Chapter 15
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“I was starting to think that you didn’t actually exist outside of the club,” I tease, pulling the cork from a bottle of wine. “Just a figment of The Haven’s imagination.”
“Are you saying you fantasize about me, darling?” Isla asks with a quirk of her brow.
Laughing, I fill a glass with red wine and slide it over to her. “Nightmares, maybe.”
A knowing silence rest between us as I take my glass of water to the couch, Isla following not far behind me. I can feel her contemplative gaze at the side of my head as we drop onto the soft leather cushions.
Years of watching and reading the people around her makes it nearly impossible to get anything past Isla – nearly . She picks up on cues from me that most other people don’t. Almost everyone in my life, whether passing through or staying longterm, seems to take me at face value: what I show them is what they believe to be the entire truth.
That game doesn’t typically work with Isla.
“You haven’t come in since your freakout,” she notes.
“It wasn’t a ‘freakout.’ I don’t freak out.”
“Looked like a duck, quacked like a duck, love,” she argues. “Come back for the next newcomers’. She won’t be there.”
“And you know this…?”
“Because I asked her if she was coming, obviously,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “We already have more attendees than last time. We could use your help. Bring that cute brother of yours,” she finishes with a shimmy of her shoulders.
I move to set my glass on a coaster waiting for me on the coffee table, shooting her a quizzical look with a loud laugh. “ Graham? He would keel over and die.” With a sigh, I lean back into the couch and prop my feet on the corner of the table, crossing my ankles. “I’ll be there. But that does not mean that I guarantee any entertainment.”
I haven’t even considered visiting The Haven again since the fiasco with the poor woman that I abandoned there. Memories haunted me all that night, assaulting me with guilt. Isla was right; I had no control over it, and I had no way to know that something so normal for us would suddenly become so damaging to her.
April was obviously fine when I saw her; thriving, even.
That doesn’t serve to stop the shame that I carry over that night, and there’s no convincing myself anymore that I’m not still bothered by it.
I wasn’t just her Dom, I was her husband, and I’ll never believe that it wasn’t my job to see it coming.
I’m not sure that I’ll ever be ready to take on another sub after that, even if I’ve let my mind wander to places it never should have.
Even if something as simple as adjusting the lapels on a client’s blazer for her set my body on fire.