Chapter 59

“But you want to show me how strong you are, don’t you, my pet?”

Valerie stared agape at Lucca, still at a complete loss for words. Lucca took their hand off her neck, and patted her cheek gently, then hooked a finger through the attachment ring dangling from the front of her collar.

“Come along, little creature.”

Lucca led her to their own bedroom, not toward the basement dungeon stairs that Valerie had expected.

“Wait, Lucca…” Valerie said softly, pleadingly. “This isn’t… she’ll still punish me. I just…”

“Does she need a reason to punish you?”

Lucca did not look back at her as they spoke, but their hand hooked onto her collar was enough for them to feel her head shake no, after a pensive moment.

A few steps crossed the distance between the kitchen and Lucca’s room; the two of them crossed the threshold into the bedroom, and Lucca stopped, releasing Valerie’s collar and turning to face her.

“Why did she punish you last time?”

“She said she told me not to orgasm, and I disobeyed her.”

“She said? You didn’t say anything about that while we were playing.”

“I…” Valerie looked down and away from Lucca, suddenly deeply interested in the mosaic of rugs that carpeted Lucca’s bedroom floor. “I don’t remember her telling me.”

“You don’t remember, or she didn’t tell you?”

Valerie opened her mouth to reply, but she could tell from their tone that they already knew the answer. She closed it again without speaking.

“That’s not the answer to the question, anyway. That was her premise, her story. Why did she punish you?”

“Because… because I misbehaved?”

Valerie felt hot and her stomach knotted. She did not know what answer Lucca was looking for, and part of her worried that she would anger them with more incorrect answers.

“Girl, no,” Lucca replied, their voice sad and kind in a way that quieted down the anxiety inside her. “She punished you because she wanted to.”

Valerie looked down at the floor, feeling chastened, even if less anxious. They were all true answers, she supposed, but she could not muster an argument against Lucca’s being the truest.

They reached out and, softly, tipped Valerie’s chin up toward them.

“If she wants to punish you,” Lucca told her, gentle and resolute, “it doesn’t matter if you deserve it. She can just as easily choose not to. That’s how the world is, too, you know? You punishing yourself preemptively doesn’t change that.”

“I thought it would be easier,” Valerie sighed. She leaned sideways against the door frame, resting her head on it and closing her eyes.

“What, having the horny beaten out of you?”

“No. Well, I mean, yeah. But… everything. This whole thing with Dana. I try so hard to be good. To… to behave. Obey. Follow the rules.”

Her chest felt tight, sadness and frustration threatening tears that she fought back for what felt like the thousandth time. Dana’s hormones meddled with more than just her libido; she never used to cry so much.

Valerie closed her eyes and rubbed her face with a free hand, feeling suddenly exhausted in a way that had nothing to do with physical stamina.

“A dynamic isn’t supposed to be like this, Valerie,” Lucca said, their voice betraying a certain weariness around the subject. “Even a 24/7 dynamic. It’s supposed to be something you both enjoy. Using punishments, real punishments, to control you isn’t dominance, it’s abuse.”

Valerie turned her head away, pressing her forehead against the door frame. She took several deep breaths, trying to endure the wave of despair that Lucca’s words sent through her.

“That specific punishment, I don’t think you need to me to tell you that it’s gaslighting.”

Their words were not new information, not a new perspective. She did not have real experience with dominance and submission, all of the fiction she once consumed not withstanding. She knew that, increasingly, Dana’s treatment of her felt no different than her old boss, Heather, or her parents.

“I’m doing the best I can,” she choked out, sobs threatening to swallow the last few syllables.

A week before, she had told Lucca that every big decision she had made to try and better her circumstances had only made them worse, instead. The idea had been swirling around in the shadowy eddies of her mind ever since, and she found more evidence for its truth everywhere she looked. Her signing Dana’s contract was, perhaps, one of the more marked examples of the effect.

Dana may have saved her from a car trunk and a worse fate, but she had also unintentionally caused it. Calling that a break-even, it was extremely debatable whether her situation now was truly any better than struggling to make ends meet as a burnt-out exploited program writer.

She swallowed the tears back and, with a few more deep breaths, managed not to cry.

“Do you think it’s worth it?” she asked, opening red-rimmed eyes and turning her face back toward Lucca. “This thing with Dana. The money.”

Lucca met her gaze and then looked away, quiet and thoughtful for a long moment. They looked back at Valerie as they answered.

“What is it like for you? Being hers?”

Valerie chewed on her lower lip, trying to condense months of experiences down into an explanation.

