“I’ve never abused her,” I said, my voice rough with roiling anger. “I have never, ever abused her. Everything between us is consensual. Everything I do, everything I say, every rule, every protocol, every session between us is motivated by my fucking love for her. I guide her. I encourage her. I write her fucking poetry.”
“If you love her, why do you hold her so hard? You control everything in her life.” Andrew said it like it was a bad thing. Like it wasn’t what she’d begged for that day in my dungeon a few months ago.
“You don’t understand us.” I waved a hand at him, waved off all his misguided, meddling-best-friend bullshit. “I need to talk to Chere. She needs to come home. It’s late.” I made another move toward the hall. Andrew didn’t budge. Motherfucker.
“She’s not going anywhere if she doesn’t want to.”
“She’s coming home with me tonight if I have to pick her up and drag her out of here,” I informed him. “And you and Craig aren’t going to fucking stop me. I’m sorry, but you’re not.”
He ruffled up. “I’ll call the police if I have to.”
“Andrew, it’s okay.”
Her voice materialized first, and then she was there, a miserable angel drifting out of the darkness. I wanted to go to her and hold her, but Andrew still stood in the way. She put her hands on his shoulders and turned him to face her.
“Thanks for sticking up for me,” she said, pressing her cheek to his. “You’ve been so brave, but I think you’ve done enough.”
He shook his head. “I haven’t done enough. I’ve been too quiet about…about this.” He gestured toward me, the evil user and abuser who couldn’t be named.
“Chere, we need to go home,” I said, staring at her very intently. “We have things to discuss.”
She didn’t look happy to see me, or happy at the idea of coming home with me. She looked tired. “It’s okay,” she told Andrew again. “He’s right. We have things to talk about. This is something I need to work out on my own.”
“But I don’t know…” He stopped, clutching her hand. “I don’t know if you can. Remember…?”
Remember Simon? That other abuser you got tangled up with for ten years? It was all I could do not to pummel him. I was nothing like Simon. In fact, I was the opposite of Simon. Simon had never cared for Chere, and I…
Well. Maybe Andrew had a point. Maybe I cared about her too much, to the point where I exerted unhealthy levels of monitoring and control. Well, I’d warned her. It always came back to that. I’d warned her what I would be like, and she’d agreed. I’d told her that if she ran away from me, I’d bring her back whether she wanted it or not. I knew she was remembering that now.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said, and I was talking to her, not Andrew. I wanted her to understand I wasn’t going to take her home and explode. I was going to take her home and fix what had gone wrong between us. If I could build bridges and skyscrapers, I could fix a faltering relationship. There’s always a way…
She gave Andrew a long hug and stepped away from him, back into my control. We didn’t touch each other. There was too much tension. I followed her to the door as Andrew watched with a doom-and-gloom gaze. He was a nice kid, but he didn’t have a clue about Chere and me, and our dynamic. He needed to butt out and let us work through our own complicated shit.
“Are you going to punish me?” Chere asked when we were almost to the car. She sounded a bit snarky, but mostly terrified, which touched something in my heart. Despite her fear, her vulnerability, she’d agreed to put herself back in my hands.
“I’m not going to punish you,” I said, because I knew that would be the wrong tack. “Simon doesn’t deserve any more of your pain. I’m going to re-train you instead. Take a few days and go back over what it means to belong to someone. Do you think that would be helpful?”
She only hesitated a moment before she answered. “Yes, Sir. That would probably help.”
* * * * *
Was I crazy to go back to him? Maybe. Andrew thought so, but in my heart, I wanted re-training. I wanted peace. I wanted my brain to go silent, and Price was great at making that happen. From the moment we got home, he was in Master mode, giving me no choice but to surrender.
He put on my collar as soon as we got home, and put me through my paces in the dungeon, doling out pain on the spanking bench, the rack, the sawhorse—though not the painful, pussy-torturing side of the sawhorse. He lectured me about submission as he carried out various torments, but he wasn’t angry and rough the way he sometimes was when I’d pissed him off. He was…thoughtful. Andrew had pretty much accused him of abusing me, and maybe that factored into this careful, deliberate form of training. Once he’d broken down my body, he turned my attention to his needs and desires as my Master. Kneel. Kiss. Back straight. Open your mouth. Suck me.