Trust Me

by Annabel Joseph

  He claimed to care, but he didn’t fucking care. I pulled out of his arms and ran away from him, because I needed some space to breathe. I left his office, ran down the hall and through the lobby, and out into the corridor toward the elevators. I listened as I ran, straining to hear if he was coming behind me. That was when I realized I wasn’t looking for a place to breathe. I was looking for a place to hide.

  Chapter Twelve: Control

  I didn’t expect her to leave the building. I didn’t expect her to literally go, but when I went back to the meeting and switched on the feed to her studio camera, she wasn’t there. I kept watching, but she didn’t show up. And didn’t show up. And didn’t show up.

  She’d left.

  I resolved not to panic. She was in slave revolt mode, which sometimes happened. I finished out the meeting and went home, and waited for her there. Nothing. She didn’t come home. Of course, I’d never given back her goddamned phone, so I couldn’t call her. My mind ran in circles, hot anger mixed with regret. She’d left me. I knew she’d do it eventually. Now I had to figure out how to bring her back, because Simon wasn’t going to be the one to steal her from me, especially from the grave.

  When eight o’clock arrived with no Chere, I texted Andrew.

  Is Chere at your place?

  No, he texted back.

  But he was an idiot, because if she wasn’t at his place, he would have texted something appropriately dramatic like OMG WHAT HAPPENED or OMG IS SHE LOST?

  I had to go get her. She was wrought up. I understood that, but rules were fucking rules and she couldn’t just blow up in my face and run away to her friend’s house. I took a cab to Andrew and Craig’s building and helped a woman with her grocery bags in order to get through the door. I walked down the hall and knocked on the door of 24B.

  Andrew answered with a pout on his face, and his arms crossed over his chest. “She’s not here.”

  “I know she’s here.”

  I pushed past him into the living room. Craig stood up from his place on the couch, but didn’t greet me.

  “I need to talk to her,” I said.

  “I don’t think she wants to talk to you,” said Andrew. “In fact, she told me to give you this. She doesn’t want it anymore.”

  He held out her garnet ring. Fuck. I wasn’t shocked that she’d taken it off, but it wasn’t staying off, not if I had anything to say about it. I shoved it in my pocket.

  “Is she in the back?” I moved toward the hallway, but Andrew jumped in front of me, his skinny arms held out, his lips pursed in a stubborn line.

  “She doesn’t want to see you. Aren’t you listening? She needs some time.”

  I stared at him, at his wild, blond, curly hair and his childishly innocent features. Cute kid, trying to play the hero. The protector. His boyfriend hovered in the background, doing some protecting of his own. Both of them were good guys, but they weren’t going to keep me from retrieving my runaway.

  “I know you’re her friend,” I said calmly. “I understand that you want to help, but the best thing to do right now is to let us talk.”

  “Talk?” His frown deepened. “When do you two ever talk? You give orders, and she obeys.”

  “Yes, that’s the way we work,” I retorted. “You understand about us, about our dynamic—”

  “No, I don’t understand. I don’t get why you treat her like a dog on a leash, like a child who needs to have every aspect of her life micromanaged.”

  “Andy, hon,” said Craig. “This isn’t your fight.”

  “It is my fight. Because he—” He pointed angrily in my direction. “He’s taken all the fight out of Chere. You saw how she was when she got here.”

  “She was upset because we argued,” I said. “We just need some time to work things out.”

  “No, you’re going to leave her alone.”

  I raised my eyebrows at him, to no avail. Damn toppy subs.

  “Chere’s my best friend,” he said, sticking out his chin. “If she won’t speak up for herself, then I’m going to speak on her behalf.”

  I sighed and rubbed my forehead, because I had to listen. It was that, or beat up a twenty-two year old gay kid wearing a lavender scrunchie, and I already had a police record from beating up Simon last year.

  “If this is about the thing with Chere’s ex—” I began.

