by Adira August
He came quickly, not drawing it out, not wanting to use this as a means for domination, but only relief. And after he sat her up, he left her for the bathroom. At no time did he kiss her. As she expected he wouldn't.
When he came back, he found her with the afghan wrapped around herself, standing in front of the window.
He stood behind her, the warmth of his body competing with the chill through the glass for possession of her. He took a long moment to memorize the scent of her hair, then spoke clearly, with authority.
"Red."
She shoulders slumped and she swayed back against him. His arms went around her shoulders and they stayed like that, together, waiting for dawn.
Night slowly withdrew and the world gradually took on more detail. The wind moved on and the snow resolved into tiny wide-spaced flecks.
A dog barked in the apartment downstairs and Janet turned off the lights. When Ben opened the front door, he faced a three-foot high drift that had established itself against the building. The top foot of it fell inside. He leaned out, reached around and came back with a snow shovel, surprising her into a laugh.
"I brought it back from the truck last night. Figured it'd come in handy." He put his hoodie over his sweatshirt and cleared the walkway and stairs. Building maintenance in the person of Emilio Garza joined him, and with another tenant, the three men cleared the ground floor doorways so at least the tenants could step outside. The drift against the bottom floor of the building was over their heads.
When Ben came back, she was dressed in blue jeans and low boots and a fisherman's sweater and had a pot of hot chocolate on the stovetop.
"There're fresh towels in the bathroom for you," she said.
He stayed under the hot water a long time and came into the kitchen bundled into black sweats. She wondered if he owned anything else. But then remembered fine black slacks and a creamy cotton shirt.
Sharing the afghan and a bowl of popcorn between them, shoulders touching, they drank mugs of cocoa laced with brandy and watched Alien and Aliens on DVDs. Janet's. Ben had brought Brokeback Mountain and Capote. They were vetoed as too depressing.
Ben fell asleep with Sigourney Weaver in a robotic exoskeleton battling the alien mother. Janet laid him down and covered him with the afghan. Turning off the TV, she closed the drapes against the recently restored sunlight.
It was time to write.
January 2006
Ben hadn't left when the streets were cleared. They settled into a routine. They both set up at the desk, he to conduct his business and she to write. Suddenly, she had much to say and was brimming with ideas for series and characters and new genres.
He spent his time multitasking on phone and computer, meeting with lawyers and coordinating with his 'graphics department' and 'IT Coordinator.'
He spent a lot of time with his new writers, coaxing, reassuring, suggesting. He took a day to meet with a prospective writer and managed to sign him to an exclusive deal for his eRom titles while the author kept control of his detective series.
Ben often cooked, because Janet never gave a shit about food when she was writing. It was simple and good, steak and baked potatoes and salad. Chili, red and green, which made her break out in a sweat. Beans and franks and salad, a childhood favorite.
When she said was craving mac and cheese, he brought home several boxes from the grocery store and made them up with half and half and handfuls of crumbled English cheddar. She moaned in orgasmic delight at the first bite and proposed marriage.
He told her he wanted a really big engagement ring or no deal.
Every night, they had sex.
"You sure?" he asked when she reached for him the night after the first night, his cock already rising.
"I have a gorgeous mostly naked man with a body Michelangelo would weep over and a fairly substantial erection in my bed. I'm sure."
But even now, in the "Red Zone" as she'd come to call the sexual portion of the program, she never touched him without seeking his permission with a look. He gave it with a nod, eyes smoldering with the Dom he kept in check.
They had straightforward missionary (mostly) position sex, at night, before sleep, like married couples do. And it was both nicer and sadder than they expected.
It had come to be this way because during dinner the night after the storm, he'd told her about the truck.
"It's mine. I bought it last week." He laid an envelope next to her plate. "That's your share. Go ahead and open it, because I want to talk to you."
"Okay," she said. "About my share?"
"Not exactly, but I think it'll be factor in your decision."
Lord, not another proposition. She opened the envelope. $47, 622.19.
"There'll actually be more," he said. "I won't have December's totals for a couple weeks. It should be bigger. We had a spike on the run-up to Christmas and I suspect today will be very big. Tomorrow, too."
Janet stared in shock at the check. She read the amount written out. No, it's the same. His words filtered through.
"Why -" she choked and cleared her throat. "Why will today be big?"
"It's Christmas."
"It is?" She seemed to be having trouble managing coherent thought. "Ben, this is more than my annual salary."
"I know."
"And you're saying, what? I'll still get more for Christmas Day?"
"J.J., that check is for the last four days of October and all of November. And the money for the new servers and all that came off the top. Your December check will be more. A lot more. And there'll be a bonus, but not until the end of January."
She laughed. It was ludicrous. "Ben, what the hell? You were supposed to get twice as much as me. That's ....," she did some quick math in her head, "almost a hundred thousand dollars. In a month. That's ... " she groped futilely for a word. "You screwed up the math somehow." She pushed the check across the counter at him.
"We grossed over two-hundred twenty-thousand dollars last month," he said. "You forgot about Graphics Guy and Geek Guy's shares." He pushed the check back to her.
"Reading Romance went live in the U.K., Canada and Australia before Thanksgiving. We now have a subscriber base approaching the one million mark and have published over four-hundred titles. All of which you wrote." He smiled. "You're really going to like the bonus."
She put a finger on the check. "And you really are going to be a billionaire."
"Yeah. But right now, I need you to resign from your job and work for me full time," he said.
"I have a contract with the university," she said.
