Trust Me (Rough Love 3)

“Maybe instead of punishing you, I should just punch you in the face so you can remember what it felt like. Then you can decide how much you want to help him.”

She buried her head in her hands and bawled. Jesus, the fucking drama. It was so hard for her to admit when she’d been bad, when she’d done something wrong.

“I’m not going to punch you.” I touched her leg, trying to calm her. “I’m going to make this easy for you, okay? Listen to me. You’re not helping him. It’s not your job to save him from his past mistakes. You’re not seeing him again.”

“But he needs help. He seemed really upset, really conflicted.”

“He deserves to be conflicted for the things he did to you.” I narrowed my eyes. “It’s like you want to see him again. Like you want to become involved with him again. I don’t fucking understand.”

“I’m trying to exorcise my demons too,” she said. “I had a life before you, a very complicated one. I have feelings that don’t involve you. I know that’s hard for you to accept. Since I moved in here, my entire life, my emotions, my feelings, my friends, all of it has become this tiny little box that only has room for you.”

“You chose that. I warned you. You said you wanted that!”

“Simon is still sick, Price. He’s still struggling to stay sober. He needs me.”

“I need you,” I said, stubbornly clinging to my own guilt, my own past mistakes. “I need to protect you from being hurt by him again. I watched it happen once, and it sucked like hell. I’m not going through that again. No. You belong to me now. I get to decide. I get to protect you.”

The more I argued, the more she fought back. I liked her fighting spirit sometimes, but when she was fighting for her abusive ex-boyfriend, it fucking pissed me off.

“You’re smothering me,” she yelled. “You don’t want to protect me. You’re jealous of Simon just like you’re jealous of every other fucking man in the world because you’re such a fucking insecure wreck. You don’t trust me to be around any other human with a penis. Why? Jesus. It makes me hate you sometimes.”

I flicked a glance over her naked body. We hadn’t played hard in a while. There were no marks on her. Maybe I needed to leave a few marks to get her straightened out. “I think you better watch the way you talk to me,” I said. “You’re going to be punished for hiding your meeting with Simon. Don’t make me punish you for your manners too.”

“Fuck my manners. Fuck your rules and protocols and protective bullshit. You don’t love me, you don’t care about me. You haven’t changed at all. You still have no fucking heart underneath all your grasping, possessive, posturing bullsh—”

I stood before she could finish her sentence, and yanked her off the couch.

“Walk,” I said, turning her toward my bedroom. Toward the dungeon.

She started to resist, then thought better of it. Surely she understood she’d earned a punishment. If she’d decided to make it worse with more screeching and disrespect, that was her choice. Her misstep. Her own fucking mistake she’d have to live with.

“Please, don’t,” she said, trying to pull away from me. “Let me calm down first. I can’t. Please… Please, I’m so sorry.”

Nothing she said loosened my grip or slowed our inexorable progress toward the dungeon. I loved Chere. I loved her too much to let her lose her shit like this. I loved her too much to let her go backward, even if forward motion was about to cause her a whole lot of pain.

Chapter Ten: Surrender

Oh, shit, I’d fucked up. The look in his eyes…

Shit, I was so scared. I resisted even though I knew I’d earned this. We had a dynamic to follow, a system of rules and expectations, and I’d broken every one of them. I felt awful and out of control, but still, I didn’t want this.

“Stop,” he said, halfway toward the bondage rack. “Stop fighting me. You’re going to get what you deserve. No more, no less.”

That’s what I was afraid of. Most of the time I loved coming to the dungeon with him. I loved the way he treated me like a sexual science experiment, a bundle of female nerves on which to practice pleasure and pain.

But I knew there wasn’t going to be any pleasure this evening. He got out the manacles, the ones I’d fashioned to his specifications, back when I had no clients and no prospects. He put them on my wrists in a quick, businesslike way, and hooked them to the chain and pulley system in the ceiling. At the push of a button, the chain moved upwards, and soon I was straining with my arms to the sky, barely able to dance around on my toes.