by Megan Hart
“I’ve met someone,” Madeline said despite her hesitation.
Mitsoku’s eyebrows lifted. “Tell me!”
“He’s a very nice man. A doctor, here in Ohio. We met through a mutual friend.” It was the smallest of untruths, not really a lie.
“Will we meet him at Christmas?”
Madeline shook her head. “I’m not sure. I suppose, if we are still seeing each other then and he doesn’t have other plans, you might.”
“Good,” her daughter said. “I’ll be happy to meet him.”
They spoke of other things after that, nothing serious, and by the time they signed off, Madeline was stifling a yawn behind her hand. “I love you, Mitsoku-chan.”
“I love you too,” her daughter replied, to Madeline’s surprise.
Fifteen minutes later, tucked into her bed, Madeline had just set her phone on the nightstand when it hummed with another call. She’d been ready for sleep, but checked it anyway, in case it was Mitsoku again, or who knew, maybe Kenji. She smiled at the sight of the name on the screen.
Eric.
Twelve
The past week had felt more like a year. Eric had been half-hoping Madeline would have sent him away for the weekend with a list of instructions, at the very least including a command that he call her every night or somehow check in, but she hadn’t even asked him where he was going or why. It was too soon for that, and he knew it, and he appreciated her reticence and respect for his privacy even as he was already wanting to tell her everything. To obey her, whatever she asked.
The morning before he left for Pennsylvania, he’d woken in Madeline’s bed after a final night of teasing and denial that had left his balls aching so much he thought he might not be able to stand wearing pants. It was the longest he’d ever gone without feeling resentful. That had to mean something, didn’t it? That he was willing, no, more than that, eager to let her dictate his orgasms?
The heavy sensation hadn’t let up. Nor had his thoughts of Madeline. Pain, pleasure the taste and shape and feeling of her beneath his hands, tongue, lips, teeth. The smell of her breath. The sting of her flogger and the bite of her fingertips when she pinched him. He’d been so distracted on the plane that the flight attendant had asked him three times if he wanted a beverage before he’d been able to coherently say yes.
He hadn’t felt this way about a woman in so long…hell, Eric had never felt this way about any woman, ever. If he cycled back his recollections to boyhood, he could pinpoint a lot of different situations and experiences that had shaped him into who he was today, even if he hadn’t been able to identify and accept his need for submission until he was an adult. He’d been in love before, a time or two. He’d had a few dominant partners. He’d never had both at the same time, had in fact, accepted the idea that he probably never would. Yet now…
It was too soon, he reminded himself even as his fingers tapped the phone’s screen to call her. They’d known each other too short a time. They had a connection, yeah. The sex was amazing, yes, not that they’d even had intercourse yet, but everything they had done so far had blown his mind even if Madeline had not yet allowed him to blow his load. Crude, he thought, but the weight of his balls and his aching cock made that phrase totally accurate. When she did allow him to come, he was going to blow like a volcano.
“Hello.” Her melodic accent came through the phone, soothing and arousing him at the same time.
“Hi. Is it okay that I called now?”
“Yes, of course,” she told him. “I was just getting ready to go to sleep. How’s your trip going?”
The truthful answer would be “terrible,” but then he’d have to get into a description of exactly what he was doing and why, and the day had been shit enough without going into all that, now. “It’s all right. I’ll be home Sunday night. Probably too late to see you.”
“That’s all right,” Madeline said.
Eric stretched out on the firm hotel room bed with one arm behind his head. He’d showered already. Naked, he shifted a little against the white sheets. His dick was half-hard just from the sound of her voice. “I don’t want it to be all right.”
“You want me to ask if you’ll be able to see me when you get home?” She laughed and dropped her voice to a whisper. “Are you aching for me, Eric?”
“Yes.” He groaned.
Madeline made the noise a woman makes when faced with a decadent slab of chocolate cake. His cock twitched, fully hard now, at the thought she might be imagining him as something she wanted to eat. A treat. The hand not holding the phone drifted toward his dick, but he held back. She hadn’t given him permission. He hadn’t asked for it, not wanting to seem like he was about to break so soon. Anyway, if he had and she’d said “no,” he wasn’t one hundred percent sure that he’d have been okay with it, that he wouldn’t have been able to stop himself from being grouchy about it, especially with being gone for the weekend and not even having the torture of pleasing her to at least partially sate him. They were still in the weird place where he didn’t want to screw this up. Still on his best behavior.
“I want to see you, whatever time you get in,” she said.
“I’ll text you when I land?”
She made that noise again, a murmuring sound of “yum.” After a beat, she added, “that will be lovely. I’ll be ready for you.”
“I’m ready for you,” he said. “God. I’m so, so ready.”
Madeline laughed. “I imagine so. Do you want to know how long I intend to make you wait?”
“No. Yes. No,” he repeated. “I’m not sure I’ll be able to handle it, if it’s a long time.”
“Fair enough.” She paused, and the sound of her soft breathing embraced him. “I’ll look forward to seeing you. I’m falling asleep now, though, and I’m afraid I won’t be a very good conversationalist for much longer.”
