“Tough shit,” I replied, trying to soften the edges of my harsh voice. “You need to say it out loud. You need to let some of itout.I’m not volunteering to be your therapist, god knows I’d do a piss poor job of it. But you need to say the word, at least.”
“You don’t know the first thing about me and what I need. You can take your sanctimonious bullshit and shove it up your ass.” She began to rise, vibrating with tension.
“I’ve been there, too,” I spat out. “Not in the barn, or on a farm. I was in a shitty block of flats, but you get the idea.”
Lynn sat back down. Fixed her mouth into a flat line, skin pulled tight over her face. “Is that why you…” She waved a hand around, the nails painted the dark red of dried blood, I noticed. Sharpened to points.
“I’m many things, asshole. Better at riding than most of my brothers, the best torturer this side of Birmingham, a Mario Kart prodigy—”
She snorted loudly. Rude.
“What I’mnotis a mind reader.” I gave her a dry look. “What does this—” I flapped my hand like she did. “Mean?”
“Your deviant proclivities.”
“Where did you learn all these impressive words?” I asked, trying not to laugh. It was how I dealt with my demons; morbid, dark, twisted humour. That, and sex.
“School,” she answered flatly. “Is that why you need it rough? Because of what happened to you?”
“Mostly,” I agreed. “I started out pretty fucked up, but it got worse.” I shrugged. “I’m not talking about this with you.”
“Aw, but we’re friend-adjacent.”
The sarcasm on this woman. I exhaled hard through my nose, swallowing back words that originated in my dick instead of my brain.
“So how rough do you need it?” she asked, seeming to have recovered her bravery now she knew she was pissing me off.
“Very. I won that race, by the way,” I said, pointing my controller at the screen.
“Not bothered. How hard is very? What are we talking, specifically? Bondage? Choking? Spanking? I’ll be so disappointed if you tell me it’s just hair pulling.”
I clutched my shaved head. “Leave my hair out of this.”
Her flat expression called my bullshit, which was annoying since I was usually calling her on hers.
She leaned closer, her scent hitting my senses. Brimstone, explosives, a little smoky, a lot dangerous. No decay, no death anymore. It was a relief to smell the absence of it, to not connect her with Hanna and the empty, staring eyes I couldn’t look away from for hours, the silence that suffocated me, the strangling fear of knowing I would be next.
“Let’s make a deal,” Lynn suggested.
“Let’s not,” I snapped, harsher than I meant to. I dragged a hand over my head, dug my fingernails into the back of my skull. My demons were too fucking loud today, breathing down my neck.
“I’ll say that word, out loud, and you tell me your sex shit and how it helps.”
I gave her a wary glance. Was that all this was—trying to find ways to deal with her trauma? Pure curiosity? And here my ego assumed she wanted to fuck me. I shook my head at myself and said, “Fine. I need complete control, a position of true, absolute power. Sometimes I need a bark to force complete submission; there’s enough alpha in my immediate family that I can produce a weak one. I refuse to be even a little bit submissive. Fuck that.”
Because she was quiet, watching me but listening, not antagonistic, I bit out, “I need to hurt, instead of being hurt.”
“Makes sense,” Lynn said quietly, a low murmur of velvet, barely there at all.
“It’s more than most people can handle. Too dark.”
She shrugged. “I get it. I thought—honestly, I thought it might work for me, too, but I don’t want to hurt anyone. That won’t help me.”
She sounded so disappointed, so miserable, that I asked, “What will help you?”
“Fuck knows,” she sighed, picking at the buttons of the controller. “But I’m sick of not being able to sleep. I need to take control of it. Beat the memories into submission. I’ve hadenough.”
I knew that feeling. “Start by fulfilling your end of the deal. What happened in that barn?”
