Page 61 of Triple Pucked
I cling tightly to his hand. “You’re not going bloody anywhere.” Then I glance down at my cock. “You need to take responsibility.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” D’Angelo replies, airily.
I stare back up at the moon.
It helps me to say something that my therapist has been suggesting I discuss with D’Angelo for a while.
I’m not good at this shit. But the stars help.
“I know now that Blythe was an abusive dom,” I whisper. “I’m still processing it but I can still say that out loud. I didn’t know it at the time. You’ve shown me how things should be. But back then, I was only eighteen, away from home for the first time, and just figuring out my submissive side. Blythe was older, wealthy, and so bloody glamorous. She showered me with attention, taking me out to restaurants and showing me a new world that I’d never seen before.”
“She love bombed you.” D’Angelo’s voice is hard.
“Yeah,” a wave of sadness washes over me, “but why did she chooseme?”
“Cucciolo, it’s not your fault?—”
“I know, but she must have seen something in me, right? Something that she could use?” My chest is tight with pain. “Within a couple of weeks, she started criticizing me and being cold, always giving me this silent, disapproving stare, no matter how hard I tried to please her. She’d find something to pick on and then just go on and on about. She’d demand things like:Why are you late?Even when I was certain that I was early.”
“And now the gaslighting.”
“The thing is,” the stars’ light fractures, as my eyes swim with tears, “she only used how fucked up I already was. She saw how much more it hurt me to beat mefor not trying hardenoughin a scene, to punish me for beinglazy and weak,or to demandwhy can’t you be more like your twin?And I took it because I thought that I deserved it. I’d heard all those things before from my teachers.”
D'Angelo wipes a tear away from under my eye. “You’re the hardest working person I know.”
I give a laugh that is more like a sob. “Wish you’d been there to tell my teachers that I was bloody trying hard enough. You know that I struggle to concentrate. In the first few years at school, there was some sympathy. Well, more like pity. When Dee picked up reading like a bloody prodigy, however, while I remained an idiot?—”
“Stop it.” D’Angelo firmly grips me by the chin and turns me to face him. “You don’t get to talk like that about the man I love.”
“I just…I tried my bloody best…and it wasn’t good enough. I tried so hard to please them because not pleasing adults meant pain, hunger, or being sold. I just…I tried.”
D’Angelo hushes me, dragging me against his chest.
He strokes my hair. “I know you did, cucciolo.”
He kisses the top of my head like I truly am something precious.
Like this, beneath the starlight in a room that D’Angelo made for me, I can almost believe it.
“It’s why I know that there is something wrong with me.” I voice my biggest fear, which I have never spoken out loud to anyone else. “It’s why I let Blythe… She told me that she was a dom and since I was a sub, this was how it should be. I messed up, and she disciplined me for it. I believed that I was lucky to have her because I was such a trainwreck. So, maybe I needed someone who would hold me accountable like she did.”
“There isnothingwrong with you.” D’Angelo’s voice is thick with emotion. He wraps his arm tightly around me. “You are exactly how you’re meant to be. Blythe is a predator and a narcissist who worked out your self-esteem issues because ofthose fucking useless teachers. She used them to try to break you. But you’re here with me now. Safe with me. And Blythe may have called four months ago to mindfuck you, but I will fucking kill her if she ever gets close to you again.”
“She always said that I wastoo much.” I’m glad that I can’t see his expression. “I know that I sing, dance, and get on everyone’s last bloody nerve. I guess that I am too much.”
D’Angelo pushes me back just far enough to peer into my face.
He studies me intently enough to make my skin prickle with heat. “My sub is proud of who he is. He is nottoo much; he’s exactly who he is meant to be. Do you understand?”
I nod.
D’Angelo growls, shoving me roughly onto my back.
My heart speeds up but in the pleasurable way that makes me feel like I’m flying.
“I said,” D’Angelo’s voice drops to a dangerous coldness, “do you understand me?”
“Yes, Sir.”
