Chapter 25
twenty-five
cam
“The limits you gave me while we were at Damian’s…” Saúl’s words woke me up. I hadn’t fallen asleep per se—I wasn’t that bad of a sidekick—but I’d been dozing off for the last… hour, maybe? Oops. “Do they always apply, or was it just for that scene?”
Surprising no one, my brain had no problem plaguing me with images of that scene and the limits he was talking about. No anal. No CBT. No sensory deprivation.
“Is it a problem if they were?” I challenged out of principle—and because I needed some time if he wanted me to give an answer that made some amount of sense.
“No, darlin’.” He smiled ruefully. “I want to own you. I’m flexible in the how.”
Fuck.
That sounded…
I shifted on my seat. Sweatpants were still the superior roadtrip attire, but they could design some that made it easier to hide cocks thickening because they didn’t get the memo that a serious conversation was coming.
“I’m… Okay, so CBT is, um, a soft limit, and sensory deprivation is all good when I don’t have an audience, and, um, I’m going to start rambling now, but…
So I keep reading people in forums and stuff that are like fuck douching every time, and you don’t need to douche, just keep a balanced diet and like a million other things, and I mean, more power to them?
But I’m kind of anal about it, pun fully intended.
” Before he could berate me for it, I took a deep breath.
Daddy didn’t say anything, but I visualized him praising me for it, and it was almost just as good as the real thing.
“Anyway. It’s not like I need scheduled sex or anything, but I didn’t want to kill the vibe by rushing to the shower, and I didn’t have anything with me anyway, so… That’s why.”
“Noted.” Was that a growl in the back of Daddy’s throat? It wasn’t helping my situation, was all. “Are you in a more Little headspace, or can I be frank?”
The question didn’t make sense at first—but Daddy was nothing if not careful.
I’d known that from the beginning; it showed in everything, from how he handled the horses to how he addressed everyone in the sanctuary.
But he kept proving himself, showing so much consideration, it blew my mind.
Sure, there was a chance that he was doing the bare minimum, and I’d just been burned too many times.
I didn’t care.
“You can be frank.” I curled my fingers around the edges of the seat.
The leather there was peeling, rougher, and definitely not as nice as the one in the swing. I should ask him if he had a swing like that in the house, but the struggle to not seek friction was hard enough as it was.
Daddy spared me a glance before returning his eyes to the road. I understood the necessity of it, but if I glowered at the tar before us… Well, that was between me and… Me.
Yeah.
“I keep picturing your ass and thighs bruised up on my lap.” He let out a deep exhale before adjusting himself.
I supposed it was a good thing I wasn’t the only one unaffected but damn, now I really wasn’t going to stop thinking about it, was I?
The shape of his cock was not one I was easily forgetting.
“Gotta keep reminding myself it’s not a good idea with how many hours you’ll have to be sitting after. ”
“I don’t sit much in the sanctuary.”
I’d thought I would when I first got the position, but it was more grueling than I’d imagined.
Even when there weren’t any emergencies or wounded animals to take care of, checking in with the workers and making time to get closer to the animals so that they were used to our scents meant a lot of moving around.
Not that it would’ve changed my answer much. Feeling those bruises every time I tried to get comfortable days after they had been caused might even be better than the actual bruising. I liked the physical, constant reminder, the discomfort that was impossible to ignore and all-encompassing.
I liked how turned on it kept me.
Daddy cleared his throat. “I’m aware.”
I so wanted to lean forward and tease the bulge in his jeans. Which meant finding something to distract myself with.
“How does it work? I mean, being a Sadist on top of a Daddy?”
I licked my lips once the words were out of my mouth, and I didn’t have to pretend my throat wasn’t as dry as it felt.
The question had been plaguing me, though.
We hadn’t done a lot more than making out and giving each other blow jobs while at the event, but every time, afterwards, he’d cradle me and be so fucking perfect and sweet.
I started wondering how the other side of the coin worked.
He had said he was a Sadist, that he didn’t play that way with anyone until he trusted them, which implied his Sadism went beyond a few spankings here and there—and it was confirmed by his fantasies involving me developing bruises.
But weren’t the two types of Domination counterintuitive?
