Page 35 of Reclaimed

“How do you feel?”

“Better. And… worse. I don’t know. Sorry if I was a long time.” I was finding it hard to concentrate on speaking with the pulse in my skull pounding so harshly. I had felt confident outside in my safe Ray-free space, but suddenly I was petrified. I kept thinking of all the worst parts of my list. I’d been a fool not to lie, or at least not to have kept back some of what I’d written. Ray was going to be furious. He was holding out his hand for the paper, but I couldn’t give it to him. I started backing away and his expression turned stormy.

“We had a deal.”

I shook my head frantically. “I can’t.”

Ray stood up suddenly, making me flinch away. This was not a good start. I’d messed up, again. All the emotions of that morning were looking to escape now in the only way that was safe – tears.

“On. Your. Knees.” His voice was laced with so much malevolence that I obeyed immediately. This was exactly what I’d been hoping to avoid. I knelt before him, with my eyes downcast, and offered up the sheet of paper. I wanted to beg him to have mercy on me when he read it, but I knew, right now, all he would accept was respectful silence. He took it and a regretful sob escaped my lips. I tried to keep my crying to a minimum, but I was so afraid – there was no turning back now. He was going to read it; he was going to know everything. He already had so many tools at his disposal to use against me, and now I’d just handed him even more. I tried to focus on calming my breathing, but the more I tried to concentrate on breathing deeply, the more I felt that I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. So I switched my focus to torturing myself by listening for any tiny sound that might give away how Ray was responding to my pitiful outpourings – any swallow or sigh that might prepare me for what reaction I should expect. But there was nothing.

“Why were you so afraid to give me this?”

“I wanted to give you the truth, but I didn’t want to make you more angry with me.”

“Did you really think any of it would be a surprise to me?” There was no smugness in his tone, only warmth.

“So… you’re not angry?”

“I’m disappointed that you doubted me, but this”—he held up the paper—“this is real.” Then he was beside me, setting the paper down and helping me gently to my feet. “What I asked of you just now wasn’t easy, I’m aware of that. I’m not angry with you, so you can put those fears out of your head, understand?”

I nodded, wiping my eyes and feeling a little foolish for my outburst.

“You were out there a long time; are you hungry?”

I’d been too caught up in my emotions to notice anything like hunger. Ray’s question made me check in with my body, and I realised that I was starving, and also suddenly cold.

“Here.” Ray handed me his sweater from the back of his chair. My clothes were only in the wardrobe on the other side of the room, but the gesture felt so classically romantic it was easy to forget who I was dealing with. “I want to talk some more about what you’ve written, but let’s get some food in you first.”

“Okay.”

“Good girl.” He squeezed my hand and led me downstairs.

I don’t know if it was in response to my vulnerability or if it was because of the previous night, but Ray was extra soft with me over lunch. He smiled more than usual, and it seemed like he couldn’t give me enough attention. He insisted I sit down while he got everything ready, he gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze every time he passed, he kissed my hand when he sat down with me. It was… nice. I was so relieved that he knew the truth now and wasn’t angry, and I felt so much better having got everything out of my system. I was far from being happy with the situation, but I was edging closer to being able to cope with it. I let him take care of me – I needed it. Delving into all those raw emotions had left me feeling incredibly drained and sensitive, and I knew Ray still wanted to discuss things further, so I needed some time where I felt protected, and I felt like I was safer with Ray than on my own.

When we had finished eating, Ray put the piece of paper between us on the table and took my hands in his. He paused a long while before talking, and it occurred to me that I was not the only one struggling with letting down defences.

“I am perhaps not as articulate as you when it comes to this sort of thing. But I will do what I can to… assuage some of your concerns.”

“You know that I want us to be together, properly together. I want for us to be able to sleep together and for you to not need alcohol or punishments or a day-long debrief to make you feel okay about it.” Ray’s words could have sounded accusatory, but I could tell that the irony was covering up a deep yearning, and I felt my heart go out to him. “But that is not what I expected to happen last night. What I expected was for you to feel all this.” He nodded in the direction of the paper. “I usually pride myself on knowing what is best for you, but on this occasion, I will admit that I could have… anticipated your needs more effectively.

“That being said, I want to make it clear that you have absolutely no reason to feel ashamed. You obviously enjoyed… elements of what happened last night, and you shouldn’t feel bad about that.” I was glad that, for once, Ray wasn’t insisting on eye contact. I don’t think I could have met his eyes for this conversation. “We were a couple not that long ago, and I think you’ll agree we always had great sex, and I did what I could to make sure you enjoyed last night. I know you might have been expecting something a little more… forceful, and God knows I imagined something more like that, but last night wasn’t just about my pleasure; it was about yours, too. And I know there’s been a lot of intense emotion between us, but it hasn’t all been bad, and so, you giving yourself to me like that… It was human, and it was honest, and you shouldn’t worry about what other people would think. You should only be interested in what you and I think, and I think we can both agree that it felt pretty fucking good.”

I smiled weakly. He made it sound so easy to not care about what other people think.

“Where you stand with me is the same as always – I love you, and I want us to have a good life together, but I also have certain expectations of you, and there will be consequences if those aren’t met. Sometimes, what I tell you to do is in your best interests, and sometimes, it is in mine, but it’s not your place to try to distinguish between the two.” He looked stern for a moment but then softened when he looked back to my list.

“As for feeling pathetic, Callie… I am older than you, stronger than you and have significantly more resources – of course you can’t get yourself out of this situation. I understand your frustration, but the only thing making you unhappy now is your resistance to your reality. If we can just get you closer to a place of acceptance, then you can stop judging yourself so harshly… and me, for that matter. Besides, if it makes you feel any better, you’ve certainly done your best to make it challenging for me, regardless.”

I had nothing to say. I was surprised at how much depth I was getting from Ray. I hadn’t thought he was capable of prolonged emotional communication like this.

“You shouldn’t hate that I know you so well. It’s one of the reasons we worked so well together before. How could someone possibly give you what you need any other way?” I didn’t have an answer for that. “Why are you so afraid to let people see you?”

I wished I knew. It didn’t make sense. I was afraid to let Ray know me so completely because that knowledge gave him power over me, and yet, that’s what I’d always wanted, that was what had attracted me to the submissive lifestyle in the first place – being able to give away some power, some control, to someone else who I knew I could trust completely. And that had felt safer in the past, but now, trusting Ray felt like a much more momentous task than it had back then.

“This is exactly why you need this, why you need me. You feel things so much, and that’s not a weakness. It’s wonderful, it’s something I love about you, but it also means you need someone who is… attentive. Someone who can take some of that burden for you, even take it all away sometimes, if it feels like it’s getting too much, and Callie, I will always do that for you when you need it.” I knew he was telling the truth. For all his faults, Ray was completely devoted to me. I knew that, if I gave myself over to him, I could depend on him in a way that felt unreasonable to expect from anyone else. Ray knew the appeal of that promise to me. It had a tangible weight in the air around us, and it took all my restraint not to lean into it and let it catch me. Instead, I tried to think about everything Ray had said. All that unexpected depth was unprecedented. So far, throughout all this, his emotions had appeared to seesaw between the two polarities of love and hate, with not much room for subtlety in between. But it had seemed as though he was more literate in the language of my emotions than he was in his own. I knew that others in my life loved me, but sometimes, it felt like Ray was the only person who got me.

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

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