Page 226 of Masters of Control

He kept murmuring the words of encouragement as she sobbed into his shoulder, crying hysterically without knowing why. All she knew was she couldn’t stop. If he’d screamed at her, if he’d decided to punish her, if he’d lashed out at her—all of that she could have understood. That wouldn’t have made her cry.

But his acceptance? His apology?

It broke something inside her, and she cried like a child, finally safe in someone’s arms, able to release the torrent of emotions that had been bottled up inside her for so long. The whole time, Brian soothed her, rubbing her shoulder as he rocked her on his lap and holding her the way she’d wanted to be held so many times growing up.

Eventually, the emotions and tears were finally drained, leaving her soggy and empty. She was limp on his lap, whatever little energy she had left gone.

“I’m so sorry, sweetie. If I’d known a week without an orgasm would do this to you, I never would have agreed it was a good idea,” Brian joked hesitantly.

Morgan snorted out a laugh, then her hand flew to her mouth and nose to cover them in shock. She’d never snorted before.

The giggles came then, almost as hysterical as the crying, but without the jagged edges that had cut into her insides. Brian laughed, too, hugging her tightly before releasing her and helping her to her feet. She still felt a little shaky, but she could stand.

“I really am sorry. I’ll talk to everyone, and I’ll find out what happened that Lexie didn’t tell you.”

Morgan shook her head again, wiping her tears away.

“No, I’ll talk to Lexie. And Patrick.” She needed to do it herself, or no one was ever going to believe that she could. She needed all of them to see that she could do things on her own if they were ever going to trust her to do things on her own.

Brian nodded slowly. She didn’t know if he was actually going to listen or not, but either way, she was going to talk to Lexie and Patrick as if he wouldn’t. As grateful as she was for all of their support, she wanted to live her life on her own terms.

Mistress Julie was going to be so proud of her.

Asad

Sleeping alone sucked.

That was a thought he’d never had before in his life, but here he was, rolling around over and over again, then hugging his pillow because… because he couldn’t hug Morgan. Because he’d gotten that used to having her in bed with him.

Rolling over again, he reached for his phone and checked the time.

Quarter ‘til midnight. He never had this kind of trouble getting to sleep. He laid down, he fell asleep. That was how his life was.

Until now.

He had to go to work in the morning. He needed to sleep. He should have been asleep an hour ago. While he might still stay up late on weekends, on weeknights he was responsible about getting his seven to eight hours.

Maybe he should invest in a teddy bear. Or a body pillow. ‘Cause his little pillow that he was trying to snuggle with wasn’t cutting it.

Or maybe he just needed to get over his shit and get used to not having something or someone to cuddle with because that wasn’t who he was. He didn’t do sleepovers, and he wasn’t going to start. It had been a temporary situation, a tiny blip in his usual routine, and now it was time to get back to reality.

Rolling onto his back, phone still in his hand, he turned it on, not entirely sure what he was looking for. He ended up on the clock app, scrolling, and it took less than a minute for Morgan’s current livestream to pop up on his feed, as if the algorithm knew what he really wanted.

She was smiling and tapping her nails against a piece of beeswax paper that was resting on her microphone. The sound was oddly soothing. Or maybe it was just that seeing her was oddly soothing. The comments coming up on the bottom of the screen were a little distracting, so he swiped them off so he could just watch her.

As always, her makeup was perfectly done, her hair falling in curls around her shoulders, pushed out of her face by the large blue and silver headphones she had on. They matched the dark blue shirt she was wearing. She looked good. Happy. A slight smile curved her lips as she looked at the camera. Even though he knew it wasn’t true, it felt like she was looking directly at him.

Rolling onto his side, he put the phone down on the bed next to his pillow. It wasn’t the best angle, but he could still see her while he lay there. A huge yawn cracked his jaw, his eyelids fluttering.

It was like now that he was trying to watch something, he was struggling to keep his eyes open.

Which was the point, right? He needed to sleep. Which meant he should close his eyes and stop watching Morgan.

A moment later, she stopped tapping on the beeswax and moved it to the side.

“Okay,” she whispered, her voice so much lower and softer than normal. “Thank you all so much for the warm welcome back this evening. This week, I’m back to my usual schedule—yes, HappyGirl, I had a wonderful trip, thank you. Now, we’re going to do a bit of reading from Pride and Prejudice. I’m picking back up where we left off, then I will see you all tomorrow night again. Don’t forget, my schedule is Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday nights, and I have my video channel for the other nights in-between. I’ll be getting more content up on there this week as well.”

The whispery quality of her voice and pacing of her words was almost hypnotic. Asad yawned again.