Page 47 of The Real Mason
I don’t want to need to be controlled to experience them.
Or do I?
My shoulders sag. That’s the problem—my night with Mason changed everything. It changed my perception and made me question what I believe about myself, about Mason, and about our relationship.
Now I don’t know what to do with this knowledge. I don’t want to have to obey him all the time. That’s no way to live.
I want to be empowered, not repressed.
Vivid images of the things he did to me flash in my mind, and my stomach dips. Heats.
He tied me up, abused my breasts, spanked me—not only on the ass but…everywhere. That isn’t right. It defies everything I understand about the way men are supposed to treat women. I shouldn’t have liked something so obscene. And yet I did.
I hate that it felt like coming home.
Now I can’t get it out of my mind. I long to go back to ignorance. Even through my despair, I’m responding to the images, and that appalls me. My mind drifts unbidden to last night, alone in bed.
Unable to sleep, my thoughts consumed by Mason, I replayed everything. When we met, our relationship, all the nice, normal things we’d done together. And finally, every second of our night in his playroom.
I relived it over and over until I was filled with it. It had come alive in my mind and I recalled every sensation, every stab of pleasure and pain, the smell of our sex, the moans and the low rumble of his voice in my ear ordering me, directing me.
I became so worked up I couldn’t help myself. I burned. My legs twisting and clenching under the sheets, I grew frantic until I gave in and desperately rubbed my clit, pulling viciously on my nipples and coming in a mad, hurried rush, crying out Mason’s name.
After, as I lay there panting for air, shame filled me.
I just want to be normal again.
Mason said there is no normal, but he’s wrong. There is. I’ve been happily living it for twenty-eight years. And we had a perfect relationship before he ruined it.
But is that really the truth? Or only what I told myself?
I stare into the mirror for so long my image blurs and distorts into something unrecognizable.
God, I have to pull it together.
Somehow I have to get through this day. After I return home from school I can collapse on the couch and curl into the fetal position, but for now I need to get ready.
I’m strong. I can do anything. I proved that the other night.
Just get through the day.
I scrub my hands over my face and flip on the faucet, splashing water onto my cheeks until the icy wetness washes away my cloudy haze.
The cold liquid slides over my hands and water pools in my open palms as a beam of sunlight catches the pale blue veins in my wrists.
I study them, frowning. I twist and turn them in every direction, searching for the barest hint of the bruises Mason left there, but I can’t find anything.
How can that be? They were still visible yesterday.
I walk over to the window, holding my hands up in the bright morning light and find…nothing. I rub the skin with my thumb, peering so closely my eyes cross.
Not even the barest trace.
Slowly, almost numb, I return to the sink and turn off the faucet. Mason was right. He told me they’d be gone by the time I returned to school, and they are. I won’t have to explain anything to anyone.
No one will ever know.
I look in the mirror, and the truth hits me.
