The Proposal

by Kitty Thomas

  There's a part of me that wants to say this woman is too much drama—except that she isn't. She's happy to hear from me when I call. She's fun and flirty when we go out. And she hasn't once asked me “Where is this going?” There is zero pressure. It's like she doesn't care. And I honestly don't know what the hell to do with that. It's so novel that I just keep calling her like a fucking idiot even though part of me is sure she's playing me somehow.

  Is she involved in some advanced next-level gold-digging where she gets the man to shell out without ever spreading her legs? Given tonight's extravagant date, that's possible. And well-played, my dear.

  I've tried on every date to push things a little, to maneuver her into bed with me... and... nope. She's assured me she's very attracted and feels strong chemistry, but she doesn't do casual sex. I don't normally do the girlfriend thing, partly because I get trapped in vanilla suburban hell where the woman I'm with doesn't have the slightest clue of who I really am or what I'm actually into.

  And I rarely feel anymore that I should inflict my sadism and kinks on them for sport. I like to think I've outgrown some of my darker edges, but deep down I know they're only lurking, lying in wait for the right moment and the right woman they can be unleashed upon.

  I know I could specifically seek out kinky women to date, but that's often its own brand of drama. Then I not only get the needy clingy girl but I get the needy clingy girl who needs me to order her around 24/7—which is exhausting—and it becomes rote and boring. Then it's like I'm LARPing my own sex life.

  Above and beyond the specifics, I miss sharing a woman. I miss passing her around. I miss the joy of watching her get taken by one of my friends.

  Tonight's date was a surprise for Livia, and I am definitely raising the stakes. I'm a bastard, but I'm trying to push her buttons so she feels guilty for all I'm spending on her, so she'll give it up—even as I'm intrigued by the bizarre situation of a woman resisting me and wonder how long she can keep it up because I know she's attracted.

  I've seen the way her pupil's dilate, the way her breath catches in my presence. I've seen the hungry look in her eyes when our gazes meet, like I'm the very best filet mignon she's ever sunk her teeth into. Except that she hasn't. She's just sitting there, staring at her plate. Metaphorically, of course. We just got to the restaurant.

  Tonight, I took her on the jet to an extremely upscale underwater restaurant. It's like an aquarium, all glassed in with the fish swimming around you, and coral reefs and everything. It's pretty impressive, and I can tell she's impressed, the way she looks around, her light blue eyes widening at every new sight. It's like she can't even believe something like this can exist in our world.

  I admit I'm kind of charmed by her reaction, this sense of wonder and appreciation she approaches almost everything with. We are seated in a small private dining room at a romantic candlelit table, while sharks swim over our heads—which seems pretty fitting, all things considered.

  She's staring at the menu. “Seafood?” she asks wrinkling her nose.

  “What else did you think an undersea restaurant would serve? Do you not like seafood?”

  She shrugs. “I don't know. I'll feel judged.”

  “By the marine life?” I ask, incredulous. I can't stop the chuckle.

  “Yes. It would be like eating a hamburger while wandering through a field of cows. I feel like I need to cover my plate so they can't see what I'm eating.”

  Oh Livia, your clothes are coming off when we get back on that jet. The jet has a bedroom, and I have every intention of using it and initiating Livia into the mile-high club—a club I'm somehow convinced she isn't a part of. Fucking thirty-eight thousand feet in the air doesn't seem like her style, which makes me wonder why I'm even pursuing her so hard because I'm sure this girl is just more vanilla suburban hell.

  Livia works through her guilt and orders a type of seafood that isn't swimming in her immediate vicinity. When the waiter has taken our menus away, I pull a slim black box out of my suit jacket pocket and slide it across the table.

  Those fantastically expressive eyes widen once again. “Soren?” she questions. “What's this?”

  “What does it look like? Open it.”