How could he be that caring and nauseatingly sweet at times, and hurt me until I cried on the next breath?
Hell, even back at Damian’s… My toes curled at the thought of it. He hadn’t hurt me in a traditional sense, but there had been little of the caring Daddy look as he pushed me over the edge and licked my tears away.
“I’m not sure,” he said. The admission was enough to bring me fully to the present.
A Dom admitting they didn’t know something?
I would’ve fanned myself if I wasn’t frozen on the spot.
“I get different things out of them, and I seek them out for different reasons, too. Both make me feel in control and powerful, but that’s about it.
Sadism is about seeing my own power and the trust someone puts in me, but also their strength to take what I’m doling out.
Being a Daddy is about the trust, too, but it’s more about seeing their vulnerability. ”
He clicked his tongue, shaking his head with a grimace.
I could relate to the struggle of knowing you weren’t explaining yourself quite right, but I thought it made sense.
If I wasn’t getting it all wrong just because, he was saying it was about getting the full picture of a sub, and that tracked with his intensity and everything else I knew of him.
Or maybe I just wanted someone that intense on my corner, someone to see every speck of me and stick around regardless.
Not that it would actually happen.
I could ignore the pit in my stomach and be selfish while it lasted, though.
“Should I return the question?” Daddy asked. He drummed his fingers against the wheel like he did every time before he found an excuse to park the truck in some service stop and get his hands on me. I could be observant when I had the proper motivation. “You’re Little and a masochist, too.”
Huh.
I hadn’t considered that.
“I like the sharp sensations and the physicality. They get me out of my head, and let’s face it, I probably watched too much porn or something before my time that crossed my wires all wrong, so that I get this turned on by it, but…
When I’m strapped somewhere waiting for a Sadist to strike, there’s only lust and desire and whatever’s happening to my body.
The days after are the best. It feels like I’m claimed, like I’m marked and I can’t escape it.
” I squirmed, fingers digging into the peeling leather.
There were more cars around us than there had been on our way in, and we hadn’t talked about what could happen here.
“When I’m Little, it’s just about comfort and feeling safe and warm and… loved.”
Nope, I didn’t choke out on the last word. Nothing to see here, Sir.
“You’re good, darlin’.” Saúl—Daddy; I really didn’t know what was going on with all these scrambled thoughts—took one hand off the wheel to rest it on my thigh. Was it dangerously close to my cock, or was I just seeing things? Jury was still out. “I want to give you all that.”
“You do?” I took a sharp breath. “Um. Why? I mean, I’m a mess. Did I mention that? Like, I want it, so fucking badly, but…”
I didn’t know why I kept self-sabotaging.
This morning, before getting in the truck, I’d grabbed my phone and opened the message I’d sent Kara.
It showed as read just like before, which was not new, but my heart somersaulted down to my stomach and I had no idea how I went through the notions of breakfast without raising any alarms, but now I was back to thinking about it, which was not good.
Most importantly, I was not good.
“What brought this on now?”
Daddy—Saúl; seriously, what was wrong with me?—squeezed my leg when I didn’t answer right away. It wasn’t intentional. Words lodged in the back of my throat, unable to come out.
Breathe. Breathing was important. I knew that.
I was more bothered by the fact that I had to remember. That I had to keep doing this to myself and couldn’t go five minutes without breaking down or going in circles about something that should’ve been fixed already.
“Kara.” The name burned my lungs, past my vocal words; it left a bitter taste in my mouth, sucking the air out of the truck as if I wasn’t having enough trouble breathing. “She read my text.”
Saúl hummed. “Yes, we covered this.”
“Well, yeah.” I didn’t have it in me to feel enraged over the condescension that wasn’t even there.
It was a simple statement. It just didn’t do anything to keep me from slumping down, thoughts of keeping my libido in check forgotten.
“I just hate myself. I obviously shouldn’t have texted her.
I shouldn’t have hired a fucking PI because how violating is that?
And, fuck, I shouldn’t have like basically ghosted her. Who the fuck does that?”
“More people than you’d think,” Saúl sighed. “But you’re right. Those weren’t the best choices you could’ve made.”
