Divine Solace

  He went back to his knees and slid tiredly onto the mattress inside the cage. Lyda bent, locked the door. "I have some things to do," she told Gen. "Sit with him. No talking. Come to me when he's asleep."

  Noah had turned on his side, facing away from them, his back rounded, knees drawn up. Lyda met Gen's gaze and mouthed, "Peacefully asleep."

  Gen nodded and lowered herself to the floor beside the cage. A mandate not to talk was probably a good idea, since it seemed like her words had been the straw to set off his rage. But when she'd held him, he'd leaned into her.

  Maybe words really weren't what were needed. Gen lay down on her side outside the cage, slid up close to it and put her hand through, resting it on his hip. She also threaded one leg through, pressing her toes against the bottom of his curved foot. Without the bars, she could have spooned with him.

  She caressed his rib cage, felt him breathe in and out. Kneading his muscles, stroking his bare spine with her knuckles, gliding over the rise of his buttocks, she felt driven by a not-incongruous mix of maternal feelings with those of a protective lover. She watched his shoulders as closely as Lyda would, so she saw when they began to ease, his head sinking deeper into the pillow. Eventually his even breath told her he slept. Peacefully. Remarkable after the display of strife, but maybe when that broken part of his mind was torn open, exhaustion overwhelmed him more quickly.

  Unfortunately the aftermath didn't have the same effect on her. She was rattled to the core. Both by the incident itself--Noah being attacked, his reaction to it--and how this might change how she felt about being part of all of this. She needed information, answers.

  When fifteen minutes had passed and his rest seemed untroubled, she went to find Lyda. Though Gen was reluctant to leave him alone, she was pretty sure Lyda wouldn't have told her to leave him when he was peacefully asleep unless she was sure he'd be safe. Being trusted to determine what "peacefully" meant indicated Lyda trusted her judgment on Noah's care. Gen already knew a good Mistress didn't do that lightly. While a part of her wanted to react to the knowledge in a way similar to how she'd felt when M let her do the books for Tea Leaves, she was too fragile to feel much about that.

  Lyda was sitting on the back stoop, studying the sunset. When Gen sat down next to her, the woman gave her a nod, offered her a sip from her glass of wine. Gen took it, their fingers overlapping before Lyda relinquished it and Gen took a healthy swallow. Then she put it back in her hand.

  "There's more on the table there." Lyda gestured toward the screened porch behind her. "And another glass. Or you can keep sharing mine and we'll refill as needed."

  "Like in medieval times, when lords and ladies shared the same trencher. Brendan told Chloe about that. She said it was romantic. I said it was unsanitary."

  Lyda looked up at her with those fathomless gray eyes, tilted the glass toward her again. "What do you say now?"

  Rather than take it from her hand this time, Gen settled next to her. Brushing a lock of loose hair from her own face, she held it there as Lyda brought the glass to Gen's lips. Gen settled her hand over Lyda's, changing the position of the glass. Lyda's lips had left an imprint on the edge and Gen made sure she put her mouth there, fingers overlapping Lyda's again. Their gazes met, even as Lyda kept tipping the glass. Slow, but intentional, until Gen had several more very generous gulps, the alcohol spreading warmth through her stomach. Then Lyda transferred the glass to Gen's hold.

  "Pour us some more. You looked like you needed that."

  She thought they both did, so Gen topped the glass and brought it back. There were three steps to the stoop and Lyda sat on the top one. Gen sat on the one just below her, the woman's thigh pressed against her upper arm. Lyda shifted, lifting one of those flexible legs and bringing it down on Gen's other side, giving her a nudge so she centered herself between Lyda's knees. Gen adjusted onto a hip, propping her back against Lyda's leg so she could look up into her face. "Are you okay?" she asked.

  "Yeah. It's always hard, to watch him tear himself apart like that. It hasn't happened in a while. Goddamn Elias."

  "Elias?"

  Lyda glanced down at her. "Right. Sometimes you feel like such a natural part of this story, I forget you arrived after we were already a few chapters into it."

  It was a gratifying and unsettling observation, but Gen put that away to listen.

