“Explain it to me, Scar,” he said. His voice was gentle, but it brooked no refusal.
I had no doubt what he was referring to, but how could I explain it to him? Maybe simple was best. “I need it to be my choice. I need to experience it, and know I put myself here this time.”
He nodded, and I expected him to say something, either in agreement or in protest, but he didn’t. Not one word. He strode out of the room and into the ensuite and shut the door behind him. I debated following him, but if he’d wanted me there, he would have brought me with him. He didn’t want me there.
He didn’t want me. If he understood what I was asking, then it was the only explanation that made sense. When he’d kidnapped me, he had wanted me. He’d wanted to control me. He’d wanted me to submit to his will, and his alone. But now, when I was choosing to offer myself up to him, he walked away and locked himself in the bathroom. I was used goods. I wouldn’t want me either.
I curled up as tight as my ribs would allow and closed my eyes. Tears leaked out the corners, but before they’d saturated the pillow, the bathroom door swung open. He was standing in the doorway, a towel slung low around his hips and his flesh still damp from the shower. He was beautiful, perfectly sculpted. Awareness crept through my veins—a feeling I hadn’t experienced in what seemed like a very long time. I wanted to block it out. The deep, dark shame inside me said I had no right to be looking at him this way, but I couldn’t help it.
By the time my gaze had made its way up to his eyes, I was warmer. The heavy blanket was stifling. But he was looking back at me, and the reflection I’d glimpsed of myself earlier in the broken shard of glass flashed through my mind. That’s what he was seeing. That’s what I looked like now. The heat fled and I tucked the blanket more tightly around my body.
“Dr Fuentes left this for you,” he said, picking up the tube he’d left on the nightstand. “You’re going to roll over for me, and while I put it on you, you’re going to tell me exactly what’s going through your head.” He tone was still gentle, and it still brooked no refusal.
I struggled from my side and onto my stomach while he stood motionless. He wasn’t going to help me. He wasn’t going to move until I’d complied. It was the closest I had felt to peace since he let me kneel between his thighs and he fed me his fast food burger from his fingers. Fucked up, maybe, but it was the least fucked up I’d felt since that day.
My ribs protested, but I succeeded, and then waited patiently as he picked up the tube, rolled down the blanket to expose my back, and sat down on the bed next to me. “Talk, Pet,” he said as he squeezed some of the thick, opaque gel onto his fingers and rubbed it gently across a wound just below my neck.
“I know it probably sounds crazy…”
“No,” he interrupted. “Don’t tell me what you think is going on in my head. I want to know what’s going on in yours.”
“It’s…what happened, is in my head all the time. I feel helpless.”
His fingers faltered but then moved smoothly again across my mutilated flesh.
“I learned a lot about myself with you…before. I learned that I didn’t need to be in control, that as long as I trusted you, I didn’t need that. It felt as easy as breathing to offer that up. But…but it was never my choice. I need it to be my choice.”
“I want to help, but fuck Scar, do you have any idea what you’re asking? Before…it was never an act. I feel guilty as fuck for what I did to you, but…I wanted to do those things—and that makes the guilt about a thousand times worse. Now though, after all, I did to you after all those sons of bitches did to you…how can I do what you’re asking?”
At least it did seem like he understood what it was I wanted. Except, I didn’t just want it—I needed it. And by Derek’s own admission, it hadn’t been an act on his part. It came naturally to him. I was only asking him to be…him. Thinking about it that way made it easier to push harder.
“I need this. And you’re the only man I want to do this. I don’t want to even think about trying to find some professional dominant…”
“Over my dead body,” he said, his voice calm and cool—and a little scary this time.