Page 67 of Echoes of Fear

“Wouldn’t dream of it, baby.”

He was right about one thing. His backyard is empty of anything but the pond. Taylor finds a spot and sits, pulling me between his parted legs with us both facing the pond.

“We need to talk about us,” he says. “But, first, we need to talk about your attack.”

“What about it?” I ask. “The guy is dead.”

“I know, baby. I need to know what he did to you?”

“Why?” I ask, genuinely curious.

I don’t mind talking about what happened to me. I’ve spent a little over a year talking about it weekly with my therapist and even occasionally with my friends. The topic doesn’t scare me.

Taylor turns my body so I sit sideways and look up at his face.

“You have to know how much I want you, Knox,” he tells me. “How much I want to worship your body. But I don’t want to do or say something that is going to scare you.”

Ah. I get it.

“I wasn’t violated in that way,” I tell him and smile when he visibly relaxes. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Are you okay with telling me?”

“Nick took a lot from me that day,” I admit. “My freedom. My courage. Some of my kink. Even my Little. But what he didn’t take was my will to survive. It took me several months to work through some of the damage he had done to my mind, though. I’m still not finished sorting through all of this mess, but I won’t give up.

Meeting you has helped in a way you won’t ever truly understand. I want tosurvivefor me, but I so badly want tolivefor us. When you’re in the room, it feels like my freedom is within my grasp. You made my Little pop his head back up, and I didn’t think I would ever trust someone enough to show him again.”

I lick my dry lips and continue.

“I don’t want you to walk on eggshells around me, Taylor,” I tell him. “I don’t want you to second guess yourself when you want to touch me. I’m not fragile. I can handle it. All of that being said, I might have some new limits because of what happened.”

“Tell me what he did, baby.”

“Can I look at the pond while I talk?” I ask. “I’m not sure I can handle looking you in the eyes while I relive this.”

Taylor kisses me gently before turning me back around.

Always manhandling me.

“Okay,” I take a deep breath and begin. “Me, Maddy, Sophie, and Bitsy were on our way back to the clubhouse with breakfast for everyone when we were hit from the side causing my car toflip multiple times. The people who hit us took my friends and locked them in some industrial walk-in freezer. Luckily, the men got them in time before any lasting damage was done.”

“And where did they take you?”

“To Nick Thornfield,” I answer. “I don’t know what happened to the men he hired to take me, but Nick took me to his apartment.”

Sighing, I lean back on Taylor, trusting that he can take all of my weight.

“We had been on one date months prior,” I admit. “But it didn’t feel right. I told him as much, but he would call several times a day. When he eventually stopped, I figured he’d just given up. I guess he was planning his big day.”

I’m stalling, I know. I need to rip the bandage off. Just get the story over with.

“Nick wanted me to put a diaper on,” I begin. “But I tried explaining to him that I didn’t regress that young. He was so adamant that he was going to put it on me regardless, but I said that I didn’t give consent. I kept saying Red. The universal safe word.

He got angry and stripped my clothing off and tied me face down onto a Saint Andrews Cross.”

“Mother fucker,” Taylor mutters.

“He told me that I needed to learn to obey him and proceeded to spank me brutally one hundred and seven times. With his hands. With a whip. A belt. A paddle. I’m sure there was more.”

---