They arrived at the club a few minutes late. They hadn’t bothered bringing a rope or gear bag with them, because play was, honestly, the last thing on their mind that night. They hurried through check-in and hustled inside just as Tony was gathering the class around him to get started.
They spotted Jenny first, sitting with her boyfriend, and Tilly, and a woman they didn’t know.
That likely meant the sister.
Jenny held up a hand and they made a beeline for them.
“Hi, guys,” Jenny said. “Vanessa Riddick, this is Lyle and Reed. They were friends and play partners with Basco.”
Lyle nodded. “Hi. We’re really sorry for your loss.”
“He was a great guy,” Reed added.
She looked close to tears. “Thanks. Sorry I didn’t get to tell anyone earlier about this. Jenny told me she told you guys. Thank you for coming tonight. I was hoping I’d meet you.”
“You were?” Lyle asked.
“I…I found my brother’s journal. He mentioned you both in there several times. He really liked you guys.”
Lyle didn’t know what to say to that. They slid into chairs at the table with them. Even usually feisty Tilly appeared somber and subdued tonight as she looked on. The two men loved Tilly and her guys. They’d both played with Landry as bottoms several times. The man was an extraordinary sadist.
Lyle couldn’t ever remember Tilly looking so close to being distraught as she did now. Like she was forcibly holding things together for everyone else’s benefit.
He returned his focus to Vanessa. With her long, auburn hair, which she’d pulled back with a barrette, and her hazel eyes, she strongly resembled her brother. So much so that it tugged at his heart.
He hated that he couldn’t help but notice she wasn’t wearing any rings. No jewelry at all, actually. And she had beautifully rounded curves, a real woman’s body, and wasn’t some skinny, bony twig.
Get your head out of your ass. Her brother just died.
Still…
He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t attracted to her. Whether that was a protective, instinctive reaction because he knew how much she had to be suffering right now and he wanted to ease that pain, or because of her relation to Basco, or because he was just attracted to her—that all remained to be seen.
And now was not the time to be thinking any of that.
* * * *
Reed couldn’t help it. Logically, he realized it was most likely a reaction due to grief and longing, missing Basco.
But he felt a draw to Vanessa. He’d be lying if he denied it. He could see Basco in her features, the way she talked, the tilt of her head. Even had he not known her brother very well, much less having known Basco for over three years, had he seen the two of them side-by-side the likeness would have been eerie.
It was a very melancholy feeling. So close, and yet so far from their friend.
And it was exactly on that point Reed realized he did understand why she was there. Probably for that very reason—wanting to hold onto a little bit of who her brother was, in the only way she could.
With people who knew a different side of him.
Just like Reed regretted not getting to know Basco even better, the way he and Lyle had wanted to.
“So you guys were friends with Ton—Basco?” she asked.
Tilly reached out and patted Vanessa’s hands. “We had a slight misunderstanding when she first got here,” Tilly said without a trace of her usual trademark snark in her tone. “She told us her brother was Tony and…” She pointed with one hand, palm up, at where Tony was starting to teach.
“I’m so sorry,” Vanessa said.
Tilly squeezed her hands. “It’s okay, seriously.”
Reed wanted to be the one comforting her instead of Tilly.
“Yes, we were friends with Basco,” Reed said. “Play partners.”
“I just…I don’t know how or what to ask.”
“You can ask us anything,” Lyle assured her as Jenny slipped an arm around her shoulders. “We’ll do our best to answer it.”
“I don’t know what’s considered too personal,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Reed said. “If we can’t answer it, or don’t want to, we’ll say so.”
“They mean it,” Jenny told her. “One thing about this lifestyle is people quickly learn that communication is extremely important.”
Vanessa looked at where Tilly still clasped her hands around hers. “I wish he’d felt like he could have communicated to me about this.”
* * * *
Reed and Lyle seemed like nice guys, which was probably why her brother had mentioned them a lot in his journal. While he hadn’t come right out and said he loved the two men, it was patently obvious to her through her readings that Basco had a deeper affection for them, felt a closer affinity to them, than toward most other people in the lifestyle.
Tonight, they both wore jeans and short-sleeved, button-up shirts. Not exactly the garb she would have expected from Doms. Or subs. Or switches, or whatever it was they called themselves.
They seemed like two ordinary guys who wouldn’t get more than a second glance from her normally, and that only because they were both fairly attractive men, by her standards.
Reed looked like he spent a lot of time out in the sun, with his tan and the lines at the outer corners of his blue eyes, and the sun-lightened tint to his short, brown hair. Lyle had sweet brown eyes and black hair with only a few sprinkles of grey at the temples.
If she had to guess, from his paler skin tone, she figured he worked in an office.
“Sometimes,” Lyle said, “people don’t want to burden their families with this. It can be kind of personal. They worry they’ll be shunned or disowned. It’s happened a lot before.”
“But I wouldn’t have done that.” She stared at Tilly’s hands, trying not to remember how she’d clasped Tony’s hands, willing him to get better even as he sharply declined, before the medical staff forced her away from his bedside as they tried heroic measures to save his life.
