Bossy Bottom, page 14
part #1 of Kinky Bottom Series
“The frog in boiling water,” I muttered.
“Yeah, it was like that!” Luke nodded vigorously. “You don’t realize how far gone you are until you’re already there.”
There was silence that hung heavy in the air. I was trying to restrain myself from figuring out how to find this guy and punish him myself.
Luke exhaled slowly. “Then there was the whole thing about the cage.”
I inhaled sharply.
“He begged me for weeks to let him do it. Just once, he said. He kept nagging me over and over. ‘Just for ten minutes,’ he’d plead. ‘It’s so hot picturing you in there, needing me so much.’”
Luke bit his lip and stopped.
“Go on Luke, there’s nothing to be ashamed of,” I encouraged. “You’re safe here. You’re safe with me.”
He took a deep rattling breath, and I reached across the table and held his hand. Through touching him, I was trying to absorb his pain and give him strength.
He continued, “Because I was so… lost in the relationship, I would have agreed to do anything. I knew that I could only get the types of things I liked from this one guy. Or at least, that’s what he led me to believe. My world started to shrink when I was seeing him, and I’d lost touch with most of my friends.”
I shook my head, trying to keep the fury out of my eyes.
“So I did it. I got in the cage— a large dog crate, if only for ten minutes just to make him happy. He did seem to love watching me in there… but he left me in there for twelve. I should have known then.”
I was gritting my teeth so hard I thought they would crack.
“He coerced me into staying in there for longer and longer periods over the next few days. I didn’t like it at all, and I told him as much, but he told me to stop being a whiney brat; that I only had to sit in time out for a little while each day. Now, keep in mind,” Luke said, holding up a finger for emphasis, “that this entire time, we were also doing some of the things I liked and needed too. So that kept me coming around.”
I wanted to ask him the question that comes up in everyone’s mind when they hear about an abusive situation: Why didn’t you just leave him? But I knew from experience and dealing with domestic abuse that things just weren’t that simple.
“One time,” Luke said, steadying himself, “I snapped out of it and we got into a fight. I told him I was going to leave him. He completely transformed; he was begging me not to go, promising me that we’d stop with the cage stuff. From now on, he said, we’d do only the things that I wanted to do. I wanted to believe him.”
Blinking rage out of my eyes, I continued to listen intently. But I was carefully writing down on a mental notepad all of the things he was telling me so that I could exact revenge in Luke’s name later.
“One night when we were on the rocks and I thought things were over, he came over with flowers and tried to explain himself. Said it was a huge misunderstanding and miscommunication, and that he’d try to be better. He asked me if throwing away everything we’d ever had was worth it. I was naive. I was convinced to give him another chance. So once we did some vanilla stuff for a little while to establish trust, he invited me over to this… place. Now keep in mind, I knew what I was getting into and I consented to it. I knew that this night was when we were going to resume our kink, and it would be in a new location. That was part of the turn-on.”
I squeezed his hand, encouraging him to press on.
“I go there, and it was in this basement with a mattress on the floor. The only light was this dangling, single lightbulb. It was eerie, but I liked it. He strapped me to the bed and we did all of the things that one does in that situation. I was… I was into it. But then, right when I was about to finish, he jumped off of me and left the room without a word.”
My eyes narrowed.
“I thought he was going to the other room to get some water or something, or maybe just disappear for a few minutes or so. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes passed. Time stretched out to an eternity. I began to call for help, but no one was there. I was just in this random basement somewhere — no one was going to hear me.”
“That piece of shit,” I hissed as my heart broke for my partner, spilling his heart out to me here in the break room.
Tears beaded at the corners of his eyes. “He’d just left. He was gone, and I was still tied to the bed. I laid there for hours. I called for help; I screamed I cried. And finally, I was able to get my hand out of one of the restraints. Once I got one out, I could free my other limbs easily. So I got off the mattress and went out the same door that I’d seen him leave through. Only, I found that the path outward led to a cell.”
“Like… a jail cell?”
He nodded.
Rage swirled within me. I made it my personal mission to find this suck fuck and make him suffer. This explained why Luke had an anxiety attack when I mentioned I had a cage in my playroom. This is why he wouldn’t look at the criminal in the back of the cop car. Cages were a trigger for him.
“I was trapped in that room for three days without any food or water. I missed a bunch of my classes… then finally, someone came by and heard me yelling from outside the abandoned house. They came in and saved me. I couldn’t tell him what happened. He took one look at me and suggested I go to the police. But what was I supposed to tell them? Was I going to explain to them that I had a kink that got out of control? Hell no.”
“And if they questioned you about it, you’d have to relive it,” I offered.
He nodded. “I didn’t want to do that. I was already bedridden for the rest of the week, trying to get a handle on my anxiety. It was so bad during that time that I couldn’t even get out of bed. Everything seemed like it took an enormous amount of effort.”
I remembered the time that thing happened in my past… and how long it took me to overcome it. The depression that pulled me down into the dark corners of my mind. Luckily, I had a therapist to help me through it. Luke didn’t have that. He didn’t have anyone.
