by KD Robichaux
I peek one eye open at that, wanting to know what he means. I know nothing of his past, and I still have a lot to learn about who he is. Not as a person. I get that. He’s everything that is good and right in this world. But I don’t know much about his life besides that he’s a therapist who runs a security business and is part owner of a BDSM club on the side. And I only know about the BDSM club because of special circumstances—i.e. the shit that happened last year with my sister. It’s called Club Alias for a reason; members’ identities are sacred and the place is like Fight Club—you don’t speak about it.
Something tells me there’s a lot more to Dr. Neil Walker than what’s easily assumed by public knowledge.
“Wanna play a game, Doc?” I ask in a creepy voice, mimicking the scary little fucker on the trike in the Saw movies.
“I never realized how much like Seth you are until today,” he replies instead, and a lazy smile pulls at my lips.
“My sister said since the day she met him that he’s like me but with a penis. I chose to ignore the fact that she then proceeded to have sex with that penis. I have enough psychologic damage to wonder why my sister fell in love with a man who reminds her of me,” I joke, and he shakes his head at that.
“Then I’ll choose to ignore the fact that I fell in love with a woman who reminds me of him with a vagina,” he replies, and I wrinkle my nose.
“Ew.”
“Right?”
“No, I mean the vagina part. Don’t call it that.” I stick out my tongue.
“Are you twelve, goddess? I’m a medical professional,” he points out.
“You’re a head doctor. Not a vagina doctor,” I argue, sneering the word.
He lifts a brow. “You’d be amazed how much the mind is affected by what’s between one’s legs, Ms. Quill.”
My nipples go hard at his heated look as his eyes lower to my pussy even though it isn’t visible beneath the bubbling water. “Fair enough,” I concede. “But you never answered me.”
“What game would you like to play?” he asks.
“I feel like… it would be against some kind of rule for you to be my actual therapist if we’re in this… relationship, no?”
He nods slowly. “I can verify that it would be unethical to be your doctor in an official capacity, yes.”
“And since I’ve agreed to now be resident of this estate, as you put it, and there is not only a sexual but emotional nature to our relationship now and you’re no longer just my hot roommate,” I state, ignoring his smirk, “I thought we could play a type of… I don’t know, 20 questions game. That way I get to know more about you instead of feeling like I’m being interrogated in a mental institute.”
He chuckles. “You can always ask me anything, Astrid. We don’t have to play a game for you to get to know me,” he replies. “But if this will make you more comfortable to open up, then we can play it this way.”
“It would,” I respond honestly.
“Good. Me first, and I’ll try my best not to use my ‘shrinky voice,’” he says, making finger quotes that make me smile. “What’s up with all the BDSM books?”
I sigh, closing my eyes and focusing on the jet that’s currently making my skin feel numb. “Just like almost every other woman in the entire universe, I read the Fifty Shades books. I loved them and was hooked, and I used that handy-dandy list that pops up on Amazon that tells you ‘If you like this, you may also like…’ and let’s just say the list was accurate as fuck and spiraled out of control. The end. My turn!” I gloss over any depth my answer might’ve had, not quite ready to delve into my fascination with the D/s lifestyle and what it ultimately led to, when we’re just getting this party started. “When was your last relationship?” I ask, curious about this more than I care to admit. How the hell was a guy like Dr. Neil Walker single when I met him, and how has he stayed that way over the past year I’ve known him? Or was he seeing someone I didn’t know about?
The thought makes my stomach hurt and my face flame with jealousy.
“God, your microexpressions are so telling, goddess. I can read all those emotions like a book,” he murmurs low, and I frown at him.
“Shrinky voice.”
“My bad,” he replies with a grin.
I giggle. “God, you’re old.” I shake my head when his face falls. “No one says ‘my bad’ anymore. That’s so Clueless circa 1995.”
He raises a brow. “And what would you know about a movie that came out when you were two?”
