Things Made Right (12 page)

After Ross arrived home from school, she’d greeted him at the door as she always did, naked and with a kiss.

His playful smile looked even more devious than usual. “What?” she asked.

He had a bag with him. “I brought you something.” He set his stuff down on the sofa and snapped his fingers, pointing at the floor.

Automatically, and with no hesitation, she sank to her knees in front of him, her pussy already clenching in anticipation.

He opened the bag and pulled out a black leather collar. Hand-tooled with an intricate Celtic knot design, the edges were wrapped with leather lacing, and it looked soft and supple.

“I think my gorgeous girl should be appropriately attired.” He leaned in and buckled it around her neck while she held her hair up and out of the way.

The feel of the soft, supple leather, the smell of it made her nearly come right there.

“And there’s more.” He dug into the bag and produced matching wrist and ankle cuffs. She had to stand while he put them on her ankles, kneeling in front of her to do it.

“Well?” he asked.

She threw her arms around him, kissing him deeply. “I love them, Sir,” she said. “Thank you.”

He fisted her hair, which now grew past her shoulders. “I found out about a group that gets together once a month,” he said. “A group of people who have…common interests.”

“Sir?”

He smiled. “People like us. They meet at a local bar to talk. Sometimes they have private parties. They meet this Saturday night.”

She hadn’t really given it much thought. Her pulse raced. “There’s other people like us?” Intellectually, she knew it. It just hadn’t blipped her radar before that there might be people she could meet and talk to locally about it.

“Yes. Would you like to go meet them?”

“Just to meet them?”

His grip on her hair tightened. “I meant what I said. No one touches you but me. And I don’t want anyone else. But I thought it’d be nice to have another circle of friends who does this kind of stuff. Knowing that we’re not alone. Like that.”

“Yes, Sir. I’d like that a lot.” She had a growing circle of friends.

The last thing she could do was talk about this aspect of their lives. An aspect that was a core, integral part of their relationship.

Her other friends didn’t understand why she served Ross his food first, or waited until after he’d started eating to eat her own food.

Why she took great pride in how he always opened doors for her.

Why she let their teasing comments about how she needed permission from him to do things roll off her shoulders.

“So you’re okay with us going?” he asked her.

She smiled. “I think it’d be nice to have some new friends who will understand this part of us.”

“That’s what I was thinking, too, sweetheart.” He pulled her in for a hug. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay with going.”

“I’ll go anywhere you want me to go.”

“I know. But that’s why I asked. Because like I promised you, sometimes I will ask your opinion and limits and I will respect them. This is one such case.”

She closed her eyes, basking in his warm embrace. “I don’t care what my limits are. I trust you.”

Warm breath brushed against her scalp. “I trust you, too, sweetheart.”

Now…

When Ross returned home from his work trip that afternoon, he found Loren kneeling in the living room, naked except for her leather collar and wrist and ankle cuffs. She knelt in a formal posture, hands on her knees, palms up, head bowed but shoulders back.

On the floor in front of her, the punishment cane lay exactly perpendicular to her body.

He pulled up short, taken aback. There’d been times lately he’d threatened her with bare-handed swats, but he rarely used a cane on her anymore. Not as punishment. He hadn’t even used the paddle on her as punishment in…years.

And for her to formally present the cane to him like this meant only one thing—whatever it was, it was a whopper. She’d broken a rule.

And she knew it.

Just what rule, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Not if it elicited this level of contrition from her.

When he finally realized he was just standing there, laptop case in one hand and carry-on in the other, he stepped forward and set them on the floor next to the chair.

He found his voice. “Slave? Explain.”

If she was formally requesting punishment, it dropped them right into the zone without passing go or collecting two hundred dollars. He’d find out what happened, get it over with as soon as possible, and then spend the evening making love to her and cuddling with her, loving her, soothing her and whatever guilt—real or perceived—she felt she had.

“This slave has earned punishment strokes, Master.”

He froze again. Not only was she formally requesting punishment, she was in full-on formal mode.

“What was the infraction?”

And here is where she faltered. “This slave has committed two infractions, Master.”

His blood chilled. “Two? Name them.”

“This slave went somewhere without asking Master’s permission first.”

Cold sweat broke out on his back. This was a horrible flashback from the past. From the early days. He had relaxed that rule years ago.

Decades ago.

The only reason he had put it into place at all was because of what had happened to her.

Because of
that
night.

But since then, since moving to Florida and putting that nightmare behind them, he’d relaxed it, trusting her instincts. Knowing she wouldn’t ever put herself in a position like that again.

“And the second infraction?” he asked.

“This slave cannot say it, Master.”

He closed his eyes and silently counted to ten before opening them again. “How can I be expected to mete out punishment if I don’t know what I’m punishing you for?”

“The slave has earned at least fifty strokes, Master. Total.”

Oh, boy.

“Then you’re going to have to tell me what I’m giving them to you for, slave.”

He watched her throat as she swallowed. “This slave cannot say it, Master,” she quietly repeated.

Now he felt a cold ball of fear chilling in his gut. “Did you cheat on me?”

“No, Master.”

Oookaay…
It’d been a long-shot, but in his mind it was the worst-case scenario. If it wasn’t that, he honestly didn’t know what it was she’d done.

“Didja kick a puppy?” He tried to inject a little humor into this situation because he felt stifled, nearly sick at heart.

“No, Master,” she softly said.

Not even a hint of humor in her response or her demeanor. “Why can you not tell me what it was you did to earn fifty strokes, slave?”

“Because Master ordered this slave to never speak of it.”

For a second, he thought his heart stopped.

There was only one thing he’d ever given her a command not to speak about, and technically that had been before he’d collared her.

