Reconstructing Meredith by Lauren Gallagher Read Free Book Online Page B

reassuring smile. It must have done well enough, because she turned to Leslie and went on.
    “He could turn almost anything into a punishment. Sex, oral sex, flogging, fingering, you name it, he could make it a punishment.” She put her free hand to her mouth for a moment, then drew a ragged breath and continued, her voice shaking as she whispered, “The worst part was what he’d say while he was punishing me.”
    Oh Jesus . I held her hand tighter, bracing myself for what I didn’t want to hear.
    She glanced at me, and the tears in her eyes nearly brought tears to mine. “He’d say things like, ‘this is why you’re with me, because no one else would want to bother with this shit.’ Or ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you, why do you hurt me like this?’ The whole time he was punishing me, he’d say things like that. He’d tell me he loved me, and that I should treasure that because no one else in their right mind would love me.”
    Even Leslie couldn’t hide the disgusted grimace. Our eyes met briefly, and I wondered if she was having as difficult a time as I was not reaching for the empty wastebasket a few feet away.
    Meredith wasn’t finished, though. “He liked to turn other Doms loose on me. He liked to watch.” She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “So he’d bring them over, or we’d go out to a club, and he’d let them do what they wanted to. Sometimes he’d participate, sometimes he just watched. Sometimes it would just be one other guy, sometimes two or three. And the worst part…” She put her hand to her mouth again, not quite masking the way her chin trembled.
    “You okay, babe?” I whispered through clenched teeth.
    She nodded. “He’d tell me this was what I existed for. This was all I was good for.” Her voice cracked as she added, barely whispering, “He’d tell me how much of a whore I was.”
    I closed my eyes and exhaled through my nose. The other Doms probably thought it was just part of the scene, part of her role as a slave. It wasn’t unusual for us to call our subs dirty whores, filthy sluts, things like that, but only when they’d made it clear they were not only okay with it, they were aroused by it. Humiliation and degradation were part of some Doms’ bags of tricks because some subs and slaves loved it. An emotionally intact Meredith would have. She would have loved listening to a Dom growl in her ear that she was a filthy whore while he fucked her or flogged her, but Rich had taken that away from her. He’d broken her down, beaten her into nothing, and used something that could be such a turn-on as a way to shatter her.
    Leslie cleared her throat and shifted in her chair. “I must say, I’m very sorry to hear this. He had no right to do this to you, and you’ve got a long road of recovery ahead of you.”
    “I know,” Meredith said. “That’s why I’m here.”
    Leslie smiled. “You’ve come to the right place.” She shuffled some notes around. “Now, in spite of all of this, you still have an interest in kink?”
    “Yes.” Meredith took a deep breath. “The thing is, he also did things I was already curious about and wanted to try, but he made them traumatic. I wanted to try a threesome. I wanted to try bondage, flogging, anal. But not like that. And I want to separate what he did from those things.”
    “So, you still want to try all of those things, but on your terms and in a safe environment?” Leslie gestured at me. “With Scott?”
    “Yes,” Meredith whispered.
    I gulped. No pressure, Scott .
    Leslie gestured at the two of us. “Have the two of you been intimate at this point?”
    “Once.” Meredith glanced at me. “The other night, when I got back in touch with him.” She paused. “We dated several years ago, though, so this is… nothing new.”
    “Oh, I see. Was kink part of your sex life back then?”
    “No,” I said.
    “Scott was into it then,” Meredith said. “But I wasn’t sure about it. I wasn’t ready, I