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“Of course.”
“The truth is, I’ve only ever collared one woman. It was”—he did some quick math in his head—“eighteen years ago. Fuck, I’m getting old.” He ran his free hand through his hair. “Anyway. We met at a club down in Tampa.”
Surprise filled her eyes as she looked up at him. “You lived in Tampa, too?”
“For a while. I moved around a lot after high school. My parents wanted me to go into the Army like my dad and grandpa and great grandpa, back and back and back.” He stared out over the pool, watching the bright blue water ripple in the breeze. With the weather as warm as it had been, and the pool being heated, they hadn’t bothered closing it for the season yet. He sighed. “I wanted to make them proud, but I knew it wasn’t for me. I’d known since I was a little kid.”
Nell looked over with sympathy in her eyes. “That must’ve been really tough.”
“It was what it was,” he said, shrugging. “I knew from the get-go they wouldn’t pay for college or even sign the student loan forms unless I served at least four years, and I didn’t have the grades for a scholarship. So I didn’t even try. I graduated, found a job and a cheap apartment in a different state, and accepted my fate as their greatest disappointment.”
That made her tense up beside him, and he regretted his word choice immediately. So wrapped up in his own shit, he forgot for a second that her parents disowned her. At least he still spoke to his mom and dad. He was just the black sheep among his career military brother and Westpoint graduate sister.
“After a few years, I got a job doing parasailing tours down in Tampa. The pay was shit but the tips were unreal. Easiest job I ever had in my life.” He drove tourists around the bay seven days a week, then partied at clubs or on the beach almost every night. He’d felt energized, invincible, utterly alive—like his life was fucking perfect.
It was the last time he could remember being truly happy.
“Some friends dragged me to a new club one night,” he said, forcing himself to keep telling the story and not get lost in his head. “I’d never even heard of it, and I assumed it was like all the other places we went. A dance club or a bar—the kind of place we could meet pretty girls.”
When he didn’t continue right away, she asked, “Was it a BDSM club?”
Rafe nodded, remembering the red lights, the smell of leather, the music so loud your partner had to scream their safeword for you to hear it. “I felt things that night I didn’t even have the words to describe. The other guys were there as a joke, for a good story. But something in me awakened that night. When they got bored and left, I stayed. I wanted to learn everything I could.”
“And that’s where you met her. The woman you collared.”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes, remembering her short bushy hair, her lips pressing together into a heart shape when she smiled, and the come-hither stare she gave him from across the club. With a sigh, he forced his eyes to open. “Her name was Jessica.”
There was genuine strain in Nell’s voice when she forced out, “Did you fall in love with her?”
“Yes.” There was no point in sugarcoating it. Not if she had any chance of understanding. “We were both twenty-one. Young, stupid, always looking for the next exciting thing. For a while, we found everything we wanted in each other. When she accepted my collar, I thought we’d be happy forever. It all seemed so perfect.”
He’d been entranced by Jess—by her willingness to submit to any whim that crossed his mind. The parties and barhopping with the guys stopped basically overnight; from their first meeting on, whenever they weren’t at work, they were together.
“What happened?” She still sounded uncomfortable, but there was a softness to it now. Like she knew this story would have a terrible end.
“After a while, she wanted more from me.” He winced as he remembered the first time Jess brought it up. The screaming match that followed. “She wanted to go harder. Deeper.Darker.”
The blush heating Nell’s entire face could’ve started a wildfire during a drought. The poor thing. She’d done exactly the same thing to her ex Brian, ending up in Micah’s clutches as a result. He could only imagine what she felt right now.
Hoping to get through it as quickly as possible, to put them both out of their misery, he kept going. “She wanted to try things I knew absolutely nothing about—things that weren’t safe for total amateurs to try without some training. Things like extended suspension. Fire play.” He had to force the last part out through clenched teeth. “Breath play.”
Christ, her eyes were so wide. “Did you do them anyway?”
“No.” He looked away, biting at the inside of his cheek as he tried to figure out what to say next. “I talked to some other tops at the club, looking for someone to mentor me. That’s where I met Freya. I started working with her to learn as much as I could. I told Jess if she could wait, I’d learnanythingfor her. But I wasn’t going to risk hurting her.”
“What happened?” Nell asked again, voice shaking.
“She called me a pussy and said she’d find a real man who wasn’t afraid to give her what she wanted.” That came out much harsher than he intended. He hadn’t realized he was still mad about it after all these years. Though he supposed that’s what happened when you repressed your feelings instead of dealing with them. “And that’s more or less what she did. She found someone dumber than me willing to do anything she wanted—dangerous fucking experiments with someone else’s life on the line.”
“Oh my God.” She slapped her hand over her mouth and stared up at him, hardly even breathing.
With a harsh, humorless laugh, he said, “I guess you figured out the ending.”
Nell continued to stare at him, hand over her mouth, words completely failing her.
“Police ruled it an accident. And I have no reason to believe otherwise. The guy called 911 himself when he realized she didn’t start breathing again.” He sounded like a fucking robot. Like he was reading a news story about a total stranger, not talking about his own life. “He performed CPR while he waited for the ambulance. Even offered to help pay for her funeral, though her family wanted nothing to do with him.”
Tears sparkled in her eyes. “I’m so, so sorry.”