  “No. It’s about more than Simon’s overdose. This is about all your rules and consequences. This is about the fact that you monitor my texts to Chere, and take away her phone whenever you want. This is about Chere and I having to hang out at the Big Apple Diner because I’m not allowed to be alone with her anywhere else. I mean, what the fuck?”

  “Every relationship has rules.”

  “Yes, but most relationships also have freedom, and consideration for the other person’s feelings. Most relationships involve some fucking trust. She used to love you.”

  “She still loves me!”

  He shook his head. “She’s lost faith in you. She told me so when she got here, that you don’t care about her, that you only care about yourself.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Oh, I believe you care about her,” he said, looking me up and down. “I believe you love her, but you need to think about how you show it, because from the outside, your relationship looks majorly fucked up. To me, from the outside...” He faltered, then persisted. “To tell the brutal truth, you come off like a desperate, cowardly man. The way you behave toward her—”

  “Cowardly?” I interrupted. The word felt disgusting in my throat. “Cowardly?”

  I heard Craig shift as I raised my voice, but Andrew didn’t back down. “Yes, cowardly. You’re afraid of losing her, so afraid of losing her that you’re scaring her away. She showed up here scared out of her mind. I only just got her calmed down.”

  “Scared? Scared of what?”

  “Of your jealousy! What would it have hurt, to let her try to help Simon?”

  “It would have hurt Chere.”

  I was shouting now. Craig came closer and held out a quelling hand. “Can both of you calm down? We have neighbors.”

  “I care about her,” I said to Andrew. I worked hard to modulate my voice. I had to get my shit together. I had to be the strong one, so I could get Chere home and calmed down, and get us out of this fucking mess. “As for the rules, she agreed to every one of them.”

  “Of course she did. She’s a submissive, and a masochist. She’s never going to put the brakes on. Believe me, I know the mindset, but your job is to—”

  “To keep her safe. To keep her out of the hands of users and abusers.”

  Andrew glared at me. No, it wasn’t a glare, exactly. It was a stare. Craig stared at me too, and then, like a lightning strike, I got it. They thought I was a user and abuser. They thought I was a threat to Chere. Not Simon Baldwin. Me, the man who had saved her from that relationship and given her my love at great fucking risk to my peace and sanity.

  “I’ve never abused her,” I said, my voice rough with roiling anger. “I have never, ever abused her. Everything between us is consensual. Everything I do, everything I say, every rule, every protocol, every session between us is motivated by my fucking love for her. I guide her. I encourage her. I write her fucking poetry.”

  “If you love her, why do you hold her so hard? You control everything in her life.” Andrew said it like it was a bad thing. Like it wasn’t what she’d begged for that day in my dungeon a few months ago.

  “You don’t understand us.” I waved a hand at him, waved off all his misguided, meddling-best-friend bullshit. “I need to talk to Chere. She needs to come home. It’s late.” I made another move toward the hall. Andrew didn’t budge. Motherfucker.

  “She’s not going anywhere if she doesn’t want to.”

  “She’s coming home with me tonight if I have to pick her up and drag her out of here,” I informed him. “And you and Craig aren’t going to fucking stop me. I’m sorry, but you’re not.”

/>   He ruffled up. “I’ll call the police if I have to.”

  “Andrew, it’s okay.”

  Her voice materialized first, and then she was there, a miserable angel drifting out of the darkness. I wanted to go to her and hold her, but Andrew still stood in the way. She put her hands on his shoulders and turned him to face her.

  “Thanks for sticking up for me,” she said, pressing her cheek to his. “You’ve been so brave, but I think you’ve done enough.”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t done enough. I’ve been too quiet about...about this.” He gestured toward me, the evil user and abuser who couldn’t be named.

  “Chere, we need to go home,” I said, staring at her very intently. “We have things to discuss.”

  She didn’t look happy to see me, or happy at the idea of coming home with me. She looked tired. “It’s okay,” she told Andrew again. “He’s right. We have things to talk about. This is something I need to work out on my own.”

