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Jonah looked at him a moment and held his hand out. Marcus offered his as well, they shook, and Jonah said, “Thanks for that.”
Marcus nodded and headed towards the pool, saying, “I’ll see you later,” as he walked away.
Chapter 31
Heather rounded the corner and took a running dive into the deep end of the pool, slicing her body through the cool water, opening her eyes underwater to look for Marcus, who’d been hanging out in the shallow end, and she flew up into the air in front of him. He reached for her, pulled her to him, kissed her forehead, then her cheek, and then zeroed in on her mouth.
She relaxed into him, one hand on the side of the pool and the other on his shoulder. She was still overheated from riding Phantom, and the cool water felt good.
But then the kiss heated up, and she forgot everything except Marcus’s arms, his lips, his body pressed against hers.
Just as she was about to end the kiss, Marcus moved his mouth to caress her cheek with his lips, and then just held her.
She couldn’t stay still long, though, so she kissed his chest, pushed away, swam to the ladder, and climbed out. She walked to the diving board and ran to the end, both feet landing hard on the end with a big bounce. Her petite form flew into the air in a tight tuck and flipped over once and then another half time, and she opened her body in time to slice into the deep end in a dive. She swam underwater to the shallow end, came up for a breath, and went back under with her chin up first, so her hair would fall backwards away from her face. Marcus had stayed in place while she was active, but now he moved out to the center of the pool, treading water since he was halfway to the deep end.
“Is there anything you aren’t good at?”
“Yeah, normal sex. I thought we’d already covered that.”
He gave her an annoyed look. “You know what I mean. You hang-glide, you run trails most people have problems hiking, you scale up the side of cliffs, you fly planes and helicopters, you kayak on world class courses, and now I discover you also have skills on the diving board.”
“It’s all part of the same thing. I’ve had so many martial arts courses and gymnastics classes and...” She shrugged. “We’ve already established I need lots of sensory input. Right? The things I’ve done for stimulation have taught me how to move my body in ways most people just don’t learn. Speaking of which, what did you learn from my mom? She left me a voice mail earlier, but I was waiting to call her back after I talked with you.”
“There’s an exercise to help with sensory issues that involves wrapping the child up in a blanket, like a big burrito, with only their head sticking out. Some kids like the compression; it’s sensory input that works for them. Other kids absolutely do not, and when that’s the case, some therapists feel they need to do it until the kid is okay with it. Your mother only let them do it to you one time, and she was so upset by your reaction that she went to the library and searched through the periodicals to learn more about the process. She learned that not all experts agree with using it when a child is traumatized by it, and she didn’t let them do it again. Good for her, and I told her so. I may get annoyed with parents who research and question what I’m doing, but I always appreciate the effort. In this case, she was exactly right.”
Heather needed a moment away from him, so she stood and walked up the concrete steps towards the small storage house. She walked in, then back into the sunshine with half a dozen pool noodles. She tossed all but two into the water, and made her way down the steps with the other two. “Keep going, I can tell there’s more.”
He opened his mouth to say something, closed it, and flexed his jaw in annoyance. He kicked his way to the shallow end and reached for a pool noodle,
Marcus wrapped a single noodle around his shoulders, the ends coming up under his armpits, and leaned back as if sitting in a chair. “I asked her if she had any reason to believe you’d been restrained in the orphanage. She said she didn’t have proof, and that she saw no evidence of that when she was there, but that your wrists were rough, like rope had been around them for long periods of time, and it took months of moisturizing them to get them to smooth out.”
Heather waited for him to say something else, but realized he was giving her time to process it. Also, that he would probably wait for her to respond before he spoke again.
“This is the part where you want to know how that makes me feel. But all I want to do is ask you how it’s supposed to make me feel.”
“Knowing you, you’re looking forward instead of backward, so you’re trying to figure out if this information will help you deal with it next time, or if it’ll make it harder to deal with it.”
“I didn’t figure you’d restrain me again.”
“At some point in the future, you’ll want to overcome it. It might be six months out, or two years, but I know you well enough to know it’s going to bug you, and it’ll keep bugging you until you can get past it. Whether that happens or not, though, there are other things we can do to give the same effect I was going for, and we’ll begin doing that soon.”
“What kind of things?”
“You’re used to your torso being in ropes and harnesses when you climb, hang-glide, and parachute. Also, I restrained you in the mountains with your arms over your head with a spreader bar between, another spreader bar between your ankles, plus you were blindfolded. It was the same basic X position, and you didn’t freak, so there might be something about the cross, or possibly the forward-leaning stance. Most likely, it was your body being completely immobilized while your limbs were restrained. So, we’ll see how it goes if I only restrain your hips. Your arms will be free, and you’ll be able to release your hips if you wish, but you won’t.”
Heather considered how she felt about trying it again from every direction before she told him, “I don’t think I want to be bound again.”
Without hesitating, he said, “Okay, then we won’t. I blew it in the trust department. I’ve got to earn your trust again. If you change your mind, let me know. If you don’t, we’ll work around the safety issues.”
“You didn’t do anything. I freaked. You couldn’t have known I’d go apeshit on you.”
“I’m the Dom; I’m the one in charge. You got hurt, so I’m the one responsible. It wasn’t intentional, but that doesn’t make it okay. To be honest, I’d have probably felt better if Jonahhadtaken a swing at me.”
“Bullshit, Marcus. You don’t need absolution. You took all the safety precautions, even had the quick release knots and hardware so you could release me right away. I still can’t believe I knocked Kyle down like that, though. I’m responsible for hurting him, and he’s been so damnedokayabout it.”
“Of course he’s okay — he’s your submissive, and he knows you didn’t know what you were doing when it happened. You went into fight or flight mode, and you fought to get away so you could flee. Simple as that.”
She shook her head. She wanted to be finished with the conversation, but she knew Marcus wasn’t going to let her change the subject yet. “So am I supposed to be pissed that the whole orphan thing has reared its head again? Pissed that I thought there were no more motherfucking issues to work through, and suddenly another one has been thrown in my face?”
