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But when he shook his head she stopped, her next protest dying on her tongue.
“This is the part where you find out I’m a liar.” He tugged his hand free of hers and stood, leaving her kneeling, facing an empty chair.
“My secret isn’t what happened to me as a child. That’s public record. I testified at the trials—which took years to make it to court—when I was adult, so my name, my new name is listed. You could google me and find it.”
“You said before that how you appear is a lie. Daniel, it’s not. I get it, you modeled yourself on the FBI agent who you saw slay a monster. That’s not all that different from what the rest of us do. No one tells you that fake it until you make it doesn’t mean that you’ll stop feeling like a fake once you actually do make it.”
He stood at the window, hands in his pockets. His waistcoat hugged his trim waist, emphasized the breath of his shoulders. He looked like a CEO, a titan of industry taking a moment at the end of a long day.
“You aren’t defined by who you were as a child, or what happened to you,” she said softly.
He was out there somewhere, in the shadows, a child who had never made it to adulthood, his identity erased at 18 when the boy he’d been shed that ragged, battered identity to become the first iteration of the man he now was.
“I’m a Dom because I need control. I don’t just like it. Ineedit. I’ve learned to accept that there are situations and people I cannot control. It took a long time, but I accepted it.”
Autumn got off her knees and perched on the end of the chaise. “Well, you did a good job compartmentalizing, because on first impressions you’re an easy-going, insightful, and compassionate man.”
“Thanks to literal years of therapy.”
She waited for him to continue, but he just stood there, looking out at the night.
“Daniel.” Autumn rose, crossing her arms. “Enough with the dramatic staring into the darkness. What am I missing?” A thought occurred to her. “Did your therapist tell you that being a Dom was a bad idea? Because of your issues with control?”
“I told him I liked to be in control in the bedroom, but didn’t open it up for a full discussion. Never mentioned D/s, or joining Las Palmas.”
“Why not?”
“Because I convinced myself that I didn’t need to. That bottling up this need, letting it out only when I’m doing D/s, was okay. That the rules of BDSM, being in the club…that was enough structure to contain my need.”
She sorted through what he was saying, both actual words and the unsaid, the subtext that was written in the tense lines of his body. “So each of us is using BDSM, and Las Palmas, as a lockbox. A place where we keep a part of ourselves we don’t want anyone else to see, or know about.”
Finally, he turned away from the window. “I knew exactly what you were talking about last night, when we were sitting in the grass, and you said that you didn’t want to mix romance with D/s.”
“And for you…” The analytical part of her brain made a connection she hadn’t seen before, and the realization caused a soft, heavy feeling to pool in her gut. “Oh. You don’t want anyone outside of the club to know you like BDSM, because you’re worried that they’ll wonder why you like it, given your past.”
His shoulders dropped, and he stared at the floor for a long moment. When he looked up, he was smiling, but it wasn’t his normal smile. The smile that she found so damn attractive. It was a cruel twist of his lips.
“Knowing now that I’m the son of a cult leader pedophile abuser, aren’t you at least a little alarmed that I’m a sexual sadist?”
He was ready for her to deny it. She could see it in the way he was standing. If she’d say ‘no’, that she trusted him, he’d point out that she just met him.
Time to flip the script.
“Of course I’m worried about it. I’m not an idiot.”
Daniel blinked.
“Why do I like having men hit me? I got enough love as a child. But clearly something in me is broken, and it was before my exes fucked me up.”
“Autumn…”
“So fine, we’re clichés. I’m a successful woman in a predominately male setting. I’m perfectly in control and even aggressive in my day-to-day life, but I need to be topped in the bedroom. This is hardly an earth-shatteringly unique profile. It’s why I’m pretty sure half the other managers at my firm see Dommes on the weekends. They need the same release I do.
“And you had a legitimately terrible childhood and overcompensated as an adult by trying to control everything. Therapy helped you deal with most of it, but you still like dominating women in the bedroom.”
“You’re oversimplifying it,” he warned.
“Am I? Or is it my turn to help you see what’s really going on in your head?”
