Oh my God. I am in so much pain. Both emotional and physical. My inner goddess has her ass wrapped up in bubble wrap and is hiding under a large four poster bed with red sheets. Not even a toe is peeking out. My conscience is drugged beyond awareness with painkillers. So that leaves me staring at my butt in the bathroom mirror.
It's Sunday and I have to start my new job tomorrow. SIP. It was supposed to be a great day. How many new graduates were there longing for this chance. Editing was a … oh God! Look at this. I am completely black, there are skin tears and, hell, I'm bleeding from where he beat me. I can barely walk, much less sit. Advil, Tylenol, Aleve, nothing was working. I need painkillers, just like my conscience is telling me. Either that or a bottle of Jack Daniels.
OK, then. Seattle has hospitals and urgent care centers. I get out my map of the bus routes, find one that will take me from Kate and my's apartment to a place called Seattle Family Healthcare. It advertised on the map that it was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I took a deep breath. One thing that could be said for hysterical crying … the lungs got a good work out sucking in air. I shook off the thought, got into the shower and washed. My ass no longer just hurt, my whole body did. Not from the crying and heartache, those should be banned from my existence, but it wasn't happening. No, the pain from my little play time experiment with Christian had spread up my back and down my legs. Since I could barely sit I had had to contort my body in unusual ways to even walk a straight line, much less lay down or do the usual like open the refrigerator and search for a yogurt cup.
I put on a short sleeved sundress, ballet flats, put my hair in a bun. It was a look. Said graduated from college, lost virginity to an orgasm-inducing god, experimented with BDSM, never again. The bus ride I took standing up. It didn't help that the security dog Christian had still following me had slunk onto the bus, having hustled to catch it at the next stop when I surprised him by looking like I was heading to the park closest to the apartment, then stepped onto the bus. It pissed me off that he was still here. Christian's reasoning was beyond me.
God! Why had I let him do that? No. To be fair, I had begged him to. I had enjoyed what he'd been showing me, a little, and I was foolishly in love with him, and I honestly hadn't thought … how could I … that he would beat me. Really beat me. With a goddamn belt. See? See, Ana? This is what love brought you. I'd avoided men like the plague since my Mom's third husband tried to rape me. I had run straight to him and Ray had made it easy to maintain my virginity because guys were afraid of him. And I'd been a bookworm in high school, never one of the pep squad crowd. College and Kate … both had given me opportunities, but I'd been skittish and, really, wanted to save myself for the right guy.
Hey, it was a dream. Shattered, but a dream.
Ignoring the guy following me, I got off at the right stop and hoofed it the few blocks to the urgent care. It took them two hours to call my name. I made myself a small shadow in the corner of a wall, standing until it was my turn. Like I could sit down without screaming? My conscience was dressed in a suit of armor as I lied my way through triage with the nurse, then a PA. Both of them were horrified and I got to see a doctor in no time flat. He was older, maybe fiftyish and had been around. Obviously.
Dismissing the two nurses or aides – firmly, because I guess it's some law that a female staff person has to stay with a female patient when a doctor it examining them - he pulled up a roller stool and began to calmly and without any appearance of embarrassment, to put pain relieving and antibiotic cream on my black swollen ass. "I take it this was … consensual," he asked casually.
I glanced back at his face, impassive, checked his name tag. "Look, Dr. Lowe, I don't want to talk about it." I can't. I signed a NDA. Now shouldn't that have been my first clue that running was for more than exercise?
"DO NOT take that tone with me, young lady," he snapped.
Instantly I quelled, hunching in on myself, clutching the corners of the examination table and ducking my head to the paper sheet on top of its cracked leather. "I'm sorry, sir." God! Had I apologized to Christian for letting him do this to me? Why? Was I really so pathetic? Of course you are, my Inner Goddess responded, getting her head out from under the bed in Christian's Red Room of Pain. You were still hoping that after he beat us half to death, Christian would have an epiphany and say he loved you.
"You should be. Why didn't you safeword?"
WHAT? I would have fallen off my perch on the table with my naked ass up to his lotiony hands if he hadn't used those hands to put me back on my perch. Little bird, little bird. I pulled back on the Don Quixote songs. "I don't know what you mean," I mumble instead.
He ignored that. "This level of punishment is obviously something only an experienced submissive would allow." Which you are obviously not, was unspoken. "Did he ignore the safeword?"
"I didn't say it." Ok, I'd been too busy trying to be brave, then trying to avoid going into shock, then just praying to get through the six count and that Christian would stop at six.
He sighed heavily. "If you're going to go into the submissive business, you'd better take on a trainer with some experience. I could recommend somebody."
Let me guess …
"Her name is Elena. I'll get you her card." The doctor finished with the cream, stood and helped me stand up. He was very gentle, pulling my underwear up so as not to hurt me as much as possible, and I recognized the same manner of handling me that Christian had. So, a fellow Dom. I had time to think that maybe Seattle was full of them. Like that vampire movie where all those teenagers in the town were vampires and the grandpa had known all along … "I'm also going to give you a card for a private clinic. Next time –"There's a clinic and a next time?! – "use that. It's private, no questions will be asked."
I pulled my sundress down and finally glanced at his face. He had deep brown eyes that were presently quite kindly. I already knew enough about Doms that I could guess those same eyes could get hard and cold, bright with excitement at a good hard fuck after a good hard discipline. Quickly, I looked down … My, aren't you the good little sub, my conscience sneered. She had a pillowed wrapped around her ass and was smoking a Mary Jane … it helped with pain, right?
"I'll also make the records of your visit here disappear. Next time, don't use your real ID." There were those words again. Next time. Really? "I see from your chart that you're using The Pill. That's quite frowned upon, as a submissive can easily be tied up for several days and a dosage could be missed." Several DAYS? Jesus, had Christian really thought I could be a submissive? I couldn't believe he was so wrong about me. How had he gotten so good in business if he read people this wrong? "So I'm going to give you an injection of a birth control called Lunelle. Not used here in the USA, but very popular in Europe. I'm also giving you a one year prescription for the injections. You can give them to yourself monthly."
He disappeared out the door and the probably mandatory social worker came in. I sobbed my way through a box full of tissues, the cheap kind you had to use two for each time because otherwise what was the use?, and denied it was any kind of assault, refused a rape kit, and pretty much made her day a living hell by not giving her one iota of information no matter how many ways she asked. Finally, giving me her card – sure, what's one more – she left. Dr. Lowe popped back in, gave me a fast shot in my right thigh as I stood there dumbly in astonishment, whispered, "Good girl. I wouldn't mind a contract when you've been trained better." Then he handed me a fistful of prescription scripts and business card, then headed back out.
A few minutes later the nurse reappeared, gave me my discharge instructions … obviously Dr. Dom hadn't told anyone about my shot and the prescriptions, and I was on my way out the door.
My security guy looked like he'd rather be killing baby puppies, or like he'd just been told he had an STD. Taking pity on him, I slowed down as I passed him on the sidewalk. "Let's go," I muttered, blushing. He didn't bother to act surprised or like he didn't know me, just fell into step behind me. Good boy.
See? I could be a Dom, too.
