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“If he’s still alive, I’ll beat the ever-loving shit out of him.”
“I don’t know if he is or not,” she said honestly, smiling a little at his threat. “I left the day I turned eighteen, and I never once looked back. And they don’t seem to have ever tried to find me, thank God.”
“Where did you go?”
“I stayed with a friend and her parents until I finished high school, and then moved to Austin in the fall. I wanted to be an accountant, and maybe even study to be a CPA someday. It was the most boring, stable thing I could think of, and I knew if I could do that, I’d never be anything like my parents. I’d always be able to find a job, and always make good money. That security—it was literally everything to me at the time. And I got a full academic scholarship for undergrad at the University of Texas.”
Aiden sounded proud as all hell when he said, “My brilliant girl.”
Tears sprang to her eyes again. No one had ever been proud of her before. “I had to apply in secret. My dad fuckinghatedthat I was smarter than him. He’d always go on about what a useless loser I was, and how high and mighty I was thinking I was so smart, when he had more intelligence in one finger than I had in my whole body. Every time I knew something he didn’t, or he saw my grades...hell, reading a book could set him off.”
“Sounds like a classic narcissist to me.”
She took a moment to consider it. “That makes a lot of sense. He definitely did think he was smarter than everyone else, no matter how much evidence there was to the contrary. But one night, he got drunk and made me take an IQ test he took online. I think he wanted to rub it in how much higher his score was than mine.”
“I assume you kicked his ass?”
She grinned. “You fucking know it.” But her smile slipped away after mere seconds. “He was so mad. It must’ve completely fucked with his view of himself. That’s one of the only times he ever hit me.”
“I’m so sorry, Liv.” Aiden sounded like his heart was breaking. “He was a small man who wanted the people around him to feel even smaller than he did.”
Aiden was right. She knew he was. But something else was lurking in the back of her mind—had been lurking there for years. If she was being completely honest with herself, that niggling thought was part of what had kept her out of the lifestyle for so long.
“Isn’t it a little fucked up though?” she asked tentatively.
“It’s majorly fucked up.”
She shook her head. “No, I mean me.”
“I...don’t know what you mean.” She could hear the frown in his voice.
Olivia took several seconds to think about what she wanted to say, knowing she’d only get one chance to get it right. “I spent my whole childhood under the control of someone else. Someone who used that control to hurt me so much I might never fully recover. So how the hell did I end up like this? BDSM shouldrepulseme, shouldn’t it? Yet here I am, begging to be spanked and ordered around and fucked like I’m your toy. How did those wires get so fucking twisted in my brain?” She let out something halfway between a sigh and a groan. “Fuck, I need so much therapy.”
“Oh, my sweet girl.” Aiden shifted her around in his lap so they were face to face, her legs straddling his. “What we’re doing together isnothinglike what happened with your father. He was an abuser, plain and simple. Everything we do is one-hundred percent consensual.”
“I know, but I’m consenting to behurt.”
He brushed her hair out of her eyes, gently cupping her face. “Did the way your father treated you ever make you happy?”
“Fuckno.” She was horrified by the very idea.
Pressing their foreheads together, Aiden whispered, “What about what I do to you?”
Olivia closed her eyes, leaning into him even more, desperate to be as close as possible when she admitted, “I’ve never been happier in my life.”
“Nothing got twisted in your brain, Liv. I promise.” He brushed his lips against the top of her head. “You were born a submissive, not made one. It was always there inside you, waiting for you to discover it, just like I was always going to be a Dom.”
She frowned, rolling that idea around in her head. “How can you be sure?”
“Remember how I said my parents disowned me? How they’re ultra-religious and conservative? If being raised by them was going to turn me into something, it sure as fuck wouldn’t bethis.” His voice grew almost regretful as he admitted, “For a long time, I wished I could make myself different. For them. To make them accept me again. But I can’t change who I am, and neither can you.”
“But my dad—”
“Wasn’t a thing like us,” Aiden insisted. “He’s an abusive piece of shit, nothing more. When you’re with me, or any other Dom worth a damn, you have all the power. You can bring everything to a complete stop with a single word. Don’t you ever forget that. And a real Dom doesn’t see your submission as something to make himself more powerful or important. I see it as a gift. The greatest fucking gift in the world.”
It felt like the weight of an elephant had been lifted from her chest. “Aiden,” she said, knowing she needed to tell him how she felt about him, that it was now or never. “I—”
Three sharp knocks on the door shattered the moment into a thousand jagged pieces.
