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After Sage was done cleaning, I took him to our room. We showered together, but I knew he was done emotionally, so I turned things around so I was the one taking care of him. I took my time washing his hair and body and murmured words of praise in his ear the whole time. By the time I had him curled up in bed next to me, his eyes were already half-closed. He was asleep within a matter of minutes.
It wasn’t until his breathing evened out that my own body began to crash. All of the fear and uncertainty hit me at once and I automatically hugged Sage closer to me as I tried to calm down.
Too close.
Too fucking close.
I felt tears sting the backs of my eyes.
How the hell had I fucked this up so badly?
A soft knock on the bedroom door had me wiping at my eyes. Since I knew who it was, I softly called, “It’s open.”
I expected a fully dressed Daisy to come in and tell me she was leaving – that her cab had arrived and she was heading to the airport to fly to Seattle to stay with Ronan after all.
But she wasn’t dressed.
She was wearing pajama shorts and an oversized T-shirt. She hovered in the doorway as her eyes fell on Sage, then me.
“Make me understand,” she whispered. Her voice sounded raspy and I wondered if she’d been crying.
“Come sit,” I said as I motioned to Sage’s side of the bed. He was pressed up so tight against me that there was plenty of room for her. Since Daisy had moved in, Sage and I had started wearing pajama bottoms, but neither of us had shirts on. But I doubted Daisy would notice or be bothered by it.
She was clearly too upset to notice much of anything.
After climbing on the bed, she sat crossed-legged. She kept twisting her hands, proof that she was very agitated.
“What do you think you saw down there?” I asked, since I needed to get a read on where her head was at.
She looked at Sage. “I… I don’t know what happened to him, but you… you…”
“I what?” I asked gently.
Tears slipped down her cheeks. “You humiliated him.”
The comment stung, but I’d been expecting it.
“He was upset and hurt and you… you made him cook and clean and you…”
She shook her head. Her disappointment in me was palpable.
“Is that all you saw?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know what I saw.”
“Yes, you do.”
She wiped at her face. “He liked it,” she finally got out. “The things you said and did, they relaxed him.”
Good. At least she’d seen more than just me supposedly belittling my lover.
“He doesn’t like it, Daisy. He needs it,” I clarified.
She mulled that over for a moment. “That night in the motel. After the wedding… it was like that between you two, but I thought it… it…”
“You thought it was limited to the bedroom. That I controlled him only when it came to sex and that he got off on it.”
She nodded stiffly.
I sighed and dropped my eyes to look at Sage. “Did you notice how he wears long sleeves a lot?” I asked.
My question seemed to throw her off. She shook her head.
“He only does that around you. Because he doesn’t want you to ask about these.” I carefully moved one of Sage’s arms so that Daisy could see the thin scar running from the inside of his wrist almost all the way to his inner elbow.
She gasped when she realized what she was seeing.
“Whatever he used to do it with luckily wasn’t sharp enough to sever a vein or artery,” I murmured.
Daisy moved closer to Sage so she could touch the scar on his arm. Then she gently folded his arm so it was resting along his hip and she covered his hand with hers. Sage sighed and pressed into me, even as he turned his hand so he could link his fingers with Daisy’s. I knew he was still asleep, but it didn’t surprise me in the least that he’d reach for her while lost in the peace that only sleep brought him these days.
“He’s never told me what happened to him when he was a kid, but I found out some of it on my own. One night a few months after he and I started sleeping together, he was having a nightmare. He mentioned ‘pure love’ and ‘mouse.’ I tried asking him about it the next morning, but he wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Couldn’t you have ordered him to?” Daisy asked, then seemed to realize what she’d asked. Her cheeks colored and she dropped her eyes.
“What we have doesn’t work like that,” I explained. “What you saw in the kitchen was extreme, but it had to be to bring him back. I give Sage orders and I control what he does, but only because it’s what he wants and needs. I only have that power over him because he gives it to me. But while he trusts me implicitly with his body, his mind is another story. When I tell you what I know about his childhood, it might make more sense.”
