Truth By His Hand

by Casey Cameron

  I swallowed, looking up into his eyes, a sea of blue and light. “Thank you for letting me. Sir.”

  The look he gave me was full of pride, and that made me soar even more than the ecstasy of the things he did to me in the dark.

  “So, um…” I grasped for something to talk about, something to distract me from the surging feelings in my chest. “Why did you choose this place? Are the hash browns that amazing?”

  Ellison glanced around the restaurant, a soft, fond smile on his face, like he’d forgotten he wasn’t alone. “I used to come here in college. I’d get a coffee and stay up all night cramming for tests. I don’t think it’s changed a bit.” He pointed up at a faint brown stain on the ceiling. “Even the grease stains are familiar.”

  I smiled into my cup, trying to imagine a younger Ellison, surrounded by textbooks and chewing on the end of a pencil, brow furrowed in concentration. It was a hard mental image to grasp, and I tried to fill in some details to make it a little more real. Maybe his hair would have been a little longer, a little unkempt. Maybe he’d have had a little scruff on his face, too busy with his studies to shave.

  The image wouldn’t quite stick. I shook my head with a rueful smile. “I’m having a hard time picturing you here. Even with you right here in front of me, it doesn’t exactly mesh with your current image.”

  He gave me a crooked smile. “I suppose not, but I swear it’s true—I was here two or three times a week. I must have gained about 20 pounds just from the hash browns, and another 10 from the burgers.”

  “That,” I said, pointing at him with my straw, “is even harder to picture.” A few drops of water fell from the end of the straw, and I grabbed a napkin from the dispenser on the table.

  “Oh yeah, I was pretty chunky by the time I graduated. I’ll show you a picture sometime.”

  I paused in my cleanup, suddenly overwhelmed by the simple intimacy of the statement. He was offering to show me a part of himself—a less-than-flattering part of himself—and I hadn’t even asked.

  Was this what a real relationship with him looked like? It was…well, it wasn’t quite as touchy-feely as I’d hoped, but it was something. Warmth bloomed inside my chest as I pictured the two of us poring over old photo albums, telling stories and pointing out meaningful details. That was what I wanted—well, in addition to him fucking and beating me senseless. It was a multi-layered fantasy.

  “I looked mostly the same in college,” I said, listening to the ice cubes clink against my glass as I stirred the water with my straw. “I didn’t get the left arm done until after I graduated—sort of a graduation present to myself—and I didn’t start gauging my ears until my late 20s, but mostly what you see is what you’d have gotten. Mariah sometimes says it’s weird how much I haven’t changed.”

  “Physically, maybe,” he said pointedly. “But I’m willing to bet you’re a very different person mentally.”

  I frowned at the painted checkerboard pattern on the table. Now that I was looking, the irregularity of it was driving me crazy—the lines that weren’t perfectly parallel, the occasional squares slightly larger than the ones next to them.

  “Yeah, I’m not so sure about that,” I said with a rueful laugh. “I’m just as neurotic as I ever was, no matter how much I’ve tried to change.”

  “I doubt that,” he said with a smile. “Maybe the thought patterns are there, but the way you’ve coped with them has changed, from what you’ve told me.” He reached across the table to take hold of my hand, pulling it toward him and pressing a kiss to the tip of each finger in turn—to each freshly-trimmed nail. I sighed in defeat.

  “I guess I have learned better coping skills over the years. But I really wish I could change some of the brain stuff. Attitudes and thought patterns.”

  Ellison looked thoughtful for a moment, lips resting against my skin. “When you were in college, did you ever think you would enjoy what we did tonight?”

  I shifted in my seat, my ass aching as I did. “No, never,” I admitted, my cheeks heating. “I probably would have been utterly horrified by the idea.”

  “That’s another thing that’s changed, then.”

  “Sort of. It’s…the more I look back, the more I see that I was always a little bit this way—always a little submissive. I just didn’t know what it was or how to express it back then.” I ran my hand through my hair, and realized it was getting way too long on top. Great, now that was going to bug me too. Maybe I could get a haircut this weekend. “Like I said before, my time with you has just been revealing what was always there.”

