by Marlee Wray
“You need to?” he asked, sounding amused. “Why’s that?”
“Why are you smiling? This is not funny. At all.”
“Well, it’s a little funny, considering you’ve got three or four times the number of marks on you, and I’m the one who made them. I’m not sure how I expected you to react when you saw my back, but I didn’t think you’d be outraged.”
“You’ve never broken my skin! This is a whole other thing. Wait, are you saying that it was a punishment?”
“Yeah, what did you think?”
“Who? When? Where was I?”
“You were in D’s office, talking to him.”
“You let this happen? Why? Because you broke the club’s rules? This was the price of them letting us back in? I didn’t agree to that. I wouldn’t have!”
He laughed. “It’s not a two-way street, kitten. I own your body. You don’t own mine.”
“Just tell me. Did you have to take a punishment? Was it mandatory?”
“No.”
“But you did. Because it’s what the club wanted?”
“No. It had nothing to do with our coming back to the club.”
“What then? Are you a switch?”
He barked out a laugh. “Kitten, come on. Be serious.”
“I am. Your back is shredded.”
“Hardly that,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “And if I was a switch it wouldn’t have been only my back. My ass would’ve gotten the same and more.”
“But you chose to do this?” She pulled her legs up to sit with her arms wrapped around them, feeling very cold.
“Yeah. Atonement.”
“For?”
“That’s between me and my conscience. Let it go.”
“You had a scene with someone else,” she whispered. There were things he did, big things, that had nothing to do with her. And that he had no intention of sharing with her.
“It wasn’t really a scene,” he said.
“I see,” she said, her voice empty. She knew from the online community that this was how things were. Dominants often did scenes with other partners. They frequently had more than one pet. The thought of Rory with other women made all the air in her lungs disappear. This was part of what scared her most about being with him. The feeling that if things ended, she’d never again be as happy and in love as she was right now. Her dad would have called it limerence because he was an academic.
“Kate—”
“My parents were texting about a wedding. I said I was going to RSVP no. I said I couldn’t afford to fly home right now, and they weren’t happy. They were texting to say they bought me a plane ticket. I guess I’ll go.”
She crawled under the covers. The expense had not been the reason she hadn’t wanted to go. The real reason was that she didn’t want to be away from Rory. But now she thought maybe she should force herself to go. She couldn’t afford to become so caught up in him that she lost her mind. There couldn’t be another few days like when he’d been in Austria. Maya had already texted to say that if anything like that happened again, she would call the campus police to open her door and an ambulance to take her for an evaluation. She had scared her suite mate in the worst way. She had scared herself, too. What if she had stopped breathing? Her parents would have had to wonder for the rest of their lives if she’d killed herself on purpose.
“Kate,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Move over here.”
She slid to the center of the bed, so her arm was against his.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just really tired. Aren’t you?”
He didn’t answer, but she knew he must have been because he didn’t ask her anything else.
Chapter Twenty-Three
His kitten was not in a mood to play. She was distracted and ready to leave by the time they finished breakfast.
“My suite mates want to have a group meeting this afternoon. They want me to be there around noon.”
Rory folded his arms across his chest. He had planned to take her back on Sunday, but not first thing in the morning. And he didn’t care that her friends wanted to meet with her, even though he knew they had been collateral damage in the end-of-the-week drama.
“Don’t you think I should go?”
He knew she should, but he wanted to say no. Just like he knew she should go to the family wedding her parents had been texting about, but since she hadn’t invited him to come, he didn’t want her going there either. He wanted her within easy reach, which was usually what she wanted too. But ever since he’d shut down discussion of the flogging he’d taken, she wasn’t the same. He still didn’t want to cover that ground with her. He didn’t want her to feel responsible for his taking a punishment. On the other hand, cool and collected Kate was not his Kate. And he wanted his Kate back.
“Rory?”
“What?”
“Don’t you think I should go to the meeting?”
“Yeah, you should, and you should take them a gift. Something for the suite that they’d enjoy.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary. They didn’t do anything, other than open the door for you.”
“I told Maya not to call anyone and she didn’t. It would’ve been a mess if she had.”
Kate nodded. “I suppose so. I did scare them. Maybe an espresso machine? We’ve talked about getting one, but they’re kind of expensive.”
Rory rolled his eyes. Like he gave a fuck about the cost of an espresso machine. Kate didn’t seem to realize that she could’ve ended up on a psych hold in the emergency room, and worse, she could’ve been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital if they’d thought she was trying to kill herself with those pills. Rory knew what could happen because one of his college friends had had a girlfriend who’d cut her wrists after failing an exam.
Kate’s suite would get a coffee machine, and it would be the most expensive one the store had.
* * *
Kate felt excessively blue, which she knew was unwarranted. The other girls in the suite were satisfied that everything was okay with her and were delighted with the espresso machine. She was convinced that the discussion was more limited than it might have been because one of the girls really wanted to make a round of cinnamon cappuccinos for everyone.