I snort. “I might’ve been in diapers when you were watching that movie on a date in high school, but it’s a freaking classic. Who hasn’t seen Clueless?”
I say it with humor in my tone, but a look of complete sadness fills his eyes before he looks away. I sit up in my seat, the overwhelming need to go to him and comfort him, even while not knowing exactly what I said that brought on that look I’ve never seen on him before, filling me. But he answers my original question before I can move any closer.
“My last real relationship ended twenty-four years ago.” His voice is quiet.
I do the math in my head quickly. “When you were eighteen? But how—”
“My turn, goddess.” He cuts me off, giving me a dose of my own avoidance medicine. “What is it about all those books that you find fascinating?”
I shake my head at him. “You’re like a dog with a bone.”
His face softens. “Can you blame me? After a year of knowing you, I only just discovered your… I don’t want to say obsession, because that term is used entirely too loosely these days, but your… fixation on D/s relationships, when I am, in fact, part owner of a BDSM club.”
My eyes narrow as I lean forward, squeezing my tits together. “Why, Doc? You wanna tie me up and fuck me?” I question darkly.
I don’t know why I do it. I don’t know why I ask him that question and in that way. A defense mechanism maybe? A response to the last man I told about my love for the alternative lifestyle?
Maybe I do it just to provoke him, to see if he’ll react in the same way my ex had.
But I should’ve known better. Neil isn’t anything like Brandon, and he seems to understand me better than I do myself.
Before I have time to dissect my own thoughts, his big body is on my side of the hot tub, and he sinks down into the water until I’m looking down into his cerulean eyes and I feel his giant hands grip my hips in my seat. “Going to try really fucking hard to not go all therapist on you, but you’re making it hard when you say shit like that, baby.”
I nod, quick and shallow.
“I think I’ve done a damn good job keeping the Dom in me in check when it comes to you. You have no idea the times I’ve wanted to order you to open up to me, to force you to snap out of what you were going through by using both my psychological skills and my physical capabilities as a professional Dominant.” I suck in a breath at the mental image his words provoke. “But then I would’ve been abusing my power, and if those books are accurate at all, then you know why I couldn’t do that to the woman I love.”
I can barely breathe, let alone speak, so I nod again.
“Domination and submission is all about trust, and how much would you have trusted me if I took advantage of you while you were at your lowest? How would I have earned your submission if I didn’t take the time to learn about you and try to help you heal the wounds of your past, and instead just ignored all that just to get to… tie up and fuck your body?”
Even though I’m being scolded right now, even though I know it’s a highly inappropriate response to the verbal lashing my ass is getting, my pussy clenches at the way Neil says that last part, and I shudder at the picture it flashes inside my brain.
“I asked you a question, goddess, and I expect an answer,” he says, and his tone is what I would imagine hearing if he were dominating me and I was his sub. I didn’t know Neil’s voice could sound like that, and for some reason, it’s like he’s speaking directly to my soul.
I respond w
ithout hesitation. “You’re right. I wouldn’t have trusted you like I do now.” My voice is breathy, needy, and I want to slap myself out of it. But I can’t. Not when Neil is still looking up at me like that even though his voice made it seem like he’s towering over me while I’m on my knees before him.
“Good girl. Now, please tell me. What is your fascination with BDSM novels?” he asks and makes to move back in his spot, but I grab his arm beneath the rumbling water to stop him.
“Wait!” It comes out as a squeak through my tight throat, so I clear it. “Will um… will you stay here? I feel… I feel like it’s easier to think clearly when you’re um… looking at me and speaking to me that way,” I confess, my cheeks flushing.
He slowly glides back into place, this time settling his knees on the bottom, and his eyes soften ever so slightly. “Ahh, goddess. I think I just got my answer without you even saying a word about it. But I want to hear you say it.”