  "Back in New Orleans, Noah belonged to a Master named Elias. Not the worst or best kind of Dom, but Elias had a tendency to get a little carried away with the power aspect of it. Since most healthy subs know how to protect themselves, it was a minor addiction problem, kept in line by that check and balance. Noah was like crack to Elias."

  Gen could well imagine.

  "When Club Progeny's management recognized the risk, thanks to a couple over-the-top sessions," Lyda continued, "Noah's membership was revoked. He was too big a liability. Remember when I said a sub's first responsibility is to care for herself or himself? Well, Progeny took that shit seriously. As they should."

  "Elias wasn't expelled too?"

  "Suspended, for a time, because they treated it as one infraction rather than an affliction. Without Noah's proximity, they might have been right, like a drug user staying away from his drug of preference. But they couldn't control what happened outside the club. Elias moved Noah into his house. One night things went so far, he put Noah in the hospital. Couple broken bones, internal hemorrhaging from being kicked."

  Gen's fingers had come to rest on Lyda's knee. Now they tightened, horror filling her. "Does that happen often in BDSM?"

  "Abuse has no more place in a Dom/sub relationship than any other relationship." The firm set to Lyda's jaw and warning flash in her eyes underscored it. "However, a healthy D/s relationship looks different from a healthy vanilla one, doesn't it? The lines can get confused if the people involved aren't responsible enough."

  Gen thought of the night Lyda had switched her. Her ass had been on fire from the punishment, but she'd also never come so hard in her life. Yes, it definitely looked a little different from a vanilla dating scenario.

  "D/s brings a lot of things to the top, Gen. It's why it's called Risk Awareness Consensual Kink. Human beings have endless communication problems and weaknesses. Ones they sometimes don't recognize the way they should until it's too late. Fortunately, after that incident, Elias realized his. He cut Noah loose. Too little, too late, to my way of thinking, but I tend to be an unforgiving sort."

  Gen wanted to go find the faceless Elias herself and pin him up against a wall with her car. She thought of Noah leaning out over the water, hands gripping the braided nylon lines, holding them taut to keep the boat balanced and flying.

  He was strong, healthy. He could defend himself. But he hadn't. She wanted to say she couldn't comprehend it, but she thought of the person she'd once been, the one who thought if she just kept loving her husband and trying to be a good wife, it would work out. Though she'd wised up fairly quickly, a shadow of what she felt then was undeniably connected to what Lyda was describing about Noah.

  "On its face, it seemed like Elias backing off resolved things. But that cord was only cut in one direction. Elias didn't tell Noah it was over. He simply stopped visiting him in the hospital, and assumed Noah was as done with it as he was. For all the time he'd spent with Noah, he still didn't get it. Not until Noah was discharged."

  Gen shook her head, a futile rejection of what she suspected was coming. "No."

  Lyda nodded. "Noah went home. In his mind, that was to Elias. Thank God, Noah wasn't alone when he was discharged. A fellow sub had picked him up, and when Noah made it clear where he was going, that sub texted her Dom." Lyda's lips twisted. "Ironically, he's a hardcore sadist who can dish out pain like a trained interrogator. Yet he understands where the lines are, more than Elias ever will. His sub, who's also his fiancee, is as fiercely cherished as Noah deserves to be."

  Gen puzzled over that. "I really have a lot to learn about all this."

  "I'd say that g
oes for all of us." Lyda gave her a fond smile, something that helped loosen the band around Gen's stomach. A little.

  "What happened?"

  "Ben, the Master she called, met them at Elias' house. He made sure Elias clarified the relationship was over. Elias handed Noah his things at the door, pretty much threw him out and told him he was done with him. Ordered him to give back his collar."

  Lyda passed an absent hand over her hair as she took another swallow of wine, offered the glass to Gen. "Ben was smart enough to know Elias wasn't cured, and distance was the best plan. Which is where we come in. Ben's boss, Matt Kensington, is a friend of Tyler's, and of course Matt's a Master as well. The D/s community is a tightly knit one. Matt contacted Tyler and told him Noah had a grandmother in Tampa. He suggested Tyler talk to her and figure out a way to get Noah down here. The grandmother has some health issues, so it worked without being a lie. Tyler took Noah under his wing when he first arrived, as a service sub, not sexual, but then he introduced him to me. I got intrigued."

