Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Avery
I’ve died a thousand deaths in the last five seconds.
In each of those deaths, I’m subjected to the cruelest of torture, and I would rather be living those experiences than standing here right now.
I’m… I’ve been messaging Caleb Flynn the entire time.
He’s The Duke.
He’s… A Dom.
I am freaking out. My entire brain is having some kind of hyper connected implosion.
Because there’s no way. It’s too coincidental.
I’m torn between two competing ideas. The first is that he set all of this up.
Maybe even all the way back. Planting a seed of some kind of submissive need in me that day that he grabbed my wrist and scolded me, and made me want to kneel before him.
That he knew he was messaging me the entire time, that he lured me into cleaning his house so that he could get me right where he wanted me – and the horrible realization that I might just be drawn to him because there’s something in me that needs what he has.
That the reason I feel like fighting him and throwing myself at him at the same time is that he has always been the answer to this thing inside of me.
That he has always been my damnation and salvation all at the same time.
“No,” I say.
“Of course,” he says. “It makes sense.”
“No. I… It doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes it does. You know it does.”
“You had to know,” I say, because I need to make the accusation. I need to say it. I need to know.
“I did not know that I was messaging you,” he says.
“That can’t be true. I don’t believe you.”
The hot flame that flares in his blue eyes silences me. “If that’s what you think, then you can leave.”
“What?”
“I mean it. You get the fuck out. Because I’m not going to have you working in this house when you distrust me to that degree, and I’m sure as hell not doing this with you.”
“What makes you think that I would do this with you?”
“Oh, you were happier to be with a stranger than you are to be with me?”
I feel so vulnerable then. Stripped absolutely bare.
He is the only person who knows this about me.
Not a single other soul knows these intimate details about my fantasies.
Truth be told, he basically found out the substance of them along with me.
And that makes me feel so angry. So raw and vulnerable.
It makes me wish that I were dead. I’ve nobody to talk to about this.
Because I would have to tell my friend Monica that I even want to do this in the first place, and she would think that something was wrong with me, and…
He is the only person in the world who knows this about me.
I feel cut down by that. I feel reduced. I’m angry, and I want to lash out. The whole time, it was him.
I am a jumble of feeling. And the worst, most shameful feeling is the excitement that’s burning inside of me.
Those words that he just sent me were the most erotic thing I’ve ever read in my life.
And I am screwed up. Absolutely twisted in the head.
Because the hottest thing a man has ever said to me is that he wants to tie me up so that I can’t move while he fucks me, and I want it.
I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything else, and it’s him.
And that makes it better and worse. It’s like he alone has the key to a lock inside of me and we are both so aware of it now.
I despise it and him.
And I’m drawn to him all the same. In spite of it or because of it, it doesn’t really matter.
“I mean it. If you think I was fucking with you to that degree, you don’t trust me enough to do this.”
I do believe him. I’m just so… Furious about it.
At the universe, I guess. Or maybe God is punishing me for being a kinky slut.
I’ve never really believed that, but right now I kind of feel like it.
I also feel desperately, horrifically turned on, which makes me question if what I actually have is a humiliation kink.
Because God knows I am so embarrassed I want to die.
But you know the same things about him. You know what he likes. That he likes power. Control. That he likes to tie women up.
It’s true. I do know that. I don’t find anything shameful in it, because it’s something that I find hot.
And that’s when the world turns upside down for me.
He doesn’t think it shameful that I want to submit to him. Because he needs women to do that.
The heat of my humiliation begins to dissipate.
I’m still shocked, I’m still thrown completely off guard, but I don’t feel horrified.
Not in the way that I did a moment ago. Not scalded and like he’s going to judge me.
He can’t. I’m the other side of his coin.
He needs me. Women like me. And you need a man like him .
“Do you believe me or not?” His prompt is hard and there’s a hidden command beneath the surface of those words, one that I’m incapable of denying.
“I believe you.”
“Is the Club the first experience that you’ve had with BDSM?”
