50 Shades of Drake 3 and 4

Torn: Chapter Forty-Seven

    Destiny sat on the living room couch, dressed in a tank top and shorts. It hurt to sit down. It hurt to do most things. It hurt to talk, hurt to sit, hurt to hold up the cup of tea she was currently sipping from. He'd encouraged her to have some of the spaghetti he made...as if she could even stomach the idea of eating anything. As hungry as she was, the thought of swallowing anything instantly made her throat hurt.

    She stared out of the window, replaying the scenes from the red room in her mind. Blinking back tears, she lowered her cup and glanced over towards the broken dining room table that still needed to be replaced. Their session on the dining room table seemed so much more tame than what she'd just experienced.

    Aubrey, freshly showered and changed into a pair of loose-fitting gray pajama pants, padded barefoot out of the hallway. He crossed the dining room and headed into the kitchen.

    She watched him while tapping her fingertips on her cup.

    After he'd finished inside of her, he hadn't said anything to her. He had silently walked out of the room and minutes later, she heard shower water running. They hadn't spoken to each other since leaving the red room. While she was showering, she'd boiled some tea to help soothe her throat so she wouldn't sound like Kermit the Frog the next day at work.

    Aubrey packed the spaghetti and side dishes he'd made into food containers and proceeded to wash out the pot and pans he'd used.

    She watched him quietly, her eyes scanning across the tattoos littering his back. There's so much about this lifestyle that I still don't know, she realized. There are so many different levels of punishment and treatment. I thought I had an understanding of it...but tonight only proved to me that I don't even know the half of it.

    He turned his head and looked at her while drying his hands off. "What's on your mind?"

    She shrugged and stared down into her cup of tea.

    He walked into the living room and sat down beside her.

    She flinched when he raised a hand to her face.

    He frowned and let his hand fall in his lap. "I was too rough with you."

    "You called me a sneaky little bitch."

    He stretched an arm across the back of the couch. "I did, yes."

    "What could have possibly given you the impression that would be okay?" she asked him, leaning forward and setting her teacup on the coffee table.

    His eyes were unreadable. "Your behavior."

   Her mouth dropped open and she jumped up from the couch, temporarily forgetting that her ass still hurt.

    "Sit down," he ordered softly.

    In a display of defiance, she remained standing.

    His eyes narrowed in disapproval. "I said, 'Sit down,'" he repeated firmly.

    She slowly sat down, grimacing at the dull pain that throbbed in her rear end.

    He turned his head away from her and glanced towards the window. "What I told you in your office today...do you understand how much bravery it took for me to tell you that?"

    Some of the anger left her face.

    "When I got back to my office, I ran down the list of my exes and wondered if I would have confided that to any of them. I came up with no names. You are the only woman I have been brave enough to tell that." He took a deep breath and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. "There was more...more that I wanted to tell you, but I wasn't brave enough."

    "Our talk is all I was able to think about today," she told him. "It's not like I completely dismissed it. That talk is why I needed time to think."

    He scratched his head. "You called me a coward during that talk," he said. "And after I couldn't come out and tell you everything that I wanted to, I felt like one. So...I came home and made dinner for us, with the intention of telling you everything."

    Her eyebrows rose.

    "And I sat in the living room and waited for you," he went on. "Finally I was too hungry to keep waiting, so I ate. And still waited for you."

    She lowered her head down. "I'm so sorry."

    "Not so much as a text message, until you were on your way home," he said, glancing at her over his shoulder. "My first instinct was to worry about you. Had Palmer gotten to you or something? Since he knows that we're witnesses for his trial? Did you get in a car accident? I had to calm myself down and reason that you could have just stayed at work later and forgotten to call, or something like that."

    "I never wanted you to worry."

    "That's what happens when you don't communicate with me," he stated. "I worry. In my head, you knew better than to just...not text me. Or that's what I thought, anyway." He paused and took a deep breath. "There was a time I set in my head, a time when if I still hadn't gotten a message from you, I was going to start calling hospitals to see if you'd gotten in an accident."

    She shifted her position on the couch and grabbed onto the back of the couch, wincing in pain.

    He sat back and looked her over. "Over my lap. Now."

    Her heart pounded in her chest as she moved to lay across his lap. Whenever he moved, she flinched, anticipating another spanking, but instead he started to caress her ass gently. The relief she felt was overwhelming. "I'll communicate better from now on," she promised. "I felt bad for not texting sooner, before all of this. I knew I should have."

    "Thank you for saying that," he said.

    "You make it sound as if you don't believe me."

    "I...I do." He continued to caress her ass cheek through her shorts. "I do believe you. After that talk I had with you, I just felt...vulnerable. I don't like how vulnerability feels. I hate it, actually. I feel like a wide open target that anyone can aim and shoot at. Some of my guards went up a little. Defense mechanism. I'm sure they'll come back down."

    Who knew that what should have been a simple night drive could lead to all of this? she wondered miserably. Now he feels like he has to have his guard up around me, and I didn't even mean to see Brian. Brian being at the marina was just a coincidence. "What was it that you wanted to tell me?"

    "Now is most certainly not the time to tell you what I wanted to tell you," he said. "But I will. When my guard comes back down."

    She closed her eyes, holding back tears. "Okay," she said while swallowing back the urge to cry.