Still, it was impossible to reel his mind back in after it’d already taken off down that path.
* * * *
Skye drove home in a daze. Tonight had been great. Fantastic.
It was the first time in a long damn time she hadn’t feltlonely. Living in the same house with her parents, or being at work, wasn’t the same as having a tight cadre of trusted friends.
Which was what had been missing from her life for too damn long.
Her life felt like night and day, from before Sunday until now. She’d have D&D, her friends, volunteering at the club—she’d made a rapid transition from isolation to whatever the hell the opposite of that was.
Most of her friends outside of work in Pennsylvania had been Kelly’s. Any time she tried to have friends of her own, somehow, Kelly always managed to get in the way. Vanilla or kinky, it didn’t matter. As her husband and Master, even though he hadn’t outright said, “You can’t be friends with ____,” that’s what it had amounted to. She could see it all when she looked back.
He’d come up with reasons they weren’t people he wanted to spend time with. Or imply they were “beneath” her to spend time with them because of his family.
Or that she was a horrible judge of people.
Well, on that last point he’d been correct, except the “people” she’d been a horrible judge of was Kelly.
Kelly only tolerated her parents because they came up to visit her and, duh, they were her parents. He must have known that was a line he shouldn’t cross or it would have triggered her leaving a lot sooner.
She’d been able to rationalize pretty much everything else within the context of their marriage and BDSM dynamic. Especially early on.
Even the damaging—and untrue—things he’d told her about herself over the years, all couched as “helpful” criticism to try to get her to be a “better slave.”
With all of that added to the mix, it hadn’t felt like it was worth the effort to get him to change his mind about people, sometimes.
Most of the time.
Sure, the woman who had recently celebrated four decades of converting oxygen to carbon dioxide on the third rock from the sun could see all the red flags and warning signsnow.
Some people—many people—might be turned off from the lifestyle after going through something like she’d been through.
Except it wasn’t a problem with thelifestyle. It’d been a problem withKelly.
She’d grown, matured.
Smartened up a hell of a lot.
Just like she wouldn’t settle for less than what she wanted and needed in a BDSM relationship, she wouldn’t put a vanilla person through trying to become kinky just to make her happy.
That would be criminally unfair to him.
She sighed, knowing that meant she and Axel would only be friends.
She also hated how sad that thought made her.
Chapter Seven
Axel lay in bed for a few minutes after his alarm went off Wednesday morning and studied the ceiling. Last night, after he’d returned home, he saw where Eliza had taken pictures of them at gaming like she frequently did and posted them on Facebook.
Tagged everyone.
She’d managed to perfectly snap one of the two of them looking at each other, him smiling and Skye laughing at something he’d just said.
It was like the only picture taken of him in the past five years where he was really smiling.
He’d spent a good twenty minutes or so staring at the picture.
