I’m inspired by Nora Sakavic’s example to mine through some old fiction for missing scenes. Don’t you love missing scenes? I’ve been consumed by the Foxhole Court books, a series called All For the Game, and because it’s my way, I then read the author’s entire website. (My habit of doing this is one of the things that motivates me to write a lot here on the site; the more I write, the less likely it is that random travelers will stumble upon something old and horrifying.)

Nora’s site, Courting Madness, is a gold mine for the hungry obsessive reader; she’s got loads and loads of missing scenes and pre-series scenes and stuff posted. I’ve actually been throwing up a lot of new stuff lately because I didn’t write a novel this month, so I wrote lots of random stuff instead. (Don’t get used to it, lads.) But I did happen upon a gem or two that I’ll polish up and post for funsies.

This is the first of the lot.

From Surrender the Past:

“…What happened six months ago that made you look for men on FetLife?”
The boy swallowed, hands shifting to lock behind his back. “I listened to them talking, when they didn’t know I was there.”

This is that scene, culled from something written roughly seven years ago. It is, I think, only the second thing I’ve posted from Lucy’s POV. (Anyone want to corral Lucy? She wants a book, but she’s being pretty goddamn obstinate about its content.)

First aid kit, basic medical cards, soft flogger, sharp blades, tipped single tail. Lucy went through her list again. It wasn’t the first time she’d run an instructional workshop on BDSM, but it had been a while, so she didn’t want to forget anything.

“Do you think it’s helping?” Leo asked from the couch, where he was reading one of her books (Domination and Acceptance or something; she’d liked the idea but didn’t think it was particularly well executed).

“Helping?”

“Eddie. Do you think me, doing—whatever—is helping?”

Lucy pulled her focus back from her list and looked up at him. Sprawled, all long legs and bent head, graceful fingers flipping idly through the book.

“In what sense?”

“I don’t know, exactly. Do you think it’s getting easier for him to—not do that other stuff?”

Oh boy oh boy, she thought, setting down her bag. The part of her mind that catalogued Leo’s perspective and analyzed his responses shifted, spinning, rootless and at sea.

“Other stuff,” she said, and he looked up. Yes. You’ve stumbled, kiddo. Let’s see how long it takes you to catch up. “The stuff where his desire to be punished is so extreme it makes you very uncomfortable?”

“Sometimes it even makes you uncomfortable, Luce.”

“Mm. You trying to fix my sub, Leo?”

“Surely he’s kind of my sub, too?”

“You are a beginner and he is far too complicated to be yours in any sense of the word.”

Leo sat up. “I said something wrong.”

“You didn’t answer my question. Do you think that what you’re doing with Eddie will fix him?”

“Not—fix him, no. I don’t think he’s broken. Exactly. But I thought—at least—was I wrong to think that pulling back from wanting to completely submit, do anything you say, all the time would be more healthy? What did I say that was a red flag, Luce?”

Checklist could wait. Not long, but long enough. Lucy unobtrusively relaxed her hands and walked over to sit beside him on the couch.

“Leo, do you think someone can be healthy and still want to be caned fifty times? Or cut? Or whipped until they are bleeding?”

Leo inhaled, slowly, the words, as ever, discomfiting him. But he thought about it, ran it through all those minute razor’s edge perceptions.

“The correct answer is yes, I do. I think someone can be healthy and want all that. In reality…I’m not sure, Luce. But I guess my only experience with that kind of extreme submission is Eddie, and he’s definitely not healthy.”

“Well, he’s closeted and eating himself alive over it. Yes. Even suicidal at times. But that’s why you and I are very careful to address just those things.” She considered him again, looking closely at his eyes. “Be straight with me, poquito. Did you think that if you showed Eddie enough love he’d be satisfied with blow jobs and cuddling?”

“Not…intentionally. I really didn’t think I was his cure, Lucy. But maybe, a little. Maybe I thought that I could use his—attraction—to heal some of those wounds.”

“I don’t disagree. But Leo, whatever the reasons, Eddie likes to submit. And he likes discipline. A lot. I doubt that will ever disappear, and we wouldn’t want it to. Right?”

“But the degree—he doesn’t just want to be flogged or whipped, Luce. He wants it until he passes out from the pain.”

“Sometimes. Sometimes you want me on top of you, straddling you until you bottom out inside me, again and again until everything goes white and you can’t breathe, you can’t think.” He colored, the blush stealing over his cheek bones, down his neck, just beginning to show stubble. “What makes your way of reaching oblivion better than his, Leo?”

“My way doesn’t hurt.”

She raised an eyebrow. “No? You’re never sore after a bout with me in the hunter green bedroom? I know I get sore, but that doesn’t change how good it is. Hell, Leo, you gonna tell me that the intensity doesn’t make it better?”

“Luce, that’s not the same.”

“Why?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Because what I want can’t be taken so far I end up in the hospital.”

“You think I’ve sent Eddie to the hospital?”

“Not you, but someone—”

“He’s not submitting to just anyone, he’s submitting to me. And to you. Though Leo, as deep as my affection for you is, I won’t let you make this into something wrong for him.”

“He already thinks it’s wrong!”

“And you told him you believe God didn’t fuck up with him. Did you lie?”

His hands tightened around each other.

“You presume to judge Eddie, Leo? You know what’s right and wrong more than he does?”

There. His eyes flashed.

“You know better than I do now, kiddo?”

“Stop it, Lucy. Don’t. Give me a second.” He took a few breaths, trying to shake off the anger, but she didn’t let him.

