Her Savior/Her Doms

Sir Gets Upset

She said it like it was obvious. For them, it changed everything.

The house smelled like something slow-cooked and warm when we walked through the door — garlic, herbs, the particular richness of a meal that had been made with patience. Master Leo had timed it perfectly, the way he seemed to time everything, and the kitchen was quiet and unhurried, the table not yet set, the kind of domestic calm that, after the intensity of the beach, felt like stepping into a different world entirely.

He looked up when we came in, and his eyes moved over me the way they always did — not quickly, not casually, but with the full and deliberate attention of someone who notices everything and files it away. Whatever he saw made something shift in his expression. Not alarm. Something more careful than that.

{Sir} “Jake — set the table. I’m taking her upstairs.”

It was not a question, nor a suggestion. Daddy nodded once, already moving toward the cabinet where the plates were kept, and Sir crossed the room to me and lifted me before I had fully registered that he was going to — bridal style, one arm beneath my knees and one at my back, as if I weighed nothing, as if this were simply the most efficient way to move me from one place to another. I made a small sound of surprise and, out of instinct, looped my arm around his neck, and he carried me up the stairs without a word, his jaw set in a way I was beginning to learn meant he was thinking hard about something he had not yet decided how to say.

Our room was warm and dim, the lamp on the nightstand casting a low amber light across the bed. He set me on my feet near the bathroom door and began, carefully and without ceremony, to undress me. His hands were unhurried but deliberate, the way they always were, and when the last of my clothing fell away, and he could see me fully — the marks from Daddy’s hand, the thin, precise lines the cane had left across my skin, the bruising already beginning to bloom in the places where the impact had been hardest — he went very still.

He did not say anything for a moment. He just looked, and I watched his expression move through something I could not entirely name — not anger, not quite, but something adjacent to it. Something that lived in the same neighborhood as protectiveness and had sharp edges.

He let out a slow breath through his nose.

It was not really a whistle. It was the sound a person makes when they choose not to say the first thing that comes to mind.

{Sir} “Are you okay? Do you need aftercare right now, before anything else?”

His voice was even, but there was something underneath it — a careful quality, like someone holding a door open and waiting to see what comes through.

{Destiny} “Whatever pleases you, Sir. I am in your care.”

He looked at me for a beat longer than the answer seemed to warrant. Then he turned toward the shower and reached in to start the water, adjusting the temperature with the practiced ease of someone who had done it a thousand times. When the steam began to rise, he guided me ahead of him and stepped in after.

{Destiny} “Sir — may I ask something?”

{Sir} “Always.”

{Destiny} “If you intend to use anything on me tonight — please, not my backside. It is too painful right now. I am sorry to ask.”

He did not answer immediately. He reached for the shampoo, poured a careful amount into his palm, and began working it through my hair from root to end with both hands — slowly, thoroughly, his fingertips moving in firm circles against my scalp in a way that made my eyes want to close. The warmth of the water, the warmth of his hands, and the warmth of the steam all folded together into something that, after the intensity of the evening, felt like being set down somewhere soft.

{Sir} “What was used tonight?”

{Destiny} “Daddy’s hand. And the cane.”

A pause. His hands kept moving through my hair, but something in the quality of his touch shifted — still gentle, but more deliberate. More careful.

{Sir} “And what do you think of the cane?”

I kept my eyes down, watching the water run in rivulets across the tile. I thought about how to answer honestly without saying anything that would worry him, and then I remembered that, in this dynamic, those two things were not supposed to conflict. Honesty was the only currency that mattered here. He had told me that himself.

{Destiny} “If that is the way you both prefer it — I will get used to it. In time.”

The hands in my hair went still for just a moment. Then they resumed, but something had changed in the room — a shift in pressure, the way the air changes before weather arrives. I could feel the tension move through him even though he was behind me and I could not see his face.

{Sir} “That is not what I asked you.”

His voice was quiet. Not sharp — never sharp with me, I was beginning to understand — but with a weight to it that told me he had heard exactly what I had said and exactly what I had not said.

{Sir} “I asked what you think of it. Not whether you will endure it. Not whether you will adapt to it for our sake.” A pause. “Ask me real questions, Destiny. Ask me if you are having second thoughts. Ask me if it was too much. Ask me anything that is actually true.”

