Never Have I Ever

by Clearwing, August

  “There’s always a woman, not her, in those flashes of color and light. For a long time the woman was faceless. She didn’t mean anything, just like all the women I took to bed never meant anything, and so I could get away with thinking and doing such things to them and cast them aside in the morning.”

  “How was Selene’s suicide your fault?”

  He held up a hand to stop my thoughts right there. “It just was. Let’s leave it at that for now. I’m not exactly in the mood to make the night any heavier than it already is.”

  Then it was probably not the best moment to bring up her state of being very much alive. I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying it.

  “These days,” Noah went on, “the woman in those images is you. It’s only you. I’ve tried, actually, to turn her into someone else just to see if I could. I can’t. The rough, glorious, perfect passion that you possess satiated the depravity in those pictures so that they wouldn’t devour me, so that those images served as a catalyst to focus on you. Your image, your very being kept the worse terrors of a darker sin away. The crazy thing is… it worked, Piper. You were my cure; a smaller sin to cover a larger one.”

  At the end of his strange explanation, which I only understood a small percentage of, Noah was close to tears. His eyes were red with the force of holding them all at bay and my heart ached for him.

  “Why do you think they came back?” I asked softly.

  He stood up and laughed; ironic and inappropriate, but the only thing he could do with the tension raging against him. He ran his hands through his hair, inhaled sharply, and made certain his back was facing me. “Because you made me talk about that greater sin! You wormed your way into my heart and undid me! I opened up Pandora’s Box when I knew better than to talk about those events. You were supposed to be my escape! I wanted you for that. And now—” He cut himself off. He was nervous and shaking and anything but fine, which made me nervous and wary and bordering on anything but fine.

  “What are you saying?” I asked tentatively. Noah paced in front of me, his vision focusing on anything and everything in the room except me. “Are you saying this happened tonight because of me?”

  “No—Christ, no! Don’t be stupid.”

  “That’s sort of what it sounds like.”

  “Not by a long shot. But, it means there won’t be a next time. What I thought was my cure, this figurative magical spell of you, is broken. And it means I don’t think I can do this. Not after I lost it tonight and not to you. Fuck, not to you, of all people.”

  I set my glass down beside his on the coffee table. “Hang on, are you about to give me the, ‘It’s not you, it’s me,’ spiel?”

  Noah pulled his keys from his pocket. There was one, a small one, attached to a thin loop of its own. I started shaking my head, dread and heartbreak twisting my soul as he peeled it off the ring because I knew exactly what the key was meant for: the cuffs he gave me.

  “No. No, please.”

  Then the key was off the ring, and Noah was in front of me, and the key was pressed into my palm, and he wouldn’t look at me, and I felt like my heart was going to explode as my eyes stung with tears of my own.

  “No,” I breathed out. “You’re tired, a little drunk and upset, and you don’t want to do this.”

  “What I want and what I can have are two very different things.”

  “They aren’t, they really aren’t.”

  “Take the key, Piper.”

  I shook my head violently, refusing to let go of his hand. “No, I won’t!”

  He finally looked at me. “Take it. That’s an order!”

  “God, please, no.”

  “I’m releasing you from this now… before I can’t bring myself to do it later.”

  “NO!” I shoved it back into his hand and pushed his hand into his chest as I stood up. “Take it back! Take it back, I don’t want it! I have to belong to you! I went through everything; I even quit my job to keep Ethan at bay! You’re the only one who matters to me!”

  “You did what?”

  My breath hitched my voice. “I… I quit the observatory.”

  “Why?” he demanded.

  “Because.”

  “Because why?” His tone grew dark and harsh.

  I struggled to find my verbal footing. “A-At the café, Ethan said either I left you or he would take the financial aid away.”

  He practically roared, “And you invited him to your house for dinner after that! Are you insane?!”

