The Agreement

by Lund, S. E.

I frowned. Drake understood.

  "He always sees everything, every event, every word, for its strategic purpose. How it can aggrandize him and our family – or hurt us. He doesn’t really pay attention to people. What he said about those photographs being key to what makes me tick? He thinks it means I'm some great humanitarian – some angel of mercy – but really, I was just a student looking for a topic for my honors thesis. I had no idea what I got myself into."

  "You didn't like Africa?"

  I said nothing for a moment, my arms wrapped around myself.

  "I hated it – the corruption. It was so hard. Painful. As soon as I could, I changed my topic. I couldn't do it. I'm not strong enough, but he can't see that because it would mean his daughter isn't up to snuff."

  "You saw the worst of the worst." He turned to me, trying to catch my eye. "Where the people have resources, they're full of hope. I see it in the hospitals. The young doctors and nurses – they've been trained in America and they want to raise their countries out of poverty."

  He pressed his shoulder against mine. I didn't say anything but I didn't move away either. It was kind of sweet what he did, trying to comfort me.

  "I admire you for going. You didn't have to so that does say something about you, what makes you 'tick'."

  "You'd be wrong to think that." My voice was bitter. "My father has no idea what makes me 'tick'. He practically chose my thesis topic and arranged everything. I wanted to do something on the fine arts, but no. It had to be political."

  Drake frowned. "Your father chose your honors thesis topic?"

  "You're surprised?" I turned away. "You obviously don't know my father."

  "What did you want to do?"

  I didn't say anything for a moment. Finally, I sighed. "What did I want to do? I wanted to do a series on young artists in Manhattan, and how they're using social media and new technology in their art, but that was too 'airy-fairy' for him, as he put it. He only sees art for its value as an investment, not for its social or cultural value. I tried to explain but he just dismissed me." I frowned, my emotions so close to the surface. "I was too much of a chicken to fight him and do what I really wanted."

  "I'm sorry." He sounded as if he actually meant it. "University should be a time when you explore who you are and what excites you. It shouldn't be a time to please your parents."

  I turned and looked at him, and it was one of the few times our eyes met – really met. I actually looked into his eyes, like it was for the first time, and it surprised me how much it affected me. I noticed once more how beautiful his eyes were – how blue, his eyelashes long and dark. In that moment, something passed between us. Attraction. I felt it in my belly, in my groin. In a moment of irrationality, I wanted him to lean over and kiss me, but he just smiled. Just a brief smile.

  Then he glanced away.

  The door opened and my father popped his head in.

  "Oh, here you are," he said and smiled. "I thought you two might have a lot in common. Sorry to interrupt, but my dear wife has announced that dinner is served."

  CHAPTER SIX

  Of course, my father seated Drake next to me. I was on one side of him with Drake next to me and Heath was on the other, with Christie next to him. My stepmother Elaine sat at the other end of the table. Quite the socialite, she knew how to entertain, always knowing the right thing to say.

  Drake smiled as he pulled my chair out for me, the perfect gentleman. I could tell he enjoyed this whole situation, amused that my father was trying to match us up. I didn't know why he was so pleased – my father probably saw Drake as prime Grade A marriage material and I knew Drake was not into that – not from what Lara told me when she and I spoke after the fundraiser. He had his marriage and divorce and wasn't into romance. He wanted his kinky sex and that was it. He had his work and he had his band and he had his subs. No girlfriends. No fiancé and certainly no wife.

  My father was so wrong about him it almost made me laugh out loud. Drake must have been chuckling up his sleeve at my clueless father trying to match me up with a Dominant in the BDSM community who only saw women as props for his sexual kinks.

  But there was that moment when Drake and I were in the bedroom when I felt something resembling humanity from him. No grin, no leer, no gloating superiority.

  Like he understood.