  Gen looked up into Lyda's bemused face. "Do you regret that?"

  "No. He wasn't something I was planning for my life...but he took me by surprise. I find myself unable to let him go. Not because I'm worried about protecting him, though there's that. I like having him around. Have you ever thought about Jesus, Gen?"

  Gen blinked at the shift. "Is this where you tell me you're born-again and ask me if I've accepted Him as my savior?"

  "No." Lyda gave her a light pinch on her shoulder. "You know how it's supposed to be--that Jesus merely wants you to let him into your heart, where he'll love you unconditionally. He doesn't choose which of us to love--he waits for us to make the choice to love him completely, totally, which allows him to love us completely as well." She lifted a shoulder. "Or something to that effect."

  "I've never really thought of it like that."

  "I hadn't either, until I started trying to figure out Noah. And I think the key is there, in a far more earthly sense." Lyda's lips curved faintly. "That boy is definitely not Jesus, though he does have some of the sexy rock star thing going on that Jesus has."

  Gen bit back a startled chuckle. She also had to suppress a little twinge of horror, probably residual guilt from her mother's Baptist roots. Lyda looked at her, sobering.

  "I don't think anyone's ever truly fallen in love with Noah, Gen. They don't look beyond the fact he'll do anything for you, make life easier, do any chore, give you screaming orgasms. Or that he'll take anything you dish out." Her lips tightened and she looked out over the yard. "He has a soft sense of humor, like clouds at sunset, and a mind so sharp he could design aqueducts in Rome. He's generous-hearted, smart and sexy. And when it comes to this, he's totally fucked up in the head, in a way I'm not sure can be fixed."

  Though that brought a wave of dismay, Gen was transfixed by Lyda's face, the emotions reined back behind the carefully chosen words. Lyda had said a D/s relationship didn't look like a vanilla relationship. But some things actually did look the same. Marguerite had told Gen once she was a watcher, a listener, and that she always knew more about people than they realized she did.

  Only someone truly in love with another could show such poignant sorrow and unmitigated intent in that understanding. So whether or not it was clearly stated, Lyda was in love with Noah, the light and dark of him. And she obviously knew that love could bring as much pain as joy, but the latter would be worth any amount of agony.

  It was a feeling Gen had sought for so long. And no matter how she tried to deny it, she was well on her way to finding it with these two. When she looked down, her hand was clasped around Lyda's free one, those fingers linked with hers. As Lyda said, it was like she'd stepped into a story that had just been waiting for her to join it.

  "I don't think that tattoo was meant for any asshole Dom who steps into Noah's path, like Elias," Lyda murmured. "It's like an SOS to the Dom he's meant to be with."

  "A soul mate."

  "I'm too cynical to go that far, but yes, something like that. It's a specific message to a specific person. The irony is, Noah would rescue you or me from a burning building, or lie down across acid so we wouldn't get a single drop on our shoes, but in the end, Gen, it's him who needs saving. From himself. There's a wire that doesn't connect, and if it's possible for that connection to be repaired, it will happen with the person...or people...he's meant to be with. I was arrogant enough to believe I was that person, but the past couple weeks, I'm thinking it might actually take two people, not just one."

  The implication rendered Gen silent, keeping her thinking. Lyda didn't say more than that, offering the glass again. When Gen handed it back, she held onto it long enough to put her mouth on Lyda's knuckles. While doing that, she leaned her head against Lyda's breast as the woman bent her head over hers. Taking and giving comfort.

  "I didn't want to leave him," Gen said against that curve. She felt the edge of Lyda's bra cup beneath the thin blouse, the flesh it cradled. "It cracked me open, seeing him that way. Odd as it sounds, it happened again when I imagined Elias throwing him out, telling him to give back the collar." She was seeing that uncomprehending look in Noah's eyes, the despair he'd shown before he went postal on the boat.

  She closed her eyes. "Which was good, because he was the wrong Dom. But...you're not going to make him leave, right?"

