Safe Harbor (17 page)

The next morning, Clarisse leaned against the kitchen doorway and watched Mac wash dishes. Weird. What did it say about her that she’d quickly come to see a naked man in a collar washing dishes as a normal fixture in her world?

“What’s on your mind?” he asked, startling her.

“What?”

He turned from the sink, that playful smile on his face. “What’s rolling around that pretty brain of yours, kiddo?”

From the heat in her face, she knew she was blushing.

“Honestly?”

His smile faded. He dried his hands on the dishtowel and leaned against the counter. “Always. Total honesty, you know that. It’s law in this house.”

She tried to keep her eyes off his cock and her mind off how she’d dreamed about it plunging deep into her…

Clarisse sat at the table. “How can you let him do this to you?”

“Do what?”

“Treat you the way he treats you?”

Mac pulled out his chair, the one he kept a towel on, and sat across from her. His voice softened. “Treats me how?”

With his cock safely out of sight under the table, she met his eyes.

“You’re his slave.”

A hint of a smile returned to his face. “That’s sort of the whole point. You hadn’t guessed that by now?”

“How can you do that? Let him run your life.”

“I love him.”

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“How do you know he won’t throw you out one day?”

Mac shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “I don’t. I don’t know that any more than he knows I won’t up and leave one day. I’m not held hostage, if you haven’t noticed. I’m here willingly. We trust and love each other.”

With the questions coming, she couldn’t stop. “The things you let him do to you, like at the party and even the everyday stuff. Doesn’t that make you feel…used?”

He grinned. “Again, that’s sort of the whole point. For me, at least. I want to serve him.”

She didn’t know what worried her more, that he seemed so okay with it or that of late her fantasies were of letting Mac tie her up and do some of them to her. “He beats you!”

“Not nearly hard enough sometimes, doll.”

At her shocked silence, he grinned. “I love this. Don’t you get it? I trust him. Including last night, I think I can count on one hand the times I’ve had to safeword for something other than equipment issues.

Sully, he’ll call a scene a lot faster than I will. He doesn’t go nearly far enough for my liking sometimes. He’s a worrywart.”

More stunned silence from her.

He leaned forward, his elbows on the table, hands clasped. “I like the pain. Haven’t you noticed how sometimes I’ll goad him so he’ll have to punish me?”

She nodded. She’d watched Mac’s eyes twinkle all the times Sully held up fingers denoting strokes after an infraction. It had been her suspicion, but she hadn’t wanted to voice it, didn’t know if that was a taboo subject or not.

“He knows I do it. Sweetie, I love him. More importantly, I trust him. There’s been times he’s taken me further than I thought I could stand and I didn’t safeword and I’m damn glad I didn’t. Usually if I safeword, it’s because of an equipment malfunction or I get a cramp or I know something’s seriously wrong. I rarely safeword because of what he’s doing to me.”

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“But he hurts you.”

“Yeah. Isn’t it great?” His playful smile melted her.

She shivered. He reached across the table, just enough his fingers brushed the back of her hand. “Not everyone gets off on pain. Like Doreen last night, she’s not a pain slut, she likes the bondage and forced orgasm play. I enjoy pain. Vanilla sex doesn’t do it for me. He gets off on the control. He needs it. He gives me what I need, and I give him what he needs. It works for us. Every person in the lifestyle is in it for a different reason and practices it in a different way.”

He leaned back again, withdrawing his hand. “I mean, I like my turn in the driver’s seat every once in a while, too. That’s why he decided to let me have him when we’re out on the boat. He trusts me as much as I trust him, and every so often he digs doing that.”

“But he’s
using
you!”

“Fuck yeah, in a good way. It’s what I want. He’s using
only
me.

He’s not going around getting his rocks off with just anyone. He needs me as much as I need him.”

“What about last night? Doreen.”

He shrugged. “He helped out. That doesn’t bother me. It gets me off knowing he trusts me as much as I trust him, which is why he lets me be in charge on the boat. I’m the only person he trusts like that.

And it mixes it up, gives him some downtime in a way he can safely enjoy it.”

“Why not at home? Why don’t you take turns?”

Mac’s expression turned sad. “He’s been hurt in a lot of ways, and not just the shooting. It’s not my place to tell his secrets. I can say he’s had a damn good reason to not want to trust. I don’t blame him. I was there for him to help pick up the pieces, and I was lucky enough to prove to him he could trust me.” He looked at her. “He trusted me enough to believe me when I offered myself to him.”

She couldn’t process that. “You
asked
him to make you his slave?”

“Yeah.”

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She still found that difficult to believe. “You’ve got nothing.”

“I have Sully. He’s my Master. That’s everything I need. He’s all I need. If I have him, he’ll take care of the rest. That’s all I need to know.” The look on her face must have showed her disbelief.