  “But I don’t know...” He stopped, clutching her hand. “I don’t know if you can. Remember...?”

  Remember Simon? That other abuser you got tangled up with for ten years? It was all I could do not to pummel him. I was nothing like Simon. In fact, I was the opposite of Simon. Simon had never cared for Chere, and I...

  Well. Maybe Andrew had a point. Maybe I cared about her too much, to the point where I exerted unhealthy levels of monitoring and control. Well, I’d warned her. It always came back to that. I’d warned her what I would be like, and she’d agreed. I’d told her that if she ran away from me, I’d bring her back whether she wanted it or not. I knew she was remembering that now.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said, and I was talking to her, not Andrew. I wanted her to understand I wasn’t going to take her home and explode. I was going to take her home and fix what had gone wrong between us. If I could build bridges and skyscrapers, I could fix a faltering relationship. There’s always a way...

  She gave Andrew a long hug and stepped away from him, back into my control. We didn’t touch each other. There was too much tension. I followed her to the door as Andrew watched with a doom-and-gloom gaze. He was a nice kid, but he didn’t have a clue about Chere and me, and our dynamic. He needed to butt out and let us work through our own complicated shit.

  “Are you going to punish me?” Chere asked when we were almost to the car. She sounded a bit snarky, but mostly terrified, which touched something in my heart. Despite her fear, her vulnerability, she’d agreed to put herself back in my hands.

  “I’m not going to punish you,” I said, because I knew that would be the wrong tack. “Simon doesn’t deserve any more of your pain. I’m going to re-train you instead. Take a few days and go back over what it means to belong to someone. Do you think that would be helpful?”

  She only hesitated a moment before she answered. “Yes, Sir. That would probably help.”

  * * * * *

  Was I crazy to go back to him? Maybe. Andrew thought so, but in my heart, I wanted re-training. I wanted peace. I wanted my brain to go silent, and Price was great at making that happen. From the moment we got home, he was in Master mode, giving me no choice but to surrender.

  He put on my collar as soon as we got home, and put me through my paces in the dungeon, doling out pain on the spanking bench, the rack, the sawhorse—though not the painful, pussy-torturing side of the sawhorse. He lectured me about submission as he carried out various torments, but he wasn’t angry and rough the way he sometimes was when I’d pissed him off. He was...thoughtful. Andrew had pretty much accused him of abusing me, and maybe that factored into this careful, deliberate form of training. Once he’d broken down my body, he turned my attention to his needs and desires as my Master. Kneel. Kiss. Back straight. Open your mouth. Suck me.

  I didn’t get any pleasure or orgasms myself, but I hadn’t expected to. When it was time for bed, he got out the chastity belt, plugged me and strapped me in for the night. The lesson was obvious, even without his punctilious reminders: All my lust and attention was to be centered on him.

  After that, he locked me into the manacles, and used rope to secure my wrists to his headboard so I couldn’t so much as turn over without him knowing it.

  “Neither one of us is going to work for the rest of this week,” he informed me as he slid into bed beside me and took me in his arms. “You’re going to spend the next few days naked and on your knees. Do you understand why?”

  “Yes, Sir,” I whispered, leaning my head on his shoulder. “Thank you. I want to belong to you.” I wasn’t just babbling what I thought he wanted to hear. I was babbling my real, true feelings, because the bitter truth was that I found security in being his slave. Anger, frustration, and panic bled away when I handed him the control, and the next couple days felt a lot like the first few days I’d spent in his home: strenuous but deeply rewarding.

  In the beginning it had been hard to find the slavey side of myself, but now it was easier, like relaxing into a familiar bed after a long and trying day. I still felt guilty about Simon’s death, but I could process that later, when I could get some distance and perspective. The funeral was Thursday afternoon, near the end of this re-training odyssey, and maybe that would be the best time to deal with my pent-up feelings. If Simon’s funeral didn’t bring me peace, it would at least deliver some closure on that chapter of my life.

