Page 75 of Punished

Well, I guess it’s time to make good on that promise,he told himself as he slowly finished getting dressed.Mia wants to go back to the beginning—to when we never even touched or hugged or laughed or joked with each other. She wants a strictly professional relationship and if you can’t provide it, she’ll find herself a partner who can.

But pretending that he didn’t love her had been a hell of a lot easier before they’d been intimate. Now he knew his partner in ways he never had before. He knew the scent of the delicate skin on her inner thighs…the taste of her honey…the sound of her cries as she came for him. Putting those experiences away and pretending they had never happened was going to be damn near impossible.

Well, you’d bettermakeit possible or you’re going to lose her,he told himself.

He couldn’t help wonderingwhyMia was so against anything but a professional relationship. Was it something her ex-mate had done to her? Or—and he considered this second possibility much more likely—was it something that had been done to her when she still lived with the religious sect she’d called a cult?

“Bad memories—I’m fucked up in the head,”she’d told him on their first night here. But what was she remembering that made her so upset? What had been done to her so many years ago that had made her this way?

Sev wished he knew—he had the feeling that whatever it was, it held the key to Mia’s present feelings. But he knew better than to ask—that would only make her more upset. He would have to wait and see if she ever felt close enough to him to tell him.

That’s never going to happen,he told himself unhappily.She’s going to keep you at an arms length for the rest of this mission—probably for the rest of your professional lives together. She’s never going to want to get close to you again.

Little did he know how very wrong he was.

THIRTY-FOUR

MIA

After Sev left for his work duty, Mia had nothing to do but hang around the house and feel guilty. They’d barely spoken a word during breakfast—which was some kind of gloopy blue oatmeal concoction that tasted as bland as cardboard.

They hadn’t even looked at each other as they ate—or pretended to eat—the food really was awful. Mia suspected she had screwed it up somehow—she’d never been much of a cook, even back when she was still active in the sect and married to Michael.

Back then it was important to be domestic. In fact, the whole family had criticized her when she’d decided to go back to school to get a degree in Criminal Science. They’d even asked the Elders of the church to intervene and try to “talk some sense into her.” But Mia’s father—her real father, the one her mom had divorced after she joined the sect and he refused to join as well—had been a cop. And so, she had persevered.

Her real dad was dead now, but he had been the only one who came to her Police Academy graduation. He had already been diagnosed with an aggressive form of stomach cancer by then, but he had come anyway—sick and weak but incredibly proud of her. Almost proud enough to make up for the fact that the whole rest of her family had stayed away.

Even Michael, who was still her husband back then, had skipped the event. It wasn’t right or proper for a woman to work outside the home, he had told her bluntly—especially in a man’s job, like a police officer. It was emasculating to him—he worked in an office with several of the other members of the sect. It was a white-collar job—how could he hold up his head around his fellow workers and sect members when his own wife was working outside the home in such a masculine line of work?

It was then that Mia’s split from the sect—and eventually from Michael—had begun. She simply couldn’t take the guilt anymore—the judgmental stares she got every time she walked into church. The whispers behind her back and the cold shoulders she got from every single woman there—even some who had been her friends for years.

What they wanted was to make her quit the PD—to make her weak…to bring her back into the fold where she would agree to be nothing but a housewife. Instead, Mia had decided to be strong. She had left the sect and eventually her husband. She had left everything that made her feel weak and wrong and guilty.

Then how come that’s still how I feel? Weak and wrong and guilty?Mia wondered as she put the dirty dishes into the dish sterilizer. And why couldn’t she stop thinking of last night with Sev?

His big hands on her…the way he had touched her with such confidence…suchdominance.

Their first night in the Dome, he had touched her breasts, which had felt really good. It had given her some guilt, but nothing like what she felt today. Was it because of the way he’d taken over last night? Taken charge of her completely? Was that why she felt so much more guilty and upset today?

Mia couldn’t help remembering the way she had melted under his touch—the way she had given herself completely without even a fight. She was a strong, independent woman—why did the memory of submitting to her partner still make her feel weak in the knees?

She drifted around the small domicile, feeling torn between guilt and desire…shame and sexual need. The buzzing of the Chastity devices still affixed to her breasts didn’t help either. Mia told herself she would demand that Sev remove them the minute he got home…and then remembered that the only way for him to take them off her was to suck and lick her nipples again. But she had told her partner in no uncertain terms that they were never doing anything like that again.

Damn it—what was she going to do?

Without noticing what she was doing, she got a glass from the cupboard and went to get herself a drink of water. She drank it down thirstily and poured herself another glass. She was halfway through drinking it when she noticed a fruity flavor. For some reason the water tasted like the cherry Kool-Aid her mom used to make her to go with her after school snack when she was a kid. (This was long before she had been taken in by the sect and had divorced Mia’s father.)

The taste of cherry Kool-Aid had always reminded Mia of home and comfort—the feeling that someone cared for her and everything would be all right. She still drank it sometimes, even as an adult. Kool-Aid now made sugar free packets you could put in your water, but it still tasted the same to Mia—like caring and comfort and childhood.

But I don’t have any of those packets with me now,she thought, looking uncertainly at the red liquid half filling the glass she was holding. The extremelylargeglass, she noticed—and she’d already drained it once.

Feeling sick, she looked at the counter where the three brass tubes resided. Sure enough, there was a drop of red liquid clinging to the mouth of the skinny, straight tube in the middle—the one that dispensed Nutrient Crème. Had she been so distracted with her guilt and worry that she’d accidentally filled her glass from the tube instead of the sink?

Mia feared she might have. There was something about the damn Crème that called to her. Even knowing that it might give her problems, she still wanted it. In fact, even now she was eyeing the second half glass of fake Kool-Aid thirstily. Maybe Sev was right—maybe shewasaddicted to it.

She poured the rest of the “Kool-Aid” down the sink quickly, before she could be tempted to drink it.

“What am I doing?” she said out loud. “I need to getoutof here!”

Source: www.allfreenovel.com