by Lucian Bane
****
Nineveh vowed to ignore her body’s incessant need. To be touched, loved, cherished, yada yada, what a fucking mess she was making where Daniel was concerned. It was ruining everything.
He clearly wasn’t interested in having the kind of relationship she wanted, desperately craved, and that was that. She couldn’t fault him for that. Wouldn’t fault him. He was different. And he was right, she was acting off of habitual shit. And yet she was only human. Putting her heart, mind, and soul on the line—fucked up as they may be—to be rejected, was not something she could handle. She knew her breaking points.
If she had a decent bone in her body, and she did think she had a couple of those left, she wouldn’t want to give Daniel her diseased life. If any man deserved good, it was him. He needed pure, he needed brand new, he needed… vanilla.
Not stale, burnt-to-fuck chocolate.
It would all be a very hard fight for her. Which was good. Was about time she was given a fight worth fighting. For Daniel, for what he stood for, she’d fight tooth and nail to protect. The stranger who cared enough to step in front of that run-away train to save her, she’d protect him from her, and her dirty life.
She remembered then about the fasting. What had he said? Denying yourself something you wanted while praying? Hmmm. She sure never wanted anything more than who and what Daniel was, to have for herself.
Guess it was settled. She was going on an indefinite Daniel Fast. And maybe, for Daniel’s sake, God would recognize the sacrifice and use it for both their good.
“You’re awfully quiet,” Daniel said, snapping her back into reality.
“Just thinking,” she said, gazing out at the scenery down highway 12.
“Care to share?”
“Just making plans, that’s all.”
“Oh yeah? What kind?”
She put her foot on the dash, wondering how to explain that. “Just plans to help myself.”
“Nice,” he finally said. “Any other details?”
“I’m gonna fast,” she said. “Give up something I really like and pray.”
“Coffee?”
“Nah.” She angled a smile at him. “I don’t think it’s right to tell if it’s a sacrifice to God. Seems private.”
“You’re right,” he said, sounding surprised. “You know, you have quite an amazing understanding about spiritual things.”
This got her attention. “You think?”
“I know,” he assured.
She forced her eyes away from ink markings along his arms that seemed to disappear in the direction of his chest. She’d wondered if he had a tattoo on the front and now that it seemed he did, her brain was buzzing with the need to know.
“I’ve been praying,” Daniel suddenly announced, making her stomach flutter in a strange way.
“Okay.” She regarded him. “Am I supposed to ask what about?”
He aimed a smile at her, and it felt like an all-out declaration of war to her body. “I guess I might’ve expected you to ask but I should remember you’re not the average person when it comes to the spiritual jargon.”
“Definitely not,” she said, hoping that wasn’t a bad thing. “So… what were you praying about?”
“You. Teaching me. About that life.” He looked into the rearview mirror, then back at the road. “I don’t think I was just supposed to help you out of it, I think I’m supposed to do more than that.”
That strange feeling increased in her stomach. “Like what?”
“I don’t really know. But I know that with knowledge comes understanding. And with understanding, the wisdom of God.”
She raised her brows. “That how that works?”
He assaulted her with another smile and nodded. “Pretty much, yes.”
She looked forward, lowering her foot from the dash. “What… exactly do you want to learn?”
“The basics. The principals, the nuts and bolts behind this… life, this BDSM.”
She chewed her lip, fighting for courage and the ability to see it all in that light. Educational. She’d been the one to suggest it but at the time, she’d intended something else. “Well…” What was a simple gist for it? “It’s… mostly about an exchange of power. One has authority and one submits to that authority. And you… just have sex mixed in with that.” At hearing how bad it sounded, she added, “But you can have love too. If you have the right partner, that is,” she mumbled.
“How does it work in the right situation,” he asked.
“In the right situation… the… Dom, or the one in authority, commands the one in submission, called the sub. And she obeys.”
“With limits, as you said,” he reminded.
She nodded, crossing her arms over her tense stomach. “Right.”
“What kind of limits?”
She took a deep breath. “Whatever she wants, really. Limits are tricky. They can change, so you have what they call safe words. The sub says it when her Dom is reaching her limit and he’s supposed to stop at that point.”
“What happens when she gets hurt?”
“Then he’s supposed to soothe her, it’s called aftercare. He’s supposed to… to tend to any wounds and discuss if things need to be changed, etc.”
She fought for a casual tone but it was getting more difficult as the memories attached to all the words followed.
“So wounding her is what, a common occurrence?”
His disgust alone was soothing to Nineveh. Reminded her she was with a good man. “Sometimes he wounds or… a lot of times he wounds, it depends on the Dom and if he’s a sadist that cares more about grooming her to take more and more pain for his pleasure, or whether he’s a Dom with no heart who is just careless before, during, and after.”
“Are there any Doms that do it correctly?” he wondered, sounding disgusted still.
“I am thinking yes, there is,” she said in pure faith. Surely there had to be. But she’d personally not met a single man that didn’t have his own pleasure at the foremost front of his selfish mind.
