Chapter 21 #2
Addie sat up with a gasp, glancing all around her. What was it? What was wrong? What was going on?
Had she fallen asleep in class? Or while her mother was droning on in one of her lectures?
But it wasn’t her mother’s face that she stared up into. No, this face was far more masculine and way more beautiful. And yes, it was possible for a face to be both masculine and beautiful at the same time.
“Cash,” she said, grimacing as she heard the breathy note in her voice. She sounded like she was staring at somebody that she loved. Oh, that was just embarrassing.
In order to cover up her embarrassment, she sat, but her forehead slammed straight into his chin, and he sat back with a groan of pain.
Oh, shoot. Oh, shoot.
“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to,” she said hastily. Her words were almost tripping over each other as she tried to force them out of her dry, sore throat.
Standing, she wrung her hands together, shifting her weight from foot to foot. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sor-eek!” she cried as he stood up.
Taking hold of her shoulders with his hands, he gave them a squeeze. “Addie, stop apologizing. I’m fine.”
“I hit you. I hurt you.”
Addie would never deliberately harm someone, and she felt horrible.
Cash drew her into a gentle embrace, and she found herself with her face pressed to his chest, nestled just under his shoulder. Oh my God. She’d already been held in his lap, but his hug? It was the best feeling in the world.
Addie slumped into him and let him support her.
“Hey, are you all right?” he asked.
To her shock, he placed an arm under her bottom, then lifted her into the air so her face was close to his. She rested there with her feet dangling in the air.
Should she wrap her legs around his hips? But wouldn’t that be weird?
Why had he picked her up? What was she meant to do? Oh, God. Was she making a mess of this? She was, wasn’t she?
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Are you not feeling well?” he asked. “You just slumped into me, and I was worried you were going to fall over.”
Oh God.
She had done that, hadn’t she?
“Sorry.” She buried her face into his chest.
“Addie, we have got to stop you apologizing for stuff all the time. Don’t be sorry. Just tell me what’s going on. Also, put your legs up around my hips. That can’t be comfortable.”
Her legs moved without her even thinking about it, wrapping themselves around his hips. Oh, yeah, that felt so much better.
“Good girl.”
Jesus, she thought she’d do just about anything to hear the words ‘good girl’ coming from his lips.
Which was kind of a scary thought when she considered it.
She would have to be careful because she couldn’t trust just anyone with that power over her.
“What are you thinking?” he asked her.
There was no way that she wanted to tell him what she was really thinking.
“Addie,” he said in a low voice, “I know you can tell me.”
Drat. How had he figured her out so quickly? No one figured her out this easily. Of course, most people didn’t actually bother to try.
“You can tell me anything, remember? We’re a team.”
Oh, how she wished that was true.
She really wanted to be a team with Cash, maybe for the rest of her life.
Stop, Addie. He’s not going to marry you, for God’s sake. He’s just being kind to you because he’s a kind person.
“I like when you call me a good girl,” she blurted out.
“That’s good,” he told her. “Because I like being able to call you a good girl. That isn’t what is worrying you, though.”
“It’s just when you call me that I think I’d do anything to hear it.”
“And you’re worried about what you might actually do, without really meaning to?”
She nodded. It sounded kind of ridiculous. She had her own mind, and she could think for herself. Two words didn’t have the power to make her do something.
At least they shouldn’t.
“Addie, it’s all right to like praise,” he said. “And even though it feels like you might do anything to hear those words, I know that you wouldn’t. I know that if someone told you to jump in front of a car and that you were a good girl if you did, that you wouldn’t.”
She was glad that he knew that.
“It can be a heady feeling, falling under someone else’s control, giving away your own. And while some people really do enjoy that full power switch, others prefer something a bit less intense.”
Right. She had read about people who were in a full 24/7 power exchange relationship, where the sub didn’t decide anything, not what she wore, or ate, or did.
And that sort of thing didn’t really appeal to her. She didn’t want anyone telling her all the time what to do. But sometimes it would be nice not to have to make decisions.
Maybe that’s why she relied so much on her sisters, because Dotty would happily make the decisions for everyone around her.
“Sometimes it can be nice to let go and just not worry about anything. Give someone else total control. That doesn’t mean you’d want it all the time. However, you have to be very careful about who you give that power to.”
She nodded. She knew that.
“I’m going to guess you haven’t really been around a Daddy before, or a Dom?”
“No.”
He nodded. “So say you were starved for affection all your life. Nobody touched you. They didn’t hug you, they didn’t kiss you, they didn’t praise you.
And then suddenly you’re thrust into a different situation.
It’s warm. People are always touching you, always hugging you, and your system can’t handle it.
It gets overloaded. It feels so good that you think you’d almost do anything to keep this feeling.
But your system just needs to get used to it. Does that make sense?”
It actually did. And it was so similar to how her life was that it actually surprised her for a long moment, before she realized he was just making a generic statement.
He didn’t know that for most of her life, she’d been touch starved.
That she’d received very little praise, that most of what she’d heard growing up had been negative.
Not just about her, but about the world in general.
Yeah, she could have easily become a recluse like her mother, locking herself in her house, too scared to leave for fear of what might happen. If not for her sisters, she was fairly certain that would have happened.
“You can trust me, Addie. I’m not going to hurt you or push you too far. I can give you a little bit of a taste of this, but maybe it’s best if I back off. You’re going home in a few hours, and I don’t want you to drop without me there.”
“Drop?” she asked.
“Have you ever heard of Sub Drop?”
She’d read about it, but she didn’t see how it applied to her. “We’re not playing.”
“There’s all sorts of play, baby.” He set her down on her feet. “Now, would you like to have a look around?”