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“It’s a nice jacket, and now it has concealer on it.”
“I really don’t give a shit about the jacket. If you want to rub makeup all over it, be my guest.”
“Please stop being so…” She waved a hand in the air. “Perfect.”
“Perfect?”
She eyed him, the sadness gone, replaced by some of the sass from earlier. “Don’t fish for compliments. I already admitted that I find you attractive enough that I was thinking about you as a date rather than a Dom. And then I fully freaked out because of it.” She pursed her lips. “And then I confessed my deep dark secret, and you helped me figure out it was a totally different kind of mental health issue than I thought.”
Daniel chuckled. “You were right, you know.”
“About what?”
Right now Autumn needed a Dom, but not to stimulate her physically. She needed a Dom to protect and cherish her. To make her feel accepted and heard. It was one of the reasons people joined Las Palmas—to be among like-minded individuals, and to have a place where their desires were normal, rather than taboo.
“You were right about what would have happened if we met at that bar.”
Autumn’s shoulders tightened and she looked away.
“We have chemistry. We have a similar sense of humor—I’m basing that on our conversations so far. So if we had met outside of here, things might have been different.” He let his voice deepen. “But this is where we are.” He gestured at the courtyard around them.
“Except now you know how messed up my head is.” Autumn tried to make it a joke but there was real pain in her words.
If she thought she was fucked up…
Daniel got to his knees. She leaned forward, as if drawn to him, then pulled back.
“What I know is that you’re hurting,” he said. “That your fear is making you cruel, not to others, but to yourself. You’re lying to yourself—”
“I’m not lying to myself.”
“Yes.” He used his Dom voice this time, deeply pleased when she jumped. “You’re telling yourself you’re ‘an asshole’ because of how you feel about submission, but you’re not. You’re hurting, and that’s a defense mechanism.”
He braced his hands on either side of her. “You’re scared, and you don’t trust Dominants.”
“Um, clearly I do. I got naked for you within hours of meeting you.” Her protest was weak, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“You’re lying to me, but I’ll allow it because you’re not doing it intentionally. The primary person you’re lying to is yourself.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t really know me. You can’t say—”
He leaned in. Didn’t touch her, or say anything, just invaded her personal space. She stopped speaking with a click as her teeth snapped together.
“You might be willing to trust a Dom with your body, but you don’t really trust me, or any other top. Not enough to be honest.”
“Trusting someone with my body is a damned big deal.” She’d raised her chin, looking down her nose at him.
Daniel shifted closer, so his abdomen nearly brushed her knees. “But it’s not nearly as important as trusting someone with your emotional truth.”
“My emotional truth?” She eyed him. “Are you a psychologist?”
“No, just a man who has been in therapy for years.”
“Well here’s my emotional truth. I don’t like that I need this, but I do need it. I enjoy it too, of course, as long as D/s stuff stays separate from romance.”
“That’s part of it, but not all of it. It’s deeper than that, which is why you displaced some of your feelings onto others, onto submission and being submissive as a whole.”
“It’s not that complex.”
