Page 19 of Brave
She obeyed. In and out, in and out, until the need to cry gradually seeped into the background and only the intense embarrassment remained.
“Keep breathing until you feel calm. When you feel calm, open your eyes. When you open your eyes,” he said, the tone of his voice dipping ever so slightly into disapproval, “then I am going to let you go, we are going to clean up our space, and we’re going to be all done here tonight. While I appreciate that you would rather use your safeword as opposed to lying to me, it was, in my opinion, an inappropriate word use. I am telling you all about me, because I would like to get to know you better. Do you want me to stop?”
Stop talking to her? Or did he mean stop spending time with her?
Or touching her?
No. God, no.
She ducked her head, eyes squeezed tight, as terrified of what she wanted to say as she was of the consequences that would inevitably follow. No matter what she did, there would be consequences.
His hand left her waist again and she flinched, instinctively ducking her chin so he couldn’t catch it again. The intimacy of being forced to face him, even with her eyes closed, was just too much.
It was also no match at all for the comb of his fingers moving up the back of her neck into her hair, seizing a firm hold at the base of her scalp before dragging her head up and back. The hand still on her waist, stole around her back, becoming a secure embrace that pulled her closer. All the way into his embrace, so close that her ass bumped all the way up against his hips, all but lifting her right up onto his lap. This was anything but sexual, and yet it was the most intensely sexual position she’d found herself in in years.
Her eyes flew open, locking on his because his face was right there. So close that he could have kissed her.
The raw thrill of it sang through her. So did her panic.
She didn’t even realize she’d just grabbed his chest until the heat of his body beneath his soft, black, skin-tight shirt burned her hands. She gasped, but the word red never crossed her mind much less her lips. Staring into his calm, unsmiling eyes, she lost herself.
“Breathe in,” he commanded.
Losing all the air she had in a gusting exhale, she obeyed. Locked in his arms and his stare, breathing was all she could do. Breathing and shaking, and God knows she was doing plenty of that. It was a wonder she didn’t shake him, she trembled so hard.
“Do you want me to stop?” he repeated himself.
Heaven help her.
“N-no, Sir,” she gasped.
Tipping his head, slowly he said, “Don’t call me that again. Not unless you want me to take that role. It’s Carlson. Just Carlson. Do you understand?”
God, why couldn’t she have found someone like this instead of Ethen all those years ago?
Let go, she told her hands. If she let go of, then eventually Carlson would too. They’d untwine. Their time here would end and who knows if he’d ever invite her to sit with him again, because she was inappropriate and messed up, and God, but she just couldn’t make her fingers release him. Not anymore than she could make herself stop trembling, or blink back the rush of her tears now spilling freely down her cheeks.
And yet the worst was still to come, because when she opened her mouth to apologize, what came pouring out was every bit as unstoppable as those awful burning tears.
“I’m not allowed to leave the house, so I sit in the tub. I lost my job a year ago, and now I live with my mother. If I tried to get my coat, Pony wouldn’t have let me come tonight and I had to get out of there. I had to! He’s punishing us again, because of me, and I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry. Please.” She needed to let him go, and yet her fists only tightened their grip on the sleeves of his shirt. “Please, Sir, don’t stop.”
She didn’t sound sane, even to herself. That he didn’t immediately dump her off his lap, with an appalled, ‘Jesus, lady,’ as he quickly walked away, would forever be a miracle in her mind.
“I told you not to call me that.” But instead of pushing her away, Carlson pulled her closer, embracing her with the kind of strength she only wished she had.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.
“Maybe, but probably only half as sorry as you’re going to be. This isn’t the way it’s done,” he said, holding her tight. “You want a sir? Well, you’ve got one now.”
He held her with her head buried against his chest and she couldn’t have resisted if she wanted to. She melted into him, letting the softness of his shirt absorb all the tears this awful day could drag from her. She didn’t deserve his kindness, but knowing she might never get another chance to feel this again, she gratefully stole all the comfort that he chose to give her.
With her face buried as it was, she never saw the look Carlson shot over the top of her head to Spencer, standing silently in the mouth of the nook just behind her.
Jaw clenching over and over again, Spencer nodded once, then shook his head and, fists balled up tight at his sides, quickly walked away.
* * *
Spencer sat in his office with his feet flat on the floor, forearms braced across his knees, and hands steepled in front of his mouth. This was such a mess. He wished he’d stayed in his office tonight. He certainly wished he hadn’t heard the things Puppy had said out there. It had been a hell of a lot easier back when he could vilify her right alongside Ethen, but no longer. She was every bit a target for that man’s abuse as Hadlee and Kitty had been, and now Spencer was right back to square one, struggling to think back to the beginning of this whole mess, second guessing everything he’d seen and searching in retrospect for some clue to the horror that had been going on right under his nose before Hadlee and Kitty revealed it all. No matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn’t find it—that one word or action that he could put his finger on and say a-ha that was the clue he never should have missed.
