Healing the Wounds (33 page)

“I’m not certain.” Henry led her toward the grouping Jay had picked out. “Emma is likely to know. We may ask her if you wish.”

Jay gripped the chair back in both hands and shook his head. “I thought it would look the same. Silly. But I…I counted the steps, you know. I was watching your feet so I’d know when to stop.” He dragged his shoe against the rug. “Twenty-three steps from the salon door to the chairs, and you told me to sit and I sat on the floor.”

Their first real meeting. That’s what this room meant to Jay. The week after Cal’s assault, he’d said.

“I remember,” Henry murmured. He gestured her to the short couch beside the chair. “I asked you to sit in the chair instead, and you apologized for displeasing me.”

Bruised from the week before, an emotional wreck in search of a new dominant, Jay had gone back to the club.

She sat. “Your first date.”

Henry raised his eyebrow, but Jay beamed. “Henry didn’t look at anyone else all night. He didn’t go back upstairs. He stayed here with me the whole time, and I didn’t have to do anything bad to earn it.”

“That must’ve been exciting.” Smiling back took effort. She had a limited idea of what Jay considered bad ways to earn attention, and none made for pretty pictures in her head. “A good night.”

“The best. He asked so many questions. I thought he must be planning a huge scene and he’d take me upstairs when he had all the answers, but we just talked.”

“It ought to have been a familiar experience, my boy.” Henry stood straight, his shoulders unbowed, his tone even, but his eyes—tightness lurked at the corners as he tracked Jay’s every motion. “I hadn’t intended our talk to be quite so novel.”

“It was—” Jay ran his hand across the back of the blue chair. “The first time I went home hopeful instead of empty. Like I didn’t have to leave everything at the door.”

She studied her shoes. The place Jay feared was the place he loved, too. The place where he’d met Henry.

“I had a red ribbon and a homework assignment. Henry wanted to see me again. I mattered.”

He’d found his first spark of self-worth in submission here with Henry. Of course he’d felt empty. He’d been a toy to the people before Henry. His pleasure had lasted as long as he was pleasing and being praised. When the game stopped, the feelings stopped, too.

“That’s what this room reminds me of.” Face sweet and open, he gazed at Henry with naked adoration. “You told me, ‘You’re a good boy, Jay’”—he’d dropped his voice, the lower register a credible mimic of Henry’s dom tone—“‘and your red ribbon tells everyone here that you’re
my
good boy. I want you to take good care of my property this week. Treat it well. If you do that, you will have pleased me very much.’”

Henry had given him something to look forward to. A way to respect himself.

“You still please me, my boy.” Henry pulled Jay into a hug, cradling him tight to his chest. “Very much.”

As nervous as the club made Jay, this room, this space, stood outside that feeling. It had its own memories, happy associations. A tree with their initials carved in the trunk. Their relationship had started here.

“Alice, you’re missing the hugging.” Jay’s voice was muffled against Henry’s neck. He flung one arm wide in a blind search for her body. “You don’t wanna miss out.”

“Nope.” She rose and nestled herself at their side. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

* * * *

The little kitchen off the salon had finished their tour of the second floor. Nowhere to go but up. No going back, not if they intended to confront the thoughts drying her throat and making her pulse race.

The third floor’s silence seemed eerie. She irrationally expected a soundtrack. The plaintive whispers of violins below a chorus of chatter and moaning and the slap of skin against skin in the hall.

She came to a dead stop.

“Alice?” Henry paused beside her. “Tell me.”

They’d been here. Right here, between that bench and this viewing window. Hemmed in. Herded like cattle, and Cal with a mind for slaughter.

“I thought someone would help us.” She meant to speak up, to provide a good example for Jay and make Henry proud. Her words emerged in a whisper. “I couldn’t figure out why no one was stopping him. But no one thought it was strange. Just the way to talk to submissives. Perfectly okay.”

Humming to her, Henry kissed her temple and rested his forehead against hers. “They would have expected such things had been negotiated, sweet girl. That if he were speaking to you, red-ribboned as you were, he’d already obtained your consent and his behavior was consistent with your preferences.”

The idea of giving that man her consent made her skin crawl like a cockroach colony. She shook off the creeping disgust. “I got that, eventually. That’s why I talked to him. Defied him. Another man—I don’t even know his name—he started asking questions. Gave us the opening we needed to get away.” Not soon enough, though. Not for her paralyzed playmate. “Jay?”

