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Mitch cupped her other hand behind Vanessa’s head and gently pulled her curls away from her scalp. “You won’t have to. I promise. But…” She laughed, tired. “I know.”
As long as she knew.
Mitch didn’t keep going to her therapist as a way to keep up appearances should Candace have someone watching her. She needed to. While her therapist didn’t know all of her deepest and darkest secrets, she knew enough about Mitch to offer advice and ways to reframe her thinking – and she didn’t judge Mitch for the darkest things she chose to share.
Because there were a few, and some of those were on her mind today.
“You look a bit tired,” Dr. Esser said shortly after Mitch sat down and asked for one of the bottled waters her therapist kept in a mini-fridge. “Are you sleeping well?”
“When I sleep, it’s like a rock,” Mitch said after giving thanks for the water. “Things have been a bit chaotic lately. Done a lot of traveling. A little jetlag…”
“Anywhere fun?”
Not sure I’d call it that.“It was mostly for work. Sorry, I have to keep it cryptic.”
Dr. Esser nodded. “How’s Vanessa?”
“Fine. Talking with her own therapist right now down the street. I think they might be putting her back on her anxiety meds.”
“Sounds like things are stressful.”
“Might be the time of year.”
Mitch was used to employing so much double-speak with her therapist. The trick was revealing enough to work through her thoughts and to make Dr. Esser’s advice worth something. Because, as Mitch was keenly aware, how could a therapist help her if they didn’t know what was going on in Mitch’s life? Talking about her family was the easy part. So was being candid about her traumatic experiences in the Marines. Dr. Esser knew about the dynamic of her full-time Dom-sub relationship with Vanessa, who had met the therapist more than once.
What Dr. Esserdidn’tknow was the details of what made Mitch tick. Every time Mitch thought about divulging some of it, something held her back. She liked that Vanessa was the only one in the whole world who knew the deep depravity of some of Mitch’s kinks, from pet play to humiliation to being the “town pony,” as Candace had so lovingly referred to Mitch. So while Dr. Esser knew about the persona Michelle, she didn’t know exactly what that persona got up to both in the kinky clubs and in the privacy of someone’s hotel room.
She might be a mandatory reporter about some things, after all.The last thing Mitch needed was the FBI havingmoreblackmail in their arsenal.
And Mitch couldn’t talk about the investigation.
“This woman…” Mitch divulged toward the end of the hour. “If she wasn’t potentially dangerous, she’d be exactly my type. I think Vanessa knows that, too. It’s not like Vanessa to be jealous. We’ve done all sorts of things and I’ve believed her when she said she was fine with it or was into it for herself. But something about Carrie,” she used a fake name to make this more palatable, “sets her off. Some part of her thinks Carrie has the power to steal me away, which simply isn’t true.”
“Have you brought this up with your couple’s therapist?” Dr. Esser asked.
“Mm, not yet. We only go once a month and we skipped last month because of Thanksgiving. We’re supposed to go this month, but… I have a feeling we won’t have the chance to address it with a professional until the holidays are over.”
“If you could say anything to your partner, what would it be?”
“That I love her more than anyone, of course.” Mitch pulled one of the couch pillows beneath her arm and leaned into it, her other hand tugging on the cord of her sweatshirt hood. “She doesn’t just understand me better than anyone else. I feel safe with her. That’s more important than getting to express my sexual thoughts… although they’re intertwined, I guess.”
“You wouldn’t feel safe with Carrie?”
“No. She’s too selfish. I’ve never slept with her, but I can tell. Nothing would be about my pleasure, only hers, but she’s manipulative enough to make a woman think it’s mutual.”
“That’s quite the accusation about another person’s character.”
Mitch stared at the tops of her sneakers. “I know her well enough by now.”
“Then what about ‘Carrie’ attracts you to her?”
Mitch had to think about how to put it into words. “I’m attracted to women who know what they want, and what they want to give other women. Preferably, women who are comfortable in their femininity, or at least don’t think too much about it. Because that’s the example I need. I’ve spent the past few years unpacking what my own womanhood means to me, and how I want to experience it for the rest of my life.”
“We’ve talked about that before… how you’re mostly attracted to femmes.”
“Been that way my whole life. I like more masculine and butch women too but in a very different context. I’m only comfortable with that as Michelle.”
“Your hyper-feminine alter ego.’
