Safeword (2 page)

Present Day

I TURNED my cell phone to silent and did my best to ignore the blinking notification light from the coffee table, but it kept drawing my attention from the TV quietly playing in the dark room.
Blink, blink. At least no one died. Blink, blink. Stevenson is a better lead investigator. Blink, blink. He didn’t get anyone killed. Blink, blink. Not like I did.

“Yeah, but Stevenson had a hell of a lot more help,” I grumbled, resentment rising like bile in my throat. “‘Keep it from the media, DeGrassi,’” I mimicked Talcott viciously. “‘One consultant should be enough, DeGrassi.’ Oh, and let’s not forget, ‘Maybe this wouldn’t have happened to you if you weren’t queer.’”

Sometimes, my pettiness surprised even me, and my face immediately heated with shame. Talcott never said that last bit, and had been nothing but accommodating in the weeks after the attack. He’d preserved my job and only once asked my shrink if I should consider retiring under the disability umbrella. It was true, there was a measurable distance between us where there hadn’t been before, but it could be attributed to many things: his promotion, which took him out of the more day-to-day activity of the precinct; my year-long sabbatical; and hell, there were a lot of people who were simply uneasy around me now. People who didn’t know how to react, so therefore didn’t, coming off detached and cold. It was the rainbow colored elephant in the room, my being forced violently out of the closet to not only my family, peers, and colleagues, but the world at large. There’s no hiding one’s orientation when the guy who attacked us only targeted gay men, not to mention the rather sensational manner in which we’d been rescued.

I could hardly blame Talcott for not knowing how to handle it when even my oldest brother, Mason, was standoffish now. It couldn’t have been, as Mason’s wife, Sandra, had said, the shock of nearly losing a brother in the line of duty. Not after going on eighteen months and he still didn’t speak to me more than one word at a time.

“What are you doing in the dark?”

I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sound of Ben’s voice right behind me, and let out a squeak as warm hands fell on my shoulders. I launched myself out of the recliner so fast my skull cracked the underside of Ben’s chin as he leaned down to kiss the top of my head.
Get away, now!
a panicked internal voice screeched. The clack of Ben’s teeth was audible both inside my head and out, his head whipped back with the force of the blow.

“Oh, Ben, I-I’m sorry,” I stammered, rushing around the chair, hands on his biceps to steady him.

He blinked rapidly for a moment, his brown eyes shining in the glow from the big flatscreen on the wall above the fireplace. He smiled thinly at me, the gap in his top front teeth more prominent in the flickering shadows.

“I’m okay, Gav. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.” He pulled away from me to flip on the wall switch, bathing the room in the soft glow from the wall sconces. “I’m surprised you’re watching the news. Weren’t you there in court?” Strange’s preliminary hearing had been that day.

I glanced at the screen and snorted. “Yeah, just trying to see how much of a tool they made me seem to an audience of millions.”

“Why would they make you seem like a tool? You didn’t have to testify until the trial, I thought. And now there won’t be one. I heard on the radio Strange changed his plea to guilty and the judge gave him two life sentences for Jeremy Trexall’s kidnapping, and Colorado’s looking to do the same for Marshall Schofield. Plus the federal charges for transporting a minor across state lines. It’s over, right?” He moved to the closet in the foyer to hang his overcoat.

“The defense changed their plea, so yeah, he got the book thrown at him without my help. But The Walking Mouth shoved a microphone in my face yet again, asking if the boys’ recovery would compare to my own. I couldn’t let that go with a simple ‘no comment.’” Ben scowled at me and I immediately went on the defensive. “Hey, what happened to them has nothing to do with me, and I told her as much.”

“And?” he asked, waiting, arms crossed over his chest. He knew me too well.

“And I reminded her they are minors whose names she only knows because of the media attention surrounding their kidnappings and rescue. They should be treated with the respect any other juvenile victim is given, not that Aldrich understands respect.”

“Uh-huh.” He wasn’t going to let it drop until I told him everything I said.

“And then I might have insinuated there’d be certain consequences if she even thought of hounding them the way she’s hounded me since I went back to work.”

“What sort of consequences?” His tone took on a softer quality, one I recognized as agreement with my sentiment if not my methods.