“No, no, tell me all about it. You’re a twenty-five year old white male, I’m sure you have all the answers, Leo. Why don’t you teach me what’s right, what’s okay with you. You’re gonna rule the world one day, go ahead, start with me, if you think you can.” She grabbed his hands, holding them firmly in her own. “Show me, Leo. You spent the two years in a school full of boys ashamed of their dicks and you’ve never seen a cunt that wasn’t mine, go on, tell me all about sex, Leo, tell me all about what’s right.”

He jerked his hands but she held fast.

“Tell me what you really think, baby, go on, let the anger make you honest—”

“Stop.”

“Make me.”

He bit down hard on his lip, his breathing ragged. “Why do you do this? I love you. I love him. Maybe I’m wrong, but why do you make me feel like this?”

“Because, baby, I’m making a point. What you’re feeling right now, the object of my judgement? That’s a fraction of what he feels. And I will exile you from this house before I’ll let you do that to him.”

“But you don’t mind it if you’re making me feel that way? Liked it better when I was the object of your affection, Luce.”

She lifted his fists, kissed each before unfolding them. “You are. But it’s not a disease. You can’t go into this thinking you’re gonna take him apart and put him back together again. He put his trust in us; before this it was all just twisted fantasies and poor attempts to self-injure, chasing those fantasies. Eddie’s judgement isn’t in question here, Leo. Not today. Not in this house, where he has only ever been safe.”

“But mine is.”

“You’re damn right.” She looked at him, holding his gaze. “I dared him to trust you, Leo. I gambled all of his trust in me that you wouldn’t judge him.”

He swallowed and dropped his eyes.

“Look at me,” she said, allowing the barest hint of demand back into her voice. “This is about you, Leo.”

“I can’t be what he needs, if that’s what he needs, Lucy. You know that.”

“Yes. But have you ever thought that maybe he can be what you need?”

“I…but—” He blinked at her and his hands trembled. “You think he can fix me, Luce?”

“You are the only person you know who actually thinks you’re broken.”

“I’m taking deep breaths now, for a minute.”

“You know what else?” she asked, pulling her legs up and settling them in his lap. “You’re giving me a foot rub. You give the absolute best foot rubs when you’re pissed at me.”

“I’m not.”

“Yeah, you are. Go on. I fucked you up in the head and you’ll be thinking about it all night, you’ll be thinking about it lying in bed tonight when I get home from class, thinking about Eddie, thinking about how far he could push you in the playroom, how far you could push him in the bedroom.” She wiggled her toes. “Go on, Leo, dig in.”

He reluctantly began to rub her feet, too gently.

“You gonna make me provoke you? I know you want to whip him, love. I know that look, that hunger, in your face when you see me doing it. You want to practice? He’d love to let you.”

“Unfair,” he murmured, but he dug into her arch.

“Yeah, that’s me. Hey. I’m not ashamed of what I do, Leo. I’m not ashamed of making him bleed when he asks me to. I’m not ashamed of getting off on the thought of you making him bleed, either.”

The hands on her foot stilled, fractionally, before continuing, his muscles trying to be controlled.

“I am. Ashamed. But that’s—there’s a part of this, you’re right, it’s not fair to him. He cannot be the instrument of my shame, my guilt, anymore than you can.”

“His decisions are just as valid as mine. And yours.”

“Yeah. I know that. I just don’t feel it in my bones. Yet.”

“Good boy. You need to be aware of it, that’s all, poquito.” She paused, wondering at her near-unwillingness to say the next words. “And I won’t stop pushing you, Leo. You know that, right?”

“Until I safeword out, anyway,” he said, quirking a smile up at her.

“Yeah, well, it’d be a deal-breaker. I don’t hurt you for nothing.”

“I don’t know, Luce. Sometimes you do.”

“Not like this. It wasn’t all a wind-up, Leo. There is a part of you that grew up surrounded by a culture that projects onto you the future of everything important. The presidents, the celebrities, the respected voices of your generation—will mostly look like you. We can’t have this conversation unless I can get below the part of you that was formed by all that expectation.”

“Below my white skin?”

“Below the part of your brain that knows absolutely that your white skin gives you dominion over others.”

He struggled with it. She watched the whole battle go down in his eyes, but mostly she felt it in the way he dug into the muscles of her feet. “I’m trying not to defend myself.”

“Yes. Listen, it’s time for me to get going. Make dinner, enjoy your night. If you want, you can administer his daily discipline. A spanking in the guest room before bed would do the trick, and you can send him off with a delicious fantasy.”

“Without you here?”

“You don’t need me, Leo, you have him. A spanking isn’t going to kill him.” She leaned in, tilted his chin up. “And it isn’t going to kill you.”

“I’ll screw up again with this, Luce. Next time can you try something else? I feel—sick—after you poke me like that.”

“No, kiddo, you feel sick for being angry, for letting yourself feel it that intensely. Hold on to that sick feeling, Leo. Let it ground you. Let it remind you that you survive, you keep breathing. Then you’ll be ready to let the rage go when it’s over, and it won’t make you so goddamn ill.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I didn’t answer it directly, but you can sure as hell infer an answer.”

He sighed. “So you’re not going to stop poking me?”

“Not while I’m still invested in you overcoming your greasy white boy shit. Now. Kiss me, baby. I’ll let you pin me down tonight if you want. You can fuck me hard, fuck both of us into oblivion.”

“A hard fucking is your solution to everything, Luce.”

She licked her lips, feeling herself get wet at the thought of it. “Baby. You just said ‘fucking’. I may not make it through the night. I may come right there in front of the little baby kinksters and they’ll just have to hold their questions till I’m done.”

“Luce.”

“Leo.”

He kissed her, not gently, not exactly demandingly. With intent.

Lucy took off after an early dinner with an unnecessary (but delicious) admonition to Eddie to follow directions. Then she pulled down a side street with a view of the Bay and got off before she even left the neighborhood, thinking about the night they had before them.