A second sob escaped, and she buried her face in his neck. It was warm and solid and smelled faintly of peppermint, and it was so unexpectedly comforting she sobbed harder. “I’m not sad.”

“No?” He swept his hand up her back and down again in a soothing caress. “What are you, then?”

“I’m mad,” she said, the words muffled against his skin. “I spent a year with the wrong guy, and now I have to start all over again.”

He laughed, his breath a soft puff against her hair.

“It’s not funny,” she protested, and wiped her dripping nose on his shirt in retaliation.

“I’m not laughing at you,” he assured her. “I’m relieved.”

She lifted her head, blinking away the tears that blurred her vision. “Why are you relieved?”

“Two reasons.” He wiped the tears from her face with a gentle hand. “First, it’s a lot easier to deal with unmet expectations than a broken heart.”

“True,” she muttered grudgingly. “What’s the second reason?”

“Anger is productive. We can work with anger.”

She blinked. “Seriously?”

“Once you figure out why you’re mad—which you have, so well done—then you can figure out what to do differently next time.”

“There won’t be a next time.” She let her head thump back down on to his shoulder. “I’m never going to get the CNC scenes of my dreams.”

He pressed a kiss to her hair, his body shaking lightly under hers with what she assumed was more laughter. “Yes, you will.”

“No, I won’t,” she said on a wail. “I’ve been in the kink scene for six years in multiple cities, and in that entire time I’ve only found two people who were open to consensual non-consent play. Well, four, actually, but two of them were women, so that didn’t work out.”

“Straight people problems,” he said soberly, but she heard the snicker underneath.

“Said the smug bisexual,” she mumbled, and wiped her nose on his shirt again.

“Stop using my shirt as a handkerchief,” he told her, and punctuated the order with a light slap on her rump.

“Oh, don’t spank me,” she wailed. “I’m sad and horny and that’s just mean.”

He laughed so hard the whole chair was shaking, and in spite of the lingering sense of despair, she lifted her head to smile at him. “Are you finished?”

He grinned and dropped a kiss on her nose. “Who was the other one?”

“Other one what?” she asked absently. Her nose tingled where his lips had brushed her skin, and wasn’t that strange?

“You said you met four people who were into consensual non-consent. Two were women, and I assume one of them was Kyle. Who was the other one?”

“Oh. You.”

He raised an eyebrow. “We never talked about that.”

“I know.”

“We did what, three scenes together?”