He was a lot older than her. She wasn't sure by how much, but it was significant. Still, he was in amazing shape. The gray in his hair looked distinguished and sophisticated.
“I've had about enough of your shit. This is twice I've saved your life now,” he said.
“Saved it for what?” Shannon felt the hot tears gathering, the tears she'd been holding back behind bravado and anger. Fuck. She would not let him see her cry.
But she couldn't help it. The tears slipped past all her defenses and rolled down her cheeks. She looked down at the bright pink polish on her nails.
The stool across from her scraped against the floor, then a moment later he was beside her.
“Come here.”
She wanted to resist him. She wanted to lash out again, but he was holding his arms open to her, and it had been so long since any man had done that.
“Don't over think it,” he said.
Shannon got off the stool and in a moment of weakness, she let him hold her. The tears came harder as she laid her head against his warm bare chest. He was too tall for her to reach his shoulder. She tensed when he started rubbing her back, not because he was touching her, but because of the scars—that loud screaming void between them.
He shouldn't get to touch her in any way after that. Even though he saved her. Even though he hadn't directly made them. If he'd never brought her here...
He was old enough to know better. She'd been a silly little twenty-three year old girl. He was a much older man and a psychiatrist, for God's sake. He knew better. And yet he'd brought her here. He'd exposed her to the monster who'd destroyed her and broken all her dreams and fantasies in a single afternoon.
He'd taken any future of any kind she could have ever had. He'd taken her chance at freedom and a normal life in the real world. And he'd taken her chance of love or at the very least a real master. Yes, the house had been explained to her. She'd known—or thought she'd known—what she was signing on for.
There was no guarantee of love in this package. And even so, it wouldn't be the kind the rest of the world fully understood or was used to. Shannon had been fine with that. She didn't do vanilla. She'd had one normal mainstream relationship long before the house. And even though the guy had been hot, she'd been so repulsed by his cloying efforts to please her that she'd ended the relationship before it had really begun.
Even so, kinky relationships weren't cold and sterile. They were a closer bond than most realized. She'd hoped her kink would come packaged with love eventually. Unless the guy was made of stone it had to, right? Now she wasn't getting any of it, except suddenly Lindsay's arms around her, but just because he didn't want her to kill herself.
She didn't want his pity.
The kettle on the stove whistled and Lindsay stepped away to prepare their tea. Shannon sat back down at the bar stool and watched him set out the cups and saucers, the sugar and milk, and the tea. He scooped loose tea leaves into diffusers and set them inside the cups of hot water he'd just poured.
He set the timer on the stove for four minutes and then turned back toward her, his arms crossed over the chest that looked like it belonged to a twenty-five year old underwear model.
How old was he?
“I made Earl Grey. Decaf so you'll be able to sleep,” he said.
Like she'd be able to sleep. No doubt another Brian nightmare would be waiting for her to kickstart this whole horror show all over again the second her head touched the pillow.
“That's fine,” she said. Though she was sure he wasn't really asking her opinion on the matter.
“Do you take milk and sugar?”
“Just milk.”
He spent four agonizing minutes watching her while their tea steeped. She tried to pretend he was wearing a suit like normal. Thinking back to before the house, she remembered sitting in that lavender office of his in the city. Like everyone else, she'd thought Lindsay Smith was a woman. And gentle lavender walls, a fountain, and a row of orchids would seem to confirm that assumption—until he'd walked in and filled the entire room with such raw masculine energy that there could be no doubts.
In that moment, the room had transformed and become utterly unapologetically male. She'd been attracted to him from the start. She'd been seeing him for months in therapy, talking about intimate details of her life, kink information slipping out at times because he was a “kink-friendly therapist” and that, combined with... well everything... it had been impossible to keep that aspect of her life under wraps. It just hadn't occurred to her that she needed to hide it or protect herself from him.
She'd just been unceremoniously dumped by someone she'd been having a 24/7 power exchange relationship with. She'd really thought he was the one, and she hadn't been handling the breakup well at all—or the reintegration into normal life where she was in charge of everything again. She hated that feeling. It was too much to worry about. Life was too busy, too fast. Too stressful. She just wanted a place where she could hide away and not worry about all of it. To not have fifty thousand things on a never ending to-do list and never enough hours in a day to do them all. That would be heaven.
Over months, Lindsay had gained her trust, and then... he'd dropped the bombshell. He could give her what she needed. At first she'd thought he meant he wanted to keep her as his pet. Such a thought had occurred to her during more than one masturbatory session alone in her apartment after one of their increasingly intense appointments.
He'd never touched her in any inappropriate way. He'd never made any innuendo. He'd been perfectly professional. Despite the age difference, she'd been a bit disappointed when he'd explained the house.
So he hadn't meant to keep her for himself.
But then she'd become excited again by all the new possibilities, and she let her attraction to him cloud her vision. The doctor was the worst mistake she'd made in her life.
The timer went off, jerking her back into the reality where she found, much to her dismay, she was still attracted. And even worse, he was even better half naked than he was in a suit. Even her imagination hadn't been able to do the reality of a shirtless Lindsay Smith justice.
And still, the most he'd ever touched her was minutes ago, standing there holding her while the water had boiled. She didn't want to think about that—to think she could want that. Especially not from him. The betrayal was too deep. There was too much bad history. She'd gotten used to seeing him as a hated piece of background furniture in her life. It was the one comforting constant. She needed it to stay that way.
Shannon took a long, slow breath. She just had to get through tonight. Within a day or two he'd forget about her again. They would go back to polite avoidance.
Lindsay brought the tea over and placed one of the cups and saucers in front of her, then he sat across from her again and took a sip of his own tea.
“Tell me what you need, Shannon.”
Her mouth set stubbornly in a firm line. She wasn't going back to that doctor/patient place with him. She'd trusted him once all those years ago in his office. She could never be such a fool twice. She took a sip of her tea, placed the cup back on the saucer, and stared at the steam rising up off the cup.
“I could beat it out of you.” The suggestion sounded almost casual.