The Love He Craves (The Love She Craves: Selling Her Soul to Declan Book 2) (34 page)

"When you say collar, do you literally mean a collar?"

Declan reached for the jewelry box he had retrieved earlier. "I'm not someone who feels the need to put my sexual interests out on display," he said, toying with the lid. "You already have a wedding ring to show people you're taken. I have no desire to make you or anyone else uncomfortable using something too obvious. I had a really hard time picking this out. I didn't want anything cliché—no hearts with keyholes, no padlocks, or handcuffs, no chokers."

"Thank God. I think a choker would have freaked me out."

"I was really leaning towards a yin-yang symbol, but these days, you see them so much, it has lost a lot of its meaning."

"It's like a soulmate thing, isn't it?"

He shook his head, his lips thinning momentarily at the use of the term
soulmate
. It was an expression he found overwhelmingly saccharine. "No, Yin and Yang are more about the duality of the world—for everything there is a complement. Yin is the dark side of the symbol—the feminine or submissive."

"That figures,” she said rolling her eyes and twisting her mouth so that one dimple appeared. “For once, Onyx Ebony would like to be the light one."

He chuckled. “I wouldn't have you any other way. Yin is the dark of night, the cold of winter, the calm, the ebb. Yang is the hot summer sun, the impatience, the high tide. Yin and Yang balance each other. And if you look at the symbol, you'll see a circle of the opposite color in the center of each side, you'll see that there is always a part of one in the other, stars and moon in the night, shadows in the day. It also symbolizes the eternal changing of the seasons—seeds producing plants, plants producing seeds."

Nyxie shifted her weight and sat back on her heels, making Declan give her a look of irritation.

"God, we need to teach you some discipline. Back the way you were."

Staying on her bottom a few more seconds, Nyxie sighed. "Yes, sir," she said, using her hands on the carpet to push herself back up. "Maybe you should spank me to help me remember." A slow smile emerged across her face.

He shook his head indulgently. "We’ll see."

She sighed again with exaggerated disappointment. "I didn't know the Yin-Yang meant so much. Why did you decide against it?"

"Partially because it's everywhere. I wanted something more exclusively meaningful to us. Also, it just didn't look like it would go with both casual clothing and more formal wear. I saw some that were studded with gems or even diamonds, but didn't like them."

Declan lifted the lid of the box to reveal a teardrop shaped pendant in a white gold setting. At first glance, it looked like one of those crystals that had become popular in recent years, but was, in fact, a frosty white teardrop measuring about an inch in length.

"A teardrop," he said. "I couldn't stop myself. You know your tears send me over the edge. When you cry, I feel this overpowering love for you. It's as if you are giving me a gift of seeing into your soul. I think that's why I hate the fact that you don't cry when you're being spanked. I feel as if you are masking your heart from me."

"I'm sorry. I don't know how to fix it."

His head lifted in acknowledgement and he exhaled a breath of resignation. "I know. That's why I don't punish you over it."

"It's very pretty," she said and bit her lip. She reached into the box and ran her finger from the setting to the tip. It was cool and smooth to the touch.

He began to chuckle. "I can read your mind, baby. No, it wasn't expensive."

She doubted his definition of not expensive and hers were the same thing, but tried not to think about how many bags of groceries could have been bought with that money or if it cost more than a month’s electricity bill. "That makes me like it even more."

"The setting is white gold because I wanted to make sure it wouldn't turn you green. Once you put this on, you are not allowed to take it off. You will bathe and sleep with it on. You will not let Lotus or Reina try it on."

A small closed-mouth smile played at her lips. "Yes, sir, anything else?"

"If you remove it without asking permission, I will take it to mean that you do not want to be collared."

“I wouldn’t do that without talking to you first.”

A gentle smile played on his lips as if he already knew that because that was who she was. “The whole purpose of the consideration collar is to explore if this is an option for us. Some fantasies are better as just that, fantasies.”

Nyxie looked into his handsome face and wondered if the reality of being married to her would live up to his imaginings. She wanted to be all the things he thought she was, but doubted she could ever match his farfetched expectations.

“I love you,” she said abruptly.

“But…?”

Nyxie drew back slightly. “No buts. I was just thinking how handsome you are and how lucky I am.”

“Oh.” He sounded surprised. “I love you too.”

Was this something she wanted? Her initial instinct was to refuse. Didn’t he have enough control in their relationship already? A silent sigh deflated her lungs. She knew she was nearly helpless to stop Declan when he wanted something.

“If this is what you want, I’ll try it,” she said and watched as a slow smile lit up his expression.

"You're sure?"

She nodded. "At this point, it's not binding, right?"

His smile faded and little lines formed between his eyebrows. "That is not the attitude with which you should go into this."

"You're springing this on me without any warning. You aren't giving me any time to consider it."

He held out his hands palm up and she placed her hands in his before he helped her to her feet. "You're not going to have to worry about that. I'll make the majority of the decisions."

"Your mom will be thrilled. She already thinks I call you at work to ask what kind of paper towels to buy," she said dryly.

"I like the ones that feel like cloth," he said, fighting a playful smile.

"I prefer washcloths and dishtowels. Paper towels are a waste of money."

He sighed indulgently. "My mother will never know." He drew her forward. "Come sit on my lap."

