Another way Read online

  “Damn. Your back feels like a radiator.”

  I laughed. “Do you still think it looks nice?”

  “Mmm,” he mumbled, wrapping his arm around my waist and snuggling his face into my neck. “You’ll like it less in the morning when you can’t move.”

  “That’s okay. I have you.”

  “That you do.”

  I pulled his arm tighter around me, until his hand was resting over my heart.

  “I hope you can feel this too,” I whispered, the closest I could come to telling him how I really felt.

  Will’s silence was his answer, but he pressed his hand tight against me and his lips worried the skin on my neck, telling me he was trying. He wanted to feel it too.

  Chapter Eleven

  I WOKE the next morning in an indescribable amount of pain.

  The problem was, I couldn’t decide what hurt more. My head, my heart, or my back.

  I must have made some sort of noise, because Will rolled over and gently stroked my hair back from my face.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice husky from sleep as his eyes cracked open.

  “Hurts,” I managed to say, without specifying where.

  He leaned in and carefully placed his lips on my temple, letting them linger there before rolling out of bed. I heard the taps start for the bath and Will banging around, and then he appeared at my side.

  “Can you move?” he asked.

  “I… I don’t think so,” I admitted. My muscles had seized up during the night, and I was aware that I was still in the same fetal position that I had fallen asleep in. I tried to arch my back as if I were stretching out an ache and cried out in pain. The bad sort of pain, not the good sort.

  “Shh, shh, I’ve got you,” Will said. He crouched down and slid an arm under my neck and another under my knees, maneuvering me until I was cradled against his chest. I clung on around his neck, too mentally tired to even be embarrassed about being taken care of like this.

  He settled us into the hot water while the bath was still filling. I’d never paid much attention to the sunken bath in the room before; Will seemed to go to the shower by force of habit, and I’d always joined him there. I tried to relax back against his chest as his arms wrapped around me once more.

  “Any better?” he asked, kissing my shoulder.

  “Getting there,” I told him.

  Once the water had filled to our chests, Will turned off the taps and gently, incredibly gently, started to massage my shoulders. I had to grit my teeth against the pain at first, then slowly it started to ease. He had me shift forward, sloshing water about as his hands traveled down my back. I couldn’t help the occasional hiss or cry of pain as he caught a sore spot. He always stopped and kissed my shoulder when that happened, a silent apology.

  “What time do you have to be at work?” he asked as he started to rub my upper arms. He hadn’t hit them, but seemed to know that they were hurting from the strain of hanging on to my restraints.

  “Nine,” I told him. “Shit, what’s the time?”

  “A little after seven,” he said softly. “It’s okay. Do you want me to call in for you?”

  “No, it’s okay, I’ll do it,” I sighed.

  Finally, the hot water and Will’s hands made me relax enough to be able to lean fully back into his chest. He wrapped his right arm around me, pinning my arm to my side, and I turned my head as I rested it on his shoulder.

  “Can you talk to me yet?” he asked. His fingers splayed out over my skin, over my heart, his palm pressed gently against where I had held it as we fell asleep.

  It was a long time before I could respond. “I’m really fucking scared right now.”

  He mumbled something that sounded a lot like “Me too.”

  My fingertips traced the strong muscles in his forearm between wrist and elbow. The water had turned the fine hairs on the back of his arm darker in color, standing out against his pale skin. As if that wasn’t enough, our legs tangled together in the water. I was touching him literally from head to toe.

  “With you,” I started, “it’s more. Adele and I broke up only a few hours ago, and what I feel for you is more… fuck. More than I felt for her over the past five years. Probably what I felt for her in five years combined is less than what I feel for you only hours into this relationship. And I really don’t fucking know how to handle that.”

  “Jesse,” he said slowly. “Our relationship didn’t start last night. Our relationship started a long, long time ago. I realized that I was falling for you… um… just after I fucked you for the first time.” The last few words came out in a rush.