A moan slipped out. It was so not appropriate. I’d never been very good at keeping a filter. And just because I knew I was wrong and deserved to be punished for it didn’t mean I enjoyed it happening per se.
My gut churned as I tried to think of things to say.
Instead, I kept thinking back to chats and voice and video calls with Kara.
Of how fucking sick I’d felt during the months leading up to her dropping off the face of the Earth, how my stomach revolted every time I chose to not reply to a text or only gave a one-liner as if it was at all sufficient.
“So why should I have the right to be here? To be calling you Daddy and getting all the rewards that come with it?”
Saúl grimaced. There was no way he wouldn’t have given me the boot already if we weren’t inside his truck in the middle of an interstate road.
The thought was not comforting.
“You don’t have the right to… much, in this life,” he said. His voice was measured, too even in how he pronounced every word with intention behind it. “All you have are chances you can take.”
“So…” I frowned. Granted, I’d never been good with metaphors or whatever that was supposed to be. “You’re saying that I don’t have the right to call you Daddy, but I can take the chance to do it.”
“Pretty much.”
“But what about everything else?” I pushed. “Everything I’ve done that I can’t fix?”
Everything that had weighed down and decided all my choices for the past few years. I kept that last part to myself. Not sure why.
“You make the amends that mean you can live with it, whatever that means for you, Cam.”
“But aren’t consequences important?”
“They are,” Saúl confirmed. It was both a relief and another reason to be confused. “I imagine you’ve already given yourself a bunch of those.”
“I mean…”
He wasn’t wrong. I just didn’t feel like conceding his point was right. Truthfully, I didn’t know what I was after. I got the feeling that was the crux of the issue. I had isolated myself from everything and everyone, convinced myself I deserved nothing that brought me joy.
Then, I’d jumped at the chance to interview so that I could be even more isolated, so that I could repent or something.
And yeah, it had backfired, but I didn’t know that it would’ve helped, even if the sanctuary hadn’t come with Saúl, or his sister, or any of the volunteers who looked up to me, even when I tried my best to stay humble and get it in their heads that I was not the be-all end-all of veterinary studies.
My skin itched with the need for something else, but I couldn’t tell what.
I couldn’t process any of it. I couldn’t look in the mirror and say, Yes, if someone straps me to a cross and makes me bleed thirty times, I will be absolved.
It was disingenuous. Punishments were fun.
Hence, people referred to them as funishments.
They could build all the discourse they wanted about behavioral modification or anything else, but punishments were not meant to take away real-life stuff.
And that deeply seated knowledge left me with nowhere else to turn.
“Can I ask you something personal, darlin’?”
Huh?
The question came off weird given the subject matter.
I forced myself to bob my head up and down regardless. “Sure?”
“When’s the last time you’ve seen a therapist?”
Oh.
I glanced down. “About… two years ago, maybe? I check in with a psychiatrist for my meds, but those appointments are very meh.”
I hadn’t needed a refill since the first month of moving, either.
Not that my anxiety had been healed. Exhibit A was this whole conversation.
I was a fucking mess. I’d accepted I’d always be, but I’d never relied a lot on meds.
I’d always used them as an emergency thing, not something I took on a daily basis.
Sometimes I didn’t even take them in case of an emergency, either. Certainly not when I was busy or had a million other things to do and didn’t want to risk the time it would make me lose.
Psychiatrists were split fifty-fifty between loving me and hating me for the outlook.
Psychologists tended to be on board until they realized the second part of it.
The online community? The groups that were more curated seemed to be more compassionate.
The major ones thought I was ableist with a lot of internalized bullshit to work through.
Some days, I could be more aware of the layers and factors that went into it.
Other days, I didn’t know who to believe, so I just buried my head in the sand and pushed forward.
“Can I ask why?”
“Therapy made me feel better.” After I’d found one that didn’t make me feel as confused as all those forums did. “It didn’t feel fair.”
The stuff about the insurance providers had been the perfect excuse, but at the core of it? Yeah, it had nothing to do with the corporate America headaches.
Saúl huffed. “I hate this fucking road.”
“Um. Why?”
And where did that even come from?
“Because there’s nowhere to stop for another hour, and you’re killing me here, darlin’.”
Oh.