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she had, but his question was to get her to open up, not to just nod absently like she was doing now.
    “Do you even know the proper rules?” He watched her eyes cloud over, as though memories had taken all her attention.
    She tensed, fidgeting with that collar so harshly her nails scraped the skin of her neck.
    “Please, stop doing that. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
    “Felt worse pain than this,” she whispered, lowering her hand and embracing herself around her middle.
    “I have no doubt you have. Do you wish to talk about it?”
    The floodgates opened then, and she related horrors no person should have to endure, all the while keeping her gaze fixed on that back door. He imagined her running, finally breaking free, the bite of the cold on her feet, the wind whipping her hair and freezing her body. He resisted the urge to get up and embrace her, resisted even making the simple gesture of reaching across the table to touch her arm, worrying any action may spook her.
    “I knew all along he was a wrong’un,” she said, tears wetting her cheeks. “Knew I shouldn’t be there, pretending to be a damn lady when I wasn’t and never will be. But he told me…he said that was the way a Dominant and submissive behaved, that I had to do whatever he told me whether I liked it or not. I’d read a bit about it in books, you know, when I worked in the library, but he said that was all a load of bollocks, that the books were wrong…”
    She swiped her eyes with the back of one hand, and he was struck by the fact her tears were silent, no sobs accompanying them, no hitches of breath or the thickening of her voice. Had she been conditioned so much she was even afraid to cry?
    Who the hell is this man?
    “It’s possible I may know him,” he said, startled that he’d voiced his thoughts.
    “Which is why I won’t tell you his name. It’s bad enough I’ve run from him—and he’ll come looking for me, you can bet on that—but to have you confronting him, if that’s what you had in mind… No, it’d make things worse for me.” She shivered and unlocked her arms, reaching for her drink only to hold it to her chest.
    “You might want to drink that before it gets cold,” he said, leaving the subject of her Master’s name behind them for now. “You’ve had quite an ordeal, and being out in the snow won’t have helped.” He ploughed on, “Do you wish to stay here for a while until you feel safe enough to find a place of your own? I assume you’re not planning to return to him.”
    She shook her head. “I’m not going back—ever—and I don’t rightly know what I’m going to do. I can’t work at the library again—he’ll look for me there—so maybe I ought to bugger off to another town or something, get completely away.”
    “Maybe.”
    He stood slowly and walked into the laundry room. The quick wash he’d set her clothes on had finished, and he transferred them to the dryer. “Your clothes will be ready soon,” he said as he returned to the kitchen. “Shall we go into the living room so you can warm up a little more? I’m worried you might suffer from a chill and want you as warm as possible.”
    She cocked her head, giving him a quizzical look, as though his concern was utterly foreign to her, and he guessed that it undoubtedly was.
    “I don’t know why you’d give much of a shit, but yes, that would be nice.”
    He let her walk ahead of him and smiled at her word choice. Despite her way of speaking having initially made him cringe, he found her openness, her honest answers, refreshing. Especially since she’d now given him a brief description of her life prior to finding herself here. That she felt comfortable enough with him to revert back to her old ways was a step in the right direction. Her Master hadn’t completely cowed her, hadn’t stripped her of everything she’d been before she’d met the hateful man, and that was something to be grateful for.
    In the living room, she sat at