Reconstructing Meredith (Light Switch Book 2)

by Lauren Gallagher

  She sat over me, straddling my hips. The bottle clicked once, then again, and she leaned to the side to set it beside us. She rubbed her hands together, the soft hiss of oiled skin on skin raising goose bumps all over me.

  Her weight shifted forward slightly. Then she pressed the heels of her hands into my lower back on either side of my spine. Groaning, I closed my eyes and lost myself in the hypnotic circles she made all the way up and down my back.

  “Jesus, Scott.” She pressed her hand in even harder just below my left shoulder blade. “You are tense.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “No, I mean really tense.” She dug her knuckle in.

  I winced. “Fuck…”

  “Sorry. Only way to get the knots out.”

  “I know.” I gritted my teeth and forced myself to keep breathing while she worked the stiffness out. After a moment that felt like a goddamned hour, the tension released. She rubbed it gently with her palm, and I exhaled as the pain diminished.

  I couldn’t say how much time passed. I almost fell asleep a few times, but right about the time I’d start to drift off, she’d find another knot. Then she’d knead the back of my neck, or my shoulders, or even my upper arms, and I’d relax once more. By the time she was finished, I simultaneously ached all over and felt like a million bucks.

  “Have I ever mentioned how much I love your hands?” I murmured.

  “You’ve mentioned it a time or two.” She moved off me and set the oil bottle on the nightstand. “Feel better?”

  “Much.” I rolled on to my back. She leaned down to kiss me, then laid beside me with her head on my chest. I wrapped my arms around her. She nestled her head beneath my chin, and I stroked her hair.

  “I’ve missed you lately,” she said.

  “I’ve missed you too.” I nudged her to raise her head, and when she did, I kissed her forehead. I had missed her. My God, had I ever. I even had to stop and think to figure out exactly how long it had been since I last saw her, and cringed when I realized the time had to be measured in weeks, not days. We’d spoken on the phone, sent e-mails and texts back and forth, but this was the first time we’d been in the same room, let alone the same bed, in almost a month.

  I wished I could say it was the situation with Meredith that had kept us apart. While that situation occupied a lot of my time and energy lately, it was just another splash of water on this already dying fire. Over the last six months or so, Amy and I had spent progressively less time together. It wasn’t by design, or because of any negative feelings, it was just life. Our other relationships—her marriage to Ryan, my relationship with Krissy—had their own implicit demands that we’d always worked around.

  But now, Amy was up to her neck in finishing her master’s degree while she and Ryan dove into the long, stressful process of having their new house built. My employer had had the audacity to cut into my play time with demands of overtime. Life happened, and we had, for some time now, been two ships who could barely find the time to pass in the night.

  Though I would never have held it against Meredith, nor did I regret agreeing to help her, I couldn’t deny her re-emergence from my past had happened at the worst possible time where Amy and I were concerned.

  I ran my fingers through Amy’s hair. “I’m sorry I haven’t been around much.”

  “It’s okay.” She lifted her head to look at me. “I’ve just missed you.”

  “It’s mutual, believe me.”

  She touched my face, and her smile fell a little. “Are you doing okay? I mean, everything you’ve been dealing with…”

  I closed my hand around hers and kissed her palm. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  “I do worry about you.”

  I chuckled. “You and Krissy both worry about me too much.”

  “Well, why shouldn’t we? I mean, when you’re left without adult supervision, and—”

  “Hey, is that any way to talk to your Dom?”

  “You’re not my Dom right now.”

  “Okay, good point. But don’t let it become a habit.” I gave her the sternest look I could muster, which wasn’t much because her grin made me laugh.

  Then her expression turned serious. “So, everything that’s going on, you’re doing okay with it?”

  At the reminder of everything that existed in the rest of my life, that sinking feeling came back, but I nodded anyway. “I told you, I’m doing fine. It’s just been time-consuming.” I caressed her face with the backs of my fingers. “I hate neglecting you in the process, though.”

  She smiled. “Just means Ryan’s had his hands full.”

