by CD Reiss
Her breath came out in a long cloud of contradictions. In and out. Desire and repulsion. Thoughts and feelings. Yes and no.
I didn’t want the answer. Both would hurt.
No, I don’t want our marriage.
Yes, I do want it.
One was a knife, the other was a hope I didn’t trust would outlast her curiosity.
“Come on,” I said, leaning toward the store. “I have to get gas for the generator. The power always goes out when there’s a storm.”
“I’m just going to go back, I think.”
I let her think she was walking back alone, but I followed to make sure she was all right.
Chapter 54
PRESENT TENSE – DAY FOUR
I caught Stefan outside the studio. I had intended to be easygoing but firm with him, and instead I fucking lost my shit. “Stay away from my wife.”
“Whoa, there.”
“Don’t talk to her,” I continued. “Don’t smile at her. Don’t try to do the Scandinavian charm shit.”
“I was offering her a ride.”
“Stay. Away.”
“You forgot. Five years and you forgot that we look out for each other and our subs. We are a village. That’s why you go to Serena to check on her and I’m not in your face. I’m grateful. I know you’ll make sure she’s okay.”
Trust this asshole to play the community card and be the bigger man all in a few sentences. I didn’t want her near this logic. This was the exact logic that led to sharing subs, to pushing their pain, to situations that could only be rectified with bullshit contracts.
I didn’t want this for her. I didn’t want it for us.
“It’s not going to matter,” I said. “I’m sending her home.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I can take her if the truck’s ready.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“The radiator. That was what I was telling your wife. I’d give her a lift back to the house or as far as the truck would make it. Not far actually, but far enough.”
That was why she was laughing. They were joking about the truck. But he was still trying to charm her, and I was still sure he wanted to fuck her.
There was no way she was getting in a car with him all the way to the city. Stefan was good. Very good. The thought of anyone with Diana boiled my blood. The thought of Stefan with her added fear to the rage.
“I’ll have Thierry take her tomorrow.”
He shrugged. It was a little too fine with him. His smile was shot through with cockiness, as if all my avoidance was useless.
The air was cold and dead calm. The sky was flat cirrus with crystal blue holes. Pre-snow weather. I had to go back to the house and tell Diana she was leaving, and she was going to ask why.
I wasn’t going to lie. I was done with lies.
She was in the library with a book, bare feet tucked under her. The diffused light from the window caught on her stray hair.
“Hi,” I said when I came in. She faced me. “What are you reading?”
“Steinbeck, of all things.”
“Really?” I sat on the arm of the couch next to her.
“I was looking in the stacks, wondering if things would have been different if I’d changed my name. Would it have been harder to leave you? Was I not really committed? And then I came upon this.” She held the cover up long enough for me to see Travels with Charley.
“‘A journey is like marriage,’” I quoted. “‘The certain way to be wrong is to think you can control it.’”
“He was married three times.” She closed the book.
“That doesn’t make him wrong. So.” I bent my head forward, putting my hands on my knees. I couldn’t face her when I said it. When I looked at her, I wanted her. I needed to be stronger than my desire. Tougher than my love. “You should go home.”
“What?” Was she just surprised? Or was there a tinge of disappointment? And was the disappointment over an easy handoff of the company? Or the fact that I was giving up? “Why?”
“I feel better. I feel like we cleared a lot of air between us.”
She seemed pensive. I could guess her next questions. Would she still have an easy out for McNeill-Barnes? Was I going to work with her? Did she still get the loft? But none of those questions came.
“Thank you, I…” She caught herself. “When are we going?”
“You. You’re going. Thierry will take you tomorrow.”
Her head shook slightly as if she was thinking “no” but didn’t want to say it. “You’re quitting? It hasn’t even been a week. And you’re staying and I’m going?”
“I need time, Diana.”
She crossed her arms and thought for what seemed like a long time.
“Speak,” I said.
“I’m leaving tomorrow. Stefan’s leaving on Friday. You’re staying. And this means you’re in the house alone with her?” She jerked her thumb in the general direction of the studio.
“Yes.”
“Yeah. No.” She stood, clapped her hands as if getting dust off them, snapped up the book, and tapped it on the heel of her hand.
“Yeah, no what?”
“This woman fucked with you so badly you married someone totally wrong for you. She did a number on you. And now? Look, I’m not trying to tell you how you feel, but you’re vulnerable. I know what me asking for a divorce has done to you even if you don’t show it. You’re an open wound. Still handsome as hell, but hurting. You’re primed to get involved with her again, and she’s going to drag you right back where you were.” She slapped the book back into its place. “So no. I’ll go back with you when you’re ready to go back.”
I didn’t know what my expression revealed. Shock. Disbelief. Denial. Insult. I didn’t try to hide any one reaction because they all came up at the same time with equal measure.
“Wait.” I held up my hand. “Are you jealous?”
“No. Of course not.”
“You want to stay and make sure I don’t sleep with her.”
“For your own good.”
“For my own good?” I added frustration to the list of emotions. How did I lose control of another conversation?
