He nods. “Yes. I wondered what I did wrong.”
I smile through tears. “You made me fall, and I wasn’t prepared for that. I freaked out and called my sister. I was afraid that you could never return my feelings, and that I would be destroyed by it. Then I was afraid that if you did return my feelings, I would be destroyed by that too. Until we met with Dr. Nashito, I thought it had to be your way too, and that to be with you, I would have to give up who I am inside.” He nods, encouraging me with his eyes. “But then I saw how hard you were trying for me. I saw—” My voice cracks as tears clog my throat. “I saw a man that was devoted to me, and I’ve never experienced anything that powerful. After that, I knew we could do it, but I wasn’t gonna tell you how I felt so I didn’t freak you out.”
Gabriel smiles, cupping my face. “Freak me out, Mia. Tell me how you feel. I need to hear it.”
“I’m in love, Gabriel. With every part of you. The darkness and the light. The hard and the soft. The rough and the gentle. I love you, the man you are today, and the one you’ll be tomorrow. I love you, Gabriel, with as much force as the strongest storm. I won’t leave you. I can’t.”
He pulls me close and rubbing my back and stroking my hair, we rock together in each other arms. I’m filled with such peace it nearly takes my breath away. I made the right choice to trust him. I looked inside, like Marian said, like Dani did, and I listened to that little voice that said I was safe.
Gabriel leans back, flashing that stunning smile of his. “This is the best day of my life. Hands down.”
“Mine too.”
“Want to go to sleep now? We’re both physically and mentally drained.”
“Yeah.”
He helps me up and we climb into bed together. As he cradles me, I kiss his compass tattoo. “You found your way home, Gabriel.”
He gazes down at me and smiles. “Finally.”
THE NEXT MORNING, I sit beside a sleeping Mia and watch her chest move up and down as she softly breathes. Vixen is snuggled above her head on the pillow, content with her new surroundings, and I realize I want Mia to stay here. I also realize that I have no desire to force her to do it. I don’t want to tie her to the bed or threaten her or break her. I want her to want to be here. I exhale slowly as that concept hits me.
Last night, I was rough with her, demanding, selfish, but she kept up and encouraged me. She submitted completely, and it tore me up inside to realize what she was willing to do for me when I’ve done so little for her. I love you, Gabriel. Her words play over and over in my mind. Words I’ve heard so few times in a meaningful way they sound foreign. How many times I’ve had a sub crawling on the floor spewing words of love knowing all along it wasn’t love she felt. It was the fear of losing me, the excitement of complete domination, the high of submission. I knew, of course, that the only feelings I ever had were lust. When that was gone, so were they. The only one who might’ve actually loved me was Claudette. As soon as I think her name, I feel a wave of nausea hit me. I have to tell Mia. I have to get it all out.
I pull myself away from her and walk out to the kitchen to make breakfast. I love this apartment, but it would never be the same if she left. All I know is I’ll do whatever I have to, to be with her. After sending Dr. Nashito an email that I won’t be in to see him today, my phone rings and I grab it from the island, noticing the caller ID as I answer.
“François, my friend.”
“Gabriel. How are you?”
“Great, but it’s the ass crack of dawn in the U.S.”
François chuckles. “I was never good at the time difference. Do you have a moment for a friend?”
“Of course. What’s up?”
“Is your invitation to visit you still open to me?”
“Yeah, any time. Why?”
“It turns out that I have an opportunity the first week of January to go to Los Angeles for work. Since it is close, I thought why not stop by this desert my friend has chosen as his home.”
I laugh softly. “Why not, indeed. I’d love to see you.”
“Magnifique. I can come for a long weekend and leave Sunday night. Does that work for you?”
“Definitely. You can meet my devoted.”
“I cannot wait to meet this unicorn amongst women.”
“That’s a good word for her.”
“I will call when I know my exact travel plans.”
“Great. Looking forward to it.”
“As am I. Before we go, if you know of any American women that I might entertain myself with, please arrange it.”
I nod. “I’ll see what I can come up with. I haven’t explored the scene at all here since I met Mia quickly.”
“If it works out, good. If not, I will go home with no souvenirs.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “See you soon.”
“Yes, Joyeux Noël, mon ami.”
“Merry Christmas to you too.” After hanging up, it hits me that the holiday is closing in fast, and I need to think of something good for Mia. Something she’ll never forget. I wrack my brain for ideas. Jewelry? Hmm. Maybe. What does she like? I haven’t spent enough time getting to know her on that level. An idea pops into my head, and I smile. Yes, that’s it.
Walking over to my desk, I open my laptop and type in the item I want. Looking over all the selections, I decide to go over the top and get her several items, noting the store location. There’s a store in the mall right next door. Perfect.
“Gabriel?”
I hear her soft voice and quickly close my laptop. “Hey.”
“Hi.” She’s completely naked, and when I see what I’ve done to her, I’m alarmed. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh, Mia, I’m so sorry.”
“For?”
“Come here.” She pads over to me, unaware of the damage I’ve caused. “Babe, look at your wrists.”
She looks down at the bruises and gasps. “Damn.”