He was tired, too, more emotionally than physically. His visit with Harriett today had been stressful. “I’m ready for sleep, too. I’ll text you tomorrow when I land, okay?”
“Yes,” Madeline said. “That will be perfect.”
They said their farewells, and she disconnected first. Eric put the phone on the nightstand and lay back against his pillows. He wanted to touch himself, but did not, despite knowing that Madeline would never know if he did. He’d know it, though, and he wanted to be for her just what she’d said.
Perfect.
There’d been little change in Harriett since his last visit. She was neither improving nor failing, but simply existing in the same limbo in which she’d been trapped for the past few months. Eric knew there wasn’t much that could be done except to make sure she wasn’t in pain or distress. He knew, too, that she could die at any time, without warning, that she might simply slip away into the darkness while she slept, and the chances that he would be there for her final breaths were very small.
He’d finished reading the book to her, and Harriett had smiled for some parts of it, even when her eyes remained closed. He’d just closed the book and tucked it into his messenger bag, meaning to leave it for the nurses at the desk in case any wanted to read it, when Karen arrived. She scowled at the sight of him and moved immediately to her mother’s other side to take Harriett’s gnarled fingers.
“I’ll go,” Eric said mildly when Karen didn’t bother to even acknowledge him.
She frowned, refusing to look at him. “I’m having you served with papers. You’re going to be banned from here.”
Harriett’s daughter had been threatening that for a long time, but something in her voice sounded less like a threat, more like a promise. Eric sighed. “Karen…”
“Oh, shut up,” she snapped. “I don’t want to hear it. You have no idea what it’s like, do you? You waltz in here once a month or so —”
“I come when I’m able to,” he interrupted.
She twisted to glare at him. “Why can’t you just leave her be? She doesn’t even know who you are, anymore!”
“She knows who I
am. She might not be able to talk, but she knows. And, Karen…” Eric’s voice softened. “She knows who you are, too. She does. I know it’s hard to see her this way. You have to understand and believe that she knows you’re here.”
Karen’s shoulders hunched. He might have had some pity for her, if she hadn’t spent so much time being such a bitch about everything, and not only to him, but to her mother, too. He could try for compassion, maybe. Empathy. But it wasn’t going to be worth the effort.
“I don’t understand,” Karen said.
Eric paused, not sure what to say. Harriett’s daughter turned to face him. She didn’t look much like her mother, not even sharing a resemblance to the photos he’d seen of Harriett in her youth. Karen, he knew, had been married and divorced twice. Her mother had said she was a sour, bitter person, and he’d never seen any evidence to the contrary.
“I don’t understand,” she repeated.
Eric shrugged. “You don’t have to understand. I guess you don’t even have to accept it. I Just wish, for your sake, and your mom’s, that you’d…hell, Karen. I wish you’d at least just stop chewing on it. You can’t change it. You can’t make it so that it never happened. Harriett was never embarrassed about her relationship with me, and I know she wished you’d never let it embarrass you.”
He wasn’t going to get through to her, and he didn’t have time to try, anyway. His flight would be leaving in an hour and a half, and he wasn’t going to risk missing it. He wanted to get back to Dayton. To Madeline.
Guilt pricked him as he left the room without stopping to force his way past Karen so he could kiss Harriett goodbye. She wouldn’t know, he told himself. She barely knew he was there, she wasn’t going to know he’d left her without a proper goodbye.
Three hours later, he was texting Madeline from his car. She’d said he would be able to see her, and he wanted to. Needed to. By the time he got there, tension had risen and coiled inside him, twisting and tight, and only the smallest part of it was sexual.
“Hello,” she greeted him at the front door, but whatever else she’d been meaning to say did not leave her lips as she furrowed her brow at the sight of him. “Oh, my. Come in.”
“I’m tired,” Eric said.
He wanted to tell her about Harriett. Of how it had felt to discover himself through the older woman’s care, how they had met and been together and how it had been something precious and wonderful, no matter how Karen tried to turn it into something nasty. He wanted to tell Madeline how he knew he was going to lose Harriett soon. How it would be an unbearable pain and an equally unbearable relief. Something held this back, though, like telling her would make it all too real, and it might…he didn’t know what. Might frighten her away from him, to learn that he still had ties to a woman he had loved and who had loved him? Right now, he didn’t have the strength to explain it all.
“Then come to bed,” Madeline said. “Come to bed with me.”
She undressed him and, naked, they spooned with her behind him. She kissed the back of his neck. His cock stirred, but he didn’t say anything about it. He wanted to fuck for release, but not like this. Not their first time.
Madeline hummed a tune he didn’t know, but it soothed him. She ran her hands over his shoulder. His arm. Over his belly and chest. Her soft warmth, breasts, belly, the brush of her pubic hair against his back, all became a comfort. She knew exactly what to do for him.
“I’m so grateful to have met you,” Eric said.
Madeline was silent for a moment before answering. “I feel the same way.”
He waited, thinking she might try to get him to talk about what was so clearly upsetting him, but Madeline simply nuzzled and petted him. The tension melted. He sank into the pillow, his eyes closing.