“Huh?” His head jerked. Jittery, foot tapping, he’d been staring at the wall. “I’m listening. Bad night. So many people, and he—I mean, what?”

She stepped toward him and gripped his trembling hand. “I’m sorry I let him say those things to you, Jay.”

He shook his head, his mouth a stubborn line. “I’m sorry you had to protect me. If I hadn’t stopped moving, you wouldn’t have had to talk to him. It was my fault.”

“It was not.” Her voice and Henry’s sounded as one.

“His behavior was an egregious breach of protocol and common courtesy. You are not at fault for his actions, my boy, and your response to his presence was neither unexpected nor unwarranted.” Henry touched her face, gently turning her toward him. “Nor are you at fault for Cal’s words. His speech is his own. The responsibility to conduct himself like a gentleman is his own, even if he chooses not to exercise restraint in word or deed.”

Silence drifted in. She lacked the stomach to head down the hallway and into the room where she’d been publicly disciplined. Unjustly so, since Cal had instigated the entire event. But she’d agreed to accept punishment. The way Jay’d agreed to sign the papers and pretend he could forget Cal’s assault. To avoid making trouble.

Henry tucked her arm into his own, and her feet moved automatically to keep up. The hall opened with unexpected quickness.

The distance had seemed insurmountable that night. An endless search to find her way back to Henry. She’d dreamed, in the week afterward, she hadn’t found him at all. That Jay’s hand had slipped from hers and she’d been alone among strangers wearing Cal’s face.

Thank God waking up had brought her face-to-face with Henry. He hadn’t disappeared, and Jay hadn’t disappeared, and she wasn’t lost.

Tears blurred her vision.

Henry squeezed her hand. “Tell me how you feel now, standing here. Alice?”

She rotated in a slow turn. Breathed in and out. Rocked with the shame and confusion. The fear. Cal’s laughter. But underneath, too, rolled her initial excitement. Will’s courtesy. Jay’s loving attention. Henry cradling her in his arms…and Henry lowering her panties and turning her over his knee.

“Too much,” she murmured. “I feel too much.”

“Jay?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Not—I don’t know.” He stood on jittery legs, one knee twisting in and out. “Fine. This is for Alice. She got hurt. I’m fine.”

Henry frowned. He didn’t challenge Jay’s answer. A bullshit answer, for sure. Maybe Jay didn’t know exactly how he felt, but he wasn’t fucking fine.

“Angry,” she blurted. “I’m really fucking
angry
, and I don’t want that jackass to make anyone feel as helpless and small as he made me feel ever again. And I’m angry at myself for not doing something different, and I’m angry at Henry for not finding another way, and I’m angry at Jay for not fucking saying how he feels.”

They stared, Henry approving and Jay with wide eyes.

Her lungs heaved. Streaming tears itched her cheeks.

“And better.” She sucked in air. “I feel better, because I’m not afraid to be here. He doesn’t win. He doesn’t get to defeat me. He’s nothing, and I’m still me. I still have both of you. He hasn’t taken a damn thing from me. I win. I win.”

She laughed, and cried, and let Henry soothe her with sheltering hands and whispered encouragement. But Jay watched with an uncomfortable fear, his anxious expression reforming into a smiling mask every time they looked at him.

Henry’s quiet sigh warmed her neck. He stepped back. “Jay? Perhaps you’d like to share your feelings now, as Alice has done.”

“I’m good. This was good. I’m glad Alice feels better.” He delivered a toothy grin, as if Henry would agree they’d exorcised their demons and take them home.

“Upstairs, then, my dears.” His words sucked the joy from the room.

* * * *

Jay halted at the top of the stairs, on the edge of the fourth floor, and she stopped with him.

“Straight ahead, Jay.” Quiet but firm, Henry allowed no argument. “Keep moving, please.”

Jay stepped forward. “One foot in front of the other, right? No problem.” Swinging his legs and dragging his toes, Jay babbled fast but walked slow. “I can dance if you want. Fancy footwork.”

Henry took her hand when she would have moved with him. No way in hell could he expect Jay to do this alone.

He shook his head at her. “Patience,” he murmured. A grimace crossed his face.

