Knowing the Ropes (27 page)

She’d cried during scenes before, but it had been a catharsis that left her feeling light and clean. This felt different, wrenching sobs that welled up from inside her, threatened to choke her, threatened to keep coming forever.

It wasn’t from pain, although it had started with the involuntary, unfightable tears that sprang to her eyes when he’d caught her vulva.

She’d fucked up.

Natalie’s dictum,
“Slaves don’t have safe words,”
echoed in her brain like thunder. And if she couldn’t handle being Nick’s slave, even on a trial basis for one night, and he didn’t really want a girlfriend, where did that leave her?

Alone, that was where. Without the man she’d come to love.

Maybe she was better off that way, because she was a huge wimp who couldn’t take what Nick obviously wanted to do as a dominant. Couldn’t take a little paddling and caning. Got pissed off at a few measly dirty words. Made an ass of herself. It had been fun while it lasted, but clearly she wasn’t cut out for this lifestyle.

Wrapped in her misery, she hardly noticed Nick cutting the ropes off her—hurriedly but gently—with the EMT shears he kept on the bedside table.

Hardly noticed when he briefly left the room.

Flinched when she felt pressure on her still pulsing clit but relaxed when she realized it was a soothingly cool washcloth—relaxed, at least, to the extent she could, which meant pulling back behind her walls of shock and misery.

So she hardly noticed him lying down beside her and cradling her in his arms. Good dom behavior, she registered briefly. Nick was a good dom.

And someday he’d find a good sub again, but it wasn’t going to be her, not after tonight’s debacle. He wasn’t going to want to deal with her, and she wasn’t sure it was a good idea for her to deal with him. He’d injured her by accident. The real hurt, she’d done to herself.

That meant it was time to get out. In the worst cases of abuse, the victim learned to do the abuser’s work for him. And while Nick wasn’t being abusive, that didn’t mean they might not both be harmed by the mess they were making together.

Nick held Selene close, listened to her sobbing as if her world had fallen apart, wished he dared to say how much he loved her.

Fat lot of good that would do now. If she hadn’t wanted to hear when everything was going more-or-less well, she certainly wouldn’t now when he’d fucked up so grandly.

It wasn’t the missed stroke. That must have hurt like a bitch, and he felt bad about it, but occasional accidents happened to even the most careful doms.

It was the whole damn scene. He’d pushed too hard, too fast. He’d played with things they’d never really talked about, edgy things like face-slapping and humiliation, springing them on her out of the blue when she was already off-kilter.

And he’d played while he was angry and upset, something he’d promised himself he’d never do. That way lay madness, or at least stupid accidents and emotional minefields, both of which had happened tonight.

At least she’d had the sense to use her safe word, although he guessed after the fact that she’d been tempted to long before she did. He should have been paying more attention. He knew how hard it was to admit something was too much, especially for a proud woman like Selene, and how just plain hard it could be to think when you were caught up in a heavy scene. A responsible dom kept a little bit of detachment so he could see if his sub had reached the point where she couldn’t manage to say the safe word because her brain had stopped working. But he’d been too rattled to keep that detachment.

He only hoped he could repair the damage he’d done to their relationship in his stupid pride. Maybe she wasn’t in love with him, but she’d liked him a lot until now. With luck, she still did, and maybe when she calmed down, they’d be able to talk this through and be all right. At the moment, though, she seemed happiest pretending he wasn’t there, and he wasn’t sure he blamed her.

All he could do was hold her shuddering, sobbing form and whisper almost inaudibly into her hair, “I’m so sorry,” and “I love you.”

When she finally stirred and rolled onto her back, he breathed a sigh of relief. When she opened her eyes and looked at him, he breathed another one.

“Hi,” he said, knowing it was feeble. “Can I get you anything?”

“Another cold cloth and a glass of water. Please.”

He padded off to the kitchen.

Over the sound of running water, he heard the door slam.

With the faucet still on, he ran back to the bedroom.

Selene’s play collar and the toy, still drenched with her juices, lay on the bed, the collar surrounding the balls.

But Selene was gone.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Half naked on the roof, Selene watched him run outside, calling her name. He pelted down the street toward her usual bus stop, a madman in the dark, calling her name.

Then she took her cell phone and called for a cab to meet her at a T stop several blocks away in the opposite direction, finished putting her clothes on, and headed back down to the street.

She walked briskly, though not without looking back. The brisk was because some of the area between Nick’s place and the T stop wasn’t the nicest neighborhood, not dangerous but rundown and depressing and more so in the dark.

The looking back… She couldn’t decide if she hoped Nick wasn’t following her or hoped he was.

She hated leaving like this, hated running away, but she knew if she tried to talk to him now, even about something like why she needed to go home and clear her head before they tried to talk about what had happened, it would make the current mess even worse.

She needed to be calm, to face up to her failures like a rational adult so they could end the relationship in the measured, friendly way they’d begun it.

Because it would have to end after tonight, wouldn’t it?

She couldn’t imagine Nick would want anything to do with her after a debacle of emotional blackmail, hysteria and safe-wording.

And that thought was bleak and lonely enough to make a seedy Jamaica Plain side street late at night look cheerful and bright by comparison.

The cab ride home gave her all too much time to think, but not in a productive or calming way. Different voices echoed in her head. Molly, pointing out she’d been nuts to be there in the first place and would be better off without Nick—and had she considered therapy for that self-destructive streak? Natalie, mocking her as a day-tripper into the land of BDSM, unable to hack the reality. Her mother, sad and sympathetic about a promising relationship fizzling without beginning to understand what had happened. Alison and Garth, annoyed that she’d done a number on their friend. And her own inner voice, the one she’d use if a friend told her a similar story, pointing out that Nick wasn’t lacking in fault here, that he’d been sending mixed signals, then he’d pushed her boundaries, taking her deep into unknown territory without talking her through it first, without his usual care to make sure she was okay with things.

