Chapter 3
Three
Mira
I stared at his handsome face—his questioning gaze, as he looked down at me through my window.
My heart thundered against my ribs. The look he was giving me was tame right now, but far more serious than it had been in the hospital.
I wanted to tell him it was none of his concern what I was doing.
But I was sort of trapped measuring the arch of his eyebrow, the curve of his frown and the depth of his eyes.
I knew this look. I could draw it from memory.
Glancing at his square jawline, I looked for tightness. A firmly clenched jaw meant I was in big trouble vs a relaxed one which meant there was time to negotiate before he made any decisions about what he would do to me.
I straightened, reminding myself that information was moot. I wasn’t his submissive. I was no one’s submissive. Well, I was Rawhide’s but that was a place not a person, so it was safe.
Speaking of safe, being near him wasn’t. It made my heart feel both inflated and crushed all at the same time. Because I wished more than anything, that he’d scoop me into his arms, take me back to Rawhide, and make me his Girlie again.
But wishes weren’t meant to come true, and what I needed was for him to stop being all Daddy-Dom-like and bossy before I damn well crumbled.
Crumbling wasn’t an option. And neither was going back to being his Girlie. I didn’t do Daddy-Doms anymore. I only played with the Doms who wanted a weekend partner, or a scene or two, nothing lasting, no strings and no sex.
At one time though, he’d been all I’d wanted.
Reaching down to the floor, I grabbed my book, smacking it onto the seat next to me. I didn’t need the reminder of how weak that made me—my mother had proved that to me a year ago.
“I promised myself when I brought you into this world with no one at my side, I would be here for you always. That I’d take care of you. But somewhere along the road, I made a mistake. I took away your ability to take care of yourself.”
“I don’t need someone to take care of me, Mom. I’m a fully functioning adult. We’ve been over this.”
“Then why was Josh taking care of you?"
“He wasn’t. I paid half the bills, took care of the house, and went to work. And I don’t want to talk about that jerk. It was the worst time of my life.”
She snorted and it was so unlike her. “You called him sir, right? He made all the decisions? Spanked you when you disobeyed him?”
I was speechless. Humiliated and speechless. My mouth opened and closed, and my face flushed so hot I broke out in a sweat.
“That’s … that’s not what that was!” I protested.
“I’m not stupid, Mira. When we went to Florida on vacation, the walls were thin. I overheard him scolding you for overspending and then I heard him spank you like a naughty child.” Her fists had landed on her hips.
“It was sexual.” I swallowed hard. “A game we played.”
“A game? Why did he control everything all the time then?” She shook her head. “People don’t play sex games twenty-four-seven, Mira. And even if so… why is it when your relationship ended, you came back to me, jobless, homeless and broken?” She huffed angrily. “Fully functioning adult my ass.”
My eyes went wide. Who was this woman? She never talked like this. Where was my sweet, caring, and over-protective mother?
“Because—” I threw up my hands, ignoring the way my stomach roiled and churned from her observations.
“It doesn’t matter now. I’m in school like you wanted, rebuilding my life, and I’m not that girl anymore.
I don’t even paint much now.” In my head, I wasn’t so convinced though.
Because I lived, worked, and went to school at a BDSM ranch.
A place where if I screwed up, I was punished, not kicked out, fired, or failed.
It was like doing life with a safety net.
“Mira, I have cancer.”
I choked on whatever I was about to say next and when she said her next sentence, I collapsed to my knees.
“It’s terminal. Six months is all they’ve given me.”
Tears streaming down my face, I begged her to tell me she was lying. That this was some lesson she was trying to teach me. But no, it wasn’t a lie, it wasn’t a lesson. It was a cruel truth.
Finally spent and unable to shed another tear, I asked, “Mom, what can I do for you? What do you need?”
“I need you to show me you’ll be fine without me. Show me you don’t need some guy like Josh to take care of you. I can’t die knowing that I left you like this.”
And it had been at that moment I’d decided as soon as school was done, I was done with that side of myself. BDSM would be strictly sexual, not a twenty-four-seven lifestyle, and not something I needed, but something I did occasionally for fun or maybe not at all.
