Page 11 of Forfeits

“Well…I said you could choose. I didn’t say I’d go along with your choice.”

My heart sinks, but my body sings with the knowledge that I am his, and I will suffer what he wants me to suffer. I don’t hate the crop. But I love the paddle and I want it. Maybe if I suffer for him under the crop, which he enjoys very much, he’ll give me what I want—or maybe not. But it doesn’t matter. I’m thrilled to be here, under his control, and he knows it.

I close my eyes and nod. “Yes, Sir.”

Suddenly, without time passing, I am on my belly on our bed in the home we share, my wrists and ankles bound, the snaking tease of the crop along my ass and down my thigh leaving excitement in its wake. Daniel likes to edge me before he gets down to the nitty gritty of my suffering, but this is its own form of torture.

“Please,” I whisper.

I don’t know what I’m asking for, but my heart lurches in my chest, and for some reason, I start crying. He’s barely touched me. I don’t usually get this upset. I love our kink sessions.

So why am I crying?

The sensation of the crop on my body becomes a whisper, gliding over my ass again, then along my hip and…then it’s gone.

“Daniel?” I sob. “Daniel!” I scream, struggling against the leather cuffs as I turn my head.

There is no one in the room but me. And I can’t move. I lurch and fight in my bindings, panicking and sobbing his name.

“Daniel! Daniel, come back! Please!”

There’s nobody there—and I’m trapped.

“You have to let me up!” I say, fighting the bonds. “Let me go!”

I wake with a jerk as my dark bedroom comes into focus around me. It’s not the same room as in my dream. It’s not the same house. We moved when we knew we were going to have Lucy.

I blink rapidly, trying to focus through the tears that are still falling. I lift my hands to my face and sob as quietly as I can, so I don’t wake her. Luckily, her room is on the other side of the house, and she likes to keep her door closed at night.

I turn in the bed and cry into the pillow—for Daniel, for the loss of him and for the loss of that feeling of being his and suffering for him.

I missed that so much, and I couldn’t talk to anyone about it.

* * * *

“Daniel and I, we…” I met the non-judgmental gaze of my therapist, Jinta, and felt my cheeks heat. I knew she wouldn’t judge me, but I’d not talked about this before. “We kind of had a…” very kinky Dom-sub thing going on.

Jinta waited for me to continue.

“We were kinky, Daniel and I.”

“Oh?” she said, with a quirk to her smile. “Really.”

“Yeah.”

“You haven’t mentioned that before. Why now?”

I blinked, suddenly overcome. “I…I don’t… I didn’t…”

My head swirled with memories and voices. I was breathing too quickly.

Jinta stood and walked over to where I sat on the couch by the window. She placed her hand on my back.

“It’s all right, Fletcher. Breathe. Count with me.”

I focused on her familiar and calming presence and counted my breaths in and out until I had a hold of myself.

“I’m so sorry.”

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