Page 8 of Elevating Eve

All the pieces finally clicked together for him. “Ah,” he said, his heartbeat kicking up a few speeds. “He used to be your Dom?”

She looked up at him through her lashes, and it took all his self-control not to grab her and haul her onto his lap. That look in her eyes drove him fucking wild. “Sort of,” she said after a few moments. “I don’t think it was exactly the same, though. He was always a lot harsher than you were. And the ending was completely different.”

Jonathan remembered his scene out by the pool a couple of months ago. The one Eve had seen. How he’d given his guest two mind-shattering orgasms after her punishment, wringing every last bit of pleasure out of her body as she screamed.

“Completely different?” he repeated, arching a brow. “As in, you didn’t come?”

Her eyes met his for a moment, and the raw lust he saw there stole all the air from the room. But then it was gone, and he couldn’t help thinking he’d imagined the whole thing. Wishful thinking on his part, perhaps.

“No, I didn’t.” She twirled her emerald ring around her finger, staring down at her hands again.

“Ever?” The idea horrified him.

The thick gold band twisted faster and faster. “I mean, I did sometimes,” she said, embarrassment filling the words. “When we were having regular sex. Just not, you know, after punishments.”

Red hot anger spiraled out from the center of Jonathan’s chest. And he thought he hated Talley before. “Eve, I need you to look at me for a minute, and really listen to what I have to say.”

Her gaze snapped to his, finally remaining there for more than a handful of seconds. “Is something wrong?” she asked, frowning.

“What you’re describing isn’t a real Dom/sub relationship.”

Eve blinked a few times, confusion in every inch of her expression. “I don’t understand. What else would it be?”

Fuck, he was doing this all wrong. Running a hand through his already messy hair, he tried to think of a better way to explain. “Did you have any choice in the punishments?” he asked.

Her frown deepened even further. “Why would I have a choice? They were punishments.”

“But did you have a safeword?” He needed her to understand this. “Could you stop him if you wanted to?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but then closed it again, staring off into space with a deep line between her brows.

“Talk to me,” he urged. “Tell me all of it.”

“I did have a safeword,” she said, voice quiet and hesitant again. “But I only ever used it once.”

Jonathan had a feeling he knew where this was going. “Why didn’t you use it after that?”

“He just...” She let the sentence trail off as she wiped a solitary tear from her uninjured cheek. “He got so angry when I said it. He wouldn’ttalk to me or even look at me for a whole week afterward, like I was invisible. It was fucking awful.” Her voice shook by the end.

His heart was breaking for the woman. “So you let him do whatever he wanted to do to you after that, because the silent treatment was even worse,” he said as gently as he could.

Nodding, Eve wiped away several more tears.

“That isn’t a real Dom/sub relationship,” he told her again, hating the pain and confusion filling her eyes. “Talley was abusing and emotionally manipulating you, and there’szeroplace for that in a healthy BDSM relationship.”

Eve closed her eyes and took a series of slow, deep breaths. At first, her lower lip and hands shook. But eventually they stilled, and she reopened her eyes. “I didn’t know,” she admitted. “He told me that’s how it works.”

A creeping suspicion wiggled its way into the back of his mind. “How old were you when you and Talley started dating?”

“Nineteen.” Sighing, she added, “Frank was forty-six.”

Disgust roiled in his stomach. It must have shown on his face, too, because she sounded defensive when next she spoke.

“I know what you’re thinking, and you’re probably right. I never should’ve gotten involved with someone so much older in the first place. But my dad had just died, and my whole life was falling apart, and Frank...” She sighed. “I don’t know. He made everything make sense again.”

How did this keep getting worse? “Taking advantage of a grieving young woman like that is?—”

“No, it wasn’t anything like that.” Crimson painted her cheeks as soon as the words left her mouth. “I mean, I’m not trying to defend him or anything. Fuck him. But he wasn’t just some random old asshole taking advantage of me.”

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