Jess stuck out her tongue at him across the fire. We dug into the food, holding paper plates and napkins on our laps. Jojo came to beg, of course, resting her head on Manson’s lap with the biggest puppy-dog eyes she could muster.

“You’re a bartender, right?” Jess said, looking at me in between bites of pizza. She lifted her cup and took another sip. “You clearly know how to make a good cocktail.”

“Yep. At Tris,” I said. “It’s a club in Memphis. Can’t say I’m a fan of driving an hour to get there, but the tips are good.”

“What kind of club is it? I can’t really imagine you serving up drinks to honky-tonk.”

“I can get down with all kinds of music,” I said. “But it’s not a country club, no. They play a lot of electronic, and occasionally they’ll put on a metal show. Tris is a little unusual. It’s not exactly a BDSM club, but they do work with the local kink and LGBTQ communities. They’ll hold munches there sometimes, but mostly it’s just a fun place for music. And obviously, the drink selection is superior.”

Jess tipped her head curiously. “Munches? What is that?”

“It’s a gathering for people interested in BDSM,” Manson said. “A way to meet the local community and like-minded people. The first munch Vince and I ever went to was at Tris.” He laughed softly, and I knew even before he said it that he was thinking of how embarrassing that first meeting had been. “We went into it so damn cocky, too. Tris is supposed to be 21+, but we were 18 and snuck in. I don’t think we fooled a single person there.”

“Everyone was side-eying us like we were kids,” I said. The memory still made me cringe, and I wasn’t one to be easily embarrassed. “We thought we were hot shit, big bad dominant dudes.”

“They set us straight pretty damn fast,” Manson said. “The woman who runs the munches pulled us aside and warned us to behave or we’d never set foot there again. She knew we really wanted to learn, but we needed to humble ourselves a bit. We didn’t get to call ourselves Dominant just because we felt like it.”

Mistress Rachel and her husband, Mark, had set us on the right track. It was lucky we’d had someone to call out our bad habits early, before we got too involved in the scene. Someone could have gotten hurt if we’d gone on thinking that all you needed to tie someone up or wield a whip was the desire to do so. It took a hell of a lot more responsibility than mere desire.