Manties in a Twist Read online

  Riptide Publishing

  PO Box 6652

  Hillsborough, NJ 08844

  www.riptidepublishing.com

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. All person(s) depicted on the cover are model(s) used for illustrative purposes only.

  Manties in a Twist

  Copyright © 2016 by J.A. Rock

  Cover art: Kanaxa, kanaxa.com

  Editor: Delphine Dryden, delphinedryden.com/editing

  Layout: L.C. Chase, lcchase.com/design.htm

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher, and where permitted by law. Reviewers may quote brief passages in a review. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Riptide Publishing at the mailing address above, at Riptidepublishing.com, or at [email protected].

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-347-6

  First edition

  April, 2016

  Also available in paperback:

  ISBN: 978-1-62649-348-3

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  Look, I’ll never stop missing Hal, but this Subs Club my friends started to review suck-ass doms isn’t gonna bring him back or give him justice. For me, it’s just another chance to hang out with my friends, even if they think I’m too dumb to understand the important work we’re supposedly doing.

  But maybe I’m not as dumb as they think—at least I know when I’ve got a good thing going. Which is why I just moved in with my dom. Ryan’s awesome possum. He’s really short, never makes me feel stupid, and is up for anything. One word: costumes. Two more words: women’s underwear. We’re all about the lace, no leather.

  Except when we do pony play. We first tried it as a joke, but turns out I’m ballin’ at it. Now PetPlayFest is coming up, and I wanna take down the Subs Club’s archrival, Cinnamon the ponygirl, in the horse show.

  My friends think I’m spending too much time with Ryan and ignoring my obligations to the group. But since when is friendship an obligation? Ryan’s my first serious relationship, and I want to take it . . . seriously. At some point I need to think about my future, not my past.

  —Kamen

  For Cleveland

  About Manties in a Twist

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Dear Reader

  Acknowledgments

  Also by J.A. Rock

  About the Author

  More like this

  “Behold.” Amanda stepped back from the wall where she’d just hung Ryan’s and my newest amazerbeam piece of art.

  Ryan and me, we couldn’t even talk for a minute, that’s how glorious this painting was.

  It was of a hare dressed in a black and gold shirt with puffy sleeves, like from Shakespeare times, and a floppy cap and striped pants. The hare had a gold watch in his pocket and a serious look, and was just a generally very regal and well-dressed rabbit. The background was a sky blue that really made the brown fur pop.

  “You’re so talented.” Ryan had this voice that was sort of like Boots, the monkey from Dora the Explorer. It was, I mean, a little deeper than that, but not much. He was super short—almost legit midget short, and I got that maybe midget wasn’t the right word anymore, but you know what I mean. He spoke really aggressively though, so you still took him seriously even though he sounded like a cartoon. “It goes perfectly with the walls.”

  Amanda frowned at the painting. “It took forever to get the eyes right.”

  Amanda was one of Ryan’s friends from high school. Ryan actually had tons of friends from way back, which was cool. Because I was, like, intensely close with my friends Miles, Gould, and Dave, and I liked having a boyfriend who understood the concept of friends you go way back with.

  “It’s huhhhh-mazing.” I admired the detail work on the well-dressed hare’s puffy sleeves. “The guys are gonna shit when they see it.” Okay, Dave would think it was cool. Miles would think it was dumb. And Gould probably wouldn’t say anything, but he’d give me that look, the one that was like a thumbs-up with his eyes.

  Ryan turned to me. “We should figure out when we’re doing the housewarming party.”

  “Let’s do it Saturday.”

  He put his hands on his hips, which for some reason made him look even shorter. “We don’t have curtains yet.”

  “So we’ll hit up Triple B later.” I was always down for Bed Bath & Beyond.

  He smiled. Dave thought Ryan’s smile was demonic, but I thought it was cute: his lips pulled back a little bit, and the edges of his top and bottom teeth met, and I could see where he kind of looked like a doll that had come to life. But why did a doll coming to life have to be a bad thing?

  “You really wanna go again?” he asked.

  “Always.” I high-fived him. This guy and I, we’d been making Bed Bath & Beyond our bitch. We’d gotten like four gift cards from his parents and three from mine, and had blown through almost all of them. We’d bought a vegetable spiralizer, organic shams for the sofa, a Pasta Boat, and a Mighty Blaster garden hose nozzle that Ryan rigged so it would go on our shower. He was really handy, as long as he had a step stool.

  We kissed. I squeezed him and lifted him off the floor, and we went at it until Amanda cleared her throat. “Um, so can I do my laundry now?”

  I set him down.

  Ryan stepped back. “Of course. I’ll show you the laundry room.”

  We had a laundry room.

