Page 103 of Games We Play
“Is that how you really feel?”
“Yes.”
Leah sighed. “That’s all I wanted, you know. To hear what you’re feeling. Good things, bad things… I ask about them because I care. It wasn’t enough for me to know we could hook up. If we kept going on like that, I wanted more. Maybe not a serious relationship, but to at least know a little about who you were beyond the image you projected.”
“Tough shit. I don’t know either.” Sloan got up from her seat and rounded the small table they shared in the hotel room. She sat on the edge, looming over Leah. “If there’s anything positive I took from my time with my ex-husband, though,” she began, waiting for the light of comprehension to reignite behind Leah’s eyes, “it’s that you don’t have to feel ashamed of who you are or what you like to do. As long as you’re not hurting anyone,” and that included themselves, “you can express yourself however you want. That kind of stuff we did… it can be a part of a healthy life.”
“You really think that?”
“You don’t?”
Leah returned to her knot in the table. “I want to believe it’s possible, but is it something we could do?”
“You’re worried about me, aren’t you?” Sloan meant that Leah might be worried about her personal safety. The answer she received surprised her.
“I don’t want you to regret doing it,” Leah said. “I want a partner who can give myself every part of her. Including the parts that might scare other people… but not at the expense of her well-being.”
Sloan’s grip almost upturned the table.Nobody’s said something like that to me before.Not even Aaron, when he slathered on the fake concern to rope her into a lifestyle she had never expected, pretended to be so involved in her well-being. Was that why Sloan was afraid to take on the role he once filled? Why she was so convinced she would only hurt a woman like Leah?
“I wasn’t lying when I said I started treating domination as a way to understand what he did to me.” Sloan’s knuckles had long turned white. “I thought that if I stepped into his shoes, I could reclaim the self-respect he stole from me. That’s why I hired women who could separate themselves from what we did. You, though… maybe I avoided women who were really into it because I knew what I was doing, and why it was toxic.”
“That’s the word.” Leah’s left hand slowly slid toward one of Sloan’s. “Toxic.”
One of those buzzwords that have lost all meaning.Had it, though? Had it really lost all meaning, or was she too far up her own ass to see what Leah wanted to say?
“I enjoy it,” Sloan finally admitted. “I enjoy being that woman for others, but I don’t want it to get toxic. I’ve been on the other side of that. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I truly perpetuated it.’
“I never thought it was toxic.”
You don’t understand what went on in my head when we did it.Grasping for meaning. Flashbacks to the same acts with Aaron. The driving, pounding need to purge such urges from her body. “If we did that again and I lost sight of myself…”
Leah took her hand. That gentle, reassuring touch didn’t come from a weak heart. It came from the strongest heart Sloan had ever encountered.She thinks she has no confidence… that’s all I feel in her grasp right now.“We could always try?”
Sloan wanted to say something, but couldn’t pull the words out of her throat. So she did the next best thing.
She kissed Leah and allowed herself to sink into what felt natural. For better or worse.
***
There were things Sloan couldn’t do that she always fantasized about. She wasn’t big or strong enough to pick Leah up and carry her across the room, though one clung to the other as if it were possible. Nor could Sloan achieve the same kind of sexual intimacy that she had with her husband, back when she was convinced she felt true love and adoration for him. Except those were mere physical limitations. Sloan still had all the heart and soul to give another woman. The kind of lovemaking Leah liked most was mostly psychological, anyway.
Sloan knew a few things about that. Both as the woman inflicting it, and the woman receiving it.
Binding a woman’s wrists behind her back was as good as telling her to no longer worry about a thing. What good was worrying if she couldn’t reach out and touch a damn thing? Boom. Her hands were literally tied. Anyone asking her to take care of something, to do anything, togosomewhere would be crazy. Couldn’t they see that Leah couldn’t do it if she wanted? She was stuck here. Her wrists were bound behind her back, and soon, she wouldn’t be able to see, either. Blindfolds served to further cut off a woman from the stressors of the outside world.
Must be nice.Leah didn’t have to do a thing except obey. Then again, Sloan understood how much work that was, too.
“Not too tight, right?” She meant the blindfold she had secured around Leah’s eyes, but it could also apply to the strip of fabric fastening her wrists behind her back. Leah sat on the edge of the hotel bed, her marble gray shift dress tight against her body and her naked toes wiggling in the carpet. Sloan tossed a handful of curly hair behind Leah’s shoulder and caressed her jawline. Pleasant shivers erupted beneath her touch.
“No,” Leah softly said. “I’m fine.”
“Fine?” Sloan bent down, lips near Leah’s. “You mean you’re not already so turned on that you’re bursting to have me touch you some more?”
She glanced at Leah’s chest. Her dress was thin enough that a hint of hard nipple showed, but Sloan wanted to hear it from her lover’s mouth.
The bindings holding her wrists together strained against her forming fists. “Yes.”
“How do you feel right now?”
