Page 52 of My Skin Begs You Please

God only knew if Luke wouldeverbe willing to meet with me again. I’d told him too much. He had to be wondering what he’d gotten himself into…

New anger bubbled up beneath the old. I’d probably fucked things up with Luke too. Maybe I should go back to Kyle after all. He didn’t ask questions… He didn’t bring up the bad memories of being helpless, just the good ones of being powerful. Of being a god.

“Why are you angry with me?” Daniel asked, tilting his head like a golden retriever. I wanted to punch him. “I just want to help you.”

I bit into my pizza slice and chewed furiously. He sat cross-legged across the rainbow rug I’d bought for the floor of my dorm room. It was soft beneath our butts. When I swallowed, I dropped my slice back in the cardboard. “You think it’s wrong, don’t you? What I’m doing.”

“Whatareyou doing?” Daniel asked. “I don’t even know.” He let his slice glide back into the box, and fuck me if it didn’t slot right back into the place he’d picked it up from. Aside from the missing bites, it looked like he’d never touched it to begin with. He was magic.

“You won’t even talk to me.”

“I wastryingto talk to you. I asked about love. You belittled my feelings.”

His mouth dropped open, and his eyes went wide. “I answered you seriously, and I just wanted to know who the question was about.”

“It’s about my Dom, my lover, my sadistic fuck-machine.”

Daniel blinked. “Does he have a name?”

“Not that you need to know.”

“Minty… What’s happening? Why are you being like this?”

Guilt tugged at my gut. Daniel had taken care of me in high school, protected my femme ass from all the bullies and used his rich boy clout to keep me safe.

After the rape, he’d taken me to therapy appointments and went to every court date and even gave damning testimony about my father’s character. In college, he’d protected me while I went on acid trips, and shroom trips, and pot-laced country drives trying to outrun my demons.

Why was I doing this to him? The hurt in his eyes said he didn’t know either.

“You just try too hard,” I said. “You act like you’re okay with what I’m doing, but you’re not. You think it’s gross. You thinkI’mgross.”

“I’ve never thought that.”

“You think it was inevitable that I’d turn up positive. Because I’m trash, and you know I’m trash, and you think Ilikebeing treated like trash.”

“For fuck’s sake, I’ve never said or thoughtanythinglike that.”

“You wouldn’t,” I shot back, hot with anger that boiled incessantly in my gut. “Because you’re too fucking nice to think it.”

“I love you, and you’re angry and scared, and”—he took hold of my hand—“a few weeks ago, you came to me and asked me to pray with you, and I did. Peter and I both did. We all cried, and Ithought we’d made some kind of headway together. That you were going to let me help you, and—”

“I don’t want your help,” I said, tears stinging my eyes at the reminder of the Kumbaya moment I’d shared with them a few weeks before. I’d gone to him because he’d always been my safe harbor in any storm, and even with Peter being there, less of a stranger than before, but still new in my life, I’d felt safe. Just long enough to let myself feel hopeful for half a minute. The crash of despair afterward had been something awful.

Mitigated later by Kyle’s violence, of course.

God, just sitting here with Daniel’s perfect face was making me itch to run to Kyle. I scrubbed a hand over my hair. What was wrong with me? I was ruining everything. I wished I was back in Luke’s basement. Nothing could be ruined there. Even if I used my safe word, things weren’t ruined. They were just… changed.

I could be as ugly, angry, furious, hateful, spiteful, and un-sparkly as I wanted, and Luke didn’t walk away. He just made me feel something else instead. He made me hurt.

“What are you thinking about?” Daniel said. “Your face is…” He waved at his own. “All over the place.”

“I’m thinking that I’m a fuck-up, and you’re amazing, and I shouldn’t be such a dick to you.”

Daniel’s eyes flashed with agreement—at least with the part where I shouldn’t be treating him like this. “You’re angry, and you’re taking it out on me. I have experience with that. Hell, I’ve lived that recently.”

Right. While I was busy breaking down over my impending doom, Daniel was busy trying to wrangle a little brother and sister while his mom weathered yet another alcoholic storm and her subsequent stay in rehab. His life wasn’t all sunshine and puppies and roses. He had a dead dad, for crying out loud. And yet…

Compared to me?

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