A Reluctant Sadist's Painslut Ch. 01

This is the start of Cami and Zander's story arc that was first hinted in Her Daddy, Dom, and Neighbor in One. A crossover or two from A Dom's Best Friend also appears here. There is no sex in this first part, but I promise that will change in parts two and three.

***

I feel as if I've wasted my time here, Cami mused. She sipped with sullen, deep red lips, pursed in annoyance and thought. I've spent too much time trying to get Zander out of my mind, too much time trying not to be who I am in order to make myself palatable to him. And, for what? For him to make that declaration that siblings of friends shouldn't date the sibling's friend?

Not that she wished Cassie to disappear or to never exist, but her brother's determination of dating rules based on a laughable possibility of Cassie one day maybe having a relationship with Max, Zander's best friend, had really put a kink in Cami's plans.

Or, rather, it hadn't put a kink in those plans. Unbeknownst to many of her friends and all of her morally starched family, Cami was a closet kinkster. She simply mainstreamed really well.

From the time she was eighteen, Cami had sought out dominant personalities when she dated. Slowly her proclivities morphed further, and the partners she sought served as the Sadist to her masochist.

Pain was her drug; pain induced her high, as addictive as lines of coke that her cousin used to snort. Pain, paradoxically, made her feel alive.

A shrink would have a field day with her. Was her walk on the kinky wild side a result of the guilt from the failure to protect her much-more-outgoing cousin who overdosed on their shared eighteenth birthday? Or, more likely, was it a derivation of her self-defense mechanism coming into play to render herself disgusting to her secret love?

Zander Leland. Her best friend Cassie's older brother.

With deadened cerulean eyes, her thoughts drifted back to the time when she realized that he was the one.

***

Ellie was late for their shared birthday party. Her cousin's tardy behavior was nothing new; for months, her vivacious, popular cousin had been slipping away as her boyfriend introduced her to new and frightening substances to give her a fix, to make her more malleable to what he and his friends wanted to do with her.

Her best friend Cassie had helped plan the party, and she and her brother Zander, nine years their senior but hot in a way guys their age could never hope to be, walked toward Cami, twin worried expressions marring their brows, now furrowed.

Identical brown, chocolatey warmth echoed their concern for Cami. Cami, conversely, was furious. This was their eighteenth birthday, godamnit! How dare she!?

In frustration, Cami grasped her curly blonde locks-Zander had taken to calling her Goldilocks, as a joke, as of late-in two handsful and yanked, growling.

Zander struggled for levity. "Careful, there, Goldilocks. You sound a bit like Papa Bear, there."

Luckily, the other guests hadn't noticed her ire. Around them, people mingled and partied, oblivious to the other guest of honor's absence.

Cami's glare was cut off by the ringing of the doorbell. "Finally," she muttered stomping to the door. Cassie and Zander trailed behind, as confused as Cami when a grim-faced policeman was revealed on the opposite side of the door.

Something deep down caused her to realize instantly that something was incredibly wrong, that Ellie wasn't just late for the party, that she would not be coming. Over the policeman's calmly sober explanation, Cami's heartbeat thundered, drowning out his words. The horrible pity in his eyes conveyed his message, though.

Great gulping breaths and hysterical laughter brought Cami up short for a few seconds, only for her to realize that the sounds came from her. Anything to drown out his words.

Ellie. Was. Dead. Overdose. Her cousin, as close to her as if she had been her own twin, was gone. Gone forever.

Whirling, Cami sought out safety in the confusion that brought acidic chunks up past the barrier of her throat. Her eyes settled on Zander's soft gaze, and she allowed her vision to fill only with his face until everything faded to black.

* * *

In the days that passed, Zander and Cassie were never far from Cami's side. They bolstered her, twin columns of supportive determination, flanking her, at Ellie's funeral.

Cami stayed at their parents' house, and Zander, who had moved out several years before, slept by her bedside each night in the weeks that followed. Cami simply could not sleep without his strong fingers laced with hers, his calm, brown eyes steady on her face, and his warm voice talking about the mundane, anything really, to help guide her to sleep.

The few times that she had relied on Cassie to help her get to sleep, she ended up feigning slumber, as Cassie's ragged optimism hurt during her grief. Cami loved her friend dearly, but Cassie didn't understand how to help. Those nights were filled with guilty nightmares, of Cami screaming at Ellie to not go out, to stay home. On those nights, she awoke screaming. Zander would be the one to come running, auburn hair matted with sweat, chest bare and heaving. And he would slowly, patiently help her back to sleep again.