“Uh, I may have told her,” I turned away, mumbling the rest. “I’d make her eat her microphone.”

“Uh-huh,” he said again, amusement coloring his voice. He walked around to stand in front of me before laying a hand on my arm. “You can’t let her get to you like that,” he murmured. His touch skated up my arm until his palm cupped my neck. I couldn’t meet his eyes, a surge of irritation at myself and my lack of control rising to color my cheeks.

“I know,” I near-whispered. “She just frustrates me so fucking much. Like she’s entitled to know exactly how it felt to have something shoved up my ass until I bled. People can barely relate to me now. I can pretty much guarantee no one would even acknowledge my existence if they knew the details.”

Slowly, so I could see his every movement, Ben wrapped me in his arms, his embrace warm and reassuring, if not exactly tight. He knew better.

“I know, baby. You don’t owe any explanations. You have people who love you, who know you’re still Gavin DeGrassi no matter what happened to you.”

I swallowed, burying my face in his shoulder. “It happened to you, too. Why aren’t you as much of a mess as I am?”

He rubbed calming patterns up and down my back as I clung to him, grabbing fistfuls of his shirt just above his waistband. “Because I’m not submissive. Laura and I talked about this with you.” Dr. Laura Ribaldi was my shrink, but she was also Ben’s business partner and a submissive herself. She’d been indispensable to us both since the attack. “You still need someone to take control sometimes, but now giving that control unbalances you. Believe me, I understand. I may not feel exactly the same, but I do understand.”

“Do you?” I pulled back to look at him. “Does it bother you that I can’t seem to trust anyone, even you?”

Ben’s eyes registered a shock of pain that quickly disappeared. His voice remained soothing, as did his hands. “I won’t lie to you. It hurts that you don’t trust me the way you once did. But I’m aware you know I’m not the one who hurt you, and you’ll be able to regain your faith in me eventually. Your healing will happen at its own pace. Rushing won’t help, and,”―I moved to bury my face in his neck, but he stopped me with strong fingers gripping my chin―“we did rush it.”

I jerked away from him. “No, we didn’t.” It was the same tired argument. “You know my limits. No bondage. No whipping. Come on, you’re creative enough to think of something else, and you know I’m dying to submit again.” He flinched. “Poor choice of words. Our last scene wasn’t as bad as you think it was, Ben.” That attempt, right after Damon Lane’s guilty verdict, had brought my nightmares and a new development—I could barely stand to be touched. Ben had backed off almost completely. In fact, that he was touching me at the moment was something of an anomaly. I craved it, needed it like air, but it still made me shiver in fear.

“Not at the time. It’s the aftermath that wasn’t worth it.”

It was my turn to flinch. I pulled away from him, walking to the recliner and sitting heavily, petulantly kicking the footrest out to keep him at a distance. “I know you can do it. You just won’t. Which hurts, Ben. It’s like you don’t want my submission anymore.”

Our very first scenes, where he’d taken me out of my head and made me understand what true submission was, he had to break down my barriers so I could fully grasp my true sub nature. I believed, and had lobbied long and hard with both him and Dr. Ribaldi, my current barriers were similar, and Ben’s status as a leading psychologist in the BDSM community—not to mention he’d been there during the attack and knew just what I’d endured—put him in the unique position of being the only one skilled enough to guide me through. He’d shown me how to trust at the soul-deep level before; he could do it again.

That I loved him with my whole being only strengthened my argument.

“You know that’s not true,” he said, kneeling beside the chair. I resolutely stared at the TV screen, jaw clenched. “What you’re dealing with is a very normal reaction to real trauma, Gavin. It would be dangerous for me to add more confusion to what’s already difficult for you to sort out. It’s not a matter of whether I can do it or if I love you enough to try. You need more time to distinguish your natural inclination to submit from this newfound fear of giving up control. Look at me.” I ignored him. “Please, Gavin, look at me.” Begrudgingly, I did. “Safe, sane, and consensual, Gav. I won’t play any other way. I do want your submission, babe.” I rolled my eyes, but said nothing. “More than you can possibly know. But to be safe, sane, and consensual, you have to be able to give consent. What you’re asking me to do is take control from you, force your submission before you’ve worked through your trauma completely. I won’t. I love you too much to attempt it.”

