Okay, she had me on that one.
“Being a Submissive isn't about being weak,” she said. “It's about giving over control to someone.”
I was suddenly very aware of the fact that she was standing less than a foot behind me.
“Tanner taught me what it meant to truly submit, to trust someone so much that you know you don't have to worry about anything, that you know they'll take care of you.”
I'd never liked it when she'd talked about Tanner before. I really didn't like it now. The thought of someone having her so vulnerable, so trusting...
And what did all of that mean? What did it mean to be vulnerable to someone in bed? Real vulnerability, not just some emotional shit that rom-coms try to sell you.
Images flashed through my mind.
Nori blindfolded and naked.
Handcuffed and naked.
Tied up...and naked.
I closed my eyes and tried to push the images away.
“We sometimes went to a club where I saw other Doms and Subs, where I learned about that world. I was in it for almost four years.”
Four years?
I decided I must've fallen asleep at some point and this had to be some sort of weird, erotic dream. Weird because there was no way sweet, innocent Nori was into S&M.
And erotic because the idea of sweet, innocent Nori into S&M turned me on more than I cared to admit.
“I don't understand what this has to do with me.” My voice was rough, and I didn't need to look down to know that my shorts weren't doing anything to hide my erection.
The idea of Nori in any sort of sexual situation would make me hard. Thinking of her in even my vague understanding of the BDSM lifestyle was making it impossible to think straight.
I heard her take a deep breath and wondered what she was steeling herself to say next. What else could she say after that insane proclamation?
“I think you might benefit from...learning from me.”
I did turn now, shock overriding everything else. “Excuse me?”
The color that had faded from her face came back with a vengeance. “I think that learning about...I think that you could benefit from...oh, shit. I don't know how to explain it.”
“Try,” I said dryly. “Because this is getting weird.”
“Fuck,” she muttered and looked down, her fingers twisting in front of her. “I should go. This was a bad idea.”
“Nori.” I started to reach for her, then realized that probably wasn’t a good idea, especially considering the subject matter. And the fact that I was sporting a very visible hard-on. “Whatever you were thinking, you thought it was important. Just tell me.”
“I was thinking that you should be a Dom,” she blurted it out, then clapped a hand over her mouth.
I would've laughed at the gesture if I hadn't been still playing that sentence over in my head.
She thought I should be a Dom.
As in kinky sex with handcuffs and whips and leather.
Yup, definitely a weird, erotic dream. There was no other rational explanation.
“A Dominant is all about control,” she said. “And you lost control. So being a Dom would give it back. At least some of it.”
I took a step back to put a little more distance between us. If I hadn't been sure that Nori didn't have a cruel bone in her body, I would've thought she was messing with me. But all I saw on her face was sincerity. Well, that and embarrassment.
“I know this is crazy.” She was talking faster now. “But I really think getting that sense of control back would help you.”
“So you want to take me to some S&M club with a bunch of freaks that'll probably be turned on by my scars and have me order some stranger to fuck me?”
It wasn't until I saw her entire body tense that I realized what I said.
She told me something extremely personal, and I said something completely insulting.
“I didn't,” I started. “Fuck. I'm sorry, Nori. I didn't mean it that way.”
She gave me a nod, but her expression was still tight. “It's okay. Entirely my fault. I shouldn't have brought it up. It was out of line. Inappropriate.” She started to turn. “I'll call Father O'Toole and let him know that he needs to find someone to take my place.”
She actually got two steps before I realized she was serious. She was going to leave.
And I didn't want her to.
I reached out and grabbed her arm, holding her as I closed the rest of the distance between us. I looked down at her, the six-inch difference in our heights putting her right at my chest. I was suddenly aware that I wasn't wearing a shirt.
I could smell her now, the scent of that same shampoo and soap she'd used back in Texas. The same clean, crisp smell I'd come to recognize without consciously trying to.
The wanting hit me right in the gut, a sharp, painful twist that was stronger than any desire I'd felt before. If I'd thought I wanted her after that dream, it was nothing like what I felt now. This was more primal, more urgent.
“What did you mean?” I asked. I kept my voice low, my grip loose. I kept waiting for her to pull away, to tell me I was overstepping. “What did you mean when you said learning from you?”
She looked up, a lock of that nutmeg brown hair falling across her forehead. I wanted to push it back, trace my fingers across her face, but I restrained myself. I still wasn't sure what this meant yet.
Her eyes met mine. “I want to teach you to be a Dom. To me.”
Fuck me.
Chapter Two
Nori
When the idea occurred to me, I knew it wasn’t a good one. Aside from the fact that I was seriously playing semantics with the ethical line, I wasn't sure X was in a healthy enough place for the trust it would take for this to work. But I also knew I wasn't letting him go without a fight. I wasn’t able to save my brother, but I’d be damned if I couldn't save X. No matter the cost was to me.
It was harder than I'd thought to try to explain things to X. Not that I really thought it would be easy to tell anyone about the world Tanner introduced me to, but I'd always assumed that talk would come when I was in a relationship with someone else, discussing the things I needed sexually.
