“I don’t doubt that.” She ran her fingertips along one of the characters. “These are really, really cool, though.” She laughed softly. “Maybe you’re not as much of a dork as I thought.”
I rolled my eyes, chuckling as I pulled the blanket over us and settled in beside her.
“So tell me,” she said with a playful smile, “what worse things have you been called?”
“Worse than dork?” I grinned. “Well, one of my girlfriends insists I’m a manwhore.”
Meredith laughed. “If the shoe fits…”
“Hey!”
“Scott, you can’t exactly protest being called a manwhore when you preface it with ‘one of my girlfriends’, you know?”
I shrugged. “Okay, point taken.”
“So you’re still into polyamoury, then?”
“I am,” I said. “I have a couple of girlfriends right now.”
She laughed again. “Only you could say that so nonchalantly, Scott.”
I chuckled. “Just doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me anymore. I mean, I’ve been doing it for so long, it’s pretty normal for me.”
“For some reason, that doesn’t surprise me at all. So who’s in your harem these days?”
“You remember Kristen Locke, don’t you?”
“You’re kidding me.” She blinked. “You’re— I didn’t even think she was into kink.”
I shrugged. “She is now.”
“Do I know the other one?”
I furrowed my brow, trying to think back. “No, I don’t think you ever met Amy.”
“Hmm, doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Didn’t think so. Anyway, besides them, I had a couple of subs for a while. Tara and I still play every once in a blue moon, but we’re both so busy, we don’t see each other much anymore.” I rolled on to my back and she rested her head on my shoulder as I went on. “I was training Kasey to be a slave so she could find a Master, and now that she has…” I shrugged with my other shoulder.
Meredith shuddered. “I hope she’s found a good one.”
I trailed my fingers up and down her arm. “She has. I know him. He’s a good guy.”
“Good.” She draped her arm across my chest. “So, you had two other subs, but they’ve both moved on.”
“More or less.” I gave a quiet laugh. “Probably just as well. Amy and Krissy keep me plenty busy.”
She looked up at me. “This isn’t going to take away from them, is it? What you’re doing with me, I mean.”
“No, don’t you worry about that.” I smoothed her hair. “They’ll understand what I’m doing with you, and besides, Amy has her husband and Kristen has Matt, so I know they’ll be well taken care of.”
Meredith clicked her tongue and rolled her eyes. “Your world is a strange place, Scott.”
“Yeah, it is.” I ran my fingers through her hair. “And it looks like you’re part of it again.”
“I guess I am.” She nestled her head under my chin, probably to avoid my eyes. “When I called tonight, I honestly didn’t expect this.”
“That makes two of us, believe me.” I rested my hand on her arm. “Of all the things I expected when I came over tonight, winding up in bed with you wasn’t high on the list.” I touched her face. “It was a pleasant surprise though, in spite of the circumstances.”
She raised her head and, with some effort, met my eyes. After a moment, a hint of her smile returned. “Yeah, it was.” And once again, something darkened her expression. She reached up and ran her fingers through my hair. “Are you sure about this, Scott?”
“About being your Dom?”
She nodded.
The knots in my stomach tightened. “Of course,” I whispered. “I wouldn’t throw you to the wolves, you know that.”
“I know you wouldn’t.” Her fingertips drifted down the side of my face, their gentle warmth raising goose bumps on my back and neck. “But after everything… the past…”
I put my hand over hers. “It’s in the past.” I kissed the heel of her hand, never taking my eyes off hers. “We agreed to be friends, and as your friend, I’m not going to turn you away when I can help you with something like this.” Assuming I can. Fuck, I hope I can do this.
“But after I,” she hesitated, dropping her gaze. “After I disappeared on you.” She took a breath. “I’m sorry about that. I really am.”
“Let me ask you this,” I said quietly. “Did you walk away from me back then because you wanted to? Or because he forced you to?”
She flinched. Swallowing hard, she closed her eyes.