“So no man you’ve ever met.”
The dark fury in his tone was like a shot of valium to her frayed nerves. “No,” she said, a quiet sadness washing over her.
“You mentioned contracts, what’s that about?”
Yeah. “Supposed to be the conditions between a Dom and a sub. They both sign it.”
“What kind of conditions?”
“The kind I just talked about. What he expects of her what she expects of him. Actions and consequences in connection to both. Length of these terms, bla bla bla.”
“What kind of condition is there for him when he breaks the contract and does what he agreed not to do?”
“Oh, well, contracts, like limits, are tricky too as it turns out.”
“Like how?” he asked, his sarcasm at full throttle.
“I mean, they are full of words and terms that can be interpreted differently. The contract is supposed to protect women but what it actually does, in the wrong hands, is becomes a tool to manipulate her into an abusive situation that she feels trapped in.”
“So they don’t get out of it.”
“Exactly.”
“Why don’t they,” he demanded, not understanding.
“They’re terrified for their lives?”
“Were you?”
She avoided his constant angry glances. “Of course. But I had in mind that after my six months was up, death or not, I was done. I was ready to die trying to get out rather than die a slow death inside that hell. Then you showed up out of nowhere.”
“Not out of nowhere,” he said.
His rough voice soothed along her skin and she lay her head back, letting it. Needing it. “You’re very right about that,” she murmured. “You came straight from Heaven and stole me right out of Hell.”
“Can you… explain to me why you like it. With limits as you say. Help me understand what is happening to these women that get snagged into this.”
Nineveh looke
d out her window, unseeing as she fought to distance herself from the intimate aspect of the topic. Do it in a medical way.
She took a breath and said, “Well, some women are abused when they are young, often sexually, and, they develop a… I wouldn’t call it need to have pain but more a bend toward pain when sex or sexual pleasure is involved. Unless sex was always painful, then… I imagine the bend is different. I’m not an expert,” she warned. “But their bodies have learned to be stimulated through pain and first pleasures are like… the top high and your brain usually… I think imprint to that type of mixed pleasure with pain.”
“This happened to you?”
The question suddenly brought a mountain of that stupid-shame to her. “No, it didn’t.”
“So, why? Why do you want pain with pleasure?” he asked, his tone nearing aggressive.
She struggled to think why she did and when all she got was she was curious to try, her humility grew. “I just… you read all the stories about it…” more shame poured in. That she had acted on silly fictional stories and landed herself in a nightmare. “I was stupid, I don’t have another answer besides that.”
“But you said you still like it. Have you ever even had it the way you wanted it, to even know if you like it?”
Wow. The sudden need to end the convo reached an all-time high as she plummeted to an all-time low. “I…I guess…” She felt his furious gaze swing from her to the road like a slashing light-sabre. “Maybe.”
“Maybe? You’re not sure?”
His desperate plea for her life to make sense, to make her suffering worth something, had her brain on fire. She pressed her fingers to her temple, sure there had to be some valid reason why she was where she was in her life. Some reason to justify where she ended up. Surely.
“Wow, so you really aren’t even—”
“I’m thinking!” she yelled. She banged her fist on the dash over and over. “I’m thinking! You prying fuck! There’s a fucking reason, I’m not a total fucking moron, I had… I had ideas, I had thought…”
Daniel pulled off the highway as she struggled to breathe and grasp at the shattered, dirty pieces, to remember what happened, where it all went wrong.
“I’m sorry,” he said, reaching a hand to her.
She slapped it away. “Don’t! Don’t try to console me, I’m still thinking.”
“It’s not my business,” he said. “I don’t even want to know.”
“Well, I want to know,” she tried to scream, but the words strangled in her throat making her fight to get them out. “I…I started out with dreams of a good life. With a man… that I loved,” the hoarse words burned her heart until she couldn’t breathe. “He was… he was going to be good to me, he was… going to care, it was all a… a simple dream.” She shook her head at her lap, not understanding. “It was so simple. I don’t know, I don’t know where, I… how… when did I allow myself to…”
“Please stop,” Daniel begged, his words desperate as he reached for her.
She slapped and swatted his hand away, glaring at him. “You stop!” she yelled. “You don’t touch me. You don’t make me want what I can’t have,” she hissed, jabbing her finger at him. “Don’t you ever touch me again. Ever!” she ground at him, furious.
He leaned back, both hands up. “I won’t. You have my word.”
She stared at him, hating those words, hating more that she needed so desperately what she couldn’t have. “Well, then that’s as good as gold,” she grit at him, her breaths still shaky. A wave of fear hit her at the thought of losing him, her only tie to anything good and decent. She put her hands over her face and leaned forward. “Oh God. I’m sorry,” she strained, regretting every word. “I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s me. I just… you can’t be more pissed than I am about how stupid my life is.”
“I’m such a fucking moron,” he muttered. “You have to forgive me, Nineveh. I’ve been locked up for seven years. I have the communication skills of a monkey when it comes to knowing how to talk to a woman.”
