Perception (Club Destiny #6)(95)
Author: Nicole Edwards

She wanted to add a couple of things to her bag tonight, toys she knew he had in his vast arsenal, the ones she’d eyed when they had previously visited his dungeon. Not that she needed any other toys for Xander because she’d already stocked up from her own collection, choosing exactly what she thought would make him lose his mind.

And that’s what she was going to do. She’d only been anticipating it since the day they’d made their deal. To prove to him that she wasn’t what he wanted her to be. She was a Domme.

Not wanting to waste any more time, she grabbed the items and made a beeline for the front door. It was time to do this.

Mercedes woke with a start, glancing around the room to find herself alone.

Holy crap.

Covering her eyes with her hands, she tried to calm her breaths. She was slowly going crazy, and that dream wasn’t helping.

It’d only been four days that she’d been practically glued to Xander’s side, pretty much handing herself over to him on a silver platter yet that dream continued to torment her and had since the first night she slept in his arms.

She could close her eyes and still see how incredibly handsome Xander looked with her collar around his neck. But it had been his responses in the dream that always tripped her up night after night. Every time, she expected to see something different, but it was never there. It was like he was just a shell of himself. Like his body was there, but someone else had entered the right response, the right actions, hell, the right way to breathe into his brain, and that was all he knew how to do.

Sighing, she rolled over to her side.

Was this a sign? Was her subconscious telling her that she couldn’t do this anymore? Being a sub was… shit. It was confusing is what it was.

The dream seemed surreal, sort of like a premonition. She couldn’t help but compare her own responses to Xander’s domination against the dream version of Xander and his responses to her. There were no similarities. She seemed suited for submission, while he… did not.

There was no way to deny that her body was eagerly anticipating Xander and his commands. She burned hotter and brighter than ever before when she gave herself over to him completely.

But she had a difficult time accepting her desire to submit. Especially considering what she’d been through as a child. The hell that her father had put her through every single day of her life. She didn’t want to get herself in that position ever again. Never could she allow someone else to have that sort of control over her.

It didn’t feel that way with Xander, but the fear was still close, coming to the surface with every passing minute.

“Let her go out with her friends, Phillip,” Priscilla argued while Mercedes stood just around the corner, watching her parents in their kitchen.

“I told her no,” Phillip yelled. “I don’t want her out of the house.”

“She’s sixteen. She needs to spend time with her friends.”

“She’s too stupid to have friends,” Phillip screamed and Mercedes flinched as though she’d been slapped.

Too stupid? Had her father really called her that?

Sure, he’d called her many names before – pest, tramp, pain in the ass, not to mention some much, much worse. But stupid?

She made straight A’s; she didn’t miss school, didn’t even ask to stay home when her temperature had been over one hundred, and she had been throwing up all night.

She knew better. Her father would’ve stayed home, keeping her right under his thumb, telling her to quit faking it, to grow up. And if that didn’t work, if he didn’t get the reaction he wanted, he would hit her.

Never did he spank her like she’d heard some parents did to their children when they were bad. No, he back handed her. Once he had even punched her in the stomach.

Just like he did to her mother.

And that’s what made this situation all the more surprising. Her mother was standing up for her. She was sixteen years old and for as long as she could remember, Priscilla had never stood up for her against her father. Not once.

But here Priscilla was, standing up to her father, a gleam in her once pretty gray eyes.

“Let her go out,” Priscilla said through gritted teeth, shocking Mercedes with her boldness.

“Fuck you,” Phillip argued. “She’s staying right here. Until she turns eighteen. Then she can do whatever the fuck she wants. She can go out and fuck the defensive line for her school’s pitiful excuse for a football team for all I care.”

What? Mercedes couldn’t believe her father was saying such disgusting things. She was a freaking virgin.

“You’re too hard on her,” Priscilla said, that eerie glow still in her eyes.