I was quiet for a moment, letting the water run over me, feeling the steam move around us. He rinsed the shampoo from my hair with the same careful thoroughness, working from the crown downward, making sure every trace of it was gone before he reached for the conditioner.

{Destiny} “No second thoughts,” I said finally. “Truly. I believe I need this. I believe it is helping something in me that has needed help for a very long time.” I paused, and then said the harder part quietly. “I just hope that one day it brings me peace. That is all I meant.”

He went tense behind me. Not angry — I was almost certain it was not anger — but something moved through him that I did not yet have a name for. He began working the conditioner through the ends of my hair, and I heard him exhale slowly, and then, very quietly, almost to himself: “We need to slow down. She has never done this before.”

I was not sure if I was meant to have heard that. I decided to treat it as if I had not.

He finished with my hair and moved on to my body — a clean cloth, warm water, soap worked gently across my skin with the particular attention of someone who is cataloging as much as cleaning. Every fresh mark received its own moment of consideration, his hands slowing when they found the places that made me draw a breath. He did not comment on them. He simply noted them, the way a careful person notes things they intend to address.

{Destiny} “Sir — may I ask a question?”

He straightened behind me. “You are always allowed to ask questions. I thought I had made that clear.”

{Destiny} “You have. I just — you seem upset tonight. And I cannot tell if I have given you the wrong answers, or if something else is wrong, and I would rather ask than sit with it.”

A long pause. The water ran between us. Then he turned me gently by the shoulders so that I was facing him, and he looked at me with that steady, unhurried gaze — the one that never looked away, the one that felt like being seen all the way down.

{Sir} “There are no wrong answers in this house unless they are lies. You have not lied to me.” He held my eyes. “And I am not angry at you. I want to be very clear about that. Whatever you are reading in me right now is not directed at you.”

{Destiny} “Then what is it directed at?”

He was quiet for a moment, and I could see him deciding how much to say. Then: “It is directed at the situation. At the fact that you are standing in front of me with marks that are deeper than they should be for where we are in your training.” His jaw tightened slightly. “That is not your fault. That is something I need to address.”

I felt the familiar pull to make it easier for him — to smooth the tension, to say it was fine, to minimize. I caught myself doing it and stopped.

{Destiny} “Sir — you still have private time with me tonight. Whatever you had planned — it does not have to change.”

Something shifted in his expression — a flicker of warmth through the careful control of it. He almost smiled.

{Sir} “No. Not tonight.” He reached past me to turn off the water, and the sudden quiet of the bathroom felt significant. “But I have something else in mind. And I think you are going to like it considerably.”

{Destiny} “Please don’t hold back on my account. I need to learn. I want to learn — and quickly. I want to be able to give you both what you need.”

He looked at me for a long moment, and the expression on his face was something I did not have a word for yet — something between tenderness and exasperation and something warmer than both.

{Sir} “Can you not see that you already do?” He reached for the towel and wrapped it around me, tucking it carefully at the top, and then reached for his own. “Jake moved too fast tonight. That is not a criticism of his intentions — his intentions are good, they are always good — but he moved too fast, and I am going to speak with him about it.”

{Destiny} “Sir — please. Please don’t say anything that will upset him. He didn’t know. It was dark on the beach, and he couldn’t see—”

{Sir} “I know.” His voice was gentle but firm. “And I will be careful. But this conversation needs to happen. You are my responsibility as much as his, and I will not let what happened tonight happen again.”

I wanted to argue further. But I swallowed it.

He led me back into the bedroom and had me lie face down on the bed. He disappeared into the bathroom for a moment and came back with the healing cream—something cool and medicinal that smelled faintly of arnica and an herbal scent I could not identify. He sat beside me on the edge of the bed and began applying it with the same methodical care he brought to everything, working from the places that needed it most outward, his hands slow and deliberate and completely without agenda.

It was one of the most intimate things anyone had ever done for me. Not because of what it was, but because of what it meant — the attention of it, the patience of it, the simple fact of someone sitting beside me in the quiet and tending to the places that hurt without making me feel like a burden for having them.

I closed my eyes and let myself receive it.

When he was done, he pressed his palm flat against the center of my back for a moment — warm, still, just resting there — and then he said, “Stay as you are. We are going downstairs.”