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I was, and it needed to be explained — to hell with the rules. Or, with some of the rules.

“I’ll likely get in trouble for telling you even this small bit of truth, but it feels necessary. If you tell anyone, it might mean I have to go away for months or years, so keep it to yourself.”

“Don’t tell us if the stakes are that high,” Will said.

I shook my head. “The thing I went through that I’ve called rehab, because it’s as close as I can come to explaining it under the current restrictions, means that when you first arrive you have no rights. None whatsoever. Kept in a jail cell without anything in it — no bed, no toilet, no shower. You’re given tasty food and clean water if you behave. Disgusting, watery gruel if you don’t. Someone hoses the cell down every couple of hours to remove waste.” I shrugged. “I was hosed down a couple of times a day, as needed, and the water wasn’t warm. People can come into your cage and do whatever they want to you — hurt you, fuck you, talk to you, play poker with you, whatever. You earn privileges, which at first means things like a mattress, a bucket to piss and shit in, a lid for the bucket, which was huge when I finally earned it. Eventually, it means you get an actual bedroom with an attached bathroom and luxurious bathtub, but you’re still a slave, still have to immediately obey anyone wearing the house decal that gives them privileges over the slave class.”

“Doesn’t seem a healthy way to handle people who’ve been through trauma, giving them more trauma,” Davy said.

I shrugged. “Aaron tried every other way to reach me. When nothing else worked, he sent me to the place with better than eighty percent results, and he apologized to me on the way, but said he cared about me enough to send me, and he wanted me to remember that this was a way out for me if I could dig deep enough to find a way back.”

And that was way more information than I should’ve given, so I plunged ahead. “Eventually, I earned enough privileges I got to wear the decal that meant I could order the slave class around, though there were still four people with a decal that meant they were over me and could still order me to do whatever they wanted. I was assigned someone on the day they earned a mattress in their cell, and once I got that person successfullythrough the worst of the program, I was assigned four people who hadn’t yet made it to the mattress state. Handling four at once was practically a twenty-four-hour per day job, and I was exhausted by the time the last one moved from the harshest level to a jail cell with an actual toilet.”

The point of all that was that I was controlling them, in charge of them, and I had to stay human to do it. It was a job that kept me occupied, a reason to stay human, but I couldn’t explain that to Will and Davy. I was on super-dangerous territory, so I finished up with, “So, yes, I’m used to slaves who can only find their freedom again by completely giving up every ounce of autonomy and idea of self before being refashioned into a healthy person once again. It’s Maslow’s hierarchy at its harshest, where survival is the only thing that matters, and there’s no place whatsoever for emotions.”

I shook my head. “But that isn’t what I want from my own personal slave. Part of the turn-on, Davy, is that you’ve chosen this life andwantto be my slave.” I looked to Will because this was stepping out of power exchange if I said it to Davy. “I get that it’s a balancing act to make sure everyone in the relationship is fulfilled, and the dichotomy of treating him like a slave and making sure he’s fulfilled in that role, since by definition, a slave’s feelings don’t matter. So, occasional conversations outside of power exchange works for me, but having a slave tell me something is bothering him while we’re in power exchange does not.”

Will’s brow furrowed, and he said, “While my tactic is that he’s supposed to tell me about those things as they come up, but whether I do anything to remedy the situation is entirely up to me.”

I nodded. “I want him to write his feelings down in a book I have access to. If I feel something is off, I may choose to look through the book and schedule something sooner, butI’m hoping most things can wait until our regularly scheduled sessions.”

“I see no problem with us having different rules about that, but you’ll have to be okay with him telling me things that bother him as they come up, even if you’re in the room.”

In a perfect world, he’d talk to Will about those things when I wasn’t around, but that wasn’t something I could demand. “Yes, because your rule is to speak up about things so long as you aren’t in the middle of a scene. Holding back is tantamount to hiding things from his Master.”

Will nodded, and my phone dinged. My stomach fell to my feet because it’s the ding I’ve assigned to Bran, and only Bran.

What have you done?

My stomach stayed in my feet and turned somersaults, but I tried to pull it off like everything was fine. I looked back up to Will. “I’m sorry, I need to text him back.”

Discussed my experience with power exchange as it relates to something akin to rehab. No major secrets were spilled, but I’m trying to negotiate a power exchange relationship with way too many secrets in my life.

You need to come to me tomorrow.

Yes, Sir. Is one o’clock okay?

Make it three.

Yes, Sir. I’ll see you at three.

I looked back to Will. “Speak of the devil. Seems he needs a face-to-face with me tomorrow, which works for me since I can begin the process of formally asking for permission to share certain things with the two of you.”

Davy looked genuinely worried. “Does he still have authority over you, Sir? Can he demand things of you, tomorrow?”

“He can, but it’ll be okay.”

“He uses protection?” Will asked.

No, but that’s because vampires and bears are immune to STDs, so I had to fudge the truth. “He arranges things so it isn’t possible for anyone to catch any nasties.”

“I’ll worry about you while you’re gone,” Will said.

“It’ll be fine.”

Chapter 21

Micca