She looked out the window and rested her head on the seat, closing her eyes. “Let’s just go. This will pass. Everything passes.”
Chapter Eight
He’d fucked up royally. Daniel paced outside the store in the mall, waiting for Nineveh. He wasn’t sure how long it was supposed to take for her to get everything, but he guessed an hour. Maybe he should go find her and let her know he was going to the coffee shop several stores down and she could meet him there.
Fuck it. He headed inside the store, looking. He finally spotted her dark hair on the far side and made his way over. He stopped just out of sight, watching her as she checked herself out in a mirror outside the dressing room.
He stood immobile, gripped in that fascination that always took him over when he watched her do anything. In that moment, there was something about the way she looked at herself in the mirror. He realized she had on a dress and the innocent sight gripped him with the need to hug her, he’d needed to since his earlier fuck up.
Feeling guilty about watching her, he walked up, stopping several feet away. “Hey,” he called, making her spin around with a worried look on her face. “I like it,” he said, hoping it was okay to say.
She pushed hair behind her ear and looked down at herself. “I just… I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. About my life,” she said quietly before looking at him. “If I’m going to change it—and I am—then there’s no sense in me dressing to attract a man.” She turned back to the mirror, inspecting again. “I think it’s time to dress like the person I want to be perceived as. A smart, decent, strong woman.” She smoothed her hands over the dress and turned to him again. “You think it looks alright?”
Daniel fought with himself. He was in constant warfare around her now and confused as fuck over it. But he took the open invitation she’d given him to look, sliding his gaze carefully over her, wondering how every, fucking, glorious thing she said and did made him burn in ways he had no right to. When his assessment ended at the hungry look hiding behind that determined glint, it commanded him, and he obeyed. “You look beautiful.” He didn’t know or care if the words were right. They were true.
“My instincts were right, then,” she said with a small smile, sounding relieved. Fuck, that she had such absolute trust in his words should have made him feel better, but it only added fuel to that already unstable inferno inside him.
He watched her disappear into the dressing room, praying the compliment wouldn’t hurt her. Was he setting her up for a fall? He didn’t know. He only knew he needed to see that smile. Fuck, when did it become about what he needed? No, he needed her to smile.
He was a mess. The broken human God had given him to help was turning into a job he was not equipped to handle. But that was too late. He was too far in now. And he wouldn’t deny the truth of what he felt about her. Not with God. He’d wrestled with The Man over it and there was to be no covering up anything happening in him. He’d acknowledge the truth to God and pray for the strength to do the right thing. That’s all he could do.
Nineveh’s mood on the way back was sweet torture. He admired the way she could bounce back from life’s snags. Guess it was something she’d had to learn in her life. Get up and fight or get beat down.
She’d changed into one of her dresses and the modest design, along with the light innocent pink had him crazy with the need to just stare at her. She was the look of pure woman. It was perfect on her. He was getting a migraine from resisting all the temptations bombarding him. He hated just as much that he couldn’t build her up without putting her heart at risk.
She upped his torture when she grabbed the Bible off the backseat, smiling as she got back in her seatbelt. “I’m ready to try,” she announced. “I’m going to read from the Bible. What do you think I should start with,” she wondered, pushing hair behind her ear as she turned the pages carefully, her gaze turning stern.
“Whatever you want,” he said. “How about we stop at a drive-thr
u for a slushy. That way I can focus.” And not wreck.
“Okay but you can’t watch,” she said.
“That’s fine,” he said, only halfway meaning it. He was sure being able to close his eyes and listen to her would be just as glorious as watching her.
When they finally parked, Daniel looked at her as she held the Bible against her chest, her face tense with deep thought. “What?” he asked, hungry to hear her speak her mind. He’d developed a near immediate addiction to her doing that.
“Are you circumcised? Or is that too private?”
His heart sped up at the way she took care to do the right thing. “I am, yes. Although, circumcision is no longer required with the New Covenant. It’s become more a modern day medical procedure.”
She nodded, still serious. “What’s the New Covenant?”
“The new contract between God and man. The Old Testament is the old contract, the New Testament is the new contract.”
“Is it… like the kind of contracts with… BDSM you think?”
Daniel fought his tongue’s immediate urge to shoot the idea down. He considered her question seriously. “In a lot of ways, it is,” he conceded. “Only, He does what He says and never goes back on His word.”
She smiled, nodding. “I bet. Because He’s so good.”
“Right.”
She held the book to her chest again and Daniel waited for what was on her mind.
“I like God,” she said, as though she’d been debating and had finally decided. “When you think about it, He’s kind of like… the perfect Dom.” She snapped her worried gaze to his. “Is that blasphemous?”
Daniel stared at her, heat burning inside him. “No,” he said. “He is perfect. And He is our authority. It fits.”
She went back to staring out the window. “Do you think… I could just… let God be my Dom? Nothing sexual, duh, I mean just…” she looked down. “He could be the one I listen to. He could be the one that protects me.”
Fuck, Daniel was going to die, sitting there with her being so fucking angelic. “He could. And He’d love to.”