He did want to meet with her again. Alone.
He wanted to very much.
He just didn’t want her to know how much he wanted to. “That sounds good.” He reached down and adjusted his semierect cock through his shorts. “When and where?”
“Would you like to meet at the Village Inn on 41?”
“Sounds good. Give me an hour.”
“See you then.”
He hung up and smiled. Don’t get your hopes up. She probably wants to talk more for her article.
Still, as he got up to grab a quick shower, he couldn’t help wondering what Shayla looked like without her clothes.
Shayla arrived just before Tony did. She’d nervously changed clothes three different times before settling on a black sundress she hadn’t worn since the previous summer. It hit her just above the knee and with her black sandals, it didn’t look too dressy.
Once they were seated and the waitress took their drink orders, Tony leaned forward with his hands clasped on the table in front of him. “What did you want to talk about?”
Shayla realized she was probably using her notebook more as a crutch at this point and left it lying unopened on the table next to her. “I don’t understand,” she finally said, knowing it explained nothing but with lack of a better place to start.
One of Tony’s eyebrows slid up in a delicious way. “You’re really having a tough time with this, aren’t you?”
She breathed a sigh of relief. “More than you’ll ever know.”
“BDSM is very difficult for someone vanilla to understand unless they recognize deep within them some of those same urges. Even then, it’s something hard to explain. Just like someone who likes vanilla ice cream but loathes strawberry might have a hard time explaining to someone why they loathe it. They might answer, ‘I just do.’ That doesn’t make their answer wrong, and it might not fully explain their reasoning. They might not even know the reason. It might be a legitimate preference, or it could be based in some deep-seated prejudice stemming from an incident that happened in their childhood that they might not even remember.
“Maybe they were eating strawberry ice cream when they heard a loved one died, and since then they’ve loathed it, but don’t remember that connection. Maybe they once got sick soon after eating strawberry ice cream, but while the two had nothing to do with each other, they became entwined in the person’s mind.
“Maybe it’s simply a preference and nothing more. Sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar, and not some Freudian symbol. Does that make sense?”
“But people letting someone beat the crap out of them isn’t a simple flavor preference.”
He leaned in and tapped his finger on the table for emphasis. “But that’s just the point. It is. It might not be your thing, but it doesn’t make it any less valid a choice.”
“How is someone enjoying inflicting pain on someone else a valid choice? Isn’t that sociopathic?”
“Not if it’s consensual, no. Have you ever had a massage so painful it hurt, but later felt great?”
“I’ve never had a massage.”
His lips pressed together for a moment as he apparently sought another approach. “Usually the strawberry ice cream metaphor works.”
“Sorry.”
He leaned back and waved away her apology. “No, it’s all right. I know it’s a difficult subject for some people to wrap their heads around.” He thought for a moment. “Are you against gay marriage?”
“No. I could care less what people do with their love lives.”
“Exactly,” he said. “Think of it like that. There are people who object to consensual BDSM on nonlogical grounds, because it conflicts with their feelings, just like they object to gay marriage because it conflicts with some religious or moral point of view they hold. Not because there is any legitimate reason to object to it.”
She chewed on that. “Okay, that makes sense, but I’m still having trouble with it.”
“See, that’s the thing. It’s okay if you have trouble with it. You don’t need to understand it to agree it’s okay for consenting adults to engage in it.”
“It’s not okay when I want to write a fair article about it that can educate others. How am I supposed to educate anyone when I feel like I can’t even educate myself?”
His green gaze seemed to study her. He looked like he needed a shave, stubble filling in the areas around his mustache and goatee. He slowly scratched at his chin for a moment.
“I think,” he said after a moment to gather his thoughts, “that if you are truly dedicated to doing the topic justice, you will. You don’t necessarily have to understand the whys of it. Maybe it even makes you a better choice to write the article, because you don’t have an axe to grind and you are deliberately trying to give it a fair treatment.”
She swallowed a little nervously at that. She did have an axe to grind. A battleaxe of barbarian proportions, as a matter of fact. But she also knew these people had nothing to do with that and she didn’t hold it against them, either.
“Do you think next weekend’s classes will help me any?”
“Probably. You’ll get to see more things, learn more, meet more people. I’m sure Loren gave you her newbie 101 talk the first time you guys met, right?” Shayla nodded. “She’s absolutely right,” he continued. “There are so many different flavors and ways people practice BDSM that it’s impossible to lump them all together. They can’t even lump themselves together without someone inevitably pissing in the pool because others aren’t doing it ‘their’ way. I call them ‘won twue wayers,’ because they can’t accept that there are many ways to do things the ‘right’ way in BDSM.
“If the individuals in the dynamic are consenting adults, and happy with the way things are, and no one’s being harmed, that’s all that matters.”
“That’s almost verbatim what she said.”
“Well, that’s because despite what the won twue way asshats think, it’s all that matters.”
“I feel woefully unprepared and unqualified to write this.” She ran her finger down the spiral spine of the notebook. “I’m scared I’m going to screw it up and piss everyone off that I’ve just met.”
He smiled kindly at her and reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “You’ll do fine. I don’t mind reviewing it for you before you submit it, and I’m sure Ross and Loren won’t mind, either.”
“I’m glad you feel so confident.”
Tony once again got the feeling there was more to it, some deeper issue that she wasn’t ready to reveal. He wouldn’t press her about it, but he wished she’d open up to him. He’d carefully observed her the night before while she watched scenes play out. If he wasn’t mistaken, he’d spotted more than a bit of longing on her face.
And a bit of fear, too.
Fear of what, he wasn’t sure. He knew from years in the lifestyle that people sometimes feared the part of themselves that desired the BDSM lifestyle. It usually flew in the face of what had been drilled into them about how “good” people behaved in life. It was shocking and shameful and a disgusting display of sexuality and against all moral behavior, or so they’d been told.
It was also the most fun some people ever had in their lives.
He did not want to scare Shayla off. “You said you were writing a series of articles, right?”
She nodded.
“Why not start with a general overview, using quotes from me and Loren and Ross, and then lead into deeper topics in later articles? At least it will buy you a little time and breathing room.”
She finally met his gaze. “That’s not a bad idea.”
“You can always feel free to bounce stuff off me. And we’ll have next Saturday to talk more during and after class.” Their waitress returned to take their meal orders. “Deal?”