Nyxie allowed him to draw her onto his legs. Her whole body melted into the contours of his torso. The contact, body to body, skin to skin, fulfilled a need in her she hadn't known she was lacking in her life just a few months earlier. Practically, the only contact she remembered from her parents were angry touches. When she was in the way and didn't move fast enough to suit them, they might grab her upper arm and pull her, or other times push her back. More often than not, they were hitting her for whatever she was doing that annoyed them. She learned early in life to slink away to the closet where it was safe when they were in bad moods. She wondered if that was another reason she had developed masochistic tendencies. Had she been so desperate for love and physical contact, that any touch was better than none. Did she equate the harsh touches with some skewed sense of love? Did she even need to think about it to suspect it was related?

She closed her eyes and pressed her ear to his chest, listening to the steady thud of his heartbeat as she inhaled the clean scent that was Declan. Her eyes burned with tears behind her eyelids and her sinuses prickled. She sniffled quietly.

"Nyx, are you crying?"

Leaning back, he took a hold of her shoulders and held her away so he could see her face.

"Maybe a little," she said, forcing her voice to sound chipper as she did when waiting tables. Her smile was equally coaxed.

"Happy tears?" he asked, studying her countenance.

"Of course.” It was only a partial lie. She couldn't imagine being happier. Silently, she admonished herself for her moment of self-pity—hoping someday, thoughts of her parents would no longer have the power to upset her. "Of course they’re tears of happiness. Why wouldn't I be happy? I'm married to the most handsome man on the planet. Cody is getting better every day, and Melinda has signed over custody."

His lips tightened for a moment as he studied her face. "I hate it when you're not honest with me."

Her whole body sagged with resignation. "I'm not lying, all that is true."

"And yet you're still upset about something and you're keeping it from me."

"Am I not allowed to have private thoughts?"

"Do you want to start off our marriage with secrets between us?"

He wrapped the necklace around his finger and gently tugged until it came free from the box. His large hands struggled for a few moments with the tiny clasp, but he quickly had it around her neck and secured in place.

"Here are the new rules that go with the collar. As I said before, if you remove it, I will assume that means you have chosen not to move forward with being collared. If there is an unforeseen problem with the necklace, you will ask me for permission to remove it temporarily, until the situation can be remedied."

"Why would I need to remove it?"

"I don't know, maybe you need to remove it to have an x-ray taken."

"Oh, okay."

"Rule number two:  you will not hide your emotions, feelings, or pain from me." He looked at her with one eyebrow raised.

"You just put the necklace on me. I don't see how you can demand a retroactive response about what I was feeling a minute ago."

He stared at her, not saying anything, waiting for her to tell him what he wanted to hear.

"Fine! I was thinking that I used to believe there was something about me that made my parents not love me. I never knew why. It made me sad. Is that a fucking crime?"

She could see his anger building at her belligerence. His jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed into a steely stare.

"Lose the fucking attitude, Nyxie, and stop swearing."

She got off his lap and stood in front of him, far enough away that she was out of reach. In her mind, she quickly calculated where she would run if she made him so mad that he might attack her.

"When I do say something, I've got a
fucking attitude.
You only want to know what's going on in my mind if it suits this image of me you have rolling around in your head. I have tried to tell you a hundred times that I am not that broken bird you think I am. Don't you have private thoughts you don't want to share?"

"This is not about your private thoughts or mine. This is about your obedience. You said in your vows you would obey. Why did you say it, if you didn't mean it?"

"I did mean it. I do mean it. I just can't stand it when you do this
poor Nyxie
thing. What you call being submissive, I call being a wimp. You like the things I hate most about myself. And then when you start pitying me, it makes it ten times worse."

"Okay, I hear you saying you don't like it when I treat you like you're helpless, and you hate me seeing your vulnerability because you think I feel sorry for you."

Her eyes narrowed as she thought that was the phoniest thing she had ever heard anyone say. She made an obvious show of looking around the room and dipped her head down as if looking under the bed.

"What are you looking for?" he asked.

"Dr. Phil."

He sighed and a crooked, chagrined smile softened his features. "I was using a technique they taught us in one of my psych classes to show you I was listening, and to tell you what I heard."

One side of her face dimpled as her mouth moved sideways. "That only helps if it changes anything."

“Nyxie, I'm your Dom. I always try to take your feelings into consideration. When you cry, how can I not ask you what's wrong? I love you. I want to know everything about you—even your everyday thoughts. Do I feel bad for everything you've been through? Yes. Do I feel sorry for you? Yes. Do I feel pity and every other form of sympathy? Of course. I would feel that way for my worst enemy if they endured the same shit. Why can't you open up to me?"

Nyxie lifted one heel and twisted her toe in the carpet. Her eyes never lifted higher than his chest.

"You like stories about my childhood…," she said flatly, but he interrupted before she could finish.

"I don't
like
them. They help me understand what shaped you into the person I love."

She sighed and her arms came up and crossed over her chest. He wondered if she did it to cover herself because she felt vulnerable by this story she planned to convey.

"When I was in the third grade, one of the girls had a falling out with her group of friends. I guess she was desperate because she started talking to me." Nyxie drew her arms tighter around her body and her eyes dropped sightlessly to a spot on the carpet, her mind replaying the events in her head. "She kept asking me questions. Most of them I didn't want to answer but I answered them anyway because I thought we were friends. When she asked me questions like what kind of toys I had or how many pairs of jeans I owned, I made up shit. But other things were harder to lie about."

"A couple of days later," she continued. "She went back to her old friends and made fun of me about the things I had told her. They used those two days of conversation against me for years. I learned to keep my mouth shut. So, even though I'm trying to trust you, it's hard for me to confide in anyone. Until you came along, Cody had been my only confidante and I don't tell him everything either."