  I was probably just projecting. I couldn’t let myself get taken in by his suave exterior. He was a Dom and he wanted his way in all things. He probably figured he could use my father's desire to match me with him to get some kinky sex out of me. I'd have to do everything I could to dissuade him that I was available. I'd have to squelch the stupid physical attraction I had for him and for which I hated myself.

  I'd done everything I could to stay away from bad boys since Kurt but I got this crazy idea that I could research this world without getting mixed up in it. Drake was just too damn gorgeous for my own good.

  I ate my meal in silence, aware of him next to me, how he turned to me when he spoke with my father, but I refused to engage him. Still, I couldn’t help but notice everything about him – at least, everything about him from the neck down. I refused to look in those eyes of his. I always saw him laughing at me, a twinkle of pleasure or amusement in his eyes, and it infuriated me.

  Even his hands were gorgeous. Surgeon's hands. His fingers were long and tapered. Not huge meat hooks and I could imagine how they'd feel if he touched me. He was a doctor and knew the human body like no other and that did something strange to me. There was virtually no hair on his knuckles – maybe he scrubbed them so much, it wore off. He had a school ring on his finger and on the other hand was a large aquamarine. He had a leather strap of some kind on his wrist, with what looked like tooling, but I didn't want to look too closely or ask what it meant. I wondered if it wasn't a symbol of his bondage kink. Why else would a surgeon wear a leather strap on his wrist?

  The talk was pleasant enough – about the weather, sports teams, the wine, which Drake took pains to praise. He actually sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Boy, he sure knew how to flatter my father, who loved to show how he had refined taste in everything.

  It was like a love-fest between the two of them and I wanted to slam my knife down on the table and expose Drake for what he was just to see the look on my father's face but I swallowed my anger. If Drake even tried to move forward with this stupid agreement, I'd threaten to do just that.

  Luckily, Drake didn't try to engage me in a conversation, but my father did several times, trying to get me to tell Drake all about my Master's scholarship, my award for the investigative piece on West Africa, my volunteer work. What he didn't ask me to tell Drake about was what really mattered to me – art, my art. It was never any interest to my father, even when my teachers praised me and encouraged me to go into Fine Arts in college.

  I sat and steamed, angry at myself for letting my father rule my life.

  He was just so damn powerful, controlling and certain that everything he believed and did was right. He ran our home like a drill sergeant and his court like one as well. I heard talk of him, and I read some of his decisions. I wouldn't ever want to go before him if I was involved in anything slightly morally questionable.

  He could accept financial fraud. But moral failings?

  No.

  It wasn’t that he was truly religious. Far from it. Going to Mass was just for show and to make sure he kept the Roman Catholic community behind him.

  How he'd freak if he knew about Drake…

  It almost made me want to get involved with Drake just so I could turn to my father and say, "Look at your wonderful saint of a man, Daddy. He likes to tie me up and fuck me, make me crawl on my knees to him, kiss his foot."

  Wouldn’t that just about make him explode?

  I glanced sideways at Drake and he met my gaze, his expression dark, and it was like this current flowed between us.

  I tore my eyes away. I could never do it.

  Just. Never.

  Fin
ally, dinner was over and those of us not part of my dad's 'people' left for the living room while dad escorted the men into the study for his strategy session. As we left the dining room, Drake took my arm and stopped me.

  "Can we talk later?"

  I glanced at his hand on my arm. He didn't let go.

  "We have nothing to talk about."

  "Please? Just hear me out."

  I exhaled. My father stood in the hallway, and he kept glancing back to us, his eyes judging. As usual.

  "I was going to leave after we 'ladies' have our tea."

  "OK. I'll come by your place. Can we talk inside your apartment instead of through the door this time?"

  He grinned, and that smile made him look so sexy.

  "I'd rather you didn't come to my apartment."

  "Fine," he said. "Why don't you wait for me and I'll give you a ride home when we're done here."

  My dad came over, his eyebrows raised.

  "Hey, sweetie, you're detaining Drake. We have important business to attend to."

  I looked between Drake and my father. Drake nodded like it was OK.