  “I’m sure he has.” I laughed. “Have you taught him to flog you yet?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Come on. He’d sooner cut his own throat than hit me.”

  “Yeah, true. Sorry I wasn’t game for it tonight, I—”

  “Scott.” She raised her chin and kissed me lightly. “You’ve got a lot on your mind. I’m not going to get upset about that.” She eyed me. “And don’t try to tell me you don’t have a lot on your mind, because the knots in your back told a very different story.”

  Sighing, I nodded. “Okay, yeah, I do have a lot on my mind these days.”

  “Everything all right?” She touched my face. “I mean, you said you were helping your ex with some problems, but…”

  “Nothing I can really talk about,” I said. “Except to say I’m helping the most traumatized, brutalized sub I’ve ever seen.”

  Her eyes widened. “My God, what happened to her?”

  “What happened to her,” I growled through clenched teeth, “was a son of a bitch who called himself a Dom, but was nothing more than a sadistic wife beater.”

  “Wow.” She exhaled. “I can’t even begin to imagine.” She draped her arm over me and rested her head on my shoulder again. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swore she held me a little closer, a little tighter.

  I stroked her hair. “It’s a nightmare, honestly. So, I’ve been worried about that lately. A lot.”

  “I don’t blame you. At least she’s in good hands.”

  “God, I hope so.”

  Amy looked up. “I’m serious. I couldn’t think of anyone better to help someone in her position.”

  I managed a half-hearted smile. “You have more faith in me than I do sometimes.”

  Her smile was more enthusiastic than mine. “I have faith in you because I know what you’re like as a Dom.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “I mean it, Scott,” she said. “If I were in her shoes, I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d turn to.”

  “Thanks, babe.” For a moment, I just looked at her, taking her in and caressing her face. My God, it had been too long. Way too long.

  “What are you thinking about?” she whispered.

  “You.” I slid my hand into her hair and kissed her. Touching my forehead to hers, I whispered, “I love you.”

  “I love you too.” She drew me closer as the kiss deepened, her shirt brushing my bare chest. I let my hand drift down her side, then under her shirt. Warm contact between her skin and my fingertips made us both inhale and pull each other closer.

  I lifted my head and looked at her again. A shiver ran down my spine. Whatever I hadn’t felt when she arrived, it came to me now. I wanted her. Naked, bound, taking whatever I chose to give her, whether I fucked her or flogged her. Holy hell, I needed her.

  When I bent to kiss her neck, she arched her back, pressing her breasts against my chest, but there was still too much clothing between us.

  “Hmm,” I murmured against her neck, “any chance of a happy ending to that massage?”

  She laughed. “I thought you weren’t in the mood.”

  “I wasn’t.” With a quick motion of my fingers, I unsnapped her bra. “But I am now.”

  ~ * ~

  Amy squirmed and cried out.

  The Saint Andrew’s Cross groaned and the restraints clanked and creaked as she stru
ggled.

  I raised the cat o’ nine tails and shivered when her cry fell to a whimper. She was always enthusiastic, but never like this. By now, she’d usually drifted into subspace, quietly moaning and murmuring while I laid knotted leather tails across her back. Tonight, she screamed. Something I couldn’t understand, words that didn’t quite make it to my arousal-fogged mind, but her voice drove me, the shrill sound that started anew every time I hit her. Strike after strike across her back, and with each crack of leather on flesh, she screamed louder.

  My mouth watered. I was hard, so hard, and if I didn’t fuck her soon, I’d go out of my mind. But just a few more hits with the cat o’ nine tails. Just a few more.

  Whoosh. Crack.

  Whoosh. Crack.

  Whoosh. Crack.

  She screamed. I barely kept myself from groaning.

  Her screams suddenly made sense. They weren’t slurred, murmured nonsense or profanity or pleas for more. How had I missed it? How had I not understood?

  “Red! Red!” she sobbed, her voice hoarse, strained. “Red, Scott, red!”

  Had she been screaming that all along? God, yes, she had. Why hadn’t I understood?

  And why was I still hitting her?