With Zander, she didn't feel as if she had to pretend that she was okay, or at least that things were getting better.

Her days leading up to college were spent on the lake with Zander, quietly absorbing nature in all its wholesomeness in an effort to blot out the ugliness of Ellie's boyfriend's arrest and trial. The charge was manslaughter; a jury quickly found him guilty the following year.

In August, Zander and Cassie worriedly looked at her as she defiantly glared back at them. "The plan was for us to go to college, Cassie. We were going to room together. You and me and-Ellie," Cami broke off, biting her lip, swearing resolutely that THIS time, she wouldn't cry simply from attempting to say her cousin's name.

Cami turned away to regain control of her emotions, but soon she felt the enveloping warmth of Zander's brotherly hug. With a deep breath that only tilted into shudders at the end, she inhaled the fresh scent of the outdoors that clung to him like the most erotic of colognes.

She shoved down those thoughts. Zander did not feel that way about her; she was the burden, his kid sister's grieving, fucked-up best friend, not the femme fatale to woo away this man nine years older than she.

"It's okay; I don't mind. My apartment is less than half a mile away from campus," Zander rationalized, his breath warm in her ear. Resolutely, she tamped down those newly confusing feelings of lust.

With a definitive shake of her head, she responded with an unequivocal "No."

She glanced over at Cassie and winced. Her brightly optimistic friend appeared more like the proverbial puppy that had been kicked. "Why not?" Cassie whispered.

Zander's comforting hand smoothed her blonde waves. "Yes. Why not, Goldilocks?"

"Because we will cramp your style, Mr. Hotshot Attorney." With a pang, Cami wrenched from his delicious grasp. "And you will cramp ours." Looking to Cassie for support, she continued. "We are going to be college girls. This is our first taste of freedom. And the last thing either of us needs is our de facto brother-well, you are Cassie's actual brother-raining on our parade."

A hooting laugh alerted the trio to the presence of the understood fourth of their group of late, Zander's best friend Max Phillips. "Cami has you there. You remember our wild university days, right, Zan?"

Zander's wolfish grin and the complicated "man handshake" were his only responses. Cami looked from one to the other expectantly, hoping for further explanation, but none was forthcoming. Then, Zander's concerned brown orbs slide to Cami, capturing the gaze of her bright blue eyes. "I just want to make sure that you will be okay."

Wincing from that implied reminder that Cami equaled burden, she ground out, "I'll be fine."

Those words would haunt her as they moved into the cramped, two-person dorm room and began their courses of study. Ever with an eye brightly on the future, Cassie tackled her early childhood education classes with gusto, humming happily each night as she read and studied.

Cami, by contrast, floundered in her first few weeks. Originally an English major, she found she could no longer find comfort in the classics. Several sleepless nights caused a concerned Resident Advisor to recommend counseling.

It was in the counselor's office at the health unit on the sprawling university campus, that Cami broke down completely-and slowly began to heal. Her first few sessions were unremarkable. Cami responded to the counselor's softly probing questions with shrugs and other non-commital responses.

During her fourth visit, Cami espied a photograph on the counselor's desk. Her "Who is that?" was meant to elicit a bland response, but her glance back at the older woman's dark eyes revealed the same grief she herself had felt the weight of the last several months.

"My sister," Dr. Layton revealed with a sad, tight-lipped smile. "She passed away five years ago. A drug overdose."

"I'm so sorry," came Cami's polite reply, but Dr. Layton's explanation unlocked the key holding back Cami's grief.

Slow, trickling tears quickly morphed into gulping sobs as she struggled, incoherently, to explain her reaction. "My cousin. Ellie. She was. Supposed to be. Here. Drug overdose. March. Eighteenth birthday."

Cami's reaction seemed to guide Dr. Layton back into her mien as a counselor. Having read Cami's file with her vital statistics, she asked, "Your eighteenth birthday was when she overdosed?" She handed Cami a tissue and watched as it quickly absorbed moisture and was shredded by the girl's clenching fingers.

Cami shook her head. "Both of ours. We shared the same birthday."

Even Dr. Layton's counselor training couldn't hide her shock. "I'm so sorry."