  "We'll just speak in the car." His voice dropped to a lower register, sexy and deep and he had the audacity to hold three fingers up. "I won't come in. I promise. Scout's Honor."

  I exhaled. "Very well."

  He finally let go of my arm and he and my father walked off, my father's arm around Drake's shoulder like they were already father and son-in-law.

  If the situation wasn't so upsetting, it would make me laugh so hard at my father for being so out of it.

  Later, while I sat with Christie and Elaine, and we finished our tea, Elaine leaned over to me and smiled.

  "That Drake Morgan is something. Quite the catch."

  "Yes, he is, I guess." If you're fishing for sharks…

  I laughed to myself. If they only knew…

  I hung around until my dad finished meeting with 'his people' about his campaign for the House seat that was going to be vacant, all the while trying to talk myself into leaving before Drake came for me to drive me home. I could use my dad's limo service and go home by myself, but I just knew that Drake would come to my apartment and stand outside my door to say whatever it was he wanted to say.

  He wasn’t some college boy. He was a grown man. Divorced. A neurosurgeon. A Dominant. Trouble, like Dawn said that night in the bar. Oh, how right she was.

  I did date a 'nice guy' after Kurt and I broke up, but Greg was so nice, so accommodating, so into equality, that he wouldn't even kiss me first. I had to kiss him first, and it made me so insecure, like he wasn't really attracted to me, or didn’t really feel much desire for me.

  Stupid girl insecurities, but I was used to the guy making the moves. At least then you knew he wanted you.

  With Kurt, I always knew he wanted me. He said so, often. He told me how much he wanted me, and how often and how he wanted to do it. He'd whisper in my ear when we were in public and I'd be so ready when we got back to my apartment that I'd practically melt.

  Then, he started increasing the pressure on me, suggesting we role play and that he'd sneak into my apartment one night and be waiting for me to mock-rape me. He wanted to smack my ass while we were having sex. Even though he promised we'd agree to everything before hand, and would only do what I was comfortable with, it scared me. Yielding power.

  "Come on, sweet stuff," he said. "Everyone's adding in a bit of kink in their sex after those books."

  I said no. I told him I was just an ordinary girl, with ordinary vanilla tastes. I had no interest in getting my ass hit or being scared to death when entering my dark empty apartment late at night. He did it anyway, one night lying in wait for me, and it scared me so much, I screamed and threw something at him, almost hitting him in the head. I cried, and told him to leave.

  Then I called him over and over again, apologizing, asking him to come back and for us to work things out because he made me feel something again, for the first time after Mangaize.

  Like I was alive and filled with desire. Like I was wanted.

  Really wanted.

  He never spoke to me again.

  I had to look deep inside of myself to understand why I even tried to get him back, considering he didn't accept my 'no' about the mock-rape and spanking. Was I so desperate for male attention that I'd accept abuse?

  My mother would be horrified.

  Dawn told me to forgive myself, but I had a hard time and for months, I moped around my apartment, dressed in flannel pajamas, watching Seinfeld re-runs and eating Häagen Dazs. Now, here I was, with some other man hanging around me who liked to enforce his will over women, looking at me like I was a piece of steak he couldn’t wait to eat.

  Finally, the meeting broke up about an hour and a half after dinner finished and the men left, one by one, shaking my dad's hand and thanking us for the hospitality. I noticed that Drake hung back, taking his time, speaking to Christie and Elaine. Finally, he was the last one and I went to get my coat and bag while he shook my father's hand. The two spoke to each other in hushed voices.

  "What are you two conspiring about?" I kissed my dad on the cheek.

  "Us? Conspire?" My dad laughed. "Just how to take over the world." He smiled and glanced at Drake. I said my goodbyes to Elaine and Christie, and then Drake escorted me out of the apartment. Once the door to the suite closed, he put his hand on the small of my back and guided me gently towards the elevator.