But Loren was not just a good slave. She was, in his eyes, perfect. The best.

Exceptional beyond compare.

Any order he gave her, she would follow it to the letter. It wasn’t an assumption—it was a given.

Including the first order he ever technically gave her, despite them not even being a couple at the time.

He slowly removed his jacket, more to give him time to think than to psychologically mess with her, for once. He neatly folded it and draped it over the back of the chair before he started unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling them up to his elbows.

He dropped into full-on stern Dom tone, one he hadn’t had to use on her in anything other than play in…well, over twenty years. “I’m giving you an order to tell me what happened, slave. This supersedes that previous order.”

He didn’t need to say what the previous order was. He knew.

Now he needed to know how it applied to this situation.

Softly, her voice choked with tears, Loren told him about Melody Axlerod contacting her. And who she was. How Loren had hoped the one contact on Facebook would be enough, but then Melody contacted her again, wishing to meet.

And the talk they’d had.

When Loren finished, she still hadn’t moved from her formal kneeling position, waiting.

At least it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it might have been.

“Slave, explain to me why you feel you deserve fifty strokes for this?”

“Because this slave didn’t tell Master about the initial contact or the meeting. Twenty-five for this slave going somewhere without Master’s permission. Twenty-five for talking with her.”

“You knew I was out of town. I relaxed that rule long ago. You don’t need my permission to go anywhere safe.”

“But this slave concealed the circumstances from her Master. This slave committed a lie of omission, Master.”

He
hated
it when Loren went full-on slashy-speak formal. It was fine in a scene, but in a case like this, where this was more than just about their M/s dynamic, it felt…wrong.

And yet he couldn’t bring himself to order her up off her knees to discuss it as equals, either. Loren was no shrinking violet. There’d been plenty of things over the years she’d gone toe-to-toe with him about as his wife and partner, not as his slave.

The few times she’d met him like this, she felt she’d earned the punishment. More accurately, she needed it, wanted it for whatever reason.

She still hurts.

Well, of course she did. Not only the sudden baby explosion amongst their friends likely adding to her angst, but Tilly’s breakdown over her infertility, and Loren was suffering from those old emotional wounds all over again.

And Loren was now well past the chance of any surgery helping her ever become a mother. She’d accepted her fate years ago, even though he’d tried several times to gently coax her into trying.

She couldn’t face the potential failure, another slap in the face, a painful reminder of what had happened to her that night. For her, it was less painful to give up than it was to face repeated loss before accepting the inevitable, and he couldn’t fault her for it.

He also didn’t feel right about punishing her for this, but knew if she thought she needed punishment, she wouldn’t feel right about accepting a pass, either.

Especially when she considered it such a grave infraction that she felt she’d earned fifty with a cane.

Maybe I can logic my way out of this.

Honestly, the thought of giving her fifty cane strokes for this, when she was only protecting him and what he was sure she’d deduced he’d done, based on her reaction, made him sick at heart. It felt like victimizing her a second time.

“Why should I punish you when you followed my orders not to speak about that, until just now when I amended my order? You didn’t disobey me.”

She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it. Tears spilled from her eyes, down her cheeks. All he wanted to do was drop to his knees in front of her, pull her into his arms, and hold her. Soothe her conscience.

And he knew she didn’t want that. Not now. Not yet. If she felt she needed to be punished, she was never happy unless she received that punishment. She felt like she was disappointing him, no matter how much he’d told her otherwise. It was always easier to give her the strokes and let her feel happy about it, able to erase her mental slate instead of her obsessing about it.

“This slave spoke to someone else about what happened, Master. This slave was ordered never to speak about it.”

He slowly bent over and picked up the cane, flexing it in his hands. “Technically, you
didn’t
speak about it. To the best of your abilities, you answered her questions, mostly without even lying.”

“This slave didn’t give Master the opportunity to rule on it before doing so. This slave should have told Master upon the first contact.”

Logic. You’re a fucking attorney. You can twist shit six ways to Sunday.

“Have I ever given you any rules prohibiting you from going places at will under your best judgment since I relaxed that original rule?”

“No, Master.”

“Have I ever given you any orders prohibiting you from talking with people in general on the Internet, Facebook, phone, or elsewhere?”

“No, Master.”

“And what was part of the original order that I gave you that night?”

Now she looked confused. “This slave doesn’t understand, Master.”

“You got the first part. What was the second part?” Well, technically it hadn’t been an order. It had been their agreed upon story.

She struggled to come up with the answer. “About how we spent the night, Master?”

“Good girl. And what did you tell Melody Axlerod about how we spent that night?”

She swallowed. “That you came over around seven, spent the night with me, and left the next morning. That’s when I saw the TV reports about—”

“So you
did
follow my orders.”

“But Master told—”

“I told you what to say if others asked you about that night, did I not?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Did I prohibit you from talking to people who asked you about that night?”

“No, Master, but—”

“Did you not follow those orders I gave you, exactly as I gave them to you?”

“Yes, Master.”

He walked around her, stopping behind her, staring at her back. Trying not to remember the horrible bruises in the shapes of large hands that she’d had for over a week after
that
night.

Marks he hadn’t put on her.

Now, she loved staring at marks
he
put on her, twisting around to look in the mirror to see them, the smile on her face as she ran her fingers over them.

Knowing she loved them because she’d consented to them, that they were marks of love, of ownership.

Of safety and trust.

He swallowed back the bile in his throat at the memory of how he’d smelled after getting gas and whiskey on him when he’d splashed it on their clothes, the sound of the
whump
as he’d tossed the match through the open car window before walking around to the back of the car. How he’d shoved the trunk, hard, rocking the car and knocking it free of the jack holding it off the ground, the rear wheels spinning, the car in gear and the cruise control set.