“Talk to me, Meredith,” I whispered.
“He decided I didn’t need any other men in my life.” She opened her eyes, the haunted expression sending a chill down my spine. “First, my exes. Then my friends. Once I moved in with him—and I use that phrase very loosely—he decided I didn’t need anyone but him. So he cut me off from everyone.”
I cringed, sucking in a breath. “When you say you use that phrase loosely, what do you mean?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. In fact, I was damned certain I didn’t, but I asked anyway.
“It wasn’t so much that I moved in with him,” she said, her voice hollow. “I stayed one night, and he didn’t let me leave after that. Had me quit my job by phone, took me over to get a few things from my apartment, then had everything put into storage and broke my lease on the apartment.”
“And all of this was without your consent?” My own voice sounded distant.
“Yes. In fact, I’m still fighting with the fucking storage company to get my stuff back.”
“Are you serious?”
She nodded. “We’ve been playing the paperwork game for months. The unit was in his name, so I have prove that we were married, we’re now divorced, that I have any kind of right to stake a claim to the contents of the unit, whatever. It’s been a nightmare.”
I shook my head. “What a mess. I just can’t believe he thought it was his right to do that to you.”
She shrugged with one shoulder. “He told me it was what I needed, and what I wanted, and I would learn to accept it.”
Rubbing the bridge of my nose with my thumb and forefinger, I muttered, “Fuck, this guy was a piece of work.”
“I know.” She sighed. “Apparently I just needed a Master to show me what it was like to be a sub, and—”
“And he wasn’t the one to do it.”
She laughed bitterly. “Maybe not, but he did.”
“No, he didn’t.” I turned on to my side to face her. “He showed you what it’s like to be imprisoned against your will and treated like an object that was his to own, rape, and beat.”
She flinched again, looking away from me.
I raised her chin. “I can’t undo what he did to you, babe. If I could, I would, but all I can do is help you pick up the pieces, and there is nothing in our past that would make me hesitate for a second to do that.” I moved my hand from beneath her chin to the side of her neck, then into her hair. “And if he’s the reason you cut off contact with me, then it wasn’t your choice, and therefore it isn’t yours to apologize for.”
Blinking away tears, she smiled. “I was sure you’d hate me for that.”
“I was angry and hurt, I’ll admit that.” I leaned in and kissed her. “But I didn’t know the whole story. Now I do.” I kissed her again, drawing it out for a moment.
Our eyes met again. There was so much in her eyes, so many answers to questions I was afraid to ask, so many stories I was scared to death to hear. Those would all come out in time, though. I still wondered if I was the right man for this task. I’d have done anything she asked me to do if it meant helping her heal from the things that son of a bitch had done to her, but what if I made a mistake? What if, even with the best of intentions, I made things worse?
Her fingers brushed my cheekbone, startling me out of my thoughts. She furrowed her brow. “What are you thinking about?”
I swallowed, then shook my head. “Nothing.”
“Sure about that?”
There are very few things I’m sure about right now, Meredith. “Nothing important.”
“Well, I was thinking,” she whispered, trailing her fingertips up the back of my neck, laughing softly when I shivered, “that I rather enjoyed everything you did earlier.”
“Oh?” I shivered again when fingertips became nails. “Did you?”
“I did.” She drew me in to kiss her. “I was thinking I might want you to do it again.”
“Hmm.” I dipped my head to kiss her neck. “I think I could do that.”
She whimpered as I flicked my tongue just beneath her jaw. “You sure?”
I grinned against her skin. “I’m definitely sure about that.”
Chapter 4
Sitting in a semi-comfortable chair in the waiting room, I absently flipped through a copy of Popular Mechanics. I had this issue at home and had probably read it fifty times. At six months old, though, it was the most recent magazine on the rack that wasn’t about parenting or cooking, neither of which interested me.
Not that I would have been reading it even if it was the newest issue. I was here with Meredith, and the clock on the wall said Dr. Reid would be calling us back any minute. I doubted I was anywhere near as nervous as she was, but I was indeed nervous.
