Albie’s impressed, and so am I.
I stare at him in wonder as he shows us the rest of the lab and answers all of Albie’s questions.
“Thank you,” I tell him after Albie finally lets Faizan pull him away from Rashid’s makeshift lab to go upstairs and unpack. “Thank you for being so patient with him.”
He dips his head to the side. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be last summer. That’s why I’m making the waterproof Future Legs. When Albie comes back from his camp, helping me learn to surf on them will be an activity we can do together.”
“Albie will love that,” I say. At the same time I wonder, who does that? Who builds future tech for the son of his temporary lover?
Suddenly it all feels too real, too overwhelming.
I clamp my lips and look up at him for the first time since that night in Jahwar. Technically he’s hunched forward on the forearm crutch, but somehow he seems even taller than back then. Or maybe I just feel small right now.
“You’re a little afraid of Cyborg me,” he guesses.
Now it’s my turn to dip my head, embarrassed. “A little,” I admit.
“Tech does that to some people,” he tells me with a teasing smile. “It’s okay.”
Is it?
“You’re more confident now.” I think I’m reassuring myself as much as I’m complimenting him. “And you’ve found a way to return to being kind. I’m proud of you.”
“Yes, I’m more confident. But as for kind...”
His legs hiss as he takes a step forward, then another until the next thing I know, my back hits a wall. “Not with you.”
“What do you mean?” I’m pinned between his bionic body and the lab’s ungiving wall with his crutchless hand braced against the wall on side of my head. And even though he’s not touching me, I can sense his erection, just mere inches away from my stomach.
His eyes darken, and he looks at me. Just looks at me, his gaze chewing me up. “Four days until Albie goes to camp. That means four more days until I give you the punishment you deserve.”
“Punishment…” I repeat. Breathless, though I haven’t moved. “Punishment I deserve for what…”
His eyes scan my face, glittering and hot. “I will punish you, Mika.” We’re no longer on the phone, and this time there’s no hesitation as he explains, “I will punish you for making me feel this way.”
I was so bold last summer. Such a drill sergeant. But now I don’t have the guts to ask the next obvious question. What way?
He smirks. Probably sensing he’s won this round.
Then he pushes away from the wall and walks away.
Leaving me to wonder just what this punishment of his will entail.
22
MIKA
“Dad’s doing unbelievably better, right?” my sister says, her voice happy and bright.
“Totally,” I murmur, my thoughts stuck on Rashid and everything that has happened since my return.
Three more days…that’s what he said on Thursday when we went over the consent contract. There are two levels of safe words.
Breakdancing. That means I’m getting scared.
Robot. That means I want him to stop.
There’s also Ice Cream—that means I like it, keep going, please.
I checked “Open” to everything on his list of possibilities after figuring out that I could slow down or stop whenever I wanted. It felt like a “treat yourself” for my curiosity. But when it came time to fill out my goals and fantasies section, I admitted that I didn’t have any of my own.
“You had no ideas about what you wanted from this when you agreed to this arrangement?” he asked, lifting a brow.
“No, I just wanted you.” I admit. I feel like a Catholic school girl again, back in confession.
He looked away, cleared his throat, and suddenly the cold, polite mask returned as he said, “We’ll revisit the topic tomorrow.”
“I can’t believe how well the drugs and his therapy are still working,” Jazz enthuses.
“Me either.”
Two more days…that’s what he said on Friday, when I came in to clean his workout room lab.
“You know this is just for show until Albie leaves,” he told me, leaning in close but not quite touching me. Again. No, I didn’t know that.
“Have you given any more thought to your goals and fantasies?” he asked. I grimaced and told him that I guessed my number one goal was to figure out what I liked…what I could handle.
His eyes had darkened. “That’s a good goal,” he answered. “We’ll figure it out together.”
“Just yesterday Dad went kite-surfing with Bruno Mars and Iz,” Jazz tells me. “It was so dope. They all put on a big concert after. We really rocked out.”
“Wow, that’s great.”
One more day…he’d told me this morning, when I popped into the gym to tell him I was headed over to Pearl City with Albie to visit my family.
He was sitting on the floor with his back braced against a weight bench
“What are you doing?” I’d asked.
“Waiting for Torture” he answered.
I hadn’t understood what he meant until a huge Samoan-looking guy with a Pacific Hawaii University SCI Center shirt had appeared. He had that “will never stop working out ever” look of a former Marine.
“This is Torture,” Rashid had said, using one of his forearm crutches to stand on his bionic leg. “The physical therapist who I’m also consulting with on Future Legs.”
“The ladies call me Loto, though,” Torture told me, sticking out a hand.
“Oh my God, it’s great to meet you!” I’d been so happy to find out that Rashid was finally seeing a therapist, I’d rushed over to take his hand and introduce myself. “I’m…”
“Oh, I know who you are, Mika,” the huge PT had said with a laugh before I could finish the introduction. “All of this. He’s doing it for you.”
He's doing all of this for me? I hadn’t known how to respond to that. How to feel. Loto/Torture couldn’t possibly be right about that. Rashid understood this was totally temporary. Right?
“Mika?” Jazz says somewhere in the distance.
