us. We’d been so rough on Joey, one of the most hardcore masos I’d ever played with. Well—Reid had been rough. I’d ended up on the receiving end, despite having Joey between us.

With Joey on my lap, and him fucking himself on my cock, facing me, I’d been too close to Reid’s target. He’d used a rubber flogger on the boy’s back, and the lashes had struck my arms and neck. Then later, when Joey had taken both of us at the same time, Reid had gotten so swept away by the moment that he’d become grabbier with me than the boy. Because I remembered so vividly how he’d picked up the pace, looking down at where his cock was disappearing into Joey’s tight ass alongside my own, while his hand had slipped up my throat?—

“My go-to memory is the jungle takedown.” Reid’s low voice shook me out of my own reminiscing, only to shove me into a new memory. And this one—fuck, I’d almost forgotten. Wait, this was his go-to? But he’d… “The look on your face when you got caught in the crossfire. ”

I clenched my jaw, instantly annoyed, even as a thick rush of desire slithered through me.

Got caught in the crossfire—vague way of reminding me of how he’d shoved me up against a tree in order to get me away from the prey I’d thrown down on the ground. Reid had scratched up my entire back with that move.

He’d also let the prey escape, however briefly.

I swallowed hard as the memories came rushing back.

The anger, the shock, the fight . Oh fuck, the fight. How had I suppressed this memory?

He’d grabbed me in a chokehold, taking advantage of my frozen state, and grazed his nose up my jaw.

“Having fun?”

I shivered and gave my cock a squeeze.

The rising anger had eventually broken through the shock, and I’d shoved him away from me. We’d become animals that night. I’d wrestled him to the ground, but he’d one-upped me and ended up on top. Goddamn bastard. But rather than claiming the prey as his, he’d told me we could share him.

Maybe that was his favorite part. Maybe that was what he thought back on in the shower or wherever, when we’d hunted down the boy again and turned him into a spit roast.

“The part where you interrupted me with Jason, or when we shut him up together?” I asked.

He chuckled darkly. “Definitely the former. You’re fun to piss off. And you—fuck.” He exhaled, and the way he did it killed my irritation at the former comment. “The way you fight back, Max…”

The fucker actually groaned, and I sucked in a breath and felt all the blood leave my brain.

The fight in question hadn’t lasted long, maybe a minute or two, but yeah, it’d been wild. It’d just been the two of us in the darkness, no safety guards, no artificial playground to protect us from what actually existed and lived in a rain forest. Snapped twigs and broken branches fucking hurt when you were lying on top of them. The underbrush was damp and rustling with life. And then you had the otherworldly look in Reid’s eyes .

I slipped a hand down my boxer briefs and gave myself a few strokes, and then I just didn’t stop.

I’d been fueled by the screams of defeated prey nearby—and the lit torches flickering here and there, providing the right amount of light, a faint glow, to reveal what hid in the shadows.

“You didn’t go easy on me,” Reid murmured huskily.

A breath gusted out of me, and I stroked myself harder. “Never would.”

We weren’t evenly matched, but I could hold my own for a while. He only had a couple inches on me—and maybe ten pounds—but he lifted weights and had a more physical job than I did. His hobbies also put him on the move. He built things and loved manual labor. I…was really good at solving sudokus on my phone.

Whenever we met up to go on a hike or take our bikes out in the Shenandoah, I had to push myself to the extreme to keep up with him.

At the same time, I loved his strength. I loved how it increased the intimidation factor about him.

He was the silent killer who could be pushed for quite some time before he snapped.

I drew a deep breath and closed my eyes, and I wondered how it would feel to really see that side of him. When it was aimed at me, not a nearby sub.

God.

How had I not connected the dots before? This was where that curiosity stemmed from. This fucking jungle takedown. Our wrestle. He was the goddamn reason I’d foolishly checked primal/rough on that kink list we’d handed out. Because he’d ignited something in me, and I wanted more of it.

“Is, uh…” I cleared my throat and pushed down my boxer briefs altogether. “Is there a forested area at the new place?”

I’d only seen pictures of the house we were renting this time.

“I’d say so,” he answered. And I knew that voice. Low and doused in desire. I’d heard it way too many times directed at masochists—which…fuck. I couldn’t help it, but it suddenly sparked jealousy within me. “It’s on the outskirts of Homestead, so we literally have the Everglades in the backyard. ”

That’ll do.

I brushed the pad of my thumb over the slit of my cock and smeared out the pre-come.

“You want a second go?” he murmured.

“I think I might.” I raked my teeth over my bottom lip and stroked myself faster. Fuck, that’s it . “You know, to even the score.”

He rumbled a sexy laugh. “Dream on, boy. I’ll have you flat on your back in five minutes.”

I couldn’t force back the groan that wanted to escape, but I was too far gone to give a fuck. The pressure built up rapidly, and I started seeing us running through the Everglades, knocking each other over, throwing punches, never holding back, biting and grabbing?—

“The question is what I can do with you when I defeat you,” he said, out of breath.

Christ, he was getting off too, wasn’t he?

I shuddered violently and swallowed against the dryness in my throat.

“Then again, nobody knows you like I do,” he added. “I won’t ask.”

For what, my limits? He better not. As he’d already said—he knew me. He knew.

I didn’t wanna talk about it, because the risk of him actually doing anything was slim to none. He talked the talk to get a rise out of me, but I’d known him long enough never to take the bait.

No, this was better. I’d face him in the dirt once more. I’d get a new fantasy, one I was never going to suppress, and before we got there, I could live on the minuscule what-if . What if he actually threw me down and rapefucked my ass.

Shit.

Pleasure welled up inside and erupted before I could react, and I was thrown into my orgasm.

“Fuck,” I heard him grit out.

I moaned as ropes of come hit my stomach, and I heard him too. His grunts and his growl-like groan; he was coming, and I wanted to fucking see it. Feel it. Taste it…

Goddamn .

My body gave up. Every muscle unclenched, and I melted into the cushions.

“Jesus Christ,” I panted.

He blew out a heavy breath. “Yeah.”

I blinked drowsily, looking for the nearest—fuck it. I picked up my underwear and wiped my stomach.

Had this just happened?

My fucking God.

“I’ll buy you breakfast after security tomorrow if you don’t make shit awkward,” he said.

I let out a tired chuckle. At the moment, I was too blissed out and sufficiently intoxicated. Awkwardness didn’t exist, and I was ready to continue drinking to keep it that way.

How I’d feel when I got up in a few hours—we’d see.

“I think only Five Guys is open when we get there,” I drawled.

“Works for me,” he replied through a yawn. “Goodnight, Max.”

I swallowed. “Night, Reid.”