She sat beside me, enthralled with a copy of Reader’s Digest. Neither of us had spoken. It wasn’t a hostile silence between us. I couldn’t decide if it was nerves that kept us quiet, or if there were simply too many potentially prying ears nearby. Whatever the case, we didn’t speak.
To anyone else in this room, we were a couple sitting quietly, waiting our turn. Perhaps we were here to save a troubled marriage or consult with someone about a difficult child. I doubted anyone suspected a thing about what had really brought us here, nor why we’d chosen one of the doctors at this particular practice. For all I knew, though, some of them were here for similar reasons.
The man with his face buried in an old, tattered National Geographic might have been a sub trying to reconcile his need for sexual humiliation with society’s disdain for the same. Maybe the blonde staring sadly at the brightly colored tropical fish was embarrassed by her desire to tie up her boyfriend—no, fiancé, I realized when she ran her left hand through her hair—and flog him while he called her Mistress. And while I wouldn’t have bet my life on it, I was sure the middle-aged couple ignoring each other beside the window had been to the BDSM club a few times in the past. I hadn’t seen them there in a while. Maybe that had something to do with the frosty distance between them, including a joint armrest that they both carefully avoided using.
I always wondered what it would be like to be a fly on the wall in a therapist’s office, particularly a therapist as sex-positive and open-minded as the ones here. I only knew Dr. Reid personally, but as far as I knew, she’d carefully partnered with a few like-minded doctors. God only knew the things that were said within these walls.
Or the things that would be said today, I thought with a shudder.
Beside me, Meredith laughed quietly. I glanced at her, then the magazine in her hand, and realized she was on the Laughter is the Best Medicine page.
Best medicine or not, at least she was laughing.
The door opened, and in walked Dr. Reid. It was weird for me to see her like this, dressed in a perfectly tailored, conservative suit with her graying brown hair spilling over her shoulders. I normally didn’t pay much attention to how people were dressed, but it caught my eye this time because it was so unlike how I usually saw her. Then again, she wasn’t Dr. Reid in that world where our paths usually crossed. She was Leslie to me, Madam to her submissives. In that world, she wouldn’t have been caught dead in plain tan clothes when black leather was so readily available. Her wire-framed glasses would be long gone and her hair would be tightly pulled back so it wouldn’t get in her eyes while she flogged someone.
Therapist by day, Domme by night. If anyone could help Meredith, it was Leslie.
She looked around the room and caught my eye, then shifted her gaze to Meredith.
“Meredith Whitley?” she said.
Meredith put the Reader’s Digest on the table beside her, and we both stood.
Leslie extended her hand. “Leslie Reid. It’s nice to meet you in person.”
“Nice to meet you too,” Meredith said as they shook hands.
Leslie looked at me. “Scott, I hope you’ve been staying out of trouble.”
“Nope, can’t say I have.”
She rolled her eyes. “Big surprise. Come on back.” She started down the hall, and we followed her. On the way, Meredith slipped her hand into mine. Her fingers were cool, her palm damp with sweat.
“Doing okay?” I asked.
She smiled, but it was forced. “We haven’t even started yet.”
“I know, but are you nervous?”
She started to speak, probably ready with a sarcastic comeback, but then she just said, “Yes, I am.”
“You’ll be fine.” I kissed her cheek just before we stepped into Leslie’s office. “And I’m not going anywhere.”
“I know.” She squeezed my hand. “Thank you.” We exchanged smiles—hers with considerably less enthusiasm than mine—as Leslie shut the door behind us.
There was a couch in Leslie’s office, but it wasn’t the stereotypical black leather affair from movies and such. It was about as plainly and conservatively appointed as she was.
Meredith and I took a seat on the couch while Leslie sat in her armchair.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice,” Meredith said.
