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"I've never really thought of it like that."
"I hadn't either, until I started trying to figure out Noah. And I think the key is there, in a far more earthly sense." Lyda's lips curved faintly. "That boy is definitely not Jesus, though he does have some of the sexy rock star thing going on that Jesus has."
Gen bit back a startled chuckle. She also had to suppress a little twinge of horror, probably residual guilt from her mother's Baptist roots. Lyda looked at her, sobering.
"I don't think anyone's ever truly fallen in love with Noah, Gen. They don't look beyond the fact he'll do anything for you, make life easier, do any chore, give you screaming orgasms. Or that he'll take anything you dish out." Her lips tightened and she looked out over the yard. "He has a soft sense of humor, like clouds at sunset, and a mind so sharp he could design aqueducts in Rome. He's generous-hearted, smart and sexy. And when it comes to this, he's totally fucked up in the head, in a way I'm not sure can be fixed."
Though that brought a wave of dismay, Gen was transfixed by Lyda's face, the emotions reined back behind the carefully chosen words. Lyda had said a D/s relationship didn't look like a vanilla relationship. But some things actually did look the same. Marguerite had told Gen once she was a watcher, a listener, and that she always knew more about people than they realized she did.
Only someone truly in love with another could show such poignant sorrow and unmitigated intent in that understanding. So whether or not it was clearly stated, Lyda was in love with Noah, the light and dark of him. And she obviously knew that love could bring as much pain as joy, but the latter would be worth any amount of agony.
It was a feeling Gen had sought for so long. And no matter how she tried to deny it, she was well on her way to finding it with these two. When she looked down, her hand was clasped around Lyda's free one, those fingers linked with hers. As Lyda said, it was like she'd stepped into a story that had just been waiting for her to join it.
"I don't think that tattoo was meant for any asshole Dom who steps into Noah's path, like Elias," Lyda murmured. "It's like an SOS to the Dom he's meant to be with."
"A soul mate."
"I'm too cynical to go that far, but yes, something like that. It's a specific message to a specific person. The irony is, Noah would rescue you or me from a burning building, or lie down across acid so we wouldn't get a single drop on our shoes, but in the end, Gen, it's him who needs saving. From himself. There's a wire that doesn't connect, and if it's possible for that connection to be repaired, it will happen with the person...or people...he's meant to be with. I was arrogant enough to believe I was that person, but the past couple weeks, I'm thinking it might actually take two people, not just one."
The implication rendered Gen silent, keeping her thinking. Lyda didn't say more than that, offering the glass again. When Gen handed it back, she held onto it long enough to put her mouth on Lyda's knuckles. While doing that, she leaned her head against Lyda's breast as the woman bent her head over hers. Taking and giving comfort.
"I didn't want to leave him," Gen said against that curve. She felt the edge of Lyda's bra cup beneath the thin blouse, the flesh it cradled. "It cracked me open, seeing him that way. Odd as it sounds, it happened again when I imagined Elias throwing him out, telling him to give back the collar." She was seeing that uncomprehending look in Noah's eyes, the despair he'd shown before he went postal on the boat.
She closed her eyes. "Which was good, because he was the wrong Dom. But...you're not going to make him leave, right?"
"No," Lyda said. Her lips brushed Gen's temple, her cheek. "As you go along in life, you realize it isn't finding the perfect guy or girl. It's finding the person who's perfect for you, in the sense life would be a lot worse without them. Noah brings a lot into my life. I'm just trying to figure out what that means to him. What I want to teach him is selfish, but true for the relationship to work. I want to be his choice, not just the Mistress who chose him. I have this inner bitch who wants to be told I'm the one."
Gen lifted her head to look at her. "Everyone wants to know they're the one. The only."
"Even if the only means two, not one."
The reassurance gave Gen's heart a lift, enough that she squeezed Lyda's hand. "I'm familiar with your inner bitch. It's not all that inner."
"Nice. I'll remember that, rabbit." Lyda tugged her hair, sighed. "It's a unique thing for me, to find one I want to keep. Not just until it wears out. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to make sure it never does. But how to work around this, confront it head-on, make peace with it..." She shrugged.
"Do you know what caused it?"
Lyda finished the wine, set it aside. When Gen gave the empty glass a quizzical look, she shook her head. "We've both had enough for now. As far as the why... We're a world of broken toys. Sometimes I think whoever made us set us aside in favor of whole, perfect toys elsewhere, and yet the laugh's on them, because we're ten times more fascinating and tougher broken than something that's never been broken at all."
Gen thought about the inner strength she'd discovered after divorce, destitution. Yeah, it could be like that.
"Except for his grandmother, Noah is estranged from his family," Lyda said. "His parents rejected him, his father the head of that particular spear. What I've learned through bits and pieces, because Noah doesn't talk about it much, is his father first thought he was gay, then found out it was 'even worse'. He learned his teenage son was a sexual submissive, a hardcore one, and he found out in a pretty graphic way. My guess is he probably stumbled on him in a Dom/sub session with someone older, maybe a college student already in touch with his inner Dom. Whatever it was, Dad couldn't wrap his mind around it, saw it as a sickness."
Lyda took a breath. "Ben's fiancee did some digging. Marcie does corporate investigations and is damn good at it. Ben says she could find Jimmy Hoffa. Noah's father had him committed to some whacked deprogramming institution at seventeen. Nothing took, of course, because Noah is...Noah." Her lips twisted. "That's the irony. There's this steel core to him that can't be changed. Noah knows what he is, and you can't knock him off that tightrope with a sledgehammer. Not even with enough meds to turn someone into
a zombie."
Gen sucked in a breath. Lyda closed her hand alongside her throat, thumb rubbing a soothing caress. "At twenty-one," she continued, "They washed their hands of him. Noah's father signed him out of the institution, handed him a duffle bag of clothes and told him he was dead to them. He was never to come back, call them, what have you."
Gen thought of Noah's duffle. It was old but carefully tended, with a few mended corners reinforced with heavy duty canvas thread, perhaps like that used to stitch boat sails. Oh God. It had to be the same one.
The scenario was a mirror of the scene with Elias. Of every Dom who'd ever cut him loose. It was happening again and again...
"The mental institution may have added layers," Lyda said, "but I think it was the betrayal of his family that severed that wire in his head. Or it could have been there from the beginning. Sometimes we're born the way we are."
She brought Gen to sit on the step next to her then, the two of them leaning against the door. Lyda had an arm around Gen's shoulders, fingers caressing the top of her breast. "So that's that. You're now inside our crazy little world. How does dinner sound?"
Lyda had been inside this story for a while, and though the events of the day may have stressed her out, apparently she was ready to turn things in a different direction. When Lyda's thumb teased her nipple, a spiral of arousal disrupted Gen's pensiveness, increasing when Lyda's eyes heated. Despite the turmoil in Gen's mind, her own body was obviously ready to make that same turn. "That's a nice, tight little point there. I think you need the distraction. We all do. But first you're going to need food. Both of you." Lyda kept stroking, tweaking, as Gen did her best not to squirm.
