by KD Robichaux
You guessed it—I loved him. Until he dumped me a couple of months later when his mom found out he was french kissing his girlfriend.
Throughout all of this, I was a dancer. Had been since my mom put me in ballet in kindergarten. If I wasn’t thinking about boys, I was thinking about dancing. I was good. Damn good. Contemporary was my dance of choice. I loved the way my body would take over when I absorbed the music and let myself go. I was even able to take it as my PE in high school, which was a blast, because I was finally known in school for something other than being so-and-so’s girlfriend. I was that dancer girl. People showed up at the talent show and our seasonal recitals to watch me. My head was finally clearing of the boy craziness toward the end of my sophomore year… until I met Brandon.
Brandon was on the football team. Not the captain or anything. He was big, like muscular, but also built like a house. One of the guys that protects the quarterback. Not sure what he was called, because I always spaced out when he talked about the game. He was hot, a bad boy for sure. He said he thought I was way more beautiful and talented than any of the cheerleaders, and—once more, for the people in the back!—I was instantly smitten.
We were the “it” couple. When the pretty dancer girl and the football player hooked up, the popularity came with it. I was hanging out with the popular kids, the football team and with them the cheerleaders. But the not-so-popular kids still liked me thanks to my little sister, Twyla. Sweet Twyla. If you looked up nerd in a dictionary, there would be her portrait. But God, I loved my little sis. It was us against the world. Yes, I teased her constantly for always concentrating on her studies instead of any type of social life, but I was still good-natured about it. I was never mean. If anyone were to be mean to my little sis, they would regret it. And I had the entire football team to back me up.
Anyway, back to Brandon. Brandon took over as far as all the rest of my firsts. The first time I was ever actually fingered—thank you very much, seventh-grade bully. The first time I ever had sex.
A few years later, the first time I moved in with a guy.
The first time my hair was pulled.
The first time a guy ever made me cry with his angry words.
The first time I was separated from all my friends and family with threats and guilt.
But I stayed. And even more years later, I thought if I could improve our sex life, he’d be nicer to me, so I suggested some things I’d read in my naughty books. Books I read to escape my reality, since by then, I had nothing else to do.
So then came the first time I was choked unconscious.
The first time I was truly forced into having sex when I didn’t want to.
And finally, the first time I was beaten black and blue.
So with my boy-crazy personality, I got what I guessed I deserved—a crazy boy.
And after that, I swore never to fall in love again.
Chapter 2
Doc
I pull into my driveway, using the huge cement width to back my car in between my SUV and my old truck, where I can sit for a moment and watch the beauty flit around the kitchen through the window. It’s the only window I don’t digitally fog over until I’m home, knowing no one else can see inside from this angle, since I have the entire property locked down like a fucking fortress. I sit here every evening for a few moments just to watch Astrid dance around as she makes dinner, my heart nearly bursting at the seams when she orders Scout to sit, shake, switch paws, and then bark before rewarding him with a taste of whatever she’s cooking. The Australian shepherd looks like he has a smile on his face as she scrubs his head with both hands before placing a kiss between his mismatched eyes and then dances away to whatever music she’s playing over my system today.
I pull up my app, seeing it’s Timbaland and Katy Perry singing “If We Ever Meet Again,” and I glance up to match her lips to the lyrics. I could sit here and watch her forever. It’s the only time I see her truly relaxed, not a care in the world unless she does something she deems “wrong” in the kitchen.
Like the time she browned the grilled cheeses darker on one side than the other.
And could barely look me in the eye the entire time we ate.
She flinched when I went to run a soothing hand up and down her arm, telling her it was okay, that she didn’t need to cook dinner for me every night anyway—like I have for the past year.
A year of pure torture in which I wouldn’t let her leave—not that she fought me much.
A year ago, Astrid’s abusive ex found her, several months after she and her sister landed here in our small town outside Ft. Vanter. I’d hidden her away while my security team took care of him, and after everything was said and done, I couldn’t let her leave. At first, it was because everything was up in the air with Brandon, her ex. We didn’t know what his sentencing would be, so she stayed while we awaited his trial. At the same time, her sister, Twyla, moved in with Seth, the technological genius behind Imperium Security—the cover for our mercenary operations—and co-owner of Club Alias, our BDSM club.
There was no way in hell I was going to let her live alone for the first time in her entire life when she was so very clearly suffering from PTSD thanks to her decade-long relationship with the worst kind of human being.
And I say it’s been a year of pure torture, because for the first time in over two decades, I want a woman. I want this woman more than I want my next breath. And not just in the physical sense. From the moment I first saw her, the image of her had been branded on my mind, to the point I see her beautiful face every time I close my eyes, every time I blink. She’s a constant in my subconscious, never allowing me to fully concentrate a hundred percent on anything or anyone else, because there’s always this shadow of her perched in the corner of my mind. Which isn’t good, since I’m a well-respected psychologist.
