Chapter 8 #2
“Cynnie’s coming over for dinner tonight. Anything she doesn’t like? I know she has a dairy allergy.”
Emily beams, the little minx. “She likes almost anything, but she loves peanut butter and green beans.”
My stomach twists. “Uh, together?”
“No, silly.” She beckons me after her as she walks through the great room into the kitchen.
“I have a really good recipe for sesame chicken. Super-easy and lots of peanut butter. There isn’t actually any butter in peanut butter, so it’s safe for her.
You can put green beans on the side. Sauté the green beans in sesame oil instead of butter.
She’s okay with diary in stuff that’s been baked, so bread is okay. ”
“I make a mean garlic bread.”
“That would be really nice with the sesame chicken,” Emily says.
“Okay, thanks for this, girlie-girl. Can you text me the recipe?”
Emily nods and goes up on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “Relax and be yourself with Cynnie. She’s going to love you. I know you were holding back yesterday.”
I shake my head at her, irritated by my own transparency.
“It’s okay,” Emily says quickly. “I only noticed because I know you well. No one else thought so.”
“I just didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
“You didn’t. Mary Lisa should know better than to try to monopolize you the way she was.”
I rub the back of my neck uncomfortably. “She wants me to call her.”
“Do you want to call her?” Emily peers at me.
“Not really, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings, either.”
“You shouldn’t feel obligated. Mary Lisa has a daddy. She doesn’t have any business flirting with you when she’s already committed to her daddy.”
Thinking of the women who used to hang all over Logan, without any apparent commitment on either side, I shrug. “Is she? Maybe they have an open relationship or something.”
“I don’t think so.” Emily gives me another searching look. “Do you like Mary Lisa better than Cynnie?”
“I barely know either of them, Em.”
“Mary Lisa’s a—”
“Emily,” Logan growls from across the entire great room. “Are you gossiping?”
Emily’s lip seal together like one of those Zip-lock bags. I can’t control a chuckle.
“It’s okay, girlie. I know what Mary Lisa is.” High maintenance is what Mary Lisa is. “It’s Cynnie who’s coming over for dinner tonight. Thanks for that recipe.”
She stretches up to plant another kiss on my cheek before she waves me off to follow Logan into the basement.
“Don’t let Emmy bully you, mate,” Logan says as he leads me down the stairs.
“She really wants to hook me up with Cynnie, doesn’t she?”
“Yeah. She just wants her friends to be happy and I’m good with that but take things at your own speed. It’s a lot to ask for you to start dating someone new and figure out how to be a Daddy-Dom at the same time. I had a hell of a lot of training before I tried to top anyone I was dating.”
“Uh, how’d you train if it wasn’t on the job?”
Logan turns at the bottom of the stairs to look at me. “I trained in a brothel. That one in Bangkok where Sneaker tried to order me a rim job, remember?”
“Jesus, really? I didn’t know you went back there.”
“Yeah, I spent six months learning how to be a dominant from the madam there. So don’t rush yourself. Take it slow. Your instincts are solid, but there are things that will pop up and surprise the shit out of you. Still happens to me with Emily.”
“Yeah?” That surprises me. Logan seems like he’s in complete control of Emily.
“A submissive’s not a doll, as much as we might like to call them our fuck-toys.
” He flashes white teeth at me. “They’re independent adults outside their relationship with us.
They have freewill. Sometimes they’re unreasonably fucking stubborn.
And you’ll never know them perfectly, so you’ll never have complete control over them.
That’s what keeps dominance interesting. ”
“But I’ve never seen Emily refuse to do something you told her to do,” I say as Logan hands me a weight belt and straps one around his own waist.
“She’s used her safe word.” Logan rubs his hands over his face, and I gather that’s a bad memory.
“That’s the closest she’s come to outright refusing to do something I told her to do.
And I’m glad she did. That’s why we have safe words.
But I hate that we got to that point. That I put her in a situation where she felt so unsafe she had to use her safe word. ”
Remembering what DirtyGurl told me about using her safe word, I ask, “Does it bother you when your submissive uses her safe word?”