  We had basically a house. I mean, it was an apartment, but it was the whole second floor of a house. We were on the opposite side of town from Dave and Gould, which kinda sucked—my old place had been really close to them. But it was closer to the Green Kitchen, where I worked. Maybe now that I had more space, I could get the guys to come over instead of always going to them.

  Ryan and Amanda headed to the back of the house. That was the deal: she’d paint us a picture of a well-dressed hare, and in exchange, she could do her laundry for free at our apartment whenever she wanted. I glanced at the hare again. We’d wanted a unique painting, and had been trying to decide between a hare and a megalodon, which were my and Ryan’s favorite animals, respectively. I was glad we’d gone with the hare, because you could make a hare look classy, but that was harder to do with a megalodon.
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  I went to the kitchen and got, like, weirdly, nonsexually excited by the contact paper in the silverware drawer when I opened it to get a spoon. We’d done that. We’d scrubbed and decorated this whole place, with some help from our friends. Like, I’m talking painted the bathroom, set fire to a pile of dead earwigs we found behind the fridge—which almost did not go well, so if you’re thinking of trying it, maybe do it outside—and put knobs on the closet doors and picked out bedding that complemented the walls.

  I wasn’t a master of introspection, but I figured my happiness was about more than contact paper or the square footage or even the well-dressed hare.

  I finally felt like a grown-up.

  My friends considered me the least mature member of the circle—probably on the basis of the number of fart jokes per hangout session. And because I did stuff like trying to put Dawn in the dishwasher when I ran out of actual dish detergent. I know, forgive me for thinking something called dish soap could be put in something called the dishwasher. But now I was living with a guy I loved, and I knew how to do stuff like wash windows with vinegar and newspapers and clean the baseboards. I was a fucking adult.

  I grabbed some animal crackers and a jar of peanut butter from the cabinet and went to the table.

  My phone made a lightsaber sound. I took it out of my pocket and checked. Text from Dave: Hey, buddy. Wanna come with Maya and me laterz for location scouting?

  For a few seconds I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I texted What are you talking about? and then I realized he probably meant the kink fair, and then he was like, The kink fair. It was cool he was asking me, even though I figured it was mostly because Miles was getting ready to bring a kid into his life, and Gould was working. I wasn’t really anyone’s first choice to handle club business.

  Basically, last year, my friends and me had formed the Subs Club, an online group where submissives and bottoms could talk about stuff like BDSM safety and watching out for doms who sucked. We’d started it because our other best friend, Hal, got killed a couple of years ago by a dom named Bill Henson who didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.

  I bit the head off a hippo. Animal cracker dust got on my screen as I thought about how to reply.

  The club had run into some trouble at first, because we’d kinda violated the privacy of a bunch of local doms by reviewing them on our site. So we’d taken down the review blog and started a discussion forum called the Sounding Board. But a few months ago, Dave had decided we should take the Subs Club on the road. We’d given a talk about safe BDSM at a local college, and then Dave wanted to host a kink fair in the spring and make it free to the public. So he’d asked an all-female kink group called Finger Bang if they’d help us plan it. Maya, who was in the Subs Club and Finger Bang, was kind of being a liaison.

  I texted back: In like flynn.

  I opened the peanut butter and started dipping my animal crackers in it.

  Then I remembered something.

  I texted Dave again. Shit sorry forgot Ry and I are going to look at curtains.

  I waited, but Dave didn’t write back.

  Ryan returned a few minutes later and stole a camel from me, and we made out a little more.

  “So Trips B tonight? For real?” I had to work the next two days, but I’d totally find time to put the curtains up if it meant our place would look awesome for Saturday.

  “You bet.” He bit my lower lip and held on, but then I stood, which meant he either had to release me or do tiptoes. He chose tiptoes. Dude never gives up.

  We stared at each other for a moment and laughed, and then he let go and went to the fridge to check the Capri Sun sitch. I got out my phone.

  He rummaged in the fridge. “We’re out of Pacific Cooler.”

  “Yeah, dude.” I started a text to my mom. “We should hit up Giant Eagle after curtains.”

  He straightened, letting the fridge door fall shut. “Did you ever find your Giant Eags card?”

  “It was in the washing machine. Looks okay, though.”

  I texted Mom that the housewarming party was set for Saturday. She wrote back that she’d be there, and then I got this, like, intensely mommish text that she was proud of me, with lots of exclamation points.

  It was nice to have one person who was a hundred percent on board with my choice to move in with Ryan, since all my friends had been like, Too soon, man. Ryan and I had only known each other four months, and I guess they all figured I hadn’t thought this through. But when I’d told Mom, she’d said it was great that I was always willing to take risks and try new things. Which I wasn’t even sure was true, seeing as how I’d pretty much lived in the same place and done the same things my whole life, except for when I went to college for a hot minute. And even then, I’d picked a school an hour away.