“You’re welcome,” Leslie said. “I normally try to see new patients as soon as possible, and given your circumstances, I didn’t think this should wait.”
Meredith exhaled, and I couldn’t help noticing how relieved she sounded, especially when she said, “I appreciate it, believe me.” Aside from the other night, I wondered how long it had been since her needs and emotions had been a priority for anyone.
Leslie laid the file folder on her lap and folded her hands across it. “Now, we discussed your situation over the phone, but why don’t we start this session with what you hope to get out of this?”
Meredith glanced at me. I gave her a reassuring smile and squeezed her hand. She took a breath and turned to Dr. Reid. “Rich took everything I knew about sex and turned it into…” She trailed off, biting her lip for a moment. Then she shook her head. “I don’t even know how to describe it. He took everything I ever enjoyed and made it hell.”
I clenched my jaw. I’d heard of Doms and Masters like this, but I’d never been so close to the aftermath. I’d never been called upon to help someone recover from it, and wondered for the millionth time if I was capable of doing so.
“Go on, Meredith,” Leslie said softly.
“What I want out of this,” Meredith whispered, “is my sexual identity back. I do want to be a submissive, but on my terms this time.”
Leslie gestured at me. “Which is where Scott comes into the equation, I assume?”
We both nodded.
“Before we go on,” Leslie said, “are you concerned about your safety? Any possibility of your ex-husband threatening or harming you?”
Meredith shook her head. “I pressed charges against him when I left. His sentence isn’t up for a few years yet, and he doesn’t know where I live now.”
“Good, good.” Leslie wrote something in the folder in her lap. “What was he charged with?”
“Multiple counts of sexual assault, assault and battery, aggravated sexual battery, unlawful imprisonment.” She paused. “I got lucky. The district attorney had an ax to grind over both sexual assault and domestic violence, and so did the judge. The D.A. even tried to nail Rich for attempted murder, but that didn’t fly.”
“Wait,” I broke in, “Attempted murder?”
Meredith nodded, but didn’t look at either of us. “He thought Rich’s rather enthusiastic attempt at erotic as
phyxiation qualified as attempted murder.”
I clenched my teeth, trying really, really hard not to get sick. Choking was one of the few things I absolutely refused to do, even if a sub wanted it, and if that motherfucker had taken it far enough to warrant charges…
“When you say ‘rather enthusiastic’,” Leslie said, “what do you mean?”
I held my breath, certain I did not want to hear the answer to that question.
Meredith reached up to brush a stray strand of hair away from her neck, but even that casual pantomime didn’t hide the way she gingerly rubbed the side of her throat. “I blacked out. Which wasn’t unusual. I guess he kept going for a while after that, I don’t know. When I came to, he’d already come, and he punished me for…” She paused, then shook her head and let her hand fall back into her lap. “Hell, I don’t remember. Anyway, he left for work, and a few hours later, my throat started swelling. I was locked in the house, just like I always was whenever he was gone, but I knew I needed help. So I…” Her cheeks darkened and she pressed her lips together in a thin line.
I put my hand on hers again, running my thumb back and forth along the inside of her wrist.
“Go on, Meredith,” Leslie said.
Sniffing sharply, Meredith ran her free hand through her hair, brushed a tear from her cheek, and finally spoke again. “I broke a window to get out. I went to a neighbor’s house, they called the paramedics, and at least until my throat closed to the point I couldn’t speak anymore…” She took and released a deep breath. “All I could do the entire time was beg them to help me get the window fixed before Rich found it.”
I winced. So did Leslie.
“Did you leave him after that?” she asked.
“Not right away. Well, I mean, I didn’t file for divorce right away, but I didn’t go home to him. I guess the paramedics and the ER staff got suspicious, and the doctor came up with some bullshit reason for me to be admitted. They brought in a counselor, a detective, and…” She sighed. “I fought them like crazy, demanded to see Rich, defended him left and right. They called it—”
Reconstructing Meredith (Light Switch Book 2) Page 4