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Then Hilary handed her a celery stick, and things just went downhill from there. Angel broke out the leftover bacon from breakfast that morning. Jessica and Maria went rooting through Adam’s cabinet. Lexie stayed with Leigh at the island, making sure she didn’t slip back into despondency. The topic of conversation had somehow moved around to Lexie’s training... then again, it wasn’t too surprising, really. Leigh definitely had a fascination with the club and BDSM.
“I think he’s testing me,” Lexie said, aware everyone was listening even if they weren’t all completely in tune with the conversation. “Trying me out and seeing if I can handle it. Why else would he have me in his office for hours last night? Doing nothing?”
“How did you not get bored, that’s what I want to know,” Angel said, making a face as she coated strips of bacon with chocolate. Olivia was still stirring, ensuring the chocolate didn’t stick to the glass bowl. “I mean, I know you guys have said he wants a full-time submissive, but if he doesn’t actually have anything for you to do, shouldn’t you get... I dunno, time off?”
“I liked it,” Lexie said, shrugging because she couldn’t really explain why. “I was happy just being there. It was kind of like meditating except I was super aware of him.”
“That doesn’t sound very sexy,” Leigh said, accepting a piece of chocolate covered bacon from Angel. She took a bite and moaned. “Holy guacamole, that’s so wrong, it’s right.”
“Gimme a bite,” Lexie said, leaning over so Leigh could put it in her mouth. Smokiness, salt and sweet exploded on her tongue. She wouldn’t have tried it sober... but Leigh was right. It was fucking good.
“I get it,” Maria said, coming out of the cabinet with Jessica behind her. They were both holding various bags of snacks. Nuts, chips, dried cranberrries... “Sometimes Rick just leaves me tied up with a toy in me, and does his own thing. I don’t get to cum, but waiting for him, knowing he’s thinking about me during the whole time... it’s hot.”
“Yeah, but that’s sexual,” Angel countered. “It doesn’t sound like anything about last night was sexual.”
“Submission isn’t always about sex,” Jessica chimed in, ripping open a bag of chips. Mmmm, more salty and sweet. They were going to need more chocolate soon. “Sometimes it’s just about submitting. Patrick’s a serious control freak. Even if something isn’t overtly sexual, that doesn’t mean it’s not a turn on for him. Especially since Lexie isn’t always exactly cooperative, which makes it a bigger deal when she is.”
“Why does Patrick want that?” Maria asked, looking to Olivia for answers, as the only dominant in the room. “Is it just because he’s Super Dom and the more dominant a guy is, the more control he needs to have?”
“Nah, Adam’s almost as Dommy, and he’s fine just being dominant in a scene,” Angel said, swiping her finger through the chocolate in the bowl and sucking it off before Olivia could manage to whack her hand with the plastic spoon. She winked at the Domme, who shook her head at her.
“Do not ever let Adam hear you say he’s ‘Dommy,’” Olivia advised in a dry voice. “He’s plenty controlling, you just don’t always notice because he’s a hell of a lot sneakier about it than Patrick.” Angel scowled, looking like she was about to disagree, and Olivia raised an eyebrow at her. “When was the last time you hung out with any of your guy friends by yourself? Or made a new guy friend?”
The shocked and disgruntled look on Angel’s face made it pretty clear she hadn’t even thought about either of those things and the answer was – not since she started dating Adam. Lexie couldn’t help but giggle, but that was okay because the others were too.
“I think Patrick’s a control freak partly because of his parents,” Lexie said thoughtfully. “He’s always been like that since I’ve known him.”
“What’s with his parents?” Maria asked. “If it’s not too nosy... were they super controlling to him?”
Olivia shook her head as Lexie answered. “Just the opposite, they were barely in his life. He pretty much hung out with Jake and my family all the time, and, from what I can tell, my parents cared a hell of a lot more about what he was up to than his parents did. They’re not unloving, exactly. When he got hurt in a stupid sword fight with Jake, they were super upset and took care of him when he first got out of the hospital, but as soon as he was okay they went right back to being indifferent. He’s just always had to take care of himself.”
