by Joey W. Hill
Wolf opened his door, pulled a cooler out from behind his front seat. Tilting his head toward the bed of the truck, he moved there himself. He lowered the tailgate and took a seat on it. Offered Gideon a soda from the cooler.
Gideon raised a brow. “Coke?”
“It’s a classic, right?”
“Hmm.” Gideon sat down on the tailgate next to him, listening to the creak. “Can it handle both our weights?”
“And then some. This truck was built when vehicles were supposed to last beyond a five-year lease.”
They drank in silence. Wolf didn’t see any point in fishing for where Gideon was going. Not when it was obvious the male would get there in his own time.
“I think what helped Anwyn handle the Council’s sentence was I was okay with it,” Gideon said, returning to that topic. “Because no matter what I thought of those Council assholes, part of it felt like penance, for lives I took that maybe didn’t deserve it. For not being fast enough to save others I cared about, wanted to protect. But I can’t think of a fucking thing Ella needs to seek redemption for. There’s only one thing she wants, wants so badly, and I’ve been thinking a lot about why you won’t give that to her.”
“I don’t see how that’s your business,” Wolf said.
Gideon ignored him. “Most of us come to the servant thing by accident or circumstances. But some gut deep part of us knows it’s where we’re meant to be. That’s written all over you and Ella. You get that. I know you do.”
“Gideon.”
“Really wasn’t a question, man. No need to argue it.” Gideon squinted at the sky again. “You know, I don’t know what your deal is, exactly. If Anwyn knows, she’s not saying. She respects you that much. But I do know there are certain fuckups that don’t come with a punishment to fit the crime. There’s nothing big enough, not even death. So, you have to come to terms with them a different way. I’m guessing the whole BDSM therapy thing, that’s what that is for you.”
Allan’s words flashed through his mind. His immersion in therapy for others against his personal rejection of it for himself. They got better, in spite of what he truly believed, whereas he…stayed the same.
Gideon glanced at him. “I eventually realized the only balm to make it bearable is someone you trust to say, ‘you're forgiven,’ or, if not totally forgiven, they accept. But that’s not what makes things change. Amid all the darkness, they see something worth loving, and you believe them. Finding someone you can believe when they say I love you? That’s the person you can't do without. They see who you are, all your dark and light. They get past all your insecurities and bullshit, and you believe in their love, because it’s a gift from something way bigger than your puny ass.
“If you turn your back on it, even if you can’t figure out the why or what the hell happened to bring you to that spot, the powers that be are going to do a number on your ass, totally deserved.” Gideon pushed himself up from Wolf’s truck. “Anyway, Anwyn’s coming. She had me keeping lookout for you.”
At Wolf’s expression, Gideon gave him an arch look. “What, you think, me, a lowly servant, was going to be the one to read you the riot act on this? I’m just the opening act. The lookout.”
Wolf snorted, but looked toward the entrance. Anwyn was headed their way. She was no longer wearing club garb, but instead was in a pair of belted jeans, heeled boots and a T-shirt that clung to her curves. Even casually dressed, she looked like a woman who could bring anyone to their knees.
“I didn’t—” Wolf turned back toward Gideon.
Son of a bitch. The fist had the propulsion of a battering ram and took him solidly across the jaw. The force bounced him off the tailgate and had him stumbling down to one knee on the asphalt. For a second, Wolf was pretty sure Gideon had busted the hinge of his jaw. He sprang back to his feet and spun, ready to meet the next attack. Gideon was sitting on the tailgate again, sipping his soda. Despite his apparent calm, the offending fist was curled on his knee, his knuckles turning red, and the midnight blue eyes were filled with fire.
“So,” he said. “You going to welch on that whole ‘free shot’ thing and take my head off?”
Despite the mild comment, Gideon had his feet braced flat on the ground, body coiled and ready to spring out of the way. Though Wolf doubted he would get very far. The man was as reckless as he was courageous. A vampire might strike in retaliation first and consider whether that was the best course of action later.
