Page 149 of At Her Pleasure
He glanced at the screen. “I can have you home tonight.”
“I know. I want to stay here instead. We have the time, right?”
“Yeah. I guess. Sure.”
She let it go for another few minutes. They were passing through forest, marsh, forest, marsh. Open fields. More forest. He was right. She could be home in a couple hours. But she wasn’t crossing New Orleans’ city limits with this unresolved.
“Talk to me, Mick.”
“I don’t want to talk.”
“Since when do you refuse a direct command?”
His jaw hardened and this time his eyes didn’t leave the road. “Since I don’t want to talk about fucking anything. My letting you top isn’t a constant. You’re smart enough to know that, to not pull some shit like that.”
“‘Letting me’ top. Interesting.”
He swore and pulled off onto a side road, a service entrance to a local state park. When he switched off the engine, he shifted to face her. “Stop playing with my head and just say what it is you want to say.”
“Your cover’s been blown, and you can’t do this anymore. You’re as fucked up as you can be right now, and you need to work through it.”
“Thank you. Didn’t realize you were a therapist. Maybe you can leave TRA and pursue a career as a professional Domme. One of those who helps sad bastards work through their shit by letting you piss on them.”
She unbuckled her seatbelt. He’d gotten her a cane—a sparkly black and silver one from the drugstore—but the limp wasn’t that bad, and she didn’t need it for this. Unless she decided to bash him in the head with it.
When she lunged at him with an open palm, he grabbed her wrist, but his head really was fucked if he’d fallen for the distraction, the idea she’d respond to the insult with a weak-assed slap. She punched him with the free hand, snapping his head to the left.
He surged up, pushing her into the aisle of the camper. While it would have been a better strategy to have him stop the motorhome and lure him outside, where she had more room for this fight, she wouldn’t waste time on that.
She hooked his ankle and they crashed to the floor, him hitting his shoulder on the table as he twisted, trying to protect her from the impact. Despite his obvious anger, he had his arm around her, hand up to protect her skull. She landed beneath him, but most his weight came down on his knee, hard enough she heard the pained grunt.
She seized his hair, yanked. “I can feel how much you need to run me down, Mick. You want something to hunt and fight. I can’t give you the hunt, but I can give you a fight.”
She struck at his face again, brought her knee up. He wrenched away, so she found thigh muscle instead of testicles. He seized her shoulders and gave her a sharp shake. “You’re going to hurt your leg,” he snarled. “Stop it. Stop being a bitch.”
“That’s what I am, Mick. Always.” Even while glaring at him, her hands went to his belt, unhooked and stripped it off. It drew his attention, made him slower to push her away, so she got the button of the jeans unhooked, the zipper halfway down, before he knocked her touch aside. “I’m ‘letting you’ top me, aren’t I?” she hissed. “You can’t take anything I don’t want to give you. You’re not wired that way.”
She wrapped her legs over his back, ignoring the bolt of pain through her thigh. She wore her short knit skirt, because it lay more comfortably over the taped bandage than slacks or jeans. She grabbed one of his hands, shoving it beneath the hem. “So fuck me. Show me who’s boss. Show me I can’t get into your head just because I want to. That you’re in control of your whole universe. Even when it’s burning down, you can get it up and show me you’re in charge. Totally in control.”
He slammed his mouth down on hers, and she bit him, as he would expect. She wanted to draw blood and she did. He leaned into it, his whole body rigid, holding her down like he was a block of concrete. Her internal organs felt compressed, everything aching, but she wouldn’t be the one to give, even if he crushed her.
Proving it, he cursed and shoved himself back on his heels. In the next blink, she was alone. As he refastened his jeans, he exited the motorhome so violently it rocked.
Bastard. He knew she couldn’t move fast. Still, she grabbed the cane and the other thing she thought she might need, managing to reach the ground before he’d made it too far down the service road. If he thought she was going to chase him, he was delusional.
She lifted the gun she’d pulled from her bag and took aim.
The warning shot kicked up the ground fifteen feet to his right. He started away from it and spun, shock on his face.
“If you try to run from me, I will actually shoot you,” she said. “In the leg, so we’ll match.”
He stared at her. After three pregnant seconds, he moved in her direction, his steps as precise as those beats of time. She evaluated his state of mind, had a moment where she thought she might need to shoot him before he did her actual physical harm, but then he was in front of her. He wrapped his fingers around her wrist as he took her Walther. He put it carefully on the stoop, as if he didn’t trust either one of them with it.
Then he faced her. “I can’t bear it, Cyn. I won’t be able to bear it. Not doing it. As long as I was working, I could stay ahead of it, stay ahead of this.”
He struck his forehead with the heel of his hand, like a double tap from a fatal bullet. He lowered a clenched fist to his side. “If I always had some way of going forward, it was okay. You can’t…there’s no way… You can leave, but you don’t leave, you see? Too many people lost, because I had to let them lose.”
He dropped to his knees, not because he was kneeling to her, but because that concrete weight she’d felt upon her was holding him down as well. He gave her a helpless look, a man she’d never seen look helpless. “I don’t know what to do. I know Tyler is right. I know it. There’s all forms of cowardice, Mistress, and on this, I’m a coward. I wish I’d been burned alive in that building, or shot in the head. When I wake from nightmares, at least the ghosts standing around my bed know I’m still trying to do something. Now…”