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The Domme was fully prepared to scoop Caera up and usher her home where Connie could keep an eye on her. The idea was certainly appealing—against the practice’s rules, of course, but appealing, nonetheless. She'd be company for Alicia, and it wouldn't take much to alter Connie's home office into a second guestroom. The girl needed company and tending to before she fell off the ledge completely.
Connie decided to think it over, maybe talk with Alicia, and go from there. If Caera had shown an ounce of submissive tendencies, she'd have been tempted to drag one of the guys into the fray as a guardian. Atticus would've been perfect—his Daddy Dom proclivities would make him extra attentive. But alas, the girl didn't know which way was up right now, let alone whether big, dominant men were her type.
“Drink your juice,” Connie muttered absently, scribbling down ideas and notations for future reference. She'd type them all up for Caera's file once her patient left, but for now, she wanted everything jotted down so she wouldn't forget anything. “I've got some research to do on a few things, but I think for the moment, the best thing I can prescribe for you is a bath, some food, and rehydration. No more coffee, no more energy drinks. Water or juice. Start a journal, and I'd like to see you again on Wednesday. Do you have a work schedule we need to cooperate with?”
Caera shook her head. “I've lost every job I've ever had. Employers don't like their staff to be hyped up on caffeine, turning into hormonal bitches every five minutes. I got by for a while, kept a roof over my head.” She looked at Connie with a forlorn expression. “Thought about selling my virginity, prostituting myself for rent money. Luckily, I didn't have to test my courage with that—somehow I don't think I'd have been able to go through with it, not even for my shitty apartment.”
Oh, dangerous territory. Traveling that route could send a woman slipping down the wrong incline into the gully of drugs, sexual assault, and a rather nasty case of death. “You found a source of income you could live with?”
“If you mean I didn't have to sell my body or feel my soul slowly die, yeah. My grandmother on my father's side was a really nice lady. She looked after me a few times, then my mother said that she was a bad influence, always sticking her nose into my parents' business, so that stopped. When she died, I was really young, like five? My parents thought they'd be the beneficiaries of the will, so when it came to light that my grandmother had left all her money to me…”
“They weren't happy.”
Caera laughed, and the sound was so bitter, Connie could taste it. “Not happywould be the world's biggest understatement. My mother, the woman who birthed me, threw me down the stairs in a rage, breaking my right arm. After they took me to the hospital and I had a cast put on it, I was locked in my room for…I can't remember how long.” Her eyes blurred, and she disappeared somewhere Connie couldn't see. “There's a lot I can't remember after that.”
Child abuse was at the top of Connie's loathed human crimes list, jockeying for position with rape, murder, and animal cruelty. Anyone who could abuse a child, a child they had conceived and raised, didn't deserve to live, in her opinion. She wrote delve into childhood abusein capital letters, then underscored it three times for emphasis. “Does that night resurface as part of the terrors, Caera?”
But it didn't matter what Connie said or how she phrased her questions, the girl had shut down. Eyes distant, face almost slack, Caera's responses were slow and disjointed. They'd taken one step too far, too fast, and whatever time she'd gone back to was a place loaded with triggers.
Concerned, Connie rose and crouched in front of the girl's chair, gently setting her fingers on a bony wrist. She found a strong, slow pulse beneath the chilled skin. “All right, sweetheart. You've done really well today, we've covered a lot of ground.” And still haven't come close to touching the heart of the matter.“You're in a safe place here, Caera. It's safe to come back. Come on back to me now.”
Those green eyes had grown a few shades darker, but as Connie murmured to the girl, drawing her out of the minefield, the irises lightened, and the pupils began to focus on her surroundings. On Connie. With a jerk, Caera returned to reality with a baffled frown.
“D-Did something happen?” she asked quietly.
Balanced on the balls of her feet, Connie smiled softly. “No, sweetheart. You just went away for a few minutes. Do you do that a lot?”
“I don't…I don't know.”
“That's okay. Why don't you drink the rest of this,” Connie murmured, tapping her finger on the bottle clutched in slim hands, “while I finish up outlining our plan of action? I think we've got a few directions we can travel in, and hopefully between us, we can work towards getting you a night of undisturbed sleep.”
Caera burst into noisy tears.
*
It had been the longest week.
Thane limped into Avalon on Friday night, his leg killing him. The movers he'd hired to ship the rest of his furniture from Chicago had been worse than useless, and several pieces were damaged. The items themselves held no monetary or emotional value—it was goddamn furniture—but it was the principle of the matter that had worked its way under Thane's skin and festered.
He'd spent the last five days hauling his own goddamn furniture where he wanted it, wrestling everything into position and—aside from the minor accident where he'd dropped a bookcase on his foot on the way into his home office—all had gone as smoothly as he could make it. But he resented the hours he'd had to waste emailing the company, phoning the company, arguing with the company receptionist until he'd finally snapped and demanded to speak to the owner.
He'd learned a long time ago that if he needed a matter settled quickly, it was better to hit the authority ladder at the topmost rungs. He'd finally got a full refund andbeen compensated for his damaged furniture this afternoon, after dogging the owner's heels for the past two days.
Now, Thane was ready to put his feet up, stake out the club, and see if he could introduce himself to the woman who'd held his thoughts captive since the first time he'd seen her. Through process of elimination, he'd identified her as Connie, the woman Atticus had taken into the private room the weekend before, but that didn't fit with the image she apparently presented to the club.
In everyone's eyes, she was Mistress Connie, an accomplished Domme.
That wasn't the impression he'd gotten from the conversation he'd overheard between Atticus and Saul. No, the impression he had was one of a woman with a dual identity. One of the rarities of the lifestyle, someone who could dominate on one hand and submit with the other. A most fascinating kind of person.
Liam greeted him with a welcoming smile as Thane approached the bar, and he finally felt a sense of acceptance from the blond Master. “Hey there, stranger. Rough week?”
Thane chuckled and slid onto a stool with a pained wince. “Shows, huh?”
“Yeah, it's kind of etched into your face. Is there something I can get you to ease the pain?” Liam just lifted a brow when Thane frowned. “Your limp's more pronounced than it was last week. You just moved to the area, right? Have you got a physical therapist? I can get you a few reputable names if you're looking. Saul mentioned you'd gotten tangled up in a wreck,” he continued unapologetically. “Never needed PT myself, but Jasper had an accident not long since, and I know he had to go through some serious recovery time.”
Chatty bunch, Thane thought without rancor. He didn't mind, it wasn't a secret, and he couldn't exactly hide his limp. If he had to divulge some information to make himself less of a stranger in a place he wanted to feel like home, so be it. “Three years ago, I was driving on the I-90 near Englewood, coming home from a business trip. A semi veered over the lanes when its front tire blew, causing one hell of a pile-up involving eight cars. Two people dead, seven injured. The side panel off one of the other vehicles punched through my door on impact, jammed into my thigh and ripped me up pretty bad, but I'm still here,” he added before Liam could ask. “Jasper's the sadist, right? Did he whip the wrong masochist?”
“I’m sorry, Thane, that must have been rough.” Liam's face hardened with an expression Thane hadn't expected those kind features to be capable of, but he pulled off cold rage perfectly. Gray eyes were dark with a memory Thane had no right to access. “Someone tried to fuck with his sub. Big mistake.” He whipped the cloth off his shoulder and wiped down one of the brass beer pumps. “We don't take kindly to people messing with our family.”
