Hanna held his hips down, opened her mouth, and Brady searched his stupid, useless, forgetful brain for whatever word he was supposed to say, but it wouldn’t come and he needed to get out of here.
“Stop! Seriously, get the fuck off me.”
Brady sat up, pushed Hanna off him, and she pitched ass-backward onto the bed. Sam’s expression went from a grin to disaster.
“Brady—” Sam began, but he talked over her.
“No, I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”
But he wasn’t sorry. Not then and not when he stood, grabbed a towel and quickly wrapped it around himself. He didn’t want anyone else, didn’t care if not wanting it made him a real man or not. He didn’t want to get disciplined by a stranger either, no matter how much his wife liked her. He didn’t know how to say no to Sam, and God help him, he never wanted to, but he’d been on this roller coaster with her thinking she’d keep him safe.
She hadn’t.
Brady walked out of the room. And he didn’t look back.
28
By the time Brady heard Hanna drive away, he’d showered, dried off and was sitting in the bathtub. It seemed like a good place to put himself, even though he’d had to shove another towel under his butt when the one he’d wrapped around his waist got wet, then thrown another over his shoulders for good measure. He looked ridiculous, covered in towels too small for him and trying to fit his giant body in here, but he didn’t care. He didn’t feel like leaving this room.
His legs bent, he balanced his elbows on his knees and waited.
For what, Brady had no fucking clue.
He tensed when Sam came upstairs. He had no idea what was going to happen. He hoped they could hug, that she would tell him she loved him and they’d put this whole thing behind them. Didn’t seem likely, though.
Sam knocked once—one quick rap of her knuckles. “We need to talk.”
Brady didn’t want to talk. He never did, but being angry always made him fuck up his words, trip over them and say stupid shit. But unless he planned on living in his bathtub, there wasn’t another option.
“Come in.”
The door opened. Sam’s brows were hunched and her arms were crossed over her bathrobe.
“Why did you do that?” she asked.
Seriously? She was pissed off at him? “Why did I do what?”
She shook her head quickly, like she’d been hit with something and needed to clear it. “Why what? How about why’d you shove Hanna and curse at her?”
Oh. He hadn’t realized it came off like that. “I didn’t like what she was doing.”
“Then why didn’t you use your safeword?”
Brady turned away, stared at the wall. “I forgot it.”
“You forgot it?”
“Yeah. We changed it and I couldn’t fucking remember what the new one was.”
“Did you need a reminder?” she spat. “Should I have put it on a Post-it Note?”
He cut his eyes back to her and matched her glare. “You know, you can tell me what to do up to a certain point, but you just fucking passed it.”
Sam recoiled, her mouth open. He wasn’t often as mean as she was, but she’d pushed him too far.
“Yes, I forgot the damn word,” he said. “But you forgot me, what I wanted.”
“What did I forget? What part of what we negotiated did I not follow through on?”
He looked at the opposite side of the shower again, let his head fall back against the wall with a thump, because the answer to that was confusing and too fucked up for even him to figure out.
“She shouldn’t have made me apologize for saying your name,” he said. “It wasn’t her call.”
“That’s what you’re upset about?”
No. “I didn’t like the French either. When you were talking, when she was going to do stuff to me, it made me feel—”
Like less of a man. Like he couldn’t be what she wanted. Like he was never going to be enough for her.
“Like what?”
He gritted his teeth. His faced burned. Couldn’t she tell him she loved him? Isn’t that what he’d said he needed after? This didn’t feel like a Domme comforting her sub, though. It felt like his wife scolding him, felt like the old them all over again. But this wasn’t him missing what she was saying or buying the wrong damn brand of yogurt. This was something much more private, and if she didn’t realize that, then there was no point explaining.
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Of course it matters, Brady. It matters that Hanna said two things and you shoved her. I was worried you were going to hurt her.”
“It’s her you’re worried about?” he shouted, shooting her another glare. “You didn’t think it would bother me when you fucking rented me out, handed me over for Hanna to use? Jesus Christ, Sam. When would you ever think I’d be okay with that?”
“You think I rented you out?”
“I think saying ‘he’s all yours, have fun,’ counts as renting me out.”
“That’s not what I did,” she said coldly. “That’s not fair.”
Brady looked away from her again.
“Oh no,” she said. “You don’t get to shut down. I asked you what you didn’t want. I stood by those requests.”
She was right, but he wasn’t going to take the fall on a technicality. “I didn’t think I had to explain that I didn’t want her to humiliate me.”
“I told her you liked that! You said provoking you in the bedroom does shit to you. You didn’t say it—”
“Bothered me?” Brady looked straight at her. “Yes, I did.”
It was here in this room. He’d told her he liked it when she made fun of him. Just her.
“You didn’t say you didn’t want Hanna to do it.”
He thumped his head against the tile a few more times. Where was the delete button on this whole conversation? Could he safeword out of this, too? Maybe other submissives didn’t feel this way. Maybe being into humiliation required having tougher skin.
Maybe he was weak, after all.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “I asked if there were any other limits or things you wanted to change. You said we were good.” She narrowed her eyes. “Is there something I’m missing, Brady?”
