“Let me hear you, Jesse.”

  I knew this was the reassurance he needed, that he wasn’t hurting me, that it was all good.

  “Thank you, Master,” I choked. Then he hit me harder. “Thank you, Sir!”

  When he switched his attention to my ass, I almost, for a moment, forgot that my sole instruction of the evening had been to keep those little colored dots covered up. My hands wanted to clench and curl with each fall of the flogger on my skin, but that wasn’t the task I’d been given….

  This focus gave me a new perspective on the session.

  It was difficult for me not to be restrained, and I had to come to terms with that as Master continued to hit me. I had been begging for this for what felt like so long, such a painfully long time I’d been asking him to hit me. Now he was hitting me, and my thoughts couldn’t help but wander to I wish I was tied up too.

  There was no doubt that the tone of our sessions would change—Post-Accident Will and Jesse were two very different people. We needed different things to what we did a year ago. In some ways, the entire process of building up to the bondage, the sensory deprivation, and the level of pain play I was used to before the accident could be good for us both. There weren’t many people who could go back to square one with an integral part of their relationship and start again. We would evolve again, rise from the ashes, and who knew where we might go next?

  I found my physical limits quicker than I thought I would and was squirming away from the lash much sooner than I wanted. Master knew when it was enough and laid the flogger down just out of my line of sight.

  With his touch I turned, still breathing heavily, and brushed my hair back from my face. Master took one look at my erection—achingly hard, swollen, sticky, and red—and groaned. My fingers clenched at my thighs. I wanted him.

  “Please, Sir,” I whispered.

  “Jesse—”

  “Please,” I interrupted him. “Please.”

  He curled his hand around the back of my neck, drawing my body to his as his mouth crashed down onto mine. I immediately parted my lips, granting him access to where his tongue could flick, hot and wet, inside my mouth.

  Somehow we got to the floor without damaging ourselves or each other; care for things as literal as our physical well-being was beyond us now. I wanted him, all of him.

  He made me writhe and beg and whimper for every touch of his body on mine, made me cry out over and over as his searching fingers prepared my body for his cock. When I was ready, he was too; bare, he pressed his cock against my hole, waiting for my body to accept him in.

  Through the hazy edges of residual pain, I forced myself to relax, to allow it.

  The sounds that came from us both were raw, primal cries of pleasure and pain and goddamn relief as he filled me, connecting us both again. There was no use in thinking about all the time I’d forced myself to not even think about the possibility of this: his body, moving gently in mine, being in this room with this man, experiencing this.

  It built slowly, but our need for each other eventually exploded, and all guises of gentility dissipated as Master arched up onto his hands, I drew back my knees, and he fucked me. His eyes—they were what I needed to stay connected in this moment, the edge of a smile teasing at his lips, the frenetic searching kisses that our lips demanded and gave willingly.

  “Don’t ask for permission,” he said, his lips against my neck, his voice low. “I can’t give you that yet. I’m not ready for that responsibility.”

  I understood. “Okay,” I said. “But I’m close.”

  “Me too.”

  I drew my knees up further and locked my arms around his body, attaching my lips to his neck and exploring that area thoroughly with my tongue and lips and teeth, until he was arching his back and changing to those short, shallow, sweet thrusts that tipped me over the edge.

  I knew when he was coming. I was coming too.

  Although I hadn’t dared to wish for this when I’d walked into the playroom earlier, it was everything I could have hoped for and so much more. This was a reconnection of so many different sides of ourselves. I wasn’t one thing to him; we meant something to each other in multiple ways, like prisms that broke up something simple and painted color on the walls.

  It was peaceful there on the floor, with his arm loosely draped over my waist as we recovered; from this spot I could see each of the individual grains of wood up close. My fingertips dragged over the darker knots in the pale waxed oak.

  On closer inspection, I saw that what I had thought was a characteristic flaw was actually a tiny dark, dark-red spot of what could only be my blood.

  That was a revelation that shifted something in me. I felt like I would walk out of the room a changed person, all because of that one drop of blood on the floor.

  It wasn’t just blood—it was what I became while in the room. These four walls, the beams in the ceiling, the smell of leather and wood and wax, were part of me, and parts of me were parts of them. My blood and sweat and snot and spit and come and tears had soaked into everything here. It wasn’t just a room. When you gave so much of yourself up while in one place, that place changed you. It changed me.

  Overwhelmed, I lifted my fingers from the red dot and laced my finger’s with Will’s.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go to bed.”

  “Tell me what you want,” he said, his voice still low and commanding though the session was definitely over. With squishy pillows and the soft comforter around my shoulders, I was basking in the afterglow, basking in the new things bouncing around in my head.

  It took me a long time to separate my thoughts, analyze them, and decide whether I was going to be completely honest with him or not.

  “I want to wear my collar again.” I went with honesty.

  Will was silent, and I guessed he needed time to work through that statement too. In all truth, it was an request that would hurt my pride if he refused.

