“That’s when I’m the most grateful.”
He liked things rougher than most women were down with, no matter if half the world had read that Fifty Shades book and decided BDSM was the new black. He was no damaged billionaire and this apartment was no tricked-out playroom. Their props were duct tape and rope and the cold, hard floor under Laurel’s knees, his own two hands. Gags and blindfolds were whatever shirt he might grab, and he’d bound her with an extension cord once. This was BDSM as furnished by Home Depot, and without most of the tiresome honorifics and other formalities he found so cheesy. He didn’t mind “Sir,” but if any woman ever called him “Master” he’d be improvising himself a gag real quick.
He didn’t want to be a woman’s master; he wanted to be her assailant.
During sex, he felt all the things the sick shit he played did, hearing a lover’s fear in her voice, seeing it strain her face. He’d never in a million years do this to a woman who didn’t want it, but it had taken ages to get good with that distinction. To believe that it was okay to want these things, when they were consensual.
Laurel was growing drowsy and he scrunched her messy hair.
“Say it back,” he said.
“I love you.” The final word was swallowed by a broad yawn.
He smiled. He’d waited for her to say it first, and that must’ve happened back around Thanksgiving. She was cautious, reserved in some ways, not the kind of girl you rushed. He was normally the same, though he’d never been with someone who felt this right, this easy. They knocked heads now and again, but by and large all was peaceful…outside of the sex, that was.
He’d been ready to tell Laurel he loved her after maybe six weeks, but he’d known better than to have risked scaring her off. Her parents had been a real shit show, same as his, and he’d come to understand that the tighter you tried to hang on to Laurel, the more she’d edge away from you. Plus her occasional depressive bouts did a number on her confidence.
She didn’t love herself the way Flynn loved her, or how her friends did. Something inside her didn’t trust people who cared for her deeply. It made her feel like a fraud, or undeserving. Pretty standard, as baggage went. Plus all the practice Flynn’s fucked-up family had given him at standing by difficult people made loving her feel like the easiest thing in the world.
“You remember when we first said it?” he asked.
“What? ‘I love you’?”
“Mm hm.”
“I do indeed. It was October thirtieth.”
He blinked. “That early? You been keepin’ a diary I don’t know about?”
“It was the day before Halloween, I’m pretty sure. We were lying right here, and I’d had, like, three beers, and I was going on and on and on about all the costumes I’d made myself as a kid. And I caught myself, and I caught you, how you were just listening, asking me questions, letting me be drunk and sentimental and boring and acting like you were actually interested.”
“Maybe I was.”
She laughed. “No sober person would’ve been. But it just hit me, out of the blue. I think there was some complete non sequitur, like, ‘And when I was eleven I went as Lisa Simpson,’ and then a big dumbfounded pause and, ‘I love you.’”
“‘I love you, Flynn,’” he corrected.
She smiled. “I’ll take your word for it.”
“Same as I’ll take your word it was October. We didn’t wait that long, did we?”
“No, not really. Three months?”
“You say that to many guys before me?”
“Two. How many women did you say it to?”
“Just one.”
“You mean it?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I did. Did you?”
“One of them, yeah, I meant it. The other one, I meant it, but I also didn’t really know what I was talking about. I think I was mostly infatuated.”
“Who was he? I’ll kill him. Tomorrow. After breakfast.”
She snorted. “Down, boy. He was my high school boyfriend. Who did you say it to? That woman who taught you all about rough sex and stuff?”
“No, not her.” She’d meant a lot to Flynn, and he had loved her, had felt that, but he’d known it wasn’t that serious to her. She wouldn’t have said it back, and he’d spared the both of them the awkwardness of underscoring how mismatched their investments had been.
“Who?” she asked again.
“My first serious girlfriend. The one I half-traumatized, wanting to fake-rape her all the time.”
“Oh, right.”
“Who was the second guy you said it to?”
“Someone I dated in college.”
“Why’d you break up?”
“I can’t remember, exactly. I just remember he annoyed me by the end, and I think I bummed him out. The second half of college was really hard for me. I’m surprised I made it through, looking back.”
“You’re at least twice as strong as you give yourself credit for.”
“Probably.”