Chapter 21
NIA
“S orry,” I say, throwing my purse over my shoulder as I close my car door. “I totally lost track of time.”
“My submissive would be flogged once for every minute that she was late,” Brody tells me, standing at the hood of my car with his arms crossed over his chest. “If it happened again, she would be caned.”
My stomach does somersaults at the authority in his voice and the sternness behind his normally-gentle eyes as he scolds me. Clutching the handle of my purse more tightly on my shoulder, I step closer to him in the hope that it will squash whatever has him so irritated with me.
“Is this because I called you—”
“If your Dom gives you an order, you follow it,” he says. “Lesson two.”
My teeth find my lower lip, pulling it in just slightly as I offer him a nod. “Yes, Sir.”
I don’t miss the deep inhale that he pulls in.
“Save the honorifics for your Dom,” he tells me, turning to walk toward a building that hardly has any signage out front, save the small three-way yin yang design that I recognize from online.
What was an unassuming building outside is anything but once we enter. Red walls house shelves upon shelves of toys, tools, and things that I’m not sure that I want to be able to identify.
A shopping basket is placed in my hands before Brody reaches for his own.
“You’re building an aftercare kit,” he says. “Following consent, aftercare is the second most important part of a scene.” Turning to face me, he adds, “And no, a scene does not need to be intense to warrant aftercare. Everyone should receive aftercare.”
“That sounds like a lot of work,” I comment.
“If your partner cares about you, taking care of your needs shouldn’t feel like they’re doing work.” He says it so plainly that it leaves me taken aback. “A Dom’s job is to take care of their sub, above all else. That job should be done enthusiastically.”
As we move toward a shelf which looks all too familiar to one of the supply closets in the hospital, he reaches for several of the items laid out, dropping them into his own basket. He explains their purposes to me as he picks each of them up, and I follow suit with more items than I expect to, dropping them into my basket.
I walk with Brody through an aisle filled with more types of rope than I even knew existed, and I catch his eyes moving toward me occasionally, but he never reaches for any of the items.
“Are you not buying any?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “I prefer to work with leather or steel, and I have plenty of both already.”
“Right, of course you do,” I nod, trying to ignore the flip in my stomach and the heat shooting between my legs at the thought of how he might use that leather.
I like the Brody that I see in his office; strong, confident and capable. But the version of him that I’ve seen outside of his office is incredibly intriguing. He’s commanding and powerful and…he inspires certain ideas that a client and friend should not have.
It takes too many moments too long for me to realize how close my body has come to his. I’m not sure that a piece of paper could slip between us at this point, and the smell and heat of him have wrapped themselves around me like a warm blanket on a cold winter evening.
“Since you’re just my teacher,” I say with a clearing of my throat, forcing myself to step away from the magnetic pull of his body, “can I break off and do my own shopping?”
“Be my guest,” he tells me with the corner of his mouth quirking up into a mischievous smile.
I round the corner as quickly as possible, blowing out a steadying, clarifying breath as soon as there is a solid barrier between the two of us.
“Can I help you find something?”
Turning toward the voice next to me, I’m met with a woman who looks younger than I am, which is only slightly embarrassing. Her hair is dyed green and black, the colors split straight down the middle of her head. The top half of it has been pulled up into pigtails that sit at the side of her head, and her black cat-eye glasses frame blue eyes rimmed with thick black liner.
My eyes scan the shelf in front of me, lined with a rainbow array of vibrators and dildos which look to replicate a number of species, human and otherwise. At least six of them look like different types of tentacles.
“Oh, no, I’m—” I stop myself as I start to wave her off, deciding that a moment of embarrassment is worth pushing through. “Actually, yes. I just want something basic. No bells and whistles, no octopi, just…”
“I get you,” she laughs. Reaching to the left of her, she pulls a small box from its peg and hands it to me. “The rose is our most popular vibe right now. The suction makes it—” folding her fingers together, she presses them to her lips and kisses them. “Chef’s kiss.”
“Is it quiet?”
“As a church mouse,” she whispers.
“Thank you,” I tell her, turning the box over in my hand before I drop it into my basket, trying to bury it beneath the other items I’ve grabbed. “I— thank you.”
She leaves me with a wink and a pat to my arm, and I spend far too long not moving from my spot before I take off in search of Brody again.
I find him at the back of the shop, standing in front of a wall lined with varying tools which look to be made of a variety of leathers and metals. His hand is sliding down the length of a whip, the handle of which ends in what has to be twenty different strips of leather.
He’s handling it with the same gentleness that one might use to handle their lover.
It’s not an inspection; it’s a caress .
Setting my basket on the ground next to me, I reach for the same whip, which forces his eyebrows to shoot up as he turns toward me.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” He asks.
His eyes glue themselves to the leather in my hand as I pull it through my fingers. “Maybe,” I tell him truthfully.
Holding my free arm in front of me, I slide the leather strips across my skin. They’re cool and soft, not nearly as harsh as I’d expected them to be. I lift the handle just a few inches above my skin, bringing it down without much force.
The second time that I lift it, I raise it higher, this time, bringing it down harshly enough that it smacks against my skin, and I gasp at the contact. Brody tenses next to me.
“I marked whipping as yellow on the paper you gave me,” I tell him quietly, keeping my eyes on my arm as I smack myself again.
