A/N: So, we're going a bit back in time to see what Christian's been doing with himself.

Chapter Summary: Christian, still kicking against the pricks

Inspiration Song(s): Slept So Long by Jay Gordon

CPoV

All night, I stood outside of Anastasia's bedroom, the sub room… She cried until she fell unconscious from exhaustion. She wouldn't let me comfort her. To make things right. She does this. She puts up walls and runs away. She can run away while remaining in the same room. I'm almost afraid for her to wake up.

The elevator doors close. Anastasia is gone. I have no recourse.

Anastasia Rose Steele. Beautiful. Elegant. Timeless. A woman as unforgettable as her name. My woman. Mine.

I had never wanted to possess and consume anyone before. In my previous arrangements, both parties were always aware that we were on borrowed time. Until she tripped into my life, I had never truly felt the wicked whip of desire, or the ache of persistent longing in the face of wishes unfulfilled. I had never wanted anyone or anything as much as I desired her. The obsession was entrenched so deeply in my psyche that I didn't know where the desire ended and my need began.

Finally, I had become desperate enough to give her 'more' she demanded. Didn't she realize she's had more of me since the day we met? How could she not know she had tied me in knots, chained to her every whim? She couldn't have chosen a better man to give her the world. At least I could afford a hefty portion of it, unlike the preppy wannabe at Clayton's, that photographer fucker or Kavanagh's surfing golden boy with a silver spoon in his mouth. Luckily, I'd surpassed silver long ago.

She's everything I shouldn't want, and yet I can't stop thinking about her. My dreams of the pimp have diminished as her presence has supplanted him. Make that her disappearance. Dream Anastasia abandons me in a myriad of ways. Death, disease, the arms of another man. In one nightmare, she boards a plane to parts unknown and I can't find her flight manifest or itinerary. She doesn't want me to touch her. She doesn't want me to follow her. I'm numb. I'm in shock. I doubt myself. I'm angry. I'm desperate and I know I can't reach out. If I reach out, I'll take. And I can't have her without her permission. She would become Persephone to my Hades, forced to share my underworld. And she, such a creature of life! It would be the greatest sin I ever committed, yet…

I had shared more of myself with Anastasia than any other person. Never was the temptation so great to yield ground… I shared my time, my most valuable commodity. I shared my bed, which was previously forbidden. The air, up to that point sacrosanct, with Charlie Tango and the glider excursion in Savannah. I would've shared GEH with her too, despite my policy of not mixing business with pleasure, or mixing pleasure with anything else. She met my mother, for fuck's sake. If she had been a real sub, my mother never would've seen, let alone be introduced to her. It's not as if no-one in my family had dropped by before. They're just as easily diverted and ejected.

When I felt Anastasia pulling away from me, I just couldn't let her go. She was out of reach, and I wasn't good enough. Again. I didn't know what the hell she wanted from me. What was her idea of 'more' anyway? Any more and she'd be Mrs Christian Grey.

All this thinking of 'more' takes my thoughts back to the conclusion of my previous associations… I wasn't exactly honest with Ana about the reasons those arrangements ended. I tied up all of the breakups with a neat little bow, using incompatibility to serve as the catchall. The truth was that they wanted 'more', I wasn't going to give it to them and they were too fucking dangerous to keep around dissatisfied.

Once they hinted around or even pushed the boundaries of our contract, it was time for them to leave. Their terminations were a tad more messy than I may have conveyed, but Anastasia had never been in an intimate relationship, so she really had no concept of the steps involved in quitting a highly-charged sexual relationship cold-turkey. Yet, it was regularly a necessary evil, done for self-preservation.

My NDAs were geared to cover a multitude of sins, but pregnancy and STDs would've blown those painstaking plans to shit. Generally, I was pissed with the hassle of headhunting a new sub, the subs were distraught and desperate or there was begging and bartering, clinging to door frames. In short, it was always a clusterfuck. I was never so glad to have Elena in my corner for the messiest bits, namely finding the subs new Doms, like an exit interview or some shit. Each contract cycle cost me approximately one hundred twenty-five grand and expenses: 100k to find 'em and 25k for Elena to make them go away. If I was an ordinary Dom, I would be responsible for that shit and honestly, I could barely tolerate the aftercare.

Until Leila. At least she left with some dignity intact. She laid out her case and once I let her know in no uncertain terms that the relationship she aspired to was never going to take place, she nodded her head, then told me she had to leave for greener pastures. I was pissed, but it wasn't my desire to keep someone in an untenable situation. A BDSM arrangement exists solely on the premise of mutual benefit. So I let her go with a more than generous severance package, allowing her to keep her medical coverage for another year along with the clothes and any other gifts I may have purchased during our involvement, transferring ownership of the Audi and giving her a lump sum payment.