One of the things he’d often said to me in the beginning weeks of our relationship was that it took more courage to kneel before another than to stand beside them, to give up the power to another. I’d come to understand in that whirlwind month of sub training that I had to know my value in order to relinquish my power to him. What Damon Lane had done to me was far more than physical rape. It was identity rape. He’d stolen who I was and twisted it to the point where I hardly recognized myself anymore. Deep down, I knew Ben was right. How could I give my whole self to him if I no longer recognized who I was?

Shouts from the TV caught our attention as my face came on screen. We watched in silence, Ben’s hand resting on the arm of the chair, his pinky finger brushing my elbow lightly. I cringed at The Walking Mouth’s voice, grating loudly over everyone else’s, her microphone shoved closest to my face. She wielded it like a weapon. My eyes flashed at her intrusive questions, and my threat to make her eat her microphone was delivered with a smile—a wholly serious, I-mean-every-word smile. As the TV-me fled the horde onscreen, I sighed in my chair beside Ben.

“Okay, that was kind of awesome,” he rumbled, laughter threatening to erupt. “No one would be a better advocate for those boys than you, you know.” He stood, looking down at me fondly, and a wave of guilt for what I’d said a few minutes before pounded the inside of my face, in time with my pulse. Ugh, I was so sick of guilt.

“I have to get my shit together before I can try to help anyone else.”

This time, when he leaned down to plant soft lips to my forehead, I didn’t flinch. In fact, I tilted my face up, catching his mouth with mine. He startled, but I felt his smile against my lips and for a brief moment, he let me deepen the kiss. Too soon, though, he pulled away and turned in the direction of the kitchen.

“Given any thought to what you want for dinner?”

§§§

“SHH, IT’S okay, Gavin. It’s okay, you’re waking up. Just breathe.” Ben’s voice broke through the fear and panic. “C’mon, baby, breathe. Say it with me: hydrogen, helium.” His cooing drifted through my mind as the suffocating anxiety ebbed and flowed. The covers were ripped off me and cool air hit my skin like a bucket of ice on a sunburn, shocking and welcome. I breathed deeply and felt gentle fingers on my forehead, smoothing back my hair. I turned into the touch, swallowing thickly. “Lithium, beryllium, boron, shh, that’s it. Carbon,” he continued, and I joined him, reciting slowly.

“Nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon, sodium, magnesium, aluminum.”

“Need to keep going?” Ben asked. I shook my head as finally, other than his fingers on my face, he touched me, his hand on my chest feather-light. He placed his palm over my heart, counting beats. Sucking in dry, heaving breaths made my throat constrict as I tried to swallow, and Ben grabbed a water bottle from the table on my side of the bed, bringing it to my lips and carefully tilting liquid into my mouth. “This nightmare must have been a bad one,” he murmured while focused on the watch he always wore to bed now, still timing my heart rate. “Got all the way to carbon before you said it with me.”

I closed my eyes, finally relaxing. I couldn’t even nod, stung by humiliation and berating myself yet again for being unable to do something as simple as sleep. “What time is it?”

“Just before two. Want to talk about it?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Same one as before? A bright light pointed at you on a stage with an audience of laughing invisible people? With Lane somewhere backstage?”

What part of “I don’t want to talk about it” don’t you understand?
I thought meanly. Outwardly, I only nodded.

“Anything different this time?”

I wasn’t getting out of this. “Yeah. Yeah, this time I heard him instead of just feeling his nasty presence. And there was a suit. Like a living suit attaching itself to me. He told me I would wear it and he could control everything about me.”

“A suit? Like a coat and tie?”

“No, like the one you wanted him to make for me.”

“Sensory deprivation?”

“Kind of. It was alive and had little feelers, and when it touched me, the feelers pulled the suit onto me, sucking me into it. It was when the nothingness closed over me that I screamed, and the audience screamed with me just before everything went black.”

“You screamed because you felt out of control?” Ben guessed.

I was silent for a long moment, looking at the ceiling with fierce concentration. I knew once the words were out of my mouth, things could change. But I had to be honest with him. With all the bullshit we’d been through, lying to him would be our death knell.