by Lund, S. E.
"She didn't keep in contact with you?"
He shook his head. "My dad won custody. He had a really great lawyer…"
"Who?" I said, my eyes widening. "My father?"
He nodded. "Yep. Your father was working in Family Court then and advised my dad. My dad was just really starting to make money and was able to hire nannies and housekeepers to look after me. The judge thought I'd have a better life with my dad even if it meant I was kept away from my mother. She left and went back to California where her family was, remarried and that was it. My father never remarried."
"I'm so sorry, Drake. To grow up without a mother…"
He shrugged. "It explains a lot, really."
I nodded, not saying anything else.
Then he stood up and came to me, putting his arms around me. "But I've learned the hard way. Now, enough reminiscing. I want to have a nice evening with you now that we can. Your father wants us to come out with him to dance, but I pointed to my arm and used it as an excuse. I said I wanted to bring in the New Year with you alone. He thought that was probably a better idea, considering…"
"I can't believe he accepted that you're into BDSM…"
Drake shook his head, smiling. "He said 'I don’t care what bedroom games people play in the privacy of their own homes for God's sake. I've played a few of my own. You have to in order to keep a marriage alive and I was married to the same woman for twenty one years…"
"Bedroom games," I said, smiling. I closed my eyes and leaned against Drake, my arms slipping around his waist. "Do you suppose he's a bit of a Dom himself?"
"I wonder…" Drake said. "Sly old bastard if so. Still, it must be hard for a father to think of his beloved daughter being sexual."
"And vice versa. But, as long as he thinks of it as bedroom games, that’s OK by me."
"Seriously, Kate, I'm pretty tame when it comes to Doms. A lightweight. He said he did his research."
"You're just right for me."
He smiled at that. "I think so."
"I know so."
He kissed me and all the tender emotions quickly turned to ones more passionate, his hands slipping down to the hem of my dress to search for garters, which I hadn't worn.
"No garters?"
"I was too sad to wear them."
"Do you have them here?"
I nodded, a smile starting on my face.
"Go put them on with nothing on underneath."
"Are you serious? At my parent's New Year's Eve dinner?"
"Please," he said, grinning. "I didn't get a present from you and I'm feeling all deprived. Consider it your present to me."
I left the bathroom and went to my bedroom where my bag was on the dresser. Inside were the garter belt and nylons I'd worn the last time I saw him. While he waited in the living room, I slipped off my undies and pantyhose and put on the garter belt and nylons. I took in a deep breath, knowing that just wearing them alone would make me aroused.
I went out to the living room where he stood by the bar talking to the bartender, who was pouring some Anisovaya into Yelena Kuznetsova's shot glasses. Drake took them and turned to me, and when he saw me, his face just brightened, then a leer started on his face, his mouth turning up into a half-grin.
He came to me where I stood by the fireplace and handed me one of the glasses, with the delicate filigree pattern etched onto the crystal.
"Za vas, moya lyubov," he said. "To you, my love."
I couldn't repeat it because of emotion, covering my mouth with my hand, smiling through tears.
We shot the Anisovaya back and I grimaced, although I had come to associate the taste with pleasure.
He leaned in and kissed me immediately, and I could taste the anise on his lips and tongue.
"With you looking like that," he said, stepping back to examine me up and down. "Knowing what's underneath that dress? I don't know if I can wait until later. We may have to sneak off in between courses for a quickie."
Heat rose in my cheeks at that, warmth between my thighs.
"You haven't given me a present yet either," I said a grin spreading on my own face. "Maybe you could use me the way I've always wanted – a fast fuck in the broom closet that leaves me panting, in need of you. Later, you could take your time and satisfy me… Maybe pour some of that Anisovaya over me and lick it off…"
He pulled me against him. "You are a kinky little thing, Ms. Bennet. You're going to make me very uncomfortable if you keep up with that teasing mind of yours and I'll be embarrassed in front of your father's guests because of the tent in my pants. But maybe later, after dessert when there's a lull in things before we get into liqueurs, I'll tug at my ear and you'll go into the bathroom off your bedroom and wait for me. I may just have a nice big present for you…"
I closed my eyes, a thrill going through my body thinking of it.
Somehow, we made it through the cocktails and chat before dinner, my father's huge smile and boisterous gravelly voice clearly indicating he was happy to see us standing together, one of Drake's hands on the small of my back. Drake never left my side, and together, we talked to whoever came by to greet us.
Nigel arrived and I was surprised to see him with his partner, Brian. Short, well-dressed with impeccable taste, Brian was barely up to Nigel's shoulder. I turned to see my father and wondered how he'd respond. He smiled and shook Brian's hand and that was it. He was accepted into the inner circle. Nigel spied us and came right over, introducing Brian to Drake and me. After we said our hellos, Elaine came by and pulled Brian away for a moment to show him some artwork.
Nigel leaned in to me.
"So I see your father's matchmaking succeeded."
I smiled. "I tried to fight it, Nigel, but you know my father. He has to have his way."
Nigel laughed. "Yes. That he does." Nigel laid a hand on Drake's shoulder. "I already had my little talk with Drake about you so I won't say anything more."