“I didn’t think anyone would believe me if I told them, or they would blame me for the whole thing. I blamed myself, anyway. But then on the last day of that week, when I’d made arrangements to take a break from university and come home for a while, I got a text.”
Dread boiled in my gut. “Was it from him?”
Luke nodded slowly. “He must have figured out I’d escaped, because the text said, ‘That’s what you get for trying to leave me.’”
I narrowed my eyes again, disgusted. “And did you say anything back to him?”
“No… I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
I rested my head, propping it on my fist. I’d seen this kind of abuse before — when one partner felt like they were losing power, they’d punish the other one to get the upper hand. And they were very, very good at controlling their victims.
“Is he still out and about? Is he still walking free?”
Luke nodded, but then he looked away. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
I nodded once. “Sure thing. But if you ever want to pursue justice with that, just tell me his name and I’ll take care of it. You don’t have to worry about a single thing.”
A weak smile crossed his face. “Thanks, but I’d rather just try not to think about it anymore. If I start to think about it, I feel an anxiety attack start to happen. I mean, I used to get them before the incident, but ever since then I’ve gotten them ten times as often, over the smallest things.”
“Stress. It heightened your baseline of stress,” I said, repeating what my therapist had told me about my own incident that caused my PTSD. Then I was stricken by a thought. If Luke could tell me what happened to him, I could probably tell him what happened to me.
“Luke…” I began, looking into his eyes. “Would you… would you come with me somewhere? To the place where I had my own incident.”
I needed to show it to him. I needed to show it to someone.
He nodded wordlessly, then said, “I’m here for you, Adam.”
* * *
A quick ride in the cop car later, we were pulling up to the place: The bridge over the water. As if the weather had sensed me approaching and wanted to color me gray with sadness, the sky had turned overcast. The water beneath the bridge was gray and murky, flowing by as if nothing had ever happened to it.
I parked the car on the side of the bridge, and we got out. It took a few steps to get to the edge.
My body recognized this area; the sights, the sounds, the smells, and it threatened to bring me back to that place. But I had worked through it in therapy, so it couldn’t bring me all the way back down.
Maybe I was showing Luke this to bond with him. Maybe I was showing it to him to share my pain with someone else. Regardless of the reason, sharing this with him only felt right after what he’d shared with me.
“Three years ago, one of my previous subs — not Brian, stood on this bridge. He was grabbing onto the railing and leaning out over the water on the other side.” I tapped the railing and echoed a metal, hollow sound.
Luke’s eyes were wide as he realized what I was talking about.
“The police were called; I was on duty at that time. I was the first one on the scene.”
Luke wordlessly grabbed my hand as I stared down into the rushing gray water.
“I pulled up, right over there…” I said, pointing to the other side of the bridge, “thinking this was going to be some random person I could save. But when I got here, I saw that it was… it was the person I’d been seeing for a few months.”
Luke squeezed my hand and listened, tucking his words away for another time.
“I knew Peter had issues with depression in the past, and he was getting counseling for it, but I had no idea how bad it was.”
I squeezed my eyes tightly, trying to stop the tears that threatened to come out.
“I thought I could save him. I’d saved everyone in my career up until that point. But as much as I talked to him, ran through the script of what to say to people so they wouldn’t jump, reasoned with him, pleaded with him not to do it…”
I took a deep, shaky breath.
“He looked me straight in the eyes, mouthed ‘I’m sorry,’ and let go.”
A lump had formed in my throat.
Luke pulled me into a tight hug. It felt like I was bleeding into him; he was absorbing my pain like a sponge.
I composed myself quickly, then continued. “I went to therapy for it. Worked through it for years. It still hurts that I couldn’t save him. I asked myself thousands of times why he did it. Was it something I did? Was I not enough to save him? I felt like a huge failure for letting him down. If I was half the man I was supposed to be, maybe if I took care of him more, or tried to help fix his depression, then maybe he wouldn’t have done it. Maybe he’d still be here.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Luke said gently. “It wasn’t your fault at all; depression doesn’t work like that.”
“I know, I know…” I said, used to those very same words from my therapist. But somehow, they meant much more coming from Luke. I knew he dealt with that black monster in his own mind. He knew what it was like to lose that battle over and over and over again.
“I’m here for you, Adam,” he whispered.
We hugged there on that bridge for what felt like an eternity. And when we finally let go and pulled apart, I felt like something heavy had been lifted from my shoulders.
15
Luke
We held hands in Adam’s squad car as we continued with the ride-along.
I’d never felt so close to someone in my entire life. Not even with him when things were good… even then, it felt like the relationship was emotionally unbalanced.
But with Adam, I felt like we were partners. We were equals.
And this was just the beginning.
After I’d told him about what had happened to me with the incident, I felt lighter. Like I no longer had to carry around that secret alone. I’d found someone who understood.
