Loving a Dangerous Life (editing)

Chapter 20 - Learning

The next two weeks, which seemed like the most enjoyable of my life, passed without incident. Audrey and I fucked and trained and fucked some more. I had memorized her body, and what its actions meant. I’ve managed to memorize what each color of her eyes meant, what each twitch of her fingers meant. I've learned that she can’t sit still for the life of her and that she hates sleeping at night because it takes so long to get asleep- and she doesn’t want her nightmares to come back. She loves golden retrievers, and everything about rain, but she is scared of thunder. I’ve learned that when she bounces her right and left legs up and down, she was overthinking, but when it was only her right leg, she is bored. I’ve begun to realize that when she enters that submissive headspace in bed, her eyes never stray from mine unless I tell her, and when she is on the brink of too much, she cries out my full name.

I’ve learned that she isn’t truly the confident woman she displays, but a conflicted, sweet, uncertain woman that just needs to be shown care for once in her damn life. For once, my mind and my heart were agreeing- glad that I was the one to show her what it is like to be cared about. She loves coloring in my tattoos with sharpies, as I found out one night after she had been exhausted by my body, she was curled up in my lap as I ran my hands over her skin. There had been a sharpie on the table next to us, and she spent twenty minutes coloring in the tattoos on my chest, as well as drawing her own.

How fast she went from being annoyed by me and constantly shutting me out to being this sweet girl was almost dizzying- but I live for the effect her mood swings have on me. True, she still shuts me out even now, but I was working on it.

She disappears into my gym for hours at a time, distracting herself from what I am sure are unwanted thoughts by abusing her body, to the point of passing out in my arms.

It was one o'clock in the morning when she limped into my room, a little bit of blood visible on her knuckles. Sweat glistened on her body, defining her muscles. She wouldn't meet my eyes, and immediately I stood up from where I was working on hacking a security system, crossing the room over to her in hurried strides. The closer I got, the worse the situation looked. Her whole body shook, and not in a good post-sex way. Uneven breaths racked her body, and as soon as I was close enough, I reached out to touch her and ground her. She raised her hand as if to touch me, but something was terribly off. She started falling, and within a blink of an eye, I had her in my arms, cradling her body to me as we sank to the floor.

Before she disappeared, she had been mad at me, and I had been in half a mind to punish her for it, but now, I wasn’t her dominant, I was her boyfriend, and I was determined to take care of her.

Her hands clutched mine as I pulled my shirt off, using it to wipe the sweat off of her brow.

“Alexander…” She whispered my name, and my heart clenched. She only said my name like that when I was going too hard in bed and she was too stubborn to say her safe word. She only said my name like that when it was too much. Tears built in her eyes, and a sudden wish that I could distract her from what was hurting her so bad made its way through my mind as I grabbed her hand, placing it on my chest.

“Hey, hey, you’re okay. Let’s breathe together, okay, Princess?” I kept her hand pressed to what was surely my racing heart, taking even breaths in and out to calm her down. It worked, and within minutes she was getting enough oxygen to her mind to be able to think. “Can you tell me what's going through that pretty mind of yours?” I kept my voice the gentlest it has ever been, cradling her fragile body to me as my hands traced circles on her skin, my whole mind solely focused on calming her down. She was vulnerable right now, and it was a side of her she rarely let me see. I wanted her to feel as safe and as cared for as possible.