AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I hate him for you,” I said.
“I didn’tmeanto come,” he whispered.
“Our bodies respond to stimuli,” I reassured him. “That’s all. Just like you came earlier for me despite how much pain I had put you through.”
“But I liked what you did,” he admitted. “It felt horrible.” He shivered and whimpered. “I loved it.”
“I loved hurting you,” I said. “It felt good to me too.”
I felt dizzy with anxiety. I’d never dealt with something like this, with someone in the grip of this kind of trauma.
We rested a moment in each other’s arms, and he didn’t pull away or get angry. I breathed in his scent, tried to let the smell of sweat and sex fill me up. I breathed through my fear, trying to talk myself down. He was whole, here with me, cognizant, and this was going to be fine. So what if I’d never dealt with anything like it before? I was here now. I had him. We’d get through this together.
But what if we couldn’t? What if I didn’t have what it took? Being with Minty was already more than I’d bargained for, and this? This was too much. It was terrifying to think at any second I could push him into a memory like this. I alreadyhadmore than once. I didn’t think playing with him was safe at all—not for him, and not for me.
“But wait,” Minty said suddenly. “You never got to come.”
He sat up, his eyelashes fluttering guiltily. “I could blow you. I’m really good at it.”
“I know you are.” I remembered just how good his throat felt. “But this has been a lot.”
I felt a little sick, and the last thing I wanted right now was an orgasm. I just wanted to grab onto a flotation device and swim us both to a safe shore where we could find help because I sure as hell didn’t know what to do with this. “We need to rest right now. We should cuddle, drink water, shower, and come down from all that.”
He didn’t argue with me. I guided him to the bathroom in the basement and turned on the rudimentary shower. As I washed usboth, he leaned against me, trembling. Facing the showerhead with him beneath the spray, I soaped up his hair with relaxing, lavender-scented shampoo. He was nearly purring as he rubbed his face into my chest while I worked my fingers over his scalp. I tilted his chin back and rinsed the suds from his hair, and then took my turn under the warm stream. Afterward, I toweled him off and helped him sit on the small bench I kept in there while I dried myself too.
Back in the basement bed, he snuggled up against me. I stroked his back and arms, and he sighed. “This is nice,” he whispered. “A year ago, I’d have wanted just this and not the other.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“And that changed because…” I knew the answer.
“The diagnosis.”
“So, if you weren’t positive, you wouldn’t want me to hurt you?”
He squirmed. “I don’t know. I think maybe yes, but I’d want this part more than the pain.” He indicated where my arms were latched around his waist. “I used to be a romantic, you know. In love with love.”
“You’re still a romantic.”
He snorted. “You just put me through hell, and you think I’m a romantic?”
“I know you are. No one takes pain like that without being a romantic at their core. You want flowers, kisses, anniversary trips to romantic hotels, and you also want to give up your whole self to someone and trust they’ll know what you need.”
“I did want all those things,” he agreed. “Now I don’t know what I want. I think I just want to feel something other than dread.”
“Is this working, though?” I whispered. Maybe he’d say what I was afraid to say right now, but what I suspected I might have to saylater. This wasn’t a good fit.Weweren’t. “This is the second time what we’re doing together has brought up—” I stopped.
“I know,” he admitted with a shrug. “I didn’t expect that. You’d think what I do with Kyle—” He patted my arm. “I mean did. What Ididwith Kyle. I’m not doing it anymore, I promise. Anyway, you’d think it was more like what my father did to me.”
He sighed. “And itismore like it. In every way. It’s why I’m drawn to it.”
My stomach twisted. “What do you mean?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to explain it. Not now.”
I let his rejection of my request sink in for a moment. He’d sounded final. A firm boundary. I wasn’t going to poke at it. Not tonight. Maybe I didn’t even want to know. If I wasn’t going to be his Dom going forward, he didn’t owe me anything at all.
