Reid shifts behind me, his body curling around mine. One heavy arm anchors across my waist, his chest warm at my back, and breath fanning against my neck. We don’t speak, but his fingers trail lightly along the top of my thigh.
My body is boneless, my brain quiet. And for the first time in what feels like weeks, maybe months, I’m not thinking about anything at all.
“Hey,” he says eventually. “Can I ask you something?”
I hum my reply, eyes still closed.
“When you said you liked being spanked and tied up… Throat grabbed. That wasn’t just dirty talk, was it?”
My eyes flutter open.
“No,” I murmur, staring at the wall. “It wasn’t.”
There’s a beat where the only thing I can hear is his steady breathing.
“Tell me why.”
He’s not asking to push me. It feels gentler than that. Curiosity, more than anything else.
I shift in his arms, clearing my throat as I adjust so I can feel more of him. His hand stays on my skin, the heat of it grounding me.
“It’s the only time my brain shuts up,” I admit quietly. “I make decisions all day. Sometimes in the OR, I feel like I’m holding a thousand threads at once, and if I drop one, someone’s fucked. Everyone looks to me to lead or to know everything. There’s no room to unravel.”
His thumb strokes once across my skin in acknowledgement.
“But this?” I go on. “When someone else takes over… when I don’t have to think or be responsible or hold anything? It’s the only time I can really let go. My body just takes over, and my brain goes quiet.”
His voice is even softer now. “That happen with anyone else before?”
“No.” I hesitate. “I’ve tried, but it’s never felt like this. Guys… well, sometimes they think it just means getting rough. Or they push it too far, like it’s about pain.”
He goes still behind me. The shift is subtle, but the tension rolls off him like a current.
“I hate that,” he grits. “You give someone that kinda trust, and they treat it like a free pass to do whatever the fuck they want to you.”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “I guess some just don’t get it’s not about being hurt, it’s about letting go. About feeling safe enough to let someone else take control.”
His arm tightens around my waist.
“You never have to explain that,” he murmurs. “Not to me.”
I believe him. I don’t even question it, because everything about the way he touched me, held me, pushed me, and made me come tonight says he already gets it.
“You don’t scare me, you know,” he adds, mouth brushing the back of my shoulder.
“What?”
“You,” he says, a hint of a smile in his voice. “You’re sharp and intense. Beautiful as fuck, obviously. But under all of it, you’ve got this pressure cooker running twenty-four-seven. Most people wouldn’t know what to do with that.”
“And you do?” I ask, the corner of my mouth twitching.
“I think I already did,” he says, nudging my hip. “But watching you come undone and want to give it up for me, just for a second? Yeah, that sealed it.”
A silence blooms between us.
“You like being in charge,” I murmur.
“I do.”
