Chapter 26 #3
He turns me over and pulls me against his chest. I press my face into him, crying harder, gripping his shoulders, and he holds me.
He holds all of it. The tears, the snot, the shaking, and the words I've been carrying for months that finally found their way out in a soundproofed room at a sex club after the most intense orgasm of my life.
"I've got you," he says against my hair. "I'm right here."
I cry until the tears run out. Then I breathe. His heartbeat under my ear, steady, constant, is the metronome that holds the structure while I fall apart. When I finally pull back, my face feels swollen, my mascara is destroyed, and there is definitely snot on his chest.
"I just told you I love you while covered in bodily fluids in a sex club," I say. "That's peak romance. Hallmark should be calling any minute."
He wipes my face with his thumb. His eyes are soft. The softest I've ever seen them.
"What just happened to you is normal," he says. "After something that intense, your body releases everything it's been holding. The adrenaline, the endorphins, the walls. It all comes down at once, and the emotions that come with it are real. The most real thing you'll feel."
"So I'm not insane for sobbing after sex?"
"You're not insane." His thumb traces my cheekbone. "That's why trust matters. That's why I don't do this with someone I don't trust completely. Because when the walls come down, you're the most open you'll ever be. And the person holding you has to be someone who won't use that against you."
"You'd never use it against me."
"No. I wouldn't. Not in this room. Or outside of it.
Not ever." He holds my gaze. "The trust we build in here carries.
Into the apartment and the shop. Into whatever's coming with your father's case.
I'm not your Dom in a room and your boyfriend everywhere else.
I'm the man you trust with everything, and the dynamic is just one way I prove it. "
My chin trembles. "You're going to make me cry again."
"Then cry. I'll be here for that too."
He reaches for the side table. There's a stack of warm, damp towels folded beside the water bottles, and he takes one, wrings it gently, and starts cleaning me.
Between my thighs first carefully, wiping away the slick and the mess of both of us.
The cloth is warm against my swollen, sensitive skin.
He's gentle around my clit, barely touching, just enough to clean without overstimulating.
Then wipes along my inner thighs where the wetness trailed earlier.
Nash cleans his handprint on my ass with the same tenderness, the damp towel soothing the warm skin.
He takes a second towel and wipes my face. The ruined mascara, the tear tracks, the smeared red lipstick that's ended up on his chest, neck, and the pillow. He holds my chin and cleans each streak with careful strokes.
Then his hands move over my body gently.
Every place he gripped, held, pressed, corrected.
His lips follow. My nipples, swollen and sensitive from his mouth and his pinching, he kisses each one so gently my eyes well up again.
The marks on my throat from his palm, he presses his lips there and holds.
"Water," he says.
He opens a bottle before bringing it to my lips. I drink. Nash takes the bottle back, drinks, then sets it down. He pulls a soft blanket from the foot of the bed and wraps it around both of us.
"How do you feel?" he asks.
"Like I found something I didn't know I was looking for." My voice is quiet and raw. "Like all the noise in my head went quiet for the first time in my life, and the quiet didn't scare me."
His arms tighten.
"I liked the kneeling," I say. "And the hair pulling. And the—" I pause. "The new thing. The... posterior exploration."
"Posterior exploration."
"I'm not saying the word, Nash. I'm not there yet. Give me time."
His chest vibrates with a laugh.
"I liked the spanking," I say quieter. "And I liked that I liked it.
You asked if I wanted you to stop, and I said no.
That felt like the most honest thing I've said in months.
" I press my face into his chest. "The vibrator while you were inside me.
The nipple thing. Your hand on my throat.
" Heat crawls up my neck. "All of it, Nash.
Every single piece." My breath catches. "Even the denial.
" My fingers curl against his skin. "Especially the denial. "
"Why especially?"
"Because holding the edge when you told me to was the first time I've ever trusted someone more than I trust my own body.
And my body wanted to go. It was screaming.
I stayed because you said I could." My eyes sting.
"That's the thing you've been trying to show me, isn't it? That trust is what makes it work."
"That's exactly the thing."
"Well, you showed me." I sniff. "You showed me very thoroughly. Multiple times. With visual aids and practical demonstrations."
He kisses my forehead. I close my eyes.
We lie in the bed in the private room at Vesper, wrapped in a blanket, the warm lighting low, the sounds of the club muted behind the soundproofed walls.
His heartbeat is steady under my ear. My body is spent, tender, humming.
The red lipstick is smeared on his chest where my mouth pressed against him.
My heels are somewhere on the floor. The dress is a puddle by the chair.
"Nash."
"Yeah."
"Can we come back?"
"We can come back whenever you want."
"Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow I'm fixing the ink stain on your supply closet floor."
"Worth it."
His hand traces lazy circles on my back. My eyes grow heavy. The quiet doesn't scare me. For the first time in twenty-two years of filling every silence I've ever encountered, the quiet feels like exactly where I'm supposed to be.
His lips press against the top of my head.
"My girl," he murmurs.
My fingers find the headband on his wrist and hold on.