  She's suspicious now, and I'm sure she can see through all of this. The trip on the jet, the fancy Little Mermaid date, the jewelry. She knows I'm trying to buy her. And in this moment I'm convinced that I've found her price and her legs will be open to me by midnight. A part of me is disappointed it was this easy. She presented the tiniest glimmer of a challenge. Oh well.

  She opens the box. “Oh my god, it's beautiful!”

  Inside is a platinum diamond tennis bracelet, which looks lovely against the dark plum-colored dress she's wearing.

  “Soren, I can't possibly accept this. It's too much.”

  “Don't be ridiculous. Of course you can and will accept it.” At first I think she'll fight me on it. Telling her she will accept it was possibly too much. But my mind is stuck in the fantasy of telling her she can and will accept every inch of my cock. These are actual words I plan to say to her in about an hour.

  She doesn't fight me on it, and it seems symbolic of her already-sealed surrender on the trip home. She holds out her wrist to me, and I help her put it on, part of me wishing I was locking something more substantial around her delicate wrist.

  I mostly zone out during the rest of dinner. I'm listening and responding but as soon as words are spoken on both sides they seem to dissipate entirely into the air around us. I just want to get her back on that jet. I want to rip that dress off her and throw her down on the bed. I want to hold her down and make her scream my name loud enough for the pilot to hear.

  “Thank you for dinner,” she says shyly when the check arrives. “This place is amazing.”

  “You didn't feel too judged by the fish?” I ask.

  “I got over it,” she replies, smiling. She has a beautiful smile. It inches up a little more on one side of her face than the other. It looks like a sweet smirk, a concept I would have found as credible as Santa Claus until I'd seen it for myself.

  I pay the bill and guide her out of the restaurant, my hand on the small of her back. My blood is pulsing and throbbing in my cock as I take her back to the jet. Thirty minutes tops, and I'll be inside her.

  But that isn't what happens. I've got her all the way to the bedroom at the back of the plane. I'm about to push her down onto the bed, my hand fumbling for her zipper when she says, “Soren, stop.”

  I think I may have actually growled. What in the fuck?

  This time she leads me back into the main part of the plane as she zips her dress back up. I realize I'd managed to get it halfway down her back. She sits in one of the plush seats, glancing nervously out the window as if she has the option to jump.

  I sit in the seat across from her. I'm sure she can see my anger and impatience because she looks genuinely afraid. Good. She's trapped in the air with me with no one to save her, and I'm growing tired of this prude act. It was cute at first, but I'm just about over it.

  She looks down at her hands. “I told you I don't have casual sex,” she says quietly.

  “Well what the hell does that even mean? Do you want to be exclusive? Do you want to be my girlfriend? Is that what you're angling for?”

  She looks up and takes a deep breath. I can see the weight of what she's about to drop on me even before it falls.

  “No. I don't do the girlfriend thing. Girlfriend is a fake title for a non-commitment that's just committed enough to fuck but isn't really going anywhere. Trust me, I've gotten that T-shirt. I don't want to sleep with anyone who isn't offering me anything real. And I don't believe in monogamy outside of marriage anymore.”

  Now I'm gaping at her like one of the fish we just left. She has got to be kidding. I want to stop this plane and make her get out and walk. Unfortunately that idea only works on the ground, with a car.

  “Excuse me?” I ask. Of all the million things I expected to come
out of her mouth, this was never even in the top one hundred. “Wait... are you seeing other men?” I feel somehow weirdly betrayed by this even though I'm usually the one seeing multiple women and keeping them all at arm's length.

  We haven't even discussed whether or not we're supposed to only be seeing each other. I just assumed because most women past the second date zero in and focus all their attention on me. So fair or not, it's become an expectation even when I'm not doing the same.

  She looks genuinely terrified right now, and still no guilt has arisen over that issue in my mind.

  “Yes, I'm seeing other people. And you're free to see other people. We aren't in a committed relationship.” She says this like it should be completely obvious. And actually it should be.

  “So you're trying to trap me into marriage?” I ask, my voice rising.