  “It was more like he sprang that on me in the midst of my inviting him to dinner,” I explained quickly. “He showed his hand, though, said if I didn’t work there he wouldn’t care about it, so I beat him at his own game and quit. That way they get to keep their funding, and I get—I get to keep you.”

  “Fucking hell. Why didn’t you come to me about this?”

  “I fixed it myself,” I insisted. Once more I pressed the key toward him, pushing my hand against his chest. My eyes implored him to reconsider. “Take it back.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, I’m not allowing it. You’re getting your job back, and I’ll make sure Ethan signs off on the funding. But if he’s so unrelenting then I can’t risk him hurting you just like I can’t risk letting what’s fucked me up spill over on you. That’s baggage nobody should have to deal with.”

  The key dropped to the carpet as Noah started walking towards the door. He hefted the bag he brought with him from beside the wall. I scrambled between him and his escape, backing up with every step he took until I was flush against the entryway. If nothing else, he wasn’t leaving while intoxicated. I snapped the extra lock shut quicker than I ever thought my shaking hands could shift and stared him down in defiance.

  “Move away from the door,” he commanded.

  We played this game once before. The last time I convinced him to stay. This time, though, things weren’t as light-hearted. The night wasn’t as assuring. I wasn’t certain if my will could outlast his.

  “I gave you everything,” I pleaded with all my heart. “All of me. I can’t not belong to you.”

  “Not if it destroys both of us in the process.”

  “Then let me help.”

  “You can’t! It took me this long to understand nothing can help me.”

  “What about the rest of our lists? What about ice fishing? Climbing the pyramids in the dead of night? Meeting the Dali Lama and Michio Kaku and all the others? Holi in Utah? And all the things we wanted to do together intimately; just us?”

  “Stop it.”

  “You can’t—you can’t just give me the briefest tastes of Heaven before hurling me straight into Hell! You promised me, in that hotel in Beijing, right before we—you said you would never dismiss me.”

  His tone was cold as he replied, “Promises born from passion hold little weight beyond their moment. A man will say anything to a woman to get what he wants.”

  “That’s a lie and you know it.” My voice was stern and unrelenting if a little broken. “You’re far more honorable than that.”

  “What year are we in?” he challenged. “Since when does chivalry or honor mean a goddamn thing?”

  “I’ve always seen both in you.”

  The palm of Noah’s hand slammed against the door mere inches from my head. The sound echoed back sharply in the small alcove of the entryway. I winced as the air from the impact rushed alongside my face. He leaned in close, his words hollow. “I haven’t been honorable in five years!”

  “I don’t believe that,” I said breathlessly. I was too startled to say much of anything at more than an octave above a rattled whisper. “You’re scared. You’re scared I’ll understand you and I won’t judge you and that you need me just as much as I need you.”

  “The truth is the truth whether you believe it or not.”

  I searched his face and swallowed down the complex ball of catastrophe in my throat. “You’re afraid of what you feel for me just as much as I’m afraid of what I feel for you.
The only difference is I’m not running.”

  “Move away from the door, Piper.”

  My body was frozen. My blood felt like mercury in my veins. I couldn’t budge if I tried. My sheer force of conviction forbade it.

  “I can’t, Sir.” I choked the words out.

  “Move away,” Noah said for the last time. “Please.”

  {CHAPTER NINETEEN}

  It’s easy to romanticize the people in our lives that mean something to us. We elevate them onto a higher plane than the rest of humanity. They appear glorious and pristine and full of the wonders of the Universe all wrapped up into one person-sized box just waiting to be unpacked. It’s easy to forget, when they appear perfect in every way and in every facet of their lives with every action they take, in the end they are still human. And we duly forget being human comes with an inherent composition of flaws in our genetic and mental make-up. My greatest mistake was forgetting, however momentarily, that Noah was still human.

  There were many occasions in which I’d seen Noah without his clothes on. As of this moment, though, it was safe to say this was the first time I ever saw him naked. Every pretense was dropped. Every mask fell away. It left him open and vulnerable and, if I didn’t do anything, he would allow his exposure to consume him.