And her other inner voice, troubled and troubling, reminding her that she’d come like the Fourth of July while he pushed her, that her body still trembled with desire, that her thighs were still sticky with moisture.
That
inner voice suggested, not gently, that the situation was even odder and more confusing than it appeared on the surface.

Her cell rang three times during the relatively short ride, but each time she saw Nick’s number and ignored it.

She knew she and Nick needed to talk, but not yet. Good God, not yet, not when her mind was still such a muddle. Not when her body still throbbed from pain and her pussy still throbbed with an aching need for Nick, Nick’s body, Nick’s cock, whatever it took to send her to space and then bring her safely back again. Not when she couldn’t decide if the things they’d done had been awful, blissful, or both.

The emotional turmoil? Awful, definitely awful. The cane slip, ditto. That was the kind of pain you should only have to experience in, say, the course of lifesaving medical treatment; otherwise, she’d pass, thanks. But oh, she wouldn’t mind feeling a cane again under other circumstances, feeling that delicious helplessness of being bound so tightly, being pushed past the point where things gave pleasure in any simple, straightforward way but came in layers. Pain and pleasure and pain and the pleasure of knowing she pleased…

The phone shrilled again. Really, she needed to shut it off.

But as she fumbled in her purse for it, she realized it wasn’t Nick but Alison.

She was ready to ignore that call too. There had been brunch plans for the morning. Let Nick explain why she wouldn’t be joining them.

Then she decided she owed Alison an explanation for why she’d be dropping out of sight for a while—or maybe permanently.

The first words out of Alison’s mouth were, “I just got a really weird call from Nick. He called me, said about three words, then hung up. Now he’s not answering. Is everything okay?”

“No,” she choked out. “No it’s not. I’ve ruined everything and… Oh Alison, I know you’re Nick’s friend more than mine, but you’re the only person I could possibly talk to about this. Molly just wouldn’t understand. Can I call you tomorrow?”

She dropped her voice abruptly. It probably wasn’t the first time the cabby had driven a passenger who wasn’t having the best damn night of her life, but he didn’t need to hear everything.

“No time like the present, sweetie. That’s what friends are for. Do you want to come over?”

Selene glanced out the cab window. Almost home—almost to her car. “Could I? Oh, thank you, Alison. I’ll be there by ten.”

Nick’s lungs still hurt. He was in good shape, but he wasn’t Captain God-damn America, and chasing a bus up Centre Street pushed it. And when, three inbound stops later, he caught up with the bus, the one he’d been sure Selene must have been on—she wasn’t.

He’d punched at the door when the bus drove off, which, he figured, made him look crazier than the average half-dressed guy pelting down Centre Street, and since they were near the VA Hospital’s outpatient psych clinic, the level of random street crazy in the neighborhood was fairly high.

Taking just enough time for a deep breath, he’d run back to his own neighborhood and the restaurants and cafés of Centre Street. She had to be around here somewhere, couldn’t have vanished into thin air. With an increasing sense of insanity, he dashed into every restaurant and bar and coffee shop, looked around frantically, moved on to the next.

She wasn’t in any of them. No one remembered seeing her—not, he thought grimly, that he’d have given himself information like that at this point, because he must look like a classic psycho that a woman should be running away from.

Then he’d grabbed his car and driven to the Green Street T station. The station was empty, a train’s lights disappearing toward Boston.

Probably that was the second or third train that had come through in the time since Selene had vanished. No hope there, especially since it wasn’t a direct shot to her house on that line and she had several options of how she might transfer, assuming she was on the T at all.

But where the hell had she gone?

Had she taken the wrong bus because she was distracted or because she’d rather go all over Boston than risk having him catch up with her? Miraculously gotten a cab in the thirty seconds before he’d noticed she was gone?

Met up with something dire between his house and the bus? His neighborhood was as safe as any in Boston—which meant it was unlikely but not impossible.

It had been almost two hours. He’d called and called, but she refused to pick up. He’d even called Alison and Garth on some lame excuse, too ashamed to admit what had happened, but hoping that if Selene had gotten in touch with them, Alison would say something. All that had done was confuse Alison.

Not that he’d blame Selene if she ran away and didn’t ever come back. He’d broken half the unwritten rules of being a good dom and all the rules of being a good partner in one night. Any sane woman would run—and she more than most. He’d probably showed all the warning signs of an abuser.

But he wanted to apologize. To explain.

To say again he loved her, even if she didn’t feel the same. And if he’d had a chance of that, if she just hadn’t been ready to take the big leap from like and lust to love, he’d blown that out the window, hadn’t he? Idiot.

He loved her and knew he’d fucked up big-time and would spend a lifetime making it up if she’d let him.

His phone buzzed.

Not Selene.

He almost ignored it when he saw Garth’s number. If there were such a thing as a dom license, Garth would revoke his for some of the shit he’d pulled tonight.

But maybe Garth knew something.

He picked up gingerly.

And had to hold the phone back from his ear when Garth barked, “Get your ass over here. Selene just talked to Alison.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Selene considered it nothing short of miraculous that she managed to drive to Garth and Alison’s without killing herself or anyone else. Between emotional upheaval and a strange sense of disconnection thanks to the abrupt way the scene—and her night with Nick—ended, she felt like she might as well be driving drunk. She couldn’t focus on anything except that, if things weren’t over between her and Nick, they probably ought to be, between her stupidity and his.