by KB Alan
She startled when Missy P’s furry head bumped her arm, and found that she’d hunched forward toward the table. She sat back and the cat circled her lap four times, then dropped down. The warm, furry weight brought Natalie back to the present. She’d been so out of her element that night, terrified she would do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing. And so confused, because it was completely out of left field.
Another glance at Noah proved he was still watching, waiting patiently for her to continue.
“I didn’t sleep that night. I was so afraid she would do something, even though she acted normal through dinner and told me everything was fine when I asked before she went to bed. I sat on the couch all night, until she got up, took a shower, and went to class. I skipped my morning class and went to Michael’s house. And I told him what she’d said.”
It felt like a lead weight was sitting in her stomach. She remembered having a hard time saying the words to her friend’s Dom, but feeling so relieved that someone else would be able to help her figure it out, make sure they took the right steps to help Felicity.
She’d fucked up so badly. The shame of it burned like acid up her throat. It took more effort than she liked to force herself to face Noah. To see his reaction.
No change. He had the same patient expression.
She swallowed down the burning sensation and bit her lip. Missy P made a little trilling sound and Natalie resumed petting her.
“Michael told me to go to David’s and wait for him, and tell him what had happened. About both the previous night, and then about going to see Michael. I—I was confused. I didn’t realize yet what I’d done. I was so upset and tired, I did head over to David’s, but before I got there, I realized he was at work and didn’t get off until five, and I was still worried about Felicity, and I couldn’t really afford to miss more classes, so I went back to campus instead. Which was pretty much a waste, since I couldn’t focus, even though I texted back and forth with Felicity a couple of times to make sure she was okay.
“When I got to our apartment, Felicity was studying, like normal, but she looked at me like I was crazy, asked me if I wasn’t supposed to be at David’s. I asked her if she wanted to go to the counseling center before they closed, but she just shook her head at me like I was an idiot and told me to go to David’s before I got into ‘more trouble.’”
She managed a wry smile in Noah’s direction. “At that point, I was too dumb and tired to even know what she meant, and so confused, so I just did what she said and left.”
He still showed no visible reaction, but she had no doubt that she had his full attention.
“Hold on for one minute,” he said, and headed into the house. He quickly returned with two glasses of ice water and set one in front of her.
Suddenly her throat felt like sandpaper. The ice rattled in the glass as she brought it to her lips, but she felt better after taking a long drink.
Chapter Four
Noah hadn’t gone into this conversation with a lot of expectations. But he had absolutely not expected to have trouble keeping to his side of the sofa. And yet, here he was. Bringing Natalie the water had helped. A little. But the urge to pick her up and cuddle her into his lap, to share his warmth and strength while she recounted the events of her past, was almost overwhelming. Luckily, as a Dom, he’d worked hard on his patience and control.
“Thanks,” she said, lowering the nearly empty glass.
“You’re welcome.”
He waited in silence as she took a couple more breaths, then started speaking again.
“I waited for David on his front porch. I remember thinking I really, really needed a hug.” She shook her head. “Like I said, at that point, I didn’t even realize I’d screwed up.”
Making sure she couldn’t see, he gripped the throw pillow next to him in a tight fist. He was determined not to interrupt her narrative. In his admittedly unschooled opinion, it seemed important to let her tell it as she remembered it, without interrupting to make corrections.
“But when I saw his face, I started to realize I’d missed something. He stormed up the steps and into the house and slammed the door behind me. I started to say something. I have no idea what. But he pointed to the floor and told me to kneel and wait for him.”
She finished the water in her glass without looking at him. The cat had disappeared when he brought the drink, and Natalie had brought her feet up to the edge of the cushion, her arms wrapped around them.
“We’d always talked about any scene before starting. Negotiations at first, just like Felicity and I researched about. Toward the end there, we didn’t really negotiate every scene, but they were always preplanned, and we’d talk about it some. I was so surprised, I just stood there for a minute, and he kind of turned red and just kept pointing at the floor. So I kneeled and waited.”
He could easily picture a younger version of the Natalie he’d first met. Longer hair, a little too skinny. Innocent and trusting. Tired, scared and confused. He twisted his fist. He might have to buy his friends a new pillow.
“Finally he stood in front of me, hands on his hips, and told me it had been a test. He’d asked Felicity to tell me she was suicidal, as a test of my submission to him. And I failed. Spectacularly.”
She startled when he nudged the second glass of water into her line of sight. Her miserable smile of thanks was too much. He needed her to know that he was on her side.
“How so?”
She looked at him in question from over the rim of the glass.
“How did you fail this test?”
Frowning, she studied him, but he kept his face impassive. With a sigh, she cradled the glass in her hands and returned her focus to the coffee table. “I was supposed to go to Master D. Preferably call him that night, or at worst, go to him in the morning. By not doing that, and by going to Michael instead, I showed that I didn’t trust Master D. And it was a betrayal of my relationship with Felicity.”