I realize I’ve been sitting here a little longer than I should, as I see Astrid glancing at her watch and biting her lip, probably wondering what’s taking me so long to get out of my car. She knows I’m here. All sorts of bells and whistles go off inside the house when I open and close the gate, and she can see my car outside the window. But she believes I always have an appointment with a patient over the phone that I finish before I come inside, or that I’m wrapping up things with security cases with one of the guys. She doesn’t know I just sit and watch her for a little while, enjoying her relaxed expression, seeing the real Astrid, before I come in and she’s back to her usual tense and overly careful state.
I put in the code at the door and it unlocks, allowing me inside, and I barely have it closed before the locks reset and Scout is barreling into me. He may be a trained military police dog, but being retired, he now knows he’s free to just be a well-loved and spoiled pet. I stoop down and bury my hands and face in his thick gray, white, and black swirled fur, giving him a minute of my attention, all while I feel Astrid’s eyes on me from the kitchen. The open concept of my house allows me to peek up over Scout’s head just enough to catch the small smile on her pillowy lips before she spins away, opening a drawer quickly to act like she wasn’t just watching me.
I stand, strolling up to the huge island separating the kitchen from the living area, and sink onto one of the stools that surrounds it. “How was your day, goddess?” I ask her, the same thing I always ask her when I get home from work. And she replies the exact way she always does as well.
“It was good.” And there’s her little one-shoulder shrug, never meeting my eyes as she plates our dinner, then slides it across the island to me. She tugs the stool at the end of the counter around to sit on, keeping the five feet of white marble between us.
I groan in pleasure at the smell. “God, I love your spaghetti. Thank you for this.”
Words of affirmation. Right now, it’s the only Love Language she’s receptive to. I can see her physical response to the praise, a relaxing of her shoulders, the corners of her eyes no longer pinched.
I take a bite, moaning at the perfec
tion. “How you get the absolute perfect amount of salt every time is beyond me, woman. So, so good. Mm.”
There we go. Her eyes finally lift, and I can hear her barely audible sigh of relief.
And it makes me want to murder that motherfucker for making her this way. Making her terrified that she’ll be punished if the food she didn’t have to cook in the first place isn’t exactly right.
But I can’t. It’s against our code. Life for a life. He might’ve ruined a decade of her life, but he didn’t end it. So therefore, I’m not allowed to choke the very spark from his body.
“What did you do today?” I ask, glancing around the first floor and seeing its usual immaculate state. Not even one of Scout’s dog toys are outside its beige basket with the black pawprint.
She wipes her mouth delicately with a napkin before replacing it on her lap. “I put together several makeup orders. There’s a sale going on, so there’s quite a few more than usual, if you wouldn’t mind taking them to the post office for me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Saturday,” I remind her, watching her closely.
A tiny furrow of her brows. “Oh. Oh yeah. So… I can do it. No biggy.” She shakes her head.
“I’ll take you. You don’t have to go alone,” I tell her, and she nods, a look of relief in her eyes. The post office is right by my office, so I normally take her orders for her after she packages them all up. But since I don’t work on Saturdays, I use it as an opportunity to make her leave the house. Otherwise, she’d stay right here, a self-imposed prison. Hence why it wasn’t that hard to keep her from moving out and leaving me once Brandon was behind bars.
“Did you do a live video today?” I ask, my head tilting to the side as I take in her look. “I like these colors on you. They really bring out the blue in your beautiful eyes.”
Her cheeks pinken and she looks down into her plate of spaghetti before she nods.
“Astrid.” My tone makes her eyes meet mine once again, and she knows I want a verbal response. It makes me uneasy to be commanding with her, since Brandon forced her into a life of subordination, but sometimes the Dom in me rears up in subtle ways.
“Yeah, I thought I’d try out the new pallet that just came in. It has these new shades of browns and greens that haven’t been in the previous pallets. Just wanted to play around with it a little,” she explains. “But you don’t want to hear about my silly makeup stuff, do you? I mean, you’re out there doing really important work. My job is—”
“Something you love, goddess.” I finish for her instead of allowing her any more self-deprecation. “It makes you happy, and you’re tremendously talented at it. As I’ve told you time and time again, never put down something that brings you pleasure.” There’s a tense moment of quietness. When I see her relax enough to take a bite of her food, I wait until she swallows to ask her another question. “How long did it take you to achieve this look? It seems more intricate than the last one you did. I see what—” I narrow my eyes and lean closer to count the colors. “—five… six different shadows?” From all my time of getting her to hold an actual conversation, I’ve learned more about makeup than I ever thought a forty-something-year-old straight man should. But I’d learn anything if it were Astrid teaching me, if it got her to talk.
“It’s actually only four, but with the blending and stuff, it gives an ombre appearance,” she replies, closing her eyes and lifting her perfectly manicured brows, pointing to different colors with her fingertip. “The black is called naughty minx, the brown is called melted chocolate syrup, the green is called morning wood, and the beige is called cream pie—” She cuts herself off with a gasp, opening her eyes wide and looking at my face in horror. My nostrils are flared, trying hard not to laugh, when her face flames.
I pull my lips in between my teeth, the hair beneath my bottom lip touching my mustache I bite down so hard, but I’m sure she sees the hilarity in my eyes.