“It’s like sex lives,” Reed said. “It’s not always something people are comfortable discussing with other family members unless they absolutely can’t avoid the issue.”
“Basco and I could talk about anything,” she said. “At least, I thought we could.”
“It doesn’t mean he loved you any less,” Reed told her.
“He told us how much you meant to him,” Lyle said. “How much he loved you. That he was glad he was living with you and able to be a part of your life. He made it clear to us from the beginning that you always came first with him. That there might be times he had to ditch us at the last-minute if you needed him, and we were perfectly fine with that. He hated that his ex got in the way of his relationship with you for so long.”
She didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse, even though it gelled with what she’d read in her brother’s journal.
“I wish I’d known about this. I would have told him I was okay with it since it made him happy.” She tipped her head toward where Tony was teaching. “I’ve read far kinkier stuff in books than I’ve seen here yet. This is not what I was expecting. At all.”
“Thought you’d see nekkid people swinging from the rafters, right?” Tilly joked, smiling as she gave Vanessa’s hands a final squeeze and sat back, releasing her.
“Well…yeah. If you want me to be honest.”
Everyone else around the table smiled and softly chuckled. “It’s both far more boring and mundane, while simultaneously being weirder, than anyone imagines,” Jenny assured her. “Look at me and Ken, here. You didn’t think anything about us was different.”
“True.”
She knew her friend was open-minded and liberal, but while the news that Jenny was kinky didn’t surprise Vanessa, no, it wasn’t a fact she’d readily foreseen.
Her brother was more proof of that.
There was something else she wanted answered. “So I can ask anything?”
/> Everyone nodded.
“Okay. Then who was Kaden, and why did his death have such an impact on my brother?”
Everyone froze.
Chapter Ten
“To be best of my recollection,” Tony said, “Basco started coming around to munches and the club just before Kaden left the public scene for good.”
She was sitting alone with Tony on a couch in the club’s far side, a second space they’d recently added. The music was a little louder over here, and the lights dimmer, but there was only one couple playing, and they were on what Tony had called a St. Andrew’s Cross on the far end of the space.
For all intents and purposes, they were alone and could talk in private.
When she’d asked about Kaden, everyone gathered around the table had gone still and quiet for a moment before Tilly took the reins again, back to a very subdued, quiet tone.
“We’ll table that topic and let Tony talk to you about Kaden,” she’d said. “Of all of us here right at this moment, he knew him the best. It’s better he answers your questions.”
So now here she sat, just a few minutes after Tony’s class had ended. Vanessa had told him it was okay if he wanted to wait to talk about it, but he didn’t seem nonplussed by the topic or her desire to talk about it.
Tony continued. “People didn’t need to know Kaden personally, or deeply, to be effected by him. He was a very calming, serene presence. He and his wife, Leah, taught classes here. Rope, whips, other things.”
Tony seemed lost in thought for a moment. “So I’m not sure how well Basco actually knew Kaden, because I was around Kade a lot in those last months and don’t remember seeing him or hearing Kade talk about him. That doesn’t mean Kade’s death didn’t have an impact on him.” He caught himself. “Well, obviously it did have an impact on your brother, because he wrote about it. So he must have met Kade at least once or twice.”
“But why? Why would Kaden’s death have an impact on my brother if he didn’t know him very well?”
“Because Kaden died of pancreatic cancer. It took…a while. When he found out about it, he set in motion a series of events to put his life-long best friend, Seth, in place as his wife’s Master and husband.”
She blinked. “Say what?”
The sad smile Tony gave her made her regret her tone. “He was a complete control freak. And Leah…needed…things. Not need like, ‘Oh, I’d really like a spanking tonight.’ Without breeching a confidence, she needed a certain type of…” He seemed to search for the word. “She needed a certain type of loving managerial style to ensure she would keep moving forward.”
In her current state, Vanessa had no problem believing that. If it wasn’t for Carlo and her promise to her brother to take care of him, she’d find it damned hard to come up with a reason to get out of bed every morning.
She didn’t interrupt, sensing Tony had far more to say.
“When everyone learned, mostly after Kade’s passing, what he’d set in motion to provide for Leah, it sort of changed those who’d known him, even a little. It drove home the point about how not living authentically meant condemning yourself to a future in a prison, in a way. That life was short. That love was important. That if death could take someone as determined to live as Kade was, and who loved Leah as much as he had, then it could take any of us at any moment.”
That was exactly what had happened with her brother.
Taken at any moment.
“When did Kaden die?” she asked.
“About four years ago. In January.”
That would have been just before her Tony had admitted one night at dinner, when it was just the two of them, that he was going to be filing for divorce.
And when Vanessa had immediately insisted he’d move in with her.
In his journal, he’d mentioned sussing out BDSM before making the decision to divorce Kelly. How he’d attended several munches and events, trying to figure things out for himself before taking that final step and initiating the divorce.
This hadn’t been an overnight whim for her brother, but a carefully researched, thoughtful decision.
“Wow,” she said. “He must have been a really great guy.”
“He was. Poor Ed, I feel sorry for him. He had it rougher than a lot of us. He was Kade’s partner at the law firm, and the one who had to steer Seth and Leah through the process Kade had set up for them.”