“Besides, you’ve seen for yourself not everything we do is Master/slave stuff. A lot of it is normal. Do you know what he bought me for our first Christmas together?”

She shook her head.

He smiled. “I got up that morning, and yes, we were full-on slave and Master at that point, and there’s a Corvette sitting in the driveway. Not new, but in great shape.”

“But whose name was it in?” She struggled to understand, to reconcile the new longing in her soul with the stubborn balking in her mind.

“His. He owns me. Everything that’s mine, so to speak, is his.

Here’s the thing, I never asked him for a new car. We’d been at a car show the weekend before and I saw one there. I was looking at it. I never said I wished I had one, never offered an opinion on it. I spent a few minutes looking at it, and while I knew in my heart I wished I had one, I never told him.”

Confusion set in. “So how did he know?”

Mac grinned. “That’s the point! He knows me better than I know myself sometimes. He knew from watching me that I wanted one. I didn’t even consciously do anything. He just knew.”

She thought about the VW in the driveway. “Is that how he knew about the Bug?”

“Naw, that was me. I’ll admit I gave him the idea. I knew he’d been planning on getting you a car, and I told him what you’d said about them.”

Part of her felt uplifted that the men cared enough about her to do that for her. Part of her felt…disappointed. Sully hadn’t read her mind after all.

She shoved that last twinge out of her thoughts. “What if he kicks

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you out with nothing?”

He shrugged. “He could, but he won’t. Legally we have an agreement that if we separate I’ll get certain things.”

“The Dilly?”

“That’s one of them.”

“It doesn’t scare you?”

“Why should it?”

Wrapping her head around the issue wasn’t happening as she hoped it would. She stood and paced the kitchen. “How do you know?

How do you know you won’t get screwed? In the bad way,” she added.

“I don’t.”

“So you’re perfectly okay with him having all this control over you? Faced with the very real possibility of having to start over?”

He shrugged. “I can always get a job, go back to school for my master’s degree, something.”

It struck her how little she knew about the men. “You went to college?”

“Yeah. Sully made me take advantage of my GI Bill bennies. I had no interest in going to college. He ordered me to. I enlisted in the Army the week after I graduated from high school, went to boot camp a few weeks later. I had no interest in college.”

“What’s your degree in?”

“Marine biology. Sully said I could pick any major I wanted, but I had to earn a degree in something.” He smirked. “So you see, I’m not some poor, dumb asshole without options. I was offered an internship at Mote Marine. I turned it down despite Sully wanting me to take it.”

“He
made
you go to school?”

He grinned. “Yeah, how horrible is that? Fuckin’ sadist.”

Clarisse tried to process that. “You’re a marine biologist?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “No. I’m a slave.”

She blinked, trying to make sense of that. “Why would you give up a career to do that?”

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“I trust him. This is what I want to do for the rest of my life, to serve him.” He studied her. “Have you ever really trusted anyone?”

She started to answer, then stopped, thinking about it.

He picked up the conversation. “I trust him to blindfold me, strap me to a cross, and whip the shit out of me and not let anyone else touch me. I trust him to pay the electric bill and buy me food. I trust him not to sell the Dilly out from under me. I’m not saying that level of trust magically appeared overnight. We didn’t start out from day one the way we are now. We started out with pretty elaborate boundaries. Eventually, over the years, we dropped almost everything and replaced it with safewording. At some point you have to take the leap and trust you’re going to be caught. In exchange for that, I’m perfectly happy to serve him.”

The war waged within her. “He was a cop. How do I ever trust one of them!” An old argument and one she knew wasn’t valid anymore, but it remained her mistrustful brain’s fallback position.

One her mind could comfortably wrap around even while her heart disputed the truth of that belief.

“Not all cops are like Bryan,” Mac said. “Most of them aren’t.

Most of them are decent, caring guys dedicated to their jobs. I’m not saying they’re not human and don’t make mistakes, but the majority of them don’t hurt people.”

She crossed her arms in front of her. “He’s still a fucking cop.

They stick together. Sort of like the Mafia, isn’t it?” Any excuse, any lie she could tell herself to deny the new and conflicting feelings struggling to take over.

Anything to stall having to admit the truth to herself.

Mac sadly shook his head. “No, babe. Not even close. Not like that.” He closed his eyes. “If Sully could have killed Betsy’s husband with his bare hands, he would have. It ripped him up nearly as badly as me when she died. He didn’t even know me then. I was the victim’s brother. He came to the hospital every day and sat with me and my brother, talked with us. When we finally took her off life

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support, he stood there with us when it happened. He was there for us during the trial and the asshole’s conviction.”

He opened his eyes. She noticed they looked too bright, like maybe he was close to tears. “Maybe that’s the answer to your question. How can I trust him? Because he walked through hell with me when I was still just part of the job to him. How can he trust me?

