Page 28 of Brave
“Do you want to do it tonight, or do you want to do it at Black Light later this week?” he asked flatly.
“I didn’t mean to forget,” she said. “I was filling out the papers.”
“I’m glad you took that part seriously. But I also need you to take it seriously when I say you’re going to eat three meals a day, you’re going to take a picture of it before and after, and you won’t miss meals. So, last time. Do you want to take care of it tonight or do you want to wait until we get to Black Light?”
Her chest cramped in hard around her wildly beating heart. There was no way she could handle feeling like this for more than one day. The longer she waited, the worse it would get. “Tonight please, Sir.”
“Where are you?” he asked.
“Deanwood.”
“The library?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Please be waiting outside on the front steps so I don’t have to find parking.”
Hanging up the call, that should have been the point that she hyperventilated yet again, but she didn’t. Her legs were rubbery; her head hurt. Carlson wasn’t Ethen, she reminded herself yet again. And maybe, just maybe after her punishment was over, he would hug her in that way that made all her bad feelings go away. Then she could feel safe again.
Two days in a row.
She didn’t hold out a whole lot of hope. Her luck didn’t usually run in comforting directions.
* * *
Carlson found her sitting on the steps exactly as he’d requested when he pulled up in front of the library. Construction caused him to be later than what he’d told her. It was now fifteen after four and all he kept thinking about was she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Which annoyed him, but only half as much as it annoyed him that she looked so damned waiflike when she came walking up to his car. She slipped into the passenger seat wearing jeans, pink and white sneakers, and peeking out from under the thin jacket she wore, a pink t-shirt with a cartoon teddy bear hugging a cartoon unicorn under a rainbow.
Admittedly, she was an adult. She could wear whatever she wanted to. Also, he could think of no other situation in his life when he’d ever given two shits what anyone else chose to wear. But in his time at Black Light, he’d seen his share of Littles. Apart from her clothing, there wasn’t one thing about her personality that screamed ‘Little’ to him. She didn’t have the talk. More importantly, she didn’t have the attitude. All those clothes did, in his mind, were make her look even thinner and smaller than she really was.
So did the way she sat beside him, slightly hunched as she hugged a small backpack purse in her lap, now and then shooting him a nervous side-eyed look while she waited to find out exactly what he was going to do next.
“Seatbelt,” he admonished, signaling but not merging back into traffic until he heard the familiar click of the two halves connecting.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I didn’t mean to disobey.”
“If I thought for a second that you did,” he replied, deliberately keeping his tone light, “this would be an entirely different conversation. What concerns me, however, is that this is our third food-related issue within two days. That tells me the correction you received last night did not do its job, and that something more than just a hand spanking is going to be needed now.”
She turned to the window, as if trying to hide her face. But there was no hiding the quickening rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.
She was a quiet one. He’d give her that. She didn’t even give her usual ‘yes, Sir.’
“All right,” he said, breaking the silence. “Other than the obvious, how has your day been?”
Her quick glance back showed more than a hint of startlement before she just as quickly masked it. “Oh. Sorry. Um… o-other than the obvious, Sir, how has your day been?”
He’d have laughed, except he had the sneaking suspicion she wasn’t making a joke. “Not bad. I don’t mind talking about it, if you’re really interested. But that wasn’t a subtle hint for what you should do whenever we first meet up in the evening. I really was just asking about your day.”
Hugging her pack, she stared out the window, her fingers fidgeting restlessly with the shoulder strap. “I filled out the negotiation.”
“Were there parts you found difficult?” he asked, careful to keep his tone neutral and his eyes on the road. Now and then, he peeked at her out of the corner of his eye, trying to judge by her expression how she felt about what she’d read in the paper he’d sent her. It wasn’t a contract, not exactly. He’d been in the lifestyle long enough to have seen his share of Master/slave, Dominant/submissive and even play-partner contracts. Almost all of his negotiations had been verbal and usually only involved what he needed to know to bring specific submissives through specific scenes. Like a one-night-stand, that type of play was direct, to the point, and no strings attached.
This definitely was not that. Honestly, he didn’t know what this was, but he knew he was going to have to be very careful with Puppy. There were damages here that he was only beginning to catch glimpses of. It would take time to uncover the full depth of them, but the last thing he wanted between then and now was to make any of that damage worse.
“A few,” she admitted, looking down at her backpack. Reluctantly, she unfolded her arms from around it. The backpack had a fold over flap that protected a drawstring top. Opening it, she pulled out a slightly crumpled stack of papers that had been folded once in half. She tried to straighten the crumples before unfolding them. Thinking she meant to show him which part had given her particular trouble, and since he was just now slowing down to stop behind a city truck at a red light, he glanced over too.
“What’s that?” he asked, catching sight of the job application.
She folded the papers again, hugging them now to her chest behind stiffly folded arms. A touch of pink flushed her cheeks as her eyebrows buckled. “It’s nothing.”