“Hmm?”
“I don’t think you’re really listening.”
I blink, pulling myself from the memory of this morning in Rashid’s lab office back to the lanai where Jazz and I are watching Albie play chess with his grandpa.
“Sorry. I just have a lot on my mind.”
“Yeah, I bet,” Jazz says. “But don’t worry, I wouldn’t have recommended this camp for Albie if I didn’t believe he really had talent. And I promise to check on him, whenever I’m there for classes. But I really don’t think he’s going to have any problems there.”
“Thanks,” I mumble, feeling the mom-guilt on several fronts. I hadn’t been thinking of Albie at all. In fact, even though Rashid had yet to touch me, I’d been all hot and bothered just thinking about what would happen when Albie leaves.
“How are you doing for money?” I ask, changing the subject. “Can I write you a check?”
Jazz holds up her hands. “No, we’re okay.”
“Seriously, Jazz, if I can do anything—”
“Everybody’s fine. Stop worrying,” Jazz assures me.
Mom comes out with a special surprise. Five bowls of homemade halo-halo! And, just in case shaved ice topped with a scoop of mango ice cream, sweet beans, several fruits preserved in syrup, and both evaporated and condensed milk isn’t sweet enough, she also has cans of Hawaii Sun Pass-O-Guava to go all around.
“You’re going to have Dad on diabetes meds too, soon,” Jazz teases. But she tucks right into the dessert after she pops open her can of POG, as locals call the mix of passion fruit, orange, and guava juice.
“It’s okay! It’s a celebration! My only grandchild is here,” she says with a pointed look for the underperforming both of us. “And it’s been so long since I’ve seen either of my daughters.”
I pause mid-bite
and look over at Jazz. “What does she mean it’s been so long? You live here.”
“Oh, she didn’t tell you? She moved out last month to live on the North Shore instead of staying here with her own family.”
“You moved out?” I ask Jazz.
Jazz glances away. “Yeah…I wanted to live closer to work.”
A plausible enough excuse. The traffic between here and the North Shore seems to get worse every year. But… “How are you affording rent?”
Jazz shrugs. “You know.”
“No, I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
“I figured it out.”
“Figured it out, how?”
Whatever Jazz is about to say gets interrupted by a call. I pull my phone and silently curse when I see the unknown number.
“Another Bible verse call?” Jazz guesses.
I nod.
“You’d think after so long, they’d just give up.”
“Yeah, you’d think…” I double-click to send the call to voicemail.
A sudden, bad thought occurs to me. “Albie…do you think he’ll be safe at camp?”
Seeing the look on my face, Jazz sets aside her dessert to say, “Oh, sis, don’t worry. They’ve never threatened him before, right? And I’m teaching classes there three times a week. Everything’s going to be fine.”
She’s right. I think about how the one time Paco confronted me it was weirdly about Albie not recognizing him or visiting his grandparents. They wouldn’t hurt him. Not like they did Leon. Not like they would Rashid if they knew the real reason I was here.
Still…
All of this. He did it for you.
Memories of Leon assault my mind as a new transcribed Bible verse appears in my text messages. “Welcome back to Hawaii, whore. Watching you.”
This is why…my heart catches in my throat. This is why anything I have with Rashid can only be temporary. No matter what the next six weeks bring.
23
MIKA
The next day I drive Albie to the North Shore to drop him off at the boys’ cabin for the Pacific Oahu Surf Camp.
“Mom, stoooop, you’re embarrassing me,” he whines, when I tear up after hugging him, then depositing his duffel and surfboard. He looks over his shoulder at the other boys saying goodbye to their parents. Most of them have two—though this being Hawaii they come in many combinations, from same-sex to interracial to May/December and all the boring in-betweens. No one but me is crying, however.
“I can’t help it!” I wipe my tears. “This is the longest we’ve ever been apart.”
He gives me a stern look, but then caves and admits, “I’ll miss you too,” and gives me another hug.
And then he’s gone.
A flurry of wings flutter in my belly. And as I walk back to my car and pull out of the parking lot, I don’t know whether to feel guilty, bittersweet, nostalgic, or scared as I drive west to Diamond Head.
Then I pull up to the house, and I just don’t know how to feel. Like, at all.
Faizan left this morning. He announced at the breakfast table that much like the never seen Waseela, he’d decided to visit his family back in Pakistan.
“For the whole summer?” Albie asks. “But that means I won’t even get to see you.”
“Not for the entire summer,” Faizan promises with a wry smile. “Only for six weeks. Just like you.”
He was careful not to look at me as he talked to Albie, but I had no problem guessing who’d ordered this unexpected vacation.
Rashid.
Which meant that when I walked into that house, it would be just the two of us. For the next six weeks.
I sit in the car, gripping and ungripping the wheel. Trying to convince myself to get out.
Suddenly the phone buzzes with a text. It’s from Rashid.
“I heard your car pull in. Are you breakdancing?”
I can’t help but smile at his use of the safe word “breakdancing.” But even that little bit of amusement can’t stop me from wanting to shit bricks right now.
“Totally breakdancing,” I admit. Right now, I feel even more vanilla than I did at the consent contract signing, which had turned out to be more of a discussion than a negotiation.
