The Gift of Strength Read Online M.A. Innes

Categories Genre: BDSM, Erotic, M-M Romance Tags Authors:
Advertisement

Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 72494 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 362(@200wpm)___ 290(@250wpm)___ 242(@300wpm)
<<<<345671525>76
Advertisement


I wasn’t holding my breath for that to happen anytime soon, though.

I might’ve had a pair but it didn’t seem like I’d ever grow a pair…it turned out those were very different things. I wished someone had told me that in health class when I was a kid. I’d have tried to learn how to be a lot more forceful if I’d known how important it would be in life.

Quitting my disaster of a previous job had drained any and all ability to handle anything like this, and the fact that little old ladies were intimidating me proved my point.

My pair seemed to be lost.

But even though I was empty at this point, I was still proud of myself for turning things around. The ladies might be rude but they weren’t threatening to get me fired if I didn’t sleep with them and they didn’t tell me dirty jokes about how big their penises were.

And if Amanda actually made them leave me alone, my job would be perfect.

I was just going to ignore the fact that I seemed to be an asshole magnet. But it did make me feel better about my crush on Bex because if he wasn’t interested in me, that probably meant he was actually a good guy.

The logic might’ve been questionable, but I wasn’t going to poke at it too much.

“I told you that if you didn’t tell him, I would.” Amanda seemed to think this needed to be fixed. She was slightly pushy but respected boundaries even though she liked to grin and call them limits.

I’d given up pretending not to know what the BDSM reference meant but I did my best to hurry the conversation past it any time she brought it up. Eventually, I was going to find where my pair had wandered off to and tell her that she needed to find her own sub to torment…but that would’ve meant telling her that I knew what that meant, so that was out of the question.

Life was fun.

And more confusing than I’d thought it would be when I was a kid.

“If you tell him, I’m going to start asking why half the neighborhood seems to think you’re dating Bex.” It was weird but none of my business unless she kept trying to drive me crazy.

Her sigh said I’d won.

For now.

But that was all I needed because we’d made our way back to the store and I actually had work to do. The front window was still only half-decorated because I’d run off to find Amanda as soon as those dirty old ladies had headed for the bakery.

They’d looked too suspicious to be doing anything other than planning a bank heist or going to interrogate Bex. They thought he was a Dom and into…things…and I was a little worried they’d decided to confront him about it.

Around his parents.

The internet seemed to imply Doms could handle anything but just because they thought he was a Dom didn’t mean he was a Dom and nobody needed their parents knowing things like that.

Especially his parents.

They were…crazy?

Yes, they were nuts.

There just wasn’t a more polite word for it.

His father griped and pouted and stomped and his mother glared at anyone she didn’t approve of…which seemed to be everyone who disagreed with her. One time, I’d even found myself agreeing with her that mint was wonderful, and I hated it.

The last time she’d been in when the dirty ladies were there, she’d refused to even acknowledge them because she’d said they’d always been troublemakers and she wasn’t rewarding bad behavior.

And she’d said that in front of them.

That was the last time I’d been sent to get treats for the shop because I’d very patiently explained to Amanda that heart attacks were not part of my job description. So we’d agreed I wouldn’t have to go on my own again, but she’d somehow talked me into some kind of exposure therapy where I had to go to the store when she did.

I’d been had.

I knew that.

But I wasn’t sure how to get out of it.

She always made the most ridiculous things sound logical.

At some point I was going to be a strong, confident person and figure out better boundaries, but it didn’t seem like that would happen any time soon.

Yep, my pair had gotten lost in the mail somehow.

At least she wasn’t throwing tissue boxes and pencils at me for missing a comma, though, so things could’ve definitely been worse…and since hiding in the store was easy, the job wasn’t that stressful overall. Amanda even knew she’d pushed me to the point of crazy already, so as soon as she walked in, she went back to work too.

People who actually left me alone to do my job were my favorite kind of people.

For some reason, saying things like that kept getting me labeled as an introvert, but I liked having others around in reasonable doses…just not when I was trying to get shit done. I didn’t think that made me anything but someone who had good common sense…and manners.


Advertisement

<<<<345671525>76

Advertisement