  "No," Lyda said. Her lips brushed Gen's temple, her cheek. "As you go along in life, you realize it isn't finding the perfect guy or girl. It's finding the person who's perfect for you, in the sense life would be a lot worse without them. Noah brings a lot into my life. I'm just trying to figure out what that means to him. What I want to teach him is selfish, but true for the relationship to work. I want to be his choice, not just the Mistress who chose him. I have this inner bitch who wants to be told I'm the one."

  Gen lifted her head to look at her. "Everyone wants to know they're the one. The only."

  "Even if the only means two, not one."

  The reassurance gave Gen's heart a lift, enough that she squeezed Lyda's hand. "I'm familiar with your inner bitch. It's not all that inner."

  "Nice. I'll remember that, rabbit." Lyda tugged her hair, sighed. "It's a unique thing for me, to find one I want to keep. Not just until it wears out. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make sure it never does. But how to work around this, confront it head-on, make peace with it..." She shrugged.

  "Do you know what caused it?"

  Lyda finished the wine, set it aside. When Gen gave the empty glass a quizzical look, she shook her head. "We've both had enough for now. As far as the why... We're a world of broken toys. Sometimes I think whoever made us set us aside in favor of whole, perfect toys elsewhere, and yet the laugh's on them, because we're ten times more fascinating and tougher broken than something that's never been broken at all."

  Gen thought about the inner strength she'd discovered after divorce, destitution. Yeah, it could be like that.

  "Except for his grandmother, Noah is estranged from his family," Lyda said. "His parents rejected him, his father the head of that particular spear. What I've learned through bits and pieces, because Noah doesn't talk about it much, is his father first thought he was gay, then found out it was 'even worse'. He learned his teenage son was a sexual submissive, a hardcore one, and he found out in a pretty graphic way. My guess is he probably stumbled on him in a Dom/sub session with someone older, maybe a college student already in touch with his inner Dom. Whatever it was, Dad couldn't wrap his mind around it, saw it as a sickness."

  Lyda took a breath. "Ben's fiancee did some digging. Marcie does corporate investigations and is damn good at it. Ben says she could find Jimmy Hoffa. Noah's father had him committed to some whacked deprogramming institution at seventeen. Nothing took, of course, because Noah is...Noah." Her lips twisted. "That's the irony. There's this steel core to him that can't be changed. Noah knows what he is, and you can't knock him off that tightrope with a sledgehammer. Not even with enough meds to turn someone into
a zombie."

  Gen sucked in a breath. Lyda closed her hand alongside her throat, thumb rubbing a soothing caress. "At twenty-one," she continued, "They washed their hands of him. Noah's father signed him out of the institution, handed him a duffle bag of clothes and told him he was dead to them. He was never to come back, call them, what have you."

  Gen thought of Noah's duffle. It was old but carefully tended, with a few mended corners reinforced with heavy duty canvas thread, perhaps like that used to stitch boat sails. Oh God. It had to be the same one.

  The scenario was a mirror of the scene with Elias. Of every Dom who'd ever cut him loose. It was happening again and again...

  "The mental institution may have added layers," Lyda said, "but I think it was the betrayal of his family that severed that wire in his head. Or it could have been there from the beginning. Sometimes we're born the way we are."

  She brought Gen to sit on the step next to her then, the two of them leaning against the door. Lyda had an arm around Gen's shoulders, fingers caressing the top of her breast. "So that's that. You're now inside our crazy little world. How does dinner sound?"

  Lyda had been inside this story for a while, and though the events of the day may have stressed her out, apparently she was ready to turn things in a different direction. When Lyda's thumb teased her nipple, a spiral of arousal disrupted Gen's pensiveness, increasing when Lyda's eyes heated. Despite the turmoil in Gen's mind, her own body was obviously ready to make that same turn. "That's a nice, tight little point there. I think you need the distraction. We all do. But first you're going to need food. Both of you." Lyda kept stroking, tweaking, as Gen did her best not to squirm.

  "He's going to need me to be harsh tonight," their Mistress mused. "I'm in the mood to take you along for the same ride, since I've been thinking about you ever since your visit this morning. I want to run you both into the fucking ground."