  “We’re getting there,” he said. My heart sank. “Do you really think we’re ready for that, though?”

  “I am,” I said quickly. “I want that again. It’s something that means a lot to me.”

  “To me too,” he agreed. “And that’s why we probably shouldn’t rush into it. Your collar is probably the biggest step we took in that part of our relationship, but I don’t know if we’ve rebuilt everything to that level again yet.”

  I took his hand and pulled it to my chest. He came easily and found a new spot to nestle into.

  “It’s not just getting it all back again, though, is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s like everything with Dr. Smith. We don’t necessarily want to go back. We want to find a new way of going forward.”

  I felt his smile against my skin.

  “I’m surprised you listened to that.”

  And then it was my turn to chuckle. “I listen to everything,” I said, digging my fingers into his ribs. “You bastard. I don’t know. Before the accident we were just coasting. Like she said, we could have stayed like that for years.”

  “And now? What’s changed, Jesse? We were happy before.”

  “I know we were,” I sighed. “But for how long? One threesome nearly ended up with us throwing punches at each other.”

  “I will never share you again,” he said. “Don’t make me, Jesse. I won’t.”

  “That’s not even in the cards,” I said, sighing. I resisted the urge to groan. “We did the same thing for too long. Blow job, flogger, clamps, sex, come. Rinse and repeat.”

  “Ouch.”

  “It’s true, though,” I protested. “I was happy with that too. But it’s not what I need as a sub.”

  “I know. But whenever I brought something new into it, the whole thing went to shit. Like that night with the twinky kid. And the chastity cage. You weren’t willing to play ball either, Jess.”

  “Oh, I know,” I said. “I’m not saying it’s your fault, because it wasn’t. But all the shit we’ve been through in the past few months, it makes you look at things differently. What I thought was perfect….”

  “Wasn’t,” he finished for me. The word was loaded with despondence.

  “Exactly.”

  I brushed my fingers over his cheek. “Hey. You know that’s behind us now, right? We love each other enough to make this work.”

  Smiling, he turned his face to kiss my fingertips. “Of course. Fuck, even when I thought that I’d completely wrecked any chance of ever being with you again, all I could think of was how much I really love you. I can’t lose you.”

  “You won’t.”

  This back-and-forth reassurance was becoming more common, a consequence of encouragement by our shrink to do it more and the need inside each of us to know we weren’t alone.

  When he turned his back on me, I knew he wasn’t turning away. When he pushed his ass back into my groin, I knew what he was asking for.

  “No,” I whispered. “If you want it, ask. I’m not fucking you from behind like some faceless trick.”

  He rolled onto his back and reached for me, his expression unreadable. “Make love to me. Please. Jesse.”

  The way he said my name still defined me.

  I was so slow, so achingly careful as I prepped us both with the lube and pressed into him. Vulnerability seeped from his pores like smoke, which I inhaled, making it my own as we moved together, his pleasure mine and my pleasure his. Owning each other. Belonging to him all over again.

  In the velvety amber glow of the next morning, early, the bed shifted with his weight. The coolness of the sheets told me he’d been up and moving around, leaving me sleeping. His fingertips brushed over the sensitive skin on the inside of my wrist, and I stretched, yawned, reached for him again.

  When I pried my eyes open, he had something balled in his fist.

  Silently I raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to explain.

  He uncurled his fingers, holding the palm of his hand out to me so I could see for myself the twisted cord: rust, orange, and gold. My collar. If I wanted it.

  Since he wasn’t speaking, I didn’t either, and didn’t they always say that actions spoke louder than words? I slid out of bed to kneel in front of him, and held my wrist out, waiting for the feeling of security that had plagued me in the time it had been gone. Irreplaceable symbolism that just couldn’t come from any other source.

  When the knots were tied, he threw back the comforter for us to get back into bed. It was still early. There was plenty of time to sleep.

  Chapter 20

  On a Sunday afternoon, we decided to drive out to the coast. It was a couple of hours’ journey but worth it to escape the city, especially with the views on the trip out and back. It was maybe the second or third little town we passed that we finally stopped in and found a little restaurant to eat fresh fish for dinner with deliciously crisp, cool white wine and bread still warm from the oven.

  Will looked at me more now.

  I was aware that his gaze had changed in the years we had been together. At first he had studied me, learned my body and my reactions, my limits, my pain threshold. Over time it changed, and I learned the warmth that his eyes and his smile could hold when we were together.

  For too many months, he’d seen me as a permanent reminder of the damage, both physical and mental, that he had inflicted on us both, however unintentionally.

  It was changing again in tiny increments. When he reached for my hand over the table, he looked at me, looked in my eyes rather than watching his advancing hand, as if scared that I would pull away from his touch. He brushed his foot against my ankle, testing whether I’d let him do something as sweet and silly as play footsie with me under the table. I did, of course.

  His brown eyes held a challenge as he reached for his wallet to pay for the meal. I raced him to it, threw down a twenty to cover my half. We silently agreed to leave a healthy tip and left before the waitress had even cleared our plates.