“I’m not trying to emasculate you,” she said without a hint of irony.
Impossible. She was impossible. Was she always such a pain in the ass?
“Thanks for that. You’re a fucking gem. I brought you here and you don’t fit. You don’t want to be here. You have no interest in helping me get my footing, and honestly, I don’t blame you. I’ve never felt as completely fucked in the head about making a deal as I do with this one.” I put my hands on the arms of the chair and leaned into her. I needed to take up her entire field of vision. “You know me. I see things through to the bitter end. This is the first thing in my life I’ve wanted to quit. Can’t you respect that?”
“I’m staying.”
She was staying to torment me. To expose all my raw nerves. To drag this boneless half-dead shit out into the street.
Well, torment worked both ways.
“Stay. But it’s your choice to be in my house. The contract stands. You’re my sub. You will kneel when I say kneel and bend when I say bend. Your body is built for me to fuck anywhere I can fit my cock. You have no pleasure I don’t allow and it comes with pain. Do you understand?”
I designed the speech to scare her away.
Instead, she swallowed hard and said one word. “Fine.”
“See you at seven.”
Chapter 55
PAST PERFECT
Reservations at Metropolis were about as hard to come by as a virgin in a whorehouse, a parking spot in midtown, an honest banker—pick your analogy.
Our production director, Georgette, had managed to get us a table for the three-year anniversary of the McNeill-Barnes reboot.
I’d started the evening lighthearted at the round table of eight. Me, Diana, Georgette and her husband, Lloyd, Zack, Kayti. We had a lot to be grateful for. The company was
n’t just treading water. It was swimming with the sharks because of what Diana and I had done. She sat across from me in a bright red satin blouse with a subtle bird pattern. When she moved, the birds took flight. I couldn’t stop looking at her, seeing how those birds would look with her on her knees.
We were a few bottles of wine into the meal, laughing too loudly and complaining too good-heartedly about the dire fate of publishing. How good books got buried and shit sold like hotcakes to starving men.
“Case in point,” Zack said, pouring another glass. “The Books That Shall Not Be Named.”
“Glorification of abuse,” Georgette slurred.
Zack tried to top up my glass, but I put my hand over it.
“Do you know what my wife would do if I told her to get on her knees and suck my dick?” Georgette’s husband—Nick? Ned?—jerked his thumb at his wife.
“Give you five bucks for a hooker?” she asked, and the table went wild with laughter.
I tried to smile.
Kayti held up her hand. “I read them!” Everyone went ooh and aah. “Hot. They were hot.” She fanned herself with her napkin.
“How is getting spanked arousing?” Georgette asked as if she were a reporter on a crime scene.
“Because he’s looking at your butt and you know… the other stuff. You’re totally vulnerable. It’s you and this guy and you can’t see him. The tension of it. The anticipation. And the sting is more like… it sensitizes everything. I can feel more.” She turned red and sat back in her chair. Put her glass near her lips. “Frank and I did a little experimenting.”
The discomfort was broken by laughter and chatter about the Books That Shall Not Be Named.
“He was a stalker.”
“Creepy.”
“Barely consensual.”
“But why?” Diana spoke for the first time since the conversation started. “Why read about that? Why invite it into your mind? We’ve spent a hundred years fighting for equality, and we still get paid less than men. Now we’re supposed to let them beat us in the bedroom? How are we supposed to progress when we’re saying abuse—literal physical abuse—is a turn-on? Not just acceptable, but desirable?”
Was she asking the table or asking herself?
I didn’t know what I expected out of my marriage. I wanted her to bend for me, and I was terrified she might. I wanted to welt her skin and make her scream and beg. I wanted her to want to please me, to give me her body and soul.
If she did let me take all of her, I’d do what I did with every other sub I’d known. I’d throw her away. I loved her too much for that.
But even as I understood that truth, I couldn’t let her comment go unanswered.
I leaned toward her with the full force of my intention. I needed her to hear me. Needed her to know that even if I wasn’t going to ever tell her why the discussion was personal to me, she was going to know I believed what I said.
“You don’t realize this because you’re married to me, but most women don’t have satisfying sex lives.” I must have managed to keep the disappointment out of my face, because most everyone at the table laughed and hooted. “For most women, the fantasy that your husband might actually care about your pleasure is unfortunately just that. A fantasy. So given a novel about a man who loves you, wants you, would give up everything for you… and on top of it pays attention to your needs above his own? I think a little spanking under those circumstances might be a turn-on.”
“Now bend over!” Georgette’s husband cried, and everyone bellowed except me and Diana.
We were locked over the distance of the table. She had a response. She was waiting until everyone quieted down.
I didn’t want to hear it. Couldn’t. I didn’t know if I’d hate my wife or myself more.
Pretending I had a phone call, I excused myself from the table. I caught a cab and went home.
Chapter 56
PRESENT TENSE - DAY FOUR
“Hello?”
Her voice came from behind me just after seven o’clock. In the window, I could see the studio lights go on and Diana’s reflection from the doorway.
“You’re not on your knees,” I said without turning around.