I nod, unable to meet his eyes but focusing on his perfect lips surrounded by that sexy beard. “The first books I read, they were hot.” I shrug. “The premise was arousing, the contract, laying it all out what they were sexually into and not. At the time, it was… appealing, the thought of making a legal documentation saying that he wouldn’t do the things she deemed a hard limit, because while she could clearly state he wasn’t allowed to do certain things to her body, I wasn’t being given that choice.”
He moves his hands to grip my knees, pulling my legs apart and moving closer between my thighs. The comfort of his closeness helps me to keep going.
“I followed the links of suggested books since I liked those, and it led me to one that was way more in depth about the relationship a Dominant and submissive have with each other. It was a fictional love story, but it really explained what BDSM is truly about, the trust between the people and who really holds the power. It went into detail about how it’s actually the submissive who is in control while the Dominant rules her body. He could do anything to her they agreed on, even push her past what she thought was her limit, but with one whisper of her safe word, everything would stop in their tracks. She wouldn’t be punished for tapping out. And even better, he would love on her and comfort her afterward for being pushed too far. And again, it just really spoke to me, the idea of being in that sort of partnership.” I swallow, lifting my hand to rub the back of my neck, the muscles feeling tense.
“As I told you yesterday, the books I was reading turned me on enough that I actually wanted to have sex. But even then, I never got anything out of it in the end. Then I found these BDSM romances. And everything in them was so arousing. Everything, from the idea of being dominated, to submitting to a man I trusted with not only my body but my heart, to a Dom having so much knowledge to take me to sexual heights I’d never been, actually caring about my pleasure. Not only that, but the submissives’ backstories always just… spoke to me. I saw myself in them.” I scoff. “I mean, obviously. I stayed with a man for almost a decade who did nothing but make my life a living hell.”
I let out a great big sigh and pause, gearing up for the rest of it. The worst part. “I wanted to be one of these heroines. And I thought, oh my God, what if I could have that? What if he’d be willing to learn to do it and treat me like the heroes in these books?” I feel my chin wobble and look down into the roiling water.
“And then I made the biggest mistake of my life.” I take in a stuttering breath. “I told him about the BDSM love stories I was devouring, confided how turned on I got by the Dominants and their submissives, hoping he’d want to roleplay a little, and maybe then I’d be able to finally get something out of it.” A tear escapes my eye, and Neil’s wet hand comes up to wipe it away with his thumb.
“But Brandon wasn’t like those heroes in my books. And that was the catalyst that made things so much worse. That’s when he started physically abusing me, when before my admission, it had only been mentally and emotionally. He began purposely hurting me during sex, doing things I didn’t want, taking things I wasn’t willing to give. Claiming it was the same shit I was reading in my books, even though he’d never taken the time to read even one page. He just took what he saw in fetish porn videos, twisted it even more, and called it BDSM without once ever taking a moment to really understand what I was asking for. And once he grew used to that, raping me roughly and calling it dominance, then, outside of sex, he s-started h-hitting me.” I sniff, and I can’t hold in the sob anymore that’s setting my lungs on fire.
Neil reaches behind my head and drags me forward until my face is in the crook of his neck, and I breathe him in. He smells like chlorine, but deep beneath that I can still detect him, and it instantly soothes me. My body has already conditioned itself to relax whenever I catch that aroma, even when it’s not straight from him. His pillows, the fragrance inside his shower, whenever I do his laundry. My mind immediately associates it with… safe.
“Goddess, have you spoken with your sister at all about her therapy and what came afterward at the club?” he asks, and I stiffen, pulling back to look in his eyes.
“Not in depth. I believe… after what he did to her, and my reaction following that, and the… I don’t know, I guess depression I’ve been in this past year, she didn’t want to bring it up with me much, worried it might trigger something, I suppose.” My brow furrows. “Why?” I demand, wanting to know whatever it is that went on with my baby sister, shoving tears off my face along with any semblance of being upset over my past.