  “Red! Red! Red!”

  The safe word ran down her back in rivers, smearing with each strike of the cat o’ nine tails, covering her skin with streaks of red, red, red…

  Scott, what are you doing?

  “Red! Scott, please, stop…”

  Whoosh. Crack. More red.

  Whoosh. Crack. Rivers of red.

  Whoosh. Crack. The word, the color, the sound, the blood…

  “Scott, please…”

  * ~ *

  My eyes flew open.

  The room was dark and still, completely silent except for my thundering heart and sharp gasps for breath. Goose bumps prickled under a layer of icy sweat, and I shivered even beneath the covers. Beneath the covers, and with the warmth of Amy’s body beside me.

  I turned toward her, squinting to make out her shape in the darkness. She was on her stomach, the covers draped over her up to her shoulder blades. Nausea rose in the back of my throat as I remembered her back sliced to bloody cross-hatched ribbons while she’d screamed and screamed. Milky light from the street illuminated her skin just enough for me to see that she was unscathed and unharmed, and cool relief washed over me.

  I sat up, rubbing my eyes and feeling like a goddamned idiot. Of course she was all right. It was a dream. I’d never ignore a safe word. If Amy couldn’t get into subspace, couldn’t relax, or—God forbid—screamed like that, everything would have stopped long before I’d taken nearly enough strokes to do that kind of damage. Nor would I ever hit her that hard to begin with. I’d never do what I’d done in the dream, but it was unsettling nonetheless to be in the mind, if only for one dream, of someone who would.

  My skin crawling and my stomach turning, I got out of bed. I moved as stealthily as I could, stepping carefully in case Malia was on the floor somewhere. When I got to the bathroom, I closed the door before I turned on the light.

  Leaning on the sink, I stared at my own reflection.

  Of course it was only a dream. Amy was uninjured, sleeping peacefully in my bed. But it was so fucking real.

  Was I insane? Christ, I’d had some fucked up dreams involving subs and other Doms, especially lately, but this… what the fuck was this? I closed my eyes and let my head fall forward, swallowing hard while I tried to get my mind around the fact that some crazy neuron deep in my subconscious had actually thought of getting turned on while I bloodied a screaming submissive. While I ignored a safe word. While I hurt Amy.

  I shuddered, just barely keeping myself from getting physically ill.

  It was just a dream. Just my subconscious doing some fucked up mental gymnastics with all the shit I’d dealt with recently. Nothing more.

  I hadn’t hurt Amy. I wouldn’t hurt Amy. I couldn’t hurt Amy. I couldn’t hurt any of my submissives if my life depended on it. They knew it. I knew it.

  “Fuck,” I muttered. I ran some cold water and cupped my hands beneath the faucet. I splashed it on my face a few times, then turned off the water and reached for a hand towel. I gave myself one last look in the mirror.

  I still couldn’t shake this unsettled feeling. It was like trying to go to sleep after a particularly bad horror movie. I knew it wasn’t real, that it couldn’t happen in a million lifetimes, but it had crawled beneath my skin and into my veins nonetheless. The cold slime of horror and disgust didn’t care how intellectually certain I was that I hadn’t really beaten Amy into a bloody, screaming mess. I’d seen it, I’d experienced it, and that was enough.

  “Red! Red! Red!”

  I shuddered. So much for a good night’s sleep.

  “Just a damned dream,” I whispered to my reflection, and flicked off the light.

  I slipped through the silence to my bed. Amy hadn’t moved, but Malia had parked herself on my side of the bed. I picked her up and set her aside so I could get under the covers. Being the defiant little shit she was, she immediately went back to where she’d been and laid down again.

  “Malia, move,” I whispered. I picked her up again, this time setting her on the floor.

  Undeterred, she jumped back on the bed, this time trotting across to the other side, which meant running right over Amy. Amy stirred, murmuring something as I got into bed beside her.

  She lifted her head and looked at me in the darkness. “Where did you go?”