“Who the hell names eyeshadow colors after such dirty shit! No wonder there were so many laughing emojis on my live video! I thought I had like… a booger or something,” she exclaims.
And theeere’s my girl. Every day, it’s the same thing. Tension until she finally relaxes enough for the real Astrid to break through and take over like the Incredible Hulk bursting out of the quiet and timid Bruce Banner.
I finally let go, laughing my ass off as she shakes her head and allows herself to giggle, pressing her fingertips to her lips as her eyes twinkle.
“I’m surprised it took you that long to catch on to the names. You usually never miss an opportunity to throw out a ‘that’s what she said,’” I tell her with a grin.
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head. “Must’ve been too excited to play with all the new colors. Plus, I always get awkward on live videos anyway. It’s weird to talk to yourself out loud, even seeing I have like two or three hundred people watching what I’m doing.”
My eyes widen at that. “Your numbers are up.”
She shakes her head once more. “Just since yesterday. They’re promoting this new pallet like crazy, and then add in the sale and I got like four hundred new followers in my private makeup group on Facebook overnight. That’s why I did the live video. Thought it’d be smart to take advantage.”
“Very smart.” I nod. “You really have a good mind for all this. And so extremely talented. You’re breathtaking without all of it. I tell you that every day. But I look at it as… a form of art. Your makeup is your paint and your face is your canvas. You are an artist.”
She blushes. “I mean, they are called makeup artists. But I was never formally trained. Just watched hours and hours of makeup tutorials on YouTube when I wasn’t allowed to….”
Before she can go to that dark place, where she’ll spend hours unable to come out of the hole inside her mind, in which she’s still trapped inside her California home she lived in with her ex, I speak up, pulling her out of it. “I mean, yours looks just as good if not better than the ones formally trained. But if you really wanted to go to school for it…”
Her eyes lift to mine with a mix of surprise and longing.
“…we could make that happen, goddess,” I finish, my voice soft, trying not to scare her out of the idea. So many times I’ve offered such things. But every time, she tells me—
“Soon. Maybe. Whenever I have enough money saved.”
And as always, I reply, “You don’t have to wait. Just like my offer to pay for lessons so you can get back into your dance classes, you can go now, Astrid. There’s nothing stopping you.”
There’s a spark in her eyes. The one she gets when she finally allows herself to argue with me. “And as I told you, Neil, I don’t want to owe you anything. I know I live here in your home rent-free, since you won’t accept any of the payments I’ve tried to give you. But I do what I can to feel like I earn my keep. This house stays pristine, I cook breakfast and dinner and meal prep your lunches, and Scout boy is living his best life with nonstop attention—”
The sudden loud skid of my stool being pushed back as I stand cuts off her words and her eyes widen as she braces herself. I come around the island, my movements fluid, careful not to approach her too fast as not to scare her. But approach her, I do, and I get as close as I can without making her shrink away in fear.
I don’t stand over her. At six and a half feet and well over two hundred and fifty pounds of pure muscle, I know I’m an intimidating motherfucker, even if I am a therapist with a quiet and more studious demeaner. Instead, I kneel so she can look down into my eyes from where she’s perched on the barstool.
“You earn your keep here just by breathing, goddess,” I implore, reaching up to push her blonde hair back behind her ear. “You don’t and will never owe me anything.”
She closes her eyes at the touch, and my heart thuds in my chest at her slight lean toward my hand. The tiny show of her desire for physical affection makes me ache with need.
She opens her eyes, seeming to have come to a decisi
on. “M—Maybe just one class. Just to see how it goes.”
My brows shoot up, completely taken by surprise. She’s never, not once, ever given an answer this close to a yes before. But I don’t want to seem too excited and freak her out. So I play it cool. “Just one sounds like a great idea. What were you thinking?”
At first, I thought she was talking about cosmetology classes, but as I recall from previously getting her to talk about it, that license doesn’t really work that way. From what I understand, you have to go to school for basically a whole workday while they teach you all sorts of things. Not like a normal college course, where you can sign up for one class and it’s an hour or two, two or three times a week.
She won’t meet my eyes, and I know that means she’s going to ask something of me, and it always, always makes her squeamish. So I soften my face and look as receptive as I possibly can. She could ask me anything, and I’d do it with no questions asked. I’d give this woman the world.
“So like… I haven’t danced in ages. Years. And like, it’s not something you should just jump back into as if you never stopped. You could… I could really hurt myself. So um… I found… I found this gym,” she gets out through stutters and pauses, but I wait patiently, not interrupting to even urge her on. She can take all the time she needs, and I’ll be right here. She nods to herself, her face getting a little stronger the more she speaks, gaining momentum, even as she trips over some words. “Yeah, so there’s this gym. And I’d… I’d never heard of these classes before, because I… I guess the fad caught on while I was in hiding with Twyla last year. Or umm… maybe it was before that, when B— Um… when he wouldn’t let me leave the house.” She blows out a breath and shakes her head. “But there are these classes called Barre. And it’s actually… actually a fitness class. Like a group exercise class, you know? Not like um… Jazzercise or whatever. Or maybe it is, I don’t know.”