by Alexis Hall
“Oh my God.” I flailed upright, sheet flying. “Have you listened to yourself? Way to make me feel like absolute shit.”
“I’m not sure what’s going through your mind, but my previous relationship is—and should be—irrelevant to you.”
“But you do remember I like being subjected to debasements, right?”
“I…I”—he flushed—“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
“You broke up with Nathaniel the Martyr because you believe the fact you’re kinky and he’s not makes him too good for you. So what does that make me, Caspian?”
He drew in a sharp breath. “I’ve treated you with far greater care than I ever showed Nathaniel.”
“You mean by keeping me at a distance and refusing to believe me when I tell you that I’m comfortable with my desires, and yours?”
“The reason,” he snapped, “you are comfortable is because I have kept myself in check. I have set boundaries and maintained them and protected you from the consequences of both my nature and your naiveté.”
I stared at him, shocked momentarily into silence, and thrown into such turmoil I couldn’t tell if I was angry or upset or both or neither. Finally, I got my mouth working. “This is such bullshit.”
“What is?” Caspian, as he often did after an outburst, had turned to ice.
“You. This. Everything.” Or maybe I was just tired. Heaviness rolled over me like I was being dragged through the floor soul first. “You’ve only gone and Madonna-whored me.”
“I don’t—”
“You’re fucked up about kink because your last boyfriend was a judgmental prick. And you’ll never think I’m as good as Nathaniel until I’m as judgmental as him or as fucked up as you.”
I gathered my garment, and what precious little of my dignity remained, and pushed past Caspian. There was no game plan here. All I wanted was away. From him and the room where RACK went to die.
Probably there would be crying at some point.
But I didn’t actually get very far. Caspian caught up to me in the bedroom.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
It was a good question. “I guess I’m leaving?”
“Now? It’s five a.m. You’re in a sheet.”
I gave him a wild, senseless grin. “One of these is fixable.”
“Arden.”
“What?”
“I think, perhaps, we have both spoken too hastily tonight. Implied things we did not mean.”
“Is that…what the fuck is that? Are you trying to say sorry?”
He raised a fretful hand, then let it fall. “I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I can’t…think in that place. I’m not…I don’t feel…”
That was when I saw he was sweating. And not in a sexy glowing way. More just drenched, and almost feverish. He was trembling too. And looked—unlikely as it seemed for someone so beautiful—absolutely terrible.
“Are you okay?”
I started forward but he jerked away. “Don’t touch me.”
“I won’t.” I threw up the surrender gesture. “I promise. But what’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I mean”—he made a shaky sound—“I just need to breathe.”
“Um. Sit down maybe?” It was hard to help someone when they wouldn’t let you near them, but I managed to gently herd him, sheepdog style, toward the bed. “I think you’re meant to put your head between your legs if you feel faint.”
“No, it’s…it feels…It’s like being there.”
I was still super cross with him. But it wasn’t in me to prioritize my own anger over someone else’s distress. Not because I was amazing or anything. But because I wasn’t a psychopath.
He pressed his fingers against his eyes. “I can’t stop remembering. Can’t stop seeing. I don’t want…I can’t make it stop.”
“Oh God.” I dropped to my knees in front of him, trying to demonstrate closeness without impinging. “I think you’re…triggered maybe?”
“Maybe.”
Actually take that back about not being a psychopath. I wished I could whip out my phone and google what to do when you brutally traumatize your bildom non-boyfriend by trying to kinky sex him in a place full of horrible associations. What the fuck was wrong with me? I’d gone into free-fall in a void of my own insecurities. I mean, yes, Caspian had said some messed-up stuff that had made me feel hella judged. But how hadn’t I noticed how much he was hurting?
Fuck. Okay. I could fix this.
I shuffled forward a tiny bit. “Caspian? That’s the past. It’s over and done with. You’re here now. In the present. With me.”
No reaction.
Shit. Shit. Shit. This was beyond difficult.
“Just, y’know, keep breathing. And…like…sort of…feel where you are? The ground under your feet. The bed if you just reach out and touch it. My voice talking to you. And if you open your eyes, you’ll see me. Waiting for you.”
It took forever. But eventually he lowered his hands. Looked down at me with this strange mixture of wild animal fear and desperate trust. I was pretty sure I was on the verge of a heart attack myself. But I gave him my best calm, here, and incredibly sorry I made you hang out somewhere damaging for you face.
“See,” I whispered. “All safe.”
He did actually seem to be doing better. He wasn’t trembling anymore, and there was color in his face again—although he’d gone kind of red. “Yes.” He cleared his throat. “I’m…I’m fine now. And I’m sorry you had to see that.”
“Jesus. That is not something you have to apologize for.”
“Well, I’m hardly proud of it. And I have no cause to react that way.”
I almost could see him trying to put himself back together. Except it was the emotional equivalent of that scene in Bambi with the icy pond. “You’ve lost me.”
“I was not the one to endure torment in that room.”
“You know”—the words were out before I could stop them—“I’m really not sure about that.”
