"The setting is white gold because I wanted to make sure it wouldn't turn you green. Once you put this on, you are not allowed to take it off. You will bathe and sleep with it on. You will not let Lotus or Reina try it on."
A small closed-mouth smile played at her lips. "Yes, sir, anything else?"
"If you remove it without asking permission, I will take it to mean that you do not want to be collared."
“I wouldn’t do that without talking to you first.”
A gentle smile played on his lips as if he already knew that because that was who she was. “The whole purpose of the consideration collar is to explore if this is an option for us. Some fantasies are better as just that, fantasies.”
Nyxie looked into his handsome face and wondered if the reality of being married to her would live up to his imaginings. She wanted to be all the things he thought she was, but doubted she could ever match his farfetched expectations.
“I love you,” she said abruptly.
“But…?”
Nyxie drew back slightly. “No buts. I was just thinking how handsome you are and how lucky I am.”
“Oh.” He sounded surprised. “I love you too.”
Was this something she wanted? Her initial instinct was to refuse. Didn’t he have enough control in their relationship already? A silent sigh deflated her lungs. She knew she was nearly helpless to stop Declan when he wanted something.
“If this is what you want, I’ll try it,” she said and watched as a slow smile lit up his expression.
"You're sure?"
She nodded. "At this point, it's not binding, right?"
His smile faded and little lines formed between his eyebrows. "That is not the attitude with which you should go into this."
"You're springing this on me without any warning. You aren't giving me any time to consider it."
He held out his hands palm up and she placed her hands in his before he helped her to her feet. "You're not going to have to worry about that. I'll make the majority of the decisions."
"Your mom will be thrilled. She already thinks I call you at work to ask what kind of paper towels to buy," she said dryly.
"I like the ones that feel like cloth," he said, fighting a playful smile.
"I prefer washcloths and dishtowels. Paper towels are a waste of money."
He sighed indulgently. "My mother will never know." He drew her forward. "Come sit on my lap."
Nyxie allowed him to draw her onto his legs. Her whole body melted into the contours of his torso. The contact, body to body, skin to skin, fulfilled a need in her she hadn't known she was lacking in her life just a few months earlier. Practically, the only contact she remembered from her parents were angry touches. When she was in the way and didn't move fast enough to suit them, they might grab her upper arm and pull her, or other times push her back. More often than not, they were hitting her for whatever she was doing that annoyed them. She learned early in life to slink away to the closet where it was safe when they were in bad moods. She wondered if that was another reason she had developed masochistic tendencies. Had she been so desperate for love and physical contact, that any touch was better than none. Did she equate the harsh touches with some skewed sense of love? Did she even need to think about it to suspect it was related?
She closed her eyes and pressed her ear to his chest, listening to the steady thud of his heartbeat as she inhaled the clean scent that was Declan. Her eyes burned with tears behind her eyelids and her sinuses prickled. She sniffled quietly.
"Nyx, are you crying?"
Leaning back, he took a hold of her shoulders and held her away so he could see her face.
"Maybe a little," she said, forcing her voice to sound chipper as she did when waiting tables. Her smile was equally coaxed.
"Happy tears?" he asked, studying her countenance.
"Of course.” It was only a partial lie. She couldn't imagine being happier. Silently, she admonished herself for her moment of self-pity—hoping someday, thoughts of her parents would no longer have the power to upset her. "Of course they’re tears of happiness. Why wouldn't I be happy? I'm married to the most handsome man on the planet. Cody is getting better every day, and Melinda has signed over custody."
His lips tightened for a moment as he studied her face. "I hate it when you're not honest with me."
Her whole body sagged with resignation. "I'm not lying, all that is true."
"And yet you're still upset about something and you're keeping it from me."
"Am I not allowed to have private thoughts?"
"Do you want to start off our marriage with secrets between us?"
He wrapped the necklace around his finger and gently tugged until it came free from the box. His large hands struggled for a few moments with the tiny clasp, but he quickly had it around her neck and secured in place.
"Here are the new rules that go with the collar. As I said before, if you remove it, I will assume that means you have chosen not to move forward with being collared. If there is an unforeseen problem with the necklace, you will ask me for permission to remove it temporarily, until the situation can be remedied."
"Why would I need to remove it?"
"I don't know, maybe you need to remove it to have an x-ray taken."
"Oh, okay."
"Rule number two: you will not hide your emotions, feelings, or pain from me." He looked at her with one eyebrow raised.
"You just put the necklace on me. I don't see how you can demand a retroactive response about what I was feeling a minute ago."
He stared at her, not saying anything, waiting for her to tell him what he wanted to hear.
"Fine! I was thinking that I used to believe there was something about me that made my parents not love me. I never knew why. It made me sad. Is that a fucking crime?"
She could see his anger building at her belligerence. His jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed into a steely stare.
"Lose the fucking attitude, Nyxie, and stop swearing."
She got off his lap and stood in front of him, far enough away that she was out of reach. In her mind, she quickly calculated where she would run if she made him so mad that he might attack her.