I'd never expected to have to try and tell someone under these circumstances. Hell, I was pretty sure no one ever in the history of the world had a conversation like this before. But, again, if it meant keeping X alive, then my embarrassment be damned.
At the moment, however, it wasn't just embarrassment I was feeling.
When I started to walk away, for a moment, I really thought he was going to let me go. That I'd go back to my room, pack my bags and call the priest. Get a flight back to Texas and write this whole thing off as some sort of mental break or something.
Then his fingers wrapped around my arm and he was right behind me. I could feel the heat of him. Smell the masculine scent that mingled with his sweat. And, suddenly, the heat flooding me wasn't because I was freaking out about what I'd almost said.
It was arousal, pure and simple. Or, at least, I tried telling myself it was simple, that it was only lust. He was attractive, not in spite of the scars, but with them. It was just because I'd gotten so used to sex on a regular basis and had been without it for...well, okay, it'd only been a week, but that had to be the reason.
And then he said it, asked it. He wanted to know what I'd been trying to say.
So I told him. Put it all out there. And I made myself look at him while I said it.
Then I waited for the explosion. It had to be coming. He exploded at everything. I wasn't any different, no matter what Father O'Toole thought. Besides, X may have apologized for what he'd said, but he'd used the word 'freaks.' Funny, because he'd also used that word to refer to himself too.
I wondered if that meant we were actually the same.
Before I could explore that any further, he spoke.
“Okay.”
Okay? Had he seriously just said okay? Like he was just agreeing to what we wer
e going to have for lunch?
I needed to put some distance between us. I was having a difficult time thinking clearly with him standing so close, gazing down at me like that...I needed space.
I took a step back and he released my arm, but those azure eyes didn't leave my face. As if I needed to be more flustered.
“So, how does this work?” He broke the silence that had fallen between us.
I took a slow breath and forced myself to focus on something other than the heat flowing through me. This would be toeing the line as it was. I needed to maintain as much distance as possible.
“We're not going to have sex.” I almost winced at how bold the statement sounded, but I needed to make sure X didn't misunderstand what I was doing. “I'm going to teach you how things work in this world, how a good Dominant controls his or her Sub. There'll be some physical contact.”
I flushed at the thought of his hands on me. I really needed to get that under control and fast. I couldn't let X know that I was attracted to him. We couldn't be together, and right now, I wasn't sure how he'd take the rejection. If he even wanted me to begin with.
“I'll give you a safe word,” I continued, trying to focus on the facts, the straight-forward parts of things that I could say and still sound detached. “We'll start slow, but the most important rule is that when one of us uses the safe word, everything stops.”
Usually, the safe words were for the Subs, but X's emotions were so shaky right now, I needed him to know that I wouldn't push him past what he was comfortable with. He needed to know his own limits before he could expect to work with someone else's.
“All right,” he said. “When do we start?”
While there was a wariness in his tone, I didn't hear any of the bitterness I'd grown used to. That alone encouraged me enough to keep back the voice in my head that said I was going to regret this.
“Later this week,” I said. “But right now, I need to get those dressings changed.” I heard my voice shift back to the same tone I used with all my patients. I didn't want to think about how that compared to how I was speaking before.
“I'll go clean up.” He walked away, but not before I had the chance to see that faint flicker in his eyes.
Hope.
As soon as he walked out the door, I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes, letting everything just flood over me. All of the confusion, the uncertainty, the negative and positive alike. I let myself feel it all, knowing that I needed it to process before X came back, or I wouldn’t be able to do what needed to be done. The thought of touching him had to be completely professional, with nothing else behind it. That was the only way this could work.
By the time he came back into the room several minutes later, I was back to myself. Anything inappropriate that I may or may not have been feeling was carefully locked away, and I was ready to deal with the business at hand.
Even if he was only wearing a pair of clean shorts that showed off just how much good the physical therapy had done for his entire body.
“Have a seat.” I gestured toward the bed. “Any pain?”
He shook his head.
“Be honest,” I said as I started to get out the things I needed. “Better to tell me now than end up back in the hospital because you didn't realize how badly you hurt yourself.”
“Just the usual twinges,” he said. “There's no blood, nothing that looks or feels like an infection.”
I started with his back so I wouldn't have to avoid looking at him. There were only a couple spots here that still needed attention. They were places that hot metal had embedded itself into his flesh. I was the one who dug them out. Forty-seven pieces in all, mostly small fragments of wood and metal, but, at least, half a dozen had been more than an inch long.
I worked in silence for several minutes, finally sliding back into the skin I usually wore, one of a nurse and caretaker. The job I'd trained for. When I moved around to his chest, I found it easier to work, even when I felt his eyes on me.
“I didn't feel it.”
I almost jumped when he spoke. Even at the hospital, he hadn't done much talking while I worked. It'd mostly been me carrying on a one-sided conversation to keep his mind off of things.
