“I want to feel you.” The words were muted against my chest, but I heard him nonetheless. “I like that there’s a barrier between me and the world, but not today.”
“Okay.” I breathed out. The guilt kept eating at me, but I couldn’t fight it when he was giving me a reason, just like I’d asked for. “Can I keep it safe for you?”
He looked up then. It had been the goal, partly. I didn’t let that awareness seep through me. The realization that I was doing just the thing I’d accused him—in my mind—of doing. Getting what I wanted by saying the thing that would get a reaction out of him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I forced myself to smile. “I think I’ll like that.”
The smile might be forced, but the feeling that came with the words wasn’t. I did want that power. The weight that came from being responsible for that part of him. Maybe I couldn’t be the Dom he’d fantasized about all the years we’d been apart, to take all the responsibility from him, but I could do this.
I wanted to do it, to feel the tendrils of control, of power that came with it. To get drunk on it.
To have an excuse to ignore how everything had almost fallen apart already, and it felt like I was only starting to peel all the damage. All the shit I still didn’t have a name for. My therapist said it didn’t matter if I couldn’t name it so long as I could work through the feelings it provoked.
I wasn’t sure that was true.
I was sure I wanted Ever. Beneath my body. Where he belonged.
“Can I fuck you, babes?”
Ever’s breath stuttered. It wasn’t the best response I could’ve gotten, but he followed it up with a nod. Then, with more graceful movement than I would’ve expected from him, he dragged us both to a horizontal position on the bed. Kissed everywhere he could reach across my jawline.
“Mark me, Sir.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
ev
Was it weird to think that my boyfriend’s therapist was pretty?
She was. She was older, maybe in her mid-forties, and more than a few wrinkles showed that, but I’d never been one to think wrinkles disqualified anyone from a beauty contest. Her hair was so shiny, silver curls bouncing an inch above her shoulders and one of those short lesbian bangs. I lowkey wanted to be her when I was older.
To look like her?
Ugh.
Whatever.
The point was that she looked nice as she smiled at Santos and asked him about his day and the weather and if he’d found parking more easily this time. It felt like I was privy to a camaraderie that I shouldn’t witness, but I put my adulting pants on and followed them into her office.
She—Victoria—put her turquoise glasses further up her nose before she asked me to sit wherever I was most comfortable.
My gaze darted between the seats by the desk, the two larger couches, and an armchair that reminded me of old moviesand Freudian something. Santos went straight for one of the couches, so I followed.
I only hesitated when she took the seat on the couch opposite to ours. Was this a faux pas? Should I have grabbed the armchair or the couch she was now occupying? Santos didn’t indicate that he was uncomfortable. It wasn’t like I’d invaded his space. The couch was big enough that we didn’t have to touch. I wasn’t touching him, even if my fingers itched to.
Things had felt somewhat better after Santos had pushed me back into the bed. After he’d bitten on my shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise, and he made me cum without my cage on, even after I begged him not to, because no wasn’t a safeword between us, and he gave me plenty of time to use one of those.
But, still, things felt rocky. They felt even rockier the closer we got to this building, because as confident as Santos looked on the outside, and as many promises of us against the world he’d uttered in the past couple of hours, I still didn’t know why I was here.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ev.” Victoria set the recording machine Santos had told me about on the coffee table between us. “Is that how you want me to call you? Santos mentioned he was the only one who shortened your name differently.”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat. “Ev is fine.”
“Perfect. And you already signed the papers to consent to being recorded, right?”
I nodded. Clearing my throat hadn’t helped that much, and new people didn’t suddenly turn me into an extroverted version of myself, even if they were professionals and I solely thought of them in that capacity.