"I'll buy you out of it. Besides, I already found them someone to take your place. Son of a Nobel Prize in literature laureate. I doubt they'll care." He picked up their plates. "Say yes and become my Chief Editor. I need you to ride herd on the kids I hired. No one will know you're also an author. "
"You hired kids to write erotica?"
"They're older than me," he said. "I hired them to write supernatural and shifter."
She frowned. "You think ghost erotica is going to be big?"
"When was the last time you watched TV?"
"September. The night before I found some egotistical brat of a student snooping around my desk," she told him.
He grinned. "So you've never heard of Sam and Dean?"
She frowned, "Sixties pop singers?"
He laughed. "That was Jan and Dean. Trust me, vampires are going be big. And angels. Work for me, please. You won't get this kind of money for a while, but I have a friend at The Week who says they're starting a cyber edition and need a feature editor. It's a start-up, really and it's also not much salary, kind of part-time at home, but it'll be enough with what I give you."
"You have an amazing proclivity for having friends in the right places," she said.
"I plan it that way. I used to go to a lot of private clubs and I met people."
"You're what? A farm boy from Nebraska or something? And poor? How'd you get into private clubs?"
"I'm a
ranch boy from North Dakota and they were sex clubs. I was very popular." He got a bottle of champagne from the fridge. "I'd really like to open this. Work for me."
"Okay," she said.
"Okay?"
She threw a hand out toward her desk. "I have all these stories to write, Ben, when would I find time to teach?"
He grinned. Two dimples. Accompanied by champagne.
"So where are you going to be?"
Janet wrapped plates in protective paper and handed them to Ben to pack into a cardboard box.
"Someplace south of the city," she answered. "I'm staying at a hotel until I find an apartment."
"You okay about leaving?" he asked.
"This was never my home, either. And I'm looking forward to the lack of mold."
He reached for the tape gun. "Mold."
"Supposedly, they don't have mold or mildew in Denver. Semi-arid desert region. I hear they built the business complex in the middle of a prairie dog field," she said.
He set the box in the living room and brought back another. "I hired a business manager. He'll ship you a state of the art computer and a tech will come by and set it up." He looked around her small one-bedroom apartment. "And get something nice with an extra room for an office. You deserve a real office, you know. Hart Development will pick up the difference."
"Yes, Sir," she smirked.
He stopped and looked hard at her. "I'm leaving for a while."
"Okay. Will you be back later?"
"No," he said, taping together the new box. "I'm leaving the country." He reached for wrapped mixing bowls. "I don't know when I'll be back."
Now J.J. stopped and looked hard at him. "You hired a business manager."
He nodded.
"What's going on?" She went back to protecting her dishes, ignoring the empty feeling in her chest.
"You told me last week you didn't want a family. You didn't want to be obsessed with sex, either. But you do want to be in love, right?"
"Yeah. Wait - you don't think I'm in love with you, do you?" She handed him a serving platter. "Because while I am firmly in like with you and love being naked with you, I'm just not."
He smiled. "I know. The thing is, I do want to have a family. You seem okay with settling for a vanilla guy and living your submission out in your stories. But I - I don't settle."
"It's not 'settling' to me. It's a choice I make for myself. The math was always against me."
"The math?" He arranged and rearranged pots in the box like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle.
"There are ten natural female submissives to every one male," she said. "Some of those males will be gay or married or just generally fucked up. The picking are slim, at best. The thing is, I'm not willing to settle. Not willing to settle for a life about sex, which I'd become obsessed with if I had a Dom like you. Not willing to settle for a Dom less than you."
He looked troubled.
"Hey," she said softly. "Being with you just confirmed my choice. You didn't push me anyplace. I'm grateful for what you gave me, and what you made me accept about myself. I'm just as grateful you cared enough to call a halt because I couldn't have. Not with you."
"Fair enough." He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead.
"So. You want to fall in love with a natural submissive and have children and be a sex god publisher billionaire business mogul?"
"You think I'm delusional?"
"I think you have a plan," she smiled. "So why are you leaving? Now of all times? Trying to get in all the vacations you won't have time for later?"
"I need to grow up," he said grimly. "I'm pretty arrogant even if I'm not delusional. And," he shot her a concerned look. "I made a lot of mistakes with you. Ones that could have damaged you. Emotionally, I mean."
"I knew what you meant. How does leaving fix that?"
He shrugged. "I'm not sure. But America is still a pretty Puritan place Repressed. Like a whole country of middle schoolers when it comes to sex. I just think I need to experience different attitudes, find a teacher."
He turned to her. "I need to be challenged, somehow. It all came too easily, with my looks and all. I never had to work at being with anyone. I need - " He shook his head. "I can't wait. Later on, my life will become too high maintenance to take the time."
She stopped wrapping dishes and leaned back against the counter with her arms folded across her waist. "A wise philosopher once said, 'If you can't find your heart's desire in your own backyard, you never lost it in the first place."
"That's stupid. It's not even a logical construct."
"I know. It's a guaranteed eyeroll," she smiled. "But while you're away, just don't forget, coming back is also an option. … When do you go?"
He took a deep breath. "Tomorrow night."
"I see," she went back to packing. "You know, I haven't packed the bedroom, yet."
"That right? You want me to give you something to remember me by?"
She ducked her head so he wouldn't see her blush. "What'd you have in mind?"
He walked over to her and lifted her chin to capture her gaze. "Ever hear of erotic spanking?"
It was a very long good-bye.
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