Page 26 of Keep My Secrets
Your hard limits. That worksheet you filled out.
No.
You can change your mind.
I know, I don't want to. I don’t know what is going to be too much. I want to find those limits with you.
Come home.
I will.
Now.
When I'm done.
Should I be pushing buttons when I am already pushing a boundary, making him wait? Probably not, but I really want to know what he has planned for me tonight.
Abigail asks for my opinion to settle a debate, and I am pulled into the wild conversation at the table.
Even while watching Peter and Tucker have a heated debate about which design came first, Stark Tower or Castin Tower, there is a little voice in the back of my head sayingGo home to Theo.
I swallow the last of my drink and take out my phone.
Can you send a car, please?
Stan has been outside since you got off work.
You made him sit out there this entire time?
It's his job.
I’ll be home soon.
I’ll be waiting.
Closing the phone, I flag down the waiter.
“I am going to be heading home. I will see you all on Thursday.” The boys give me a hard time about working from home tomorrow, but Johnathon just watches without comment. When we make eye contact, I mouth the wordsI am safe, promise.He just nods before downing the rest of his drink.
I grab my bag and head downstairs, and like Theo had said, Stan is standing out front holding my door open.
“Sorry for making you wait.”
“It's quite all right, Ms. Mason.”
He closes the door, and for a brief moment, the air around me is still and silent. I take a deep breath, finally admitting to myself what I may have caused myself to walk into at home. Well, at Theo’s home.
When he FaceTimed me that first night, he said so many things. He told me all about how he would use certain toys, how he wanted to leave marks across my body. The conversation was so hot. But a lot of things can be hot when it's just words. He is about to actually do those things to me. A knot forms in my stomach and battles the heat rising from my core as I start to remember all the things he had said he wanted to do.
The logical part of my brain keeps telling me it's dangerous, that I should be scared. But on the other hand, it's telling me that I want it. All of it. That the fear is fun, like a haunted house. We pay to go be scared. We pay to have our nervous system attacked and us put into fight or flight.
Theo would never intentionally hurt me—I don't think. At least he wouldn't hurt me if I didn't want it. He has been very intentional about making sure I understand this is an agreement between both of us. That there are hard limits, and even when we were together before, if he introduced anything that could make me uncomfortable, he made sure I knew I could say no and how to say no.
I trace my fingers over the spot on my wrist where Theo had bound me to the bed.
My attention is pulled back to reality when Stan opens the door. I hadn't even realized we had started the drive home.It's now or never.I step out of the car. Stan tries to hand me my bag.
“Can you leave that with Enzo? Have him send it up in the morning?”
