There had been more than one lover who wanted Rylan as a Domme and a woman, but couldn’t, (or wouldn’t, they thought with a twinge of sadness), accept them as a man. For now, all signs pointed to Maddie understanding the difference between someone wearing a strap-on and a man wearing a packer because it was a piece of themselves as much as a hand or a foot. Her good manners and the cold weren’t the only reasons she fought the urge to run. She needed to see this through for her own sake, prove to herself that she was comfortable enough in her own skin to chase after a happy ending. He smiled again. “But yeah, there have definitely been times, usually when I’m a little tipsy so, you know, inhibitions,” he waved goodbye at the air, “that the odd embrace with certain guys in the past that… well, it’s made me think about it. When small things went haywire in my own apartment, I tried to fix it myself, partly because I had concluded that being self-sufficient didn’t mean just paying my bills but also figuring out why the tap was leaking without intervention.