  “That’s still a kind of change, though,” he said. “I’m not talking about changing the fundamental core of a person’s being—if that ever happens, it’s over the course of a lifetime. Revealing what’s inside and having the courage to express it is where the day-to-day change comes in.”

  I snorted. “Sounds like a quote from an inspirational calendar.”

  “It’s true, though.” He leaned his chin on his hand, his eyes dancing with mischief. “What would you like to reveal next?”

  There were a hell of a lot of ways I could interpret that. “What do you mean?”

  “You had a goal tonight, and you reached it. What’s your next goal?” Leaning in, he gave me a wicked grin, his voice lowering to a sly rumble. “What do you want me to do to you next?”

  “Besides stop saying filthy things to me in the middle of a family establishment?”

  “Come now, River. You know there’s far worse things I could be doing to you here.”

  “Jesus.” I pinched the bridge of my nose with a groan that trailed off into a strangled little noise of frustration. “I don’t have any goals. I just want…you could do anything you want to me.”

  His lips pressed tightly together, his eyes sharp. “There are things I want that you don’t want me to do. That’s a dangerous amount of power to give to someone, especially someone as sadistic as I am.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t mean literally.”

  Yeah, I meant literally.

  Sure, there were things I didn’t want. But I was at least 98 percent sure he didn’t actually want to kill me or harvest my organs or anything, so within the limits of what he was willing and able to do…he kind of had free reign here.

  I wasn’t sure I would enjoy everything he wanted. Maybe he wanted to beat me until I bled. Maybe he wanted to leave marks where the whole world could see—black eyes and purple bruises that lingered for weeks. Maybe he wanted to make me crawl behind him on a leash and eat from a dish on the floor. None of that sounded appealing to me.

  But the thing was, as long as it was something he wanted, as long as it was important to him…it was important to me. I knew I would find pleasure in it somehow. In the way he looked at me as he did it, in the wrecked sound of his voice when he told me I was perfect for taking what he gave me.

  God, I was fucked up for this guy.

  “Be careful with your words, then,” he said with a wry smile. “But I still like hearing them.”

  Two plates of hash browns appeared before us, and I glared dubiously at the gravy slathered over the top of them. “This looks disgusting.”

  “Never judge a book by its cover.”

  He actually fucking winked at me. Who was this person?

  The hash browns were…okay, they were shockingly good. It was a pure distillation of garbage food—carbs and grease and overly-salty brown gravy, piled on a chipped melamine plate—but there was something deeply satisfying about it, the hash browns wonderfully crispy around the edges and the gravy all thick and peppery and seeping into the little spaces between potato shreds. Maybe I was being overly easy to please because I’d skipped dinner, but it was perfect comfort food, and it hit the spot like nothing I could have imagined.

  “You know,” Ellison said, glancing up with an amused smile, “if I didn’t know exactly what you sound like in bed, I’d think you were having sex with those hash browns.”

  I nearly choked on
my food, and I had to grab a napkin to cough into for a second. “Well, that’s a kink I’ve never heard of,” I said when I’d caught my breath.

  “Some people are into something like that,” he said, shrugging. “Wet and messy is what it’s usually called. It’s all about texture and being covered in slippery stuff. Gravy isn’t the first thing that comes to mind, but I could see it working.”

  “Oh my god,” I groaned. “I was kidding, Ellison. I mean, on some level I know there’s a kink for everything, but I keep forgetting that means, like…everything.”

  “That’s my job here—expanding your world,” he said with a smirk. “Should we get some gravy to go?”

  “Absolutely not,” I said firmly. “I don’t even like chocolate sauce in bed. Some things don’t belong in the bedroom, and food is one of them.”

  Ellison laughed, the sound chiming brightly in my heart.

  “What?” I tried to fake offense, but it didn’t quite come out right when I couldn’t control the curve of my lips.

