Visibly rattled, Palmer thought, ‘But I’m not used to that…’ All this time, whenever he was with someone, he had always been the one in control. The partners he tended to choose were nearly always the sycophantic types, just happy to obey Palmer’s every command because he was the one with the money they hoped to benefit from. It wasn’t because he particularly liked dominating others that he did things that way—it was mostly out of necessity. At the start of an encounter, he needed to regulate the pain he received from another person’s touch. It was only after he had already lost his senses that his partners were free to do what they wanted with him. But he should have expected how different it would be with Kade. Palmer had thought he could at least be whipped into going along with what