“Sometimes I think she wants me. I don’t know that I’ve ever really felt wanted before. But she only wants some of me.”

Lucca raised an eyebrow silently, inviting her to continue, but she struggled to find the words to go on.

“What about the rest of you?”

Valerie thought about the long stretches of boredom, and Dana’s absences. These periods alone, with nothing to occupy her, had always been the hardest part of her time with Dana. If she could draw, she was sure, she could draw the landscape view from Dana’s window by memory, for all of the hours she had stared at it.

She thought about Dana’s anger, the anger that had buried her in fear and ultimately sent her away to Lucca’s desert. She realized it was not even the anger that troubled her so much, but instead the indignation. Dana had not been angry at her for speaking up, but instead angry that Valerie’s speaking up was so affecting.

“She wants… no responsibility. Power, I guess? She wants me to be someone else. Something else.”

“Will the creature she wants be willing to walk away, with her money? Will it be able?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“No,” Lucca sighed. “No. Even if you said you did, I wouldn’t believe you.”

Lucca stepped up to her and gently slipped a hand around her neck. Their touch was an invitation, without the slightest trace of command or dominance. Valerie pushed herself away from the wall, and they pulled her into a hug, their arms wrapped around her shoulders and pulling her close.

“I can’t force the world to be kind to you,” Lucca spoke softly into her ear, “And I can’t force Dana to, either. But right here, right now, I can give you a few moments of kindness, if you want them.”

Valerie nodded, her face pressed into Lucca’s chest. She could not speak.

Lucca held her for a long time, until her breathing relaxed and she could feel some of the tension drain out of her chest and shoulders. They loosened their grip, backed up a few inches so that they could look down at her without either of them straining their neck, and held Valerie’s face in both their hands.

They ran their thumb across her cheek, wiping away a few stray tears.

“May I kiss you?” they asked.

Valerie blinked in surprise; the question was unexpected, though more for the asking than for the subject itself.

“No one’s ever…” she started to say, and then abandoned the thought. “Yes,” she said softly, nodding.

Their lips were softer than she expected; she rose up on her tiptoes, and they pulled her in close again. This time, they ran a hand around her waist, from her flank to her lower back, and then slipping it under the hem of the t-shirt. The skin of their palm and fingers felt cool against the warmth of her lower back, and her breath started to quicken.

She tentatively ran her tongue across the line of their mouth; they parted their lips and gently sucked her tongue in, which elicited a surprised, delighted gasp.

Valerie wrapped her arms around them in return, and the feeling of Lucca’s muscles through their thin tank top found a heart-pounding hungry edge to her arousal that she did not expect.

She broke the kiss and buried her face in their shoulder, tasting their skin with her lips and the barest brush of her tongue at the same time as she breathed in their scent.

Mimicking their behavior, she slid her hands down their back and then back up, under the fabric of their top. She marveled at the strength she felt, and the softness. Dana was strong, to be sure, but lean first, and it suited her; Lucca was a very different person. Though they worked out and took excellent care of their health, they let their body love the things it loved in a way that Valerie wished she had the capacity for.

“Would you undress for me?” Lucca whispered into her ear, and the question felt genuine, and invitation that she could decline without retribution.

Valerie blushed, stepping back, and nodded.

“Yes,” she replied, her voice barely above a whisper.

She pulled her t-shirt up over her head and tossed it aside; Lucca smiled, and offered no hint of recrimination for her not folding it neatly. She still thought her waist was disappointingly boyish, but the waistband of her jeans squeezed less tightly than it once did. The muscles of her hips and butt kept her jeans up, lean from Dana’s diet but strengthened from running.

“You’ve changed a lot since we picked you up on that highway,” Lucca told her, stepping back and watching her undress. “And I don’t just mean your body. I know your situation is hard, but you’re stronger than you were.”

Valerie paused, about to push the waistband of her jeans down past her hips. She was quiet for a moment while she let Lucca’s words filter in.

“I don’t want to be strong,” she said, after a moment, looking up at Lucca with an expression that pleaded with them to take it back.

“I know,” they said, with a sigh, and Valerie believed they really did understand. “I’m sorry you have to be.”

Valerie shook her head, and pushed her jeans and underwear down past her hips and butt. She stepped out of them, forward toward Lucca.

“Can I… Can I undress you? I’ve… wanted to see your tattoos for a long time.”

“Of course,” Lucca replied, with a smile that was small and warm like sunshine. “I hoped you’d ask.”