Page 53 of Healing the Heart

“Fiona, I need to hold you, but I don’t want to set you off again.”

She looked up at him and his stricken expression. He seemed equally freaked out. With a sob, she flung herself at him and wrapped her arms in a choke hold around his neck. He seemednot to notice, hugging her close as he whispered into her hair, “I’ve got you, kitten. You’re safe.”

Noah rocked her gently for a long time. When her tension lessened, he eased her onto her back, cradling her with her cheek to his chest. Reaching for a blanket, he pulled it around her naked body to keep her warm. It wasn’t necessary. She wasn’t lying about him being a human furnace. But she was shivering, and she understood why he thought she needed it. The reason wasn’t that she was cold.

Long minutes passed and, feeling calmer, she asked something that was really bugging her. “Why didn’t this happen last night when you pinned my hands to the bed?”

“The leather cuffs are the only thing the same as that night. They must have been the trigger.”

“Does that mean we can’t...ever?”

This was unfair. Except for surrendering to a man strong enough to compel her submission—until Noah that had only been a concept—more than anything in the lifestyle, she enjoyed being bound and helpless. But only with a man she trusted. There had been a few of them in her BDSM journey. Apparently, Jordan had ruined that for her.

“We can work on getting you past this, kitten. It might take time.”

She tipped her head back over his arm to see his face. “Why do you keep calling me kitten? Not that I mind.”

A tender smile replaced his worried expression. “You’re soft and warm and cute, like a kitten. And you have the habit of blinking up at me, like a curious kitten. And last night, I learned that when you’re content or about to come or just finished coming, you purr.”

She stared up at him for a moment then denied it. “I do not purr.”

“You do, and you blink. You did it again just now.” He squeezed her to him and planted a kiss on her forehead. “It’s not a bad thing. In fact, I’d call it the sweetest, most adorable thing ever.”

“A thirty-four-year-old woman with my figure isn’t adorable.”

“Wanna bet?” he challenged. “But if it makes you feel better, I think you’re hot as fuck, too.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Now that,” he exclaimed with a tap on her nose, “will get you spanked. I’m not hardcore with protocol or punishing every little thing, but the eye roll is a button you don’t want to push.”

“Do you think that might trigger me, too?”

“A spanking? I don’t know. We’d have to test it.”

She sighed. “Some submissive I am when you can’t restrain or spank me.”

“This isn’t unsurmountable, Fiona. I can help you with desensitization, but you probably should see someone professionally.”

“Are those your orders, doctor?”

“That’s your dom’s suggestion. It’s not my specialty, but I know you have to be receptive to counseling for it to be effective. Val is a clinical social worker. She knows BDSM-friendly therapists and could recommend someone.”

“Yeah. She suggested it several times, but I thought I was past it. Little did I know it was lying in wait.”

It seemed her problems were mounting at every turn. Her home was a wreck, her car impounded, she had a sociopath intent on revenge against her who was possibly in cahoots with a killer she could identify, and she’d found the dom of her dreams. But within twenty-four hours of deciding to see where things could go between them, she developed PTSD.

Sullen and dejected, she picked at the blanket in her lap. “I’ll understand if you want to end our arrangement.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t sign up for whatever’s going on with me”—she tapped her temple before adding—“up here.”

“Do you want to begin the exposure therapy now?”

“What?”

“Your suggestion that we end things. You’re on thin ice, speed skating toward a spanking with that one.”

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