A split second later, it all clicked into place, making him feel foolish. The tension in his shoulders eased as he laid his hand over hers on her belly. “Never mind. You’ve had a period before, right? Natural female function, completely normal and nothing to worry about.”
Alicia winced. “Elliot said it was the sign of a sinner. Only the devil’s whores bleed.”
“Elliot is a…very bad word.” Atticus closed his eyes and controlled his temper before it lashed out at the wrong person. “It’s normal. You’re normal. It has nothing to do with being a whore, the devil’s or otherwise. Did Connie show you what to do when you were at her house?”
“I didn’t do this when I was there. It only started when I was in rehab, and only once.” Her hands trembled. “My back hurts, and my stomach. I want to cry, and then I want to throw things and cry some more. What’s wrong with me?”
Years of drugs taking their toll on her, he wondered, or something more sinister? He imagined a decade of narcotics designed to numb her from the waist down might have a similar effect on her reproductive system, but he wasn’t a doctor. He needed to run this by Julia, get her take on it.
“Nothing, princess. You’re perfectly fine.” He, on the other hand, might be out of his league. “Want me to ask Connie to come over, talk you through the basics of the female anatomy?”
“No,” she whimpered.
“How about a warm bath, some ibuprofen, and cuddles?”
Her breath hitched and nearly unmanned him. “I-I’m not dying?”
“No, princess. Absolutely not.”
“You’re not going to shove dirty rags—”
“No. Let’s just stop that thinking right there, Alicia. Forget what Elliot told you, forget whatever level of hell he put you through last time, and listen to what I’m telling you. This,” he murmured, stroking their joined hands over the slight distension of her belly, “is normal. It makes women emotional and uncomfortable, it’s messy and a little painful, but it is normal. It has nothing to do with whores or the devil, it’s not going to kill you, and for sweet fuck’s sake, princess, don’t ever let me catch you sticking rags in your vagina, clean or otherwise.” He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “There are products for that, okay? Things designed to go in there and do that job.”
Her bottom lip quivered. “You can say that with a straight face?”
“When you’re scared, your Daddy will say whatever it takes with a straight face to bring one of these to your mouth.” He tapped a fingertip on her lips as they tried to curve into a brave smile. “Think you could eat a few pancakes before your bath?”
“Pancakes? With syrup?” Alicia worried her lower lip between her teeth before he used his thumb to drag it free. “No crappy oatmeal?”
Atticus harrumphed and stood, giving her ear a gentle flick. “My oatmeal is not crappy, princess. Don’t insult the chef, else you might find yourself with a sore bottom and no pancakes.”
Shit, that was a bad thing to suggest, Atticus realized as she looked up at him with tears shimmering on her lashes and an almost naïve gleam of lust hazing the blue. One of these days, she was going to do something that made him follow through on the threat designed to keep her ass from meeting his palm.
“If I’m a good girl, can I have both?” A hint of hope lurked under the question. “Spankcakes.”
Maybe it was time he accepted he was never going to hold a guardian-only position in her life. The connection he’d felt with her from the start was deniable from his end, but once Alicia cottoned onto it…he was sunk. A man dying of thirst could walk away from an oasis, but he couldn’t throw away a bottle of water placed firmly in his hand.
Uncovering her inner strength was a pull all of its own, but when her insecurities and adorability fluttered free, there were too many parts of her that fit the yearning parts of him. He could give her what she needed, just as she made him a better man for having her in his world.
The longer she was in it, the more he couldn’t imagine a future without her here.
Atticus sighed and walked over to the counter to pour her a juice and pop two ibuprofen. He’d heard both Archie and Connie comment on how bad the cramps could get in their belly and back, how the headaches could cripple them. “Before we trademark those spankcakes, you need to let me know where you want this—any of this—to lead, Alicia. What do you want?”
“Honestly?”
He handed her the glass and pills as she wheeled herself closer. “I won’t take anything less than the truth.”