Curled into a fetal position on that dreaded chintz couch in the counselor's office in the health unit, Cami began to heal.

* * *

Several months later, in February, Cami exited Dr. Layton's office with lightness in her heart. Her counselor had agreed that addiction counseling would be a good fit for her, career-wise.

Unseasonably warm, even for Dallas in February, the sun shone on Cami's bare shoulders and, as she tilted her face up to feel the heated rays, on her soft smile of satisfaction.

Which is why she missed seeing the approaching familiar figure until she bumped into him-quite literally. "Cami!" Zander exclaimed, righting her, his fingers brushing the inside of her elbow. "Cassie said you would be here!"

Face flushed, Cami stepped back from his warm hold with the inconvenient feelings his touch wrought. "I was just meeting with Dr. Layton," she said, inexplicably nearly tongue tied. She glanced up at her, for lack of a better word, crush.

"A good session?" Zander's auburn hair had been professionally tamed and styled into what Cassie and she privately agreed was a "lawyer cut."

Cami nodded. "Mmhmm. I told her that I've decided on my new major." She trailed off without naming the major.

"And? That is?"

She let the pause lengthen. Cassie, while always a supportive best friend, had initially tried to talk her out of her decision. With steely determination, Cami responded evenly, "Counseling. With a focus on addictive personalities."

Again, she felt Zander's touch as his fingers curled around her shoulders, stopping her before turning her gently to face him. "You can do it, and be awesome at it. But Goldilocks," he whispered, "are you sure?"

Recognizing his question for what it was rather than an attempt to dissuade her, she nodded. "I couldn't save Ellie. But maybe I can save someone else."

His answering nod and glowing warmth in his gaze made her breath catch. "I'm so proud to call you a friend," he whispered folding her in his arms. For a few moments, her heart beat against his and she reveled in the closeness.

But, then, his phone rang. Breaking away with an apologetic, sheepish grin, Zander answered the call, "Jenny, hi. Yes, I'm on my way to pick you up. That sounds like a great choice for a movie."

With a sinking heart and a death of her crush on Zander, Cami realized that he was making plans for a date with a woman who, unlike her, was older, not a burden, and not a fuck up.

When he ended the call, she managed to put a blankly innocuous expression on her face. "A new girlfriend?" she queried, injecting what she hoped was the right amount of teasing banter into her tone.

Tapping her nose with one finger, Zander responded, "Maybe. If she plays her cards right. Are we still on for Saturday?" Their standing arrangement was a rowboat across the lake, their time to catch up on everything new in the other's life.

"Of course," she whispered, smiling past the bile that rushed to the back of her throat. "But I've got to run, literally. My psych study group is expecting me to meet them across campus in ten minutes. See you Saturday!" she called behind her as she jogged off.

* * *

Shortly after that day, Cami met her first Dom. A grad student who served as a TA in her intro psych class, John Grant noticed the shell she encased herself in to get through her days. While she was healing from her grief over Ellie's death, she was not one-hundred percent "better."

Within three weeks, he had broken her shell to reveal the needy submissive beneath the facade. His lack of Sadism is what led to their split six months later as he realized that he could not give her what she needed.

A succession of others, some Doms and some Sadists filled the void over the next few years. Her meetings with Zander on the lake grew more sanguine and further apart. Naked ambition and motivation to help others who were in the position that Ellie had been in caused her to graduate in three years and become a full counselor two years later at a non-profit rehabilitation facility.

Cassie, of course, graduated and went on to become a teacher, moving into a picture-perfect house right next door to Max. Cami found herself inheriting her parents' house upon their deaths, next door to the house Zander had purchased only a year before.

With their new neighborly status, their Saturdays on the lake had begun anew. Both seemed to take that time to quietly relax from the stresses of their jobs. By unspoken agreement, they did not discuss their romantic and sexual relationships. Until one day...

* * *

Letting loose in the hot spring weather, Cami lay back in her barely there red string bikini that matched the signature deep scarlet of her lipstick and nails. Blood red, she would describe the color, to the discomfiture of others. From years of running herself ragged literally, her body was toned, yet her bikini revealed the curves her usual pantsuits and dresses strove to conceal.

She wasn't as busty as Cassie, but, then, on her petite frame a DD cup would have appeared disproportionate.

