Cautiously.Carefully, Alle eased herself onto her knees.The sting in her bottom was uncomfortable now, the thrill of it buried beneath layers of concern.“Spook, just tell me.Whatever it is, I can handle it.”
“Can you?I can’t.”
She reached out and cupped his face, said, looking into his eyes.“Truly, I don’t care what happened in the past.We don’t have to live there.The present is what matters.You and me.”
He accepted her kiss, but his eyes were still a battlefield of past pain, and the way he kept glancing at her made her think that he was gauging her response.Assessing her, before he risked saying more.
“The last relationship I had went very, very badly wrong.”
His expression grew gaunt, strain showing around his eyes in the form of a thin web of lines.Between his brows the skin concertinaed.“She used to beg me to spank her and then fuck her, too.”
His expression froze.The rest of his body too, except for the nervous twitch of his tongue across his teeth.
“There’d be marks afterwards.Sometimes marks that would last for days.”
The room was too quiet.Even the hum of the air con seemingly temporarily lulled by his admission.He paused, like he was waiting for her to react.To object.To brand him an abusive bastard.But, she knew it hadn’t been like that.
“Somebody saw them and didn’t understand,” she said, sensing the outcome.
His expression didn’t change, but there was a whisper of relief in his sighed response, “Yes.”
Her poor love.“What happened, Spook?”She enfolded his hand into hers.
He seemed surprised by the contact.Still, he shook his head.Eyes brimful of shadows.
“Surely it was none of their business.”
He blinked, releasing a lone tear that trekked down the side of his nose.“Tell that to her family.”He licked the salt droplet from his lips.“Everything went to hell, Alle.Everything.Can’t you see that I don’t want to replay that mess?Reliving any moment of it…” He shook his head.“Mistakes…So many stupid mistakes.They almost killed me.”
Unconsciously, she turned his arm over, and traced the silvered scar that ran the length of his forearm.
“Oh, Spook.”All she could offer him was comfort.Willingly enough he accepted her embrace, but his muscles remained tensed, and his spine unbending.
There was more to this story, so much more, she sensed, than simple wrath and family objections.But he wouldn’t tell her it, not all at once.The details would have to be pried from him over time.One detail at a time.
Minutes sailed past, until they finally broke apart.Alle gingerly settled herself on a pillow, her bottom still sore, but not so much that the burn would last more than an hour.Spook paced.She watched him, and how his body moved.Whenever he stilled, before making a turn, his toes would curl against the carpet.Eventually, he climbed back onto the bed and rested his head in her lap.
“What did you use to make marks that lasted so long?Just your hands?”
He reached up to her, brow crumpled, and blue eyes like chips of midnight.
Alle kissed his knuckles.
Slowly, his expression eased.
“She had an old-fashioned yard stick that she loved.”
Like a cane.“Oh, God!”How old had he been?Young, terrifyingly young.And the implement.Such a stretch of wood would have been unforgiving.
“I’d scratch her too.Sometimes leave bite marks.Her preference was always the cane though, or the tail end of a leather belt.”He began to fidget with the strap of the watch around his wrist, eventually undoing it so that it fell onto the duvet.“She had daddy issues.He was a teacher of some sort.Old-fashioned notions of discipline excited her.”
“Did they excite you?”
Shimmery light caught in the blond tresses of his hair as he raised his gaze towards her.Alle curled her fingers into his hair, and stroked the pure silken strands.They fell like water between her fingers providing a distraction to focus on so that she didn’t gape over his words or make him feel like he couldn’t speak.She kept eye contact to a minimum.
“I hated it.”He was frowning hard.“At least at first.I told myself I believed in equality and women’s rights, and treating others as you wished to be treated yourself, but then she’d plead.Beg.Wrap me up in knots.The stories she’d spin… The misdemeanours she’d invent.I was her fix.I didn’t much care for the stories.Nor for being her personal disciplinarian.It’s not precisely control that turns me on.”
“What does?”