Kate had taken her coffee to her room so she could put everything away. The room was still in chaos from Rory’s search, and she winced to think of him going through her stuff under those circumstances.
By three-thirty in the afternoon, she’d cleaned and organized the room and was studying French. She had not done well on that last exam and needed a great score on her conversation challenge and the final.
She was conjugating verbs in her head when the phone rang. She glanced at it and was happy to see that it was Rory. She wished she didn’t always miss him so much when she wasn’t with him.
“Hello,” she said.
“How did it go?”
“You’re very popular. I’m having a cinnamon cappuccino. Everyone is. I think I could’ve tried to burn down the dorm and it would’ve been glossed over once Selena saw you set down that box.”
“Glad they liked it. What are you doing?”
“Studying. Parlez-vous francais?”
“No.”
“Did you have to study a language at Princeton? We’re required to.”
“Think you could concentrate if you were at my place?”
She smiled. He was not one to be sidelined when there was obviously a purpose for the call. She loved, too, that he wanted her to come home.
Her smile faded. To his home, she added to herself. She lived in the dorm, not with him. “I think so. I need to be back tomorrow. Besides class, we have our group meeting with our senior advisor. I can’t miss it.”
“You’ll be back tomorrow. Come down.”
“Now? Are you—didn’t you leave New Haven?”
“No. Come down.”
�
�Okay,” she said, hanging up and quickly repacking her bag. The girls in the common room gave her a look. “I’ll be back in the morning,” she promised, hurrying out.
When they were en route to his place, she talked idly about school and the weather, but often they lapsed into silence.
Finally, he said, “How long till you’re over it?”
“Over what?”
“The fact that I’m not getting into the details about my back.”
Never, she thought. She looked out the passenger window. “I know it’s not my place to press you for information or to expect that I’ll be everything you want indefinitely. I just thought maybe we’d be different and that it would go on for a long time without changing.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s okay,” she said, biting her lip, her eyes prickling with tears that immediately started to form.
He pulled off the road. “I want to hear everything you’re thinking. Right now.”
“It’ll make things worse. It’ll be better if I can just not think about it and pretend.”
He gripped her wrist, squeezing until she sucked in a little breath and looked at him. It wasn’t hard enough to leave a mark, but it definitely got her attention.
“You’re not gonna pull away. I won’t let you.”
“I need to, not far, just enough.”
“No.”
She tried to peel his fingers off her arm, but couldn’t. “You’re being so unfair!”
“No, I’m not. This is what we agreed to.” His voice was low and smooth, but there was something dangerous in his eyes. As much as she hated herself for it, that heat melted her.
“I need some air. Can you just—?” She struggled to pull her arm away.
“No.”
“Stop. I’m trying to protect myself.”
“No, you stop. Protecting you is my job.”
“Well, you’re not protecting me. You’re hurting me… or at least I’m hurting myself and you’re not helping me to stop.”
“Explain that. Hurting yourself how?”
“Because you talked to me. You acted like that was unusual. Like I was special. But then you shared something with someone else and you shut me out. And I know that’s allowed. I know you can do whatever you want with anyone you want, but if you got another kitten, I couldn’t stand it. I don’t want to share you! I don’t want anyone to be closer to you than I am. Not ever!”
“Christ, Kate, you have got to learn to use that mouth of yours when you’re upset. All fucking day I’ve been on edge over nothing.”
“It’s not nothing to me!”
“Lower your voice. If you think I won’t take you out into that grass to punish you, you’re wrong.”
She settled back in her seat, feeling defeated.
“If I keep something back, baby, it’s not because I want to shut you out. It’s because I’m protecting you. Shut you out? You’re seriously accusing me of that? I keep you so fucking close the minute you’re not within reach the clock starts ticking. When have I ever not come looking for you when you’re away from me?”
“What about scenes with other girls? If you have them, I want to know. Not knowing is too hard.”
“Other subs are the farthest thing from my mind. If anything changes, we’ll talk about it.”
“You said I don’t own your body. You won’t tell me—”
“When I was in Austria, I thought you might be in trouble. Instead of sending someone to check on you, I flew home. I could’ve been too late. If you needed someone, I wanted it to be me, so I took a chance that could’ve ended with me finding you dead. That’s what I needed to make right with myself.”
“You shouldn’t have had to feel that way. I wish you’d let me take a punishment, too. I have more to be sorry about than you.”
“You suffered more than enough when I left you alone.”
“Who did you get to do the scene with you?”
