Hold Me by W. Winters

Zander

The two of them are sitting in the blue room in front of the fire, and I know right away that the session has pushed Ella to one of her boundaries. Or to a place where she needs someone else to act as a boundary for her. She needs me. Her face is pale, and her eyes shine, but she’s not crying. I pull a chair directly in front of her so I can take her hands in mine and look her in the eye. Damon watches from his seat, his face neutral.

“What’s wrong?”

Damon begins to answer. “Ella and I were discussing her past with her—”

“Wait, Damon. Quiet.” My tone wasn’t meant to come out the way it did. “Please,” I add for good measure. “I want Ella to tell me what happened.” I stroke a lock of hair away from her cheek.

Her only acknowledgement is to scoot on the sofa and make room for me to sit next to her. There’s a sadness that doesn’t leave her gaze, which flicks between the mine and the fire.

“She has a voice, and I want her to use it. Tell me.” She knows a command when she hears one, and her body settles into the sofa a bit.

“There’s a lot,” she admits, and her voice is soft and slightly shaken. “I have a lot of memories. Some of them I wish I could forget … and today,” she pauses to take in an unsteady breath, “I’m just remembering a lot right now.”

“We’re going to go over them now, in a safe place.” I don’t want to push her past what she can take, but because Ella is a submissive, I make the decision for her. She still holds the power over the conversation. She can use her safe word at any time. “I’m listening.”

“James—” Ella lifts her chin a fraction of an inch. “James knew about it. He knew about what happened, and I wish—” Now her eyes brim with tears.

It’s obvious how difficult it is for her, and I’ve never wished for anything more than I wish she didn’t have to remember these things. I wish she had a clean slate, and that her life had been the fairy tale she deserves. “I wish you already knew so I didn’t have to say it out loud.”

“You will say it out loud, and I’ll hear it, and then I’ll know,” I reassure her. “It won’t have so much power over you once you’ve told me.” I hope it’s true for Ella. I kept what happened with Quincy bottled up from as many people as possible, but it all had to come out eventually. Otherwise I couldn’t have survived it. The longer you let a secret fester, the worse it gets.

Ella takes a shaky breath, and I run my thumb over the back of her hand. “My father abused my mother. He—he beat her. Not just once or twice, Z.”

“And you saw?”

“Yes. I saw it. And it didn’t seem to matter if anyone knew. He knew I saw, and that only seemed to make it worse. If he caught me looking, he would make it worse for her.” Tears spill down Ella’s cheeks. “Watching was dangerous, and so …”

“So what? What were you going to say?”

“I don’t know. I like people to know, I like them to see what’s really there. I want them to know it all … and see it all.”

“I’m not sure this is—” Damon pipes up and makes his hesitation known. Whatever conclusion Ella’s come to, he doesn’t necessarily agree with.

“So maybe with James and other men, I liked for people to see me. It’s wrong to even talk about those things one after the other—”

“It’s not wrong,” I say, cutting off that line of thinking, although I’m still not entirely sure what she means.

“I think I like people to see and hear it all, because I wish they knew everything I knew back then. So ranting about what’s on my mind … fucking whoever I want on camera, whatever it is, I want them all to see it. They’re going to judge me anyway, so let the facts of my judgment be crystal clear and out there in the world for all to see.”

“Each part of your life affects every other part. If being a witness was wrong in your childhood, then being witnessed can be a way to take back your control over that. It’s okay, jailbird.”

The name slips out before I can stop it, but Damon says nothing. I’m going to have to ask Kam about all this shit. This is much darker than I thought it would be. Than I ever imagined for Ella.

“Maybe I wanted to be seen back then, because it wasn’t dangerous with James.”

“Do you think it would be dangerous to be seen with me?”

“I don’t know.” She doesn’t take her eyes off my face. Doesn’t glance in Damon’s direction. But the color has come back to her face and she leans closer to me, her breath quickening with anticipation. “I want to feel powerful enough to show everyone what really happens,” she whispers. “I want them to see what my life is really like.”

