“So, this is kind of like dating both of you? How does that work?” Her voice was so relaxed, so damned sexy. I loved her like this, all worn out and relaxed, melted into me.
“He’s a wild animal and he reacts on instinct. For him, it’s about loyalty and survival… and pack. I’ve been part of the Atlanta RTMC since we lost our true pack in Chattanooga, and it’s helped, but we’ve been kind of lost. Now, with you, it feels as if we belong somewhere again.” I smelled fear, anxiety. I mentally chastised myself for saying too much, and I hastened to add, “I don’t want to freak you out, but I’m trying to explain what it means when I say he’s claimed you.”
“If I thought there was a chance you and Duke could patch things up if I were out of the picture, I’d leave.”
“Duke broke my trust, and hurt me bad. I don’t think there’s a way for us to be friends again.” I sighed and added, “Most of the wolves who work for Aaron Drake are pack, but a few are lone wolves. They say they get enough of what they need from the atmosphere at work, so they can exist as lone wolves.”
“You’re considering his offer?”
“For me, yeah, but if you don’t want to take him up on it, I can help you get set up with whatever you want to do — your own restaurant, or an adventure camp for kids, or a horse farm, or if you just want to be the rich housewife who spends her time on charity events. Whatever you decide, we’ll make it work.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Harmony
The next couple of days went by quickly. I awoke early and ran, Brain by my side whether I wanted him there or not. We’d been careful to keep the neighbors from seeing my face at first, but now it was fine for them to see me, and I’d selected a neighborhood with no traffic cams, which was one less worry. I still wore glasses and let some hair fall in my face, though, just to be safe.
Brain and I had sex at least once or twice a day, with me sitting in his lap, or with him lying on his back. I knew this couldn’t go on forever, so one morning as we ate breakfast after our five mile run, I told him, “I could barely function at first, after my time with the Russians. I tried to go on a date about eight months afterwards, and I beat the hell out of him when he tried to kiss me. I didn’t mean to, I just… lost it. One minute I was dying inside because his lips were on mine, and the next minute I was sitting on his torso punching his face over and over. I have no memories of anything in between.”
He reached for my hand, and I let him hold it a few seconds before I lifted them together, kissed the back of his, and then extracted my hand. I didn’t need comforting, but I appreciated the thought. “So, I made a list of the classes necessary for someone to become a psychologist, researched the books each of those classes required, and went to a college bookstore and bought every textbook. It took me nearly a year to work my way through all of them. I then branched off into the special classes for dealing with extreme trauma and PTSD, and found some military textbooks designed to teach their mental health professionals.”
He grinned. “So, you’re basically a psychologist without the degree.”
“You know what it’s like to be this smart, how easy it is to learn new concepts, how hard it is to deal with emotions? I wrote everything out so I’d have a written record of it, but after learning about how to reshape the brain after trauma, I went over it all again, as if I were moving the memory from my brain to the data on the hard drive. I did a lot of exercises — writing things down instead of talking to a therapist, and I reached the point I could have sex with men again, though you understand it isn’t exactly normal sex… it’s worked for me, until you came along.”
“So what do we do now? What’s the next step, to get you where you want to be?”
Would anyone else have known what to say? He knew I wasn’t brushing him off, but was explaining my reactions, and that I’d done a lot of work to get this far, and now it was time for more work, to get me the rest of the way to normal. I smiled, reached for his hand, and squeezed it as I said, “I want you to wash my hair. Sitting in the tub, facing each other, because I think I need the eye contact. If I zone out or freak, you keep going. Talk to me, tell me I’m okay, but keep massaging my scalp and washing my hair until I come back. If I fight you, then do what you need to do to stay safe until I come back, but then go right back to washing my hair. No pain, no harsh words. We keep doing it until I can see it as a good thing. Day after day, until I can relax and enjoy it.”