Vanilla. Megan Hart

hadn’t gone on to any further kind of Jewish education after his Bar Mitzvah, and he’d muddled through that, leaving me to take charge of most of the service we’d shared. If he went to services at all now, it was only because of William. Susan, however, had always been a little more observant.

      I shrugged. “Well, kid, it’s been my experience that moms are the ones who get to decide stuff like that. So I’d say talk to your mom about it. You never know. She might listen.”

      “Did yours listen to you?”

      It sounded like a legitimate question, especially since I had to remind myself that to William, my mother was “grandma” and therefore, an entirely different entity. “Not usually.”

      He laughed. I did, too. I turned on the radio, and we both started rocking out to the Metallica song that came on.

      It was a good day, but most of the ones I’d ever spent with that kid were.

4

      Batting cages, junk food for dinner, an inappropriate movie I knew his mother would not have let him watch. That’s how Auntie rolled. William had tried to convince me to let him stay up late watching old episodes of The X-Files from my DVD set—we were up to season four, and the kid was justifiably hooked. I made him go to bed, instead. Eight in the morning would come early, and I’d promised to get him to religious school on time. I wasn’t totally irresponsible.

      I didn’t really need a three-bedroom town house since it was just me, but I’d bought it as an investment with an eye to having a room for William’s visits. My nephew was likely the only child I would ever have. I liked that he felt as at home in my house as he did in his own. I checked on him about midnight and found him with the bed lamp still on, highlighting the paperback novel he’d been reading. He was sprawled on top of the sheets the way he’d always slept. When he was little I’d tuck him back under the covers and kiss his forehead, but now that he’d outgrown me by a few inches, he was too big for me to move around. I marked his spot in the book and put it on the nightstand and turned off the light then closed the bedroom door behind me.

      Eight in the morning was still going to come early for me, too, but sleep ran away from me as fast as that annoying little fuck the Gingerbread Man from the story William had loved so much when he was a toddler. In my bed, I tried to read, but I’d finished the book I’d been working on for the past week so I stared up at the ceiling, instead.

      I counted backward from one hundred, but that didn’t work. I did it again. Still nothing.

      I could’ve been with Esteban tonight, I thought unwillingly. Not resentfully—I loved spending time with William. But now, here, the idea of an unexpected night with my lover was definitely something I regretted not being able to take advantage of.

      Idly, I pulled my phone from the charging dock and brought up my email account. I scrolled through a bunch of junk, deleting offers for “Hot! Live! Girls!” and penis enlargement and weight-loss pills. I also deleted a bunch of auto messages from Connex telling me I had notifications without bothering to open the Connex app. I did read several messages from OnHisKnees.com, though I didn’t answer them. All of them were from men offering me homage, calling me Mistress or My Lady though I’d never met them, promising to worship and serve me in whatever way I wanted to use them. I hadn’t updated my profile in a year other than to add that I was no longer looking for a boy to play with, but the messages still came in on a regular basis. Invariably, they curled my lip. All those promises stunk of desperation, not submission. Those men might claim they wanted to serve, but it almost always meant they wanted someone to fulfill their fantasies of a vinyl-clad woman—always beautiful, always a little cruel—who would never actually demand something of them they didn’t want to give. She would maybe tie them up or tease and deny them for a while, but would always still let them come. Probably all over her tits or face. Whatever humiliations she offered would be really, when you got right down to it, orchestrated by him. For him. They had no idea who I was, what I wanted or even how to give it to me.

      To me, that was not submission.

      The question could sometimes be what was submission, but I guess like the old quote about pornography, I knew it when I saw it. Or felt it, rather. It was never something as simple as a guy getting on his knees, it was always far more complex than that. What had worked for me with one guy didn’t with another, and I couldn’t ever be certain why. Only that some men gave it to me and other men didn’t, and sometimes their compliance was a deal breaker...but sometimes it wasn’t.

      And I didn’t see a damn thing wrong with that.

      The longer I’d been a part of the kink scene, the more people I’d met who seemed to think that somehow being kinky meant being rigid and strict and incapable of flexibility. Well, just because I loved steak didn’t mean I also didn’t want a salad now and again. Hell, I liked a steak salad with fries on top of it, and I liked my sex the same way. Sweetly variable and sometimes surprising. If I preferred to be in charge that didn’t have to mean I’d been scorned as a kid and was bent on destroying all men or that I couldn’t appreciate being bent over a chair now and again, either.

      I liked what I liked and didn’t need to explain it to anyone, even myself.

      I’d never been a big fan of dating sites, but OnHisKnees.com was technically more like a Connex site than Match.com. You could join forums and have discussions and discover local munches, post pictures and blog-type entries and private message the other members. Still, it was also a place to meet partners, even if you had to wade through an ocean of crap to find a few decent prospects.

      I had met Esteban on that site, so it was possible to find someone. From the start, he’d been properly respectful without being obsequious. Clever. Funny. Responsive. We’d had an online relationship for four months before he’d even approached the idea of meeting in person, and I’d been incredibly attracted to the idea that for him, this was more than casual play. That he’d been taking his time to make sure I was who he wanted to give himself to, that I was not some random woman starring in a recurring mental loop of porn clips.

      That I was different.

      That I was special.

      I hadn’t kept all of his early messages, but there were a few I’d saved. Nostalgic, I opened the email folder to look at some of our first conversations. I opened the first picture he’d sent me of his dear face. He was nothing like anything I ever would have said I wanted. Slight. Dark haired, big brown eyes. Physically, not at all my type. Yet willing to give up to me, to be my toy. His worship was sincere, and he got off on it as much as I did, which was more important to me than the lines and curves of his face.

      Esteban had wanted to see me tonight because he missed me.

      I didn’t want to think too much about this. We’d never discussed turning our monthly dates into something more serious. His profile had, in fact, indicated he was only interested in a cyber connection, nothing in real time, while mine had stated specifically that I was into multiple partners and short-term arrangements. Both of us had changed our minds about what we wanted, I guess.

      Esteban missed me, and I had to admit that the times between our dates had been getting longer and longer in feeling, if not the actual passing of hours. My sweet, submissive boy had settled into a place somewhere close to my heart. I wasn’t sure I liked that. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure I didn’t.

      Restless, bored, unable to sleep, I clicked through a few games on my phone I hadn’t played in forever. I lost one round of Bubble Burst and quit. I sent a small poking “hi” Esteban’s way, but as I’d expected, the small S next to my message meant he wasn’t logged in to the texting app we favored.

      It had been months since I’d logged in to my old instant message app, but insomnia breeds desperation. Seeing the list of screen names made me glad I’d logged on as invisible. I’d used this account a lot before meeting Esteban. Some of those people had been relentless in their pursuit of a mistress, and I’d been occasionally foolish enough to engage even when I knew I had