“No, there’s nothing you’re missing,” he snapped back. “Except the fact that I didn’t want to do this in the first goddamn place.”
“Then why did you agree to it?”
“Because it’s impossible to say no to you!” he roared. It was that drug, the make-Sam-happy drug, the thing he wanted above everything else. “Because I’m so fucking desperate to please you, to keep feeding these needs of yours, that I do whatever you want even if it’s not good for me or what I want.”
They stared at each other. Her hands were clenched by her sides.
“So you didn’t want to do this,” she said. “Ever. At any point.”
“I thought I did. But then it started and I didn’t anymore.”
He wasn’t being fair. He had been turned on by the idea, because he was turned on by anything when Sam was worked up, and there were moments he had enjoyed.
He hadn’t known where the line was until they crossed it.
Sam sank onto the closed toilet seat lid and looked at the wall. “But you said nothing to me.”
Her voice was quieter now. He sighed. “I don’t know when I’m supposed to act one way or another with you. When I’m your pet and when I’m allowed to speak my mind. I don’t know how to be everything you want, Sam. I don’t think I can be.”
They were the scariest words he’d ever said. But it was the truth. The simple, serious, not-joking-around truth. This felt hazardous, though. Like if they weren’t careful, they were going to break something important.
“I don’t think I can be everything you want, either,” she said quietly. “I’m supposed to do everything right. Read you when you don’t talk. Figure out your needs when you’re silent. I can’t do it all. I can’t be
that and the person who finds everything in the house and be a halfway decent mother, and hold down a job and…”
She broke off into a sob. Panic took hold.
Tell me you love me. Just say those words and everything will be okay.
“This isn’t working,” she whispered.
Brady felt the color drain from his face.
“I’m not a mind-reader, and you weren’t honest with me,” she added. “We shouldn’t do this if we can’t talk to one another. If you can’t trust me, then this is all a house of cards.”
Sam didn’t move, so Brady stared at the wall along with her. The ugly-ass blue tile wall he imagined one day he’d fix up for her, back when he thought he could give her everything.
“I thought things were getting better,” she continued. “That we were fixing things. But we’ve been using sex to stitch together a broken marriage. Trying to build it on top of something that was falling apart.”
Brady twisted his ring until it went hot between his fingers. It wasn’t helping him figure out how to gulp in a fucking breath, though.
Sam stood, facing away from him as she crossed her arms tightly around her body.
“I think we should take some space,” she said. “I’ll go to my parents’ place tonight.”
“Okay,” he said.
He should’ve said don’t go.
He should’ve said please stay.
He should’ve said I love you.
But he wasn’t sure any of that mattered anymore. Sam sniffed one more time, then squared her shoulders. Brady stared at his ring, this metal band of promises he’d thought meant forever as she opened the bathroom door and shut it behind her.
Brady closed his eyes. He always knew letting this part of himself out would break them.
He hated knowing he was right.
29
Sam awoke to unfamiliar surroundings. Lumpy couch. Bare walls. Right, she was at her parents’ apartment, and her marriage had fallen apart last night.
She turned on her back and stared at the ceiling.
How had everything gone so horribly wrong?
She’d watched Hanna talk to him. All the signs of Brady’s pleasure were there: flushed cheeks, chin dipped. He looked like he always did when he was turned on. He was a little on edge, but she’d chalked that up to the newness of the situation. Not that he felt like he’d been loaned out for someone else’s discretion.
She rubbed her hands over her swollen eyelids and sighed. He was right—it did seem like that was what she was doing, but if he didn’t want that then why hadn’t he said something? Was she supposed to figure it out the way she knew how to load the dishwasher or find a lost pair of gloves? She’d been trying to read Brady, but she couldn’t possibly know everything when he locked shit away in his head.
He hadn’t trusted her, hadn’t told her how he felt. He’d made her feel like she’d forced him into this.
Had she?
In her excitement to do this, had she ignored unease on his part? He’d said it was impossible to say no to her, that he had to keep feeding her needs. But she’d given him a million chances to speak up, given him time to think and told him it was his call. If he couldn’t cough out the words, how much was she to blame?
Maybe she should’ve figured it out. Maybe she was a sucky Dominant. She had no idea how Hanna felt, or if she’d even enjoyed the evening. She’d stated she didn’t get emotions involved, and maybe that was the problem. Sam hadn’t felt anything last night, just got carried away in the sex. She’d been turned on, but it was nothing but body parts and sensation. The connection she usually had with Brady was missing, and she’d been too lost in what was happening to focus on either of them.
The phone rang—the ancient landline her parents had kept running. Sam sat up and picked it up off the end table. “Hello?” she asked, then coughed through the grit she had in her throat from crying.
“Sweetheart?”
“Oh, hey, Mom.” She was happy to hear her mom’s voice, but a part of her had hoped it was Brady on the line.
“We were wondering why you weren’t answering your cell. Is everything set for today?”
The open house. Oh, shit.
Sam raced into the bathroom to wash her face. “Yeah, I just got here.”
