STORY EXCERPT

October

What’s wrong with me? It’s been over a year.

Mallory Hansen stared at herself in the mirror as they got ready for the Halloween party.

Although she really didn’t have much to get ready for. Her wardrobe was extremely limited now, and she didn’t have a costume she could wear that would fit her, even if she felt like wearing one. Tonight she’d don one of the black maxi-dresses that was actually way too big for her now, and a black cardigan over that to hide her arms and torso.

I have a whole closet full of cute clothes I can’t wear because they’re too fucking big for me.

It was enough to make her want to cry.

The irony wasn’t lost on her that at one point in her past she would’ve killed to be smaller.

This wasn’t what she had in mind, and she was far enough along in her recovery to know she wasn’t in a healthy place.

Sticking to a recovery plan had proved difficult for her, though.

She’d had to beg and plead with her husband, Askel, to check her out of the treatment facility and bring her home for tonight’s Halloween party at Seth and Leah’s. She’d missed so many events already—she missed their friends. And Kel wouldn’t attend any lifestyle events if she wasn’t with him, despite her telling him she wanted him to go. That heaped more guilt onto her even though Kel assured her he was fine not attending without her.

She already felt tense because Kel was not happy with her right now. At all. But she was going stir-crazy at the facility. It was a nice place, except she couldn’t leave when she wanted to, had no freedom, and she was getting tired of sitting in group sessions and not having any new answers, or sitting in one-on-ones with her lead therapist, Dr. Susan Abrahms.

Yes, with her daily journal she could look back and see how she felt more clear-headed again with the new medicine regimen, but…

Yeah.

She’d been a breath away this morning from demanding a divorce from Kel over his initial reluctance to help her check out, even just for the night.

Those thoughts had pulled her up short, though, once she realized she’d had them.

She loved him.

But she was ready for something…different now. Not meaning him. Meaning this whole situation with her anorexia.

Something in her life had to change.

She refused to spend the rest of her life locked up in an inpatient treatment center for eating disorders. For starters, they couldn’t afford it. The fact that friends who could afford it stepped in to pay for it—friends who’d literally hit the lottery—was beside the point.

It made things worse for her, actually. Made her feel even more guilty she hadn’t managed to get her shit together long before now.

I can’t keep doing things this way.

At five-six, at her heaviest before her pregnancy she’d been almost one-seventy, and then during her pregnancy had made it up to nearly two hundred pounds just before…

But her usual weight had averaged anywhere from one-fifty to one-sixty while with Kel. Right now, she’d actually regained and maintained a few pounds and was a whopping one-ten, and she’d made it through the worst of the initial effects of trying to restart her body’s metabolism. Her medical team’s goal for her was to get her to one-twenty-five and see how she did, with an acceptable weight range of anywhere from one-seventeen to one-fifty. She’d lost a lot of muscle mass, too, something she was trying to rebuild by doing yoga alone in her room every day, as well as carefully overseen, gentle low-impact weight training at the facility’s gym.

Kel walked into the bedroom. She’d tried to get him to take a shower with her earlier, but he’d gently refused with a mumbled excuse that didn’t make any sense no matter how she tried to spin it, unless she looked at it in the most obvious way.

He didn’t want to see her naked.

Rationally, she understood that was due to how underweight she was—yes, logically she understood she was underweight—but it pissed her off as a spouse.

It’d been over six months since they’d last attempted to make love, and even then it’d been like he was afraid to touch her. Neither of them had ended up getting off, and Mal and ended up crying herself to sleep in Kel’s arms.

They hadn’t actually played in…

Well, since before she’d lost the baby the previous March. Here they were, now, eighteen months later.

Maybe this new regimen with medication really was helping, because she felt clear-headed and determined in a way she hadn’t in months.

“Ready to go, sweetheart?” he asked.

“Yes, Sir.”

He held his hands out to her, and she accepted that instead of the hug she really wanted.

How gently he gripped her hands, as if they were formed from fragile porcelain, made her want to scream.

“No hugs tonight, sweetheart,” he quietly said.

Anger flashed through her. “Kel, I won’t break if—”

“No,” he said, giving her the Dom head tip, as she thought of it.

Her mouth snapped shut. “Yes, Sir,” she whispered.

She’d pushed him as far as she could today and she knew it. They’d end up in a fight if she tried pushing for more, and that’s the last thing she wanted to do tonight. When she’d goaded him into a fight a few months ago, they’d both felt like shit for days after, made worse because of her being inpatient in Tampa at the time. He’d blamed himself for the fight even though she knew she was totally at fault, and that she knew he couldn’t help how he was reacting, right now.

Kel was scared.

Hell, she was fucking scared, too.

Everything he did came from a place of love, even if she wanted to grab him and shake him into being her full-on sadistic Master again.

She missed playing in the shadows with him.

Desperately missed it.

One more thing taken away from her life.

Her parents, her baby.

Her husband.

“Good girl.” He opened his arms to her for a hug and despite how hard she held him, he barely touched her as his arms circled her. She might as well have been held by a ghost.

