“How old were you?” Andrés asked. “How old were you when he—?” His teeth snapped closed, as though he couldn’t let the words leave his tongue.
“Nine,” I said softly. “But I forgot. How could I forget?”
Everything made so much sense now: my nervous tics, why I was so uncomfortable around men. I’d always been awkward and shy, even as a child. Before. But I’d had friends at school. People I wanted to play with.
After, I stopped going to my classmates’ birthday parties. The idea of a slumber party, especially, gave me crippling anxiety. I didn’t want to leave my parents.
So I’d stayed at home. I’d found solace in my computer games. I hid behind a screen, isolated from everyone. No one could touch me.
Until Andrés. He hadn’t let me hide from him. He’d pushed past my barriers and demanded that I let him in. It might have been fucked up, but he’d been right: I never would have found intimacy with another man like what I shared with him. Not even Dex. My gentle giant of a friend might be a Dominant, but he was far too sweet to have given me what I truly needed.
I needed ruthlessness. I needed darkness. I needed Andrés.
“I’m sorry,” I choked out. “I’m sorry I tried to leave. I thought you didn’t care about me. I thought—”
“You thought I didn’t care?” he demanded, his muscles tensing and rippling around me. “Do you know what it did to me, seeing another man hurting you, touching you? Seeing you broken and crying when you remembered what—?” He cut himself off again before he fully verbalized what Uncle Robert did to me.
His black eyes bored into me. They sparked with fury, but lines of anxiety tightened around them. “Did I hurt you?” he asked, his voice strangely thick. “Last night. Did I hurt you?”
He thought he’d hurt me during sex?
“No,” I reassured him, touching my fingertips to his cheek, tracing the line of his scar just as I’d done when he’d been buried deep inside me.
“Then why? Why would you leave me?”
Shame heated my cheeks at the hurt in his voice. “I woke up, and you were gone,” I said, my voice small. “I didn’t have my collar. Then Lauren brought me the pill and the shot, and I thought I must have imagined… I thought you didn’t care.”
His face shifted to a carefully blank mask, but something stirred in his dark eyes. “Do you want to get pregnant?”
“I… No. Not… Not right now.”
The thought of having a child with Andrés—of having a family again after losing my parents—made something tug in my chest.
He started petting me again. “That’s for the best,” he said, sounding as though he was talking to himself as much as to me. “You need to take the pill.”
“I… okay.” It was the rational thing to do.
But then why were my eyes stinging?
“You were upset because I was gone?” he asked, cuddling me close. “Then I’ll stay. Do you want your collar back on? I thought you resented it.”
“I, um, I got used to it. I like it,” I amended truthfully. “It makes me feel safe. Like you’re with me, even when you’re not here. But I’d rather not be chained to the bed,” I added. It would be nice to be able to take care of myself during the day, instead of relying on Lauren for everything. In a weird way, part of me would miss it, knowing Andrés was thinking about me waiting in his bed. It seemed I’d developed a kink to match his.
He traced the line of my jaw, rubbed his thumb along my lower lip. “You can have your collar, but I’m not going anywhere. I left this morning to see my brother. I was convincing him to give me more time with you.”
“Oh. Thank you.” I’d thought he’d been playing me this whole time, but he’d been honest with me from the beginning. Yes, his kinky games were meant to train me in how to please him, but everything he did was ultimately meant to protect me. He wanted me to cooperate for his brother so Cristian wouldn’t hurt me.
“I still don’t want to work for him,” I said quietly. “It goes against everything I believe in.”
“I know. I’ve read enough about your superheroes to see that.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
He sighed, his eyes clouding with anxiety. “I don’t know yet. I’ll figure something out.”
“We’ll figure something out,” I told him. I was no longer willing to sit around and wait for rescue. Cristian was the one threatening me, not Andrés. He wasn’t my captor, he was my protector.
He stared at me with something like awe, cupping my cheeks in his hands before pressing his lips to mine.