  “Bathroom. Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

  “It’s okay,” she murmured. She rolled over and cuddled up next to me. I wrapped my arm around her and she rested her head on my shoulder. In minutes, she’d fallen back to sleep, oblivious to the ice in my veins. I lay awake for a long, long time, running my fingers up and down her back just to remind myself that no, those cuts weren’t real, and yes, it was just a dream.

  A dream, Scott.

  Just a sick, twisted, fucked up dream.

  Chapter 14

  “Ready to try a little bondage?”

  Meredith glanced down the hall toward the dungeon.

  “If you’re not,” I said, “just say so.”

  “I’ll be fine.” Her voice was hollow, not completely steady, but her eyes were determined. Nervous but wanting and, she probably hoped, ready.

  I led her down the hall to the dungeon. We’d been at this for a couple of weeks now, but we’d moved slowly. Slow enough to keep from triggering more than the rare flashback, but also slow enough to frustrate her. Though she hadn’t out and said it, I had no doubt she was getting impatient. I had yet to bind or even cuff her, which aggravated her to no end. I’d flogged her on the Saint Andrew’s Cross, but she’d only held the restraints rather than being bound to them.

  Tonight, though, she was ready for some bondage.

  I opened the dungeon door. Meredith stepped past me and I closed it before my cat could make her usual run for the Saint Andrew’s Cross.

  I regarded Meredith silently for a moment. She looked over the rack of various floggers and the Cross. As she did, the nerves she tried to hide made themselves known in her shifting weight, creased forehead, and the way her shoulders rose and fell when she took a deep, ragged breath.

  “You sure you want to do this in here?” I asked. “We can go—”

  “No, this is fine.” She offered a reassuring smile. “I can handle it.”

  I wondered if she knew I could see the goose bumps on her arm.

  We’d stick to our usual slow steps today, then. Definitely slow steps.

  “How comfortable are you with being tied to the Saint Andrew’s Cross?”

  She looked at it and shuddered. Still, she turned back to me. “I think I can handle it.”

  I glanced at the cross, then at her. “I’m going to just bind your hands this time.”

  “I think I’m okay with my ankles, too,” she said.

  I shook my head. “Not until I know
you can handle wrists only.”

  “Scott, I can handle it.” The temperature of my blood dropped a few degrees. Her tone was laced with an all too familiar edge of irritation, the same tone I recognized from whenever she’d picked a fight years ago.

  I kept my voice calm. “Most likely, yes. I just want to be sure.”

  She glared at me. “I freaked out once. It doesn’t mean I’m going to do it again.”

  “I’m not going to encourage it to happen again,” I said. “I’m not saying ‘absolutely not,’ Meredith. This is just to make sure you’re okay, then we’ll move on to total bondage.”

  Exhaling sharply, she ran a hand through her hair and shifted her weight. “Well, in that case, maybe you should just tie one hand for now. And if I can handle that, in six months or so, we’ll add the other hand.”

  I gritted my teeth. “We’re taking small steps, babe, we’re—”

  “There’s a difference between taking small steps and dragging your goddamned feet,” she snapped, her anger sending me back a step.

  “I don’t want to rush this, Meredith, I’ve—”

  “That’s easy for you to say,” she said through clenched teeth. “You’re not the one who has to live with all this shit in your head. Taking it slow and easy might be comfortable for you, but it just means that much longer I have to let this fucking control me.”

  “And moving too fast could make things worse. A lot worse. You know that.”

  “Or we could take baby steps with every little thing, which means we’ll be at this for years.”

  “If that’s what it takes, then that’s what we’ll do,” I said.

  “What happened to pushing limits?” She narrowed her eyes. “You said my limits dictate where this goes and what we do. What happened to the submissive being the one in control?”

  “Look, your limits dictate how far I can push you, so—” I stopped abruptly. One of us speaking without thinking and being completely irrational was more than enough. I took a deep breath and forced my tone to be gentle and even. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to push you all the way to those limits every time. It’s at my discretion. You came to me looking for a Dom, and part of being a sub is deferring to my judgment to make sure every scene is pleasurable for you as well as safe. Emotionally and physically.”