“Stop calling it a scene. I chose the spot and the implement. I chose the number of lashes. There was no conversation. I stood with my hands on the back of my neck, and Marianne doled out the stripes. Afterward, I said thanks and that I owed her a favor. I didn’t tell her what I was atoning for. I didn’t tell her anything at all. No one was watching. I wasn’t bound. There was no safeword. If I’d wanted to walk away, I could’ve, at any time. It was the same as if I’d said my back itches between my shoulder blades where I can’t reach it. Scratch it for me. It wasn’t a scene.”
She nodded.
“There’s no one closer to me than you. There never has been.” He moved his grip and brought her wrist toward him. “That may bruise,” he said, frowning.
“Good,” she whispered.
“No, kitten, not good. I don’t want to leave marks where people may see them. No coffeemaker will buy your roommates’ silence if they think I’m abusing you.”
“Fifty Shades of Grey is very mainstream now. I’d make them understand. They would think I’m a mess, but it wouldn’t interfere with us. I wouldn’t let it,” she said softly.
He thought it over a moment. “Maybe. So what’s up with the wedding?”
She blinked. It took her a moment to realize he’d changed gears completely. “One of my aunts is getting married. I don’t think I should have to go. It’s her second time, and people know I’m here at school. I want to stay in town during my break, so I can be with you as much as possible. But my parents really want me to go. They’re being really stubborn about it.”
“It’s family. You should go.”
“I’ll miss you so much,” she said.
“Then invite me to come. I can skip the reception if she didn’t give you a plus one. I’ll hang out in a hotel and work from there. I’ll see you when you’re free.”
“You’d come with me to this? It’ll be a ton of people, not our kind of people, and—” She shuddered.
“Let’s get it out of the way. I’ll take you with me to my nephew’s birthday party, so you can meet my family. And I’ll drive you to Pennsylvania so I can meet your parents.”
She hesitated. “I’m really happy that you want us to meet each other’s families, but we don’t have to rush.”
He grinned. “What are you afraid of?”
A lot of things, she thought, but she said, “Nothing.”
“Uh huh.”
“I like it when it’s just you and me.”
“It’s always just you and me, kitten. Even in a room full of people.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
They’d had an intense scene in the early morning hours before they drove to Baltimore. Knowing by now which kinds of sore would intensify enough to need medicine, his girl had taken Tylenol with her coffee. She’d also unhooked her bra and slid an ice pack under her shirt for the first hour of the drive.
He’d gone harder with her than he would’ve with anyone else, and she’d let him, as usual.
“Why don’t you take Motrin, too, kitten?”
“I’m okay,” she said with a smile. “It’s a good kind of sore now.” She opened the window and dumped the melted ice from the Ziploc.
“You need more ice? I can hit a gas station.”
“No, I’m good now.”
“I’m thinking about later. The kids might want you to pick them up and hug them. I wasn’t thinking about them earlier.”
She smiled. “What do you think about? In the moment?”
“Nothing we should talk about while I’m driving.”
“I guess not. Later, I’ll ask you again.”
“You want to hear it raw and unfiltered?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a strange girl, Kate. You know that?”
“Yes.” She reached under her T-shirt and re-clasped her bra with a little hiss of pain as she adjusted her juicy tits inside the cups. “I think you like that about me,” she said softly.
“I love that about you.”
* * *
The house was full
, not just with his family, but with other kids and parents who had been invited for the party. Kate stood with her back against the wall, looking pretty overwhelmed as he introduced her. The kids were jumping and climbing on him as he passed out presents. He always brought them all something, no matter whose birthday it was.
Kate wore a pink and tan dress with her hair pulled back in a crystal clip.
“You’re Kate, like the princess. That’s a princess’s name,” his niece said.
A two-year-old reached her arms up.
Kate leaned over to talk to them, but her hands stayed firmly behind her back. He would’ve laughed, except he had plans that involved putting his babies inside her and at the moment she looked about as maternal as an iceberg.
Rory swept the two-year-old up, who squealed with delight when he tossed her in the air.
“Why don’t you take Kate to have a tea party?”
“Go with them?” she asked, surprised.
“Sure. When I track down my mom, I’ll bring her in.”
Having gotten his okay, the girls in their Disney gowns grabbed Kate’s hands and tried to drag her down the hall.
“Rory?”
He leaned over.
“I don’t really have any experience with this sort of play,” she whispered.
“You’ll be fine, baby,” he said, brushing his lips over hers. “You’re good at winging it.”
The little girls erupted into discussion over the fact that he’d kissed her. Was he married to Kate? If not, were they getting married soon? If so, could the girls be in the wedding? Could they wear miniature bridesmaid’s dresses? And flowers? And tiaras?
Kate stared down at them like they were aliens. Rory laughed and sent them on their way.
By the time Rory said hello to everyone and found his mom, over an hour had passed. He was surprised that Kate hadn’t reemerged, but took it as a good sign. When he and his mom got to the doorway, the girls were gathered around a table. Kate sat with her butt on her heels, the way she often did in the club at his feet. The room was in perfect order in a way he’d never seen it.
