Page 9 of Her Billionaire Boss
She nodded and took another drink from her bottle before continuing.“I’m not worried that you’re going to get mad and kick me out of your life over sex stuff.I know it’s okay for me to say no to you, and I trust that you aren’t going to get mad at me if there are things I don’t want to do with you.”
“But you’re talking about things I suggest, right?”Because the biting thing didn’t come up over a game of checkers.“You’re still worried that if you suggest something I don’t like, for example, the bite, it might make me angry?”
“Yeah, it doesn’t make sense.But you were already aware that I’m a fundamentally broken person,” she reminded me.
“I don’t think you’re fundamentally broken.”I opened my own bottle, to give my hands something to do.
“The thing is, I feel more comfortable and equal when I’m with you sexually than I do with the non-sexual parts of our relationship.When we’re doing this—” she gestured at the bed, “—then I know exactly what the rules and boundaries are.But I’ve never been in a healthy relationship.There’s no safe word for stuff like disagreements on loading the dishwasher.”
“I have people who do that for me,” I said, before I realized that was a hypothetical concern.
“The truth is, I only know where I stand with you when I’m being dominated by you.”She gazed off into middle distance as she thought.“This could be so perfect if we could be a princess and her dragon all the time.”
“There’s no reason we couldn’t be,” I said.“Twenty-four-seven Dom and sub relationships are surprisingly common.”
“Wouldn’t that mean that I would have to ask you permission to talk on the phone or go out and see my friends?”She looked doubtful.
“No, that’s called parenting.”And that wasn’t anything I was interested in.“There are people who take it that far, but frankly, I can barely manage my own life.I can’t micromanage yours, as well.”
“Before I went to Ascend Red, you told me that ultimately, you would want someone who was your sub full-time.”
She was right, taking her to Ascend Red had been something of a try-out.
“That was my best-case scenario.If you hadn’t liked—”
“I love it,” she blurted.
I raised my eyebrows.
“I liked having you telling me what to do.It felt like...structure.”
“I’ve heard people say that about bootcamp,” I quipped.
She shook her head and smiled.“Why do you have to make it sound unpleasant?”
“Because it would drive me sideways if someone tried to exert full-time control over me.”It had, in fact; boarding school had been a nightmare, and I’d made sure to share that nightmare with everyone else.“I’ve had too many people in my life telling me what to do, when to do it, which fork to use...I mean, you saw the world I came from.”
“That’s true.There did seem to be an awful lot of emphasis on conformity to complicated rules.”She put her bottle aside and drew the throw around her shoulders.
“Exactly.It’s like...the Olympics of conformity.”
“Things were so much different for me.And not just because of money or the society we grew up in.Things were different even from how Scott was treated.”She drifted off into memory.“My parents were always right on top of him about his grades and what school he would go to and what he should want to be in life.But when it came to me, they never cared about any of that.If I got an F, it was as good as if I’d gotten an A.If they suggested I would make a good dentist and I said I would rather bucket drum in Portland, they would praise me for having an artistic nature.There was no—”
“Structure,” I finished for her.
She nodded.“Exactly.And I know that they were trying to do their best by me.That they were trying to compensate for bringing me into the world under such weird circumstances.I’m sure they thought that it was unfair to put further expectations on me because I was born with such a huge expectation attached, but from my point of view, they didn’t want to expect anything from me because I had already failed to meet their expectations.”
“Have you ever told them that?”I would have put cash money down that she never had.
And I was right.“And risk disappointing them again?”
I tilted my head to see the mark on her neck, and she covered it with her hand.
“Is that what you’re worried about with me?”I asked.“Disappointing me?”
“It’s a little more serious if I disappoint you.”She couldn’t meet my eyes.“My parents have to love me, right?I’m their kid.And they feel guilty for having me to save my brother.You don’t have an obligation like they do.So, if I let you down or make you mad, you can walk away.”
“There’s no world in which I could ‘walk away’ from you, Charlotte.”I took her wrist and pried her hand away from the bite mark.“I don’t want to be with the version of you that you invent in order to keep me.I want to be withyou.”
