Rowan wants to tell him that his caring has nothing to do with being a Dom, but he’ll let Mal think that if it’s what he needs to believe. Right now he doesn’t think saying Actually, it’s because I like you even though I shouldn’t would go over too well.

[RC] Of course

[RC] Aside from the obvious, was the rest of the scene OK?

He’s careful to phrase the question as if, to him, the kiss wasn’t the best part of the whole thing, if only for a fleeting moment before the panic set in.

[MS] wouldn’t have gotten that deep if it wasn’t

[MS] that shit gets to me way more than any other type of play

As Rowan’s head stops swimming from the revelation that Mal enjoyed his praise enough to lose himself to it, his heart lurches at the realization that he probably likes it so much because he doesn’t get treated like that in his everyday life. Probably not when he was growing up either, if he was like most South End kids with shitty parents and a street-hardened exterior.

[RC] I’ll keep that in mind next time you’re up for it

Mal sends him a thumbs-up emoji.

Rowan knows that it’s kind of a dismissive emoji—a signal that the conversation is over—but it makes him smile anyway.

MAL DOESN’T bring up the kiss again that week, so Rowan doesn’t either.

But fuck, he can’t stop thinking about it. Hasn’t stopped thinking about it since Saturday. How badly he’d wanted it—still wants it, even with their tiff still fresh in his mind—and how he’d come the second he realized what was happening. Another knot of guilt coils itself in Rowan’s belly, and he can’t help but still feel dirty at having basically used Mal in that way.

It’s not his fault, and he knows that. It’s not even really Mal’s fault—just one of those things that happens with shit like this.

He wonders if Mal has kissed any of his past Doms. If he’s ever wanted to kiss any of them. Rowan doubts it, given how visceral his reaction to the thought of it had been when they first met and hashed out their kink boundaries. Still, he rereads Mal’s text over and over:

[MS] it woulda happened with anyone. you’re not the hot shit you think you are.

Rowan doesn’t want to get his hopes up that that’s a fat lie and that it would not have happened with anyone. He already knows that, at least in some capacity, Mal thinks of him as different from his past Doms.