  “You’ll accept humiliation and beatings, but whipped cream is where you draw the line?”

  “It’s your job to accept my limits, even if they don’t make sense,” I said with a haughty toss of my head.

  “It is,” he said with a smile. “Fortunately, I much prefer chocolate sauce and whipped cream on ice cream. Which, incidentally, we’re getting after this, so save some room.”

  “I’d say, ‘Twist my arm,’ but you’d probably do it.”

  He winked at me, his smile taking a mischievous slant. What kind of bizarro world had we ended up in tonight?

  Oh well, it was one where I got hash browns and ice cream, so I couldn’t complain too much.

  When it came time to go back to his place and figure out sleeping arrangements, I was torn. I didn’t want to kick him out of bed or anything, but I wanted to go home and sleep alone. Maybe it was missing out on some vital part of aftercare or something, but as wonderful as it was to spend time with him, I kind of needed some time to process everything that had gone on. I wasn’t usually too thrilled about the idea of being alone with my own thoughts—it got awfully noisy inside my head sometimes—but right now it sounded pretty peaceful, and it was one of those mindfulness things or whatever. I should probably take advantage of my empty head while I could.

  Ellison nodded and accepted it without blinking. I gathered up my things and he walked me to the door, stopping before it to wrap his arms around me. He squeezed me tight around my waist, flattening me against him, and I leaned down, resting my head on his shoulder. It was a little awkward having to bend down so far, but it was lovely to feel so held and treasured and cared for. I stayed there for a long time just breathing him in, feeling the heat of his skin under my cheek and pressing occasional kisses to the curve of his shoulder as he held me.

  My knees felt a little weak and wobbly when I stepped out into the night—maybe that adrenaline was wearing off—but I still felt good. Calm, centered, and sure. More sure than I’d been in a long time that I was on the right path.

  I took a couple ibuprofen when I got home because I knew my ass was going to hate me in the morning, and even though I’d planned to spend some time alone with my thoughts, I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow.

  I didn’t even dream. It was wonderful.

  16

  At some point, it had become tradition that I showed up at Mariah’s house early on Sunday mornings to help her set up for brunch. I couldn’t remember how it happened, given that I hated waking up early on weekends and didn’t even like brunch that much, but like most things with Mariah, it wasn’t particularly worth the effort of questioning.

  When I walked in this time, though, she took one look at me and immediately ushered me toward a chair. “You look like you lost a fight with a steamroller, River.”

  “It’s fine,” I said with a weak sigh. “I just slept like shit last night.”

  “Aww, poor thing,” she said, patting my arm in that casually maternal manner she slipped into so easily. “Well, why don’t you just take a seat, then. I’ve got just about everything ready anyway. Some day-drinking and scones will perk you right up.”

  I sat down at the table, very gingerly because my ass was still sore even two days after the beating and not a single one of Mariah’s jumble of mismatched chairs were padded. Her sense of interior decoration was just like her fashion sense, and just like her wildly clashing outfits, it somehow worked.

  She raised her eyebrows when she saw me. “Okay, either you have raging hemorrhoids, or you had a really good time last night.”

  I put my head down on my arms, defeated. “Two nights ago. It was…intense.”

  She patted me excitedly on the back. “My little baby bird has left the nest—I’m so proud! I’m going to get some mimosas in you so you can tell me all about it.”

  I let myself be bulldozed by Mariah into accepting a mimosa—not that it took that much effort. I started telling the tale of my sordid night while she started moving dishes to the table, but I’d only just gotten started when the doorbell rang. Mariah welcomed Ravi and Deirdre in, and plied them with mimosas while she finished setting up.

  “So, River was just telling me about how he got his ass beat the other night,” Mariah said conversationally as she handed Deirdre her glass.

  “Ooh, lucky boy. Me too,” Deirdre said with a grin, then stopped herself. “Oh, sorry—I forgot you’ve got some issues with that. Would you rather I don’t talk about it?”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. I haven’t freaked out since that one time.” Well, not about other people, anyway. I’d done plenty of freaking out about my own situation. “It’s…different now, I guess. I can see how the two of you work as a couple, and I can see that it’s really not, you know…”

  “Abuse?” Ravi offered.