  “What?”

  “After I fucked you for the first time,” he repeated, slower this time.

  “That was….” I thought back. “A couple of weeks after I became your sub.”

  “Yeah,” he breathed. I could feel his embarrassment.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” I demanded.

  “Because you didn’t feel it back,” he said softly. “I was under the impression that you were happily in love with your girlfriend, and besides, I had no right to feel that way about you.”

  I tugged the plug out of the end of the bath and let the cooling water drain away. Then I turned the hot tap back on to top up the water level. It gave me time to think.

  “Last night,” I started.

  “Yes, last night, let’s talk about that,” he muttered, and I halfheartedly swatted his arm.

  “I can honestly say I don’t regret it,” I said.

  “I do,” Will said.

  “Hmm. Why?”

  Another deep sigh. “I’m not a sadist, not really. I don’t enjoy inflicting huge amounts of pain, and I certainly don’t enjoy damaging you in the way I did.”

  “But I needed it.”

  “I know, Jesse, that was why I did it.”

  “I sense a ‘but’ here.”

  “But,” he said. At least I could feel his smile. “But I’m never doing that to you again.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. I had to respect his limits too. It was a two-way relationship in that sense.

  “I mean it, Jesse. I’m not the sort of Dom who pushes their sub to safeword just to find out how much they can take. I will always work within the boundaries that we’ve agreed on, and if you need pushing, then you only need to ask me.”

  “That wasn’t a normal session, though,” I said, because it needed to be said, not to argue with him.

  “I know, that was why I agreed to it,” Will said. “Tell me honestly, did you get out of it what you wanted to get out of it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Absolutely.”

  “Do you feel like you can let go of those issues now?”

  “Yes.”

  “In which case, it was worth it.”

  I could feel his shrug and his warm lips on my shoulder.

  “I don’t know how to be with you,” I confessed.

  “How do you mean?”

  Another long silence. “Fuck. I’m good at being your sub. I can give you my body, Will, I know how to do that. You have my heart whether you or I like it or not. But I don’t know how to be with you. I don’t know how to act in public with you. Or how we’re supposed to live together. I don’t know how gay relationships work, how we split the bills or the housework or the cooking or what. I don’t know.”

  “Just because you bottom for me doesn’t mean you have to be the girl in the relationship, Jesse,” he said drily. I blushed deeply and hoped he didn’t notice. “We can be whatever we want to be. Fuck the rules. I don’t give a shit how things work or how other people think about us.”

  The heat in his voice scared me a little.

  “I want this so bad, I’m just scared of fucking it up,” I admitted. My fingers swept up and down his arm again.

  “The only way you can fuck up is by not talking to me,” he said and pressed his lips to my hair again. “Tell me when I hurt you. Tell me when you’re scared, or things go wrong, or you’re unha
ppy. Because then we can fix it together.”

  “You sound like my Dom again.”

  “If my rule about communication is the only one we carry over into our romantic relationship, I’ll be happy.”

  “Are you? Happy, that is.”

  Will sighed, flattening his palm down over my heart. “More than I ever knew possible.”

  I smiled at that and turned my head to seek out his lips for the first time that day. He was soft and loving as he rubbed his lips over mine, the dry skin catching before a wet tongue eased the way. I wanted to tell him. But it wasn’t the right time.

  “I should call my boss,” I said, pulling away from the kiss.

  “Okay. Stay there a moment,” he instructed, pulling himself from the bath and wrapping a towel around his waist. “Do you need help?”

  “Probably,” I muttered.

  The muscles in my back had loosened enough for me to be able to get out of the tub, but my legs didn’t seem to want to hold me upright. Will had me brace my hands on the counter for support and rubbed more salve into my skin, then watched me like a mother hen as I walked through to the bedroom, hanging on to walls and doorframes for support.

  “Don’t put a shirt on,” he instructed. “I’ll put the heat on if you get cold.”

