“What else am I supposed to buy?”

“Anything. Whatever you want.”

Ruby sighed. “I guess I’ll have to figure out what that is.”

She closed her eyes. Yvonne watched and listened as Ruby’s breaths grew slow and deep. After a few minutes, Yvonne got up from the bed, taking care not to disturb Ruby. Ruby didn’t stir. She was asleep.

Yvonne lingered at Ruby’s bedside, that feeling of concern she’d felt earlier striking her again. At the back of her mind, a voice whispered a single word.

Stay.

But that wasn’t an option. Yvonne couldn’t afford to get too attached to Ruby.

She slipped out of Ruby’s bedroom and shut the door behind her.

Chapter 13

Ruby wandered through the department store, her arms saddled with bags. She’d been shopping all morning and half the afternoon, with the intention of buying something for herself. Once again, she’d ended up with nothing other than more clothes and shoes.

Her feet ached, and she couldn’t carry anything more. She was ready to go home. But she still hadn’t found what she was looking for. The problem?

She didn’t know what she was looking for.

She’d said as much to Yvonne that night. Ruby didn’t know who she was. She didn’t know what she wanted. She’d almost confessed the truth to Yvonne, about him, about who he’d been to Ruby, about everything he’d done. About how she’d gotten so used to becoming who he’d wanted her to be that she’d lost all sense of herself, of her identity.

In hindsight, she could see that it had been her way of coping with her situation. It had been easier just to be compliant, to do and say and be whatever he wanted. Ruby had always been the type of person who thrived on pleasing others on some level. He had taken advantage of that.

But that was all in the past. Now, Ruby had the opportunity to find herself again. She needed to figure out how to do that.

And buying another pair of shoes wasn’t the answer.

She sighed. It said something about Ruby that it was only because of Yvonne’s encouragement that she’d finally decided to figure out what she wanted. Here Ruby was, under someone else’s control again. But Yvonne was different. Despite her thirst for control, she wasn’t controlling. Whether they were in the bedroom or otherwise, Yvonne would provide Ruby with direction while allowing her to choose whether to follow it. In becoming Ruby’s Mistress, Yvonne had given Ruby a sense of stability that she hadn’t even known she’d needed. Yvonne was helping Ruby find her way, without even knowing she was doing so.

It made Ruby all the more determined to ensure she was holding up her end of the bargain, both as Yvonne’s ‘wife’ and as her submissive. But Ruby wasn’t sure what that entailed. What could someone like Yvonne possibly want? What did she need? The woman was a mystery.

Ruby stopped in the middle of the aisle and looked around her. She’d been wandering aimlessly in the maze of the department store for what felt like hours now, and she was lost. Somehow, she’d ended up in the kitchenware section. Ruby didn’t need any kitchenware. She didn’t even cook. Why would she cook when she could order a chef-prepared meal from a fancy restaurant every night on Yvonne’s dime?