Fortunately for Gideon’s sake, Wolf called to mind the young woman asleep in the recesses of the darkened club, and how she had looked after her punishment. He also remembered watching her and Gideon on the main floor little more than a day ago. Gideon had been teasing her, making her laugh, as he leaned against the ladder she was on. He’d been steadying it while she hung decorations for Burlesque Night.
He cared about Ella. So Wolf had the sucker punch coming. But for form’s sake, he shot Gideon a warning look. “I said I’d give you one shot. But just the one.”
He ignored Gideon’s chuckle. Instead he took a swallow of his Coke and twitched his jaw, trying to determine if it was working properly.
Gideon rose and left him, moving toward his Mistress. As she passed him, Anwyn twined her fingers briefly with his, stopped to press her face into his neck, something he responded to by turning his mouth to hers and holding still as she took her fill. Then she released him with a smile and strode toward Wolf. He already had a Coke Zero out next to him, knowing that was her preference. He’d had time to fish a towel out of the back seat of the truck and spread it out, so she didn’t get her superior ass dirty.
She took a seat next to him. Her dark hair gleamed in the parking lot lights, and her blue-green eyes considered him as she lifted the drink to her lips.
“It was a lucky shot,” he said in his defense, and earned a faint smile.
“They’d never admit it, but at the overlord gatherings, I think some of the younger vampires are afraid of him. His legend expands with time, but it’s actually not far off the mark. He’s one never to underestimate.”
Wolf wanted to ask Anwyn how Ella was doing, even knowing he didn’t need to do so. His mind had never been farther from her than her bedside. She was still sleeping. He should take her home before he had to go to ground. She loved Atlantis, but home was where she wanted to be tonight. Where she could remind herself that her life had to have balance.
It was an additional perspective, seeing someone through the eyes of a friend, who knew her differently. So he asked.
“She doing okay?”
“Ella is okay until she’s not okay. I honestly don’t know her threshold. She lets herself break, then puts herself back together again.”
I mend. He recalled the simple words.
“Yeah.” They sat in silence a few moments. He told himself not to ask anything else, but the girl had endured the mother of all canings for him. He could ask a few questions.
“Tell me something…”
Anwyn glanced at him as he let the words trail off. He shook his head at himself, and finished it. “Tell me the things that matter, that you want me to know about her, Anwyn. The things I should know. Don’t be cryptic and female. Just say them straight out.”
“Women are not cryptic. Men are just thick-headed.” Anwyn nudged him with her elbow, softening the tartness of the comment. “But all right.”
She set down the soda, and met his gaze. "Ella has never realized she's beautiful, Wolf. She thinks she's pretty in a nice sort of way, and knows she has a body that attracts men and women alike. But she has no clue how genuinely beautiful she is. She has no idea how others react to her."
“What?” He thought of her on Burlesque Night, when everyone in the room was mesmerized by her voice, the way the lights shimmered over her thick, dark hair, the satin over her curves. The intensity of her eyes.
Or maybe it had just been him who was mesmerized.
"Why?"
"Ella didn’t have a normal childhood
. High school, proms, first dances, first dates. A mother or father, to see herself through their eyes. A hooker is going to routinely hear that she's attractive, but that's hardly the same thing, is it? Nowhere near the same as hearing it from a man who thinks you are uniquely his, who tells you how beautiful you truly are to him. People can tell you you're sexy, pretty, beautiful, whatever, all they wish, but until someone who loves you says it, and you feel the love behind it, you don't realize it. Not in that way that’s so beyond vanity, so much deeper than that, such that you'd never have to look at a mirror again. The truth of your appearance is in that person's eyes, no matter your age, weight, or anything else the world defines as beauty."
He cocked his head. “So you knew she was a prostitute.”