Because when our positions were reversed, I walked through hell with him and refused to let him give up.”

He pushed away from the table and left the kitchen.

* * * *

Sully departed early the next morning for a conference. Although Clarisse didn’t revisit the topic, her brain still struggled to make sense of it. Modern women were supposed to be strong and independent and not want to be under anyone’s thumb, right? She’d struggled for years under Bryan’s anger, chafing under his control and abuse.

So why did she want to throw herself at Mac?

And Sully, to a lesser extent.

By the next day, she couldn’t take it anymore. After lunch, she sought Mac out in the study off the living room, where he sat in front of his computer—naked, of course—working on paperwork for the Dilly.

Mac looked up as she walked in. She felt a cautious mask descend. Something she’d never felt from him before.

“Can I interrupt you?” she quietly asked.

He nodded.

“I want to understand. About you and Sully. Why you can do this with him.”

“Does it matter? Sully’s told you, you can stay here with us as long as you want. When he says that, he means it. I agree with him.”

He laughed. “See? He
did
ask my opinion on that.”

She took a deep breath. “I want to understand what you two have.

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I want to be able to get it.”

“Why? It’s between me and him. We’ve already told you we’ll never force you to be part of us like that. As long as you let us do our thing, respect what and who we are, it’s okay.”

Her face felt hot, flushed, throbbing as her pulse pounded. “I want to understand,” she carefully said, “because I don’t understand it. But I want to.”

He watched her for several long, silent moments. Her face heated even more under his steady gaze. “Close your eyes,” he softly commanded.

She did.

“Don’t open them,” he said in that same soft, steady voice.

She heard him push his chair back and stand. She tried to listen for him, but his lack of clothing made it impossible.

Then she felt his breath against the back of her neck. When he whispered near her left ear, she flinched. “Trust doesn’t happen overnight.” He stepped away.

Her breath came in ragged gasps she struggled to control. Where would he be next? What would he do?

Then in her right ear, “Do you trust me not to hurt you?”

She nodded.

His fingers softly brushed up her left arm, making her shiver.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. “Don’t speak until I say so.”

His fingers disappeared. Then he repeated the action along her right arm and withdrew his fingers.

For a long moment, nothing. No sound, no movement, no hint of breath.

She jumped when she felt the gentle caress from his lips, warm and moist, along the back of her neck, above her neckline.

Her pulse thrummed in her throat.

His mouth disappeared.

“What do you feel?” he asked. “Tell me.”

She struggled for an answer. “I don’t know. What am I supposed

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to feel?”

“I can’t tell you that. What do
you
feel?”

“Horny.” She blushed even deeper, but his soft, amused chuckle warmed her further.

“I imagine you do.” Then he caressed both arms with his fingers.

She fought the urge to moan. “What else?”

“Scared,” she blurted out.

His fingers hesitated. “Of me?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s a good place to start then, isn’t it?” His fingers disappeared, and she sensed him step back. He next spoke from in front of her. “Fear prevents trust. You have to learn to trust, even if it’s only one step at a time.” She heard him sit. “You can open your eyes.”

He now sat at the computer again and stared at the monitor. She felt frozen, incomplete, on the edge of something and she didn’t know what.

“That’s all?”

“What do you mean?”

There should be more, shouldn’t there? “You didn’t…there wasn’t…”

He grinned. “I already earned myself ten with the cane.”

Clarisse fought and lost against her frustration. “Dammit, I want answers, not fucking Yoda!”

He leaned back. She glimpsed a frown, a hint of the expression he wore on the boat. “You have to learn when to appropriately trust. You can’t have everything your way. I’m not saying trust everyone all the time or even in the same way.”

He turned toward her. “If you’re saying you want me to take you to bed and fuck your brains out because you’re horny, I can’t do that no matter how badly I want to. Sully and I have boundaries in our

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relationship. We don’t cross them without discussing and agreeing first. That’s part and parcel of having trust in each other.”

Fuck her brains out?
She swallowed to form spit. That’s
exactly
what she wanted him to do, God help her, and the fact that an immediate flood of moisture pooled in her sex confirmed it. “I didn’t ask you to do that,” she said. But dammit, she wanted him to.

He smiled, a slight, knowing curve to his lips. “You didn’t have to.” He turned back to the monitor. “When you can trust—really, deeply trust—then maybe we can talk more.”

“Can’t you be my…whatever? My Dom? Can’t you play with me the way Sully played with Alex and Doreen?”

“Is that something you want?”

She couldn’t say it. She nodded.

“Maybe one day.”

He didn’t say anything else. From the way he focused on his work, she realized the conversation was over. On shaky legs, she walked to her room and closed the door.