Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(38)

“But you resist the assignments you’re qualified to do.”

“I don’t want to push paper. I want to help people. This is what I’m here for.”

He looked over my file. “You applied for combat medic training.”

“Yes.”

He closed the folder. “Have you considered nursing school? You can stay in the service while you finish.” He shrugged. “The army pays. You’d be helping people.”

Nursing school. Sure. I could do that. My mother had suggested it too, and at the time, I’d been irritated with her for thinking small.

“Why not med school?” I retorted.

My answer should have slapped back at Dr. Darling the same way it had her. But it didn’t.

“Why not?”

I was surprised he didn’t laugh at me. He folded his hands in front of him and asked me to decide what was possible and what wasn’t. No adult had ever given me that power.

“Why did you become a psychiatrist?” I asked.

“Because it’s easy to fix the body. The mind though? Once that’s broken, it’s hard to set right again, but if you do help someone set it back, they can overcome anything.”

I’d thought about that for a long time. Studying for my MCATs, applying to schools and Armed Forces medical scholarships, I thought about helping soldiers like my dad and brother. Somehow, that first desire had landed me at this desk, with my own practice and a husband I loved more than life itself.

After laying the magazines in a row, dusting the shelves, and watering the plants, I checked my email.



* * *



Dear Dr. Greyson,

Congratulations on finishing. I’m excited to see the results.

Let’s schedule a time to preview the proposal before the board meeting.

~Tina



* * *



I gave her a date range and let my hands rest on the desk. I thanked God for the opportunity to make a difference. Success or failure, the attempt was a blessing.

My phone rang. I flipped it open. “Hello?”

“Greyson.” It was Caden, and his voice was shiny, hard stone.

So soon. Every time the days between his needs became manifest shortened, I was surprised.

“Tonight,” he continued. “Now.”

“The control thing?”

The flatness became derisive. “The control thing.”

Pain or control? Some combination of both? We’d gone over the possibilities in fine detail, set ground rules, and waited for the presence of the Thing he now called Damon to become unbearable.

He had no Damon in his past. When he was at work, I’d gone through the list of casualties in Fallujah. No Damon. The name was a mystery to me, but personality bifurcation was a mystery to everyone. It had no real rules.

“Now?” The stack of papers bent in my fingers. I loosened my grip on them and laid the stack flat.

“Where are you?”

“In my office.”

“Get undressed.”

I paused. We’d imagined this differently, but we’d also known to expect the unexpected.

I unbuttoned my blouse and pulled it down my arm, careful of the twinge in my right wrist.

“Tell me what you’re doing.”

“I was getting ready to double-check the propo—”

“With your clothes.”

“Unhooking my bra.” I wiggled out of it around the phone. “Now I’m pulling my pants down.”

Did I sound irritated? I shouldn’t. I should be pliant and submissive regardless of my mood at the moment. That was the deal.

“Leave them around your ankles.”

“It’s done.” Between my desk and the chair, I stood half undressed, waiting. On his side, I heard a whoosh of sudden street noise and the slap of a car door closing. “Caden?”

“I’m coming to the office door.”

One step toward it and the pants restricted me. “Can you get in? Do you have the key?”

“Get on your knees.”

Through the layers of distraction and annoyance, the command was enough to send a shudder up my spine. That was what I was looking for. There was a name for someone who sexualized the enjoyment of pain. It was masochist. There was also a name for someone who became aroused when obeying commands. It was “sexual submissive.” I was that as well.

I got on my knees.

He must have heard my breath change when I got down, because he spoke. “Good girl.”

I didn’t need his affirmation, Goddammit. This was humiliating enough.

A minute ago, I’d been elated over finishing the proposal, and I was a willing participant in this process. But I didn’t have a switch I could flip up or down. I had a dial with a thousand settings that sometimes moved and sometimes didn’t.

Right now, it wasn’t turned far enough to enjoy this.

“On your elbows.”

“I can’t… the phone.”

“Put the phone in your teeth.”

I knew his voice. I knew his levels of detachment and dissociation. He was deep in, and there was only one way out. Through me.

I clamped the thinnest part of the device in my teeth and crawled to the open part of the room so I had space to drop.

Then I thought, There should be a map.