“Of course I knew.” Anwyn gave him a yes, dumbass look that he decided to let pass in favor of further information. “I vet everyone who works at my place thoroughly. People who walk through my doors entrust their privacy and sometimes their very lives and emotional wellbeing to me and my staff. I want to be sure Atlantis deserves that trust.”
“But you’ve never told her you knew.”
“She will tell me when she’s ready. When she trusts our friendship enough. I want that knowledge as a gift.”
“She worries about it,” he confided. “Feels bad about lying to you.”
“I know. But I never saw it as a lie. It was an omission, an understandable one. It made sense, that she covered it, to give her a chance to prove herself to me. How many legitimate employers will hire someone who has turned tricks? Especially in the legal adult entertainment industry, which is always under a microscope. We know the trouble that can follow them, or the bad habits that they might bring to a legal business. One of these days, I hope it will be a legal profession, one that can have the same protections as any other job, and won’t have to walk so closely to the criminal element. But until then, every employer has to be understandably cautious.”
“What made you decide to keep her on anyway?”
“Have you met her?” Anwyn asked wryly, and Wolf smiled. “She’d come as a Domme’s guest a couple times, but one day she came on her own. Brought me a loaf of bread from that little organic place where she now delivers groceries. Told me she could work as a paid submissive, waitress, janitor, whatever I needed. ‘It’s not my job’ wasn’t in her vocabulary, and I didn’t need to pay her for the first couple weeks, if I wanted to see how she worked out. She was healthy, lovely, earnest. Sincere. Her gaze reminded me of the Grand Canyon.”
She shot him an ironic glance, a reminder of his earlier comment, about taking a left turn at the Grand Canyon, the first time she’d suggested Ella become his servant. “Carved out by time, marked by every natural catastrophe that could hit the planet, but still there. Enduring, something immutable under the softness.”
“Yeah.” It was a good description. He lapsed back into silence, which stretched out into five minutes before Anwyn spoke again.
“You’ve been a vampire long enough to lose some of the human qualities and sentiment, but you’re not that far gone. Tell me you know the not loving your servant thing is a crock of shit that we’re all supposed to pretend is true.”
He glanced at her. “I served in the military, Anwyn. There are rules that are put in place for good reason. If we break them, we better have a damn better reason for doing so.”
“Being in love with someone seems about the best reason I can imagine.”
He frowned. "Maybe so, but let's think about that. How could anyone bring someone they love into our world? Lord Richard could have decided to kill her. Quick neck snap and done. Did you think about that?"
Her eyes darkened and she looked away. “Gideon came to me under traumatic circumstances, Wolf. The most successful vampire hunter who’d ever pitted himself against vampire kind. During my transition, when so many things were up in the air? His life or death never really crossed his mind, because he’d accepted that one day his luck would run out. When he bound himself to me, he was pretty sure that clock was winding down. He’d set up camp in the middle of the species he’d dedicated his life to killing. So I really don’t need you to tell me the risks of bringing someone you care about into our world.”
She shot him an exasperated look. “And are you under the impression that whoever came up with love designed it only to handle the easy scenarios? It's the most precious gift we've ever been given. It can withstand fire, flood, despair."
He shook his head. "It also involves self-sacrifice and denial, to protect those you love.”
Or to pay for wasted chances. But he didn’t say that part aloud.
"Where would she be a better fit, Wolf? Yes, she can belong here at Atlantis as long as she wishes, but that might not be her destiny. Atlantis may have been part of the path leading her right to where she is. Kneeling at your feet, offering her whole self to you.”
She stood, gestured with the soda. “I won’t beat a dead horse. I’ve said my piece. Ella is ready to go home, but she asked me to take her. She didn’t want to impose on you.”
He thought about it, wrestled with it, but then nodded, despite the effort it took. “Okay.”
Anwyn gazed at him, then turned without a word, walking toward her club. A few feet away, she stopped, looked back at him. "At a certain point, self-flagellation and noble self-sacrifice becomes nothing more than a screen for cowardice, Wolf. Or an ego stroke, to hold yourself apart and above others. You're an arrogant ass, like most uber-Doms, but you're a good man. Don't become that guy."
