Page 88 of At Her Pleasure

His world would go back to what it was, too.

Pushing her feelings about that away, she glanced at Vera, who was kneeling next to the sub on his other side. “Don’t you say a word to him,” Cyn said. “A kind word from a Mistress right now will break him.”

Vera pressed her lips together, but stayed silent.

Cyn moved away. Deliberately, she picked up her phone, put the earbuds back in and leaned her hips against the table as she watched over him.

“America’s Sweetheart” started up. Elle sang about a woman who was the exact opposite of the title. Cold-hearted, foul-mouthed. Fuck anyone who thought she should be anything but what she was. That cap-it-all line “you love me anyway” was the heart twister. Cyn ignored what it made her feel.

Under her eagle eye, she noted the women didn’t linger over their care, but they were thorough. The cuts would break open and bleed again if he insisted on doing anything more than getting prone, but the antibiotic ointment they applied, the bandages they taped in overlapping layers over the two long cuts, would keep it clean and healing. The wound depth was far less than what she’d inflicted on him years ago, the cuts much neater. The thin scars they formed would fade in time, only noticeable to the one who bore them, or the one who’d inflicted them.

Mick’s eyes had opened again, but he stared into space. It wasn’t subspace or subdrop. He was in a world both far distant from this, and totally encapsulated in the here and now, but only with her. She didn’t think he’d remember anyone else’s presence. Which meant he needed more supervision to ensure he was all right.

She shouldn’t care, but she did. When the women rose and nodded to her, she pulled off the ear buds and took a knee beside him. Vera had brought Tiger and Skye back in.

Cyn put her hand on Mick’s head, stroked his hair.

“I’m gone in a couple days,” he mumbled, eyes still focused somewhere else.

“Good.” She slid a finger over a strip of medical tape. It covered a bullet scar. “This will hurt when it comes off.”

His lip curled. At last, his eyes lifted to hers. “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

She took her hand away. “You should have told me.”

“What?”

“That you were fucked up like this.”

A weird smile tilted his mouth, a glimmer of his usual self. “I was pretty sure you always knew.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She rose and moved away from him. Mick watched her pack up her stuff. He was hurting in a lot of ways, the least of which were physical. He could tell she knew it. That made him feel worse.

“Vera’ll make sure you’re steady and all there.”

Mick had heard his Mistress admonish her friend not to cosset or cuddle, an obvious effort for Vera. But Mistresses like Vera did aftercare. A sadist did injury treatment. Though the knife cut might have been enthusiastic, he’d deserved it. Everything Cyn had done to his body would heal. What he’d done to her, to both of them? That was a different matter.

She came back, planting her booted feet by his head. He had the urge to pillow his head on one of them, put his mouth against her ankle. He might get his teeth kicked in for his trouble, so he let it be a drifting, fond fantasy, an attempt to counter the sick feeling in him that shouldn’t have been part of this.

A lot of things shouldn’t have been part of this.

“Jillie says they have the event covered,” Vera said. “Tiger and Skye can get him to his vehicle.”

“Good. Thanks.” Cyn had fished in his ruined slacks for his keys, and tossed them now to Tiger. “He keeps shirts in the closet, jeans and other stuff under the bed.”

“Cyn.” He started to struggle up, but the world flipped off its axis and rolled away like a marble, him hanging onto it. Vera’s hand was on his shoulder, Tiger’s on the other side, holding him. “Goddamn it…”

Cyn was gone, striding through the opening between the panels. Her shoulders didn’t even twitch.

As he continued to try to get up, Tiger gave him a less gentle shove to keep him on his ass and draw his attention. “She’s not in the mood, man.”

“I fucked up. I need—”

“Obviously.” Skye used Alan Rickman’s precise, sardonic tone. “If you know anything about Cyn, you’ll give her some space right now.”

“But who does…” He paused, fighting to find the right words in a brain turned to soup. “Sometimes Mistresses need aftercare, too.”