Trust Me

by Annabel Joseph

  Shit, he’d also used the itching lube. Back to the old life. Back to the old rules. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

  But that was okay. As he fitted the curved metal plate over my aching clit and locked me up for the night, I felt like everything was just as it was supposed to be. He was in control, but he loved me, and he would keep me safe.

  He put me on my knees to suck him off one last time before bed. He always got hard when he put me into chastity. I got hard too, but oh well. Since I wasn’t allowed to come, or even beg to come the way I wanted, I put all my energy into serving him. I got my reward later, when he held me and kissed my forehead as I drifted off to sleep.

  “I’m going to dream about you,” he whispered. “My beautiful, good girl.”

  * * * * *

  Chere and I checked out of the Gramercy Park Hotel on Valentine’s Day. It seemed the most appropriate day to do it, since both of us were hopeless romantics. We’d done a lot of relationship work at the Gramercy, and had the peace of mind to show for it. I was glad now that she’d run away from me, since it forced us to face our issues head on.

  Even so, I was nervous about our first trip back to the dungeon. I’d fixed the gouges in the wall where I’d thrown the cage, but the cage itself still lay on its side where it had fallen. I didn’t want to gloss over the things that had happened between us. I didn’t want to tidy away the evidence, at least not yet.

  It wasn’t long after we returned home that Chere asked to visit the scene of our unraveling. I took her hand and led her inside the gray-walled room so we could face the demons together. I didn’t require nudity or speech restriction. For this conversation, we needed to be equals, not Master and slave.

  “It looks the same.” She sounded surprised as she wandered toward the center of the space. “You haven’t changed anything.”

  “No. I was waiting for you.” I joined her as we both turned toward the far wall. “In my opinion, there’s only one thing that really needs to go.”

  “The sawhorse?” she asked hopefully, but she knew what I meant.

  We crossed to the cage. She traced the metal bars with a mournful expression.

  “It’s a shame,” I said. “You looked so beautiful when you were in there.”

  “We don’t have to...” she said tentatively. “I mean, if you want to keep it.”

  I shook my head. “Maybe we can have one again later. When a little time has passed, and we trust ourselves more.”

  “You’re right. This one has too much bad juju attached to it.”

  “Not bad juju.” I leaned over the cage and pulled out the first of the long, cylindrical end pins. “I was the one who did the bad thing. The cage was just doing its job.” I pulled out a second end pin, holding the structure so it wouldn’t collapse.

  “That’s it?” she said as the panels rattled loose. “That’s all you have to do to put this cage together and take it apart? Just pull out those rods?”

  “It’s a basic design. It held up, yeah?” I gave her a lopsided grin. “I’m a good engineer.” Just to mess with her, I turned one of the metal rods over in my hands. “Maybe we can find a use for this.”

  She took it from me. “Uh, no. Remember? Bad juju.”

  “How can you say it’s bad?” I asked, taking the rod back and carrying it with the others out toward the living room. “We learned a lot because of this cage. It definitely brought us to a better place.”

  “After a bunch of violence and drama,” she called after me.

  When I returned, she helped me pick up each panel and carry it out to the living room, where we stacked them against the wall.

  “Think you can use these at your studio?” I asked. “Melt them down into other things? It’s good metal. Stainless steel and brass.”

  She traced the gleaming bars as I stared at her fingers, their only adornment the delicate garnet ring. I thought about commitment and ownership, the healthy kind, not the captive-in-a-tower kind that really only existed in fairy tales. “Maybe you can make a ring with it,” I said, taking her hand. “An engagement ring.”

  “I prefer that to making manacles. But stainless steel for an engagement ring?”

  I let go of her hand and grabbed her ass. “I guess gold and diamonds are more traditional. I’ll buy the materials, you make the ring. How about that?”

  “Yes, Sir,” she said, looking adorably pleased.

  Now that that was out of the way, I dragged her back into the dungeon. It looked better. It looked ready for us to begin again. “So,” I said, rubbing my hands together. “You’ve missed the sawhorse, I gather.”

  “No, I haven’t missed it at al—”

  “And where are those manacles you mentioned?”

  “We just got back,” she pleaded.

  “Quiet, slave. I suppose it’s time to revert to speech restriction again.”

  Chere was rescued by the sound of the doorbell. She turned and ran out of the dungeon. “I’ll get it,” she yelled over her shoulder.

  Ha. She had a date with the sawhorse and manacles whether she liked it or not, but I hadn’t really intended to play with her yet. I was expecting a delivery from the Gramercy Park Hotel. By the time I got out to the living room, four burly delivery guys with white gloves were easing a wrapped and padded rectangle through the door.

  “Do you know what it is?” I asked Chere.

  She looked puzzled as I directed the men to leave the package propped against the far wall. I’d have to have someone come in to mount it. All families needed a portrait over the fireplace. This would be ours, because it would always force us to see our reflections. We’d never let things go haywire again.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “Open the wrapping. Just a corner. You’ll figure it out.”

  She peeled back an edge of padding and brown craft paper. She drew in a breath as she saw her own eyes staring back at her.