"When I do say something, I've got a fucking attitude. You only want to know what's going on in my mind if it suits this image of me you have rolling around in your head. I have tried to tell you a hundred times that I am not that broken bird you think I am. Don't you have private thoughts you don't want to share?"
"This is not about your private thoughts or mine. This is about your obedience. You said in your vows you would obey. Why did you say it, if you didn't mean it?"
"I did mean it. I do mean it. I just can't stand it when you do this poor Nyxie thing. What you call being submissive, I call being a wimp. You like the things I hate most about myself. And then when you start pitying me, it makes it ten times worse."
"Okay, I hear you saying you don't like it when I treat you like you're helpless, and you hate me seeing your vulnerability because you think I feel sorry for you."
Her eyes narrowed as she thought that was the phoniest thing she had ever heard anyone say. She made an obvious show of looking around the room and dipped her head down as if looking under the bed.
"What are you looking for?" he asked.
"Dr. Phil."
He sighed and a crooked, chagrined smile softened his features. "I was using a technique they taught us in one of my psych classes to show you I was listening, and to tell you what I heard."
One side of her face dimpled as her mouth moved sideways. "That only helps if it changes anything."
“Nyxie, I'm your Dom. I always try to take your feelings into consideration. When you cry, how can I not ask you what's wrong? I love you. I want to know everything about you—even your everyday thoughts. Do I feel bad for everything you've been through? Yes. Do I feel sorry for you? Yes. Do I feel pity and every other form of sympathy? Of course. I would feel that way for my worst enemy if they endured the
same shit. Why can't you open up to me?"
Nyxie lifted one heel and twisted her toe in the carpet. Her eyes never lifted higher than his chest.
"You like stories about my childhood…," she said flatly, but he interrupted before she could finish.
"I don't like them. They help me understand what shaped you into the person I love."
She sighed and her arms came up and crossed over her chest. He wondered if she did it to cover herself because she felt vulnerable by this story she planned to convey.
"When I was in the third grade, one of the girls had a falling out with her group of friends. I guess she was desperate because she started talking to me." Nyxie drew her arms tighter around her body and her eyes dropped sightlessly to a spot on the carpet, her mind replaying the events in her head. "She kept asking me questions. Most of them I didn't want to answer but I answered them anyway because I thought we were friends. When she asked me questions like what kind of toys I had or how many pairs of jeans I owned, I made up shit. But other things were harder to lie about."
"A couple of days later," she continued. "She went back to her old friends and made fun of me about the things I had told her. They used those two days of conversation against me for years. I learned to keep my mouth shut. So, even though I'm trying to trust you, it's hard for me to confide in anyone. Until you came along, Cody had been my only confidante and I don't tell him everything either."
Declan reached out and put his hands on her hips. Taking a deep breath, he pulled her closer.
"Even after you quit school, you never had friends you could talk to?"
She shook her head. “Well, sometimes I had to tell Bob things. I had to tell him about Melinda dropping off Lotus and Reina, because I needed more shifts and I wanted both my meals at the same time. But Bob already knew all the bad stuff. My mother used to work there before she disappeared. I've known him my whole life. But I wouldn't call us close or anything. He's my boss."
"You didn't become friends with the waitresses?"
She shrugged. "We were friendly at work. Bob won't put up with a lot of drama; we have to get along or we’re gone. Mostly, they're nice to me, but we don't exchange phone numbers or anything. They all know the kids, and when Lotus got sick at school, Ginny gave me a ride to pick her up. She even covered my second shift until Cody came home."
"What was wrong with Lotus?"
She resisted smiling at her doctor husband. "Stomach bug, I guess."
"Did you take her to the doctor?"
Nyxie look at him like he was nuts. Didn't he have any idea how much a doctor’s appointment costs? "We don't run to the doctor every time someone sniffles. If she had gotten worse or wasn't getting better in a couple of days, I would've taken her."
"What did you do?"
“For the fever, a wet washcloth on her forehead and an aspirin. Jell-O, ginger ale and crackers for her stomach."
"Not real aspirin, I hope."
"What's wrong with aspirin?"
"You've never heard of Reyes Syndrome?"
One shoulder lifted in a shrug as she shook her head no. "If you had taken her to a doctor, you would have been told to give her something else."
Nyxie's lips sealed tightly, and she shifted her weight to her back foot. Declan was so in tune with her subtle body language that he picked up on the unspoken cues immediately.
"Don't," he said, his brow low with displeasure. "Don't clam up. I want to hear what you're thinking."
She stared at him for many seconds before she began to speak. "Everyone over the past few months has made it abundantly clear that I am a shit parent."
"I never said that."
"No, but you're judging me. There are only two doctors in Chimera Flats. The closest one is nearly two miles from my house. Do you expect a sick kid to walk that far both ways?"
"Call a friend."
Her eyes welled up with tears. "I don't have any."
"Then you should've called an ambulance and gone to the ER."
"And how were we going to get home? Hitchhike? You have no clue what my life was like. Don't you think I wanted to take her to the doctor? Unlike the hospital, the doctor expects to be paid upfront. I had just mailed off money orders to pay my bills the day before. I had earned less than $10 in tips when the school called."
