Friends with Benefits (Club Risqué Book 5)

Chapter 3

Sitting in her quiet apartment the following day, Trinity tried to put her finger on exactly what had been unsettling her recently. She was pretty sure she knew, of course. She”d just been trying to deny the implication.

After all this time, she didn”t like knowing that her past relationship with Christian still had an impact on her life. But the truth was that lately she had found herself talking about him, more than once, when other submissives had come to her for advice.

First, there was Luanna Morgan. She had been struggling with the concept of the submissive lifestyle and was ready to run; to throw away the relationship she’d been building with Logan Thornton.

Of all the owners, Trinity was incredibly fond of Logan. He was dependable, honourable, and consistent. You always knew exactly where you stood with him and, above all, he really, truly cared about all of the subs he encountered, whether in scenes or just within the club in general.

Unlike some of the Doms who could occasionally come across as arrogant or imperious, Logan was a gentle soul. The two of them had scened together many times in the past, far too many to count, but they had never had sex. He was one of those Doms who truly understood BDSM on a more spiritual level.

There were plenty who indulged in their thrills and expected intercourse as the finale. She didn”t blame them; that was the norm. None of them would push the issue, because they were all still good, decent men who abided by the stringent codes of practice, but Logan, more than anyone else she knew, had the ability to separate the two with a far more intellectual insight.

He deserved a little happiness, and if Trinity could help with that, then she was more than willing to give advice, even if it meant opening up a little more of herself than she would normally consider.

And that was exactly what she had done, although she’d ended up disclosing far more than she had planned. Maybe she had just needed to get Christian off her chest, after all this time.

”I rarely discuss my own journey into the lifestyle,” she had disclosed quietly.

”Please.” Luanna held up a hand to stop her. ”I don”t want you to tell me anything you”re not comfortable with. If you say you know how I feel, then I believe you.”

In that moment, Trinity had known, without a doubt, that she really liked Luanna.

Most other people would have been hanging onto her every word with baited curiosity, impatient to hear the story they knew was there, but which she never mentioned. The fact that Luanna hadn”t done that had made the story easier to tell and Trinity had found it all tumbling out.

Luanna had been an excellent listener; just sitting back on the chaise, making no comment, simply maintaining a companionable silence that had encouraged Trinity to talk.

At one point, she had frowned and bit her lip, and Trinity had known her new friend was worried that she was about to break down.

Instead, Trinity had hardened her heart and used the resentment and indignation, reactions she still felt to this day, to chase off the pain and finish her sorry tale.

Trinity laughed bitterly. Yeah, there was still a lot of that inside her. She”d never really let it go.

She’d surprised herself with how much more she revealed to Luanna. ”He told me I was special, that we”d always be the closest of friends, and I believed that, too, for a while. Grasping at straws maybe. Anyhow, his new fiancée didn”t like the idea.

After all those years of being by his side, of never being acknowledged as anything more than a friend, he didn”t even bother inviting me to his wedding. Not that I would have gone, I don”t suppose. No. That would have been too much of a torture,” she mused quietly as if she were talking to herself.

”There I was, in limbo, after all. No official break-up because we”d never been an official couple, no provocation, no furious argument or bitter words. No big fight to get my teeth into and ease my heartache with some justifiable anger, where I could vent my frustration and play the woman scorned. No packing up the parts of our lives that had overlapped because there were none. No friends coming over to see if I was okay or to cheer me up. No closure. Just nothing. So many years of my life, all boiled down to…nothing.”

”The reason he gave for marrying this woman was that they were so in tune with each other, physically, emotionally, spiritually. She was into BDSM. She mirrored his sexual needs, his need for kink. Needs he”d never even bothered to mention to me, even though we”d been lovers for years… I felt so damn inadequate, even though I”d never been allowed the opportunity to prove otherwise. I”d been a virgin, after all, and everything I knew about sex, I”d learned from him. But I hadn”t been enough of anything to him, for him to bother teaching me what he needed in return.”

Trinity had closed her eyes, inhaled a long, deep breath then let it out slowly. It really had felt as if she were physically purging herself.

”Anyway,” she added, matter-of-factly, turning her eyes to Luanna. ”The upshot was that I decided to find out for myself exactly what it was that I”d been thrown over for.”

Trinity had proceeded to explain her own journey into the lifestyle, and her words seemed to be exactly what Luanna needed to view Logan”s chosen lifestyle in a more positive way.

And wasn”t that just music to the ears of a service sub like Trinity. It made dredging up a past that she preferred to keep a lid on worthwhile.

She’d known, right then and there, that she and Luanna were going to be good friends.

Trinity was glad to be able to help. It fed her soul, even if her service was to another submissive. It was simply the way she was wired. But it had meant dredging up a past that she preferred to keep a lid on.

It had taken a while, but Trinity had stuffed all of those disrupted feelings back into their mental strong box and locked the lid down, tight, once again.

She didn”t want to dwell on them any more than she had to. It had taken a long time for her to come to terms with what had happened, and the hurt still had the power to slice her deep if she dwelled on the past for too long.

And it should have been fine. Would have been fine, if it hadn”t been for Laurel.

But the club sub, known in the lifestyle as Fluff, had had her own issues to deal with and she, too, had sought out Trinity to help her work out how she should approach her own ”friends with benefits” arrangement with Master Connor.

Regardless of the consequences, Trinity could no more turn Laurel down than she could have cut off her own fingers. Especially when Laurel”s situation was so heartbreakingly similar to her own. If she could help somebody else avoid the kind of heartache she had endured, then Trinity was prepared to open herself to the aftermath of her own pain. And what Laurel had said resonated so very painfully with her own experiences.

But she remembered her own advice, and concentrated on that now.

“Don”t wait around trying to be somebody”s perfect. Either you”re right for them as you are, or you”re not. Be yourself; if that”s not good enough for them, then at least let it be good enough for you. No matter what you feel, yourself, you can”t change somebody else”s feelings for you…well, you can make them hate you, but you can”t make them love you.”

And wasn”t that the truth!

Trinity knew one thing for certain: All that talk of the past had unsettled her so much that she could no longer keep a lid on the past, and a whole slew of painful memories were about to surge up and crash all over her like the destructive wave of a tsunami. Trinity only hoped she would be able to survive without drowning in her own misery all over again.