Drake smiled, but I could tell there was still something between them.
"Quit being my big brother, Nigel," I said, pointing a finger at him.
"Someone has to be. Heath seems too busy with his own children."
Then Nigel leaned down and kissed me on the cheek. "Happy New Year, Kate."
I squeezed his hand and watched him walk over to where Brian and Elaine stood, admiring a piece of art.
I sighed and turned to Drake, who put his arm around my shoulder.
"What did he say to you that night?"
"He just told me if I ever hurt a hair on your head, he'd have me thrashed soundly."
I laughed at that and Drake grinned.
Mostly, we spoke to each other, him leaning down to whisper in my ear, telling me what he wanted to do to me if we did get a chance to go to the bathroom later.
"Ms. Bennet, I want to slip my hand down under your dress and feel you. Are you already wet for me? I bet you are, you vixen…"
"Shh, Drake," I said, my cheeks heating, unable to keep a smile off my face.
At dinner, we sat in the same places as before, but this time, I kept slightly turned to Drake, barely able to keep my eyes off him or a smile off my face. My stomach was all butterflies as we ate our meal, and I wondered if he would do it – tug his ear and signal that I was to go to my bathroom and wait for him.
Finally, once dinner was over and the servers took away our dessert plates, my father announced that we'd take our after dinner drinks in the living room. As my father spoke to Drake about something to do with the dance afterwards, Drake tugged his ear. I glanced away quickly, my body responding.
He was going to go through with it.
I stood up. "Please excuse me."
I left the dining room just as people started to filter out and make their way to the living room. I slipped to my bedroom and into the bathroom, breathing deeply, wondering how long it would take for him to escape. In a couple of minutes, he opened the door and came inside, closing the door and leaning against it.
"I have something
for you, Ms. Bennet."
"You do?" My face was hot, butterflies in my stomach.
"In my pants. Come and see for yourself. I need you to take it out. It's very uncomfortable."
I went to him and opened his suit jacket, then ran my fingers over his groin. Something hard protruded from it but it didn’t seem the right shape. I opened his fly and reached in only to find a long black velvet case.
A jewelry case.
"Drake…"
I opened it to find a velvet choker with a pendant attached. A single teardrop diamond in a white-gold setting. It must have been several carats in weight.
"I had it made specially for you back before all this happened. I thought a black velvet choker would substitute pretty well for your leather collar and would be more appropriate to wear at special events like tonight." He went behind me and slipped the choker around my neck, fastening it, his eyes meeting mine in the mirror.
I covered my mouth, tears once more springing to my eyes.
He remained behind me, adjusted the choker so that the diamond fell in the hollow at the base of my throat, watching in the mirror.
"Beautiful…" he whispered in my ear, his breath warm on my skin. Then, he pushed me forward so that I leaned over the vanity facing the mirror. He lifted up my dress, groaning when his hands slid over the garters, and he gave me my Christmas present.
He tried to give it to me just the way I asked.
He really tried but he couldn't stand not seeing me fulfilled as well.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Packing up my apartment was harder than I thought. I'd been there since I left the dormitory in my senior year and although it was tiny and had little closet space, I had amassed a lot of stuff. It took a week just to go through everything and sort it into send, store, donate or junk. Most of it was in the store category. I wasn't going to take very much with me. Having lived in Africa briefly, I knew a lot of extra baggage was a burden rather than of benefit.
Besides, when you lived in an impoverished land where people survived on very little, having a lot of superfluous stuff was disrespectful.
The very last things to go through were my pieces of art, the ones I did and those of friends and fellow art students.
I held up a framed photograph of Dawn taken when she was in India at the hospice run by Mother Theresa's nuns. She wore traditional dress of the region, a shawl over her head, and a Sari. She stood with a nun and smiled at the camera. I would keep this, despite the fact that the two of us had not mended our fences. I tried, explaining how I felt, that my father already knew, and how Drake was leaving NYP for a year and that his boss knew about the restraining order.
"You can't hurt him," I said. "All you can do is hurt our friendship. Is that what you want?"
She hung up on me. I called back, wanting to force her to listen, but she wouldn’t answer. Finally, I phoned her sister, Brenda, whose number I had on my contact list from when Dawn had stayed with her for a while after her wedding. We spoke about our friendship breaking up, about Dawn's fears for me. Brenda explained how her first relationship had been abusive and how the much younger Dawn had witnessed the abuse.
"I can understand her being worried about you, Kate. She's very stubborn and fixed in her thinking. She hasn't really forgiven me yet for putting her through that."
"She never said anything," I said, trying to think back to our conversations from right after we first met in college. "I knew she didn't like your boyfriend."
"She went pretty religious afterwards," Brenda said. "Well, as religious as she felt was necessary. Give her time."
We said our goodbyes after I asked her to try to explain things to Dawn. She thought it was highly unlikely to work.
Everything seemed to find its place in my life except for Dawn, and that left a hole in my heart that I knew time would never heal.
I sorted through my artwork, taking down the framed pictures and stacking them against the wall. Drake stood at the sound system, hooking his iPhone into it, selecting a song to play.