  She flinches at this, and something dark inside me is pushing at the cage walls to get out. I can hear it growling inside me, claws scraping harshly against metal in the way of fingernails down a chalkboard.

  “Of course not,” she says. “I didn't say it had to be you. I'm saying I'm not sleeping with any man I'm not engaged to. That's a privilege reserved for the man I love, who loves me, who is committed to me and offering me real security. Whoever that happens to be. And until that man makes that decision and I accept, I will be seeing whoever I want. And you can see or sleep with whoever you want. I'm not asking you to be celibate or putting your dick in a cage.”

  I'm speechless. For several minutes I just sit there, staring at her, forcing my mind to process the words that just came out of her mouth. It's like she's speaking in a foreign language. I speak five languages, three fluently—Chinese and Japanese I'm only passable in despite doing so much business there. But whatever language she's speaking isn't on the list of the ones I know.

  “So what you're saying is, you plan to date other men until you get an engagement ring?”

  “Basically,” she confirms.

  The little con artist.

  “And you expect any man to go along with that?”

  “The right man will,” she replies quietly.

  I want to throw things, but everything on the jet is literally nailed down. Or maybe it's bolted down. Either way, there aren't a lot of things I can throw. And I realize that intimidating her in this small enclosed space isn't the smartest idea I've ever had.

  I rise from my chair and tower over her.

  “Soren...” her voice is small, panicked.

  I grip the arm rests and lean down over her. “I could just take it,” I growl close to her ear as she shudders beneath me.

  “You do and you'll never see me again,” she whispers.

  “What makes you think I even want to see you again after you pulled this shit?” I say. Even though I know if either one of us should want to stop this forever it should be—and probably is—her.

  A fire sparks in her eyes and suddenly I'm staring at twin blue flames. “Get. Off. Me,” she snarls.

  I back off and plop my ass back in the chair across from her, glaring.

  “Did you think I was a whore?” she asks. “You know you can pay a prostitute if that's what you want.”

  “Honey, I can get it for free.”

  “But not from me,” she says.

  I don't know why I'm so fucking angry. Only a few hours ago I was thinking about how disappointed I was that no woman was a challenge, and here Livia Fairchild is—a challenge all wrapped up for me. And all I can do is whine like a petulant brat about it.

  “Are you some kind of religious fundamentalist?” I ask, because that's the only thing that makes sense to me right now.

  “No.”

  There is a long beat of silence.

  “Are you a virgin?”

  She looks at me somehow shocked, hurt, and offended all at once. “No.” She practically spits the word.

  Her voice is a bit stronger when she speaks again. “I have the right to set boundaries. I'm not obligated to fuck someone just because they want to fuck. I want the love and the commitment and the security. Sex means something to me, and if it doesn't mean the same thing to you, I'd rather just not. I'll understand if you don't want to see me anymore, and right now I'm not sure if I want to see you anymore so it might not be your decision to make.”

  She looks out the window again. We're flying over a city; thousands of lights shine like stars below us.

  My mind is racing with all kinds of insane thoughts. I have the money and power, I could make her disappear. I could take her and keep her as my prisoner. I could break her down until she bent sweetly to my will. Fuck vanilla suburban hell. I can lure her into the forest with me and take my time devouring her.

  I take a deep breath and say, “I apologize. You caught me off guard.”

  But I'm just regrouping, just resetting the game board, strategizing, planning ten moves ahead. I will have this woman in my bed if it's the last fucking thing I do. And once I do, she'll be very lucky if I ever let her out of it again. She has no idea who she's playing with.

  Livia

  Reboot

  Ten and a half months ago. Last August.

  I haven't spoken to Soren in two weeks, but I can't stop thinking about him. The reality is, the other two men I'm dating are placeholders. They're buffers to keep me from stupidly getting too attached to the wrong man. And I know without any doubt who the wrong man is now. But I haven't seen the others the past two weeks, either. I'm burnt out to be honest.