For a moment he stared at me with this terrible emptiness. And then, “Arden, go if you must, but I can’t talk about this anymore right now.”
I nearly lost my temper again. How could he think I’d leave him after what I’d just seen? Except he must have felt vulnerable enough without being reminded, and the last thing I needed was him mistaking my care for pity. And actually, in that moment, it cost me nothing to sacrifice a little of my pride to salvage his.
“I’d like to stay,” I said softly. “If you don’t mind.”
He shook his head. And most likely I was imagining it for my own benefit, but I thought I saw relief in his eyes.
I gave him a tentative smile. “If it would make you more comfortable, I could sleep in one of the other rooms. Or on the floor since I’d much rather be near you.”
“I’m not going to make you sleep on the floor.” He sounded a little bit more like himself—which was to say, faintly exasperated with me.
“Will you really be okay sharing, though?”
“I don’t know. But I’m”—he swallowed—“quite tired.”
I’d never seen anyone struggle over such a basic admission of humanity. “Then get into bed, doofus.”
He managed a laugh, and half crawled, half dragged himself up toward the pillows. Landed in a vaguely vertical sprawl, his face shadowed by the crook of his arm. “I should shower,” he mumbled. “I’m disgusting.”
“You’re fine.” I untangled the sheet from my body and settled it over him, then drew up the duvet and—
Okay. It’s weird to say I tucked in Caspian Hart. But I did. Before slipping in beside him, top to tail, just like in Kinlochbervie. I felt him tense, then relax. He said something I didn’t catch, though it might have been nothing more than my name, and was asleep in minutes.
Annoyingly—despite me also being quite tired—my brain wouldn’t leave me alone. So I ended up lying there, restless but trying not to move in case I disturbed Caspian, hamster-wh
eeling through the carnage of our evening. And to think we’d started out so promisingly. Although, actually, in some horrible demonstration of beware of what you wish for, I’d got everything I thought I wanted: the truth about Caspian. Though probably not in any way he would himself have chosen to share it with me.
And, God, that was a bitter prize.
It didn’t help that my feelings for him were a total mess, as if someone had ripped open the sofa cushion of my heart and scattered the stuffing all over the living room. I was hurt by him and hurting for him. And I wasn’t all that impressed with myself either. A lot of my behavior tonight had sprung from a toxic combination of ignorance and my own shit. But, for fuck’s sake, it was sexing 101 that you didn’t make people do stuff that made them uncomfortable.
Even if you were the one ostensibly surrendering power.
Even if you were a nobody and they were a billionaire.
And even—especially, in fact—if you thought their reasons for being uncomfortable were a big pile of crap.
Most likely, from what Caspian had said, a lot of it came back to Nathaniel. And, obviously, for both selfish and unselfish reasons, I wished he could find peace with his desires. Believe that they weren’t the consequence of cruelty or perversion. But who the fuck was I to decide whether his choices were valid not?
It was the first time I’d ever been able to see Nathaniel as something other than my opposite or my enemy. After all, we had a lot in a common.
Since neither of us really understood the man we claimed to care about.
Chapter 13
I must have eventually dozed off because when I woke up, the bedroom was full of cold light and Caspian—exquisite in a pearl gray suit and an indigo tie—was sitting on the edge the bed, shaking me gently.
I jerked upright with an undignified wuffle. It was hard not to be slightly discombobulated because seeing Caspian, absolutely composed and back to normal, half made me believe last night had been a really fucked-up dream.
“What time is it?” I asked, blearily.
“Nearly eleven.”
He gestured to a line of cups on the bedside table. “I’m afraid I didn’t know what to bring you. So I thought I’d try everything. There’s tea or coffee or orange juice.”
This was not one hundred percent comfortable. Were we seriously just going to pretend nothing had happened?
“Um, juice?” I said. “Coffee makes me hyper. And I’ve never got into tea.”
He gave me a slight smile. “What a terrible confession for an Englishman.”
“I know, right? The government will be closing in on me as we speak.” My voice rang hollow in my own ears, full of false jollity. But what was the alternative? Hey Caspian, still fucked in the head?
He handed me the orange juice and I took a sip, glad to have something to do with my mouth that wouldn’t cause an emotional apocalypse. It was annoyingly good. Sun-bright and sweet, with an edge of sharp, not a single fleck of pulp or pith, leaving this citrus-glitter on my tongue.
Typical. Billionaires even had better squeezed fruit products. Orange juice of this caliber: second best wake-up call after a bj.
Caspian was watching me, hands resting in his lap, the epitome of composure but for the hint of tightness at his knuckles.
Fuck. He was going to dump me.
He’d brought me orange juice and now he was dumping me. It was the orange juice of condolence. Or maybe he just thought I wouldn’t hit him if I had something in my hand.
He was probably right.
I was trying to work up the courage or cruelty or whatever it took to dash my drink in his face, when he said, “Please don’t go back to Kinlochbervie.”
I inhaled in shock. Except my mouth was full of liquid so mainly what I did was splutter. Attractively.
