Mastered by Malone (Haven, Texas 6)

Mia bit her lip. “What sort of club are you talking about?”

Molly tilted her head to one side. “You know what sort of lifestyle Alec is into?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Haven is a small town,” Molly told her. “You pretty much know what everyone else is doing, although Alec Malone tends to be a bit of a loner. Of course I guess it’s hard to be a loner when you have a heap of brothers.”

She wasn’t sure. It seemed that even here, on his ranch, surrounded by family, Alec was still a loner.

But she nodded anyway. Alec’s secrets were his own. And she wasn’t about to divulge anything. After all she owed the man big time.

“So while I don’t know that much about Alec, we do belong to the same BDSM club. My husband Jake, is also a Dominant.”

“He is?” She blushed. “Sorry, I’m being really rude. I shouldn’t be asking you about your private life.”

Molly shrugged. “Like I said, Haven is a small town. Wouldn’t have been long until you found out anyway. And I don’t have anything to hide.”

What would it be like to have nothing to hide? She didn’t even know how that would feel.

“Mia, again, anything you say to me here is confidential. I won’t tell Alec, unless you want me to. He’s given me some background information about what’s happened. He also said you had a panic attack the other night. Do you want to tell me about that?”

“The panic attack?” She didn’t know what there was to say, really.

“Do you get many of them?”

“Not as many as I used to get before I started taking medication.” She looked down to see she was pressing her fingers together so tightly they were turning white. She forced herself to let go. Then she looked over at Molly. “They started almost immediately after . . . after you know what.”

&nb

sp; “Have you talked to anybody about what happened?” Molly asked her.

“I told the police. I told my cousin.”

“Anyone else? Another friend? The psychiatrist that wrote this prescription for the anti-anxiety pills?”

She shook her head. “The psychiatrist owed my cousin a favor. I had a couple of panic attacks in around Mike and he knew I wasn’t going to be able to function unless I got them under control.”

“Drugs can be really helpful,” Molly said to her gently. “But they can’t fix the crux of the problem. They can’t help you process what happened. They can help manage the symptoms. How are you sleeping? Eating?”

“Sleeping and eating have become harder,” she admitted.

“Harder?” Molly said thoughtfully. “I bet they have. Nightmares?”

“Yes.”

“Every night?”

“It had gotten to the point where they weren’t coming every night, maybe every second night. And then my neighbor was shot dead instead of me.”

She suddenly realized that sometime while they’d been speaking, she’d pulled her feet up onto the sofa and had her arms wrapped around her legs defensively. Shit. Fuck.

“Do you know anything about PTSD?” Molly asked her gently, watching her. She bet the other woman didn’t miss much.

She shook her head. “A little. I know it’s what soldiers often get after they’ve been to war.”

“You’re right. People often suffer from PTSD after they’ve been through a traumatic experience. They’ve seen something, experienced something that’s out of the norm for them. It can make them anxious, ill, can make it hard to sleep. It can make it hard for them to leave their home.”

“And you think I have PTSD?”