Page 1 of We Own Each Other

Part One

Luke

CHAPTER ONE

I COULDN’T HELP thinking of him again.

Even as I sat in my Dom’s bedroom, lounging across his bed, donning his collar, I couldn’t help picturing the young man I had been with only a few weeks ago. I was a Switch, but I had resigned myself to the life of a Sub in exchange for the prestige and lifestyle being the head Sub of the Griff family afforded me. I had nearly forgotten what it was like to dominate someone until my Dom himself had asked me to train his son, a Sub, to prepare him for the day he’d be sent off to be with a Dom arranged by his parents, which all ended over a week ago.

It was all very odd and sorta romantic in a gross way, but who was I to judge what the rich did with their offspring?

The upper crust always made such a big deal about their bloodlines. In the cutthroat world of stock prices and boards of directors, having a Dom at the top of the food chain from within the family was always key to maintaining power. I always thought money gave you freedom, but after being immersed in the chaos that was the Griff household, it was clear money only added more shackles.

I hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but then I had him under me: Anthony Griff. Formerly the young master of the house, he was relegated to nothing more than my temporary Sub. His sudden absence wasn’t apparent to most people in the house, including his parents, but I felt it intensely. It ignited something inside me that had lain dormant for as long as I had been part of the Griff household: my Dom tendencies. It was no longer enough to be commanded and dominated. I wanted to do some of the dominating, too.

That was the problem with being a Switch; our secondary sex needs could be fulfilled just as easily by Subs or Doms, but we always longed to be both ourselves. It was an annoying balancing act that never ended because the only way we could ever be truly satisfied was if we had both a Dom and a Sub.

Unfortunately, Doms and Subs were easily jealous. Sharing their respective Dom or Sub with someone else was beyond comprehension unless humiliation and cuckolding were a Sub’s thing. Still, even then, the Dom wouldn’t be able to handle sharing a Sub, even with another Sub. So official partnerships were almost entirely out of the question for Switches, which was how we had earned the negative connotation of being easy lays for either group. We were usually no more than a way to tie things over until our partners found an official Dom or Sub of their own that could be satisfied with just them.

We could really only ever be satisfied with other Switches, but for every fifty non-secondary sex births, there was one Dom or Sub birth. For every one million Dom or Sub births, there was maybe one Switch birth, and that was just a generous guess on my part. My kind were so rare that there weren’t even accurate birthing statistics, especially since most people didn’t get confirmation until their nineteenth birthday. There was no accounting for those who moved to countries with less stringent documentation practices, deaths that occurred before the person could manifest, or even those who were misidentified as one or the other.

The key marker for Doms and Subs was a specific hormone not present in those without a secondary sex. For Doms and Subs, it was pretty clear which was which. Unfortunately, Switches could have more of one hormone than the other, depending on our mood and predilections at the time. Thankfully, I was confirmed as a Switch pretty early. Most others suffered until they were tested at just the right time, when their hormones were more balanced. But even after being confirmed, life wasn’t much easier.

If we needed partners or doctors, we had to sign up as either a Dom or a Sub because no one specialized in Switches. It was easiest to choose one or the other, whatever our preference, but that would never satisfy the other half of us. We always felt partially empty. Half-people living our lives the only way we knew how, since no one else could teach us. My mother had been a Dom, my father a Sub, and while they did their best to teach me both, neither could guide me on how to live beyond the way they knew as their respective secondary sexes.

It was partly my fault, anyway. They would have had an easier time with me if I could have picked one or the other, but I never could. In truth, I had no preference for being a Sub or Dom. I liked both equally, but when I met the Rutherford Griff while working as a Sub waiter in a bar that catered to Doms, his violet gaze had pinned me in place so powerfully it was unlike anything I had experienced before. Stronger Doms were out there, but Griff was the first of his social caliber that I could get close to.

He must have felt how pliable I was, and even after confessing to him that I was a Switch, he still found me all the more intriguing and offered me a job as his personal assistant, which I would learn later was code for:

Be my Sub.

It came with plenty of perks. I got to live rent-free in their huge mansion, and I got health care, including vision and dental, completely comped. I didn’t have to worry about being over-dominated since he had a whole harem of Subs he rotated through, which left me time to myself whenever I pleased, and I got paid on top of that.

All I had to do was satisfy him at least once a week and even attend to a few of his errands just for the sake of public perception. I had no idea my benefits would someday include training his son to be a good Sub.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t accounted for how much I would enjoy dominating him. I probably never would have known how much I had enjoyed dominating someone else until I was put to the task of dominating Anthony Griff. He was the sole son and heir to Griff Industries, one of the country's largest and most profitable conglomerates. That was until he turned out to be a Sub. At that point, he was entirely useless to the Griffs, nothing more than cattle to be sold off for a paltry sum.

The poor kid.

I felt a little bad for him. Most people started showing signs of their secondary sex, or lack thereof, early on, but nothing was certain until their confirmation at nineteen, which would be when the manifestation happened. His parents had been so sure that he would be a Dom that they didn’t see any of the signs, not that I did either at the time. But looking back, how could he not have been a Sub?

He was always so quiet and introverted, willingly going along with every whim his father and mother had for him. A young Dom would’ve been so much more rebellious and ambitious. A Dom wanted. A Sub only wanted to please. I'd known the young man for only a year, and I could tell. His parents’ ignorance and neglect of their one and only son couldn’t be clearer when I, a stranger, could tell their child was a Sub before they could.

Thinking back to those training days with the Griff heir, my cock was tenting the front of my pajama pants. Just when I was about to indulge in those stored-away memories of dominating Anthony Griff, my hand slipping down under the waistband of my pants, a gruff voice interrupted me.

“It’s not like you to start without me.”

Rutherford was standing in the doorway of his master bathroom, a black robe hanging loosely around his frame. I had only been living in this weird world of corporate politics and immense wealth for a year. When I met this man a year ago, he was bold, powerful, and commanding. His head was covered in thick black hair, perfectly coiffed. His violet eyes were clear and piercing, too. He had appeared mature, not old. But now, he was a shell of his former self.

From the day his son was confirmed as a Sub, he had aged at least ten years in a few weeks. His sideburns were silver, permanent wrinkles had formed in the corners of his eyes, and he frowned more often than he smiled. He seemed weak.

He seemed like someone I would dominate.

With a sigh, I pulled my hand out of my pants.

“You know I’m not a regular Sub. I don’t have to wait for my Dom to play.”

To my surprise, Rutherford chuckled. He wasn’t a playful man, even in the bedroom, so hearing him laugh was almost uncomfortable.