... She paused again. "I've never felt what I did when I read those books. I mean, never. Regular sex doesn't do anything for me, it's..." "Empty? No what you were looking for?" "Yeah, and I thought, since you had them, I could ask you about it." I stopped for a long time. I grabbed a glass of iced kfi, and some sugar, and sat down at the table. "Kathy, I've had those books on my shelves for over five hundred years. Yeah, Rice is a hot writer, and her ideas are great, but they're just fantasies. I found them as exciting as you did... well, maybe not, but I know how you feel." "You mean, you don't do..." "I didn't say that." A thought burned in my mind, like a candle. Did I want to do this? I though about the question as we sat there silently, her eyes saddened by what she must have thought was my rejection. The more the though rolled around my mind, the clearer the answer became. She did. So did I. "Have you ever done anything like..." "Like that? Yeah..." I smiled, wistful, I think, " a while ago, but not from the top." "You're a bottom?" she said, not quite believing that I'd said that. "Well, yeah, when the mood strikes me to go out, like to Rhysh or something, yeah, I tend to be bottom." "Oh." She said it like that meant that it was all over. "Kathy, the best masters and mistresses are those that were once slaves themselves... Ask Lynn." "Lynn?" "Ever here of a place called Rhysh?" "No... oh, wait, isn't that the Valley of Rhysh? I was told by my AI that I'd learn about that place when I was older." Which meant that when you were younger, someone instructed your friendly neighborhood AI to not tell you about things like that, probably under it's own discretion. |