“The explosion,” he said. “I didn't really feel it. I had a couple light burns from where some debris fell on me when I came out with the kid, and I'd inhaled enough shit that I was spitting it out, but I wasn't really hurt.”
I didn't say anything, and I didn't think he needed me to. Even though we had the on-site psychologist talk to him, I didn't think they'd gotten much of anywhere. He might've talked to Father O'Toole about what happened, but considering the father's concern was great enough to get me here, I doubted it. Which meant he hadn't talked to anyone about the explosion. I knew he needed to speak to someone, if only to get it off his chest.
“I saw the man when I grabbed the kid, but my first priority was that boy. Once I got him out, I looked around to see if any of the rescue vehicles were there. An ambulance had made it, but the fire trucks had gotten held up for some reason. I heard later it was a traffic jam.”
A traffic jam caused by some punks who decided to push a row of grocery carts across a two-lane highway because they thought it'd be funny. I wasn't sure if X knew that part, but I did. The firefighters and paramedics who came in that day had told a few of the staff and word had gotten around. The fifteen-year-olds had gotten six months each in juvie and a bunch of community service.
“I didn't know if the guy was dead or alive,” X continued. “But I couldn't leave him in there to burn.” He barked a bitter laugh. “I should've.”
I kept my face blank as I took his arm and stretched it out so I could take care of the still-healing skin there. I knew why he was bitter about it, and I didn't blame him.
“It took me weeks to get the whole story,” he said. “The man was fine, barely even singed. Passed out from smoke inhalation but that was it. The boy...”
His voice trailed off.
I didn't need him to tell me about the boy he rescued. It was all over the news. He'd been kidnapped four days before the fire, some ten-year-old from a quiet little suburb. His piano teacher had taken him. The things that man had done...it was a miracle the kid survived at all. He barely had anything fire related wrong with him. The other injuries he’d suffered, however, had been horrific. He'd gone home only a couple days before X, and I heard he needed a live-in nurse. Probably for the rest of his life. The kidnapper was currently in jail, waiting for his trial.
When I left, people had still been placing bets on whether or not the guy would even make it to court. I was personally hoping he did. He deserved everything that waited for a child molester in prison.
“All of this,” X said. “All of it, is because I went back for that bastard who should've died in there.”
I paused and raised my head. “You saved a man whose life wasn't worth saving,” I said softly. “That doesn't make you a bad person. In fact, it makes you a very good one.”
He shook his head and I could see him starting to spiral back down toward darkness.
Desperate to keep him out, I asked the first question that popped into my head. “What was the tattoo you had here?” My hands were resting on his forearm over a misshapen swirl of black ink.
“Vines.” He looked away from me. “I had vines going up my arm.”
“What about the other tattoos?” I asked. I just wanted to keep him talking, keep him from that place he went inside himself, where he shut himself away.
“Doesn't matter,” he said sharply. “They're gone.”
I felt the wall come down between us. The conversation was over and whatever ground he'd gained today, he'd just lost more. I didn't know what it was about the tattoos that made him shut down, or even if it was simply a reminder of what he'd lost, but I knew he was done talking.
No matter how much I wanted to, I knew I couldn't force him to talk. We had plans to start working on getting him better. That wou
ld have to be enough. If I pushed too hard now, I'd snap the tenuous trust we’d established, and he'd be worse off than before. I had to do exactly what I told him. Take things slow.
That didn't mean I would baby him or coddle him, but I did have to be careful where I stepped. He was a strong man, but right now, he was more fragile than he cared to admit.
And that was why, despite any lingering doubts or concerns I had about my plan, I was going to follow through with it. Whatever it took to build him back up, I was going to do.
I finished my work in silence and then headed up to my floor to think and plan. This wouldn’t be easy.
Chapter Three
Nori
Independence Day. That would be the day of our first session. It was this Thursday, so I’d have enough time to get things set up, but it wasn’t so far ahead that I'd chicken out. It would also be a good distraction. I'd gotten the impression that he didn't want to even acknowledge the holiday. Not that he'd said anything specific. Just more of a feeling I'd gotten from him when I saw him looking at the newspaper Kipp had brought in, looking at the article about the local celebrations that would be happening this week.
X and I didn't discuss our upcoming arrangement or what he'd said about the two people he'd rescued either. In fact, he and I didn't really talk much at all, but it wasn't the same sort of silence that came with negative feelings. It was a comfortable kind, so I didn't worry about it. As long as he knew he could talk to me if he wanted, we were good.
Even though it was only the two of us in the house, I made a point of only spending time with X when it was time for me to change his dressings or go through his exercises the day Kipp didn't come in. And I definitely didn't touch him except when absolutely necessary.
And I didn't want to.
Or, at least, that's what I kept telling myself when I spent my free time trying to figure out how exactly to approach this situation. I thought the tough part would be making the pitch to X in the first place. It wasn't until later that I realized that I had no true idea of how to go about doing this.