My throat tightened. I’d let him do humiliating things to me and yet, somehow, admitting this was more embarrassing than anything else.
My eyes fell to study my boots. “It doesn’t matter if I had one. I wouldn’t use it.”
“Even if I went too far?”
I wrapped my arms around myself. “I don’t know what that is, Reeve.”
He was silent but I knew it wouldn’t last. He was going to ask me to explain – I could feel it. And it was arguably a conversation we should have had long ago, though it had only been recently that I’d come to accept it myself. Now that he’d brought it out to the open, I couldn’t avoid it.
So I plunged in, walking past him as I spoke so I wouldn’t have to look at him. “It’s a problem of mine. I’m, I don’t know, sick or something. I like it when men do things to me, things that some women would consider horrible. Abuse, even. I mean, I more than like it. I need it.”
“You’re a natural submissive,” Reeve said, his voice close behind me. “That doesn’t make you sick. Modern psychologists don’t even call it an illness unless it interferes with your life.”
I’d come to Milo now, and I reached out to stroke his neck, using him as a focus point. “That’s just it. It does interfere with my life at times. Because I don’t know when to say stop. I don’t know when to say no. I’ve let myself be hurt, Reeve. Really hurt.” Amber had always blamed the men I’d been with, but while they’d had culpability, so did I.
I turned back to him, my vision glistening with unshed tears. “What kind of a person doesn’t know how to stand up for herself when she’s being broken? What does it make me that I crave parts of it so much that I keep coming back to it? I understand parts of it. Like, if someone else is in control, then I won’t have to admit that I’m part of it. That I like it. It helps me feel less ashamed. But the part where I let myself be shred to pieces —” My voice caught, and I couldn’t finish the sentence. I wasn’t sure where it went next anyway.
I shook my head, trying to free the lump in my throat. “I can’t stay away from it though. When I try, I’m dead inside. So all I can do is hope that I’m lucky. Hope that whoever I’m with will care about protecting me more than I do.”
While I’d talked, Reeve had stood patiently, watching me, listening to me. Now I waited for him to say something trite and comforting. Something that would attempt to dismiss my shame by belittling its source. I wouldn’t blame him. Because how else was he supposed to react to someone so obviously crazy?
But he didn’t say anything. Instead, he stepped in to me, brought his mouth to mine, and kissed me. It wasn’t a tentative or soft kiss, just as it wasn’t aggressive or forceful. It was a kiss with no answers, only acceptance.
We stayed there for long minutes while he let me pour out my anguish and self-hate in subtle strokes of my tongue and the varied pressure of my lips. He let me cry like this. Let me shed my skin. Let me be raw without taking advantage of my vulnerability like so many others had done.
We kissed and kissed and would have probably kept kissing if it hadn’t been for Milo nudging at us with his head.
We broke apart, chuckling. “He’s jealous,” Reeve said. “He wants you all to himself.” He pulled the horse’s head to burrow in his neck, stroking his face. “Sorry, Milo. She’s mine, and I’m not giving her up. You’re not the only one she likes to ride.”
My laugh sounded embarrassingly like a giggle.
“Can you believe her? Acting as if that kind of talk flusters her. I know for a fact that it doesn’t.”
I wasn’t ready to lose our honest moment. “That wasn’t the part of what you said that flustered me.”
Reeve abandoned the horse and pulled me to press his forehead to mine. He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. I’d never felt so connected to him. So unified. I was sure our hearts were beating in tandem. So connected that I swore I could hear the unspoken words in his head: I’m trying. I’m going to keep trying with you.
Silently I promised him the same even though I wasn’t sure yet if it was a promise I could keep.
By the time we’d returned to the stable, I was more than recovered from my emotional episode, but I was anxious and antsy. We’d spent too many hours playing nice and romantic, and no time at all playing lusty and sex-driven. I was becoming desperate for the release that only he could give me, more and more afraid that it had been lost in our transition from arrangement to deeper.
We’d stalled Milo first and now Reeve was putting Playboy away. I waited for him to lock the door so we could start walking toward the stable entrance. But as soon as the lock had clicked, he grabbed me unexpectedly, drawing me firmly to him so I could feel the hard form of his cock at my pelvis.
“I hope you aren’t too saddle sore, because I can’t have you in those tight pants a second longer. I need you naked. I need your cunt out. I need to be inside you.”
“Then let me go so we can get back to the house.”
He surrendered me, but it was to undo his buckle. “I can’t wait that long. I’m so hard I’m in pain.”
My heart tripped a beat. “Here?” God, yes.
“Here.” Abruptly, he pushed me up against the next stall and pinned my hands over my head. His breathing was heavy, like mine, the cold air causing twin puffs of condensation to drift and mingle between us. Despite the temperature, I radiated with warmth.