“That’s not all.” I touch her breasts, stomach, collarbone. Then look down at her legs to see one or two bruises there. Finally, I twist her around where there’s a big circle on her ass where I bit her. Even her lips are bruised. “You look like you got in a fight.”
She grins. “You should see the other guy.” She drags her fingers over my shoulder, so I look to see actual marks where her nails were. “Your lips are bruised, and you have bite and scratch marks all over your neck and shoulders.”
“Fuck, Mia, that is so hot.”
She smiles, straddling my lap. “It is. I guess we get into our love making.”
“I guess we do.”
She leans forward and kisses me, pressing her tits into my chest. “What are you gonna do to me today?”
“Don’t know yet. What do you want?”
“Whatever you got.”
I nod, sitting her down on my lap. “Do you remember what I told you last night?”
“Every word. Do you still mean it?”
“Every word. I want you to stay, or I want to go with you. Whatever, but I need you with me.”
“Go with me where?”
“Home.”
She chuckles softly. “You want to move in together after knowing each other, what a month?”
“I do. Maybe we don’t have to make it official yet, in case you still need space from me sometimes, but I want your stuff here, or I want to be with you there at your house. Whatever makes you most comfortable.”
“I’m happy here for now. I could bring over some clothes for work and we can just see how it goes.”
“Perfect.” Standing, I pick her up and carry her to the couch with me, where I sit her down. “I’ll turn on the fireplace and get you some coffee.”
“Okay.”
After I walk in the kitchen, I pour her a mug, then carry it out to her, where she’s now wrapped my cashmere throw around her naked form.
“Are you cold?”
She shakes her head. “No, it just looked soft.”
“Drink your coffee. I’ll draw us a bath. We
need to soak after last night.”
“We sure do. I don’t know about you, but I feel like I went on a hundred-mile bike ride.”
Laughing, I nod. “Yeah. Same.”
After kissing her forehead, I head to the bathroom to start the bath. I have so many things that I want to tell her still swirling in my head. I hope she understands. A few minutes later, I go back to the living room to get her and find her standing up overlooking the balcony with the blanket wrapped around her. She looks absolutely stunning like that, and I quietly grab my phone to take a picture of her. She looks over at me and smiles.
“What are you doing?”
“Capturing perfection.”
Shaking her head, she lets the blanket fall as she walks toward me. “There you go again.”
“I guess it just took the right woman to bring out my sweet side.” I kiss her nose. “Bath?”
“Yeah.”
Taking her hand, I lead us down the hall and into the master bath. “What were you thinking about just now?”
She steps into the bathtub, then sinks down. “I was remembering that moment at Starbucks when I thought you were the cockiest man I’d ever met, but how intensely exciting that was.”
I nod, climbing in with her. “And?”
“And how crazy it is that this moment is happening. I told my boss that I thought falling in love would be easy, and she told me only in fairy tales, but she’s wrong. It is easy.”
“I don’t think this relationship has been easy.”
She runs her fingers through her tangled hair. “She also said sometimes you have to fight for love, and I think that applies to us in a way. We had to fight to overcome past baggage, and navigate something that worked for both of us, but when I say it was easy to fall, I mean I didn’t even want to. I fell for you when we weren’t even technically together. I fell for you when I should’ve been running, but my feet wouldn’t move. My head said it’s too much work. It’s gonna be too hard.” She smiles. “But my heart said it’s gonna be fine. You can trust him. He is yours.”
Lifting her hands from the water, I kiss them. “I couldn’t have said any of that better myself. It was hard, but it was worth it. I wouldn’t trade any part of my life for where I’m at now.”
“Same here.”
We soak for a few minutes, then wash each other. I notice how she flinches when I touch her between the legs, and I realize just how rough I was.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, kissing her tummy.
“Don’t be. I loved every minute of it.”
I nod. “Let’s get out. I have some more things I want to tell you.”
“Okay.”
I step out and help her, wrapping her in a towel. We go back to the living room, and cuddle on the couch in nothing but our towels. As Mia plays with my hands, I take a deep breath.
“I want to tell you about something that happened in France.”
“Okay.”
“I want to tell you so you know everything major about me.” She nods. “Paris was where I met people that were just like me. There was a whole community, and they accepted me and taught me how to be a true dominant.”
“Mm hmm.”
“These were the people I spent all my free time with, so all the women were subs seeking doms.”
“You told me this.”
“Yes, but there’s more. A truly submissive woman will let her master do anything he wants to do. Anything.”
She nods. “Uh huh.”
“She has no boundaries, so I didn’t either.” She smiles, nodding. “It was a good life at first. I finally felt accepted and normal because I never had before, but here were lots of people just like me.”
“That must’ve been a good feeling.”
“It was. I got involved in the lifestyle, drinking, drugs, sex, that was my life every night. Somehow, I excelled at work, and things were going well. Paris, for the most part, was the best part of my life.”
She just smiles at me without speaking, so I continue.
“I didn’t want to come back, but if I wanted to continue to advance, then I had to.” I smile. “Of course now I’m really happy I did, but I was scared to leave them. I planned to find another community when I got settled here, but I met you right away.”