She closed her eyes and bit back her scream of frustration.

“I love you, sweetheart,” he said.

She took a deep breath. “I love you, too, Sir.”

ADULT EXCERPT

Kel didn’t know how long they sat there and cried together. He felt like a total, utter failure that he broke down, despite everything he logically knew. That it was healthy and good and natural.

He didn’t care.

He was supposed to be her strength.

He was supposed to be her rock.

He’d promised to take care of her, and so far, he’d utterly failed in every way.

She pressed a tissue into his hand, and he blew his nose. While he did that, she stood, shoved down her leggings and stepped out of them, and climbed back into his lap.

“Mal—”

“Shh.” She kissed him. She kissed him in a desperate, needy way he hadn’t felt in too damn long.

In the way she used to kiss him.

When he tried to draw back, to talk, she fisted his hair and held him in place, squirming in his lap as she kissed him.

Well, of course his body responded. He hadn’t exactly felt like rubbing one out lately.

Come to think of it, he actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d had an orgasm.

Shit.

Still, she kissed him, her grip on his hair—ow—surprisingly strong.

Apparently, pulling away wasn’t going to be an option. Not without risking hurting her.

Wait…

He gave up and kissed her back, enjoying the way she nipped at his lips, the way she ground against him.

He kissed her and let his mind go blank. And when her grip on his hair eased and he naturally took over, he shoved it out of his mind that he was worried about her.

Because this felt like her.

Like them.

Reaching up, he fisted her hair, like he used to. Her sweet, sexy moan in reply drilled straight through his soul and into his cock.

Especially when she started grinding against him, rocking along his cock, which now had the front of his shorts tented.

Protesting briefly crossed his mind, asking for a slow-down, or a moment to talk. But then without interrupting their kiss she reached between them with one hand, fumbled his shorts open, and fished out his cock.

And impaled herself on it.

He didn’t know which of them moaned louder as he sank balls-deep inside her sweet, slick pussy.

Ohhhh…damn.

“Yes!” she whispered.

With the hold in her hair he tipped her head back and grazed her throat with his teeth as she tried to rock on his cock.

More tears flowed, and he didn’t know if it was grief or relief or just some weird mental breakdown he was having.

Nothing made sense in his brain right now.

Nothing.

He’d never been a man who followed his cock. Ever. But right now, as his other arm encircled her waist and he ground up into her, following his cock felt like the perfect idea.

He lifted his head from her throat to look into her sweet blue eyes. Every night away from her had sucked and reminded him how fragile life was.

Every night he’d sucked it up and reminded himself being apart was maybe going to save her life, even if it gutted him from the inside out.

She was the center of his world, the light in his soul, and whatever he had to do to save her, he’d do it.

He ground up into her again, hard, deep, and watched the way her lower lip caught under her teeth the way it always had.

She grabbed his head and pulled his mouth back to her throat, tipping her head to the side. “Please mark me, Sir.”

Deep within his soul his tattered shadows stirred, crying out for her.

Needing her.

He nuzzled the left side of her throat, her flesh warm and soft under his lips. She was wearing his shirts and, yeah, he loved seeing her doing that.

Holding her head in place, he gently bit down.

Her nails dug into the back of his neck. “Yes, please!” she gasped.

Okay, then.

He wasn’t strong enough to deny her. A soft growl escaped him as he struggled not to bite too hard, too deep. Except she squirmed against him, rocking on his cock.

He pulled his arm from around her waist and worked it between them so he could use his thumb to play with her clit. All while he still…okay, it was more like an actual bite now.

Memories and emotions rolled through him, making him cry even harder. Her fingers raked through his hair, across his scalp, her moans mixing with his as she rode him.

That’s when he wrapped his lips around her flesh, where it was clamped between his teeth, and sucked hard.

A shudder wracked her body as her low, familiar moan started deep within her. He released his bite and pulled her lips onto his for a kiss, needing her, needing to feel and taste her, hope sweeping through him, swelling within him.

Both their cheeks wet with tears, they kissed as Kel finally started to feel like maybe all wasn’t lost. Mal’s lips explored his as he played with her clit and savored the feel of her pussy enveloping his cock.

This felt like a sweet, perfect heaven after their prolonged sojourn through hell.

She pressed her forehead against his and a cry escaped her, a gorgeous sound that made his breath catch. Especially when he felt waves of pleasure sweep through her pussy during her climax, massaging his cock and nearly driving him over the edge.

She rode him, and part of him wanted to pause this moment forever, hold on to it, keep it tucked safe within his soul. An alleviation of his pain, for once.

Now she cradled his head in her hands. “Come for me, Sir. Please?”

A gasp escaped him and he exploded, her lips slanting over his while Mal swallowed his groans, until they both fell still and he realized he was now tightly holding her pressed against him. It took every ounce of will he had not to release her.

“I love you, Sir,” she whispered.

“I love you, too, baby.”

She nuzzled his forehead. “How about you take a shower with me, and then I’ll cook us breakfast, Sir?”

His eyes fell closed as he deeply inhaled her scent. “Sure. Thank you.”