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42
Cole
She cried in her sleep. Thrashed. Even when I held her until she fell asleep she cried and struck out. Keeping her on her stomach without tying her meant keeping watch over her most of the night. I slept in the early mornings, what Annie called the green hour, when she calmed. When she slept.
I was hard in the night, wanting her, and hard in the morning. I prowled the playroom and picked up implements I knew I could use safely on her. The brand was almost gone, the pain clearly ebbing because sometimes she sat normally. When I looked at her, though, she begged me silently.
We went through a week where she woke up screaming every night. I calmed her and held her and in the morning she turned away. She wasn't using her trauma to avoid going back to our dynamic. I watched her during the days. She jolted at unfamiliar or unexpected sounds. She stayed away from anything and anyone new. She covered up around me and panicked if I looked at her too long. The quiet teasing from the hospital – You woke me up because you were staring so hard at my ass – was gone.
When she said no to therapy, I wanted to force her. But that was her right. There were places I wouldn't extend the lifestyle and forms of control I wouldn't push on her.
So instead, I went.
"Yes, it sounds like PTSD. The question is, what are you going to do about it?"
The therapist was young, only a few years in practice, and she had a healthy interest in BDSM. My circle of friends with similar proclivities suggested her, the same as through my circles I'd found the medics I could call when something went too far out of hand.
"I didn't know I was supposed to do anything." I waved away the end of that comment almost before I finished it. "I mean, I've been supportive. I've been there. I've encouraged her to talk. I've let her see I still value her the same. I haven't pushed her to – "
She interrupted me. Her button down was very tight, her pushup bra doing a fantastic job with the amount of boob it was called on to display. She wore a tight skirt and very high heels and if it weren't for Annie's condition, I would have taken what was so clearly on offer. My hand tingled at the thought of putting her over my knee and pulling her skirt up slowly, forcing it above her waist before spanking her generous bottom.
If Annie were physically ill, I would have. There was nothing in our arrangement that had ever suggested I'd be faithful to her. Only that, as her owner, I'd be there. But with Annie fragile, Annie the way I never expected Annie to be, I couldn't. That seemed too great a betrayal when she'd already given so much of herself to help others.
"She's a cop, isn't she?" The doctor tapped her pen against her lower lip. "She was very strong and capable."
Still is, I thought. Just somewhere down under too much hurt. Then I told her exactly that.
She nodded, standing to pace, coming back to perch on the edge of her desk. There was nothing sexual about it now. She was thinking.
"PTSD takes a long time. You know that. You worked with Ariel. But sometimes people get stuck."
I stood and paced. "You're saying she doesn't have PTSD?"
She shook her head. "She probably does. But she's also in a place where she's not ready to do anything about anything yet. She's just reacting to her environment."
"It's an environment she's used to," I said. Even to myself I sounded sulky. Like, come on, Annie, hurry up and heal. I'm sick of waiting.
She smiled at me in a way that left no doubt in my mind what she'd like to do would be offer some scenarios and then try them out to make sure they worked. What she did instead was say, "Bring her back, Cole. Unstick her. You're not just her friend. You're not her guardian. You're her Owner. Own her. Dominate her. Take her back."
I frowned, staring mostly at the floor. "And if it doesn't work?"
She gave me a look that managed to suggest Annie would have to be crazy to not have it work and that she didn't think she was. "Then let me know and we'll think of something else."
I breathed in and out. "How hard?" I asked, confident she'd understand the question.
She did. She smiled. "As hard as you both need it to be."
That evening while Annie was working on her classes, having changed to virtual for the rest of the semester, I went into the playroom. Alone. I told myself I wasn't sneaking, but I wanted her to not know I was going in. I wanted everything to come as a surprise, as if I could jolt her out of the trauma or depression.
The room is generous. It's right off Annie's suite, but she didn't seem to track my progress through from my office, the one in her suite, through to the playroom. She was frowning at the computer like she didn't understand what she was seeing.
Sun streaks into the room from the skylights and there are tall, thin windows in between the pieces of equipment. There's an emergency backdoor, almost never used. Other than those things, the walls are very much in use. I have cabinets along one wall, with doors that slide over other parts of the doors, so I can open them outward and then slide a panel and expose more of the inside of the door. Because nothing gets a masochist's blood pumping like seeing all those crops and whips, paddles and hairbrushes and bath brushes, all those leather slappers and belts, all of them hanging on display.
The inside of the cabinets are filled with other paraphernalia. Some have glass drawers, the better to display the nipple clamps of so many different styles and levels of bite. There are wig stands to support the masks, those that cover only nose, or only eyes, or the entire head with zippers to allow in air. Or not. That was Annie's hard limit. No masks.
There were restraints in another cabinet. Handcuffs and leather laces and bungee cords and rope. There were halters and harnesses, swings and other suspension gear so I could hang her spread open as much as I wanted her.
One set of glass drawers displayed an extensive collection of butt plugs. I had never plugged Annie but I thought that was going to change. There was a small medicine cabinet topping a much deeper storage unit full of Fleets prepared enemas and suppositories, and rubber bulbs and enema bags, there were salts and soaps and mixes that could clean out a sub in record time or make them sweat through the process.
