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They didn’t go away. The feet walked into her vision and stopped in front of her, just out of reach. After a dozen of her shallow, rapid breaths, the feet crossed and Kyle sat before her in criss-cross-applesauce.
“I’d love to hold you, but I’ll let you come to me when you’re ready. Can you tell me how you feel? You’re still breathing hard, and I’m concerned.”
Kyle’s presence, and his calm voice, helped Heather come back to herself. She’d been like a wild animal in fight or flight mode, but now her logical brain was coming back into control.
She’d had a panic attack. The chest pains weren’t a heart attack. She’d be okay as soon as she could get her body to chill out and calm the fuck down.
She kept looking at the line of grout, eyes focused on it, seeing it in more detail than grout should ever been seen. “Panic attack. I had a damned panic attack. What the hell?”
“Can I touch you?”
“What I really need is a punching bag — something to work the adrenaline out of my system.”
She finally brought her gaze up from the grout, but something was wrong. “Your eye? What happened? You need ice!”
She leaned forward, concerned about his eye, which was swollen, with some discoloration already starting.
“My eye isn’t important right now. You are.”
Heather tried to stand, and she managed it, but her knees were shaky. She reached for the wall, took a few seconds to get her balance, and walked out of the shower towards the kitchen. “Marcus! We need some ice for Kyle’s eye!”
He probably had an ice pack, but if not, she could put some ice in a ziplock baggy.
Kyle’s hand touched her shoulder and she very nearly turned and hit him. Was that what had happened to his eye?Fuck.
“He was heading to the upstairs kitchenette to get some when I went looking for you,” Kyle told her. “He should be along soon with an icebag. Stop worrying about me and talk to me about you.”
She headed upstairs, back to the playroom, because she remembered seeing cold-packs in the first aid kit in there. “You took the headphones off. You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“Marcus gave me the safeword signal from across the room. Once you freaked out, the scene was over. Will you let me take the clamps off your nipples?”
She started to protest that she hadn’t freaked out, but realized that was a pretty good description of what she’d done. She hadn’t even realized the nipple things were still on. She reached up, pulled them off, and tossed them onto the table just inside the door to the playroom.
The playroom was always perfectly neat and tidy, so the ropes on the floor around the cross caught her eye. She looked to her wrists and saw the cuffs were still on. Someone had released the cuffs from the cross, but she’d taken off running and hadn’t given anyone time to remove the cuffs from her wrists and ankles.
“I have no idea why I freaked. What the hell happened?”
Marcus appeared in the doorway. “My guess is the extreme restraint brought up a repressed memory, or something else from your past, but we’ll analyze the why of it later — right now, we cuddle. You were terrified, and that scared me, so I need to hold you, and I’m guessing Kyle feels the same way.”
She didn’t want to be held, and just the thoughts of it made her start to breathe out of control again.
Kyle’s hand stroked her back, skin on skin. She looked down and saw she was still naked. Kyle and Marcus were, too.
Kyle’s voice was soft. Softer than normal. “We don’t have to hold you. We can just sit near you, if that’s all you’re up to.”
She forced herself to take one very deep breath, and then slowly let it out. “Let’s get the ice on your eye, and then maybe I can hold you, instead of you holding me? That sounds like a better idea.”
Kyle reached for her hand and placed it on his arm, let go of her hand, and walked them to the bed so she was holding him, rather than him holding her.
Her arm came off his when he crawled onto the bed, and she followed him. He stretched out, his head on a pillow. Marcus was still standing beside the humongous bed, the bag of ice in his hand, and she took it from him and gingerly placed it on Kyle’s forehead, just above and around the swollen eye.
“Join us Marcus,” Heather told him. “I don’t think I’m going to freak again.”
Marcus reached for her hand, turned it over, and removed the cuff. He ran his fingers around her wrist, drawing her attention downward, and she saw ugly red marks. She looked down to her ankles and saw red peeking out around the cuffs down there as well.
“Let’s get the cuffs off you, and I’ll put some ointment on the marks.”
When Marcus stepped away to get the ointment, she told Kyle, “I don’t remember what happened between the first strike of the flogger and when I ended up in the shower. Please tell me I didn’t hit you in the face.”
