Without saying anything, Julie took her friend’s hand and sat in the chair beside the bed.
Julie was there for hours, but she didn’t sleep at all. It seemed like nurses were in and out of the room every hour, checking blood pressure, seeing if Sasha needed pain medication, and one time asking Julie to step outside while they changed dressings. Still no one told her what had happened and every time the nurse left, Sasha faked sleep.
Even with every imagined reason she came up with for why Sasha was in the hospital, she was unprepared for the two police officers who knocked and entered the room at six o’clock the next morning. She was even less prepared for the person she saw entering behind them.
She stood up. “Daniel?”
He didn’t look shocked to see her; he looked resigned. Nodded in her direction. “Julie.” Then he breezed past her and bent down to talk to Sasha. He whispered, but standing so close, Julie couldn’t help but hear. “Tell them what happened in as much or as little detail as you want. Press charges if you wish. Just know that, regardless, this will be handled.”
What the hell happened?
“Ma’am,” one of the officers said to Julie. “Can you step outside? We need to speak to your friend alone.”
She jerked a thumb toward Daniel. “Does he get to stay?”
“No.” Daniel put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s wait outside.”
She slipped out of his grasp and stomped to the door. Angry tears threatened to spill from her eyes and she steeled herself. She would not cry.
When the door closed behind him, she spun to face him. “Will you tell me what the f**k is going on and what the hell you’re doing here?”
He raised an eyebrow. “She didn’t tell you?”
“Don’t answer my question with a question.”
“I think it best she tell you herself. It’s not my place. I’m here because Peter called me.”
She’d come to the realization Peter was involved around two o’clock in the morning. Nothing else made sense.
“I knew that piece of shit was involved. Where is the as**ole?”
He leaned close and whispered, “I’m going to give you five seconds to drop the attitude and clean up the language.”
She crossed her arms. “Don’t even think about pulling—”
His hand clamped around her wrist. “Best decision you can make right now is to not finish that sentence. I understand you’re upset. I’m upset. But Sasha needs your support, probably for longer than you realize, and your outbursts aren’t going to help.”
Three deep breaths and she bit back the response dancing on her tongue. “Maybe I could be supportive if I knew what happened.”
He shook his head. “It’s best you hear it from her.”
She wiped her eyes. Damn tears. “I’ve been sitting by her bed listening to her gasp in pain every time she moves the wrong way and you have the nerve to stand there and not tell me what happened?”
He closed his eyes and sighed. When he looked at her again, his expression was flat. “The short version is, Peter took a scene too far and used equipment he had no business using.”
She didn’t understand. “Did she use her safe word?”
He pursed his lips into a line. “He didn’t give her a way to safe word.”
Shock, then rage, coursed through her body. How could something like that happen? “You knew this and you had the nerve to tell me to watch my language? Just wait until I get my hands on him, I’ll rip his—”
He took her shoulder, guided her down the hall, and spoke through clenched teeth. “Watch it. Last warning.”
He led her to a private waiting area and nodded to a chair. She sat. He stood before her, arms crossed, looking down at her.
“Did I or did I not tell you that nothing happens to a submissive without their consent?” He held up a hand when she tried to speak. “I’m not saying Peter is blameless. I’m just saying Sasha isn’t either. She should have never started the scene.”
Julie didn’t quite know what to make of that. But after a few minutes, she did remember that he had always said she was the one who decided how far they went. Then it started to make sense. “I still don’t know exactly what happened.”
“Sasha will tell you when she’s ready.”
He wasn’t going to tell her. Even so, she still had plenty of questions she could ask him. “What did you mean when you told her it’d ‘be handled’?”
His eyes grew cool, colder than she’d ever seen. Something inside them scared her. “You remember asking me what happens when a Dom in our group violates a sub’s hard limit?”
She remembered him saying an over-the-knee spanking would seem like a reward. She nodded.
“I suppose,” he said, “it’ll be a lot like that.”
• • •
The policemen had left by the time Julie collected herself enough to make it back to Sasha’s room. Unable to feign sleep any longer, her friend was sitting up and eating. She gave Julie a wary smile and set her spoon down.
“Daniel leave?”
“Yeah, said he had things to take care of.” Like letting everyone know the meeting had been postponed to another week. Just as well, she supposed; she doubted anyone would be in the mood.
“He tell you?”
Julie sat down in the chair she’d spent the night in. “Not much of anything. He said it would be better coming from you.”
Sasha looked past her, tears still in her eyes. She pushed the breakfast tray away. “It started out so wonderfully. Peter said he was ready to collar me, wanted to know if I felt the same. I said ‘of course’ and we agreed to make it official at the meeting.”
Sometimes, Julie remembered Daniel saying, couples would have a collaring ceremony, often following a group meeting. It had made her curious at the time, wondering if her relationship with Daniel would ever progress to that point. She’d fantasized what it would be like to have him place his collar on her. Unbidden, her hand stroked her throat.
