Page 51 of Reclaiming Home

Brodie

On Saturday evening, I got a call from Rian out of the blue. My brain immediately went to Ben and Max, except that wasn’t why he was calling.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, pacing into the hallway from the kitchen where we’d been sitting to play cards again.

I could hear how unstable his breathing was, which put me on high alert.

“It’s not the boys,” he said quickly, the words stuttering out of him. “It’s me. I….” He dropped something and cursed under his breath, then I heard the sound of him unlocking his car with a key fob.

Impatiently, I waited for him to get into his fancy Volvo. It was weird how a vehicle that wasn’t super expensive could still portray how he was about money so well. Someone else might’ve picked a Lexus or a BMW, but not Rian.

He was breathing deeply, but choppily, clearly trying to center himself.

The fact that he didn’t start the engine right away told me a lot, too. He wasn’t in a condition to drive.

“I-I need you, Sir,” he managed to say in between gasping breaths.

I walked up the stairs and went to sit on the edge of the bed. “Rian, are you having a panic attack?” I asked in a deeper register.

“Uh-huh,” he wheezed.

“Listen to me. Close your eyes and concentrate on doing what I tell you. You can do that, right?”

He breathed out something that sounded vaguely like “yes, Sir.”

“That’s good, well done. Now slow down your breathing before you hyperventilate.”

I talked him through the worst of it like I’d done many times in the past, just not recently.

When I was certain he was going to be okay, I asked, “What brought this one on?”

“I don’t even know,” he said in an exhausted tone. “I was at an event and suddenly I couldn’t hear the people around me. I took that as a sign and got out of there.”

“I haven’t been away for long yet. Do you think this is because—”

“Oh, no.” The answer came too quickly, and we both knew it.

For him, BDSM was an outlet that centered him when life started to overwhelm him. Despite being sunshine with fangs personified, he had a darker side that came out in various ways, most often in periods of melancholy and numbness, or, like in this case, panic attacks.

“Try again, sweetness.”

He sighed. “Okay, fine. I could use a pain session right now, but I don’t have the energy and….”

And I was too far. He didn’t like playing with most people we knew in the kink community.

“Do you need me to give Moses a call?” He was a mutual friend of ours, an Alpha of a flourishing small pack, who kind of acted as my backup if Rian needed someone to get him through a session. The only potential issue was Moses’ submissive, Simone, who disliked him playing with other men even though she knew very well that Rian wasn’t into sexual play. That was still what she was jealous of, not the play itself, which didn’t make any sense to me, but to each their own.

Rian sighed. “Yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll do that right now and try to set it up as soon as we can. I love you, sweetness.”

“I love you too, Sir.”

I ended the call and found Moses’ number. He answered quickly.

“Hey, I heard you’re out of town?”

I chuckled tiredly. “That I am. Permanently, too.”

---