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Oh, that admission didn't sit well with her. Thane nodded slowly, rubbing his thumb over his lip as he nodded thoughtfully. “Okay, that's good to know. Think you can tell me why, so we can stop it from happening again?”
Turbulent gray eyes met his; she shook her head.
Sorry, sugar, not taking no for an answer. You can and you will. He paced forward, acknowledging the wariness in her gaze, and stopped in front of her. Despite the nagging ache in his leg, he crouched down and gripped the padded armrests to brace himself, with the added benefit of caging her in. “This clever brain of yours is stuffed full of secrets, Connie. So many, they're gonna start leaking out of your ears if you're not careful. My job is to give you somewhere to offload those secrets, knowing they'll be kept in confidence.”
Pulling the blanket tighter, Connie frowned. “That's not your job.”
“Sure it is. Tonight, you're my submissive. From what I've heard, you're the kind of Domme subs flock to. Kind, compassionate, firm. You understand the weight of responsibility that falls on our shoulders when the safety of another person sits in our hands.” He lifted his, palms up and cupped. “Tonight, you're in mine. That weight falls on me. I won't drop you, Connie.”
For several long seconds, she studied his face. Whatever she saw, she seemed to approve of, because she closed her eyes in resignation. “This doesn't leave this room. Atticus knows, but he's the only one. I was praying he wouldn't have the details, but that man can get his hands on anything. I need you to promise, Thane.”
Without hesitation, he stuck out the little finger on his right hand. “Pinky swear?”
Her hand crept out from beneath the blanket, her tiny finger hooking around his firmly. When he lowered his hand to her lap, she didn't let go. “I was in a toxic relationship, years ago. I was young, stupid, and had the wool pulled over my eyes by a fucking gorgeous Dom in a nightclub I had no right being in. He was perfect—all those words you used to describe me? Well, they all applied to him. He was smooth, charming, sociable. Talented in bed, which didn't help my infatuation.”
“He was a dick.”
Connie laughed, but the sound was bleak. “That doesn't describe the level of the poison he exuded. I spent eighteen months living with him, crawling around doing his bidding. I didn't come to my senses until the night he decided he wanted to, ah, fuck me up,” she said quietly, her grip on his hand changing from pinky swear to clutching a lifeline. “Alarm bells started ringing, but it was too late. Evan didn't believe in safewords or safe, sane, and consensual. He blindfolded me.”
Hard limit number one, Thane thought as he rubbed his thumb over her knuckles.
“He'd bought a new paddle, especially for that night. Thick, heavy wood. It bruised me pretty badly, reduced me to black and purple, even in places the paddle didn't touch. I couldn't see, could barely breathe after the hits to my back contused my lungs. He told me it was his night to do everything and anything he wanted to, and if that made it my last night alive, he'd be glad to be rid of me.”
Evan. Thane rolled the name around in his head, wondering if he could wrangle a surname from her so he could hunt the fucker down. Hah, who was he kidding? With his contacts, he could hunt the guy down easier than a trophy dick shooting a tame lion in a cage. “How old were you?”
“Twenty-one when I met him. I was a few months shy of my twenty-third birthday when he…”
“Just a baby. Poor, innocent baby.” His left hand slid around her neck, fingers flexing gently around the slim column.
Connie snorted derisively, rolling her eyes. “More like stupid, naïve, foolish girl. I fell for the first Dom who caught my eye, and I didn't even know what I was. He didn't grasp the full extent of what I was, either. Maybe that was why he did what he did that night.”
“Because he finally saw you for what you were. Not just a subbie to kick around and treat like shit. The bastard woke up and smelled the coffee, didn't he?”
“That was the conclusion I reached, yes.”
“Huh. Sounds to me like the floor wants wiping with his face. Repeatedly.” He stroked her neck, enjoying the flutter of her eyelids as he touched a spot that made her feel good. She shivered, her head falling forward to give him better access. “I'm going to ask you to do something difficult, sugar. It's going to hurt, but you'll thank me for it later.”
Her moan shot straight to his groin, providing his imagination with ample fodder. “Keep doing that and I won't feel any pain at all. Jesus, you have magic hands. Magic,” she repeated on a reverent whisper.
“I will do this anywhere you want me to, sugar. After you finish telling me what happened that night.”
The muscles under his fingers turned to stone. Not just her neck, he noted without surprise, but her whole upper body. The hand clutching his turned into a clamp. “There's no reason you need to know the rest. It has no influence on—”
“Bullshit, Connie. We both know it has every influence on your life.” Shit, his leg was starting to cramp. With a grunt, Thane forced himself to stand, slipping his hand from hers so he could hobble away to walk it off. He'd only taken two steps when she made a sound that hit him hard in the solar plexus.
“Don't leave. Please don't leave me.”
He continued to walk, hobbling around in a slow circle as his thigh shrieked with pain. Face tight, jaw clenched, he didn't speak for a minute, trying to bring the discomfort under control. “Sugar, I'm not going anywhere. Do you think I'm going to abandon you when you're like this?”
If silence spoke volumes, then the room was screaming. One thing Thane loved about being a Dom was tugging the threads of a complex problem, a big knot of mental and emotional strands, and feeling them unravel in his hands. The knot inside Connie was vast, the threads stretching through her and tying her up from head to toe while she tried to hide her predicament from the ones she loved—and who loved her.
Now, he'd identified one of those threads. She kept her inner circle small, he guessed. There were, what, five Masters in Avalon. Braun had a sub, as did Jasper, so that added an extra two to the circle. What about her personal life—did she have family? Friends from work? Anyone from outside Avalon she considered worthy of bringing into the fold?
“You know what, leave. Go.”
His laugh was more of a grunt. “So you can solidify your theory that everyone who comes into your life is going to up and leave when shit gets real? Yeah, I don't play that way, Connie. When I'm in, I'm in all the way.” As the cramps eased, he bent and rubbed his thigh as he thought through his next move. “I'm invested in you now, sugar. I've got a soft spot for wounded little birds, and your wings are broken.”
When he straightened, Connie was huddled in the chair, biting her thumbnail as she watched him. Shaking his head, he stalked back to her and plucked her up, carrying her to the bed. A change of tactics was in order. He'd done a lot of talking, given her a lot of information to process, and while he'd have preferred convincing her to continue the scene from where they'd left it, she'd already told him with a definite Redthat she required a stronger bond of trust between them first.