“Oh.” There was a beat of silence. “Is everything okay?”
Sam stared at herself. Puffy eyes, splotchy skin, hair like an ad for cheap shampoo. Mascara and dry tears crackled in the corners of her eyes. Staging the place meant no hairbrush or toothbrush hanging around, so she splashed her face, brushed her teeth with her fingertip, then tried to work out all her tangles and knots.
The mirror told her she was doing a shitty job.
“Sure,” she said. “Why?”
“We called the house first,” her mother said. “Brady didn’t sound good.”
Sam’s heart lurched. She didn’t have the energy to throw on her I’m fine mask anymore, for all that it made her mother sad. “Things are bad right now.”
“You know, honey. Sometimes people get lost in a marriage. They forget the things that attracted them to their partners, what made them want to be there in the first place.” Sam didn’t say anything, so her mother sighed. “Just, remember the history you two have.”
Yes, they had a history. But maybe all spending years with another person meant was that you knew how to cut deeper, how to hurt them more.
When the Realtor arrived, Sam booked it out of there and plugged her phone in to charge in the car. She’d turned it off to save battery overnight, forgetting a wall plug for it. But there were no messages. From anyone.
She’d been overextended for years. Grabbed at and needed by everyone. Now no one needed her at all.
She drove to Hanna’s place in a fog. Her friend let her in and pulled Sam aside. “You okay? What happened after I left?”
Sam had felt lousy, watching her friend drive off in the middle of the night, but Hanna had insisted she was fine. She looked fine now, too, just as perfectly done-up as always. Sam, however, was not.
“Sorry.” She shook her head. “I need to just…not…for a while. Can we talk later?”
Hanna nodded, concern clear on her face. “Sure.”
Inside, Mimi was making pancakes slathered in cheap, fake maple syrup, full of food dyes and God knows what else. Running on instinct and very little sleep, Sam snatched Allegra’s plate from her.
“What did we say about junk food?” she snapped. “What did we discuss?”
Allegra pinned Sam with the kind of glare she hadn’t thought her daughter was capable of. “You never let me do anything!”
Anger in eyes that matched hers reflected back at her, Hope copying Allegra’s expression by her side. Sam was about to lash back when a sharp “Shhh!” from Mimi quieted them both. Sam whirled around to find the tiny Asian woman smiling and offering Allegra a bagel with butter.
Sam nodded once. “Finish up,” she said robotically once the plates had been swapped. “We have to go.”
When they’d gobbled down their breakfasts, Allegra smiled at Mimi and dutifully brought her plate to the sink.
Great, a veritable stranger was a better mom than she was.
Terrible Domme. Terrible wife. Terrible mother.
Sam managed a thank-you to Hanna and Mimi for letting the girls stay overnight before ushering her children out the door. Neither of them spoke to Sam on the drive home, matching sullen faces in the backseat. Back at the house, Allegra went up to her room and slammed the door while Hope joined Brady in the living room where he was watching TV. He didn’t greet Sam either.
Now she understood why he let the kids go to Jack’s that night.
She went up to the bedroom and sat on the stripped bed. He’d cleaned up. The toys were put away. But it seemed mechanical, almost spiteful, not done in deference or love. He probably thought she was the most awful, selfish person on the planet. Maybe she was. She’d gotten so swept up in this that she’d felt in cont
rol even when things were spinning into chaos. And she was the cause of it.
She didn’t know how to fix this. She didn’t know if she could.
What she did know was that she needed some space.
They all did.
A few hours later, Sam closed the pantry door and tucked some protein bars into her suitcase. Brady finally surfaced, standing at the kitchen entryway. His eyes were bloodshot, and his hair was a mess, curls standing every which way. He needed a haircut, and Sam couldn’t help but think she should make an appointment for him.
One of the many things she’d done for him, things a grown man should do for himself. Things she might never do for him again.
He looked at the bag, then at her.
He said nothing.
“Girls,” she called out, still holding Brady’s gaze. “Come here. Now, please”
They appeared behind Brady a few moments later. Like their father, they saw the bag by Hanna’s feet and stopped.
“I’m going to stay at Nana and Pop’s. To take care of it, and make sure it gets sold.”
Brady barely moved, other than his eyes. Sam felt it when his gaze hit the floor.
“Why do you have to stay there?” Allegra asked.
“The Realtor needs someone there to set up showings—”
“What’s a showing?”
“It’s when people who might buy it come see it. And someone needs to be there to make sure that happens.”
She waited for Brady to call her out on her lie. She didn’t need to be there. She’d given the Realtor a spare key, and even if she hadn’t, she could’ve used a lockbox, or had Brady set up a home automation system so she could let them in from her phone.
“But you’re coming back…right?”
That question came from Hope.
“I’ll be here to pick you up from the bus, to help with homework, take you to dance and your doctors, and then go back when Daddy gets home.”
Sam had rationalized this out. She couldn’t take the girls with her. Having their stuff at the apartment would mess up the staging, and she’d have to wake them at an ungodly hour to drive them to school, then double back in the other direction to get to work.
Their Discovery (Legally Bound Book 3) Page 27