Page 79 of Ashes of Sin and Stardust

No text, no phone call. Just... didn’t show up.

Once again, one more person abandoning me. Figures.

Several weeks later, Alex confessed to me that my missing play partner was in fact the convict and serial killer Michael Lewis, who was apparently working with Agent Smith Smith for a secret terrorist organization. She suggested that if I run into him again I call her directly.

After all that, I took some time away from The Underground. I still saw Simon once in a while, but only at his shop so he could finish the tattoos he’d started. I felt myself start to pull away and become more distant from my friends and my fellow brats, and I started making excuses to skip sessions with Becca Huxley.

It was Alex who called me out and got me back on track.

She’d just come back from a massive assignment and had spent all afternoon debriefing. After her debrief, she left the conference room practically boiling with fury, and told me to meet her at the bar downtown because she needed a drink and someone to talk to.

We talked for hours. Or rather, we sat there silently while we talked in her head, because she could do that, and she preferred it. And I was okay with it, because it meant I didn’t have to find the words to explain my feelings. I could just feel, and she would understand.

Alex let me see, for just a few minutes, what it was like to be her.

All the thoughts, the emotions, the memories of all the people around her were clear and understandable, like a perfect little spreadsheet, or a database of information she had sorted in her head. She could see their wants and their desires, their motivations, the truth behind the things they said and the things they did. She let me feel the way she burned for justice and family and hope for her friends.

And for the first time since I’d met Augustus Quinn, I knew something to be true beyond a shadow of a doubt, and knew that my feelings at the time would never change my mind on the fact.

Alex Victor was a good person, and I could trust her.

She told me that I had one month to get my shit together and start going back to see Becca. She told me I needed to find a Dom who I trusted, and suggested I look at Reuben’s instead of The Underground.

I did exactly as she said. I met Peter Woodrow at a munch at Reuben’s, and we hit it off. Several people including Becca vouched for him, and we started talking and going on dates, and doing some short sessions. I began seeing Becca again, and she helped me through some of my trauma regarding Augustus Quinn.

Several months after Alex gave me her ultimatum, her plane went down on her way home from an assignment. She and fifteen other people were taken captive by the Russian Mafia, and were presumed dead.

And, in typical Alice fashion, I lost my shit.

Chapter 20

If I could go backand change one thing about my journey in the lifestyle, it would be Peter Woodrow.

We were together for a little over a year. I liked him, and the sex was decent, but I didn’t love him. He let me brat the hell out of him, and he put me in my place just like I needed. He spanked me and shouted at me, hit me and spat on me, tied me up and beat me until I was bruised. Sometimes he even used a whip, though he tended to save that for actual punishments, not fun playtime. He was brutal with the thing.

Woodrow wanted more from me, but I always kept him at arm’s distance. Slowly, as I trusted him more, I let him take control of my daily routine and give me rules and tasks. But I never gave myself over to him completely, and I didn’t want to go full time, because I knew he was an asshole underneath it all. Our dynamic never turned into a relationship. It felt like he was trying to be someone he wasn’t, and I felt like I was putting up with it for the sex.

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