I swallowed against a gnawing guilt that I had made it home when they hadn’t. “Anything I can do to help.”
He grunted with something like approval before flagging down a couple of younger cops and barking out orders. The detective escorted me personally to a hotel, where I would have to stay until they had gone over my apartment once again. They had also taken some of my DNA to reinstate me as the real Melody Cole, since my fingerprints had ever been taken and apparently I had no immediate family to confirm.
That part was depressing. I had been nervous about the prospect of some unremembered boyfriend or even husband who would expect my love and loyalty, when I had none to give. But I had been hoping for someone, a mother, a brother, someone to help ease the way.
I stared at the thin walls of the hotel, sat on the thin bedspread and breathed the thin air. What was a home without people you loved but an empty box anyway? Detective Hines had paused before he’d left and said, “It will get better.” But how could it when every second was another one without Sam? I finally allowed myself to think about him, allowing myself to mourn the loss I recognized in his face at the end.
What would he think of the city? Too congested, maybe. I thought he would like Detective Hines.
What would he say if he were here? Spread your legs, subby.
With a private smile, I slipped beneath the covers and obeyed his imaginary commands.
Touch yourself.
No, slower.
We have all night.
There was probably a psychology student somewhere writing a salacious thesis on women like me. Abused, confused, we couldn’t even help it. We paid with sex, we coped with sex, everything was sex to a poor liberated slave. But my body didn’t care about political correctness, and my mind wasn’t too broken up over it either. This was Sam’s gift to me: my sexuality returned, pleasure sharpened.
The timbre of his voice reverberated deep inside me as my fingers stroked my clit, like touching a memory. I climaxed to the brush of his breath, the ache of his hands, the warmth of his praise.
I came back to myself as the AC switched off, casting me in a bittersweet silence.
Chapter Ten
“Are you sure you don’t want to go? You don’t have to play. Just have a few drinks.” Anya frowned. “It’s been two months already.”
Two months of working at this job, though I hadn’t yet figured out why it was so important that we made the regional top sales lists. Two months of returning home to a cold, empty apartment. But the thought of going out into a crowd was even worse.
I stood up from my desk and stretched. “I’ll take a rain check.”
I still didn’t remember how I had ended up in the hands of those men or why I had been targeted. For all I knew, it could have been a random drugging at a kink club just like the one she was always pushing me to accompany her to.
“You need to relax. Have a good time. You can meet a guy who can give you one.” She gave me a suggestive smile. “What’s the worst that can happen?”
Rape and torture, though I wouldn’t say so. I wouldn’t risk my friendship, however two-dimensional it was, with Anya, when she had been so willing, even eager, to reconnect with me. Everyone else I met in the hallways had avoided me since I got back, as if my presumed psychological trauma were contagious.
“Look.” Her face softened while her eyes took on a strange glint. “You can tell me what happened to you. Maybe it will help you work it out.”
There was something about the way she focused on me, her posture…
“I don’t think so,” I said. “It’s kind of hard to talk about.”
She laid her hand over mine. “I know, but I won’t judge you. No matter what they did to you. Seriously.”
A shiver ran through me as I recognized her expression: anticipation. Like she might get off on what I told her. No, that couldn’t be right. Probably just some sort of clinical paranoia shit, keeping anyone from getting too close. She wanted to help me.
And I did want to be wrapped up tight somewhere, safe somehow. Maybe a Dom could give me that. The thought of being under a stranger’s control made me nervous, even though I knew that not every man was like them.
I glanced down the hallway to make sure no one was nearby. “Well, it’s hard for me to imagine being with a man… that way. Not just sex, but giving over my power like that. And to someone I don’t know or trust. To be honest, it’s really scary.”
“Exactly! You’ll be afraid as long as you don’t do it. Fear of the unknown. You need to face your fears. Once you find an awesome Dom, one who knows how to treat you right, you’ll be fine.”
I was skeptical but nervous about disagreeing with her outright. I may have been uneasy enough to keep the specifics of what happened to me, especially regarding Sam, to myself, but I was lonely enough not to cut off contact with her completely.