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Gemma lifted her hands to his hair. It was still slightly damp from his shower. She leaned in, buried her nose in his neck, and inhaled deep and slow.
“I love the way you smell,” she whispered. “I never forgot your scent. I never will. I want to wake up to this scent and go to sleep to it every night of my life. Promise me I will.”
“I promise.” He pulled her closer and nuzzled the space between her breasts before setting her back a foot. “Let me put my other shoe on, temptress. If we don’t get out of here soon, I’m going to change my mind, strip this dress off, and fuck you in this chair. To hell with the club.”
She giggled. “I can keep the shoes though?” She lifted one and angled it back and forth.
“You can keep the shoes.” He couldn’t think of anything sexier. “I’m impressed with how well you can walk in those spike heels after all this time,” he remarked as he tied his second shoe.
“I guess it’s like riding a bike. Plus, my thighs and calves are strong from…” She drew in a breath and shrugged, not finishing her sentence. She didn’t need to. He was well aware of the high protocol she’d been forced to endure as part of her slave training. Hours of practicing slave positions would leave anyone fit.
Never again. Never again would she ever be forced to perform like that. He just hoped to God he knew which things would be off limits in her submission and which things would be fair game. The last thing he wanted was to trigger her. Not ever. That’s why he was so damn concerned about this visit to the club.
After three years of searching, hoping, waiting, she was under his protection, in his home, in his life. She was his. But he still worried every day if he could keep her. He’d only had her a month. She had a long way to go in her recovery. Years. Probably her entire life. Three years in captivity as a slave was more than most human beings could endure and come out on the other side intact.
Gemma was strong. She’d proven that. She was showing progress every hour of every day. But taking her to the club to play? That was a step that concerned him greatly. It was risky. If he triggered her, she could take a turn for the worse. She could turn away from him.
Damon had several pieces of information in his arsenal though. Most importantly, Gemma had never been struck in captivity. Because of that, she had responded positively to spankings from the day he’d rescued her. It was unconventional to say the least, but it worked for her.
At first, Damon had used spanking as a way to remind her of two important rules: She was not permitted to call him Sir or Master, and she had to look him in the eyes.
It hadn’t taken long for it to become apparent that she craved the spankings. She longed for the contact. It made her feel alive. So he had to adjust. Ever since then, he used spanking as a reward. The ante for the reward went up every day.
By now, they’d reached a point where she could earn spankings by going into the backyard alone and staying there for ten minutes, bathing or showering alone, choosing her own clothes and dressing herself.
Baby steps. Regular things people did every day that were taken for granted. But for someone who’d spent three years always naked, trained to service a future master, and tormented with orgasm denial, every tiny step mattered.
The important thing was that Dr. Langston, though initially skeptical, was now in agreement with the unconventional methods Damon and Gemma were using to help her reclaim her life.
Armed with this knowledge and the way she reacted to impact play, Damon felt confident that introducing her to other implements of impact would likely be safe. He would never restrain her. She’d experienced that every day of her life in a traumatic fashion. He would never put her in a cage. He would never deny her food or clothes or privacy.
He would also never expose her to other people. This was more a result of the intense possessiveness he felt toward her than her own need for modesty. The truth was she had come to him with a warped sense of modesty after years of parading around naked, an aversion to having clothing touching her skin, and a complete lack of touch with reality.
Damon rose from his armchair and cupped her face. “You are so unbelievably gorgeous both in and out of this dress. Please don’t ask me to remove it in front of other people. Call me a jealous boyfriend, but I’m not sharing you with another human being. Ever.”
She leaned into him and gripped his biceps. “Okay,” she said softly. A slow smile grew. “I think I like this possessive side of you. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy.”
“Good. Get used to it.” He leaned down and kissed her. “Ready to go?”
“Yes, Sir.”
If nothing else, Gemma absolutely knew when it was appropriate to call him Sir. He would never ever permit her to call him Master. That was out of the question. She was not his slave. She would never be anyone’s slave, and he didn’t want her to think that for one second.
Sir he could tolerate when she was submitting to him as long as that didn’t extend to all the time. Perhaps at one point in his life he’d visualized a Dom/sub relationship with a woman that extended outside of a club setting, but this would never be appropriate for Gemma. She needed to spend most of her time grounded in her own autonomy. If he let her submit to him and refer to him as Sir with regularity, she would lose herself to a slave mindset that didn’t work for someone who’d survived what she’d been through.
He lifted her hand, kissed her fingers, and led her out of the bedroom.
He sure as fuck hoped he wasn’t making the biggest mistake of his life.
Chapter 3
Damon
Thirty minutes later, Damon led Gemma into Roses and Thorns. Robert, Ella, Boyd, and Macy were already there. After quick hugs of greeting, the six of them entered the main floor of the club.
“It’s so bright in here. The lighting was dim the night I visited last time,” Gemma commented.
Robert nodded. “I turned the lights up so you could see everything more clearly. We can dim them again in a while if you’d like.”
