Page 104 of Liberating Lily

“So I wouldn’t be tempted to throw you on the bed and have my way with you. So I wouldn’t command you to sit there and eat more of your breakfast or dinner, or, better yet, feed it to you myself. Which is what I’m going to be doing from now on if you’re not eating.”

She groaned. “You know what? Maybe we could reverse things a little bit. You know how you said we could meet somewhere in the middle?”

“This is somewhere in the middle,” he said.

“Oh my God, you can be worse?” she asked.

He threw back his head and laughed. “You know that I can. Now, tell me how it makes your body feel when I touch you, kiss you, boss you around.”

“Those are not at all the same things,” she told him.

“I think you like when I take control, because you know everything I do is to protect you.”

“The last thing I want is for you to think I look at you and see my mother. I know you’re not like her at all.”

“That means the world to me, hearing you say that, baby. But if I do take things too far, you can slow them down. We can use the traffic light system.”

“The traffic light system?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

“It means that if I need to check in with you, then you can use a color. Or if you need to tell me something and you can’t get it out, you can just say the color. So, I might say to you, what color are you at right now? Green is you’re all good. Go ahead. Yellow would mean proceed with caution. Red is let’s stop everything. Do you get what I’m saying? Or if we were doing something and you started to feel uncomfortable, you might say yellow, and we’ll slow down and talk. You might be really uncomfortable, in pain, can’t go on, you yell out red and I stop.”

“And what happens when you stop?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you get angry, upset with me? Does that mean that you pull back and close down, and you won’t touch and kiss me or anything anymore?”

Oh, shit. He’d really fucked this all up, hadn’t he? In a bid to make her feel more at ease, he’d made her more upset.

“Baby, no. I’m not ever going to do that again, okay? I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought that would make you feel better if I pulled back. I didn’t want you to feel forced into being with me. You’ve already had so much taken from you without permission that I didn’t want to add to that trauma. But if I upset you more, I’m so sorry.”

She shook her head. “No, I’m the one that’s sorry because I know I’m back and forth. I don’t know what I want. I feel so indecisive. I do like when you take control. Maybe I’m worried I like it too much. That I won’t be able think for myself anymore. What if I can’t make decisions? What if I can’t do simple things? What if I’m too scared of life to live?”

Her breathing was growing faster, and her panic was palpable.

“Hey, easy. You’re being too hard on yourself,” he said. “It hasn’t even been two weeks and look how far you’ve grown. You detoxed off a drug that you never even consented to being on. You’re missing patches of memory. Your mother was a complete bitch, forcing you to marry a horrible man. We haven’t got all the answers that we need, and life as you knew it has completely changed. Not to mention, you got kidnapped by a handsome, sexy, intelligent man whom you’re wildly attracted to.”

She stared at him for a long minute, and then she suddenly burst into laughter.

“Hey, I might take offense to that. But I know you’re not laughing at the wildly attractive, sexy man.”

“Of course not. I could never laugh at him. Where is this wildly attractive man?” she teased.

“You brat! I’m the wildly attractive man! So attractive it’s wild.”

“You know, we really need to do something to build up your self-esteem. I’m quite concerned about it.”

“Smartass,” he muttered.

The humor dropped off her face. “Is that all right?”

“Is what all right?” he asked, slightly confused. Then he realized what she meant. “Is your being a smartass all right? Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you wouldn’t like that. I’m not sure that I’ve ever been accused of being a smartass. I didn’t know I was one.”

“Maybe you just needed to be in the right sort of headspace, where you felt safe enough to let the real you out.”

“So this is the real me?” she asked, gazing down at herself. “Messy, still unable to cook, somewhat of a smartass, completely unsure of what she’s doing, sometimes she feels lost and out of control, and other times she’s angry and upset. I’m just a mess.”