“Do you think you’ll ever change your mind?” His words came out mumbled and slurring a little with his exhaustion. “About us. This.”
She kissed the back of his neck again. His shoulder blade. “You never know what something might become.”
“Would you let me try to make this become something?”
Silence. He was still on the edge of sleep, but not there yet. She would say no. Kindly, but firmly. He knew it. Still, he’d needed to ask.
“I want to hurt you, Eric, but I do not want to be the thing that hurts you.”
They said nothing for a while after that. He dozed and woke when she shifted to turn out the lights and pull the sheet up over him. They settled back into bed, this time with her head on his chest.
“Let me try,” he whispered with his fingers tangled in the length of her silky hair.
Madeline’s hand ran up and over his belly and chest. She plucked at the piercing in his nipple. “I don’t think I can stop you.”
“Do you want to?”
“No,” she said.
Thirteen
Madeline hadn’t been expecting Eric’s efforts at wooing her to start so soon, but in the morning she’d woken to find a note scribbled in his scratchy handwriting, asking her to meet him for a date that very night when he was finished with his shift. The cynical part of her assumed much of this was because she had not yet permitted him to come, and a week was, while not an enormous length of time, certainly long enough that he was surely starting to feel restless about it.
Surprisingly, it was Olivia’s friend Sarah who convinced Madeline to make the date. Madeline had bumped into her at a local coffee shop, recognizing the other woman’s distinctive blue hair and ready smile at once. Alex had succeeded in luring Sarah to Dayton, and they both had a laugh about it.
“I needed a change of scenery, and Olivia’s my best friend. If I didn’t pick up and move here, I was going to keep spinning around in circles of my own misery,” Sarah had explained.
“You don’t strike me as the sort to spin in misery of your own making.”
Sarah had laughed. “No. I try not to be.”
Madeline did not want to be the sort to spin in her own misery, either. She could not keep telling herself she was avoiding the possibility of a lasting relationship because she was pragmatic. She had to admit she was simply…scared.
She had texted Eric to assure him that she would be making their date. He’d taken her to a fancy steakhouse, first making sure she liked steak — a small gesture that nevertheless meant much, since many men simply assumed without confirming her tastes. Now, the server showed them to a table toward the back. Dim lighting. A curved booth.
“Romantic,” Madeline said.
Eric laughed as they slid into it. “That’s the idea, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose it is. A-plus for effort,” she told him.
“Wine?” He plucked up the menu and scanned it before offering it to her.
Madeline shook her head. “You choose.”
Eric nodded and looked over the menu again. When the server, a young woman with pale hair tied on top of her head in the shape of a bow, came to ask for their drink order, he chose a Merlot. The bottle.
“Very nice,” she said when the server had gone.
Eric reached across the table to take her hand. He linked their fingers together. “It’s what you like, isn’t it?”
“It is.” In the candlelight, she studied the lines and curves of his face. The shadows. His dark eyes. His white, straight teeth in that broad, easy smile. The thick dark hair, a little too long.
He was so handsome, although perhaps not classically so. Attractive might be a better descriptor, because that encompassed everything about him that appealed to her, and it wasn’t all necessarily related to his physical features. The full package, so to speak.
“What are you thinking?” Eric asked.
His question surprised her. “You.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I want you to be thinking about me. What are you thinking?”
“About how attracted I am to you. How this,” she squeezed his fingers, “is a delight. How much I enjoy being with you, but also how much I enjoy hurting you. Watching your face
when you feel that pain.”
Eric hissed out a low sigh. “Thank you.”
“I think I should thank you, Eric. It’s been ages since I had anything like this.”
“A date?”
She laughed. “That, too.”
“You deserve to be taken out. Treated like a queen. I want to give that to you,” Eric said as the server arrived with the wine.
Poured, sniffed, tasted, the dark red liquid gleamed in their glasses as they raised them to clink together. Madeline sipped it. She smiled.
“Delicious and perfect. Like you,” she said.
Oh, how she adored the way he looked when she praised him that way. Dark eyes gone darker, sweet, luscious mouth a little lax. A few simple words and his arousal was so clear. He shifted on the chair, and she imagined his cock thickening. The thought of it made Madeline want to squirm a little, herself. She had not lacked orgasms over the past week or so, but she had been denied the pleasure of sharing his.
“Have you had a chance to decide?” The server had reappeared.
“Sorry,” Madeline said smoothly without looking away from Eric. “We’ve been too busy gazing adoringly at each other to even look at the menu.”
The server chuckled. “I’ll give you a few more minutes, then.”
“You decide for us,” Madeline told him when the girl had left them.
His eyebrows rose a little. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. I like to be taken care of in that way.”
He nodded. “All right, then.”
Eric glanced over the menu, then at her, while Madeline sipped her wine and watched the back-and-forth scanning of his eyes. He paused, brow furrowing, with a small smile. He looked up at her again and snapped the menu closed.
“You’ve decided, then?” she asked.
“Oh, yes. I hope you’re hungry.”
“Famished,” she said, and the purr of her own voice surprised her.