He bit back the defensive retort. Instead, he asked one last question. “Back when Ella stabbed that Dom with his own scalpel. What was the hard limit he didn’t respect?”
Anwyn blinked. “Fire play.”
He walked some more. And he thought about all of it. The war, the death and blood. His family.
Wolf agreed with Anwyn’s assessment of Gideon and younger vampires. Gideon still had the look of someone who’d been neck deep in violence so long, that was where he felt most at home. Wolf knew about that.
He also knew how despair and darkness could take over. He remembered how lost he’d gotten. So lost he couldn’t respond to his wife anymore. The war had taken his ability to have sex with her, but the darkness in his heart and soul had taken his ability to make love. He’d hurt her so badly they’d both gotten lost. She’d OD’ed, and he’d become a vampire, and they’d both abandoned their son. Who, thanks to good adopted parents and a will inside him greater than his birth parents’, had found a life worth living.
His son had found his well of gratitude, just as Ella had.
When Wolf stood at the edge of his own well, he’d always seen a shallow coat of water, barely covering the dry dirt beneath. But as he thought of Ella, he realized her well overflowed because she continually filled it. It wasn’t some easy, rainbow and flowers thing, either. Now he understood the meditation, the rare flashes of astonishingly violent temper. She lived her life with an apparent recklessness that wasn’t reckless at all.
It was fucking brave.
I will love my life and who I am, she said, with every action she took. I will forgive myself when I stumble, pick myself up and keep going. I will make sure that everyone in my life gets value from my presence in it, to thank them for their friendship and the experiences they provide me.
He thought of Don, and the many faces of the men he’d…he’d helped. He’d helped them, because he’d understood the depth of that darkness, just how horrible it could be. It was a living coffin, the lid weighed down by overwhelming emotions and hopelessness. Day after day, no light, no hope capable of penetrating the void.
To get back out, they had to do one thing. Something that sounded so easy, almost self-serving. Yet his inability to do it was what had compelled him to take his own life.
He helped his therapy clients find that path, yet he remained behind, in the darkness. He’d rationalized that staying there helped him help them, but now he wondered if that
was a crock of shit. How much further could he take a person like Don, if Wolf himself finally found his way? Filled that hole with abundance, so it became a well instead of a grave, lifting him up and out.
He needed to keep walking.
When Ella had woken, she’d still had the warmth of Wolf’s body around her, but he was gone. It reminded her that he wasn’t hers to hold onto, which meant she had to get herself out of bed, move onward. He’d said he’d take her somewhere for a couple days before it was official, but that wasn’t right now. She’d look forward to that, but she needed to get home, recuperate so she could work tomorrow afternoon. They’d said the second mark would heal her decently in about twenty-four hours, though she had no illusions that it wouldn’t be a tough day, a lot of the bruising needing more time to heal.
Anwyn told her she’d drive her home. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, and made Ella wait another half hour while she attended to some things. It gave Ella time to get dressed, and realize the Mistress was right about the driving thing. Her mind was still spinning, drifting, the aftereffects of the trauma and then her Master’s unforgettable attention.
When they arrived in front of her landlord’s house, Krista was home, thankfully. Ella reminded Anwyn she’d have someone nearby if she needed help.
Anwyn gave her a searching look, but maybe because she was a woman as well as a Domme, she picked up on Ella’s need to have some alone time. But as Ella moved through the back gate, she sensed Anwyn watching her closely.
She made sure she didn’t stumble or show any sign of the heavy fatigue she was carrying, the emotional turmoil. In most respects, Atlantis was home, but when she felt like this, she needed her very own space so she could shower, meditate. Eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
She managed all of that, slowly. And eventually found herself curled in her bed, tears drifting down her face as she thought of every moment she’d shared with Wolf, and the things she wouldn’t be able to share with him after they reverted back to the relationship they’d had before all this other had started.