Living and going to school at the Ranch meant I still had to follow the rules, and accept discipline if someone deemed it necessary, like my professor or Master Derek, or any other Dom who worked there, but I’d stopped looking for a D/s relationship and made it clear to anyone I played with I wasn’t interested in long-term or monogamous.
And with Master Derek too, since he had this sneaky habit of playing matchmaker.
Reality and fantasy were forever separate.
My mom needed to see that I’d be fine when she died, so she could stop worrying and let go when the time came.
And I needed to see it too, because once she was gone, that was it.
There was no one to fall back on, no childhood home to run to, no family as backup if another man like Josh came into my life.
I had to stand alone like the proverbial cheese.
I blinked at my former Daddy standing in front of me and my heart ached.
“I thought you were going to go home?”
Dr. Lake’s voice was smooth and deep, and I was weak because, as the memories suddenly came pouring back, I didn’t stop them.
“Naughty girlie.” He circled me, speaking in that low velvety voice while he had me tied down to a Rawhide spanking bench. My legs spread wide, my waiting pussy wet, and my ass tingling in anticipation as he smacked a leather strap against the palm of his hand.
“Do you know why Daddy’s about to strap your ass and thighs?”
“Yes, Daddy. I’m your naughty girlie and you can do whatever you want to me.”
“While those things are all true, tonight’s about something else. It’s about getting you out of your head. You told Daddy you feared what would happen when our time was up, yeah?”
“Yes, I am afraid of that, Daddy. I don’t want you to leave.”
“Well, Daddy is too. So tonight, we’re going to scene hard, make sure we’re both too exhausted to think about it, then I’m going to fuck you so thoroughly, that you can’t move a muscle all night as I hold you in my arms.”
Gah, it was exactly what I’d needed then, and even more so now. When was the last time I had a night without hours of fighting off intrusive thoughts and waking up exhausted?
I could practically feel the fullness of the plug filling my ass.
How the Ranch’s linked horseshoes emblem on the end hit the light as he made me spread my cheeks to see it in the mirror.
How he meant it to remind me I was his girlie as he used me for his pleasure, while denying mine for a good long time just because he could.
Holyfuckingshit! I was wet and throbbing just from the memory.
Guilt washed over me, cold and slimy, as I looked past him to the fifth floor, six windows from the left, at my mother’s room window. What kind of person was horny all the time while their mom was in a bed fighting for every single day she got to live? How could I be thinking of my own needs?
“I was going home,” I said, shaking my head. “I am going home.”
“I hate to beat a dead horse here, Mira, but…” Dr. Lake’s words trailed off.
He must have mistaken my look at the window as longing. Ugh, if he only knew what just went through my head… he’d run. What kind of a person did that? I didn’t deserve his empathy or care.
But was that really true? I wasn’t doing it because I didn’t love my mom, or care that she was dying. I did it more because she was dying. Because despite all the other complicated emotions I had, watching her die made me grasp and fight to cling to anything that made me feel alive.
And nothing made me feel more alive than BDSM, sex, and being forced to stay in the moment. Hard to obsess about the future when you’re anchored to the moment by a man holding your throat and rubbing your clit. Could I really be blamed for longing for that?
“I know you want to be with her every second of the day, Mira, but you can’t afford to let your own health fail. What good will you be then?”
I blinked, fighting to keep the overwhelming emotions down. If he noticed this about me, so would my mother. And I didn’t want to burden her any further.
“No good,” I murmured. “I was actually going to go home though. I was just too tired to drive and thought I’d close my eyes for a few minutes before I did.”
He narrowed his eyes slightly in a way that told me I was about to be scolded, which had the wrong effect because there was no way he meant to make my panties wet. Gush of arousal, gush of guilt, what a terrible cycle I was in tonight.
“Funny, your eyes didn’t look closed. In fact, they looked like they were studying.”
He crossed his arms like he had earlier.
This time I couldn’t see how defined his arms were with his jacket on, but earlier when he was wearing scrubs, I’d definitely noticed how beautiful they were with thick muscles, plump veins winding up his forearms, and light brown hair scattered over golden tanned skin.