Page 131 of To Catch a Sub

“In case I have any other new hard limits.” She was trying for wry amusement, but didn’t quite manage it.

“Yes, but it doesn’t just have to be a hard limit. I’m going to go slow in case something I do triggers you to remember or re-experience that trauma.” His hand slid to her shoulder, squeezing. “You escaped after two fucking weeks of imprisonment, came to me for help, and I tossed you around like the fucking asshole I am.”

She raised her face to his, smiling. “I like it when you toss me around.”

A muscle in his jaw clenched.

Releasing his shirt, she reached up to stroke his face. “I do,” she insisted. “Because I knew you’d never really hurt me.”

He closed his eyes briefly, leaning a little into her touch the way she so often did his.

“I don’t want you to be hesitant with me,” she said. “I need you to…” Own me, possess me, use me. “…touch me,” she finished, just enough of a coward that she pulled back from speaking the depth of her need.

“I will,” he promised, but she could see the reservation in his eyes.

Colette stepped away, and he let her go, shoving his hands into his pockets. She spun, studying the room. There was no bed, but there was a padded table, spanking bench, and an overstuffed brown leather couch with a high back. The couch was a bit incongruous, but when she walked over, she realized the back, especially with the heavily padded cushions that wrapped over the top, was perfect height for fucking.

Colette hopped up, sitting sideways on one arm of the couch, her feet on the cushion. “Join me?”

She gathered her courage as Landon ambled over, his hands still jammed in his pockets. He paused at a large floor basket, pulling out one of her carefully rolled blankets and offering it to her. Colette shook it out, starting to whirl it over her shoulders when Landon took it from her, carefully draping it over her naked back. She gripped both edges in one hand, resting her fist on her thigh.

Landon took a seat at the other end of the couch, one knee on the cushion as he turned to face her.

“He never raped me,” she said softly.

“If he put his fingers inside you, that’s rape.”

She dipped her head in acknowledgement. “True, but that felt more like…assault. It’s hard to explain, but he was almost clinical.”

“That’s… Er.” Landon frowned.

“He treated me the way I treat jewelry when I assess it.” She paused, thinking it through. “Actually no, I’m careful with jewelry, and by the time he chained me to his bed that first night, he’d beaten me bloody.” She touched her nose, then her left eye. “I was bleeding, and this eye was swollen closed. He kicked me in the stomach a few times when I was on the floor.”

“Fucking hell.”

Maybe she’d used up all her worry and fear, and that’s why she was able to give him specifics without choking on emotion. “He had cuffs already attached to the headboard, and once he had me on the bed, he started touching me.”

The first lick of shame skittered across her abdomen. “It was a relief that he was just touching me, rather than hitting me.”

“Of course it was.”

“I expected him to rape me, when he spread my legs, but…” She shrugged fatalistically. “He tried to put one finger into me. It hurt. He could barely get it in.” She winced, remembering the pressure and burning sensation of his dry finger trying to shove its way inside her.

“He looked so satisfied. That’s when he said I must be a virgin, and that since I was, he’d wait until we were married.”

The memory of what it had felt like, laying there helpless and in pain as she realized Damien was a lunatic, was vivid in her mind.

“You were right,” she said, breaking out of the memory. “He kept me naked, even when he moved me to his office. It would have been humiliating, except he stabbed the first man who made a comment about my body.”

“Stabbed one of his own guys?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck.” Landon drew out the vowel, shaking his head slightly.

“After that, no one even looked at me.” She fiddled with the edge of the blanket. “Unless he invited them too. Sometimes when people came into the office, he’d make me show off whatever art or antiquity he’d given me that day, and occasionally, after I gave a little lecture on the piece, he’d point out his favorite parts of me.”

Colette took a breath. “I think…I think I probably need to set a hard limit for objectification. Having someone talk about me, but not to me…” She shook her head. “I felt like a sculpture at auction, naked and frozen. All I could do was listen as he talked about my breasts, my ass…” She let out a weak laugh. “My ankles. He really had a thing for my ankles.”