Alicia tossed the pain relief back, drinking deep of her juice, and kept her eyes on him. She looked so frail in that damned contraption, yet there was a fire building in her eyes. One day, he had no doubt she would incinerate the shell she resided in now and rise like a freaking phoenix from the ashes imprisoning her for so long. “I want you, Atticus.”
Yes, a triumphant voice inside him hissed.
“When I first saw you, you scared the shit out of me. I was in that hospital bed, terrified I was going to be handcuffed and taken to jail. I kept waiting for the cops to come in and drag me away, then there you were, standing in the doorway like some big, brutal warrior looking for his next conquest.” She winced and pressed her palm into her side. “You did something that took my breath away, for all the right reasons. You didn’t know me, there was nothing between us, but you came in.”
She had more weight on her that night, he recalled. Pale and shocky, with old bruises marking her skin, fresh ones blooming underneath. She’d resembled a battered doll, carelessly thrown aside, while her sister had been broken and left for dead. Those eyes he loved so much had watched him warily, waiting for the pain she expected him to unleash.
He couldn’t have walked away and left her there alone.
“I sat in the chair beside you,” he murmured quietly.
“You were the first real person who spent any time with me, other than my parents. The first person I had any contact with outside of that house, the first man who saw me and didn’t want something from me.” Alicia’s smile blossomed with the memory. “You just sat down and commanded the room. I think you told me your name, and that you were friends with Bodie. That part’s a little hazy. But after that, you waited in the quiet with me. No questions, no chatter, just peace without loneliness.”
“Fell asleep on me in the end,” he pointed out. “Terror and shock caught up with you.”
“I shot my parents. I was convinced the handcuffs were coming my way. You were gone when I woke up, but I thought I could still smell you. Sounds stupid, but I held onto that during the questioning and the examinations. I held onto you and the card you left under my hand.”
The nurses had kicked him out. Understandably—they’d had things to do that didn’t require him bearing witness. He’d stayed for an hour, trying to puzzle together the pieces of her while she slept.
“The nurses said you came back a few times, and then I went to live with Connie, and you grew to be something else every time you came around. I felt shy, and stupid, and I was mired in depression. Can’t say I was the best of company.” She inhaled through her teeth, shifting uneasily as discomfort flickered in her eyes. “I didn’t know you were a Daddy. I didn’t know I wanted one. But the unwanted, mistreated girl in me clicked with you, even though she knew she didn’t stand a chance.”
“Didn’t she? How strange then, that I clicked with you too.” Thinking of the pain meds eating away at her empty stomach, Atticus dished up the cool pancakes. “If we explore this, do you just want the Daddy experience?”
She tilted her head curiously. “What else is there?”
Setting the plate on her section of counter, he laid out a knife and fork for her, then plucked the empty glass from her hand to refill it. “Obviously, sex is an option. Mutual masturbation, oral sex, fingering, full penetration.” He poured the juice, and when he turned back to her, Alicia’s eyes were glazed. “None of which you have to try, Lisha. Men have taken some abhorrent
liberties with you. I won’t be surprised if you decide sex is off the table.”
Something flickered over her face, forgotten memories spinning behind her eyes, before she pushed herself up to the counter and sniffed the pancakes like she thought he’d hidden oatmeal in them. “And the Dom part? Daddy Dom,” she continued, picking up the fork. “I guess that’s short for Daddy Dominant. So there’s more than just the Daddy experience and sex. The rest…it’s what Bodie and Braun are into, right?”
Att nodded slowly, gauging how far to push her. “How much would you like to know?”
“All of it. I’m not going to roll screaming into the night, Atticus. I might come across as…fragile,” she said with a faint wince, “but I’ve got strong shoulders.”
“Strong shoulders can only carry so much.” And hers weren’t as strong as she convinced herself—there were fractures showing. “Braun and Bodie, as you know, are more than an engaged couple. Before the pregnancy became complicated, they were one of the more active couples in the club. Braun’s strict but kind, and he loves your sister. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her.”
“He seems like a good guy.”