“And he’s a dominant, always has been,” Olivia said, continuing the psycho-analysis, which Lexie was grateful for. She’d never really spoken about her theories out loud, but it was nice to know Olivia agreed with her. “Some submissives have to have control over their lives, but find release from being out of control during sex. Patrick was already a control freak, and having to take care of himself all the time just added to that. He gets his release from being able to control someone else and actually having them listen and focus completely on him, the way his parents never did. Although, honestly, I think he’d probably be pretty much the same even if his parents had paid attention to him.”
“Truth.” Lexie raised her chocolate dipped potato chip in the air before biting off the chocolate coated part with relish.
Later that night, Lexie and Leigh ended up in the guest bedroom together. Olivia had gone home, Rick had come to get Maria, and Jessica and Hilary had passed out on the couch together. Angel, of course, was in her own bed with Adam, who had finally come home and immediately hid in their bedroom. Not that anyone would call it hiding to his face, other than maybe Olivia.
Lexie knew she’d had enough to drink to be pretty drunk, but not wasted. It was a pretty good place to be. Leigh hadn’t drunk enough to be wasted either, fortunately. Olivia had made sure to keep feeding her and giving her water in between the booze, otherwise she probably would have been a hot mess.
“Lex?” Leigh’s voice was a mere whisper in the darkness, and Lexie answered in the same way.
“Yeah?”
“What will you do if he doesn’t want you?” There was just a bit of tearfulness in Leigh’s voice, but not enough to make Lexie think she was actually crying. Even though she’d heard it before, even though she asked it of herself all the time, coming from Leigh, right now, it deserved a better answer than she usually gave. Normally, it was easy to brush off. She’d get to that when it happened. Things would be fine, they’d work out. For Leigh, right now, those platitudes would be weak and kind of insulting. Even though Lexie and Patrick hadn’t been in a romantic relationship for years, Lexie had definitely had feelings for him for a really, really long time. Unrequited feelings, so far.
“I’ll cry,” Lexie said quietly, allowing herself to really think about it for the first time. The emotion lodged in her chest made her heart ache, a phantom pain slicing through her like a jagged knife. “I’ll cry and curse him and probably hate him for a little bit. But I’ll put a smile on, and I won’t let anyone know, because I won’t want them to blame him either. I’ll keep going to Stronghold and hope that in some way, it hurts him as much as it hurts me. But I’ll really be going because I can’t stop now. I need the scene. If I know he cares and he’s hurting too, that will just make me feel better, but either way I’m not going to go back to being vanilla. I can’t. And one day... one day I’ll find someone else, who does want me, and it’ll stop hurting, and hopefully, I won’t even be able to remember what I felt for him.”
The silence in the room was deafening. Lexie wasn’t sure if her words had helped or hurt, but they were the truth. She wasn’t going to pine years of her life away over Patrick like some kind of Harlequin romance heroine. That was bullshit. She was more than her interest in a guy, and she could live without him and find someone else, fall in love and live happily ever after with them instead. In some ways, this was his last chance, she’d decided. She’d already spent years pining after him, but she hadn’t been old enough, she hadn’t understood enough before. Now she did, and she wasn’t going to waste any more time. If he hadn’t taken on training her, she would have kept coming to Stronghold, and she would have already started trying out the Doms. There were plenty who were attractive to her. But he had taken her on, and she could sense he wanted her, even though he didn’t want to admit it.
So this was it, do or die time. Because that’s what it would be, the death of her hopes. She would mourn them, be sad over them, but she’d recover eventually. That’s what people did when their hearts were broken, they picked up the pieces and they moved on, or they didn’t. Lexie wasn’t going to be one of the ones who didn’t, and spend the rest of her life miserable.
She turned her head in the darkness, trying to see Leigh.
“Leigh?” Lexie moved her hand over to poke at the lump she was pretty sure was her friend. A soft snore was her only reply, and Lexie giggled. Turning over, she hugged the pillow, trying to push away the pit in her stomach and wondering if Leigh would even remember the heartfelt confession. Lexie kind of hoped she didn’t.
8
Arriving home late Sunday morning, Lexie found a plastic bag hanging from the front door of her apartment with Gatorade and a bunch of bananas. She smiled as she recognized the hangover food. There was no note, but she knew who it had to be.
