Page 41 of Follow Me
Chapter Eleven
The next morning, Mallory awoke at seven when her alarm went off. She’d slept well, although her dreams had been unsettled.
She sent her good-morning group text to her fairy godfathers to let them know she was up and moving and headed out to the kitchen to make her coffee.
This was a morning routine she’d never take for granted again. The coffee they’d served at the center had been all right.
But she loved the aroma of grinding the beans and then standing there as it brewed, nice and strong the way she liked it.
She liked having two flavors of creamer in her fridge now, and not feeling guilty about it.
And not feeling guilty about not measuring how much she put into her coffee, either.
As she waited, she prepared her morning medications, snapping a picture of them and sending the text before taking them and logging her water intake in her app.
It was a comforting routine, and far less stressful now than it ever had been when she was doing it on her own as a desperate way to keep control, or with Kel hovering over her like a shadow and pressing her to do things on his timetable instead of hers.
And swallowing her emotions because she was worried about hurting his feelings more than her whole situation had already hurt him.
She’d tried to do this with control on her own and now admitted she was powerless in some ways. There was a perfect balance in having the impersonal “sober companion” of the fitness tracker and app, and having the men at her fingertips via text, but also having a modicum of control within that framework. It was in her hands…but there was an invisible safety net.
And a palpable accountability presence.
Maybe that was something the three could help Kel understand—in a way, what she was dealing with did strike a lot of notes for her when she researched recovery. She was powerless over what emotions hit her and when they hit her. But she could control how she responded, something she’d failed to grasp before. Muting them with harmful coping mechanisms only made the problem worse.
When she stopped trying to control her emotions, and focused solely on feeling them, acknowledging them, processing them, and instead maintaining a routine that wasn’t connected to her emotions, it soothed her.
Leaning against the counter, she caught herself rubbing her bare right wrist and regretting not having her day collar there.
I wish I hadn’t done that.
Except now she realized if she hadn’t, if she hadn’t proven how serious she was this time, Kel might have tried pulling Master rank on her again to keep her inpatient.
And she probably would have let him.
But she missed her collar, its comforting weight. It was bad enough she no longer had her piercings, other than in her ears. He’d taken out her nipple piercings midway through her pregnancy, when they’d become uncomfortable. He’d removed the vertical clit hood piercing that morning during the frantic rush to get to the hospital, when she’d started feeling cramps, because he’d had the tool there at the house and wasn’t sure if they’d have one at the hospital.
It’d only taken seconds for him to remove it.
She felt completely naked, in some ways.
Other than her wedding rings, there were no visible signs of Kel’s ownership of her, other than a few very faint scars that really couldn’t even be made out anymore.
How long since he’d last marked her?
They used to start every morning that way, with him marking her, either biting or, if they had the time, play, or even cutting.Something.
A fresh physical reminder of his love and devotion, his ownership of her.
A routine she’d cherished.
When the sob hit her, she let it flow, remembering Doug’s order to her to let emotions happen.
I miss being owned.
Maybe Kel’s attempts to force her into a permanent recovery as her Master failed because she’d let his internal premise rule their dynamic—he felt responsible for her and her well-being, when the truth was that there were limits to what he could do, no matter how much he loved her and how good his intentions. The codependent to her addiction, to use that metaphor.
And she’d been willing to assume that she was broken beyond fixing, if her devoted husband and Master couldn’t put her back together again despite his best efforts.
