Page 88 of Stepping Up to the Plate

Does he expect to get out of this through semantics? He didn’ttouchher, he just touched her? How dumb does he think I am? He clearly has his hands on a naked woman – naked woman in the midst of a scene.

As if he can’t stand the distance anymore, he closes the gap between us and grabs my hands in his. “You are everything to me, sweet girl. Other women barely exist.”

“Then how do you explain those pictures? What am I seeing here?” I ask, pulling away. I don’t miss the pain in his eyes, but I can’t have him touching me right now.

“I can’t go into much detail for privacy's sake, but something happened at the club and a sub needed to get out of the situation. I was there and helped her.”

“You untied her?”

“Yes.”

“Did you tie her up initially?”

“No. Someone else did,” he answers.

“What couldn’t they help her down?”

He pushes out a breath as he contemplates his next words. “He wasn’t performing his duties in a satisfactory way. I had to step in.”

I recoil at this. “In a satisfactory way? Did you satisfy her instead?!” I demand.

“That isn’t what I meant by satisfactory. This is where I can’t say much. It’s confidential and her privacy has already been compromised enough. The Dom wasn't following the proper safety procedures.”

“So, you made her safe?”

“Yes,” he says as if relieved that I am finally understanding him, but I am not. I grab my phone and pull up the images of her in his lap and wave my phone in his face.

“She doesn’t look endangered here. Why are you cuddling her?” I practically shout. Brady’s jaw tightens showing his frustration. Welcome to the club, buddy.

“I was providing aftercare. A sub needs care after a scene to help regulate their emotional response, especially after a scene that goes beyond their limits. You’re not in the lifestyle. You wouldn’t understand.”

He might as well have slapped me with how hard his words hit. ‘I wouldn’t understand.’ Because I’m not ‘in the lifestyle.’ Because I’m not a sub. Because I don’t do the things he’s used to. These thoughts cut deep and reopen the old wound Brady helped heal.

“How could I have been this stupid?” I mutter mostly to myself. “I knew this would happen. Everyone knew this would happen. I knew you’d get bored and want things you used to have. You fooled me for a while with all your talk about wanting a family and wanting me to depend on you. But we were always going to end up here.”

“We were not ‘always going to end up here,’” he asserts. “We aren’t ‘here’ now. I swear to you, baby, this is all a big misunderstanding.”

I can’t help but bark out a laugh. His words are practically an exact mirror of Phil’s. Do I attract bad men or am I truly not enough? Are other women offering their partners something special to keep them faithful and I wasn’t copied on the memo?

“You sound like Phil,” I finally say. His jaw ticks and he clenches his fist. That comment struck a nerve. Good. I’m done tailoring my words to pacify men. I let one man silence me. I won’t let another.

“I am nothing like him,” Brady seethes.

“You sure? Because from where I’m sitting, you’re almost exactly the same.”

“I did not cheat on you, Lola.”

“Prove it,” I demand.

“Prove it?”

“Yes, if you weren’t cheating, prove it. Give me security footage, witness accounts, a fucking statement from that woman that says you didn’t sleep with her. Prove it to me.”

“I can’t do that. It breaks the confidentiality agreement of the club. Our members pay a premium for discretion.” Is he serious? He is really putting his business over me? Over proving that he isn’t exactly like my scumbag ex that he hates? When I can think about this rationally, I will probably see his point, but right now, all I see is a man covering his ass.

“Not doing anything breaksus!” I yell. “What were you even doing there? You told me you had a meeting. You never mentioned it was at the club. That’s an important detail to conveniently hide from me, especially considering youpromisedto tell me before you went. This is not the first time we’ve talked about this.”

“I didn’t hide it from you, I just didn’t tell you outright. I know the club is a sore subject for you. I didn’t want to nudge at your insecurities, especially since we’ve been in such a good place this last week. I was going to tell you after the meeting but then all that shit went down and I had to deal with it.”

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