  “The mirror from the Gramercy. Oh, wow. And you let me cry and take a billion more photos of it this morning.”

  “You know I love when you cry.”

  She turned to me and made a face that transformed into a smile. “I’m so glad you kept it. I’m amazed they let you keep it!”

  “I have some friends on staff.” I drew her back and kissed her hard on her beautiful lips. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

  “All I got you were some cuff links,” she protested.

  “And that ring you’re going to make me, out of diamonds and gold, so I can give it back to you.”

  She giggled as I kissed her again. “I’m not sure you know how this whole gift giving thing works.”

  “Oh, I know how it works.” Mine also, little painted poem of God. The universe had brought me a gift, and she was in my arms, and she was worth any fucking price.

  As for the mirror, sure, it was expensive to take one from the Gramercy, and have a new one installed in its place, but Chere loved my poetry, and this one might end up being the most important poem of all.

  That is, after her.

  Chapter Eighteen: Three Years Later

  Price and I were in Vancouver, at a quiet park overlooking an inlet. In the distance, a spare, glittering bridge spanned the water and touched down lightly on the opposite shore. As the city constructed it, people used words like groundbreaking and game-changing to describe the minimalist design. A few people had called it plain, or ugly, but they were idiots.

  My husband didn’t do plain or ugly. He made works of art.

  “Wow,” I said, watching the sun glint off the slender posts and wires. “Wow. I have no words. It’s breathtaking, baby. How did you do that? I mean, the balance. The symmetry. The design.”

  “I had a lot of inspiration.” He corralled me into a hug and a rough, quick kiss. “I only wish they would have let me name the damn thing.”

  “The Chere Rouzier-Eriksen Bridge would have been a real tongue twister.”

  “So’s the name of that politician they named it after.” He shrugged. “Whatever. It’ll always be the Ch
ere Bridge to me.”

  “I’m honored. Seriously, I think it’s the most beautiful thing you’ve made so far.”

  “No, not quite. It doesn’t compare to this work of art.” He scooped up our daughter as she toddled past, and pressed his nose to hers. “Does it, sunshine? You’re the most beautiful thing in the universe. Well, the most beautiful two year old, anyway.” He threw a sideways wink in my direction.

  “Nice save,” I said. “And I hate to point it out, but you didn’t actually make her.”

  He put a hand over Aliya’s kinky ponytail curls. “Hush. She’ll hear you.”

  I grinned at the striking contrast of his daughter’s dark coloring against his pale Nordic skin. “She’s going to figure it out one day, blondie. But for now I’ll play along, because yes, she’s absolutely beautiful.”

  “Mama,” she cooed, reaching out for me with grassy, grubby fingers. But as soon as she was in my arms, she reached again for Price. “Daddy. Want Daddy.”

  He took her, grubby fingers and all, and tossed her up in the air, to avid screeches of approval. Aliya had been adopted into our family almost a year ago. I’d been scared about passing on my parents’ mental health genes, and Price wasn’t jazzed about giving up my body for the length of a pregnancy, so we’d looked into adopting a child. Since both of us had gotten second chances, we decided we wanted to give an at-risk child a second chance too.

  Our adopted daughter had had a rough start in life, like me, but she was also a fighter, like me. Add in Price’s protectiveness, and his mission to do better than his parents, and our little sunshine was definitely going to take over the world, along with the sibling we planned to adopt in a year or two. Our daughter also had Andrew and Craig for fairy godfathers. Andrew had painted her first portrait last month, and given it to us as an anniversary present. He’d captured all the warmth and light in her young face. We had so much love between us, and Aliya seemed to multiply it every day.

  As for her effect on our dynamic, well, the dungeon was soundproof. I was so glad Price had been thinking ahead.

  “Let mama wash your hands,” I said, digging in the diaper bag for wipes.

  “No wash.”

  “They’re dirty. Let mama wash Aya’s hands.”

  “No wash A-ya’s hands,” she repeated, this time with an emphatic shake of her head. She was in that stage where everything was no, even when she meant yes. Price said she took after me in her stubbornness, but I thought she took after him. Actually, it was probably just a two-year-old thing.

  “Let her dig a while longer,” he said, letting her down. “Maybe we have a future geologist on our hands.”

  We sat on a nearby bench and let her scratch out a series of toddler-sized holes. When she got tired of that, she started pulling up grass, arranging it in random piles.

  “She’s making excellent use of negative design space,” Price murmured.

  I laughed and rested my head against his shoulder. “I never imagined life could feel like this,” I said in the silence that followed. “I never thought I could have all this. I never thought there was a way.”

  “There’s always a way.” He squeezed my hand. “Life works like this, Chere: you get what you deserve. We deserved each other.”

  “No, we found each other, by chance and by luck,” I said. “And then we had to fight for what we had.”

  “Which is why we deserve what we have now. It took a lot of hard work, and a lot of risk.” He gestured toward the distance. “Like that bridge over there. But it’s worth it, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Sir,” I said softly. “It is.”

  “I almost sent you away that day,” he said, turning back to me. “The first day, at the W Hotel. I wanted a blonde.”

  “I was blonde back then.”

