“Leah’s birthday.” Seth didn’t realize he’d spoken aloud until he looked up and saw her sad smile.
“You remember.”
Kaden also smiled, to Seth’s surprise. His friend clapped him on the arm, squeezing briefly before letting go. “See? You’ll do fine.”
They finished. Finally, Seth excused himself. “I need to go to bed, guys. I’m worn out. Frankly, my brain’s fried. I don’t know how I’m going to get through class tomorrow.”
He walked to what was now his bedroom and closed the door behind him. Looking around, even though he’d stayed here before, he saw it for the first time. The bed was perfect, king-size, a helluva lot better than the rocklike mattress at his brother’s. Not that he’d ever complain to his brother, because it had been free and a roof over his head. He always slept well when he spent the night at Kade’s. The room was nearly twice as large as the one at his brother’s, and the attached bathroom as large as many master bathrooms in smaller homes.
He’d started unbuttoning his shirt when he heard a soft tap on his door. He opened it. Leah stood in the hall. Kaden had apparently gone on to bed, because their door was shut.
Seth’s heart hammered, panic threatening. “Leah, I meant it when I said I can’t do anything—”
She shook her head. “No! No. I…I just wanted to say good night. And thank you.” She looked up at him. “And you didn’t give me my hug when you got here tonight.”
He laughed but it came out sounding harsher than he intended. “You sort of caught me off guard with that outfit.” This one wasn’t much better, especially now that he knew what was under it. Or rather, what wasn’t.
After a long moment, he opened his arms to her. Even though he tried to lean his upper body into it, to keep her away from his hips and feeling his hard-on that demanded attention, she pressed into him. Not lewdly or even seductively.
Desperately.
When he realized this, he relaxed and held her tightly, worried she’d cry. But she didn’t, despite clinging to him like a drowning woman.
It took several minutes before she relaxed a little. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I know this sucks for you. I’m sorry.”
“Hey.” He made her look at him. “Stop. If things were different and we were single, I’d…” Suddenly, that sounded like a really stupid thing to say under the circumstances.
But she smiled again. “Yeah. I would, too.” She rested her head on his chest for a moment longer and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy it.
“Just…go easy on me, okay?” he said. “You guys are going to fry my brain at this rate.”
She stretched up and kissed his cheek. He was a little taller than Kaden’s five eleven and knew that would be an adjustment for her.
“Just remember, I can and do have the ability to stop anything I don’t like,” she assured him. “I always have. There have been times in the past I’ve red-lighted a scene. Kaden usually does before I do, but I have. So don’t ever worry about going too far. As long as you respect the safe word, you won’t hurt me.”
She left, quietly closing the door behind her.
Seth got up around two a.m. to get a drink of water. Leah had left a robe hanging on the bathroom door for him. Instead of getting dressed he pulled that on. When he opened the door he heard a soft, strange, rhythmic noise he couldn’t quite place.
The house was dark. A few carefully placed nightlights and his familiarity helped him make it to the kitchen without incident. The noise sounded louder now and almost sounded like…splashing?
He spotted a dark shape on the lanai. When he stepped out the kitchen slider, he saw Kaden standing in the shadows, staring at the pool and leaning against the wall near the sliders leading to the master bedroom.
The pool light wasn’t on. In the dark water, Leah maintained a blistering pace down and back. He knew she swam a lot, one of the reasons Kaden had the large twenty-five meter pool built, but…day-amn.
Kaden didn’t look at him, never took his eyes off the pool. He leaned in as Seth stood next to him. “Your first lesson. Never leave her alone when she’s like this,” he murmured.
“Does she know we’re watching her?”
“No. If she cries before she gets out, she’ll be okay. If she comes out looking like a fucking zombie, I’ll immediately take her to the playroom.”
Seth stared at Kaden. Kaden smiled in the dark. “Sorry. That’s what we call it. Sounds better than ‘dungeon,’ don’t you think?”
Seth stood vigil with Kaden for nearly an hour. He couldn’t believe she was still going when she finally pulled up short at the shallow end and stood, gasping, leaning against the edge. She stood frozen for several minutes, then sank beneath the water.
A low moaning sound floated out of the pool, accompanied by a flurry of bubbles. She broke the surface and took a long, hitching breath before sinking below the water again.
Kaden nodded. “That’s good.”
“What the fuck?”
He looked at Seth. “She’s screaming.”
She repeated this for nearly ten minutes before resting her head on her arms on the pool’s edge, softly crying.
Kaden nodded again and gently tapped Seth’s arm, pointing to the kitchen sliders. They went inside and closed the door behind them.
“What the fuck?” Seth asked again.
Kaden shrugged. “She wears herself out in the pool, pushes herself to the point of physical exhaustion. I mean, she can’t spank herself. She promised me she won’t cut herself, although right now I’m scared she might not be able to keep that promise if we can’t keep on top of things. She punishes herself. If it was daylight, she’d probably go run five miles or something. She hasn’t had to do this in a long time. I thought she might do it last night but she didn’t. She was too exhausted from crying.”
“How will I know?”
Kaden looked grim. “You’ll know. You might think you’ll sleep through it, but you’ll get to the point where if she rolls over in bed at night, you’ll know it.”
Seth glanced out the sliders, where in the soft moonlight he watched Leah crying in the pool. “Shouldn’t we go out there to her?”
Kaden shook his head. “Not right now. Not in a case like this.”
“Fuck.”
“There will be times she’ll come to you and outright ask to play.”
“Play? Is that whips-and-chains-excite-me code?”
Kaden smirked. “Yeah. Whatever. There will be times she gets bratty.”
“Bratty?”
“I know. It’s a lot to explain. When she’s bratty, sometimes she needs play, and sometimes she needs punishment.”
“Whoa.” Seth rubbed his forehead. “If whipping her isn’t punishment, what is?”
“Withholding.”
“Huh?”
“Not letting her play. You’ll learn the difference about what she needs.”
“You’ve so fucking confused me now, I’m lost.”
“If a kid begs for ice cream in a store and pitches a tantrum, do you give it to them?”
“What the fuck do I know about kids?”
“Well?”
Seth sighed. “I don’t know. I guess not.”
“You don’t give it to them. It’s rewarding bad behavior if you do. A lot of times you’ll know from her body language, how she’s talking, interacting with you. You’ll see her start to…I call it ‘dull down.’ It’s like she’s zonked out. Not just tired. Like she’s detaching. It’s fucking spooky. You’ll learn to tell the difference between normal tired and that. Then she needs a session. Under normal circumstances our regular trips to the club are enough to keep her going without extra sessions. We might have very light play sessions here during the week.