“Yeah.”
“So, back to Paris, something happened that was really bad.” I wring my hands. “I met a woman named Claudette. She was introduced to the community through a friend, and presented to me as a gift.”
Mia tilts her head. “A gift?”
“Yeah. At the time I had recently been accepted into The Committee, a group that made decisions about who could be members and other details. It was a very prestigious nomination, especially because I was foreign and hadn’t been in the group long. Claudette, was a, um, a virgin, and virgins in that scene are hard to come by.”
“In any scene.”
“True. So, I accepted Claudette’s servitude—”
“Servitude?” Her eyes open wide. “Wow.”
I nod. “That’s what we called it. Do you want to hear the rest?”
“If you want to tell me.”
I pause, deciding I’m this far in, I might as well keep going. “I fucked her that night, in front of everyone, as a display of ownership.” I rub my face in my hands after admitting that, afraid to meet Mia’s eyes. “That’s what we did.”
“That’s how she lost her virginity?”
“Yeah.”
“She wanted that?”
“Yes.”
“How old was she?”
I cringe at the question. “Twenty-one. That’s how old you had to be to get in the club.”
Mia nods, staring down at her hands. Forcing myself to continue, I say, “From that night on, Claudette was mine, and I could twist her however I wanted. She was so eager, so willing to please me, and I exploited that. I made her do very bad things, Mia, but she showed such enthusiasm and would beg me to debase her. She thrived on humiliation.”
She glances up. “Very bad things like what, Gabriel?”
“Those details aren’t important.”
She gives me a stern look. “If you’re gonna tell me the story, then tell me the damn story.”
I stare out the window for a moment knowing she’s right. “I, um, would take her to clubs around town and make her pick someone to fuck. I would stand over her watching some stranger fuck her brains out and call her a whore or a slut. I made her…” I exhale slowly before I can continue. “I made her suck a lot of dick. Then I would ignore her for days because she fucked another man, even though she only did it because I told her to do it. I fucked with her head constantly.” Mia nods, but remains silent. “Then I would make her watch me while I…” I can’t.
“Fucked other women?” I nod. “Jesus,” she murmurs.
“I would insult her the whole time, but she would get so turned on by it. I never saw anything like it. The more I pushed her, the more she wanted. She would beg me to—”
“To what?”
“Slap her. Push her. Spit on her. A few times, I even… she wanted… fuck, this is way harder than I thought it would be to tell you.”
“What did she want you to do? Hurt her?”
“No. She wanted me to use her like a toilet after sex.”
She scrunches her nose. “Like a toilet?”
I sigh. “She wanted me to piss on her, Mia.”
Mia gasps. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Yeah. I did it once just to see if I liked it, but I didn’t, so I wouldn’t do it anymore, but she would ask. People warned me that she was obsessive, too attached to me, but I just couldn’t see it. It’s like she got off on being treated worse than shit.”
“But you got off on it too?”
“No, see, that’s where things went bad. I mean, at first, I did, because the power she gave me was intoxicating. I would come to the club, pop my cocktail of drugs and alcohol, and then think of fucked up shit to do to Claudette. The night she agr
eed to…” I put my head back as the memory floods my head. “She agreed to a, um, a gang bang for lack of a better term. Every person there, male and female, took a turn at her, and instead of being turned on I was disgusted. I knew it had gone too far for me, and Claudette had no bottom. No limit to what she would and wouldn’t do at my request. If I told her not to speak, she could keep it up for days. No eating, she would starve. It went from being intoxicating to being dangerous. The day after the gang bang I told her I was done. I dismissed her, and the way it usually goes is the sub just finds a new master, but Claudette didn’t accept it. She lost her shit, and basically started stalking me. She found out where I worked, and she came there. That was always information I fiercely protected, so I didn’t understand how she knew. She came to my flat, she showed up when I was out with other women. So I had to say some really awful things to her to get her to understand that we were done.”
“Like?”
“Like she was a disgusting piece of trash and that I had gotten everything I wanted. I told her…” I sigh. “I said her pussy was damaged, and that I had fresh pussy to conquer. I was as mean as I could muster for the sole purpose of getting her to let me go. I hated it. Mia, I hated saying those things. The final straw came when she cried and groveled at my feet, and after an hour of this, I told her I would call the police and have her arrested. She left, and told me she understood, and she would never bother me again.”
“Did she go away?”
“She went home and took a bottle of sleeping pills.”
“Oh my God.” She covers her mouth. “Did she—”
“Die?” Mia nods. “No. Her friend came home with just minutes to spare, and she was rushed to the hospital where they were able to save her life. It was the lowest moment I’ve ever experienced when friends called me to tell me what she had done. Because of me. Because of what I did to her.”
“Then what happened?”
“I tried to quit the lifestyle. I tried to walk away, but I was just as addicted as Claudette was. I blocked out what happened with her and moved on to the next one. I wouldn’t see Claudette or deal with it at all. I just fucked more women, did more drugs, drank more whiskey. Other than the people that were present for it, you’re only the second person I’ve told. The first person was Dr. Nashito.”
Reckless Devotion: Book 2 Page 11