“I don’t get it.”
She looked up at him sharply.
“How was talking to her Dom a betrayal, but talking to your Dom wouldn’t have been? Not that I’m saying it was, one way or the other, I’m just trying to understand the logic.”
“Because…wait…I’m trying to remember how David said it.” Her forehead wrinkled as she thought back. “Actually, it’s all kind of a blur, to be honest. He was shouting and I was tired. But it basically boiled down to the fact that I should have come to him, and I would have been rewarded for showing my trust. But since I didn’t, he needed to punish me. And since Felicity and Michael were involved, they would need to be part of the punishment, so we were going to the club as soon as we got changed. I wasn’t allowed to speak, and if I did everything he told me to, when it was over, I’d be forgiven and we could move on.”
He couldn’t help it. He let his confusion show on his face.
“Sorry, I’m not relaying it very well.”
“I don’t think that’s the issue at all.”
She blinked at that, then shook her head. “Let me finish.”
“Okay. But let’s go inside.”
He wanted to give her another minute and get more water. Plus the bugs were getting annoying.
She settled into the corner of the couch and he took the big armchair that sat diagonal. Missy P hopped up behind him and made herself comfortable behind his head.
“So, we went to the club. One of the things that we’d been working on was my being comfortable with my body, in public. When Felicity and I first went, we wore sexy clothes, but nothing less than you’d wear to go dancing. He’d gotten me to the point where I’d wear a corset and tiny shorts. It was something he really wanted to keep progressing with until I was willing to be naked in the club, but he’d been relatively patient about it.”
Her breath hitched in and out. “But he said part of my punishment was to wear only a G-string. He had it ready for me. He said if I didn’t trust him enough to do this, that there was no point in moving f
orward together.”
“So you did,” he said, when she didn’t continue.
She nodded. “I did. He put a sign around my neck that told everyone I was a bad girl.” Her voice shook, but she firmed it up. “He tied me to a pole and Felicity and Michael paddled me. That was their part of the punishment. While they were doing that, David was talking to someone I didn’t recognize. Then he came over and released me. Said there was one last thing, and then the punishment would be over.”
He doubted she was aware that she’d gone stiff. Holding herself ready, as though she was about to receive a blow. She’d flinched when she’d mentioned the paddle, and he wanted to ask her questions, but she’d gone silent and didn’t seem to know how to proceed.
Fuck it.
“Natalie.” He waited until she looked up, which took a few seconds. “I’m going to pick you up.”
She stared at him, uncomprehending.
He stood up. “I’m going to pick you up,” he repeated.
There was no reaction from her, so he slowly reached over and slid an arm under her legs. He picked her up and sat back down in the chair, cradling her. She was stiff for a full minute, though she didn’t protest. Then she melted into him, and he took a deep breath.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I—I’m not sure.”
“You have nothing to apologize for.”
“Oh.”
“Are you okay staying here for the rest of your story?”
“I—yes. Thank you.”
“No, thank you.”
She frowned, but didn’t question him. Instead, she pulled in a deep breath and started talking again.
“I should backtrack. When Felicity and I were doing research, we learned all about how you should tell anyone you’re sceneing with if you have trauma or physical or emotional issues that might impact a scene. And we picked the club we did partly because we saw they had a good limits sheet. We went over that thing for two weeks together, before we ever went to the club. A lot of stuff we had to look up online to even figure out what they were. We debated which items were a hard no, which things we might be interested in exploring, and what we were fine with. There were a bunch of the first, a lot of the second, and we were scared there were way too few of the last, on our first trip.”
Missy P had leapt off the chair when he stood, and now she jumped into Natalie’s lap and immediately settled in for pets.
“One of the reasons we liked David and Michael was that they really took the time to go over the sheets with us, too. They asked a lot of questions about our choices and even though it was horribly embarrassing, it felt very adult and smart and healthy.”
She pulled her top lip between her teeth, and he resisted pulling it back out again. It took her a few minutes to continue, so he braced himself for what was coming.
“I had a thing, from my childhood. I’d told Felicity about it, and I made reference to it on my limits sheet, and I had a long conversation with Master D about it. I’d gone to therapy for it when I was in high school and my freshman year of college. I’d stopped, because it was fine, but in this context it needed to be known. See, when I was eight, my cousin Holly—my mom’s sister’s daughter—would come and stay with us a lot of weekends, because her parents had irregular work schedules. When she wasn’t in school, and they were both at work, she’d come to us. Which she and I thought was great. She was ten.”
Her fingers were gentle on Missy P, but her voice was tight.
“When I was nine, Holly started acting funny. When I was ten, she told me she was tired of playing the games with my dad and wanted it to stop. He’d been molesting her.”
