“He's already seen my scars. I whipped off my sweatshirt the first day at the compound to show everyone the message Ghost wrote on me. When I walked away, they all saw my back.
“I've never had a massage, so I don't know what to expect. I'm not opposed to having Nasa's hands on me—assuming he'd even want to give me a massage—but the idea of being face down with him behind me, above me, unable to see him... That’s a hard no.”
“First of all, don't assume what he does or doesn’t want,” Dr. White pointed out. “I saw how he looked at you right before I scooped you up for your appointment. If you were to ask him for a massage, I bet you fifty bucks, massage oil will magically appear and his first question will be, 'what kind of pressure do you prefer?'”
“As I said, one of the main components of BDSM is communication. Nasa understands how to utilize explicit language to make his needs and desires perfectly clear, no confusion or gray areas to misinterpret what he wants, and the concept of negotiation is largely a part of his sexual play.”
“Negotiation?”
Dr. White hummed her affirmation, her teacup clinking in its saucer after taking a sip.
“Explaining how the thought of not being able to see him during the massage has you hesitating to ask because you don't know what to expect, and giving him examples of what you are and are not willing to allow, is negotiation.
“In expressing where your boundaries lie, you're allowing him the opportunity to be sensitive to your insecurities and find solutions to give you what you need, which is his ultimate goal. Do you feel comfortable enough with Nasa to talk to him so openly?”
“Right this second? No. But eventually? Maybe. I'll think about it. I have a lot to think about.”
Desperate to stop thinking about Nasa's hands on her body, Dillon was quick to deflect the conversation away from her. “I have a personal question I'd like to ask you, though.”
“You can certainly ask,” Dr. White invited.
“What's the deal with Cher? When I called for my appointment, it felt like she took my refusal to make appointments for the last few years personally.”
Dr. White sighed, her smile thinning as the shutters came down over her eyes, and Dillon fully expected a dismissive answer.
“Cher is my younger sister. She can be rather nasty when she feels I've been wronged by a patient and not without cause.
"I left Dallas because one of the men I used to professionally dominate believed we were in a romantic relationship and took violent steps to prove it to me."
Dillon didn’t miss the way Dr. White’s hand trembled as she raised her fingers to carefully settle her hair along the right side of her face.
It was terrible to learn Dr. White had become a victim of one of her clients, but Cher had been a complete asshole the entire time Dillon had been coming to see Dr. White as a therapy patient, and Dr. White had only relocated to Austin a year or so ago.
"You and I will be scheduling our appointments from now on. I have Tuesday at four open.”
“Tuesday at four,” Dillon confirmed, trying and failing to find any familial similarities between Dr. White and Cher.
The two women were about the same size and both had blue eyes. Cher's hair was a russet brown, Dr. White's was black.
She supposed their skin tone would have been the same if Cher didn't avail herself of tanning beds, but beyond their general shape, Dillon didn't see it.
Then again, it was difficult to picture Dr. White wearing the uniform of a Dominatrix and receiving money for utilizing whips and chains on the men groveling at her feet.
Actually, giving it a bit of thought, it really wasn’t that difficult after all.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Two hours after watching her confidently follow Collette back to the therapy suites, Dillon came back to the waiting room with her hands jammed defiantly into her pockets, giving Nasa this look like she dared him to try and grab her hand.
Dillon was polite to Collette in her goodbyes, purposefully directing Elka to walk between them as Nasa led the way out.
Nasa threw a suspicious glare over his shoulder at Collette, but she didn't look guilty in any way. In fact, she gave him a huge smile and two thumbs up. Whatever the fuck that meant.
Nasa took Dillon out the back to avoid having to pass by Cher, waiting until they were in the truck before asking her if she was alright.
“I'm fine. It was just a lot to go over everything again, and Dr. White left me with a lot of food for thought. I'm digesting,” Dillon said calmly, but she sat ramrod straight with her hands clasped tightly in her lap, looking straight ahead.
Opting not to push or insist 'fine' was a word women used when they were anything but, Nasa started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot, his mind racing with scenarios that might explain Dillon's chilly attitude toward him.
Dillon said she'd gone over 'everything,' but two hours didn't seem like enough time to sort through three years of missed appointments.
Or describe what it felt like to have a murderer in her bed, two dead bodies on her conscience, and being in unfamiliar territory. Any of those things could have triggered a panic attack.
Collette knew what to do, she had plenty of experience helping Dillon, but Nasa couldn't help the anger brewing to not have been there to make Dillon feel safe himself.
Teague would probably want to talk about that irrational thinking.
Radiating tension from the passenger seat beside him, Dillon was silent the entire thirty minutes it took to get back to the Perdition compound, and even when she asked him if she could get online to check her emails and stuff, she didn't meet his gaze.
“Is that what you need right now?” Nasa asked, hoping she would elaborate, or at
