partnership.” I swallow, lifting my hand to rub the back of my neck, the muscles feeling tense.
“As I told you yesterday, the books I was reading turned me on enough that I actually wanted to have sex. But even then, I never got anything out of it in the end. Then I found these BDSM romances. And everything in them was so arousing. Everything, from the idea of being dominated, to submitting to a man I trusted with not only my body but my heart, to a Dom having so much knowledge to take me to sexual heights I’d never been, actually caring about my pleasure. Not only that, but the submissives’ backstories always just… spoke to me. I saw myself in them.” I scoff. “I mean, obviously. I stayed with a man for almost a decade who did nothing but make my life a living hell.”
I let out a great big sigh and pause, gearing up for the rest of it. The worst part. “I wanted to be one of these heroines. And I thought, oh my God, what if I could have that? What if he’d be willing to learn to do it and treat me like the heroes in these books?” I feel my chin wobble and look down into the roiling water.
“And then I made the biggest mistake of my life.” I take in a stuttering breath. “I told him about the BDSM love stories I was devouring, confided how turned on I got by the Dominants and their submissives, hoping he’d want to roleplay a little, and maybe then I’d be able to finally get something out of it.” A tear escapes my eye, and Neil’s wet hand comes up to wipe it away with his thumb.
“But Brandon wasn’t like those heroes in my books. And that was the catalyst that made things so much worse. That’s when he started physically abusing me, when before my admission, it had only been mentally and emotionally. He began purposely hurting me during sex, doing things I didn’t want, taking things I wasn’t willing to give. Claiming it was the same shit I was reading in my books, even though he’d never taken the time to read even one page. He just took what he saw in fetish porn videos, twisted it even more, and called it BDSM without once ever taking a moment to really understand what I was asking for. And once he grew used to that, raping me roughly and calling it dominance, then, outside of sex, he s-started h-hitting me.” I sniff, and I can’t hold in the sob anymore that’s setting my lungs on fire.
Neil reaches behind my head and drags me forward until my face is in the crook of his neck, and I breathe him in. He smells like chlorine, but deep beneath that I can still detect him, and it instantly soothes me. My body has already conditioned itself to relax whenever I catch that aroma, even when it’s not straight from him. His pillows, the fragrance inside his shower, whenever I do his laundry. My mind immediately associates it with… safe.
“Goddess, have you spoken with your sister at all about her therapy and what came afterward at the club?” he asks, and I stiffen, pulling back to look in his eyes.
“Not in depth. I believe… after what he did to her, and my reaction following that, and the… I don’t know, I guess depression I’ve been in this past year, she didn’t want to bring it up with me much, worried it might trigger something, I suppose.” My brow furrows. “Why?” I demand, wanting to know whatever it is that went on with my baby sister, shoving tears off my face along with any semblance of being upset over my past.
“That is under doctor/patient confidentiality, goddess, but—”
“Call her. Right now. I don’t have my phone out here, but yours is right there.” I cut him off. And I don’t know if he sees something in my eyes or if he’s just shocked into motion that I’ve ordered him to do something when before I could barely ask him to do anything for me, but he does. He backs up until he returns to his seat, and he picks his phone up out of the nook next to his empty smoothie glass.
A few swipes and taps of his fingers and it rings on speakerphone.
Twyla answers, “Doc? This is a nice surprise. What’s up?”