Page 35 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded
“So what the fuck am I supposed to do?” My voice came out unnaturally high pitched. Aiden couldn’t possibly mean that he expected me to…
“He wants you to have sex with him.” Aiden paused, watching my reaction carefully.
I stared back at him blankly. “That’s… No. That’s insane.” No wonder Aiden had wanted to wait longer before telling me this. Up until yesterday, I’d barely been able to put a hand on Dax’s shoulder. And now Aiden wanted me to…?
“If your own orientation is going to be a problem for that, then there are some creative ways you can work around it,” Aiden said, no doubt trying to be helpful, and if it was possible, my face got even redder. I was about to be given ‘the talk’ by another military officer? “Ask him to blow you, if you don’t think you’ll enjoy anything else. Ask him to masturbate while youwatch. Or ask him to watch you. Hell, you can even watch porn together, if that’s what it takes. It doesn’t have to be penetrative sex. Dimari are trained to respond to a wide range of desires on their master’s part. The key components are that he needs to see that you’re enjoying yourself, and you need to give him permission to climax as part of the process. If you don’t give him permission, he won’t come.”
“I think my brain is about to explode,” I muttered, pulling back on a strong temptation to simply end the call. I could not deal with this, not on top of everything else that was going on at the moment.
“For the sake of clarity,” Aiden went on, completely ignoring my impending panic, “isyour orientation going to pose a problem? I never really asked you before.”
“Is my…? No. I’m bi,” I blurted out. “My orientation is… Jesus Christ, Aiden, I can’t…” I clamped my mouth shut in a hurry, my brain catching up before I blurted out something I really didn’t want to tell him. Now, I felt cold, rather than hot. “Are you sure I can’t just tell him to go jerk off and let that be the end of it? You’re saying sex is the ultimate key to a happy dimari, right?”
“Exactly,” Aiden said. “No, it’s not optional, and no, you can’t just tell him to take care of it himself.”
Aiden was way too calm for this conversation. And only a slight amount of contemplation made me realise he must have had this exact same conversation with a dozen other dimari owners. And if he took his mission as seriously as I believed he did, he’d somehow managed to convince every single one of them that sex with a dimari was a good idea.
“Wait a minute,” I snapped, as another thought occurred to me. “Do you… Do you have sex with Kade?”
“Yes,” Aiden replied, without the slightest attempt to prevaricate.
“But he can’t consent.”
Aiden smiled, a wry, affectionate expression. “Actually, he can. We’ve had some long conversations about that. It’s not as straight forward as it would be with most people, but it is possible.” The image flickered, and then my comm beeped as a document came through. “There’s a list of instructions, and some orders that you need to give Dax. Like I said, I wasn’t going to cover this with you yet, but now we’re here, this is all stuff you’ll need to know. One of the important ones is you need to order him to tell you if you’re hurting him. He cannot and will not ask you to stop, if you’re doing something he doesn’t like, but there are ways around that. I made the point very clearly with Kade that I have no intention or desire to hurt him during sex, so if I do, he needs to tell me, so that I can do things differently. With a bit of practice and reassurance, most dimari become quite comfortable with giving their masters subtle hints and cues about what they do or don’t like. And from what I’ve seen so far, I get the impression that Dax is quite capable of making his feelings known. If you’re responsive to what he’s implying, then there’s rarely a problem.”
It took a few moments for me to convince my jaw to close. To buy some time, I opened the document and had a quick skim through it. And yeah, it was fairly comprehensive. There were things about physical discomfort, checking in to see if a dimari had any health complications – a stomach ache, perhaps, that might make them disinclined to have sex at that particular moment. There were ways to ask a dimari to express a preference for one type of sex act over another, and physical cues that might indicate a desire to continue, versus a degree of disinterest.
I looked up again, to find Aiden watching me. “So what do you think?” he asked finally, when I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t know whether to blush or cringe. “This isn’t going to work,” I said, my tone flat.
To his credit, Aiden didn’t automatically launch into another sales pitch. Instead, he sat back, a slight frown settling on his face. “Why not?” There was no judgement in the question. Just gentle curiosity, an invitation to voice my opinions.
I sighed, then decided to just blurt it out. “I haven’t been able to get it up since I got back from Ixralia.”
Aiden nodded slowly, and damn the man to hell, he looked completely unruffled by the announcement. “If I may ask a personal question, do you know if that’s a physical problem or a psychological one?”
I rolled my eyes, using annoyance to disguise embarrassment. “A bit of both, most likely. The venom I got in my leg probably spread upwards and caused more nerve damage further north. And at the same time, I’m just… not in the mood, if you get my drift. I mean, I could ask Dax to try a few things out,” I rushed on, ignoring for the moment the fact that the chances of me actually taking that leap were miniscule. “But would it be worse for him to be asked to try, and fail, or not to be asked at all?”
Aiden huffed out a breath. “Fuck. That’s always a sticky question. And it’s not the first time I’ve been asked it. But in your case, I think the answer is to ask Dax to try, but explain to him that you have ongoing nerve damage, and that that has certain physical consequences. Don’t talk to him about the psychological side of things, because that gives him licence to blame himself for any result. Let him try, give him permission to come in the process, and at the end of it, if it hasn’t worked, then make sure he knows that you still enjoyed it anyway.
“And while we’re on the subject,” he went on, “that’s actually a perfect excuse to explain why you haven’t asked him to touch you so far, and why you’re not angry about him coming in his sleep. The short version is that you know he wants sex, butyou’ve been too concerned about your physical injuries to take the risk of branching out.”
I scoffed. “Won’t he see through that? I mean, it’s a pretty flimsy excuse.”
“And yet, it’s also mostly true. All except the bit about you knowing that he was waiting for sex. Dimari are certainly not stupid, and I would caution you against taking any of these deceptions too far. But at the same time, they’re also surprisingly determined to think the best of their masters, and will usually latch onto any excuse that justifies the point of view they’re trying to maintain. To a certain extent, yes, that is manipulative on our part. But given the limitations of a dimari’s free will, I’ve yet to find a workable way around that.”
I narrowed my eyes at Aiden, through the comm link. “Kade’s not listening to this conversation, is he?”
Aiden barked out a laugh. “God, no. He’s in the kitchen cooking breakfast.” A momentary look of sorrow crossed his face. “There are some things I tell him, and plenty of others that he’s just not able to understand.”
The look on Aiden’s face made me reevaluate my opinion of him. Based on what he was saying, he was not some divine sage who had cracked the code of dimari happiness. Rather, he was cobbling together bits and pieces of lore that had the desired effect of minimising pain on both sides, while at the same time, acknowledging the very real gaps in his strategies. It was oddly reassuring to realise that he didn’t have all the answers – perhaps only because it gave me more leeway in making a few mistakes of my own.
“I don’t want to hurt him,” I admitted, trusting that Aiden would take my concerns seriously. “And I think it’s going to take a little while to get my head around the whole sex thing, but I don’t want to take advantage of him in the process.”
“I know. And I’m glad. But sometimes, not hurting him involves doing things that delve into morally grey areas, as far as Alliance ethics is concerned.” He gave me a smile that was half resigned, half encouraging. “Read through the document I sent you. Have a think about how it all applies to your particular case. And good luck. Feel free to call me back anytime. I’m always here to help.”
I sat on the bed for several long minutes after I ended the call, letting my eyes drift over the document. Sex with Dax. Getting naked with Dax. Letting someone touch me, when hardly anyone had, since the day the surgeons had put me back together. It was tempting to sweep the whole idea under the rug.