  “Yeah, that.” I scrubbed a hand across the back of my head, and slid it up to touch the top—I’d gotten a haircut yesterday, and the old neurosis was back in full force, just like always. “Sorry. I mean, I always knew that it wasn’t, logically speaking. I hope it doesn’t sound like I ever suspected anything bad was going on between you two.”

  “No offense taken,” he said, waving his hand. “I totally get it—sometimes it just takes a while to really internalize this stuff.”

  “It helps a little that I’ve actually done some of this stuff now. I’ve had the chance to see what it’s really like, and that sort of eases my mind a bit. I don’t know how well I’d handle seeing—“

  I drew up short, suddenly remembering the party at the Center for Alternative Sexuality. I had walked by a few different scenes while I was there, and I’d definitely seen some male Doms with female subs—including Ellison—without freaking out at all. It hadn’t even occurred to me to be disturbed in any way, apart from the totally unrelated ways seeing Ellison like that had disturbed me.

  It was a small victory, but I still felt a little like celebrating. Maybe my brain wasn’t unconquerable after all.

  “Actually, no,” I said, slow and considering. “I think I’d be fine seeing it, too. I’ve uh…apparently learned a lot.”

  Deirdre smiled. “Well, you’re always welcome to look in on any of our public scenes, and we won’t feel offended if you still have to back out. Thinking you’re okay with something and actually being okay with it are sometimes different things.”

  “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Mariah made a frustrated sound as she dropped into a chair next to me. “Okay, enough touchy-feely ‘I get you, you get me’ stuff. Where last we left off, River wanted Ellison to hurt him until he cried.”

  Ravi and Deirdre both leaned forward in their seats, their eyes lighting up, and I felt my face growing hot.

  “Yeah, um…that’s…definitely where we left off in our private conversation.” Mariah made a “go on” gesture, and I sighed, giving in to the inevitable.

  It was easier than I would have expected to tell the st
ory of my kinky adventures the other night, given that I wasn’t very close with Ravi and Deirdre. Or maybe that distance made it easier—I didn’t have to worry as much about them judging me, since most of what I knew about them was that they were far kinkier than I was.

  On second thought, with the way things were going, that might be debatable at this point.

  Still, I managed to tell the whole story, embarrassing parts and all, and when I was done, Deirdre gave a little shiver. “Ooh, that sounds so lovely. And intense.”

  “I mean, it was definitely that.” I frowned. “But it wasn’t exactly a success. It was like…that nightmare where you’re called on in class and everyone stares because you can’t answer the teacher’s question.”

  Mariah shook her head with a chuckle. “Only River Burke could do exactly what he set out to do and still find a way to define it as a failure. Ladies and gentlemen, I present the reigning champion of self-deprecation since 1983.”

  “Really? I was the champion even when I was a baby?”

  “I bet you hated the reasons you were crying back then, too.” She took a sip of her mimosa, looking pointedly at me over the rim.

  “Well,” Ravi said, “as an exclusively dominant guy, let me reassure you that what you described sounds really fucking hot.”

  I raised a dubious eyebrow. “Hot?”

  “Dude, you were absolutely at your most vulnerable in that moment.” His voice was so emphatic that I couldn’t help but believe him a little. “As a general rule, adults don’t cry in front of people, especially those who were raised and socialized as men. It’s practically the ultimate tattoo. If we show weakness, we’re less of a man, or some shit like that. I’ll tell you right now, if I were into guys and one cried while he was subbing for me, it wouldn’t matter why he was doing it. I’d be…I mean, I’d be completely floored.”

  “You know,” Deirdre said, nudging him with her elbow and giving him a sly grin, “Dennis is a switch. I bet you he’d be into it.”

  Ravi actually blushed, which was an impressive feat—it took a lot for something to show up on that skin tone. “Yeah, but…dicks.”