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His deep breaths turned into shudders, and she brought his head down to touch her forehead once more, a meditative posture he discovered had a calming, soothing effect. She stroked his hair, once, twice, over and over.
"Ssshh..." To his horror, he realized his face was wet.
"I'm not crying." Again.
"Okay. I know. It's fine. Mackenzie, I need you to think about something."
"I don't seem to be doing anything at the moment." It came out thick, his chest weighted down by far more than the light touch of her hands.
"Always the charmer," she reproved gently. "Hush a moment, and listen. You remember how you couldn't answer me, when I asked why you thought you were submissive?"
"Yes."
"You couldn't charm your way out of that. You didn't know." She touched her thumbs to his lips, her beautiful blue eyes very close to his face, so that he felt he had fallen into them, that swirling Caribbean color, touched by a dying sun and turned into violet. His Violet.
"I believe that you don't know, any more than I know why being your Mistress is so important to me. You need to accept that, that there isn't any explanation. Then you can let go of the reins. You have to give up control to me, Mackenzie, for no other reason than I command you to do so, and you want to do it. You're afraid, you're angry, it doesn't matter. You just have to do it. I'm here to catch you. All right?"
He stared into her eyes, only inches away from his, and fought past his fear to obey, to hear what she was saying.
When he was seven, he had stood at the top of the steepest hill in the neighborhood, alone, clutching his skateboard, scared to death but knowing he was going to do it. Just like he had known a handful of months ago that he was going to follow a man who craved only death into a dark hole and only one of them was going to come out alive. At this moment, he saw the truth.
In every terrifying moment of his life, she had been there. He had sensed her presence waiting, just beyond that next challenge, knowing he was following a path he didn't always understand but knew he must walk. Her voice, her touch, had been there. Calling him. For the hope of her, the dream of her, he had come to this moment.
Starting in undercover work and then becoming a homicide detective, he had worked as a cop for twenty years. He'd been at it long enough to have paid the price of his reputation, his soul immersed in situations so deep and darkly violent there was no way to stay untainted by them. They had been locked inside, and somewhere along the way his heart had become a dungeon, a place he no longer knew how to open to invite in the full gift of a woman's love. Or offer the same from himself.
But he didn't have to figure out how to open up that dungeon, because she had already found a way in. She stood with his darkness and violence, unafraid, the light of her soul a flashlight that could guide him through that labyrinth and keep him from losing his way. All the fears he had, of never having a complete relationship with a woman because he could not offer all he was to her, the light and the dark, dissolved in her arms.
She was wrong. He did know why his heart was submissive to her. And just like that seven-year-old child, and the forty-three year old cop, the soul of the man stood before her and knew what he was going to do, despite being more afraid than he'd ever been before.
"Mistress?"
"Yes, Mackenzie."
"I'm....very, very thirsty."
He closed his eyes as her arms wound around his shoulders, her cheek and hair touching his skin. Her breath left her in a long, soft expulsion, and he wished he could hold her.
He was terrified of his vulnerability to her, but she was right about that part. He would just have to be afraid, and give everything to her anyway, because she'd left him no choice.
She was his Mistress.
Chapter 12
Violet removed the stool, unbuckled the manacles. As he moved forward, she thought he was falling, and lunged forward to catch him, but he caught her hands, shook his head slightly, and continued to his knees. When he was there, his hand lightly at her hip to balance himself, he curled down, and pressed his lips against the side of her foot, just above her arch.
She laid her hand on his head, tears running down her face. Mac lifted his head, saw them. He straightened, still on his knees so his eyes were just below her face, and caught each on his thumb, wiping them away for her, pressing them to his lips like a gift.
Gradually, she became aware of the silence around them. A quick sweep of her attention around the room showed that the play with Leila and Collin had stopped. At some point, Lisbeth had joined them with David. Each person was still, watching the exchange with the solemn formality afforded to a religious rite. In this case, a sub's complete acceptance of his Mistress's sexual dominance over him.
Mac got to his feet. When his arms went around her, she stepped into his embrace, holding him, feeling the tension in his shaky muscles as he fought to stay on his feet.
"We're going to bed now," she said.
*
When they reached the bedroom, a room done in a soft blue with a gauze-draped canopy bed and a balcony looking out over the water, she pressed him to a sitting position on the bed.
"You've served me well," she told Mac. "Now I'm going to tend to you. Stay here."