Because it was kink-related, I’d never been able to share that memory with anyone around me — not my friends, not my therapist, and certainly not my mother.
I shuddered to think what she would do if she found out about it. She’d probably have my ex murdered and somehow conceal it from the police.
Then I closed my eyes and thought of how her eyes looked when she became Scary Mom and changed my mind. She’d probably murder him herself.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked it to see if my mother tried to reach out at all.
There was nothing on my screen, which struck me as odd. Usually, she’d text me something by midday if I was out of the house and she was home. Something small just to check in on me.
But my blank phone screen told me one of two things: She was either home and not thinking about me, or she was out and about somewhere…
I leaned toward the latter.
“The police are keeping an eye on my mom, right?” I asked Adam.
I still couldn’t take my eyes off of how amazing he looked in that cop uniform. So stoic; so in control.
“Yeah, that’s what Nick is doing today,” he answered. “Why, are you worried?”
I nodded.
“No problem, I’ll give Nick a call here…” he said.
There was a pause as he dialed, pressing a number on his dash.
Nick answered as a garbled tone that came through the speaker. I couldn’t make out a word he said.
“Hey buddy,” Adam greeted, “Could you give me a status update on Mrs. DuPont?”
Garbled noises were coming over the speaker. I thought to myself that this must be some kind of hidden language that only cops understood.
“Great, thanks!” Adam said, then pressed a button and the call went silent.
His face was unreadable.
“Well? Is she okay? Where is she?” I asked, the familiar anxiety twirling in my gut like it was having a party in there. Only, this time it was muted. Like it was trapped underwater or something. I felt happy at the thought; the thought of finally, maybe being in control of my anxiety.
“Haha, yeah, she’s alright. Though she’s driving around aimlessly right now. Nick’s keeping tabs on her though, he’ll make sure she’ll be alright.”
I relaxed, releasing a tension that I didn’t realize I’d been holding.
“You’re still worried,” Adam gathered. “If it’s any comfort, know that this is very common behavior for people to have after something like a divorce.”
It didn’t comfort me. I saw the look on my mom’s face as she threw plates at me. Then I remembered.
“She said I can’t go back to school,” I said, deflating.
“And you’re going to listen to her?” Adam asked. “Luke, you’re in control of your own life. Don’t let anyone ever take that control away from you. Unless it’s for fun, consensual things of course…” he winked.
I sat up a little straighter in my seat and felt myself become imbued with strength.
He was right. I was the one in control of my life. I was letting my mother do to me the same thing that I’d let my ex do to me. I was subconsciously relinquishing control of myself and letting her direct my actions.
But not anymore.
“Thank you; I needed to hear that,” I said quietly.
For some reason, Adam’s words tore a sheet away from my eyes and I was looking at the world and everyone in it with a newfound clarity.
Control. That’s what I’d always wanted; that’s what I’d always given away. I’d been giving it away as a means to try and control myself. But I needed to focus on controlling my environment, and the circumstances around me. That was something I could do.
“I’m going back to school next week, then,” I said with finality. As soon as the words escaped my mouth, I was stricken by panic. “Oh my God, the semester starts next week! It’s going to be September!”
Adam smiled. “Guess we’re going to have to get all of your stuff set up then, aren’t we?” he said.
I beamed.
“How about I take you shopping when my shift is over, just you and me?” he asked. “For clothes and stuff. I want you to feel like a new person.”
I shrunk down in my seat, not letting myself believe that someone wanted to… wanted to buy me things. “I don’t have any money… I can’t pay you back.”
He snickered. “Don’t worry, I’m loaded.”
I didn’t say anything.
He added, “Come on, let me take care of you. It makes me happy to do it. It makes me feel like I’m… I don’t know, it makes me feel manly or something. Look at it this way: You’re doing me a favor by letting me buy you stuff that you like.”
“I dunno…” I said, the thoughts of owing people things coming to the forefront of my mind. I’d never had someone want to buy me things before…
“Look, you can either come with me to let me buy clothes for you, or you can wait and I’ll just buy them for you. But you wouldn’t be with me, so I might get the sizes wrong.”
I pictured myself in a shirt where the fabric would be straining across my chest, the buttons threatening to pop off. Right after that image, the thought of me in a too-large short-sleeve button-down swam to the surface of my mind. I couldn’t allow that to happen.
“Okay,” I relented. “We’re going to Zara.
* * *
At five p.m. after a day of driving the cop car around the town, I was happy but exhausted. I learned of so much gossip. Mrs. Carr was having trouble with her son, Tim, who had recently set that house on fire. They weren’t able to put him away for that as the homeowner decided not to press charges; Tim convinced them it was an accident.
“I’m sure the insurance money helped them make their decision to let him off the hook,” Adam said with a smile.
“…every time I’ve talked to Mrs. Carr, she’s always tried to make me feel like I was doing worse than her son.”
“HAH. In what way? Tim Carr is the biggest screw-up I’ve seen in years. Mrs. Carr has no right to make you feel like that at all.” Adam said.
