Sara’s stomach lurched as she registered his words.
“There is a quality about you. Something that you think you’ve hidden deep inside, but despite your desire to set it apart it burns within you.
“Something of which you hope to never speak. Not out loud, not even to yourself.”
The bed shook as she felt his weight upon the mattress. A strong arm planted itself before her face and she was forced to look up at the man looming over her.
“You have something to tell me, don’t you, Sara?” His eyes burned in amber, a lava flow that threatened to immolate her from one moment to the next.
She closed her own eyes and in the same instant saw him again, battered derby hat held by fingers that were far too long to be real. That terrible, awkward gait as he came at her speaking words with a forked tongue.
“It’s your fault,” she said, trembling in fear for what she was about to say. “I didn’t know it could be like that and now that you’ve shown me, I can’t help myself.”
Sara swallowed and then in a whisper, said, “I want more...even if it means that I am going crazy.”
Braze frowned, then said, “You need to speak clearly. And, I mean right now.”
The volcano threatening behind his eyes was rising, she knew, and with no further thought to the consequences, the words tumbled from her lips.
“The last man I knew...the only man I’ve ever really known, used to come in the door and if I didn’t have his dinner on the table fast enough, or a beer in his hand just as quickly, or, most of the time, just for the hell of it, he would beat me.
“He was an artist at finding a reason to take off his belt and fold it over in half. Then, he’d look at me, daring me to defy him.
“In the beginning, I tried to. I really did. But the punishment he thought he owed me got so bad, I should’ve gone to the hospital a dozen times over. Instead, I learned to shut my mouth and clean dinner off the walls with my eyes blackened and swollen shut, and how to sweep up broken dishes when I could barely move for the welts all over my back.”
Braze had frozen. There was not even a blink of his eyes as he listened to her.
“After a while, I got faster with dinner and faster with his beers. I learned that he was right and that I deserved everything I got.
“And, I learned to hate that man, until I wanted to bury a steak knife in his heart each and every night, but he saw that, too, and pounded the look in my eyes out. When I tried to get help, no one was interested. He was too well known. Such a good old boy.
“And I had no one. I have no one.”
Still as a stone...Braze appeared to not even breathe as Sara spoke.
“I started setting a little bread money to the side. After a while, I added some milk money, too. It took me a long while and more beatings than I can count before I had enough.
“But, when I did, I got out.”
She tried to look away from him, to look anywhere but at him, but she could not. His image blurred and doubled while she continued.
“I headed for the city, thinking to get a job and make a new life for myself. And, it started to feel like things were turning around, finally going my way.
“Then I saw you and I haven’t been able to look away ever since.”
Braze sat back on his haunches then, studying her. Then said, “You’re holding back.”
The frown that followed his words frightened Sara more than she would have liked to admit.
“When we were in the restaurant manager’s office...I asked you not to hurt me. Do you remember that?”
There was no response as she hoped for something, anything she might hold onto.
“I asked you that...but, it was a lie. I wanted you to.”
Heat trebled his face in her vision as she continued.
“If I’m afraid it’s because I want it so much. And because I think I went and found someone who could be just as bad as the last man to lay hands on me.
Her tears ran without ceasing as she said, “No...that’s not right. I think I found someone who could be far worse than he was.
“But the worst part is, with you, it goes beyond anything I ever felt before. I’m afraid of you because I don’t think I could ever say no...to you.”
Braze licked his lips, took a long breath and said, "There is a world of difference in pain destined for pleasure, and that wrought by a madman. It is true that I find discipline exquisite when it is expressed in feminine curves, a woman becoming the lens through which I might focus my desire.
"And you, Sara, may be that woman. I am consumed with lust for every inch of your body. And, it is for this that I am bound to discipline you, to teach you submission for both our sakes.
"But, know this...I will never let anyone hurt you. Do you understand me? Never. Take those fears and set them aside forever, for they serve nothing. The pain I shall bring you is one to be shared between us like the finest wine. A thing to be savored and not like some brute in search of proof of his own manhood while wielding crude leather.