I shake my head. “I mean I… I’ve looked at other services. Clubs. I’ve watched… I watch a lot of porn.”
He shakes his head. “That’s not necessarily going to tell you anything.”
“It told me enough,” I say.
“What did it tell you?”
“That is what I wanted. I…” I try to take a breath and try to stop sounding so timid and tentative. “It made me sure that I wanted to be dominated.”
“You haven’t done it before.”
“No. I made that pretty clear in my profile.”
“You did. But in my experience a lot of times new submissive have tried to get their partners to engage in domination with them before they seek out an inexperienced Dominant. So a lot of times what they have is a little taste of it from someone who didn’t know what they were doing.”
“I don’t even have a taste of it,” I say. “You know who my ex-boyfriend is.”
I know he knows him. And it really is unfair of me to bring John into this. But he was just another person in my life who needed to take from me. And in the end, even though he said he loved me, even though he said he wanted to be with me, I couldn’t do it. Not anymore.
It was just one more unbearable responsibility. And I don’t know what love is supposed to be like – love isn’t what’s on my mind at the moment. But I know what I can’t handle any more of.
The problem is, I want this. I want it so badly. I want him. The truth is, I’ve always wanted him. But I’m conflicted about that, because everything else about him is so… It’s difficult for me.
But he is the one that awakened this need in me all those years ago. The need that I didn’t even have a name for. And now it’s possible. I… I don’t even know what to do with that. Say yes.
“How long have you been…”
He lifts a brow, reaches up, and takes his cowboy hat off his head.
He’s stunning. I’ve always known that, but I try not to look directly at it.
Because it makes me feel funny and wrong.
Because he makes me feel like I am hurtling toward my doom in more ways than one.
Because it’s so much more comfortable to hate him rather than acknowledge that there’s something much darker and more dangerous underlying my negative feelings for him.
Maybe it’s actually perfect. But I do feel antagonism toward him. Maybe it would make it hotter. Fuel it in an even more delicious way. That’s so messed up. But isn’t all of this?
“I’m an expert,” he says. “And lucky for you. Because if you’re going to do this you do not want an inexperienced rigger.”
I know enough terminology to know that a rigger is the person who does the tying and the model is the one who has the rope work done on her. And I’m very clear about which side of the fence I want to be on. I’m very clear about the fact that I want to be the one who isn’t in control for once.
I suddenly feel every bit of our age gap.
He’s had years of experience with BDSM. He has this whole life away from here.
I know that, I’m very aware of it, and I use it to invalidate the kind of ranch work that he does.
To turn him into someone who doesn’t deserve to own pieces of our land, but I’ve never really sat with what it means.
That he knows more than me. That he’s experienced a hell of a lot more of everything than me.
That he has something to teach me.
My palms are starting to feel damp, but then, I’m wet between my legs, too, and that has nothing to do with fear. Or maybe it does have a little bit to do with fear.
I’m not immune to the attraction created by fear, clearly. And for me, the two are pretty closely linked.
I have a shared language with him, and that surprises me.
I might not know even a fraction of what he does, but I know it.
And no one else here does. Not as far as I know, and I’m not going to go walk into a bar, throw a dart, and ask some man to tie me up.
For all the reasons he just said, but also…
I look up at him.
He is the reason I feel this way. I know it.
He’s a catastrophic event in my life. He changed me the moment that he touched me, and it shouldn’t have been sexual.
I know that it shouldn’t. But it was. It changed something fundamentally inside of me and I don’t know how to change it back. I’ve never known that. Well, I tried.
I got with the nicest guy I could find. One that fit into my actual life. One that matched the tone. I’m the one who runs everything. I’m the one who does everything. It stands to reason that I would fit into a relationship that way, but it didn’t work for me.
There’s this deep part of myself that feels so unsatisfied. That feels so exhausted. And if I run from him now, what I might even running back to?
He’s now the keeper of my secrets. Secrets that no one else knows.
And it’s this strange dichotomy, because I don’t like him— quite the opposite. But because of that I suppose I don’t have to please him.
Liar.