“Wait…who?”
“Ed. Ed Payne.”
She closed her eyes and started laughing. Laughing so hard and long, that she realized she was crying, sobbing, only when Tony pressed a few tissues into her hand from a box of them setting on a small table at the end of the couch.
“Are you okay?” Tony asked her.
She sob-laughed some more, shaking her head, nodding, then shaking her head again as she blew her nose and dabbed at her tears.
Finally, when she could speak again, she looked him in the eyes. “Ed Payne, an attorney from Sarasota?”
He looked confused. “Yes, why?”
“He’s the one who handled my Tony’s divorce, drew up his will, and who is also my attorney—referred to me by my brother—and who drew up my will for me. And he’s handling Tony’s probate. Basco’s.”
I really need to get my head around calling him Basco when I’m here.
Tony smiled. “He’s a good attorney. Let me know if you need an accountant. I can give you two names right off the top of my head, one of them a CPA.”
She froze. “Is one of them Mark Jarette?” That was her CPA, also referred to her by her Tony.
Tony playfully grinned. “Ah, so you do know Scrye.”
* * * *
Reed and Lyle sat at the table, talking with Shayla, Tilly, and Jenny and Ken, and waited while Tony took Vanessa off to the “new side,” as everyone thought of the recent addition to the club, to talk in private.
Reed fought the urge to pull his phone out and check the time repeatedly. Cell phone use was forbidden in the dungeon, although it wasn’t uncommon to see people pulling them out to check the time before quickly shoving them back into their pockets or purses. The new wristwatch, an engrained reaction that was difficult to remember not to do.
Then Keith and Scott walked in, and Reed held a hand up to them in greeting. The men veered over toward their table, and Reed and Lyle both stood to hug them.
“Hey, guys,” Reed said. “Where’s Noel?”
Her husband, Scott, grinned. “Her morning sickness is now afternoon and evening sickness,” he said. “She feels like shit, but the doctor says the baby is perfectly healthy and normal, so she’s staying in.”
Keith, the Master and Owner of the couple, snickered. “She’s cursing at both of us, too. I’m giving her a pass for that, obviously. She said for us to give our love to everyone.”
Keith was one of the mechanics at the marina where Reed kept his boat. Noel ran the office. Scott was a 911 dispatcher for the county and couldn’t always make it to the club with Keith and Noel if he had to work, so it was nice to see him out for a change.
Reed wouldn’t deny he’d felt a little bit of envy for the triad. While he didn’t want to be a full-time sub or slave like Scott and Noel did, he wouldn’t mind a switchy third to satisfy both his and Lyle’s switchy natures.
A switchy third they’d thought they might have found with Basco.
The men pulled up chairs to chat. “Why does everyone look so damned sad?” Keith asked.
Everyone looked to Tilly.
“Great, thanks,” she snarked, but still only at about a tenth of her usual pointedness. She gentled her tone. “Did you guys know Basco?”
Scott frowned. “Did we? What happened?”
“Yes,” Keith said. “We do.”
Tilly shook her head and told them what Vanessa had related. By the time Tilly finished, both men looked stunned.
“Damn,” Keith said. “I just talked to him, what, two weeks ago. At the munch. Noel was with me.”
“He was a nic
e guy,” Scott said. “That’s a damn shame.”
Keith reached over to where Scott’s hand lay on the table and laced fingers with him. “New rule,” he said. “And you and Noel can use this one against me, too. Anyone’s sick and it’s not getting better? Doctor visit. ASAP.”
Scott covered Keith’s hand with his other one. “You’d better believe it. Damn, I can’t believe he died from that.”
“Believe it,” Tilly said. “It happens. People’s immune systems get compromised for too long, the body starts to shut down. If he’d gone to the doctor early on and they’d caught it, he’d probably be sitting here tonight instead of his sister sitting in there, talking to Tony.”
Reed had to fight the sudden urge to get up and walk over to the doorway separating the two spaces and peek around the edge to check on Vanessa.
Maybe it was because of her resemblance to Basco, maybe it was the shock of trying to process his own grief, but he wanted to take care of her. Basco had loved her, put her first in his life after too many years of his wife trying to pull the siblings apart.
The least he could do to honor his friend’s memory would be to help look after the man’s beloved little sister.
Right?
Lyle eerily echoed his thoughts out loud. “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I plan on trying to be there for Vanessa as much as she’ll let us. I think Basco would have wanted us to welcome her and treat her like family. Especially since she went out of her way to seek us out.”
Nods of assent from all around.
“He would have,” Jenny said. “I know he would have. She was his life. Had he realized how cool she is with this, I know he would have told her. She was the main reason he kept such a sharp delineation between his vanilla and kinky lives. He deliberately asked me and Ken to come to dinner with them one night to meet her after he’d moved in with her. She’d had a rough week at work dealing with a sexual harassment issue at one of her stores. He wanted her to try to make friends, so we agreed there would be no mention of kinky stuff, and we genuinely did become friends with her. We also knew Rusty and Eliza, so they were sort of drawn into this as well. The vanilla beard-friends.”