Page 125 of At Her Pleasure

His face told her the answer. “Glad to hear it,” she said softly. “Because when they cut pieces off your soul, you have to hide them somewhere, to remember who you are, or at least give them a proper burial. The alternative is you hand them away and become soulless.” She gave him a penetrating look. “Which do you think you’ve done?”

His harsh laugh startled her. “I hid the pieces with the person I never expected to see again.”

Emotion obscured everything for one erratic breath, a hard triple thump of her heart. She gripped his shirt front. “You’ve lost too much of your soul, even if it is in someone else’s keeping.”

“Your keeping,” he corrected her.

“You’re going to slip up, get killed. Maybe get others killed at the same time.”

That had an impact, as she knew it would. Pointing out a client’s vulnerabilities. “So here's the question. What do you need to keep doing it, staying smart, sharp and never losing sight of the goal? That you’re doing it to save future people, so they don’t end up where that girl did.”

When the problem was difficult, she didn’t ask easy questions, not in session, not in her professional life. Not to her friends or family. “Tell me what you need, Mick. Your Mistress requires an answer.”

“I need a home to go to.” His gaze latched onto her like the cuffs she put on his wrists. Not as a restraint, but as an unbreakable bond. “I need to know I can always go home.”

She weighed that against what Tyler had told her. Looked for the balance. "So you've told me what you need. You know the next question."

His eyes sparked. "What do you need, Mistress?"

"I need you to always come home. I need to not lose you."

As his arms enclosed her, she put her cheek against his forehead, her arms wrapped around his shoulders. “All right,” she said. “Take me to bed, Mick. Give me pleasure. Work your ass off for me. Earn your right to be home.”

A shudder went through him. “You got it, Mistress.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

She led the way into the motorhome. Feeling him so close behind her, she knew something different was called for. She wasn’t yet sure what, but it was part of the challenge, letting her intuition craft their direction, while the man submitting to her control provided creative inspiration.

“You remember the night I asked when you last took a deep breath?” She turned to face him.

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t answer.”

“I watched you do it. It didn’t seem to go so well.”

“Let’s do it now. Together.”

He gave her a reluctant nod, and they tried it. It went the way it had for her the first time, a lot of weird catches, as if too much was in the way. She thought he found it the same, so she moved closer and laid her hand on his chest. His hand rose and laid upon hers, stroking her fingers. His head was down, thoughtful. “Again,” she murmured. “Eyes closed. Both of us.”

It was easier. As if they were clearing the path, widening it through that joined touch. Another breath. Drawing it in, pulling it up, her fingers tightening on his chest, his hand constricting over hers.

“Again,” she whispered.

Twice more. The last time, there was a different note to his, a rasp. His fingers convulsed. He let her go and stepped back. “Works better when you’re hitting me with something. I never forget how to breathe then.”

Light filtered in through the high windows, sketching the planes of his face, the set of his eyes. Her intuition got a big spike, in a very surprising direction. So surprising she hit the pause button and thought, Really? at whatever was pushing it.

Yeah, really, came back, loud and clear. But you’d better tie him down, because he’s going to fight you like hell.

They’d been to extreme places together, at least from the perspective of people in their world who didn’t travel down those roads. But the two of them didn’t necessarily need those extremes, not in this moment. Maybe just the opposite. What they needed was the knowledge there wasn’t a “too much” for them. In either direction.

Demons weren’t driven away by darkness, were they?

Like that prison rape scene, with him as guard and her as prisoner, taking control, what she was considering was something she’d imagined. Something flirting around the edges of her central fantasies, because when it became more than that, she’d shied away from it, not trusting why it held such allure. Its appeal freaked her out some.

But a session with a sub was like a scavenger hunt, and she’d learned the first image that hit her at the starting line was usually the right clue. However, she agreed with her subconscious on how he might react to it.