  “Yeah, that would be good,” I said as I tugged on a pair of loose sweatpants. “Can you give me a minute?”

  I wanted to be composed when I spoke to my boss. Will nodded and left after dressing quickly. After a few minutes I heard him starting breakfast in the kitchen.

  My boss bought my story about a stomach bug and was pacified by my assurances that I would be back in the next day. As I stood to go eat, I caught sight of my back in the mirror over the dresser, which reflected the mirror on the open closet door.

  Fuck.

  What had looked erotic the night before looked like, well, torture, for lack of a better word, in the cold light of day. No wonder it hurt so fucking bad. Still, a little piece of me warmed inside. My Master did this to me.

  I tried to keep moving through the day to stop my muscles from seizing up again; putting all of my stuff away kept me busy for a few hours, and Will agreed to come with me back to the apartment when Adele would be at work the following day to pick up the rest of my stuff.

  Will took me down to one of his spare bedrooms that I could turn into a place to hang out when I wanted to be by myself. It was one of the things that bugged me most in the years I had lived with Adele—a lack of space that I could call my own. When I was growing up, I’d had to share a bedroom with my sister until she turned thirteen and I got thrown out of her space and into the basement. Not that I minded, I loved it down there. But the experience of sharing left me with a deep ache for my own space. Will was an only child, but he seemed to understand. He didn’t keep a bed in the room anyway and was happy for me to put a couch and a TV in there.

  After lunch he made me sit down for a while, although this proved to be more difficult than anticipated. I couldn’t lean back into the cushions on the couch because they rubbed against my raw skin.

  “Hang on, stay here,” Will instructed after a few minutes of me trying to lean forward on my elbows, hugging a cushion to my chest.

  He returned with what looked like a pommel horse from my High School gym. Actually, it looked exactly like a pommel horse.

  “Where the fuck did that come from?” I asked.

  “The garage. It was set up out there for my play party.”

  “Oh. I didn’t go out to the garage.”

  “Probably why you didn’t see it then,” he said with a laugh.

  I noticed then some rather indiscreet additions to the horse; namely, shackles attached at various points. It looked like fun, but I had no desire to be pegged over it. Will adjusted the height, lower at the front and higher at the back and set it up in front of me, shoving a pillow between my chest and the rough leather.

  Sighing as I leaned into it, I murmured a quiet “thanks.”

  “No problem,” he said, settling down on the couch next to me. “Actually, I uh, I have something to tell you….”

  “Oh, no,” I teased him, turning my head to face him. “What did I do now?”

  “You didn’t do anything,” Will said. He had his hand in his hair, rumpling it from the roots. “I called Laura this morning.”

  “Okay,” I said and attempted a shrug, then gave up halfway through. “What did she say? I bet it was ‘I told you so’.”

  “No, um. She’s coming over later. With Steven. To check you out.”

  “Why? I’m fine.”

  “Jesse. You’re far from fine. And if you’re going back to work tomorrow, I want to make sure you’ll be okay.”

  “You fuss like my mother,” I teased him. He shook his head, looking a bit upset.

  “You don’t get it, Jesse,” he sighed. “I did this to you. You could probably get me locked away for doing it. I need to make sure there won’t be any lasting damage.”

  I reached out a hand to him, and he took it.

  “They’re not going to lock you away unless they lock me to you,” I said.

  His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Let’s talk about this with Laura, yeah? I want to hear her opinion on stuff.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. It was easy enough to drop the conversation. For now.

  “Laura’s at the door!” Will yelled from upstairs, where he was changing into something “more respectable” than sweatpants and a T-shirt. I hadn’t bothered. Laura had seen me in less. So had Steven, although that had been an accident.

  “Got it,” I called back just as the doorbell rang.

  Laura and Steven were each carrying one of the babies. I’d forgotten, somehow, that the kids would be coming, too, but they were undeniably gorgeous. They’d inherited Laura’s rusty brown hair and Steven’s deep green eyes, and they all seemed to be in good spirits. Thank god.

