“Yeah. They had a friend who was in town for a visit, a submissive who’d been wanting a CNC scene. They introduced us.”

He sighed, and he sounded so forlorn and sad that her belly twisted. But she kept silent, and he continued.

“I liked him, and we did a scene together at a party. You weren’t there, I don’t think. But it went well, so when he asked for something darker before he left town, I didn’t see any reason not to agree. We negotiated, but only generally, because he didn’t want a lot of detail to interfere with his headspace. He was experienced enough, and the set-up was fairly straightforward. I didn’t anticipate any problems.”

“But something happened,” she prompted gently when he fell silent.

“He’d rented a room for the night at one of the airport hotels. Just a businessman passing through. I was supposed to break in while he was showering and overpower him. He’d given the extra key to Tim, and he passed it to me. I let myself in, caught him when he was finishing up in the bath. It started out fine, but after a few minutes…I can’t really explain it, but the vibe changed.

“I almost kept going,” he admitted. “He had a safeword, and a gesture, and hadn’t used either. But it felt off, and I didn’t know him well enough to read him with any confidence. So I called it, which may have been the smartest thing I’ve ever done.”

“He wasn’t role-playing,” she guessed.

“Terrified out of his skin,” he said bluntly. “I called Tim and Andrew—they knew it was happening that night—and they came right over. Turns out, he was a lot less experienced with CNC than he’d implied.”

“Oh, no.”

“Yeah.” His smile looked more like a grimace. “We met for lunch a couple of days later, just before he left town, to talk it out. We parted on good terms, and he didn’t blame me for things going sideways. But I’m never not going to feel horrible about that night.”

The haunted look in his eyes was breaking her heart. “It sounds awful.”

His smile was sardonic. “Awful is an understatement. Anyway, I decided if I didn’t want to be in that situation again—and I very much do not—I’d need to reevaluate how I do CNC. No more casual scenes.”

“So when Amanda told me you weren’t doing CNC anymore…”

“She didn’t quite have the full story.”

She stared at him. “Oh, my God.”

He reached up to gently tweak her nose. “I would have said yes.”

“Oh my God,” she wailed, and let her head fall back to his shoulder with a thump. “I can’t believe this.”