“He said that to celebrate he’d like to try something new and I agreed.”“Did you ask what it was?”
“No, but we’d gone over our checklists. He knew my limits.” Her fist tightened, tangled in the sheet. “I trusted him.”
The door opened and a nurse’s aide nodded to the tray.
“Take it,” Sasha said. “I’m not hungry.”
Julie decided it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to tell her she really needed to eat. Food wasn’t going to help Sasha’s gaunt look.
“Anyway,” Sasha continued, once the door closed. “He gagged me.”
Unable to help herself, Julie shivered. She recalled the gags in Daniel’s playroom. They didn’t look fun.
Sasha didn’t notice or acknowledge her shiver. “Always before when I’ve been gagged, I’ve been given a bell. To drop or ring as a safe word. Peter didn’t give me anything. I knew better, but I . . .” She shook her head.
Just like Daniel had said.
“You what? Why wouldn’t you say something?” Make me understand, Julie wanted to say, why you would deliberately ignore one of the first rules Daniel taught me. The one he made sure she remembered every time they started.
“Look, I know it was stupid, but at the time, it was like I was high or something. I was going to wear his collar. I wanted to please him. I thought he would be able to tell how I felt. I remember thinking it was so touching he knew me so well, we didn’t need safe words anymore.”
No, that wasn’t touching, Julie wanted to say; it was stupid. But she refrained. Sasha hadn’t even known Peter that long.
“He has chains suspended from his ceiling. That’s where he bound me. We’d done it before. I enjoyed it. This time, he decided to blindfold me, too.”
Julie recalled being blindfolded and bound. She’d liked it. Aside from the gag, part of her understood where Sasha was coming from.
And that scared her.
“He started with a flogger. One of my favorites, but it takes me a while to reach subspace.” She looked at Julie with a raised eyebrow.
“Yes.” Julie nodded. “I know what it is, just not by experience.”
Subspace, that mysterious feeling submissives craved. The place a Dominant could take them that felt so good, it almost became addictive. The state where a rush of endorphins sent a submissive into a trancelike frame of mind so deep, pain was nearly nonexistent. She’d longed for the day she could experience it firsthand.
“He knew it took me a long time,” Sasha whispered. “He knew.”
She was quiet for such a long time, Julie wondered if she felt well enough to continue. “We can finish later if you want.”
“I told them I didn’t want to press charges.”
“Are you regretting that now?” Julie asked. “Do you want to press charges?”
Sasha shook her head. “I don’t think so. How can I when it was my fault, too?”
“What happened after the flogger?”
“I hadn’t made it into subspace yet. I was close, I think.” She sighed. “So much I’ve blocked. What I remember next was the pain. Searing. Like I was being burned over and over. All up and down my back. I tried to get away, but I was bound so tightly, I couldn’t move. And I kept yelling ‘red’ over and over . . . gagged . . . he couldn’t hear.” She spoke through little hiccuping sobs and she kept closing and releasing her fist.
It took Julie a second to understand she was safe wording, releasing an invisible bell over and over.
Sasha blew her nose and continued, apparently through the worst part of the story. “They told me I passed out. Next thing I remember is waking up in the hospital. Apparently, my back’s in pretty bad shape. I’m afraid to look at it.”
Julie took her friend’s hand and squeezed. “Oh, Sasha.”
“I’m not even sure where he got it. I know he doesn’t have any experience in using one.”
“What did he use?”
“A bullwhip.” Her lower lip started to tremble and Julie knew whatever bravado she’d briefly put on had reached its limit.
Julie went about getting Sasha into a comfortable position, all the while trying to keep her own feelings at bay. Nothing worked; in her mind she kept seeing Sasha bound, gagged, and desperately trying to safe word. After a while the image morphed and she was the one struggling to break free.
• • •
An hour later she was still sitting beside Sasha’s bed when Daniel came back. He didn’t say anything; he simply walked across the floor to stand beside her. His hand rested lightly on her shoulder.
“When was the last time you slept?” he asked.
“I can’t remember.” She didn’t remember anything except Sasha’s fingers fluttering uselessly for a man who wasn’t paying attention.
The hand at her shoulder tightened. “You can’t be strong for her if you don’t take care of yourself.”
“I’ll sleep later.”
“She told you.”
“Yes.” Her body shook, remembering.
“Come here, baby.”
He barely had the words out when she pushed the chair back and flung herself into his strong embrace. In his arms, she finally let her guard down and allowed the tears to flow. He held her, whispering things she couldn’t make out, but that soothed her just the same.
“Why?” she asked when she could speak. “I don’t get it. You said a Dom cherished his sub above all, guarded her with his life. How could he do that to her?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to discuss anything with him in detail yet, but I will.”