  I need a break from men. I need to think about if any of it is worth it. Dating men one at a time, dating them three at a time... what does it matter? It's still the same stupid bullshit. They won't commit, but they think you owe them your pussy because reasons. I'm so disgusted with this fucked-up dating scene, this instant-gratification culture, inside of which nothing deeper can ever have the hope to grow.

  I seriously just want to time travel to when men gave a shit, when they didn't feel so goddamned entitled to fuck by the third date. I realize even as I'm thinking it that I'm being ridiculous. We have this lovely thing called legal and political rights now. I'm pretty sure veterinary assistant wouldn't have been on the menu of career options a few hundred years ago. And I probably would have just been married off to whoever it was decided that I should marry, my desires be damned. Still, I stupidly hold onto this romantic notion that there's this great love out there for me, that there is a man who will love and respect me and give me the world, that I can be deliriously happy, have babies, have the fairy tale.

  The Disney princess brainwashing runs deep. Those movies get inside us too young. They take root like the vines that grew and twisted around Sleeping Beauty's castle, and we just keep believing that there's a man out there who will fight that dragon and slash through that thorn wall to get to us.

  While I've been giving up on men, Soren has tried to call every day. I let the calls go to voice mail, but I foolishly listen to them after the fact. It's apology after apology. He's said all the right things. He's admitted he was horny and stupid and that he would never hurt me. He swears I'm safe with him, that he cares about me and wants to continue seeing me.

  I want to believe everything he says, but I know he's dangerous. He's not the good guy. He's not the romance hero who gives me my happily-ever-after. I know he's not. But he's so fucking beautiful, and my body lights up every time he's near me. He smells like cigar smoke and whiskey, and I want to take a bath in that smell. I want to rest for the remainder of my life in the circle of his strong arms, but I know if I agree to see him again he'll be good for a few weeks and then he'll pull something like what happened on the plane again.

  I was trapped like an animal high in the air in that aluminum cage. He knew I had nowhere to go and he had all the power. Before that moment I'd been a little turned on by the edge of power and darkness I sensed in him. It wafted off him and enveloped me in its seductive warmth. It had seemed like just a little thrill. Harmless. He'd been the key figure in my twisted s
exual fantasies for the month since I'd met him.

  And I'm ashamed to admit it, but after that night on the jet, he's been even more prominent in my erotic mental movies. Every night I've gotten off even harder to thoughts of what could have happened, of what he could have done. And this is why I can't possibly see him again. Those feelings are too confusing. And I don't want to be that weak girl who lets a man like that in.

  Still, he's called. He's sent flowers, chocolates. Today I received a handwritten letter in the mail from him asking yet again for another chance. It's engraved stationery on cream-colored cotton paper. I know he won't keep this up. There are a few days at the most before he'll stop this pursuit and I will have lost him forever. If I can just be strong for a few more days I can put this and him behind me.

  It was only a month. Nothing serious. Soren is not the one.

  “I'd ask if I could buy you an ice cream to cheer you up, but that method obviously isn't working.”

  I look up, wiping the tears off my cheeks to find a very handsome man standing in front of me—as good looking as Soren, in fact. He is an angel to Soren's demon. His looks are light to Soren's dark.

  He has a golden tan, sun-streaked blond hair, and some of the bluest eyes I've ever seen—besides my own. And a toothpaste commercial smile with a dimple. A freaking dimple.

  He's got that casual Saturday in-the-park preppy look about him like he's just out for a stroll in between a round of golf and walking some pretentious special-edition dog breed. Settle down, Livia. He's probably got a girlfriend who walks their pretentious special-edition dog.

  I've been sitting on a park bench, reading and re-reading the letter Soren actually put a stamp on and put in the mail to me. And I've been eating a scoop of chocolate chip ice cream out of a disposable bowl from the creamery a block away.

  I hurriedly fold the letter and stuff it back in the envelope and stuff it in my bag as though I've just been caught doing something wrong.

  “You look like you could use some air,” he says.