  God, I hoped so, because Price was my future, and Simon needed to become my past for that to work. I understood all of this, even as Price went on and on about forward progress and self-respect during sessions over the spanking bench. You’re not that woman any more. You weren’t happy then. Your life was tied up in regrets and shame. I want you to let go of your past mistakes and reach your true potential. I want you to be happy.

  Of course, he said this while he applied horribly painful clamps to my nipples, and whipped me, and sodomized me three times a day with miserly amounts of lube so it wouldn’t feel too good.

  Re-training. Punishment. In the end, they were pretty much the same thing.

  At least there was poetry. He wrote me some poetry the next day, and then set me to reading some of his favorite poets while he called in to work meetings. Byron, Eliot, Whitman, Browning, Neruda in both English and Spanish. I didn’t do any work for those days, aside from serving him, but design ideas flowed as I stroked over every line, slope, and plane of my Master’s body. I came up with concepts for new pieces, now that my mind was clearer and free of damned emotional clutter.

  I belonged to Price. He loved me. It was so simple and safe and warm. He was concerned about me and wanted me to reach my true potential. I wanted to be happy because I knew that would make him happy, and nothing made me happier than my Master’s pleased smile.

  I was tired by mid-week, and a little sore, but it all seemed worth it because things felt normal again, and there wasn’t a bunch of anger and tension standing between us. Then Thursday came, and I brought up Simon’s funeral.

  Of course, it had crossed my mind that he might not want me to attend, but I figured I’d explain about rituals and closure, and he’d come to acknowledge my need to say goodbye. I imagined he might even insist on attending with me, so he could stand beside me and hold my hand through the most difficult parts, perhaps even brush away my tears.

  All of this was so far removed from the reality of what happened, it might have been poetry in his leather-bound books.

  “Do you really think it’s a good idea to go?” he asked, looking down at me. I was the supplicant, posed on my knees as he lounged on the couch.

  “I think I have to go,” I said, as respectfully as I could.

  “Oh, you have to go.” His arched brow and curt intonation told me this conversation was about to go awry. “I’m surprised you’d say that, after everything we’ve talked about this week.”

  “I know, Sir. I know it’s my past, but that’s exactly why I need to go. I need to move on. I need closure.”

  “Yes, you do need clo
sure.” He reached to stroke my hair, a gentle gesture that belied the storm brewing in his eyes. “But I don’t think a PR-designed art world funeral is the place to find it.”

  “Where then?”

  “How about inside you? How about letting this go? How about forgiving yourself for this crime you never committed? If you go to that funeral, I know what you’re going to do.” He yanked up my chin when I tried to look away. “I know you, Chere. You’re going to whip yourself bloody, enumerating your many faults until every crying poser and art freak there is a victim of your negligence. Or mine. It’ll be my fault, right? The whole thing. The whole funeral,” he said, waving his hand. “My fault for not letting you help poor Simon face his self-inflicted demons.”

  “This has nothing to do with you,” I said, and that was my fatal mistake, but I barged on anyway. “This is between me and a person I had a relationship with. If I feel guilt— If I wished I’d helped—”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything!”

  “I could have done it though, even without your permission. And if I want to feel guilty about that, and go pay my last respects, I don’t see why you won’t let me do it. Why does it matter to you?”

  “Your last respects,” he said in a biting tone. “The funeral’s going to be a joke, some last ditch effort to sanitize his legacy. It’s going to be a lot of people wanting to be seen, wanting to rub shoulders with the art world players.”

  “So what if it is?”

  “And everyone there will be culpable for the train wreck that was Simon Baldwin, not just you. There’s no honor in that, no respect. It’ll be a pack of fucking users pretending they cared for a waste of a person.”

  “A waste of a person?” I choked on the harsh phrase. “Simon touched a lot of lives. His art made a lot of people happy. It’s in homes and museums all over the world. A hundred years from now—”