Brody’s hands find the pockets of his slacks and he straightens his posture as he tells me, “You’re holding a flogger . Some people can be nit-picky about the differences.”
Like you, it would seem, I tease him in my head.
“It stings,” I say, braving a glance in his direction.
“Yes,” he nods, “it does.”
Twisting my arm to expose the sensitive skin at the inside of my wrist, I use the flogger one more time, gasping with a bite to my lower lip as it makes contact. My eyes meet Brody’s as my heart rate speeds up, and the ache between my legs that I was able to shove away before screams at me now.
My skin reddens as Brody reaches for the handle of the flogger, being careful not to let his skin touch mine – because technically, we’re in a lesson. Technically, he isn’t allowed to touch me – and he puts it back into its place on the wall.
I feel more than I see him looking at my skin. My own eyes glue to the angry streaks spread across my wrist and forearm before I venture to look in his direction, only to wind up pierced through the heart with his eyes, the color in them nearly swallowed by his widened pupils.
My fingertips trace the streaks of red on my arm, making my skin tingle underneath them, and my teeth pull once again at my lip, chewing on it. Biting it.
“You’ll want to add snacks to that,” Brody finally says, inclining his head toward my basket. “Chocolate and hard candies are always a good choice.”
“In case I get hungry, or…?”
“It helps with recovery and sub drop after a scene,” he tells me.
The look on his face tells me that he hadn’t planned on talking to me about either of those things; but that his plan has changed in the last five minutes.
“Sub drop,” I echo, my voice nearing a whisper.
“Think of it like decompression sickness for your emotional state,” he says. “Everyone’s needs are different, but now you have the foundation built.”
“Right.”
Neither of us move for a long time.
Frozen in place.
Frozen in whatever the hell it is hanging in the air between us.
When Brody finally clears his throat and reaches for both baskets, he nods toward the cash registers up front, and I follow his lead until we reach them.
He greets the green-haired young woman with a warm smile as he places the baskets in front of her, and she quickly scans the items that both of us had picked out before I have the chance to reach for my wallet.
When I move to say something, an assertive look thrown over Brody’s shoulder stops me in my tracks and sends that same flutter back into my chest.
When we reach my car, he hands me one of the black plastic bags, being careful still to not let our skin touch as he drops the handle onto my waiting fingers. “Your homework tonight is to practice aftercare for yourself,” he says, wearing a faint smile that tells me he was paying attention to every item that I’d picked out.
To the vibrator that he just bought for me.
“I get homework?” I chuckle.
“Nothing that you can’t handle, Ms. Cavanaugh,” he tells me. As he steps away from me, heading for his SUV, he says, “I’ll see you in my office on Friday. Make me proud.”
With Katie tucked into bed, lunches made for tomorrow, and nothing else on the to-do list that I can use as an excuse to procrastinate, I perch stiffly at the edge of my bed, my damp hair draped down my back and a robe tied loosely around my body.
I stare at the red silicone rose in my hand, studying its peaks and valleys, every contour and feature of it before I finally click the power button with my thumb.
The girl from the store was right – it’s nearly silent.
I press the pad of my index finger over the space intended for use, only to be met with strong suction that pulls at my skin. With a giggle, I set the toy next to me as I slip the tie from my robe, pulling the fabric away from itself to reveal the matching satin bra and panty set that I put on after my shower.
My heart hammers as I push the panties down my thighs, kicking them off at my ankles, and I rest my head on my pillows. With my breath growing ragged, my hand finds my breast, kneading at my flesh while I run through my shopping trip with Brody.
He saw the way that I enjoyed the flogger on my skin.
He saw the vibrator that I picked out.
He paid for it – and he sent me home with the thinly-veiled instruction to use it.
Brody wants me to masturbate tonight; and for all that I know, he’s at home doing the same thing. He may even be thinking about me the same way that I’m thinking about him.
Maybe that’s delusional.
“God, what am I doing?” I ask myself, pulling my hand away from my breast as I sit up. “This is insane.”
Clicking off the power to the toy, I drop it onto my bed and secure my robe back into place.
I move to my dresser, where a grocery bag filled with chocolates and hard candy wait for me, and I peel open a bar of dark chocolate.
This is so stupid , I tell myself as I pick up my phone, carefully framing a photo of the opened chocolate bar and just enough of the toy for it to be spotted. I groan in embarrassment as I send the photo to Brody, an attempt to ‘prove’ that I’d done my homework.
A message comes through in less than two minutes, and I hate myself for wondering why his phone was so close to his reach.
What?
Despite the fact that I want to shut off my phone and pretend that I had never sent the picture of the stupid chocolate bar, I flip my head upside down, shaking out my hair until it’s no longer neatly combed, and I pinch my cheeks to redden them.
I perch onto the edge of my bed again, using one hand to hold the top of my robe together while I snap a photo with the other, and I send it off to him, not letting myself think too deeply about it. My phone buzzes less than thirty seconds later with a text alert.
As I stare at his text with my jaw hanging open, I can’t help but to remember what I’d told him when we went to The Haven. That sex was never something that I just wanted to do; it was always out of necessity, never desire. I’d never felt an ache that begged to be touched.
I don’t think I can say that, anymore.