“Yes, he is. In a few months, when the stress of their current situation eases, you’ll get to know both of them better. Meet the people they are, rather than the impression of them.” He sat beside her and plucked the forgotten cutlery from her fingers, cutting the pancakes into bite-sized pieces. “Jasper and Anarchy’s story is slightly different. Aside from the fact it was riddled with landmines they’ve both had to dance around, Jasper is more than most guys in the lifestyle. His urges, his desires are…” How the hell did he describe sadism delicately? “Primal. He needs to inflict pain before he can become aroused. Pain is a double-edged sword for him.”
Alicia frowned. He swore the cogs working behind her eyes were working overtime, trying to process the data. It wasn’t an easy concept to accept, especially if someone didn’t have adequate knowledge to understand the complexities of what BDSM stood for, and how they branched out into innumerable possibilities.
It was profoundly harder to accept if, like Alicia, sex and violence had already been combined into one entity.
“Anarchy…she likes it?”
Atticus speared a square of pancake and held it to her lips, unsure whether she would take it. Pleasure whispered through him when she did, chewing slowly. “Anarchy is a rare treasure for someone like Jasper. Every sadist needs a masochist, and luckily for him, Archie found him, claimed him, and kept him, despite every stupid move he made to deter her. She’s the best thing that could have happened to him, and if you asked Archie, she’d say the same about him.”
“What…what about Connie?”
He smiled and fed her another bite, reaching out to wipe a drop of syrup from her lower lip with his thumb, then sucking the sweetness clean. “What is she to you, princess?”
Regret flashed in her eyes, made her mouth droop sadly at the corners. “She was my best friend, until I screwed everything up.”
“The way Connie’s been up my ass this past week, nagging to come visit, you might want to rethink the screwed up part. That woman loves you, Lisha. I doubt she loves you any less because you hit a rough patch you couldn’t navigate—with or without her help.” He offered another forkful of breakfast. “Connie is a miracle. She doesn’t see it, won’t believe it, but she has been through a hell deep enough to rival yours. She’s known as The Mistress at Avalon, but the truth is, she’s more than a Dominant.”
“There’s more than that? Isn’t that the top of the food chain?” Alicia sipped her juice, keeping her gaze on him. There was more curiosity than disgust or anxiety in those expressive eyes, which was a damned good sign.
“In the grand scheme of things, sure. But imagine holding a ball in each hand, one heavy with responsibility and duty of care,” he told her, holding his left hand out, palm up, “and the other lighter with the freedom of handing your worries to someone else.” He balanced the fork on his right hand. “Dominance and submission. Do you understand that?”
She nodded, still wearing that thoughtful frown.
“Now put those two balls together, the heavy and the light. That’s what we call a Switch, someone with the gift of being not one or the other, but both. Connie’s a Switch, but for a long time, she denied her submissive side and came close to making herself sick with the pressure of trying to be half of who she was. Thane came along, and being a Switch himself, gives her exactly what she needs to be able to embrace all of herself.”
That gave her something to think about, Atticus mused, leaving her in companionable silence as she twisted it around in her head until she found a way to comprehend it. Biting her lip, she studied him with a ferocity that surprised him. “Okay. If she’s happy, that’s the main thing, right? Happy is the goal.”
Something tapped his radar, telling him to pay attention. “Everyone deserves to be happy, Alicia. We all take different paths on this journey—some wrong, some right—but at the end of it all, all anyone wants is to find happiness.”
“Not everyone deserves it,” she whispered, clenching her fists. “Some paths are unforgivable, Atticus. It doesn’t matter if it’s a wrong turn and you get lost, or if you go skipping down that path knowing exactly where you’re heading.”
There we go, he thought. Another tangled knot distorting the system. He didn’t wade in to untangle the mess, he just walked straight up to it and sliced the whole fucking thing free. “Murder.”
She paled, making a quiet whining sound in her throat.