  He touched my dark brown hair. “I wanted a natural blonde. I’m glad I finally figured out that I was looking for the wrong thing.”

  He was kind enough not to point it out, but I’d been looking for the wrong thing too, for ten miserable years. Wow. We’d really worked hard to change, to get better, to give the love we shared today a fighting chance.

  Aliya bounded over and deposited a handful of grass shards on Price’s knee.

  “Are these diamonds?” he asked, regarding them with gravity. “Did you bring Daddy diamonds?”

  She nodded with a pleased, gap-toothed grin. “Di-mons.”

  She was a jeweler’s daughter. She knew what diamonds were. She loved how they sparkled, like the solitaire in my engagement ring. She loved that ring more than the garnet ring I still wore, but she didn’t know the story behind it. I thought I’d always love the garnet ring a little more.

  She ran away and came back with another handful of grass, and placed it reverently in my lap.

  “Di-mons, mama.”

  “I see.”

  “Beautiful diamond,” said Price against my ear. “Beautiful heart.”

  I teared up whenever he quoted that poem. I ducked my head to hide it, but he laughed and made me look at him anyway. There was no hiding from him, which I supposed was good. Aliya spun away and ran off again, singing about diamonds and pulling up more grass.

  There was always a way, if you wanted it badly enough. We’d fought for what we wanted, and now it was ours.

  A Final Note

  I have so many people to thank for their help with the Rough Love trilogy. First of all, I have to thank the readers who badgered me to write it, even when I doubted. (Sometimes rough love works.)

  Thanks to Ay and Roughinamorato for providing some nitty gritty details about the rougher stuff, as well as the numerous Fetlife friends who’ve inspired me with their edgier kinks through the years. Thanks to Riane Holt for saving Taunt Me when I wanted to ball it up and set it on fire, and to my other trusty editors and beta readers, Lina of LinaEdits.com, Audrey, Doris, Tiffany, Janine, Tasha, Tracy, and Linda.

  Thanks to Kate at Bad Star Media for the trio of sexy covers, and to Nina, Irene, and the Literary Gossip ladies for launch help. Mega thanks to all the Club Annabel denizens for being my goddesses of encouragement. I won’t name names, because if I leave anyone out by accident I’ll be crushed, but you know who you are.

  Thanks finally to Price and Chere, who came into my mind fully formed, as imperfect as they were, and kept me writing even when it seemed too dark to go on. I hope they’re pleased with their happily ever after, and I hope you are too. If you would be so kind as to leave online reviews, and help spread the word about the Rough Love series in your naughty reading groups, I’d be ever so grateful.

  You can learn more about my other series by signing up for my newsletter at annabeljoseph.com, or following me on Facebook or Twitter. You can also apply to join Club Annabel on Facebook if you’re looking for an AJ discussion and social group. I’m so grateful for your support.

  Coming soon:

  The Problem Princess, Book One in the Royal Discipline series

  There’s a problem in the kingdom of Hastings: the princess is too headstrong and ill-mannered to carry on the royal line. In desperation, the king delivers his daughter to the darkly imposing Duke of Thornton, who promises to correct her behavior through a course of stringent and lowering physical chastisement.

  Despite the duke’s harsh disciplinary measures, Princess Violet resists change, and Thornton is drawn into an escalating battle of wills with his spirited charge. How far will he go to humble the haughty royal, and put an end to her spoiled behavior? This fairy tale fantasy is a raunchy tumble into spanking depravity, with a royally satisfying ending.

  You may also enjoy these other BDSM series by Annabel Joseph

  The Fortune series

  Deep in the Woods… Sophie finally finds the courage to reenter the BDSM scene after extricating herself from an abusive relationship. At a local munch, she meets Dave, a funny, laid-back erotic photographer. They embark on a thrilling D/s relationship and Sophie finds healing and fulfillment in Dave’s arms.

  But Sophie
is still haunted by nightmares of her past. On a dark night in the woods with Dave and his friend Ryan, frightening memories overtake her. She knows that in order to move on, she must uncover the tragedy that haunts her subconscious.

  Sophie’s quest for answers brings her face-to-face with her previous tormentor. She finds herself once more in the deep woods, not only fighting for answers, but also for her life.

  Fortune… Kat doesn’t know how to end her six-night-a-week party habit, not to mention her unhealthy addiction to meaningless sex. Then an accident lands her in the hospital. She wakes to a menagerie of origami figures, and a gorgeous neurosurgeon beside her bed. The complexity of the paper creations is nothing compared to the complexity of dark-eyed, authoritative Ryan, who seems determined to give her life some direction. Trouble is, Kat’s just as determined to resist his efforts to tame her wild side.

  With persistence, Ryan draws Kat into his world of dominance and submission, where quiet commands and lengths of rope awaken needs and desires she never knew she possessed. But Ryan’s erotic shibari sessions frighten Kat as much as they excite her, for each simple knot requires infinite trust and inspires complicated emotions.

  When a family crisis threatens to snap the fragile ties that bind them, will fortune smile on this unlikely couple, or will fate tear them apart?

  Reader Advisory: For those who subscribe to a “more the merrier” philosophy, this story contains a scintillating m/f/f/m scene.