Adam frowned, but stood and followed Cooper into the master bedroom. He closed the door and stood, looking rigid and uncomfortable. Cooper turned to face him, hands on his hips.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Adam shook his head.
“Tell me,” Cooper coaxed.
“I’m just not feeling terribly submissive right now.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” Adam shrugged.
“Well, can you think about it? I don’t always feel submissive when you want to be in charge, but I’m not resistant to the power exchange and I feel like you’re being resistant right now.”
Cooper protectively crossed his arms across his chest. This was what Cooper had feared. The worry that Adam wasn’t really all in, even though he said he was. He couldn’t spend the duration of their relationship worrying that one day the dynamic would be too much for him.
In response, Adam sighed, his shoulders deflating.
“You’re right,” he said with another shrug. “I’m sorry. It’s still…I’m…I’m a work in progress, I think.”
Cooper dropped his arms to the side, heart melting at the display of honesty Adam was offering him. He immediately felt ashamed of himself for thinking the worst of Adam. That was clearly something he needed to work on—trusting Adam and taking him at his word.
“Now you look like something’s wrong,” Adam said.
“I jumped to an unfair conclusion,” he admitted, mouth twisted into a sad kind of smile. His mind immediately went to Shel and he hated it. Shel should have been a distant memory. Shel wasn’t Adam.
“That’s honestly fair.” Adam matched his expression. “I probably deserve that after how I acted before.”
“No. You deserve to be trusted and...” Cooper let out a long breath. “Sometimes my mind compares you to someone else.”
Adam tensed, his features pulling taut. “Who?”
“Before I met you, when I was eighteen, I got involved with another man. He was my introduction to this whole lifestyle, even though back then I only knew about being submissive.”
Adam’s expression relaxed and he huffed out a quiet noise. “Should I be jealous?”
“God, no.” Cooper shook his head, fighting the painful memories. “I wanted to switch back then, too. He wouldn’t let me. He said submission was beneath him. ThatIwas beneath him.”
“That’s a load of horseshit.” Adam scoffed.
“I know that now,” he went on. “And I think I knew it then, but I put guards up and I promised myself I wouldn’t be in a one-sided dynamic again.”
“I’m not him,” Adam said gently.
“I know that. And back then maybe it wouldn’t have mattered, but as the years went on, I learned to like it. But it’s more than that now. I don’t justliketo switch. Iama switch. Even though I might have gotten into it from the wrong place, it’s right now.” Cooper blinked, his glasses a little foggy behind the lenses. “I still want the things I want, and I want them for the right reasons. But sometimes the wrong ideas still fester in the back of my head.”
There.
He'd admitted his sins and his shortcomings, and a huge part of him expected Adam to walk away. Part of him believed his reasons for being the way he was weren’t good enough or weren’t right. He hated the voice that lived in the back of his head. It sounded a lot like doubt when he should have been thinking about how much Adam loved him.
“I think everything you said makes sense, Cooper. I understand where you’re coming from.” Adam’s features had turned gentle again, mouth twisted into a careful smile. “What did we talk about earlier in the week? The difference between trust and belief?”
“You’re giving me too much grace,” Cooper mumbled. He’d basically just admitted his subconscious stopped him from trusting Adam about being true to his word.
Adam went to his knees. “I’m trusting you, and you’re believing in me. It’s not a smooth path, Cooper. We’re both old enough to know better than that.”
“Adam.”