  All at once, the faint memory of Howard Cartwright’s advice came screaming back to me so fast it knocked the wind from me. These were the cracks in the surface he spoke of. And I would be damned if I allowed them to tear us apart.

  “No,” I decided. In one fell swoop I snatched his car keys from his grip and threw them down the darkness of the hallway until they cracked viciously against the back wall by my office. They clattered to the floor someplace I could not see. “Go sit down.”

  His eyes widened, taken aback by the sudden turn. “Oh, are you giving the orders no—”

  “Tonight I am,” I snapped. “It’s called saving your life! If you remember any of this in the morning then you can punish me to your heart’s content. Or, if you still feel the desire… dismiss me. No matter what; you are not walking out of this apartment tonight.” My arm flew into a straight line as I pointed to the sofa. “Now go sit the fuck down.”

  This was not a power play. If I could not convince him then I would have to resign myself to the heartache, but I had to try while I still could. This was my common sense. I watched my mother die from her stupidity. She ruined her life, the lives of her family. I was not about to watch the man I adored follow the same path, whether he decided to dismiss me as his submissive or not. Provided Heaven saw him fit to survive the drive, he would regret his actions in the morning. The humiliation and sorrow that particular emotion brought to both parties was not acceptable.

  Noah dropped the heavy bag in his hand to the ground. After he smoothed his hands over his face and thoroughly mussed his hair, momentarily stunned in his defeat, he made a noise half way between a huff and a growl.

  “Your ability to get to me is unbe-fucking-lievable.”

  “Please. Sofa. Now.”

  I waited for him to take a seat before I moved away from the door.

  “I was wrong before; about being complicated,” he said as he slumped onto the sofa. “I’m not a complicated man, Piper. I’m a broken one.”

  To make certain he remained in place, I pinned him where sat by straddling him. My robe bunched up around us, one of my thighs bare to the air in the apartment.

  “Welcome to the club. So is most of the world.” He started to protest but I cut him off, “No. Shut up and listen to me. It’s my turn now.”

  He was not overly drunk; not slurring his words at all and he had not been stumbling around. The glaze over his eyes and the empty wine bottles from before gave me an indication it was a terrible idea to let him leave. His face was flush with all things vice and sin, but I still managed to find the very faint boyish freckles hidden behind alcohol and ire. I leaned over him, one hand on the top of the sofa to balance me while the very edge of my nails on the other just graced over those pale freckles for an instant.

  I searched his face. My tone softened as I realized he did not quite understand what he meant to me. “Oh, God… you really don’t see it, do you?”

  Noah bristled. “See what?”

  I tried to smile, though I was sure it looked like the saddest smile in the world. “That you’re able to play me like a fucking guitar. You pluck a single string, and that touch vibrates through me in a hum of excitement. Strum against me and expertly crafted music flows freely from your fingertips. Even the harder songs, the deep riffs; the dark rhythms that most people have to reach so far down to get to breaks away with such little effort and such beauty for you. Nobody else has ever brought that out of me. Only you can. I belong to you because you wanted to keep me and, now that I know you, I can’t fathom a day without you.”

  He was still and silent, though the clarity began to return to his eyes as I spoke. I almost wished I had not told him to shut up. A large part of me wanted him to stop me. I was so afraid of what I felt for him because the feeling was new and different and I wanted to run and hide and wait for it to pass. Except, he did not move to interrupt me; he only sat there and listened. And the feeling did not pass.

  I tried to calm my anxiety, my trembling heart and my wavering hands with more words. “The morning we made French Toast, you said your needs were both physical as well as emotional. I wasn’t altogether confident with how I felt about that in the beginning. Emotional attachment and I have never been the best of friends.”

  “Someone like you? I find that hard to believe.”

  “Someone like me,” I confirmed. “When my mom died, I swore I wouldn’t ever trust anyone with my heart again. Can you imagine that? At seven years old, I was jaded to the best feeling in the world because my mother thoughtlessly ripped herself from my life.”