“When Emmy does it, yeah. Fucks me all the hell up. I’m her daddy.
I’m supposed to keep her safe. If she feels so unsafe she’s needed to safe word, I’ve failed her.
” He sighs as we sit down on the mats under his weight bench to stretch out.
“Being a daddy is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, mate.
I’ve never been happier than I am with Emmy.
But it’s also the heaviest burden I’ve ever borne outside of leading men into battle.
It’s more than Emily’s life I hold in my hands.
It’s her soul. I’ve never been entrusted with someone’s soul before. I can’t let her down.”
I pull my right arm across my body, clamp my elbow with my forearm, and pull until I feel the muscles of my shoulder and upper back open up. “Lo, I don’t feel ready to take that on.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to right away. Don’t ask that of yourself.
Take it slow. You need space to make mistakes.
And to forgive yourself for them. I’m not very good at that, I’ll admit.
” Logan drops his stretch to rub his hands over his face again.
“Emmy and I are okay now, but we’ve had a really rough couple of days.
I’m still beating myself up about it. I left Emily with Miranda for an hour.
I came back before they expected me to and they were going at it.
Mir said some unforgivable things to Emily and instead of walking away like she knows she’s supposed to, Emmy stood up for herself.
I don’t blame her for that, but I hate that she had to. ”
I stop stretching to give him my full attention. Seeing them at the playgroup, I never would have guessed there was a moment of discord between them. The strain on Logan’s face, entirely apart from his injuries, says otherwise. “Is she okay?”
“She will be. We both will be. She wasn’t at the time. Miranda hurt her and scared the shit out of her and she snapped back and broke some of my rules. I punished her for breaking them and brought us back to where we should be, but we’re both pretty bruised.”
“Bruised?” I keep myself from recoiling only because of the obvious distress on Logan’s face.
“Internally. I’m more than a little beat up on the inside. Emily’s bruised on the outside, too. We’re both kind of a mess. So, we’re taking this week to reconnect and heal. You’re welcome to come over any time but we’re not going to be seeing much of anyone else.”
“I don’t want to intrude—”
“You’re not intruding. I wouldn’t have asked you over if I didn’t want you here.
You’re my friend. You’re Emily’s friend.
We’re both glad you’re here. But we’re taking a break from everything else.
We’re not going to the club this week. We’re not going out anywhere. We’re just going to be us, together.”
I’ve pulled back from the world plenty of times, but never with someone. I’ve never even wanted to invite someone into my cave. But as Logan says it, it’s something I realize I desperately want. Someone to get under the covers with and hide from the world.
“I—that seems like a good idea,” I offer.
Logan nods. “Something to keep in mind if things get fucked up between you and your little. It’s okay to pull back and just be together.”
“Are you still, you know, daddy and little while you’re just being together?”
“Yeah, because Emily finds a lot of mental and emotional relaxation in being little all the time. But every little is different. If you and your little need to just be together, they might not want to be daddy and little during that time. Taking a break isn’t always the worst thing.”
“Have you—has this happened before?” I ask.
Logan shakes his head. “And that’s all on me. It probably should have happened before, but I never got deeply invested enough in my subs to know we needed this type of retreat.”
“Lo, look, I barely understand the first thing about this, but you’re beating yourself down, and that’s not like you. I can see stuff happening with Miranda. Hell, I’d have been surprised if stuff didn’t happen with Miranda. I know you didn’t see it, but she’s always struck me as a venomous bitch.”
Logan pulls his knees up, rests his elbows on them, and sinks his head into his hands.
“I did see it. I never liked what she did to my other subs but I just passed it off as cattiness. When we negotiated our contract, Emmy told me she wanted to be a better person. The rules are designed to get her to rise above cattiness. To walk away from confrontation. And she did it perfectly once, but Miranda was too much and I should have anticipated that. I should have prevented it . . . when it’s your little, when it’s Emmy, it’s not just cattiness.
It’s a killing offense. It’s DefCon One.
It’s me bringing the nuclear fucking arsenal.
You have no idea how badly I want to retaliate, to hurt Miranda a thousand times worse than she ever even thought of hurting my baby doll.
