Page 99 of Burden of Proof

I groaned, dropping my elbows onto the table and catching my face with my hands. Verity was so fucking right. I’d locked myself into a box, built partly out of self-preservation and also a little bit out of fear. Dominance had been a safe place for me when I needed it to be, but Hunter showed up and made a new kind of safety, a safety that allowed me to explore things from the other side.

If I’d ended up with anyone else for that very first hookup, it was very possible I’d still be thinking I was only a Dom. And maybe I was, but it was easy to not be that way with Hunter. It felt right to let myself have both.

“I can still be a dominant man,” I said, mostly to myself, “who is submissive to one person.”

“Yes!” They both said at the same time, Keith louder than Verity, but Verity clapped their hands and stomped their feet onto the sidewalk, their joy contagious.

“I’m embarrassed about this” I mumbled into my lands, loud enough for them to both hear. “You don’t even know me, and I just dumped this whole sob story?—”

“What sob story?” Verity asked, curling their fingers around my wrist and giving my arm a shake until I looked up at them. They smiled at me so sincerely, it made me want to cry. “We’re just three friends getting coffee, talking about how scary it is to be seen by someone for the first time.”

“But also wonderful,” Keith said. “Empowering.”

Verity hummed their agreement.

“Our stories are all very different,” he said. “But submission gives me more control than dominance ever could.”

“Hey now,” Verity chided, tutting their tongue against the roof of their mouth. “It’s balanced and you know it.”

“I like to call him Sir when he’s on his knees for me,” I blurted, sending their casual conversation straight to silence.

A moment passed, then another, and Verity finally said, “Damn, Lincoln. That’s…really sexy.”

I laughed then, covering my face again with my hands and blinking back tears I didn’t want to cry in front of these two strangers who’d dug my brain out of a miserable black spiral in less than half an hour.

“Does Micah call you Sir when you’re on your knees for Justin?” Verity asked Keith, who pouted and shook his head.

“No, but he’s going to tonight.”

The two of them burst into laughter, and it was impossible to not join in. I always felt good and secure when I was with Hunter. It was the away times that had been the problem, but at that coffee shop with Keith and Verity laughing about something I’d always imagined to be so very serious, for the first time in a long time, I felt okay on my own too.

CHAPTER 30

HUNTER

When I got home from work, Lincoln was sitting in the hallway, legs bent and his forearms resting on his elbows. He had his head against the door, and when I stepped out of the elevator, he glanced up but made no move to stand.

He had a new toothbrush dangling between his fingers, and the surge of unbridled pleasure that washed over me would have been embarrassing to admit out loud, so I didn’t. Besides, the look of absolute dejectedness that colored Lincoln’s face was enough for me to swallow the small victory anyway, at least temporarily.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, holding out my hand and helping him to his feet. The plastic of the toothbrush packaging crinkled beneath his grip.

“Can we talk?”

“Of course,” I said, unlocking and opening the door. “Always.”

Lincoln followed me inside and toed off his sneakers, looking a little bit like a wounded deer. He had on striped socks and skinny jeans with holes in the knees, a t-shirt with the armscut out so his ribs—and the occasional nipple piercing—were on display.

He was breathtaking.

“I brought a toothbrush,” he said, holding it up.

“I saw. It…makes me very happy that you listened.”

Lincoln groaned, covering his mouth with his hand and shaking his head. I gave him a minute to gather himself.

“Where should I put it?” he asked, the words muffled behind his fingers.

“The bathroom,” I told him. “Next to mine.”