  “Hey,” I said, kissing Laura on both cheeks and tickling the girls.

  “Jesse, how are you?” Steven asked, offering his hand to me. I shook it and gestured them inside.

  “Jesus,” I heard Laura breathe as I turned to walk through to the den.

  “It’s pretty, right?” I said with a laugh. Steven didn’t look too impressed. Thankfully Will jogged down the stairs, saving me from running the gauntlet alone. I put coffee on in the kitchen as Will and Laura caught up with each other, then finally I sat down in front of my makeshift back-saving horse.

  “What the hell is that?” Laura asked.

  “I’m glad you asked. I was scared to,” Steven said, bouncing one of the twins to his hip so he could drink his coffee.

  “I can’t lean back on the couch,” I shrugged. “So Will fixed it up for me.”

  “Well, at least it’s obvious why you’re shirtless,” Steven said with his typical dry humor. He set his mug on the coffee table and handed his twin to Will. “Could you hold her for a moment?” he said. The look on Will’s face as he took hold of the baby was priceless.

  “She’s not going to bite you,” Laura laughed as Will tried to figure out how to hold her.

  “Which one is this?” he said as he finally got the baby cradled in his arm.

  “That’s Sawyer,” Laura told him.

  “Hey, Sawyer, how you doing?” he muttered.

  I tried to hide my smirk as Steven had me stand and turn around to show him my back. He sighed heavily as he ran his fingertips over my skin.

  “What the hell did you do to him, Will?”

  “Don’t,” I said immediately. “I asked for it.”

  “He did, sweetie,” Laura said quietly.

  Steven sighed again. “Whatever you do, don’t go to the hospital, okay?” he said to me. “If it gets bad or infected or whatever, come to me. If you go to see a doctor, they’re going to call the police. If they’re any doctor worth their weight, they would hold you until the police turned up.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I protested, but I could hear t
he doubt in my own voice.

  “You should be fine,” Steven assured me. “I can refer you to a colleague to prescribe antibiotics if you need them, but I don’t think you will.”

  “Do you think it’ll scar?” Will asked.

  Steven was quiet for a few moments as his fingers probed the deeper cuts. “I don’t think so,” he said. “Maybe a few little scars, but it depends on your skin really.”

  “Thanks,” I said and tried smiling at him. I knew Steven wasn’t part of our lifestyle and his only connection to it was his wife. Because of that, I grabbed a shirt from the pile of laundry in the corner and shrugged it on.

  “Did you ever do that to him?” Steven asked Laura in a low voice, which I wasn’t sure we were supposed to overhear. She shook her head silently. I guessed they would talk about it in private.

  “Steven has been taking care of Shannon for me for a while,” Will said as I sat on the arm of his chair.

  “I bet that’s an experience,” I said, forcing a laugh.

  “You know Shannon?” he asked as he settled back next to Laura.

  “Yeah, we’ve met,” I said, taking Sawyer from Will. “Hey, beautiful!”

  At least one person in the room was happy to see me. She giggled and patted my face.

  “I like her a lot,” Steven said, surprising me. “Really. She’s a very eloquent young woman. Although treating a patient who has such a strong aversion to being touched is always a fun challenge.”

  “You need to be firm with her,” Will offered. “She claims to not be submissive, but she responds very well to a dominant personality.”

  “Am I a dominant personality?” Steven turned to Laura with an amused smile.

  “You have your moments, yeah,” she agreed.

  “How does it work?” I asked suddenly, shifting the baby to the crook of my elbow.

  “How does what work?” Laura asked.

  I blushed. “Balancing it all.”

  “Oh, honey, that’s a very loaded question,” she said with a smile. “The dynamic in our relationship is very different from yours. You’re going to have to figure out your own balance and what’s right for you.”

  I nodded, knowing this already, if I thought about it.