Chapter 30 #2
Not in this moment.
“Did you ever hurt any of them?”
He stilled; uncertainty etched in the lines of his mouth.
“Damien,” I warned.
“No,” he said at last—“At least, not on purpose.”
I went still, waiting. Hoping for the explanation I knew had to come.
“Remember how I said things could get intense?” he said, finally lifting his gaze.
“Well… sometimes accidents happen. I do everything I can to prevent that—close every gap I can think of beforehand—but some of the…” He hesitated, attention flicking away.
“Activities can be dangerous in and of themselves.”
“Activities?” A disbelieving laugh slipped out before I could stop it.
He gave a low, self-deprecating chuckle and looked back at me. “Some of the things we did wouldn’t exactly fall under the category of normal. And some of them weren’t even sexual.”
I frowned.
“Some activities were more about relaxation. Release.”
“Like yoga?” I asked, my patience thinning.
His mouth twitched. “No. Not like yoga.”
“Then give me an example.”
He grimaced. “I don’t really think you would—”
“I’m asking the questions I need answers to, Damien.” My tone was flat, unyielding. “I’m trying to understand.”
He drew a steadying breath. “Okay. But it’s important to know these dynamics aren’t one-size-fits-all. Everything depends on the people involved. An example of an activity would be… spanking.”
My eyes widened. “Like a punishment?”
“Sometimes,” he said. “Other times, it’s for enjoyment. Or relaxation.”
I blinked at him. “I can’t see how hitting someone would be fun or relaxing.”
“I meant for them,” he clarified. “For the submissive. It’s a common request, actually.”
My mouth fell open. “How on earth would that be enjoyable?”
“There’s a very fine line between pleasure and pain.
A good dominant can bring a submissive right to that edge—and sometimes even past it—into bliss.
Your body releases hormones during pain that are almost identical to the ones from pleasure.
An overload of those chemicals can create a sense of peace. Of complete release.”
I didn’t say anything for a long moment. The words pleasure and pain swirled together in my head like oil and water.
I shifted the blanket over my lap, fingers smoothing the fabric just to have something to do. “You mentioned punishment before,” I said finally. “Who decides that?”
“It’s mutual. Everything in a dynamic like this is. The rules, the boundaries, the expectations—they’re agreed upon beforehand.”
“So the submissive sets them?”
“In part,” he said with a small nod. “Sometimes the rules are tied to goals—staying hydrated, following a bedtime, managing stress, eating properly. Small things, but important ones. My job is to hold them accountable, to enforce those rules.”
“Like spanking,” I repeated, trying to wrap my mind around the paradox of it.
He smiled faintly. “Exactly. Some… find comfort in the physical aspect. Some submissives don’t want physical punishment at all. They prefer verbal correction, loss of privileges, things like that.”
“Comfort?” I echoed.
“Yes,” he said, voice gentling. “For some the physical release of it—the structure, the clear edges of consequence—it gives them peace.”
I studied him for a moment, searching for arrogance or cruelty and finding none.
“What about the others?” I asked. “The ones who don’t want that. What happens then?”
His focus shifted to the dark window beyond me. Expression thoughtful. “There are as many kinds of discipline as there are people. I once met a couple at a workshop—a dominant and his submissive who’d been married for over fifty years.”
I blinked. “Fifty?”
He nodded. “They’d built their entire marriage around care and balance. She’d been struggling with losing her hair—it had become a deep insecurity for her. Per their agreement, he made the decision to cut it for her one day.”
My mouth fell open slightly. “He cut her hair?”
“Yes. It was a predetermined agreement that he would get one hundred percent say over her physical health and appearance. She wasn’t happy about it, not at first,” he said with a faint, rueful smile.
“But she allowed it. And later, after she lost her temper over it—another boundary they’d agreed upon—he gave her a punishment that fit within their dynamic.
He made her wear a wig around the house for a full month. ”
“A wig?”
“Mm.” His expression warmed at the memory. “By the end of that month, she was begging to have her short hair back. She said it was freeing. That she finally saw herself again.”
I sat there, words deserting me, the image of it—absurd and tender all at once—unspooling slowly in my mind.
It wasn’t about humiliation. Or authority. Not really.
It was about care—twisted into a form I didn’t yet understand, but one that, in his voice, somehow didn’t sound dark at all.
“Is this what you expect of me?” I asked, my tone barely more than a whisper. “To be your submissive?”
His eyes went wide. “No.”
He reached for me instinctively, and when our hands met—our first brush of contact since yesterday morning—something in my chest loosened and broke all at once.
“I enjoy you just the way you are,” he said softly.
I stared down at our joined hands. “But you said it’s something you need.”
“I need you, Emma.” His voice was steady now. “The rest doesn’t matter. Dominant, submissive—all the titles, all the rules—they don’t matter as much as you do to me.”
Guilt twisted through my ribs.
He’d give it up—all of it.
Something he’d admitted he’d always craved, always needed—just to be with me?
“You said they found peace in this kind of—agreement?” I asked.
He nodded.
“Do you think you could help me?” I whispered, afraid to meet his eyes.
“Emma,” he breathed. “You’re incredibly strong—amazing, successful in everything you do.”
Then his voice turned rough and careful. “But having said that, I know you struggle. You’ve said it yourself—feeling alone. Abandoned. Overwhelmed.” He swallowed hard. “If you’re asking whether I could help with that… I could try. I’d want to.”
Memories flickered like broken film reels—those nights my thoughts spiraled until I couldn’t breathe, when the world pressed in too tight, when even success couldn’t drown out the silence that followed me everywhere.
And the way it had eased when I wasn’t alone in it.
When Read’s messages cut through the static.
When the voices quieted because someone was there to shoulder the weight with me.
Because part of me wanted to believe Damien now.
Part of me wanted to hand over every jagged piece of myself and whisper fix it.
But the other part—the one built from ambition and survival and loneliness—flinched.
I’d spent so long clinging to control, to order, to the illusion of having it all together. And now he was offering me a different kind of control—one that wouldn’t belong to me at all, but somehow promised to set me free.
My pulse fluttered at the thought. At him.
The man who had every reason to walk away after the stunt I’d pulled today.
Maybe this wasn’t about surrender.
Maybe it was about trust.
And god help me, I wasn’t sure which terrified me more.