Chapter 27
twenty-seven
. . .
LANE
We left the bar shortly after the clock struck midnight, barely making it a few minutes past Sutton saying she’d come home with me.
I was giddy, the effervescence bubbling up in my chest not dissimilar to the first time I went to a professional football game as a kid.
After we collected our things, I didn’t even bother to say goodbye to my family before heading outside.
When we reached the parking lot, I pulled up short halfway to the truck, unease prickling the back of my neck. Turning in a slow circle, I probed the darkness beyond the streetlights and neon sign, but I didn’t see anyone or anything out of place.
“Lane?” Sutton asked. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I just thought…” I shook my head, willing away the unsettled sensation. “Never mind. Let’s go home.”
Though I was drunk on her more than any of the alcohol I consumed, I let Sutton drive, but I stretched my arm over the console and kept my hand on her thigh the whole way home.
Combined with the long drive, the act of parking and heading inside made me feel like I was coming out of my skin.
It took all of my dwindling self-control to hold myself back from throwing Sutton over my shoulder and dragging her to bed.
But she looked like she wanted to say something, like her entire body was braced for some sort of confrontation, and I’d never rush her. Especially not in this situation.
Sutton walked into the living room after kicking off her shoes and hanging up her coat. Once settled on the couch, she patted the spot next to her. Like an eager puppy, I joined her, draping her legs across my lap, needing to touch her.
With a sigh, Sutton began speaking.
“Before we go any further, there are some things I need you to know.”
“Okay…”
“I haven’t been with anyone since…that night,” she admitted, averting her eyes as if afraid to witness my reaction.
I blinked in surprise. After her assault, we’d never been intimate again. I just hadn’t realized she’d never been intimate with anyone else either.
Slowly and gently, I grabbed her chin and turned her to face me.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“It’s none of my business what or who you’ve done in our time apart.”
“That’s the thing though, Lane. I haven’t done anyone.”
I chuckled lightly and asked, “Why?”
Truthfully, I didn’t really care about the reasoning behind it. Not when that possessive beast in my chest was suddenly wide awake and grinning ferally at this incredible woman before us. She belonged to me. She had always belonged to me.
“After the rape, I just couldn’t. I tried, but—” Her words choked off, and I reached for her hand. Sutton clung to me as she marshaled herself enough to continue.
“Every time their weight came down on top of me, I freaked. It just brought me right back to that frat house bedroom.”
We’d never discussed that night in any explicit detail. Since I’d been working in Dusk Valley, I’d arrived at the hospital after those useless cops had already taken her statement, and Sutton hadn’t been in a state of mind to share.
Plus, I hadn’t needed any more ammunition to want to wipe Ryan Boyd’s existence from the planet.
Everything I did know about that night I’d learned from her roommate. Sometime in those pre-dawn hours, she’d confided in me that Sutton had disappeared for a while shortly after midnight, and she got worried and went looking for her.
“I saw Ryan coming out of a room, looking smug and disheveled, and I just knew something was wrong. I found Sutton on the bed, half naked and basically catatonic. I’ll never forget how she flinched away from me.
I know these things are fucking impossible to prove, but I brought her right here after getting her out of that house as discreetly as I could. Then I called you.”
“You did the right thing,” I assured her.
“I don’t know if I’m capable of giving up control like that anymore,” Sutton said, dragging me out of my memory.
“If you’re not ready,” I started carefully, “that’s okay. You don’t owe me anything, especially not this.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head vehemently. I frowned at her, confused. “I want this with you. There’s no one in the world I trust more than you, Lane.”
My heart swelled.
Fuck, I loved her.
“What do you need from me?”
I would give Sutton anything she asked for, whenever she asked.
“Aspen had an idea…” she said, trailing off and smiling shyly.
I quirked a brow. “You talked to Aspen about this?”
“She’s my friend.”
She’s also my sister-in-law, I thought wryly.
I gave her fingers a squeeze. “I’m glad you have her. Now what’s this idea?”
Instead of answering, she got up and left the room. A few minutes later, she returned, swinging the handcuffs I kept in a pouch in my work belt around her finger.
“Aspen suggested handcuffs?” I asked, incredulous.
I definitely didn’t need any ideas about the kind of freaky shit she and Crew got up to in bed.
Fuck. Crew.
If my brother knew about this, I’d never hear the end of it.
“No,” Sutton said with a giggle, and I relaxed a bit. “She suggested I be the one in control. The handcuffs were my idea.”
Duh, Lane. She certainly won’t want to be restrained, you dumb fuck.
Realization dawned. “You want to use them on me.”
Sutton’s teeth sank into her juicy bottom lip, looking up at me through her lashes.
I had never considered the possibility of letting a woman call the shots in bed. Maybe that was some sort of internalized misogyny at play, a notion of which I needed to disabuse myself immediately.
I’d only had a few partners in the years Sutton and I were apart, and they were more than happy to hand over control to me.
But I had to admit, the idea of letting Sutton do whatever she wanted to me, to allow her to use my body to regain her power and seek her own pleasure? My cock was rock hard and pushing uncomfortably against the fly of my jeans.
“If you don’t want to, that’s…okay. I—we will figure something else out.
Therapy or something. I’ve never tried it for sex specifically, just my general trauma from the assault overall.
Which seems silly because obviously that trauma is deeply rooted in sex or we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I’ve never done therapy with a partner, either, but—”
I pulled her onto my lap and kissed her before she could continue rambling.
“Yes.”
She blinked slowly, processing. Her brow furrowed a bit, and I smoothed my thumb over the creased skin between her brows.
“Yes?”
“Yes, baby. Whatever you need, it’s yours. I am yours.”
Sutton immediately jumped up and tugged on my arm until I stood too, then dragged me to my room.