Chapter 11
Some things worked even faster than the grapevine and wealthy, reclusive Doms were one of those things, if the guy who appeared at her door the next night was any indication.
While she was tempted to turn the table on him and ask if he was indeed Zack Kincaid, as she expected, Sadie was reticent enough to keep her mouth shut.
“May I help you?” she asked instead, as if it wasn’t at all unusual for a complete stranger to gain access through a gated compound on a private island with exclusive travel arrangements.
“Ma’am.” The handsome, if slightly geeky-looking guy, tipped his head in greeting. He was clean shaven with perfectly styled brown hair and rectangle shaped glasses he managed to make look hot. “I’m looking for Saul Stephens.”
“Of course you are,” Sadie said laconically, as she opened the door a bit wider to let him in. Since she’d returned from lunch and had to face Saul again, her nerves seemed to be stretched to breaking point.
You need to get laid.
No, I just need to scene - with someone who isn’t Saul.
“Saul, you have a visitor,” she called out, vaguely annoyed that no one had mentioned Zack Kincaid would be coming here. Especially when Saul’s presence was supposedly ‘top secret’.
The truth was his presence was beginning to wear on her. The constant awareness of the man who was sharing her house, and the way her thoughts kept conjuring up all kinds of improper scenarios, was exhausting.
Saul appeared, a welcoming grin on his face, and his hand outstretched for the newcomer to shake. “Well, well, Zack Kincaid. Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise, Saul.” Zack gave Saul’s hand a firm shake as the two of them continued to overlook her presence.
Sadie bristled. She rarely got angry, but right now, things were getting a little bit ridiculous. It was like something out of a mafia mystery… one she’d stepped into but didn’t belong.
In the end, when no one made any effort to include her, she took matters into her own hands, stepping in front of Saul’s tall frame and thrusting her own hand towards Zack.
“And I’m Sadie Jones, and believe it or not, this is my cabana.
And yes, you’re welcome in my house, Mr. Kincaid…
” She threw an irritated look at Saul over her shoulder.
“Though God forbid someone actually tells me what’s going on in my own home.
But hey, don’t mind me. I’ll just make myself scarce, since I’m sure the two of you want some privacy. ”
With that, she whirled away, all kinds of miffed, and subsequently even more annoyed that she’d allowed her normally calm and dispassionate attitude to get away from her.
She’d managed just two steps when Saul’s words penetrated the haze of annoyance and sexual frustration that swirled around her.
“Well, it looks like someone’s asking for a spanking.”
Sadie stopped in her tracks and turned slowly back to him. “Why yes. Yes, I am,” she responded with saccharine sweetness. “But since I’m a hardcore masochist, I doubt there’s anything you two pretty boys can do about it.”
The stunned silence in the room stretched. All three of them - even Sadie herself - taken aback by her uncharacteristic outburst. She gritted her teeth and wrestled her surprising attitude under control. What the hell was this man doing to her?
Then, with as much decorum as she could muster, Sadie held her head high and walked out of the room, curbing the instinct to run and hide under her bed covers.
Fuck!
“Umm… do you need to go and deal with that?” Sadie heard Zack’s quiet, modulated tones ask Saul, and pretended her entire face wasn’t turning bright red. Something that never happened… except now, it seemed.
Damned man!
It didn’t matter. They couldn’t see her.
She didn’t want to admit she was walking slower to hear Saul’s answer, even if she was.
“Not my place,” was the response, and something inside Sadie she didn’t even realize had sprouted, withered and died.
She closed her bedroom door very quietly behind her and walked over to the bed, rubbing her chest as she sat down. What the hell had gotten into her?
She wasn’t this person. Hell, she’d never been this person. She never allowed her emotions to get the better of her.
Maybe that’s the problem, a small voice in the back of her mind whispered.
But it wasn’t. Sadie was broken. She wasn’t fit for human consumption.
Hell, she was self-aware enough to know that her entire history with BDSM - which she’d discovered through Melody, a girl at the group home who aged out early and whose ‘daddy’ took her to kink clubs - was a result of her childhood trauma.
It was well documented that a significant percentage of masochists sought pain because they’d been indoctrinated to believe they deserved it after a tormented childhood.
Or because they were attempting to alter the narrative; give their suffering a different nuance. She was guilty of a little bit of both.
This just proved it. Twelve years of studying and working as a therapist and she still hadn’t managed to find a way to treat herself. It made her feel like a complete fraud.
Doctor, heal yourself.
Yeah. That really didn’t help.
What she did need to do was buck herself up and stop behaving like a brat. Talk about embarrassing herself.
But damn, the sexual tension she and Saul were dancing around, and the lure of a good masochistic scene were getting way too much for Sadie to keep up her normally stoic and Zen disposition.
And to hear him say dealing with her wasn’t his place?
Well, it wasn’t. It wasn’t anybody’s. And that just sucked.
For all the advice Sadie gave her clients, it was horrible to know she was too messed up to allow anyone close.
To get the relief she craved without topping from the bottom and alienating the few Doms who’d ever been willing to scene with her.
To understand that the likelihood of her ever finding a man who would stick by her side and try to accept and work through all her many issues was like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.
Goddamn, she wished she didn’t care so much. She was positive she never used to. When she was younger, Sadie had been tough and determined, though likely many would call her hardened. As she got older, and all her friends paired off, all she got to see was how much she was missing.
One day, she promised herself.
One day she’d move forward. She’d take the steps she needed to escape from the self-imposed prison she’d locked herself in and revel in the feel of being truly free in both body and mind.
One day soon.