I wished her the best of luck in her future endeavors because I knew for certain that someone like Leila was never going to flourish in the type of vanilla relationship she claimed she wanted with me. She was honestly just not born in the proper fucking time period. I could imagine her as the prized concubine and pampered pet in some sultan's harem. She was always going to need someone to whip her lily-white ass until it was the color of a stop sign and tell her what to do. Without that structure, she was going to be a hot mess. I silently wished her guy the best of luck because he wouldn't know what he had gotten into until it was too late. Just another sorry case of the blind leading the blind because she sure as shit hasn't told him what she's really about.

I'm not gonna lie. I missed the kink, but I really didn't miss her. Or most of the bullshit she pulled in her incessant hints for more. Showing up at Escala unannounced. Wearing the wrong outfit in the playroom. Interrupting me while I was working. I accepted a lot of this behavior because she was available for me to work out any frustrations, but after a time, it was like role-play. I had to keep thinking up punishment scenes because she seemed to love the punishment so much, it no longer served as punishment. The best punishment for Leila became avoidance. And if I had to avoid her to to punish her, it seriously cut into the time I could whip and fuck her. Nobody's happy if I don't fuck.

Leila was the perfect sub, yet even she fell victim to the lure of attempting to make our relationship more relevant than it was. She loved the kink, and I liked to dish it out to her. She had absolutely no hard limits and was up for any conceivable scene, no matter how depraved. She seemed to really want to be humiliated, which was one of my hard limits. I'd joked with Ana that a true sub would've laid out on my parents' dining table awaiting my every command, and while a few might, those type tend to be more slavish than submissive. Weekend submission was more than enough for me because owning a slave would be far more work than it was worth.

Leila, so mischievous, did a lot of topping from the bottom causing me to punish her… And her punishments were as exotic as they were varied. In the end, I was probably most perturbed about my lack of love for Leila considering she gave me all I claimed to want and felt I deserved. I cared for her as a human being, but not enough to lead her on. She was never going to be more than a hard, satisfying fuck, despite how I often humored her for her ability to meet my needs. Now there's Ana, who doesn't want ANY of that shit, yet I'd do anything, sacrifice everything to have her. It was a total mindfuck for a control freak like me.

I was again struck by the fact that my money and status didn't do me any favors where Ana was concerned. Generally, my name alone was enough to guarantee automatic approval from practically everyone. Therefore, it was both humbling and refreshing, to realize that Anastasia had fallen in love with me for who I was in essentials, despite my great wealth. She didn't want my money. Or gifts of any kind. And the punishments, no, not at all. She didn't even want me to come with her to Georgia to meet her mother. I had never had someone be ashamed to be seen with me. That was new. And surprisingly hurtful. Her shy admission that she missed me, coupled with Elena's urging me to go to her in Georgia, had me on a flight posthaste.

My decision to fly out to Savannah was further vindicated by Ana's serendipitous appearance in the restaurant of the hotel in which I was staying. Confidence bolstered, I slyly made myself known as she ordered another in a series of Cosmos. The shock on her face after she received my text was priceless. Staring in disbelief at her phone, mouth agog, eyes wide and searching, until she spotted me standing at the bar. Her mother, in the way of a man's woman, made herself scarce rather quickly after my arrival. Ana came to my room soon after, interrupting my call to a local airstrip to make arrangements for a glider flight early the next morning.

There was just something about her that I couldn't define but as soon as I reached out to grasp it, she slid like oil through my fingers, slippery as an eel. She was so right, but oh so wrong, and the only way I could have her was to yield to her, but I hadn't bent myself for anyone since Elena. After a half dozen years under her whip, I wasn't looking to submit to anyone's will other than my own.

I should never have listened to her when she asked me to do my worst. I'd forgotten the other side of that particular coin: Do your worst, for I will do mine! before I ever picked up that fucking gauntlet. I never should've scened with her for the hell of it. I shouldn't have taken her into the playroom without a signed contract, even if we had to go over it line by line until she understood what the hell she was asking for. And I definitely shouldn't have given her a whipping meant for punishment when she hadn't done anything wrong.

Still wired from Leila's daring escape from the hospital, feeling out of control already, I let myself go to that dark place, taking Anastasia along for the ride. She didn't safeword. Then again, should she have even needed to? Surely I wasn't so far gone that I had failed to read her body language? How could I have not noticed her distress? Her tears, shaking and tensing up?

Yet, here I am staring down at the gift she left me, a model kit for a Blanik L23 glider like the one in which we chased the dawn. This reminded me of a happy time. Could I make Anastasia happy or would I only tear her down, leaving her utterly bereft? She wants hearts and flowers. I may not have a heart, but I could do flowers…