That included waiting on him, although he was not a bossy husband. It made my heart beat faster if Drake spontaneously asked me to obey him. I was filled with such joy just to see the approval in his eyes—in the smile on his face. To know that he was pleased with me.
When I obeyed him, he rewarded me. And when I didn't, I was punished. It was the basics of any BDSM relationship. However, my punishments for disobedience were not physically painful or even confined to a session. Drake's approach was withholding orgasms or intercourse. Sometimes it lasted for days or weeks depending on the infraction.
Even when I was being punished, I strove to obey him more. Give him more control. Because I loved him. And I wanted our kinky marriage. I wanted to please my husband. My partner. My lover. It's what I had agreed to do when I married him.
I had never considered any part of our relationship to be demeaning. That anyone would possibly see my constant obedience as something abnormal. But apparently, Becca did. And her opinion? It mattered to me. More than I ever thought anyone's opinion ever would. It was as if she were an older sister who disapproved of my actions—and therefore myself—and the disappointment ran deep.
The flight back to California had seemed longer than the red-eye we'd caught to the Windy City. I was jetlagged and should have tried to sleep. But I spent the time going over every word Drake and Becca had exchanged.
When Drake had said we were flying to Chicago—that Becca had been in an accident—my body had gone numb. I could only think that we'd screwed up a wonderful relationship for the sake of our own. That we should have never left Illinois. In the least, we should have repaired the wounds our selfishness had created before we moved.
I'd been utterly relieved to see Becca walk into the waiting room. Just the sight of her bedraggled face and body had made me forget my place. It had been too long. But Drake had been there to remind me that this was not a social call.
Then my heart had felt like it had been ripped out when Becca said my husband—her brother, her own flesh-and-blood—was no better than the man who had raped her. I had been so distraught that I'd wanted to defend Drake, though I sympathized with Becca's plight, too. But it was their own fight, not mine. And I had been instructed to let him do the talking when he broached the topic of our new life. Drake had been adamant about that in the taxi from the airport. So I'd done the only thing I could do: I'd obeyed and kept my mouth shut, like a proper submissive.
Despite the seriousness of that conversation, I'd really hoped we would be able to spend more time hanging out with Malcolm and Becca. Like we used to. Especially after finding out Becca was unscathed and Malcolm would recover.
I wanted to talk about the progress of Becca's kinkier books. To get the chance to giggle with her about how she got the diamond on her left ring finger. Find out when she was getting married, and how I could help like she had done for me. I wanted the four of us to sit around and laugh and share stories of the club like we used to, even if it was in a hospital room.
But Becca had made it clear she had given up the ghost with trying to understand her brother. To my dismay, Drake let her. He didn't press for more understanding. And he wouldn't agree to her one, simple request. It felt like the miles between us increased not only geographically as we traveled back from Chicago to California. Quite possibly, for good.
On the drive home from the airport, I wondered what Drake was thinking about. Did he wish he had apologized like Becca wanted? Hadn't brought up the ceremony in the first place? Insisted we stay longer to make amends? Or maybe that we hadn't gone at all?
The sunshine cut off suddenly as we pulled into the garage and the door rumbled shut behind us. I hesitated in the darkness for a moment while Drake got the suitcase out of the trunk. Back to our regularly-scheduled kinky programming without any discussion.
He set the suitcase down inside the door of our mudroom and pulled the key out from under his shirt. A multitude of reasons sped through my head for why he wanted a scene right now when we were both so deadly tired. But I lifted my chin and waited for him to unlock the choker around my neck.
I watched over his shoulder as he retrieved a black box from a shelf on the wall and removed the silver collar from our ceremony. The shelf wasn't the normal storage place for it, but we'd been in a scene when he'd gotten the phone call about Becca. While he'd packed, I had run back downstairs to get the box where he'd temporarily placed my choker. I had to remind him as we were walking out the door that he hadn't changed the collar. He'd merely glared at me in response as he swapped it out, securing and locking the choker back around my neck. There hadn't been time to take the collar back downstairs, so he set the box above the coat hooks.
My throat felt tight now as I swallowed. I'd gotten used to wearing the binding there after all these months, but every time he put the collar on, it took a minute to adjust to the difference in weight. It was heavier than the choker necklace. Solid with no give. A reminder that I was shackled. Owned. In fact, that word and the date of our ceremony were engraved on the inside of the