I’ve been holding back because I know I’ll lose control if I start.
Nothing will stop me, not the law, not my morals, nothing.
And believe me, I want to. I want to strip her down to her fucking bones. ”
“Jesus, take a deep breath, buddy.”
Logan flexes his fingers vaguely, but I see him take a breath and let it out on a slow hiss.
“I get how you feel about Emmy. I know how I’d feel if anyone threatened her and she’s not even mine. But you can’t go down that road. If you go after Miranda like that and end up in jail, what happens to Em?”
Logan raises his head, fixing his bloodshot eyes on mine. “Why do you think I haven’t started?”
“Okay, I get it. And I get why you’re beating yourself up.
But it’s time to let it go. I haven’t seen you like this before, man, but I can tell you, it’s not healthy.
” I regurgitate all the spew the Navy’s therapists fed to me.
“Emily’s clearly not holding it against you.
You have to let this go or it’s going to eat you up. ”
“I know.” Logan sighs. “I’m trying to process it, but I can’t get past the fact that I invited Miranda here. I left them alone together. I opened the door to this.”
“And you picked up the pieces when it went fubar. Emily’s okay.
You’re okay. Miranda’s not dead. You’re not in jail.
Things could be a lot worse. Yeah, maybe it was a mistake leaving Emily with Miranda, but what were you just telling me about littles being independent adults outside their relationship with their daddy? ”
“Not Emmy. She wants to be little twenty-four-seven and I promised her I’d make that happen. I put the rules she broke in place to make it safe for her to always be little, and then I let a threat into her safe space. I failed her, Max. There’s no other way to see it.”
“So, every other little in the world is an independent adult outside their relationship with their daddy but Emmy’s not?”
Logan groans and drops his head back into his hands. “You wouldn’t think I’m overreacting if you’d seen her. She panicked. She ran away from me. From me. I’m supposed to be her safe place. She’s always supposed to be safe with her daddy and she wasn’t.”
“Easy, buddy, I didn’t say you were overreacting. But you can’t take something that big on yourself. You can’t protect her from the whole world.”
Logan pulls his hair into rumpled peaks. “Yes, I can. That’s what being a daddy is to a full-time little. That’s why I made the rules. They’re extensive. They’re complex. And they’re designed to make the world safe for her. Not fair maybe, but safe. And I failed even at that.”
I watch him for a long moment as he wrestles with something inhuman, impossible.
We both know how short life is. How uncertain.
We were both on the boat when one of our unit got his head blown open by a Somalian pirate’s bullet.
Logan was looking right at the guy. I was looking at Logan.
We both got spattered with Ernie’s brains.
We were all in full gear. There was no way the pirate was that good a shot; you can’t hit a guy’s earhole on a bouncing boat from another bouncing boat a hundred yards away.
It was that one in a billion and Ernie died because he turned around to yell something at Logan.
“Ernie,” I say quietly.
Logan groans again. “I know.”
“If that’s the standard you’re holding yourself to, Lo, you’re going to fail.
You can’t protect Emily from everything.
The world doesn’t work that way. It’s not fair and it’s not safe.
You’ve made it safer. You’ve given her space to turn into that wondrous person dancing around in your kitchen.
But that’s all you’re gonna be able to do.
You need to settle it with yourself. What’d you just tell me?
You need to give yourself space to make mistakes and forgive yourself for them. ”
“I’m not a baby Dom.”
“Is that what you call me?”
Logan tugs at his hair some more. “Fuck, no. I don’t mean it in a derogatory way, Max. Just that you’re still learning—”
“You’re not? You told me you’ve never been a daddy before. You told me you’re figuring it out as you go. You’re telling me to be ready to make mistakes and forgive myself but you’re holding yourself to some impossible higher standard? You’re not god, Lo, no matter what Emmy thinks.”
“I know that. I’m not Javier.” He sits back, rubs his hands over his face a final time, and pulls his elbow over his head in a stretch. “Maybe shit like this will keep me humble.”
I eye him for a long minute. “Yeah?”