Memory flashed, Henry’s pleading expression as he urged her into bed after the night had gone so badly. He needed her to follow his lead. His forcefulness had gotten Jay moving until he could break down in safety. Tonight, Jay had to confront the source of his pain.

Jay acted as if being here didn’t affect him, but he crept along like a child in a house of horrors. Even with the rooms empty and silent. Even with the hall brightly lit. Even with her and Henry walking behind him. He looked to both sides as he walked, shaking his head. He slowed as he passed each door.

He…didn’t know.

Horrified understanding shivered through her blood.

The entire floor was an open wound in his mind, a terror beyond imagining, built up from year upon year of pretending he’d put it behind him. He couldn’t identify the place where his nightmares lived.

Henry laid a hand on Jay’s shoulder. “Stop here, my boy.”

They stood between two doors, one on either side of the hall.

Jay swung his head between them.

“The left,” Henry prompted.

Jay’s memories might be indistinct, blurred by pain and fear, but Henry’s had to be absolute. Frozen and sliced and dyed in shades of blame on slides for him to examine under a microscope. How often did he wish he’d noticed the scene sooner and saved Jay some pain?

Guilt and regret crippled as effectively as fear. Dozens of times she’d heard Henry say he wanted them healthy and happy. When he’d met Jay, Jay had been neither. Henry would’ve been a boy who’d driven his parents to distraction caring for wounded creatures.

Jay took a cautious step and pushed the door wide. He stood in the door frame.

Henry reached past their shoulders for the light switch. Spotlights illuminated the room’s centerpiece, an X-shaped piece of equipment fastened to the far wall.

Stepping into the room, Jay flinched. And then he laughed.

“Nothing to be scared of here. It’s only wood and metal and padding.” His forced chuckles grated at her nerves. “Silly to get all worked up over it. I’m glad, I’m glad we, uh, visited”—he tugged at his sleeves, hiding his wrists—“to get that cleared up. We can go home now. Whenever you’re ready.”

Hell no. No fucking way Henry bought his bravado either. Pushing away the pain because it hurt to feel it.

“Jay. My brave boy.” Henry’s shoes tapped against the wood floor. He stopped beside Jay, the two of them facing the illuminated frame. Metal rings stood out at the corners and various points along the X. Attachment points. “No one but Alice and me will ever know what happens here.”

The first night Henry had tied her down, he’d chosen soft cuffs and shown her how to escape. Anyone tied to this frame would be splayed like da Vinci’s Vitruvian man, vulnerable and exposed. Doubtful Cal cared whether restraints chafed. He probably preferred they did.

“Do you still wish to hide from this? To feel it controlling you when you want to let go?” Henry lowered his voice. “Will you give this moment that power and deny it to me, dear one?”

“No!” Jay’s fierce headshake scattered his hair and twisted his torso. “I want to be yours, Henry. Just yours.”

“Then you must reconcile with the past, Jay. Feel the truth of it. Accept your own blamelessness.” Henry tipped his chin, a brief glance at the floor. Would he ever accept
his
blamelessness? “You called out your safeword and were ignored.”

Jay moved forward. His shoulders shifted with every breath, his exhalations audible in the silence. He stopped less than a foot from the frame. His leg twitched. His hand clenched.

He stood, back rigid, unmoving, for long minutes.

Henry turned toward her. Expecting he’d shoo her away to give Jay privacy, she took a half step back.

He thrust out his palm in a curt
stop
gesture.

She froze, waiting.

He beckoned her to him. The soft soles of her sneakers barely made a sound.

Jay never twitched.

Henry’s gaze shifted between the two of them. He pressed his mouth to her ear.

“He needs a push.” He whispered so low she strained to hear him even at this distance. “A painful one.”

Understanding ached. He’d seen her react badly before, misread his intentions, try to defend Jay against harshness when Henry had a purpose for it. Her challenges had made Jay’s wait for comfort longer.

“I trust you.” She breathed out the words.

Henry kissed her temple and rubbed her back. Stepping forward, leaving her behind, he took a slow, deep breath.

“Step away.” Henry had a new tone. Anger. Disgust.

Jay’s head came up.

Henry clenched his jaw. “It’s an interesting technique you have, but I think you’ve outstripped your skills.” Now his words came light as an observation on the weather. “And it seems your sub has had enough for the night.”