He tightened his hold on her, and she patted his arm. “It’s okay. It was really awful, of course. I told her we should tell her mom, and we did. Then we told my mom. My mom filed for divorce…then my uncle shot my dad.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. My uncle freaked out and left, and my dad called an ambulance. He didn’t want to tell them why my uncle would do that, so he said he’d done it himself, by accident. They didn’t think it was fatal, but he ended up getting an infection and dying about a week later.”
“My mom and I moved in with my grandparents. Changed our last name back to theirs. The police never knew it was my uncle who shot my dad. My aunt and uncle moved away with Holly. My grandparents put me through college. They were great.”
“You lost the father you thought you had, and your cousin. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks. I would hear from my grandparents about how Holly and my aunt and uncle were doing. They all had therapy and seemed to be okay, last update I had.”
“That’s…good.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I told David about it, and he understood. One time when we were playing at the club, there was a couple nearby doing their thing, and she was calling him Daddy. Master D made no big deal of it, he just maneuvered us farther away so that I couldn’t hear them, or even see them, and we continued.”
She kissed the top of the cat’s head, then gently nudged her off the chair. She fisted her fingers in his shirt and took a deep breath.
“So, that night. When he led me over to the stranger. The last thing I expected was for the man to say ‘come to Daddy’.”
“Fucking hell.”
“I’m sure I was supposed to trust David. That it was a test, not a punishment. I’ve thought about it a lot, over the years. What would have happened next if I hadn’t said my safe word and left. That he would have praised me, said all was forgiven, and we would have been done. With the punishment, I mean. But…I don’t really care. I don’t regret leaving. I regret being in the position in the first place, but not leaving.”
“Good.”
She stilled at that. Looked up to him.
“You did the right thing. I’m proud of you. For being strong enough back then, and for telling me now.”
Her whole body shuddered. “Oh.”
“Your Dom was a twat.”
She gasped. Then giggled. Then burst into tears.
Natalie wasn’t sure how long she cried in Noah’s arms. She was only sure that he didn’t rush her and didn’t seem to be annoyed with her. He murmured reassurances into her ear and ran his hand up and down her arm in a constant caress. It was soothing, and eventually she wound down.
Finally, she sighed and unwrapped her fingers from where they’d melded with his shirt.
“Thanks,” she said. She tried to brush out the wrinkles she’d left, but it was impossible.
“No thanks necessary. I should tell you, I’ve changed my mind. I will absolutely be making judgements about what happened.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, while also being so calm and soothing, that she wasn’t the least bit worried about it.
“Would you prefer I start from the beginning? Or the end?”
“I think I’d like alphabetical.” She had no idea where that weird quip had come from, considering she was too exhausted from sharing to really be thinking clearly.
It took a whole twenty seconds, but then he burst out laughing. Shaking her with the motion.
“Actually, I don’t need to start anywhere, unless you have specific questions. Everything you said, after the part where you and Felicity carefully researched what you were getting into, was pure bullshit. I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m sorry one or both of those asshats thought it would be a great idea to convince your friend to do something so stupid and horrible. I’m sorry she decided it was a good idea to go along with it. From that point forward, everything the three of them did was wrong, and everything you did was right. Period. And once you got to the club, it wasn’t just wrong, it was abusive. Actually, probably before that, too. But if I think about it too hard right now, I’ll get pissed off, and that’s not what you need. By the way, what’s David’s last name?”
She huffed out an almost laugh. “None of your business. Maybe I’ll go see a
therapist again. Mine in Atlanta helped me so much, but I never really thought about seeing someone for this. I was too busy moving states and getting my new life figured out.” She frowned. “Might be hard to find someone who understands what I’m talking about, though.”
“I’ll text you a link. There’s a list of therapists who’ve been vetted by the local kink community.”
“Thanks.”
He didn’t say anything after that, just kept holding her. He didn’t seem in a big hurry to move, either.
“I do have a question, now that I think of it,” Noah said after a while.
She was so comfortable, she didn’t even tense up. “What’s that?”
“What does any of that have to do with knitting baby blankets?”
Once again, she found herself laughing. He had a wry smile, but waited for her to explain.
“Ah, right. Well, when I moved up here, that’s what I did with my time, rather than reading kinky romance novels or going to the club or missing my best friend. Grandma had taught me the basics, so I went all-in on it as a hobby to the point I started selling some of my stuff online.”
“Ah, I see. And you really just put all of this behind you? I don’t mean that particular incident, or those idiots, but your…needs?”
On the one hand, it was hard to believe she was having this conversation with anyone, let alone Noah freaking Tucker. But on the other hand, he made it so easy and comfortable.
“For a long time, yes. After my last boyfriend, I did wonder if I should start thinking along those lines again. But it was too painful to even think about exploring. And the idea of finding a safe place, people I trusted, was just…a lot.” She wasn’t going to admit it out loud, but her fantasies had definitely started edging in that direction the last year or so. Her vibrator had burned out and when she was exploring the online shops for a replacement, she’d strayed into the BDSM department and lost an hour as she looked at all the offerings.