"You know what your problem is?"
"Apparently, not. But I'm sure you do. Tell me, Declan, what's my problem?" she asked sarcastically.
"You are too proud to ask for help. You would rather starve than take charity. Is it just pride or do you get off on being a martyr?"
She gasped and took a step back.
"Did you ever see if you could apply online for food stamps? Did you call the welfare office and explain your situation? I know you are not the only person who doesn't have transportation."
Her eyes and nose suddenly felt prickly as emotion made her tears flow in earnest. She would have liked to have disagreed, but she knew pride kept her from putting in the kids’ names to Santa Red and Sage. She didn't want anyone to know how much she struggled. She even felt proud of herself for every sacrifice she had ever made for Cody and her nieces. It may not have been giving her life for a cause, but she supposed it was close enough to skirt the definition of martyrdom.
"If we aren’t going to fuck, can I put my nightgown on and go to bed?"
He drew her forward and kissed the tears on her cheeks. "I didn't mean to make you cry. I feel so frustrated by the fact you had no help. I don't know if they would have separated you, but frankly, Nyxie, you would have been better off alone in foster care, going to school and eating three meals a day."
She shook her head. "No, you don't get it. Without my brother, I had no reason to exist."
"Oh, Nyxie, yes you did. You do."
Chapter 32
"Look, I don’t want to argue tonight. Since it's our wedding night, I'm going to let you pick our toy."
Nyxie searched his face trying to decide how mad he was before she went to the armoire and picked out what he would use on her. "Anything?" she asked.
"Sure, whatever you want."
With hesitant steps, she crossed the room and began looking at the instruments inside the cabinet. Would this be like when her father told her to get a switch? If she didn't bring back something big enough, would her punishment be worse?
"Just one, or can you tie me up too?"
"We can do that."
Nyxie pulled open the bottom drawer and put four red ropes, that looked to be about six feet long each, on the bed. She pushed the bottom drawer closed and reached for the drawer above it.
"There's nothing in that one," he said as she pulled it open.
It wasn't true, the drawer wasn't completely empty but it didn't contain any toys either. Inside was the sheet stained with her virgin blood, the cards she had drawn him, their marriage license, and a selection of a few other items.
"Just a few souvenirs."
She opened the top drawer to find her corset and leash, the lidocaine spray and a variety of small and not so small toys like butt plugs and vibrators. Would they really use all of them?
Nothing there appealed to her; it was a pleasure drawer—the large compartment on top was where the pain was located. Her eyes flitted from floggers to crop, to a stiff leather paddle. One flogger—she guessed that's what that was—had knots tied in the leather strings. When her eyes fell upon a bamboo rod, she knew that was what she wanted. She held it with both hands palms up as she presented it to him.
"Nyxie, this isn't punishment."
"It’s not? Still, this is what I want," she said, continuing in a rush, her eyes never lifting above the middle of his chest. "I've been watching this tattoo show and I saw a piercer make a corset on a client’s back with a row of loops that he put a ribbon through. I thought, maybe you could put a crisscross pattern across my back."
Declan was shaking his head before she even finished. "I could try to do that, but don't you think the crop would be better
? I could leave welts with no bruises."
"It would be gone tomorrow, sir. I want to wear it longer than a few hours."
"You won't be able to go swimming while we’re out of town. The kids will want to know why."
She shrugged. "I’ll wear a T-shirt over my swimsuit and tell the kids I don't want to get a sunburn. I bought one of those one-piece swimsuits with a little skirt so no one would see my boney butt, but I also thought it would hide any marks."
Nyxie extended her arms to present it to him. "You said I could choose."
"I've never caned anyone. I'm not sure I know how hard to hit you."
"We will figure it out."
Declan reached out and took the finger thick length of bamboo from her and smacked it against his palm. He looked down at his hand and frowned.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah."
"Grab the bedpost."
Nyxie hesitated before turning. "I love you. Sir, may I give you a kiss first?"
He used the rod to tilt her head up. Her tears had stopped but her cheeks still glistened with wetness. "I have loved you from the first day I saw you. I will love you until the day I die."
His lips met hers in a gentle, languid kiss, as if he kissed the injured bird he believed her to be. His left hand reached into her hair and tightened into a fist, making Nyxie moan and smile. The kiss seemed to energize her every pore and every cell of her body with sexual yearning. Gone were the upset words from a few minutes earlier, gone were her insecurities and feelings that she was not loved. Her breathing came faster with the buildup of what was to come. She felt both antsy and calm in the same instant.
"Okay my naughty little slave, do as you were told, or you won't like the consequences."
Nyxie's eyes flashed with excitement. "I bet you're wrong. I bet I'd like it just fine."
She turned, wrapped her arms around the substantial bedpost and wiggled her bottom at him.
"Before I lace your back, I'm going to take a few practice swings on your bottom so I can get a feel for the cane."
The Love He Craves (The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan Book 2) Page 30