“I know,” he went on, “after what happened, the way I made you feel, that I have no right to ask. But I don’t want Nathaniel, Arden. I want you. I can’t change that I loved him once, but you are not, and have never been, in his shadow.”
Oh God. It was so much what I needed to hear that I nearly cried. If I’d had any dignity, I would have accepted the reassurance. As it was, I said “R-really?”
“Of course. I’m appalled that I made you doubt it for a moment.” He reached out and did this totally movie cheek-cupping thing. And somehow I didn’t feel ridiculous. “Love is a complicated experience. And so powerful that it can sometimes become its own justification. Nathaniel gave me hope that I could be a better man. You make me believe that I’m not such a terrible one.”
“I don’t,” I wailed. “I tried to make you do sex things with me that you didn’t want to do. That’s awful.”
“I don’t believe we came anywhere close to that.”
“But I triggered you.”
He gave me an incredibly cold look. “Can we please refrain from throwing around this pop psychological jargon?”
“Um, sorry.”
“I experienced a regrettable loss of control brought on by circumstance. Certainly not by you.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. Maybe this was how he needed me to see what had happened. “Okay.”
There was a long silence.
While there’d definitely been improvement, things were still not a hundred percent comfortable. I would have put them at maybe fifty-five to sixty. Sixty-two at the outside.
Eventually, Caspian got up and prowled about, like an agitated fashion plate. “I can’t believe I’m going to say this but—”
I wasn’t liking the sound of that. “What?”
He drew in a long, careful breath. “I think we may have to…talk about sex.”
“Baby.”
“Pardon?”
“Nothing.” Apparently there could be a wrong time to invoke Salt-N-Pepa. “Ignore me.”
“You said last night that I…that my…” He paused and went at it again. “I don’t want you to feel that I am condemning your…your ease. On the contrary, I admire it greatly. And very much enjoy what we do together.”
God, he looked incredibly uncomfortable.
Part of me wanted to let it go. Spare him an awkward discussion. Except that kind of thing had led us to yesterday, which—even with my zero experience—I could tell was crap. Nil points. F- boyfriending.
So we had to have this conversation. And I had to get it right this time. But I just didn’t know how. And I wasn’t inclined to trust Caspian’s judgment either, because his relationship with Nathaniel had basically been a masterclass in fucking each other up.
And then it struck me: he might not have recognized it, or even believed it, but Caspian had shown me what to do. Every time we’d had sex: the care he’d always taken with me, his perfect blend of cruelty and mercy, of knowing when to push and when to be gentle, and when I was strong enough to hurt a little.
As he was now. For me. For us.
“Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”
He gave me a tense little nod. “I’m also very aware that you would like to further explore a lifestyle that I have done my best to put behind me. And while there is a part of me that would love nothing more than to take you back to that room, I cannot allow that to happen.”
“Because you have to protect me from kinky shit I can’t handle?”
“Because I have to protect myself from becoming someone I despise.”
It had been a lot easier accepting that it wasn’t my place to question his decisions when I wasn’t actually faced with them. Because I was desperate to understand what was so terrible about getting his dungeon on with a fully consenting partner, i.e., me. Instead, I went with, “Do you honestly think what we’re doing at the moment is vanilla?”
“Clearly it isn’t.” He paced again. “I know this might not seem rational to you. But the difference is the room, the implements, the toys, the tools…they take me back to a world that I never want to be part of again.”
Well. That was clear cut. And there was no point making a huge fuss
about him talking to me if I wasn’t going to listen when he did.
“Okay,” I said. “I get it.”
He stilled. “Do you really, Arden? I’m telling you I might not be able to satisfy you in the ways you need.”
“I’ve been pretty damn satisfied so far.”
That won the smallest of smiles. But it didn’t last. “While all relationships involve compromises, there are some that should not be made. I do not wish to be a compromise for you as I have been for Nathaniel.”
This was one hell of a conversation to be having with my hair fluffed up and my nipples out. I hiked up the duvet. “Let me think a moment.”
He circled back to the bed and sat down.
My head felt like it was going to explode. And, worst of all, I couldn’t quite tell if we were having a breakup conversation or not. “Just to clarify: what we’re doing at the moment. Like what we did on the plane. And on your desk. Is that okay or not okay?”
“Very okay.”
“And we can keep doing it?”
He nodded.
Probably this was a situation when being super explicit was better than taking anything for granted. “So you’re up for spanking me? And hurting me? And making me cry and beg and crawl? And maybe tying me up with items of clothing you happen to have on hand?”
“Yes. Yes. Yes, yes, and yes. And yes.” He sounded very serious. But he’d also gone super pink.
“Oh, and saying I’m a slut and things?”
“Yes.”
“And incredibly dirty phone calls when you tell me exactly what to do?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m in. That’s not a compromise.”
Various emotions flashed across his face so quickly I couldn’t quite identify them. “But…the room and—”
“Well, the room is pretty cool. And if you were into it, I would be too. But, Caspian, I don’t need fancy furniture. I need…well…you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. Your voice commanding me and your eyes watching me and your body controlling me.”