“That is under doctor/patient confidentiality, goddess, but—”
“Call her. Right now. I don’t have my phone out here, but yours is right there.” I cut him off. And I don’t know if he sees something in my eyes or if he’s just shocked into motion that I’ve ordered him to do something when before I could barely ask him to do anything for me, but he does. He backs up until he returns to his seat, and he picks his phone up out of the nook next to his empty smoothie glass.
A few swipes and taps of his fingers and it rings on speakerphone.
Twyla answers, “Doc? This is a nice surprise. What’s up?”
He clears his throat and then opens his mouth to speak, but then I barrel through the rumbling water and snatch the cell out of his hand, sitting my ass down on his lap.
“Baby sister, mine. How are you this lovely afternoon? How’s my niece growing?” I ask her, taking a breath before I go jumping down her throat.
“Oh! Um. Astrid? Baby is good. Eight weeks to go. Why are you calling from Doc’s phone?” she asks.
“We’re in the hot tub, and I didn’t have mine out here,” I reply simply.
There’s a pause. “You’re in the hot tub. With Doc? Like… together?”
“Wha-Whaaat?” I hear my brother-in-law sing in the background. “Brown chicken, brown cow! Getcha some, Dr. D!”
Neil rolls his eyes. “None of my names start with a D, so that makes no sense.”
“Short for Dr. Doc, bro,” Seth responds, and Neil shakes his head.
“Anyway, Twy. Neil won’t tell me anything about your therapy because of doctor/patient blah-blah-blah, and I demanded him to call you and get your approval to tell me,” I explain.
There’s a choking sound, and then, “You demanded Doc to call me?”
“Atta girl, As-trid!” Seth whoops.
Twyla sputters, and then she finally gets out her panicked question. “What is happening right now? Are we in the Twilight Zone?”
“Fuck, I love it when you use pop culture references,” Seth says dreamily.
I give her a rundown to catch her up so we can move this along. “Long story short, I had a minor breakthrough, Neil and I are… in some sort of relationship we haven’t yet put a label on—” He lifts a brow at that. “—I’m a permanent resident of this estate now, and he’s going all shrinky on me in the hot tub.”
“Brooo, you using your shrinky voice on my sis-in-love?” Seth asks disappointedly, completely skipping over the Neil and me being together thing.<
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Neil growls, and my pussy clenches against his thigh. “I was very purposely not using any type of therapist-like voice on Astrid while we were simply playing a game of 20 questions.”
“Hold the hell on a second!” my sister yells, and it makes me smile. “You… you had a breakthrough, Astrid? What… what does that mean?”
My face goes soft at the hope in her voice. “Endorphins, little sister. Endorphins are a powerful thing.”
“Fuck yeah they are. How do you think I got this sexy? That runner’s high, baby!” Seth inserts, and I shake my head and grin when Twyla shushes him.
“And now you and Doc are… an item?” she prompts.
“Come on, doll. That’s like, the least shocking thing out of all of this. Ain’t no girl gonna be able to resist my man Doc. Especially living under his roof. Have you looked into his dog’s eyes? I’d marry Doc myself just for Scout boy,” Seth answers for me, saying the Aussie’s name in a baby voice.
“I swear to God, I’m going to lock myself in the bathroom if you don’t hush and let Astrid speak,” Twyla tells him, and I hear a pouted “Fine” farther away from the phone.
“Well, yes. As Seth so eloquently put it, I finally gave in to my feelings I was suppressing for Neil… and his dog.”
Neil pinches my ass and I let out a squeak, glaring into his eyes.
“But anyway. We got on the subject of my books and how BDSM novels have been my favorite genre for years, and um… you know, the stuff that happened with Brandon—”
“That mother—” Seth starts to growl, but the very distinct sound of Twyla slapping her hand over his mouth cuts him off.
“—when I spoke to my ex about what the books were about. And anyway, one thing has led to another, and he asked me if I’d spoken to you about your therapy and whatever followed at the club.”
There’s silence on the other end, and I give her a minute, thinking she’s probably rustling up the courage to tell me about the things she’s tried at Club Alias. But then…