STORY EXCERPT

“I brought some stuff for us to look at. The doctors said maybe it would help.”

Then she pulled her attention from the TV. “Can we talk first?”

“Sure.”

“How did we meet?”

He paused, not sure how to handle this hot potato. “Through mutual friends,” he said, their usual answer to someone vanilla who asked that same question.

He thought she might ask him for more details, but then she started asking about other things and the questions came one right after another.

Where she was from? Florida. Where was her family? Her parents were dead, killed in a car accident a little over a year earlier, and he hadn’t been able to contact her brother, Bill, in Montana. What did she do for a living? She owned a dive shop and charter business, and wrote freelance articles for fishing and scuba diving magazines and websites.

Why, who, what, where—it nearly wore him out until he put it into perspective that she was, essentially, hearing these things for the first time.

Laura finally paused and laid back in bed, closing her eyes.

“I also brought you some clothes. Your clothes,” he said. “I thought it might make you a little more comfortable.” He opened the duffle bag for her. She reached in and sorted through them, finally selecting a T-shirt and pair of sweat pants.

When he offered her his arm to help her sit up she hesitated at first, then tentatively let him assist her out of bed. He helped her to the bathroom, standing back while she locked the door behind her. She obviously wasn’t comfortable having him so close.

He wasn’t used to this from her, someone he’d shared his life and bed with for two years.

Someone who, until a few days ago, had called him Sir.

Someone who had trusted him with her life and safety when they played very edgy scenes.

Someone who had never hesitated—before—to turn herself over to him completely and without reservation.

Once again he had to force himself to remember he was a stranger to her.

She took several minutes to change and when she emerged, he helped her back to bed. The Laura he knew was physically there, but the tangible emotional gulf felt miles deep and infinitely wide.

Laura reached for the photo albums. The first were from her childhood. Rob thought maybe the older memories would return faster, based on what the doctors had told him.

He watched while she slowly flipped through the pages, occasionally asking him for a name or place. Some he knew, some he didn’t. Once they got to the albums with pictures of them as a couple, he told her the stories, trying to relive them as best he could for her. He also had a ton of pictures on his phone, but until he could sanitize the photo album and remove the ones of her in bondage, or her proudly sticking her ass out so he could take pictures of her bruises, he’d hold off showing them to her.

They were halfway through one album when she smiled at a picture of them on a fishing boat. Rob held a large amberjack. Laura used two hands to hoist an impressive grouper.

“Do you remember that day?” he asked.

Laura closed her eyes, deep in concentration. “Something about a ledge.”

Rob didn’t give her any information, made her search for it.

“Maybe a…croaker?” She looked at him, her brow furrowed. He nodded.

Her finger traced the picture. “We were scuba diving?”

“Yes.”

“I know how to do that?”

He forced the smile. “You’re an instructor.”

“Oh, yeah. You said that, didn’t you. Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I know you’re overwhelmed.”

That earned him a sad smile. “That’s an understatement.”

She stared at the photo for a few more minutes without speaking. The obvious intensity of her effort was mind boggling. “Something about a lobster.” After several more minutes, she finally shook her head. “That’s all I remember.”

He tried to hide his disappointment. She’d been so close to getting it. “We were spearfishing in the Gulf. You shot the grouper, and he went under a ledge, making the loud croaking noise they do when they’re wounded or scared. While you were digging it out, I shot that amberjack and had my hands full. You yelled into your regulator and I turned and you had a hold of the grouper, but a large lobster had backed out of the hole and you didn’t have any hands to grab it.”

“Was that good?”

He laughed. “Well, it would have been if we could have got it. Lobsters aren’t common this far north in the Gulf. It was lobster season, and we had lobster stamps on our fishing licenses. But he got away, baby girl.”

She flinched and looked at him with a suspicious glare.

“What’s wrong?”

“Baby girl?”

That was one of his pet names for her, had been for years. She was his “baby girl,” even though they didn’t do age play. In front of vanillas, she’d teasingly call him Fireman instead of Sir. Or Hose Jockey, depending on her mood and whether she was trying to get him into bed. She had a hellacious sense of humor.