My stomach cramps, twisting with both craving and fear.
“It’s okay. We’re setting the tone today. Nothing from the list.”
I swallow down more confusion. Now I don’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed. What is wrong with me? Do I really think I can do this?
As if sensing I’m spiraling, a new message appears. “Come inside.”
That command somehow gets me moving. Taking a deep breath, I get out and walk through the carport door. The house I notice, as soon as I walk in, is closed up tight again, with all the windows down and tinted. So I can see out, but no one can see in from the ocean side.
My phone buzzes again. “Take off your clothes. Come to my bedroom. Leave your phone.”
More deep breaths. So many. But a few minutes later, I walk through the door of Rashid’s bedroom. Completely naked.
I find him sitting up in his bed, fully dressed in a t-shirt and cotton athletic shorts. Grey, of course. Dear God…
His eyes hood as he scans my body, taking his sweet time.
“No Future Legs?” I ask, glancing at his bare legs and trying to act like him looking at me naked isn’t totally freaking me out.
“Not for this,” he answers. “Come closer.”
I feel like a puppet being pulled forward by strings of curiosity and command, but stop when I see several bundles of rope beside him. They look like braided silken nylon and come in several different colors. Everything from ROYGBIV to black, white, and brown.
Rope play…that term had appeared on both the last Option A employment contract page and the consent agreement we signed a few days ago.
But I thought he said…
“This isn’t for today,” he tells me, following the direction of my gaze. “Come closer.”
I hesitate, then crawl onto the bed.
“Closer…” He gives the command again and again until I’m all the way in his lap.
“Pick a color,” he says, once I’m there.
I consider the choices and eventually point to the golden yellow.
In the next instant, his cock swells against my stomach, becoming shockingly hard. “That color’s going to look fantastic against your skin.”
He regards me with approving, warm brown eyes and pushes a lock behind one ear. But then he says, “This punishment is going to be as hard for me as it is for you. Maybe even harder.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that. What to say or do. I want him to kiss me. Reassure me. But I don’t know how to ask.
“Let’s go over the rules we discussed at the consent agreement signing. Do you remember?”
“Always naked in your bedroom. I do what you say. I never come without permission.”
“Will that last one be hard for you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s find out.”
“Put the ropes in my nightstand,” he instructs, as he lies back on the bed. “Then come sit on my face.”
I nearly choke on my own spit. We haven’t even kissed again yet and he wants me to sit on his face?
But I guess this falls under the “do as I command” rule.
I put away the ropes, then tentatively climb up his body and grab on to the headboard with my thighs on either side of his face. “I don’t want to hurt you,” I tell him.
“You won’t,” he assures me. “But if it makes you feel better. Three taps in a row mean stop.” He demonstrates, tapping my thigh three times. “Everything else means keep going. Unless you’re on the verge of coming, then you should stop.”
Okay, I guess this is the adventure part of sex I signed up for when I agreed to come back here after seeing that list. But as I lower myself down, I know I’m not going to like it. It made me all kinds of nervous and self-conscious
the one time a boyfriend before Alberto tried to go down on me. I can’t imagine getting into it when sitting on top of someone’s face.
But that long-ago boyfriend didn’t move his tongue like Rashid. He meets my first tentative hip circles with an all-out invasion, grabbing onto my hips and plunging his tongue into my pussy. Funny, I thought this would be a weird domination reversal, something he was doing to make me feel more comfortable with the situation. But I see how wrong I was about that when he moves his hands from my thighs to my breasts. He kneads them, pinching my nipples so hard, it hurts. I cry out, helplessly grinding myself into his face.
Don’t come…some practical voice in the back of my mind reminds me when I feel an aching erotic pleasure start to build inside of me. But it feels so good…
Don’t come, don’t come, don’t—
The voice cuts off when Rashid’s mouth finds my clit. And sucks.
Suddenly an orgasm is just happening. No build up. No warning. My whole body shudders as it sparks through me, caving in my back.
I look at the clock on the nightstand where I deposited the ropes. Five minutes. It couldn’t have even been five minutes and I’ve already broken one of the rules.
Mortified, I scramble off his face and collapse at his side. Eventually, I try to look at him, only to skitter my eyes away when I see his nose and mouth glistening with my essence. Because I couldn’t control myself.
“I’m sorry,” I start to say. “I didn’t mean to—”
One moment I’m at his side apologizing. And in the next, he’s hauled me on top of him.
It’s like lying on a wall. His upper body is all muscle, no give now. Including his cock. I can feel it underneath the cotton of his shorts, hard and pulsing against the top of my leg.
“No more apologies, only punishment for your failures and mistakes.”
Before I can answer, he curls a hand around my neck and pulls my mouth into his. The kiss is rough and all-consuming, like part of my punishment for coming in under five minutes is having to clean his face with mine. I can taste myself on his lips and tongue, tart and dirty.
So embarrassing, but also so hot. It’s just a kiss, but soon I’m grinding again. And my hand scooches downward, seeking out what my pussy needs.
RASHID: HER RUTHLESS BOSS: 50 Loving States, Hawaii Page 15