  “You’ve had relationships before.”

  “Few and far between. Never did I once feel one iota of the closeness I feel with you. I didn’t have the confidence to let go and just feel. But… now I am confident. And I want to satisfy you; not just physically, but emotionally too. Including telling you when you’re being a dumbass. Could you truly ever forgive yourself if you dismiss that opportunity the way Ethan said you would because you’re afraid?”

  Noah shook his head subtly. “That was before. And now the risk, if something happens, like what I did to Declan, or if all the crazy inside this damaged head of mine—”

  “Damn the risk!” I half-laughed, half begged, “Declan didn’t know. I do.”

  “Even so.”

  “No, not ‘even so’. This is where I am supposed to be. Right fucking here. Beside you. On top of you. Beneath you, or any other way you decide you want me. You have never once harmed me, Sir. You’ve only ever given me everything I ever wanted.”

  The “Sir” mattered. He deserved nothing less from both our verbal agreement as well as from what I felt. Even though I was breaking every rule in the proverbial book about submission to a Dom, I did not care. None of those rules mattered if he ceased being my Dom anyhow. I brushed my fingers against his lips and down over his jaw. If there was not more to say, I would have given in to simply showing him. Unfortunately, words conveyed more at the moment than my egotistical desire to hope kissing the problems away ever could. He needed to hear this; all of it, in imperfect truth before I exploded.

  I hoped my own fear was imperceptible in comparison to what I prayed was confidence on my face as I continued. “You’ve helped me find the more adventurous and sensual side in myself. I vow to help you find solace enough to let go of the only thing you have no power over. Maybe once you do you’ll find it will stop trying to control you too.”

  He groaned, “This isn’t something that just goes away. Do you know what you’re saying? What you’re setting yourself up for?”

  Noah told me before that I undid him. Only now did it hit home that the sentiment went both ways. He, too, stripped away all of my former preconce
ptions of what it meant to share secrets and desires with someone; to love and be loved for all of who you are and not just what you wanted the world to see. All of the control I used to have over my life—the life I planned down to the very last detail, was overthrown by this man and his wild idea that I could give up control to him in exchange for surprise and wonder and so much pleasure it became nearly unbearable. I never immersed myself in sex before Noah. It was only slightly pleasurable to me until him. I figured out some time ago that the reasons for my screwed-up craving for pain during sex—up to and including my sordid confession to the rape fantasy—stemmed from my inability to attach to anyone. It kept me at a distance because it never felt like emotion could be involved in something so feral.

  Except; I was wrong. It almost took more emotion to maintain a relationship like ours, whatever label we chose to slap on it. Noah saw that in me. Every depraved desire I ever had to just be taken and used roughly, he provided. And he did it with such care and confidence that a simple brush against my cheek or a reassuring kiss on my neck would be a way of saying it was okay, that he controlled it; that I was never in any real danger because he cared for me. And never through words, but through touch, which meant the world.

  I wanted to be the one who did the same for him; to remind him he did not have to go it alone. I could not stop his night terrors, but at the very least I could be there to comfort him when they showed up. I was flattered when he said I was his escape from them. I was proud to be that.

  “I know,” I finally answered. “With clarity I never thought possible. The terrors don’t make you who you are. If you see them as a fault in you then you should also see I love your faults. All of them. I don’t care what happened in the past, I still love you.”—I said it. Holy shit, I actually said it—“God, I am so in love with you, Noah. Sometimes more than I can stand. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”

  I reached for his hands and guided them, his right hand to my hip and his left to the top of my bare thigh. My fingertips brushed against his knuckles in an attempt to encourage him to feel the skin on my bare thigh. At the mere thought of my next statement, my sorrow and desperation began to boil over. My heart lurched in the confines of my ribcage. Tears flooded to my eyes. I refused to blink and let them fall. It was my turn to be strong for him.