“No.”
“Would you behappy?”
“Yes. I love babies. And I would love his beyondreason.”
Her words give mehope.
Emma Lia is tipsy, well, a little more than tipsy, but I’m hopeful that what she’s telling me tonight holds some truth of what she will feel when I tell her what Idid.
5
Emma Lia James
My head is poundinglike crazy. I should have known better than to drink that many glasses of wine. It always makes my head throb the nextday.
“How does my beloved feel thismorning?”
“Uhh…” I pull my pillow over my face to block the sunlight. “Terrible.”
“Headache?”
“God, yes. It’sawful.”
“I figured as much. That’s why I brought you some painrelievers.”
That’s my Dom. Always taking care of me and seeing to myneeds.
I rise and take the pills from his hand, swallowing them one at a time with the water he also brought to me. After the pills are down, I gulp half of the bottle; I feel soparched.
“People who don’t know about the lifestyle don’t see or understand this aspect of a Dom-sub relationship.” I know that I didn’t see it or know anything about it prior to Tristan. “They think it’s all about kinky sex and abuse, but you take your role as my protector seriously. You take really good care of me, Tristan, and it’s only one of the reasons that I love you the way Ido.”
“It’s my job to protect you, but I also do it because I cherish you. You are mytreasure.”
Tristan places the box of keys on the bed beside me. “And speaking of treasure. You’re behind on pulling your keys. I owe younine.”
Neither of us has been diligent about pulling the keys from the box. When I started having feelings for Tristan, I began coming up with excuses for why I should pull my key later. He did the same thing, always suggesting that I pull the key the next day and then conveniently forgetting to bring it up again. But now, I want to pull my keys. I want to put this debt behind me so he can truly see that I am choosing to be here forhim.
I reach into the box and grab a handful, placing nine keys on the bed. “Today, we shall put this debt to rest. I can feelit.”
“I think so,too.”
One, two, three. The first three are non-working. And then it happens. The turn of number four opens thepadlock.
“Well, well, well. It only took four months for that to happen.” And it’s such a burden lifted from my shoulders. We can move forward without that hanging over ourheads.
“Four months and how many keys did we go through?” heasks.
I’ve kept up with every one of the key pulls. In the beginning, it was so I could run stats in my head to calculate how close I was to freedom, but as our relationship adapted, so did my reason for keeping up with the stats. “This key is number seventy-six. Which is really pretty funny since we’ve probably had sex two hundred and seventy-sixtimes.”
“Seventy-six or a thousand and seventy-six. No matter the number, it’ll never be enough forme.”
That ain’t no lie. This man loves to fuck. But what mandoesn’t?
“We’d celebrate and do it once more if I didn’t feel like my head was going to blow off of myshoulders.”
He rubs his hand up and down my arm. “We’ll celebrate when you feel better,baby.”
“I hope that’s soon because Michaela’s birthday party is this afternoon. I have to go early and help Adam get everything ready. Which really means go early and do everything forhim.”
