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“When you say it that way, I suppose it is a bit…”
“Yeah.” I didn’t want to think about it anymore, but the idea seized my brain. “When I think about what someone could do… Not you, but some other guy, some sicko posing as a Dom…”
My chest felt as though it would cave in, and my throat closed. I tried to gasp for air, and tears leaked from my eyes. Before I knew what was happening, I was in a full-blown anxiety attack.
Neil sat up and pulled me close as fast as he could, his face pressed to the top of my head as he rocked me. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”
This was, by far, the worst sub drop I’d ever experienced. The thought of someone exploiting me as I was helpless nauseated me and paralyzed me with fear. There was no danger of that happening, and I tried to reassure myself with what little logic I still had left in me. Neil would never hurt me that way, and I would never do this with anyone but Neil. But just the thought of someone being hurt or abused, a young woman, trusting of her partner as I was and having that trust shattered through brutality, crushed me from the inside, until all I could do was sob hysterically.
“I’m here, darling. Breathe through this.” There was a helplessness in his voice that I knew he was trying to control; if he gave in to it, he couldn’t help me. “Just breathe. This will pass.”
“I’m not afraid of you. I would never think you’d do anything to me. I just… I thought of what happens to other women…” I hiccupped and the feeling in my chest grew worse. I cried harder, but I had to tell him. I had to get it out. “It was the only thing you’ve ever said to me, ever… It was the only thing that was truly scary.”
“Oh, Sophie. I never meant to frighten you.” His anguish soothed me, as selfish as it seemed. “I never thought—”
“It’s okay. It didn’t bother me at the time. And I wasn’t scared of you.” Just saying it made things a bit more bearable. I sat up and pushed my hair back from my forehead, taking slow, deep breaths before I went on. “You thought you were reassuring me that no one would overhear or complain. You couldn’t have known how it would sound.”
“No, I should have. If I had only thought—”
I pressed my palm to his cheek. My nose was stuffy from my hysterical crying. “You couldn’t have known. Even with your experience in the past…you’re a man. You don’t think of those things, because they’re not at the front of your mind, the way they are for women.”
He folded me close again and swayed with me until my breathing slowed and I was calm again.
“Sorry I sub dropped and ruined your birthday.” I tried to make a joke of it, but it sounded pathetic and self-pitying the moment I said it.
“You didn’t ruin my birthday, Sophie.” There was such tender conviction in his words, I nearly started to cry again. “In fact, I think you were wrong. Your submission wasn’t the best part of this evening.”
“What was?”
He took my face in his hands and tilted it up for the sweetest, softest kiss. When he drew back, his gaze searched my face, soaking in every detail. “Because tonight, unlike the other nights we spent here… Tonight, you’re staying with me.”
Looking back, I couldn’t understand how I’d ever had the will to leave him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I wish all my moves had gone like this.” I watched, enraptured, as a very broad-shouldered gentleman loaded the last neatly packed box into the back of the moving truck.
Beside me, Neil was scrolling through texts. It was late April and the sun was shining, but it was a chilly day. “I’m glad we waited until it was a bit warmer to do this,” he grumbled.
“What happened to ‘I grew up in Iceland, I’m a Viking, I can walk through the snow barefoot?’” I teased.
“Just because I can tolerate the cold doesn’t mean I like standing out in it.” He frowned at the back of the truck. “Surely this can’t be everything.”
“I checked and double checked. Everything that isn’t furniture.” My heart squeezed a little bit. We had no immediate plans to sell the apartment; Neil reasoned that it might come in useful if we ever needed to stay in the city overnight. I wondered if his reluctance to part with it was rooted in the same sentimentality I felt toward the place. It was our home, the place where we’d exchanged our first I-love-yous, where we’d made some difficult decisions that had shaped our relationship and made us stronger.
It hurt more to leave than I’d expected it would.
As if reading my mind, he peered up at the bright April sky and said, “You know…while I love this place, and we’ve made some very good memories here, it’s never really been ‘our’ home, has it? I’m looking forward to settling into the new house. Making it ours.”
I supposed I had a different idea of making a house my own. Something about the whole fully-furnished aspect made it seem like there were fewer options available in the customization department. Though I knew Neil wouldn’t bat an eye if I demanded we refurnish and renovate the entire place, that wasn’t my style. It seemed too wasteful, too indulgent, too—
“Ma’am? This was almost left behind,” one of the movers said behind me, and when I turned I saw, to my horror, that he held the orange Hermés box.
“What’s that? Could it be a one-hundred-thousand-dollar purse my fiancée has been hiding from me for months?” Neil asked, a hint of humor in his voice. He put his hand on my shoulder and leaned close to my ear. “I do read our card statements, Sophie.”
My face burned with shame, both at being found out and at the openly contemptuous look that had come over the mover’s face when Neil had uttered the dollar amount. I didn’t blame the guy; it was probably an involuntary reaction.