Not for the first time, Zander glanced her way and felt a tightening in the region of his crotch. Think of anything else. Think of pollution. This is Cami, Cassie's best friend, for Chrissakes!

In repose, she appeared a siren come to lure him to his doom. Stretching in the warmth, her back arching sinuously led him to groan, cursing his undersexed cock. How long had it been since he and Chloe had broken up? Two months? He needed to get some pussy and soon, he decided resolutely.

Just as soon as he bought his dream boat-literally. He and Max were supposed to go next weekend to purchase it, and he looked forward to time on the lake with Cami in the bikini. No, he corrected himself. You are looking forward to seducing a hot honey in the hold. NOT CAMI!

He hit on something that had been bothering him lately. "Have you heard from Cassie recently?"

Sitting up slightly, Cami slid her black sunglasses down her nose to reveal bewildered blue eyes. "Uh, yeah. I talk to her every day. She's my best friend, remember?"

Glaring, he bit back a retort, but plunged ahead with his thought process. "Has she said anything to you about anyone she's dating lately?"

Cami blinked a bit in the hot spring sun and slid her sunglasses back in place. "Yeah. A bit. A guy she's talking to online. But she's playing it safe."

Zander growled. "There is no playing it safe online. That's where all the deviants hang out, Sadists and the like."

His remark stung Cami in a way that he couldn't have known it would.

"I never thought you would be so judgmental," she said in what she hoped was a nonchalant voice.

"It's not being judgmental," he fired back. "Wanting to inflict pain to get a hard on is wrong."

Some part of her couldn't help but arguing, "But what about getting wet from receiving pain?"

"Look," he said, realizing something about this conversation upset her, "I know you studied all sorts of psychology. But you would have to admit, that there is something wrong with people who are either of those types."

"Wrong?" Her response cooled the atmosphere by several degrees, rendering the hot day downright chilly in the tiny rowboat.

"Well, yes," he answered defiantly. Both were panting heavily. His eyes dropped from her eyes hidden behind the dark shades to her breasts barely held in check by the triangles of the bikini top.

Noting his regard, she breathed, "Zander," and then he was over her, his lips crushing hers in a caress that was anything but tentative. Hunger for her spiked his adrenaline, and his kiss deepened until she mewled softly in the back of her throat.

He pulled back as if scorched. "Goldi-"

"No. Don't apologize. Don't!" she thundered when it appeared that he would.

"But?"

She shook her head, her blonde curls scattering around her head haphazardly. Unfortunately, her boobs also scattered, almost leading to a wardrobe malfunction.

With grim faced determination, the bikini-clad addiction counselor grabbed the oars and started rowing toward the dock.

As the boat hit the dock with a gentle rat-a-tat-tat, Zander quickly tethered it. Cami gulped, noting his facility at tying knots, trying desperately not to imagine those knots against her skin, the constriction. On shaky legs, she exited the boat, walking briskly away from the temptation of Zander.

"Goldilocks, wait up!" His familiar footfalls soon fell even with hers. "We have to talk."

"What is there to talk about?" she countered, hoping to nudge him into ignoring her.

He grasped her hand, and she again felt the energy passing between them. "This. Whatever happened back there. What happened between us."

"That's sexual attraction, hormones. Curiosity. I've...wondered what it would be like with you. Have you wondered the same about me?" Cursing herself, she realized that her voice sounded breathy, needy for his answer in the affirmative.

He stopped, and his hold also caused her to pause. Glancing up, she noted the darkening of his gaze for what it was: desire.

Time, like the old cliche, seemed to stop. One shared breath. Another. Then, his self-admonishing answer, "Whether I have or haven't doesn't matter. You are Cassie's best friend. I am her brother. It would be like Max dating Cassie. That can never happen."

He watched her eyes absorb the hit, go from a soft dreamy blue to a rocky lapis. Her posture, tender and malleable, straightened as if a broom handle. "Goodbye, Zander," she spoke formally.

***

Three hours later found her in that seat at Lashesexxx, lips pursed, the attention of several males focused on her.

With a gradual return to the present, Cami felt one of those pairs of eyes on her. The bartender's almost silver gaze burned like ice through her.

His auburn hair strongly resembled Zander's, and she took a hit of her Jack on the rocks, her lips twisted more from her folly about thinking of Zander than the bitter bite of the amber liquid.