“I just wanted to know if I should make us dinner.”
I hadn’t even eaten lunch, but I didn’t answer. I wouldn’t until she did what she was supposed to do. The whole scene was getting turned up ten notches. She had to go. She had to beg me to get out of the house.
“Adam?”
“Third time you used my name.” I typed complete gibberish into the laptop at a thousand miles a minute. “Now you can take off your clothes and get on your knees. Delay again and you’re going to be crying before I even get out of this chair.”
Again, she surprised me.
She dropped to her knees without a word, holding up her red journal with a page marked with a ribbon.
I spun in my chair. She hadn’t undressed and I should mention that, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her bowed head. “You want me to read something in here?”
“Yes.”
I took the book and ran my finger along the edges of the pages, opening it. I flipped through dozens of sheets full of questions and landed where the ribbon was marked. There was only one question printed in the center of the page.
What if I like it?
I closed the book. Rapped the soft cover over my knuckles. Fast. The same speed as my heart. She was open to this. Not just as a sacrifice or a kindness, but as a path to her own self-discovery.
Some new hormone pumped through my veins. As powerful as adrenaline without the fight or flight. More with the power of “embrace and accept.” A tingling desire to run into this particular trouble. Anticipation cling-wrapped tightly and ready to bust.
And still, I wanted her to go. And stay. And go. Make this so hard she’d run like she always did.
I closed the book. “Take off your clothes. Don’t do a strip tease. Just get down to your skin.”
I sat back down with my back to her and pretended to work. My fingers shook. My heart felt like an alarm going off. I’d filled her closet with things that were easy for me to remove, and lingerie with straps and hooks. She pulled the T-shirt over her head. Slipped out of her bra. Slipped off the skirt.
“Leave the garter,” I said with my back to her.
She stopped and stood, straight and nearly naked. I twisted around. Only then did she remember to get on her knees.
Now what?
Make her want to leave.
I shut the laptop and got in front of her. “Hands behind your back.”
She did it, big broken-glass eyes turned to mine. Lashes black as a lie. Lips round and full with a knife of an opening between top and bottom.
Run away, huntress.
I was hard, and my cock was one inch and two layers of fabric from those lips.
She looked up at me and opened her mouth. She was doing what she thought I expected. Wanted. Needed. And she was right. She was giving me the gift of her submission as much as she knew how. Tonight. Now. Maybe this was the last of it. I didn’t care.
A shot of gratitude cracked my frustration, disassembling the pieces of it and building a foundation for the authority I needed.
Deliberately, with a purpose to every movement, I unbuckled my belt, undid my pants, and took out my cock. I put it against her bottom lip. Her tongue flicked out, catching the place where the head met the shaft. She reached for it. I grabbed her wrist.
“Open your mouth.”
She parted her lips then opened a little more.
I took her jaw roughly, pressing in her cheeks. “What’s your name?”
“Diana,” she said around my fingers.
I stroked my cock, putting the tip on her lower lip but not entering her. I’d been pent up for days, so it didn’t take long for me to shoot my orgasm into her mouth.
Her eyes were shut tight and her nose was wrinkled.
“Swallow.”
She shook her head
.
“Do it.”
She closed her mouth and swallowed. I brushed my thumb on her chin, collecting the last white drop. I put my thumb in her mouth. After a pause, she sucked it clean. Fuck, she was hot. Even in her resistance she was hot. I was about to get hard again.
“Now,” I said, buttoning my pants. “Go over to the couch and bend over it from the waist.”
She started to speak, but I put my finger over my lips. I didn’t want her to say anything. She wouldn’t last another day, and I wanted to enjoy every moment before she stormed out.
She stood and went to the end of the couch then bent at the waist.
I kicked her legs open. What a sight. What a beautiful sight. I’d been fucking that cunt for five years and I never appreciated how gorgeous it was.
I took her left hand and put it on her ass. “Open it. Spread out for me so I can see my options.”
“Wait—”
“Hush.” I took her other hand and put it behind her, using her fingers to spread her ass and thighs apart. Beautiful. Pink and glistening. “I’m going to ask before I check. Are you wet?”
“Yes.”
Without prelude, I put two fingers in her.
Yeah. Wet.
“Do you want to come?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what? Is that how you were raised?”
“Yes, please.”
I ran my finger along her seam. “When did you get wet? When I came? When you got undressed?”
A third finger disappeared inside her. She groaned and pushed against me.
“When you stood in front of me.”
The moment I stood in front of her was the moment I exerted physical dominance. I hadn’t expected that answer and I had to hide my surprise by stroking her clit.
I was incapable of loving a submissive. Or was I?
I’d gotten behind her intending to make her come then take her ass for a long, long time. I’d intended to turn her desire to please me against her. I knew if I took that tight, virgin hole, she’d leave. I’d kill all the beauty of her acceptance and turn her against it.
With all four of my fingers pressed on her, she moved her hips with me as I rubbed, then flicked, then rubbed her hard clit until she raised her ass and buried her head in the cushions. I slowed down, extending her orgasm until it drained her.
