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When she didn’t move, feeling so helpless she couldn’t translate his direction into the movement of her limbs, a muscle twitched in his jaw. Her skin prickled with gooseflesh as his gray eyes hardened.
“You’re a grown woman. You don’t need me to undress and bathe you before you get pneumonia.”
It startled her into stumbling to her feet. But she hesitated. Modesty was something med students lost early, but in front of Brick was different.
“I’m not leaving,” he said. “You’re not steady enough for me to leave you alone. Take off the rest.”
Numbly, she unhooked the bra, removed it, pushed her panties down so they fell to her ankles. Hunched over, she picked them up and put them with the bra, on top of the blanket he’d folded up on the counter.
“You’re not a beaten dog. Straighten up, Les.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, but she complied. He touched her face again, drawing her attention to his eyes. “Good girl,” he murmured, though his gaze remained cool. “Get in the shower.”
She’d told him she needed him to be mean to her. Somehow, he’d understood just what that meant, even better than she herself did. No matter the stabbing pain in her chest, the commotion in her mind, she could now move and follow direction. She got into the shower. Caught up in that maelstrom, she didn’t notice how he shifted closer, ready to catch her if she fell.
When Brick had told her to straighten up, the way she snapped her spine into position reassured him. Though what that move did to her breasts was a pleasure to watch, he sure as hell wasn’t indulging himself in it. If she looked any closer to passing out, he was prepared to enter the shower fully clothed. A good wind might knock her out.
Not undressing her like a child and taking over had been harder than he’d ever let her know.
He’d helped trauma victims. He also paid close attention to what helped a sub and what didn’t. She was both right now. Someone like her, believing she’d killed a child? If she’d been the sole survivor of a preschool bomb blast, she couldn’t be more devastated.
He stepped out only for the time it took to retrieve a sweatshirt from his dresser. It would cover her from neck to knees and would do for tonight.
When he’d visited her, he'd wondered if he’d pushed her too hard. Instead it seemed he’d planted a trigger in her submissive side that had brought her right to him when she didn’t know what else to do. The theory, hard to refute after she knelt in his living room, had him reeling. He was pretty certain she lacked any experience as a sub, which meant she’d operated on pure, uninformed instinct, something he’d never seen manifested like this.
Tish had talked about how “hints” of the natural inclination had always been there for her, same as being a Dom was for him, but they’d both pursued and developed that in a structured way.
What also floored him was her wearing that charm around her neck with her cross. Like a mark of ownership, a collar. Yeah, he was probably taking that a couple steps further in his mind than was warranted. But god damn. This was a tangle he wasn’t yet sure how to unravel.
First things first. After the shower thawed her out, she needed to get some sleep. She was vibrating with an insane amount of fatigue. He wasn’t going to dwell on her driving here in that condition, at night and in the rain. He’d be too tempted to blister her pale, cold bottom with his hand.
Though he’d limited himself to a functional evaluation of her physical state, there was no overlooking the small, perfect curves of her breasts, tipped by tight nipples. The curly light brown hair over her sex, the hint of her clit. The delicate bones and small marks unique to her.
He preferred to do his first full perusal when he could order the sub to stand and submit to it, letting her feel the weight of his regard like the stroking of his hands.
If she was a submissive down to her soul, the longer he savored that still moment, the more aroused she’d become, the more committed to the moment. Because she’d be responding to what the Dom inside him was doing, what it meant, what he wanted, she’d start to tremble, and the reaction would increase, the longer he made her wait for actual contact.
He was pretty damn sure Les had that capability, but her current shaking was from a dangerous level of stress. Her knuckles appeared to be her only physical injury. Fortunately, he didn’t have to find someone and kill them, because he knew the signs of punching the daylights out of something impervious to pain. You did that because you wanted the pain.
I didn’t come here for you to be nice to me.
His girl wanted punishment. He knew how to dish that out, but sure as fuck not for this. Taking submission when it was offered like that wasn’t a gift. It was an invitation to fucking up her head worse than it already was.
They’d deal with all of it. Once it was all figured out, then he’d punish her. For driving when she was in an unsafe frame of mind. For asking for the wrong kind of punishment. For…well, he’d just add it all to the list he would tell her about one day, when the time was right.
Which wasn’t now.
She’d folded herself onto the bench seat in the shower, and was leaning against the wall. She was half-asleep. Since it was hot enough in the bathroom to make him sweat, he deduced she was warmer. He reached in and shut off the water. When she clumsily tried to stir herself, he wrapped her in a towel and brought her out to dry her before helping her into the sweatshirt.
He'd made his point and deemed it didn’t need immediate reinforcement. He wasn’t sure he could have summoned the will to do it twice anyway. Not when she looked this vulnerable.
“What’s your phone password, Les?”
She blinked at him and seemed to search her mind for the information. “DadTR,” she said at last. Her voice was thick, but she cleared it. “@285.”
The significance gave him a jolt, but he picked her up and took her to his bed, tucking her in and adding an extra blanket. Her eyes were half open, mouth moving, but no words came out. “Go to sleep,” he told her. “That’s an order. We’ll deal with it, Les. Together, we’ll deal with it.”
Her face creased with despair. He sat on the edge of the bed, holding one of her hands, rubbing her fingers until her eyes drooped and closed. She subsided in minutes, though there was no smoothing that furrow in her brow, even when he stroked it.
