Chapter 10 #2
This was nothing like the intellectual version.
This was her face against his neck and his hand on her back and the slow steady rhythm of his breathing against her hair, and it was enormous.
Simple and enormous and she didn't have better words than that.
Sub space or little space or whatever this space was just felt glorious.
"Talk to me," he said. Low. Just for her. "What's going on in there."
She took stock honestly.
"I feel better," she said. "That's strange, right? That I feel better."
"No."
"It should feel strange."
"Does it?"
She thought about it. "No," she said. "It feels like — the thing I said about carrying everything. It feels like I put it down." She pressed a little closer. "Like you took it."
"That's what I’m here for. I’ll carry whatever you need me to, baby. I’m strong."
She'd known that. She'd read it, believed it abstractly, told herself it made sense. But knowing a thing and having it happen inside your own body were two completely different countries.
She'd been carrying the guilt since the moment she'd seen his face on that road.
The specific sick weight of having broken something she'd agreed to, of having told herself a story that justified it because she hadn't wanted to feel the inconvenience of the rule.
She'd carried it up the stairs and into this room and over his knee, and now it was gone.
Not suppressed. Not managed. Gone.
"I was genuinely sorry," she said. "Not because of what happened. Before, when I saw your face." She turned her head slightly against his shoulder. "That was the worst part."
"What did my face do?"
"It was disappointed." She looked up at him. "You just looked at me, and I already knew and I hated it. I hated that I'd done that."
"Good," he said. Not unkind. Just honest in the way he was always honest.
She understood what he meant. The accountability was the point. The rule wasn't arbitrary. She'd known that intellectually before and she knew it now in her body, which was a different and more permanent kind of knowing.
"Daddy?" she said.
"Yes, baby girl?"
She pulled back enough to look at him. "Was it hard for you?" She held his gaze. "I'm not asking to make you feel bad. I want to understand how it works for you. Not just me."
He thought about it. She loved that he did that, took her questions seriously, actually considered them rather than reflexively reassuring her and when he spoke he’d thought his words through.
"It’s not hard to discipline you," he said. "But it’s also not nothing."
"What does not nothing mean?"
"It means I don't take it lightly. Every time I do it, I feel the weight of it and I take the responsibility of it seriously.
" He paused. "I'm the one who decides the rule was broken.
I'm the one who decides the consequences and then delivers them.
And I decide what happens after. After a spanking matters the most to me.
I have to make sure the discipline landed right, that it was enough to make the point sink in and that it did what it was supposed to do.
" His eyes were steady on hers. "And most importantly, whether you're okay. "
She felt that settle in her chest warm and solid.
"I’m okay," she said. She shifted in his lap to face him better, pulling the blanket around her. "Can we talk about the rules?" she asked. "Maybe… Add a few more? Not just the safety ones." She held his gaze. "I want to do it now while I feel like this."
"I’ve never had a little girl ask me for more rules," he chuckled lightly. “What do you need, baby?”
"Safety." Simply. Completely. "I'm more honest when I feel safe."
"I know you do," he said. "Tell me what could make you feel safer."
She took a breath. "I need the structure to feel like care. I know the difference… I mean, I've felt what it’s like when a man is in control that doesn’t care about me and it was cold and it made me smaller.
" She held his gaze. "What you do isn't cold.
But I need to know that's always the point. The care."
"It's always the point," he said. “Everything will be done with care.”
"I need to be able to be little without it being a performance. I'm still learning not to justify it or produce it on demand. I need space to find out what it actually looks like for me without any pressure."
"You have it," he said. "All I want is you, just you, all of you."
She absorbed that.
"I need the after care," she said, quieter. "This." She pressed her hand flat against his chest and felt his heart beating. "This part matters as much as everything else. Maybe more."
"Always," he said. "Non-negotiable."
She nodded. There were those words again. He liked that phrase. He really did put things into boxes. Negotiable and non-negotiable.
"My turn," he said.
She looked at him.
"When something's wrong, I need you to tell me while it's happening. Not after." His voice was even. "Not when you've already handled it yourself. I can't take care of what I don't know about."
"Okay."
"I need you to trust why the rules exist. Not just follow them because you're supposed to." He met her eyes. "Today wasn't about the rule. It was about your safety. I need you to feel that difference."
"I feel it," she said. And she did. "I really feel it."
"And don’t apologize for needing things." He said it simply, like a fact of the world. "I know you've been doing it your whole life. Here you don't have to apologize for being yourself."
Her throat tightened.
She'd expected the rules about safety and honesty and following through. She hadn't expected the one telling her to be fully herself, without excuse or apology. "That one's going to take the longest," she admitted.
"I know," he said. "I've got time."
"I don't know what I did," she said softly. "To deserve to land here. With you."
"You called for help," he said. "When you needed it."
She thought about Chloe's voice on the phone. About her own hands shaking while holding the phone. About the decision to call Chloe rather than 9-1-1, the one small choice that had led her here. How she almost didn’t call anyone because she didn’t want to be a hassle.
"I almost didn't," she said.
"But you did."
"Yeah." She looked down at his chest. Back up. "I did."
He pushed her hair back from her face and she leaned into his touch without thinking about it. Her body had figured out their connection before her brain caught up.
"How are you feeling?" he asked. "All of it. Honestly."
She did an actual check. Full and honest.
"Good," she said. "The kind of good where something actually got resolved. Not moved around or put to the side for another day." She held his gaze. "Light. I feel light." She paused. "And a little wrung out. And hungry, actually."
"I'll make you something to eat, if there’s nothing left from dinner."
"In a minute." She tucked back in against him. "Not yet."
His arms came around her.
Outside the window the compound was doing its things.
Irish's voice carried up from below, as Clover made his opinion known, the low distant sound of Savage doing something with his diesel truck that required periodic revving. The rumble of motorcycles, and she was pretty sure she could identify both Savannah and Lily’s voices calling out to each other as they played outside.
Home, she thought. Every part of it. The noise and the warmth and the man holding her together. She felt like she’d come home.
"Daddy," she said.
"Yeah."
"I'm not going to sneak out again." She said it into his chest. "I know I said it before. I mean it differently now."
"How, differently?"
"Before, I said it because it was the right thing to say." She pressed closer. "Now I mean it because I understand what it costs. Not me… but, your worry." She paused. "I don't want to cost you that again."
He was quiet for a moment.
His arms tightened around her. His mouth said nothing, but his embrace said everything.
"We should write the rules down," she said, after a while. "Not as a contract. Just, so I have something to look at when I'm in my head."
"Smart."
"I have moments." She tipped her head back to look at him. "Don't look like that."
"I'm not looking like anything."
"There's a face."
"There's no face."
"There's definitely a small—"
"Emily."
"—extremely specific—"
"Baby girl."
She stopped. That warm, settling quiet came over her, the specific response to that specific phrase that she'd stopped trying to understand and started just letting happen.
"There it is," he said. Not smug. Just noting it.
"It's not fair," she said mildly.
"No," he agreed.
The door scratching started.
She closed her eyes. "That's Clover."
"Yes."
"He knows."
"He always knows."
A long pause. Then a sigh from the other side of the door and a whine coming from a dog being dragged away.
“Damn it, Clover!” Irish scolded. “They obviously don’t want to be interrupted.”
"That was Irish," she said
"We heard nothing," Rampage said with a laugh.
"Nothing at all," she agreed.