Something soft came on, and it wasn't his usual sixties music.
"What's this?" I said, liking its somber tone.
"Please Don't Go by Barcelona."
I listened for a moment. "Sounds awfully sad for you."
"I listened to this a lot during those days between Christmas and New Years."
I smiled, amazed that he admitted that. I turned back to the pictures and started to sort through them. He came and stood beside me.
"I want to keep all of these, but none of them have to come with us."
"I want this one to come," Drake said. He stood and examined my pencil drawing of the knight and his lady.
"You like that one?"
He nodded. "That was me when you met me."
"Really?" I remembered that first time he was in my apartment. "I thought you said it was about me and how I couldn't have sex without intimacy because I wanted to feel like a good girl."
He shook his head and pulled me against him, his arms slipping around my waist.
"I can rationalize anything," he said and kissed my neck. "I was trying so hard to keep everything separated, my emotions under control."
I took his hands in mine. "Why? I don’t understand. I want to fall in love. It's a loveless relationship I couldn’t imagine."
"When my marriage failed and I was given that restraining order, it was as if I had failed as a man." He was silent for a moment as if considering. "Kate, I was like Flyboy. I was the asshole who didn't know what I was doing. I had to face up to who and what I was. I had to keep myself under complete control. Whatever the reason, I tried to keep you under control, confined to one spot, my emotions restrained. Luckily, I failed miserably."
"I thought you had me quite well under control. I submitted completely and willingly. If it hadn’t been for Dawn, you might have had your wish. She kind of forced things."
"Like I said, luckily."
"Do you really feel that way? If she hadn't, we might have been happy in a simple D/s relationship and none of this would have happened."
"I was already in love with you. Just in denial."
"Already?"
He kissed my neck, his hands moving up under my left breast, as if to feel my apical pulse.
"I think I fell in love with you at the concert. No, I know I fell in love with you then."
I turned around in his arms, my hands on his chest. I wanted to look in his eyes.
"Why the concert? That was so soon after we met. You hardly knew me."
He shook his head slowly. "You don't understand. I'd heard your father speak about you for years. Katherine the beautiful, the brilliant, the humanitarian, the sweetheart who cried when she listened to music."
"He told you that? You knew that when we went to the concert?"
He nodded, a sheepish grin on his face. "That's why I had to be there with you."
"But you left when I asked you to."
"Yes, but I hid and watched you. I had to see you, see if what he said was true."
I turned back around, still in his arms, and stared at the drawing. It was as if Drake wanted to fall in love with me.
"I asked someone who met you what you looked like," Drake said as we examined the drawing. "He was sniffing around you, another hungry dog like me, and he said you had these huge green eyes and long dark hair. Fair skin like your late mother. How petite you were but with lush breasts and curvy hips. I think I was a bit in love with you before I even met you. I kept hoping your father would bring you to a function, but he never did, as if he was protecting you. I should have known it was you when I saw you in the hallway at your father's apartment, and then I was so close to you in the bedroom, but I was distracted by your garters."
I smiled. "Those garters were my undoing."
"No, it was the heels. The heels did it. They're responsible for everything, so as much as I hated Dawn, she made you wear them and I could kiss her for it. You bumped into me and practically fell in
to my arms at the bar because of them, and you did fall in the alley because of them, and then you were in my arms when I carried you to the bed. You were so lovely and desirable with your cut knees and ripped nylons, your scraped hands and those damn garters. It brought out the doctor in me and the Dom all at the same time. Even before I knew you were her, I was a goner. Not a chance in hell."
He nuzzled the back of my neck.
"Her?"
"The beloved Katherine. The daughter of my second father. He was so proud of you. But he would never bring you anywhere as if you were this princess who was too good for the rest of us. He was the kind of father I felt would never let a man anywhere near you unless he was top notch. I was so damn curious about you but you were like this mythic creature."
I inhaled, so amazed at how wrong I was about my father all those years. "I feel like such an idiot. I thought my father disapproved of me. That he thought I was a lightweight compared to Heath and that's why he never invited me to join him."
"He didn't invite you to join him because he was sensitive about your problems after Africa. He wanted to give you time. My father died soon after your return and that's when your father and I really started to be friends. When I asked about you, he said to me that a daughter embodied a father's hopes and dreams. He said he wished for you the kind of man he wanted to be to his own wife – someone who would love you forever, deeply, passionately, and be devoted to you, would allow you to be who you were, and respect you for it, but who would help bring out the best in you."
"That's so sweet," I said, my throat choking up.
"That's why I didn't ask you out after we met, despite wanting to. I didn't think I'd be able to be that man."
I turned around again and hugged him, my arms slipping around his waist.
He ran his hands over my hair. "He talked about your trip to Africa. He talked about your thesis. About your position at the school newspaper. I knew you'd be amazing before I ever met you. Like I said, a goner. And then I met you at the fundraiser and you were the girl with the luscious tits and garters and you were Katherine. I wanted to know you so badly. I wanted so badly to be with you despite knowing it was probably impossible for us to be together, given what I was. I thought your father would hate me if he knew…"