  "I didn't think you'd actually wait for me." He pressed the button. "I thought you'd be long gone, so I'm pleasantly surprised."

  "I said I'd wait."

  The door to the elevator opened and I entered, Drake behind me. We stood side by side, with him just a bit behind me. He leaned over to press the floor button, and just happened to lean in close to me while he did, brushing against me. Was that a smirk on his face?

  "Why are you smiling?"

  "Oh, let's just said that I have a hard time riding alone in elevators with pretty women and keeping a straight face these days."

  I glanced away, my face heating. Oh. Right. The elevator scene…

  "Don't get any ideas."

  "Kate, I've already had so many ideas. And that's what I wanted to talk to you about."

  Oh, God… How do you handle a man telling you he's had ideas about being with you? A wave of something swept through me, leaving my knees just a bit weak.

  The elevator arrived in the basement and we went to the guest parking area and his car. He helped me in, then closed the door for me.

  What a gentleman. Opened the door for me, so chivalrous, but wanted to tie me up and make me kneel to him like a vassal to some feudal Lord.

  Of course, then I couldn’t get the image of me kneeling at his feet, naked, him fully dressed out of my mind. I thought of the movie 9 ½ Weeks and how the woman crawled on her hands and knees to her lover. I couldn’t stop the way my body responded to those images, even as I told myself it would be humiliating.

  "Well, talk away," I said, trying to get that image out of my mind.

  We drove out of the parking garage and through the streets towards my apartment. A light snow fell, huge flakes drifting down lazily.

  "I know it really upset you that I'm the one Lara was trying to match you with for your 'research'. You wanted anonymity and are embarrassed that I know who you are. I think we should still go through with the agreement you wanted – for one reason. Who could be safer than me?"

  I frowned. He wasn’t safe. He was a slippery slope.

  "How are you safe?"

  "I know and admire your father, so there's no way I'd want to screw things up with him. I admire you and don't want you to think less of me than you probably already do. I understand your need for anonymity, at least, for no one to find out what you're doing. You understand my need for secrecy, too. We're not going to expose each other."

  I watched out the window, not sure what I thought about what he said. Part of me thought he was right. He would be very car
eful. He understood.

  "Look, I know you're worried about your father finding out about your interest in BDSM," he said, his voice low. "But I'm well-respected in my field and I don’t want to screw that up. If people found out I frequent fetish nights and have submissives, it would hurt my reputation. You want to learn about the lifestyle and understand female submissives and male Dominants? I can help you. We can pretend to be dating, and that way there'd be no reason that we couldn’t be seen together. We wouldn’t have to make up excuses in case anyone found us together. I won't do anything you don't want me to do. We can write it all out, formally in an agreement, and I'll stick to it. The only way anything will happen is if you want it to and specifically negotiate for the agreement to change. I am an honorable man in that respect. You can talk to Lara if you want verification."

  We drove along, and I said nothing. He was right, of course. The cat was now out of the bag with us. Both of us knew each other's inclinations, even if mine were purely for research purposes.

  Lara said he was absolutely trustworthy.

  "Drake, it's just…" I shook my head, my cheeks hot. "I'm so embarrassed."

  "I know." He reached out to take my hand and squeezed it before I could pull it away. "How do you think I feel? Your father actually likes me. You don't know how much that means to me." Finally, he let go of my hand and glanced quickly at me.

  I really didn’t know what to say.

  "I know you and he don't really get along well," Drake said softly. "But he's like the father I wish I’d had. My own father was so self-absorbed and away from home so much that I always felt as if I was just not important enough. He was always, 'Hey, I love you man,' but I never felt it. If he had loved me, why was he always away?"

  He said nothing for a moment as we sat at a stoplight. "Your father is maybe too involved in your life but as someone who felt neglected, I envy you that. When I met your father at my dad's funeral, he took me under his wing immediately because he and my dad were such good friends. So, if he found out about me…" He shook his head. "I've read some of his judgments. I know what he's like."