“Abraham took the wrong path. Did he deserve happiness? Hell no. Did he get it? I doubt it. Men like him never do, even when they con themselves into believing it. He was a bad man, shaping others into his likeness, but what he came down to was nothing more than a rapist, a drug dealer, a murderer, and those are just the cream off the top of his sins.” Atticus reached out and curled his fingers around her slender nape. “Diane…well, everything I’ve heard about her guaranteed she didn’t earn herself a happily ever after. She was cruel, vindictive, and not above following her husband into debauchery, murder, dealing, theft. She chose her path knowing where it led, and not giving a damn about the people she kicked to the wayside.”
The whine escalated into a soft keen that broke his heart and scattered the pieces on the kitchen floor.
“And then there’s you, princess. Beautiful, damaged, and so ravaged by guilt, you haven’t even chosen a goddamn path. Abraham and Diane’s paths crossed, trapping you in the middle in an untenable position where you either killed, or you died. Not much time to think it over, was there?”
She choked. “I had the gun. A loaded gun.”
He nodded, factoring that in. “Yet you didn’t shoot them before that night, did you? There was no unprovoked shooting, no cold-blooded homicide. They came home that night, fresh from beating Bodie to within an inch of her life, gloating that they’d killed her. They believed they’d broken their own daughter badly enough that she’d have to be buried, and they were laughing about it.”
Her hands were shaking so badly, the tremors were rising up her arms.
“What they did forced you to a crossroads, Alicia. Live or die. Their lives or yours. You did the only thing you could to ensure your own survival, and I for one, am grateful for it. If you need a second, third, fourth, and fifth,” he added sternly when her mouth dropped open, “I can list off every person I know who’s just as grateful as I am. Who would be broken and damaged by not having you in their lives. It cost you, princess, I know from experience exactly how much, but your happiness isn’t included in that price. If anything, after all the shit they put you through, you’re the one who deserves it most.”
She crawled out of the chair, clutching his legs as she tried to drag herself onto his lap. Listening to her cry did unspeakable things to his emotions, but it helped to know that they were tears of release. If she let even a fraction of the pressure inside her loose, he’d listen to
her cry all damn day.
Without thought, Atticus lifted her onto his lap, arranging her legs and folding her into the security of his arms. He didn’t say anything—he’d said enough for now—but he rocked her like a child until her sobs weren’t so harsh, until the vicious trembling stopped long enough for her to relax into him.
Ten minutes later, Alicia was quiet and still. Not asleep, he noted, but somewhere he couldn’t go. Her eyes were open, distant. She’d fallen away into herself, which was okay. Today—when her body ached and her hormones were running high, when he’d dumped an additional helping of confusing emotions on top of everything else—she could hide until the world righted itself.
To please himself, he rocked for another ten minutes, enjoying the shape of her in his arms. So slight, and yes, fragile, despite her protests to the contrary. There were some improvements in her condition—not enough, but a normal diet was slowly building her back up.
Now he just had to tackle the feminine issue without making it into an insurmountable ordeal. That shouldn’t be too difficult, right? Well, aside from the fact he’d overlooked this little detail when planning Alicia’s stay and had no feminine hygiene products in the house.
It crossed his mind that maybe Archie kept some in her desk downstairs, but he made a point of not rummaging around through his staff’s personal belongings on company property—friend or not.
Grunting to himself, not thrilled at the idea of navigating the minefield of teaching Alicia how to insert tampons if that was what she wanted to use, Atticus shifted to reach his phone.
Atticus: Code red. Menstrual phase in progress. Require immediate assistance and supplies.
Connie: Jesus, Att, are you five or fifty? Hot water bottle, ibuprofen, chocolate. Does she want tampons or pads?
Oh, a delicate question he wasn’t sure how to answer. Unfortunately, he didn’t think Alicia would know either, even if she could understand what he was asking. Scowling at the phone, he typed back: Got the ibuprofen covered. Have chocolate. Taking her for a warm bath, then will tuck her in with a bottle. How the hell do I know if she wants pads or tampons?
Walk For Me: Club Avalon Book 4 Page 18