But alone, she always called him Sir.

“That doesn’t bring anything back?” he softly asked, hoping his voice didn’t break. He tried to remember Singh’s warning, that he had to stay strong for her.

“Not really.” She wrinkled her nose again. “You really called me that? I liked it?”

“Yeah.” He hoped he could choke out the statement without crying. “If you don’t feel comfortable with that now, I won’t.”

She slowly nodded. “Thanks.” She returned her attention to the album.

He felt another piece of his tattered soul ripped from him. But if she didn’t want him calling her that now, he wouldn’t.

No matter how much it hurt.

ADULT EXCERPT

As he climbed into his Explorer, Rob spotted a duffel bag on the floor behind the passenger seat. He dragged it into the seat and unzipped it.

Royal blue rope.

He fingered it. He didn’t have to unpack the rope to know that under it lay several carabiners, other clips, a ball gag, and a blindfold.

Angrily, he zipped it up and tossed it into the backseat before starting the engine. His mind drifted as he drove. Two? No, three weeks earlier. He’d packed that bag for a small private party at Tony and Shayla’s.

Seth and Leah, Loren and Ross, and Tilly and her men had also been there. Rob was scheduled to work that Saturday and wouldn’t be at dinner or the club, so they’d set it up for him.

Because they were friends and loved him and Laura both.

Laura still went out to Sigalo’s on Saturday night with the rest of the gang, and then spent a little time socializing later at the club.

But that night, in Tony’s private playroom, Rob had tied Laura in a chest harness before binding her, helpless, to a bench.

Her soft cries still rang in his ears as he’d inserted a vibrator into her pussy before using another piece of rope to secure it in place.

And turned it on, forbidding her from coming under threat of five cane strokes, part of the sadistic fun knowing she wouldn’t be able to hold back and that she was more than willing to sacrifice five strokes for the orgasms.

How she’d moaned when he stepped in front of her and unzipped his jeans, her eager mouth wide and willing while a fine sheen of sweat coated her skin.

How he’d grabbed her head firmly. “Have you come yet?”

She shook her head, mouth still wide open and ready.

Sadistic glee filled him. This was a routine they’d gone through countless times before, one she loved despite the resulting cane strokes.

Loved him taking charge and owning her, loved knowing he would follow through.

How she moaned, the sound vibrating through his cock, deep into his balls, as he fucked her mouth and her warm lips and tongue stroked him.

How she moaned again, harder, louder, with a mix of dismay and gleeful anticipation when he reached down and twisted her nipples.

How she moaned even more deeply when that finished her off and the orgasm washed over her, arching her against her restraints as she sucked him harder.

“There’s your five, baby girl,” he’d told her, loving how she moaned again, sucking him harder, more deeply, writhing against the ropes as she fucked her hips against the air and the bench as the vibrator hummed inside her.

It only made him want to fuck her more and harder, but instead, he withdrew before she could make him come. She whined in disappointment, but he wouldn’t be denied. He carefully tucked his protesting cock back into his jeans and walked around behind her.

First, he prepared a butt plug and, even as the vibrator continued humming inside her, he slowly and carefully inserted it, making her cry out as another series of orgasms washed through her.

And then…

Then, the Hitachi.

How he held it pressed firmly against her clit, still turned off, as with his other hand he brushed the cane against her ass.

“Time to pay up, baby girl. Ask me for it.”

She struggled to speak through the effects of the vibrator and butt plug on her brain. “Please give me my five, Sir!”

“Good girl.” He clicked on the Hitachi, on high, and took the first swing across her ass with the cane.

She screamed, in pleasure and pain, as she came again.

He drew it out, knowing how she loved it, the short-circuiting of her brain as he combined each painful cane stroke with the overwhelming pleasure of the Hitachi.

When she’d taken all five strokes, he turned off the Hitachi and set it and the cane down before returning to her head.

She still shivered, the other vibrator inside her not letting her completely stop orgasming.

He unzipped his jeans again and she opened without prompting.

“Such a good girl.”