I take her face in my hands and pull her in for a kiss. Hard. Deep. Like I don’t give a fuck if Damon is sitting there. The truth is that I don’t. If Ella wants power, I have one way to hand it to her—by taking it from her. That’s the game we play, at its core.

With tearstained cheeks she peers up at me through her thick lashes and murmurs, “Do you still want me? Even if I’m this fucked up?”

There isn’t a second I hesitate. I stand her up between my knees and strip off her jeans and panties together at once, consumed with her body. With the delicate, elegant frame under a soft baggy sweater. It means that even when she’s naked below the waist, she’s still partially covered. Ella reaches for me over and over, not wanting to break the kiss. I let her kiss me for as long as I can stand it, and then I push her back into the sofa. I know Damon’s seated in a dark blue armchair behind us, and the angle in relation to Damon will keep her partially out of view.

But not entirely. My heart rages in my chest, wanting her to know I want her all the more for confiding in me. More than I care about anything else.

He still hasn’t moved, and I know he’s not going to. If he wanted out of this, he could have gotten up at any time. Still can.

Either way, I’m going to fuck Ella exactly how she wants to be fucked.

I spread her thighs to the edge of the chair. Her chest rises faster, and I slide my hands between her thighs and lean in close. It’s only an illusion that we’re having a private conversation. Damon can hear every word. But I do it anyway. “You can use your safe word at any time.”

Ella gives the tiniest nod of her head. Her breathing is slower and heavier.

“He can see you,” I tell her.

She takes in a quiet gasp, her head tipping back against the chair, and I can feel how much she wants this. Her thighs are already trembling beneath my palms.

It only takes one movement to switch places with her. Pull her out of her seat, take her place, and pull her into my lap. I undo my pants as soon as I’m underneath her, gripping my cock and use my hands on her hips to guide her down. Ella reaches for my shoulders, her cheeks reddened. She lets out a small moan as the head of my cock meets her opening and I pull her down hard.

The gasp she gives me, with her lips parted and her eyes wide, is fucking everything.

Her pussy is wet for me, and the only resistance she offers is that she’s so tight. I curse softly into her ear as she buries her face in my shoulder and rides me. I’m going to keep her moving, keep her fucking me with the rhythm I want. She wants this too. She wants it so much that she can’t relax into my hands. Ella’s hips move faster in my grip. Almost frenzied.

In a quick glance, I note that Damon hasn’t left.

“He’s still looking,” I whisper at the shell of Ella’s ear. “He’s watching while you fuck me. Do you wish you knew how much he could see, jailbird?”

She doesn’t answer me; instead she struggles to say, “I’m going to—” Her pussy clenches, and I know. It happens again and again, the pace picking up. “I’m going to come—”

“Good girl. Come for me.”

Ella’s orgasm is a pretty, shuddering thing, her face hot on my neck and her hands fisted in my shirt.

When she moves to slow down, I stop her. I’ll lift her up and down myself if I have to. “You’re not done, jailbird. Not until I am. Keep going.”

* * *

All’s quietat Ella’s house the next morning, except for the sputtering of a coffee pot. She’s still sleeping when Damon comes in through the back door for his shift.

When I was done with Ella, Damon had left and Silas was in the rec room, his shift having started. I messaged him a number of times, dancing around the obvious.

I’m at the countertop with a cup of coffee in my hand, and when he sees me, he cocks a brow, closing the sliding door with one hand. I wish I could say I didn’t feel the heat of slight embarrassment.

“Morning,” I tell him.

“Morning to you too.” The awkwardness is only slight.

“About last night …” I start and he finishes.

“I figure I won’t address it unless she needs to be reassured that there is no judgment from me?”

I’m slow to nod, considering his expression.

“Her coping mechanisms are,” he says and breathes in, “apparently compatible with yours.” The grin against his cleanly shaven face is humorous. I huff a laugh, picking up the mug to take a drink.

“Apparently so.”

“Do you think she’ll need reassurance?” he questions in a more serious tone.

I consider him, and the situation before answering. “I think she needs more reassurance that it was all right to cry, more so than anything else. I think she needs to know that whatever happened back then, is okay to put in the past.”

Damon nods, pulling a stool out from the counter to sit beside me. “So, listen. I did some research last night on Ella’s father like you asked me to.”

