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“Yeah, he’s definitely in that stage,” Lou agreed. “I expected him to yell and seem pissed off, but he’s so quiet.”
That was a function of his childhood. He had no control, so perversely he placed a whole lot of the blame for any situation he was in on himself. As though that was the only way his brain could handle how little control he had over his own life. “All right. How do I get him out of it?” The answer came before her mom could speak. “How do I get him to accept a D/s relationship with me?”
“Bingo,” her mom said with a smile. “That’s the second step. I think you’ll find if he agrees to work the rest of the op, that you’ll have to spend days and nights with him. You’ll have to pretend to be a couple in public and in private, if we leave the bugs up.”
“Absolutely not. We’re taking them out of the suite. There’s no evidence that Oakley is listening, so it’s only our team and Bri…Ben.” Tasha was going to give Dare as much privacy as she could. “Nate is staying with us, and Lou and Kenzie can monitor the hotel. Dare has to have a place where he can be real with me or none of this is going to work.”
“I’ll let them know,” Lou promised. “And if someone’s coming your way, I’ll send you a text.”
“So you’ll have to get him talking,” her mom advised. “It’s not actually all that hard to convince a guy that maybe it’s not really the universe that hates him. Maybe it is your fault, and you should make it up to him. Now he’s going to argue with the making it up part. He’ll be all ‘I can never trust you again.’ Here is where your boobs become important. Men, I’ve come to learn, can forgive boobs long before they forgive the rest of the woman they love.”
Show him her boobs. She could do that. “So my goal this evening is to give him back control. In this case, the control is over me. Convince him that the only way we can get through this op is if he’s my Dom.”
“That’s an excellent start,” her mother agreed.
“Is this not another way of manipulating him?” Tasha felt guilt twist inside her.
“You are using that word like it’s not something we do every day. What his father is doing is flat out blackmail. What you are going to do is smooth the edges out for Dare. What you are actually doing is compromising and allowing for his pain to be dealt with in a way that doesn’t break the two of you forever,” her mom explained. “It can take maturity to get through something like this, to understand that you are in the wrong but to let guilt or fear keep you fighting for a relationship that is good for the both of you. Do you truly believe you’re good for him?”
She loved him. She knew she was good for him. No one in the world would fight for him the way she would. And that was what she had to do. Fight. She wouldn’t be fighting some enemy hiding in the shadows. She was fighting Dare’s childhood, his life up to this point and everything he’d learned from it. She was fighting his insecurities and fears. “He will never find another woman who loves him the way I do.”
If she didn’t win, Dare would likely be alone. Or married off to someone his father chose, which was just as good as being alone. If he had kids, he would try to hold a piece of him apart because they could be taken away from him.
Everything had been taken from him. She had to show him she couldn’t be swayed, that she would never allow anything to come between them and she would put him first.
That was what her mom was telling her to do. Put him first no matter how much it hurt.
“It’s not forever,” her mom said quietly. “I went through this with your father, and my heart ached and there were times I thought it wasn’t worth it. Times when he seemed so far from me that being together was an impossibility. I had to consider the fact that he might stay with me so he could punish me, and we would be stuck in some never-ending hell where we wanted each other, knew we loved each other, but his pride wouldn’t let us have the life we could.”
Kala stood up suddenly. “I’m sorry, sis. I need to go and catch Kenzie before she slips away. I’ll see you in the conference room.”
She was out the door in a second.
Lou stood to follow her. “Sorry. I think that hit her pretty hard. Sometimes we don’t know what we’re really doing until it’s stated plainly about someone else and we see ourselves. And sometimes it takes watching a friend fall in love to know that what we have is a half-life, and it’s time to get out there and find something real. Tash, do what you have to. Even if it hurts. I think taking that pain is something we try to avoid, but if we don’t, we can’t ever get to joy.” She turned to Charlotte. “Aunt Charlotte, when we get back to Dallas, I would like for you to set me up.”