  Mom also texted that my dad would be visiting town next Tuesday through Thursday. Which was random. Dad lived in Oregon, and he hadn’t come here to visit in years—always paid for me to fly out and see him. He and Mom got along okay, but not great, and he and I were . . . I mean, I missed him, but not to the point where I couldn’t wait until Christmas to see him.

  Ryan came over to the table with a strawberry-kiwi Cap Sun. “You look very serious.”

  I glanced up. “My dad’s coming to town.”

  “I thought he never came here.”

  I focused on the screen again. “Yeah. The last time was, like, four years ago.”

  “When’s he coming?”

  “Tuesday.” I hovered my thumbs over the keyboard. “Think I should invite him to see me play?”

  I was playing at Pitch, a local bar, on Wednesday night. Mostly covers, but I was thinking of debuting a couple of original songs too.

  “Yeah.” Ryan peeled the straw off the side of the foil packet. “I don’t know your dad. But he’d probably love to see you play.”

  “Well, now you’ll get to meet him.” Ryan and my mom were already ridick in love, and I figured my dad would probably like Ryan a lot too. My dad loved anyone who knew how to jerry-rig stuff. And Ryan was nothing if not a jerry-rigger.

  “Cool.” He stabbed the straw into the foil and took a sip. “This tastes like car air freshener.”

  Amanda came into the kitchen, and we hung out with her for another hour and a half while she waited for her laundry to finish. Between the three of us, we ate basically all the snacks in the house. By the time she peaced out, Ryan and I were in too much of a food coma for Bed Bath & Beyond.

  “How about we take our pants off instead?” Ryan was already unzipping his jeans.

  I groaned and undid mine too. Slid them down and stepped out of them. “This feels sooo much better.”

  “Your boxers have a hole in the back.”

  I glanced down over my shoulder. “That’s on purpose. It’s my easy-access hole.” I stripped off my shirt too, because it was hot as balls. I rubbed the hair on my stomach to make it fuzz up.

  He walked behind me and put his arms around me. His chin didn’t even reach my shoulder, and his tiny hands laced over my abs. He was a friggin’ adorable doll who’d come to life, and nothing was going to stop me from thinking that, even if I didn’t say it out loud.

  His size had taken a little getting used to. I was six four and still had my jock muscles from high school. I’d tried a million times to explain to Ryan how much I loved his tininess, but he was sensitive about it, so it was hard to find ways of, like, expressing my enthusiasm that didn’t sound insulting. For instance, I’d learned not to say, “It’s like when you have a Chihuahua and you’re always afraid you’re gonna accidentally sit on it.” Which I’d meant as a compliment, because Chihuahuas are cute as fuck and tough little assholes, but Ryan had kind of been like, “Hey, bend over and we’ll see if you feel like sitting on anything ever again.”

  So I kept my admiration secret. I loved that he looked sort of frail, like those ghost kids in The Others who can’t go into the sunlight, but was actually so fierce that he surprised me some
times with his strength. I loved that I submitted to him even though he couldn’t have physically overpowered me. I felt like his fucking dragon on a chain. I’d do anything he told me, but also I’d murder anyone who tried to hurt him.

  He kissed my shoulder. “Let’s pass out on the couch for a while, then I’ll access your hole.”

  He was all romantic-as-tits like that. I put my hands over his and squeezed. “Love you.”

  I’d said “I love you” to him for the first time a couple of weeks ago, and he’d said it back like it was no big thing. My friends all made this huge deal out of When’s too soon to say that shit? But I didn’t care. I didn’t think you had to wait a certain amount of time to love somebody. You could love him right away and then change your mind later if he turned out to be a dick. And if you knew you loved him, why not tell him?

  “Love you too.” He hip-bumped me toward the living room. We waddled side by side, heading for the couch.

  He stopped. “Oh shit. Look.”

  I turned to him, then glanced at the floor where he was looking.

  There was a pair of red lace panties on the carpet, a dryer sheet clinging to them.

  “Huh.” I wasn’t sure what to do.

  He poked them with his toe. “Amanda must have dropped them.”

  “We can give them back to her at the housewarming thing.”

  We stared at the panties. I didn’t know much about girls’ underwear, but these looked nice. Deep red and not too frilly, and the patterns in the lace were, like, intricate. I got a little hypnotized by them, and my stomach tightened, which was either something to do with sexual feelings or with a whole package of Chips Ahoy.

  Ryan reached down and grabbed them. “I’ll just . . .”

  I didn’t want him to take them away yet. “Are those Victoria’s Secret or something?”

  “Uh . . .” He checked the label. “I don’t know. They’re like a French name?”

  “Can I touch them?”

  He looked at me like maybe I had a guy-with-the-lotion-in-Silence-of-the-Lambs past I wasn’t telling him about. “You want to touch my friend’s panties?”