“Did you find anything that could be helpful?”

“There were some records of her father’s abuse, all sealed and don’t ask me how I got them.”

I nod and tell him, “I won’t ask Silas either.”

“Good. But the records only contained statements and evidence of his abuse toward his first wife, not his second. She tried to press charges once, but they were dismissed on the grounds that she was mentally ill and filed a false report. When she died by suicide, no one questioned it at first.”

“Suicide? I thought—”

“Evidence came to light years later on that. The allegations that Ella’s mother was responsible. It wasn’t suicide, it was murder.”

“Do you have the records of what the evidence was?”

Damon nods his head. “I can send you the file, but keep it to yourself.” He meets my eye. “It was also sealed and it looks like …” He struggles with what to say next. “Whoever sealed it didn’t want it found, is all I’m going to say.”

“So whatever he did to his first wife, he might have done to the second?”

“Potentially, although she never hinted at abuse herself and she certainly had a reason to speak up when she was tried for murder. She also … died by suicide in her cell before the trial was over.”

“Suicide. Ella’s mother committed suicide. Do you think there’s a genetic—”

“Ella’s on antidepressants. But more than that … with what’s in that file, I would be surprised if her mother really killed herself.”

My friend shrugs off his jacket, getting off his stool to hang it up by the door. “The court cases mostly focused on Ella, from what I can see. It’s like she was used as a distraction in some ways.”

“To garner sympathy for her mother?”

“No.” He frowns. “Sympathy for her father.”

“That’s … interesting.”

“Everything that’s documented is odd. Half of it doesn’t appear to even appear to be legally relevant.”

My gut churns. “How old was Ella?”

“The trial lasted two years and started when Ella was only seven.”

Damon grabs a mug and gets his own cup of coffee, stirring in some sugar. Then he goes to the fridge and adds milk before coming back and taking his seat. “Cases involving the wealthy are generally pretty calculated.” He tests his coffee, then looks over the mug at me.

“Anyway, I thought I should mention it since you asked me to look into … whether he’d hurt Ella or not, or rather the extent of it.”

“What do you think?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him.”

The air turns stale between us as we each drink in silence. Glancing at my phone, I turn on the security app and check to see Ella, still sleeping soundly in bed.

“You’re not supposed to have that anymore.”

I peek up to find Damon tipping his coffee mug toward me.

“Do me a favor, and pretend like you didn’t see.”

He doesn’t respond to that request, although he doesn’t comment on it anymore either. “How are things going between you and Ella?”

Damon did just watch us fuck last night, I contemplate reminding him just to fuck with him. But there’s more to it and we both know that. I don’t know what to tell him. I have feelings for her. Obviously I do. But I’ve also been gentle with her, too much perhaps. I’m aware that she’s still grieving and coping with things that have happened to her as well as how she’s handled them. It’s heavy. With her, it feels easy, but everything surrounding us is troubled.

“She said she’d live with me,” I tell him.

His brow shoots up higher than they did when he first walked in. The surprise is genuine on Damon’s face. “You’re moving in together?”

“Only under the parameters of our current relationship. And we also hadn’t exactly decided one way or another on where we’d live.”

He snorts, almost spilling his coffee in the process. “What are the parameters?” He uses one hand to make air quotes around parameters. “That you’ll just have your power exchange and never ever fall for each other?” There’s an air of sarcasm that coats his guess.

“Something like that.”

“Bullshit. You and Ella, moving in together, and it’s not something more? I don’t buy that for a second, Zander. You’re really going to try to pull one over on me?”

“I’m not pulling anything over on you. That’s all we talked about. We didn’t talk about a romantic relationship. We’re a little too old for boyfriend-girlfriend titles don’t you think?”

As if everything I’ve done with Ella hasn’t felt romantic to the core. Even when I’m punishing her.

“Sure,” Damon says with obvious doubt. “No romantic relationship. Got it.”

I don’t want this conversation with Damon. She isn’t ready. There’s no reason this should even be a conversation.

If I start talking about how I really feel, about how serious this could get, then it’ll be real, and then there will be no turning back.