  Back on the street, I took a deep breath to inhale the salty sea air.

  “The beach is down that way, if you want to take a walk,” Will said.

  I nodded. “Sounds good.”

  With the sun creeping toward the horizon, the sky was starting to melt into a glowing mess of pinks and oranges.

  Tentatively, he slipped his hand into mine.

  “We should come out here more often,” I said as we started to pick our way over the pebble and shingle beach. “It’s so peaceful.”

  “Would you ever want to move out of the city?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe one day. I love this corner of the world, though. It’s home to me now, much more than Georgia ever was. I suppose you have a lot to do with that.”

  When his hand squeezed around mine, I felt his silent agreement.

  “I don’t want to live in Seattle for the rest of my life,” he said after we’d been walking for a few minutes. The loose stones forced our concentration onto putting each foot down securely.

  “No?”

  “No. I love the city, but I think I’ll outgrow it eventually.”

  “I get that. A lot of people move to the suburbs for the same reason.”

  He shook his head. “That’s not it. I want to get out, you know? All the way out.”

  “Like moving up a mountain?”

  From here, the mountains across the border dominated the skyline to the north of us, a constant presence. We had discussed with Dr. Smith about going up to Vancouver again, but we hadn’t made the trip yet. I knew Will needed time.

  I could give him that.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Or just out here. Find a small town, buy a shack of a house, and fix it up. Lead a calmer sort of life.”

  Stopping, I pulled him around to face me and wrapped my arms around his neck. He completed the circle, loosely holding onto my waist.

  “You’re still mad at me that we didn’t adopt Maddie’s baby,” I said, trying desperately to keep the accusation out of my voice.

  “No… a little bit,” he said with a laugh. “The timing couldn’t have been worse. But I don’t know when that sort of opportunity is going to come around again. It might never come around again. I just wish we’d been able to do it.”

  I did too, just a little bit.

  Two weekends previously we had moved Maddie and Evan into a little apartment that was on the same street as Carrigan and Sawyer’s school. She hadn’t taken up Cara’s offer of a place out of town, and I sort of understood her desire to stay close to Laura’s family.

  There was definitely a part of me that was sad that Laura, Maddie and Steven couldn’t come to any arrangement on how a three-way relationship could work. In an ideal situation, Maddie would have stayed at their house, raised her baby as a brother to their existing children. Nothing about her pregnancy had been ideal, though. And when all the dust had settled, I found myself silently agreeing with Maddie that some space and time to herself were what she needed most.

  Since we’d grown closer over the course of her pregnancy, I dared to ask Maddie if she had listed Steven on Evan’s birth certificate. In light of her desire to raise her son on her own, they had agreed not to name Steven on the documents. I got the impression that they wanted to keep things as light and unofficial as possible until they had all decided what was best.

  Something that should have brought the McAlder family unit together had actually ended up wrenching it apart. I could see how maybe, in the future, the six of them might be able to reconcile and build something new. But their lives were in the balance of so many variables, who knew what the next year might bring?

  I supposed it was the same for us. The car accident shouldn’t have been more than a passing inconvenience for us, but the tremors had exposed the fault lines in our relationship. Out of all the things Dr. Smith had impressed on us over the course of our therapy, the idea that we were on shaky ground before the accident had caused me the most amount of introspection and reflection.

  If I had been asked, I would have insisted that Will and I were stronger than we had ever been. But she was right—we had been coasting through our relationship and ignoring the underlying issues. Making it work took effort from both of us, as much in our romantic relationship as in our D/s.

  Working it all out would take us years more, endless discussions and fun and trips away and bonding over things that weren’t bondage. But we would get there. The braided thread around my wrist told me that we would get there.

  I waited until Will leaned down and brushed his lips over mine. A part of me wished we could take it further, kiss deeply, right here, but it wasn’t a good idea. Still, he was smiling as we broke away.

  “We’re gonna be all right, aren’t we?” I whispered.

  Will ran his nose up the side of my neck and kissed the spot behind my ear. “Yes,” he said simply as his arms tightened around me. “I think we are.”

  About the author:

  Anna Martin is from a picturesque seaside village in the south west of England and now lives in Bristol. After spending most of her childhood making up stories, she studied English Literature at university before turning her hand as a professional writer.

  Apart from being physically dependent on her laptop, Anna is enthusiastic about writing and producing local grassroots theatre (especially at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she can be found every summer), visiting friends who live in other countries, Marvel Comics, learning new things, and Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.

  Although her most recent work is in the LGBT Fiction genre, in the past Anna has worked on a variety of different projects including short stories, drabbles, flash fiction, fan fiction, plays for both children and adults, and poetry. She has written novels in the Teen/ Young Adult genre, Romance, and Fantasy novels.

  Anna is, by her own admission, almost unhealthily obsessed with books. The library she has amassed is both large and diverse; "My favourite books," she says, "are The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood." She also several well-read copies of Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park books and re-reads the Harry Potter novels with almost startling regularity.