by CD Reiss
“Sorry,” I said. “It came out before I thought about it.”
“That’s allowed. There was some discussion with the board about whether or not you should have a male therapist, but from what we could understand, it wouldn’t matter.”
“So I got the hardass, unordained priest who knows I’m bisexual.”
“You got the guy with the MDiv and PsyD who spent three years in a hospital chaplaincy in Compton. After that, I go where I’ll do the most good, not where I get the most authority.”
“Ah. Compton. You must have seen some bad shit.”
“Very bad shit.”
“Then why are you at the rich kids’ retreat?”
“I can do good here as well as there.” He wasn’t thrown. Not an inch. I respected that.
“I need you to do some good for me,” I said, feeling suddenly less vulnerable. “I want to go home.”
“To Maundy Street?”
Trick question? Maybe. Deacon was on that private road. Second house to the right. First house on the right, his shibari students. Only house on the left was where the parties were. Where the art was made. Where I surrendered to whomever my master allowed, and my hunger was sated for days at a time.
“I figure I’ll stay with my parents for a few weeks, then decide. I mean, unless the prosecutor decides for me.”
“Will you try to see Deacon?”
“Why?”
“It could be dangerous.”
“Dangerous?”
“I don’t know if it’s safe for you.”
How much longer was this session? Because it would take me that long to describe how fucking off base he was. Despite needing to get the fuck out of Westonwood, despite wanting to appear sane and stable, I couldn’t for the life of me let Elliot Chapman misunderstand my lover.
“I’m more afraid of you than I am of Deacon,” I said. “I’m more afraid of this chair. The sky would fall before he’d hurt me more than I could take. He is the only man, the only person in the world who has made me safe. And I mean, not safe from some boogeyman or earthquakes or random shit happening. I mean I had a place. I had things I had to do. I had rules. He was in control, and the only time things got fucked up was when I disobeyed him because I just had to fly off the fucking handle. And before you ask, and you will, he tied me up good. He gagged me and hit me. He made me cry a hundred times, and he wiped my tears and I thanked him for breaking me. I. Thanked. Him.”
I expected my speech to disgust him, to give him cause to judge me, call me sick and out of control. Instead, he waited, expressionless.
“Do you want to remember what happened?” he finally asked.
“Yes.”
“You might not be ready to remember.”
“I don’t feel right in my head. There are black spaces where feelings should be. Like someone came and erased stuff. I don’t know if it was the drugs or the Librium you people put me on or what. I can’t put stuff together. It’s like I have the horse and I can see the track, but she’s bucking, and the tack’s in pieces all over the barn. Does that make sense?”
He sat back, putting an ankle on a knee, elbows on the arms of the chair. He rubbed his lip with his middle finger. “Have you ever been hypnotized?”
“You’re joking.”
“Best case scenario, you recall enough to release some of the pain you’re in. Worst case scenario, you create a false memory that includes a unicorn and Jim Morrison in drag.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. That was the most ridiculous thing, and anything more ridiculous than what was actually happening deserved a laugh.
“Do I have to sit on the couch?” I indicated the long, uncomfortable divan behind me.
“Yes.”
I didn’t move.
“Come on,” he said, standing. “It’ll be fun.”
“Are you going to make me cluck like a chicken?”
“It’s just a relaxation technique. No more.”
I took three steps to cross the room and sat on the couch.
He stood over me. “Lie back.”
I looked up at him, a twisted smile on my face. I could fuck him. It should have occurred to me sooner. I was suddenly ready for sex, all tingling skin and hyper aware. I could sense his cock, its taste, its scent, its pink skin sliding against the silk of my thigh as it found its way home. It would feel so good, and if anyone needed to feel good, it was me.
“Lie back,” he said again with a voice so devoid of desire, my own need collapsed.
I put my feet up and my head back. He sat next to me on the edge of the couch.
“I want you to recall the last time you were at the stables, okay?” He held up a pen, and I watched the angles of his fingers on the instrument. He didn’t have a wedding ring. “Now focus on the tip of the pen.” He moved the pen back and forth, and I fell into the rhythm of his breathing. His voice, a velvet mask of gentleness, said, “I’m going to count backward from five.”
***
I feel a pressure on my hand. It’s Deacon, slipping his hand into mine. The gesture, in its adolescent simplicity, creates a rush of emotions I can’t hold back. I run out to the empty patio. There are candles everywhere from the cocktail hour, still flickering their last heated breaths. I’ve been without him for a week while he was on assignment, and now that he’s back, he’s a scary jar of emotion with a poorly threaded lid.
“Are you all right?” he asks, closing the glass door behind him.
“I’m fine, it’s just…” I’m not good at expressing myself unless I’m angry, and I’m not angry. I’m just about everything else.
He takes me by the waist with his right arm. He’s so tall, so handsome. His body moves like a leopard on the African plain. “Tell me.”
“I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”
He smirks. He knows I’m not serious. He knows I’m broaching painful subjects by running away first.
“I’ll be more than happy to blindfold you.” He brushes his lips on my cheek. “But my eyes stay open. I want to see you beg for me later.”
“I miss you when you’re gone,” I say. “I can’t take it.”
“Ten years ago, I’d have been gone for six months at a stretch.”
When he says things like that, he reminds me of our age difference. Ten years ago, I was thirteen and he was almost thirty. I’ve never asked him what he sees in someone so young, because that would imply we have something more than a semi-casual open-hot-regular-fuck.
“Deacon, I’m sorry. I think now is a bad time, with everyone here.” I push him off me and turn away from the strip of twinkling lights that disappears into the black of the sea. “We can talk later.” I collect myself to pull him back to the glass doors.
I want to do a hundred crazy things. I want to grab a champagne bottle and down it. I want to stand on the railing and play at falling into the canyon. I want to get into my car and crash the gates. But he inspires me to be better than my impulses, and that’s why I need him.
He yanks me back. “We talk now.”
“You have guests.”
“They don’t need me. I can take you to the studio right now and knot you up and they’d be fine.” His face gets hard. He becomes the man who spent years photographing the horror of central Africa, who took pictures and walked away. The man kept behind a rock for three months while he was negotiated out. That man, like a real face behind a mask, or a mask on real face, I can’t disobey. “Talk,”
He doesn’t have to threaten me. There’s not a consequence in the world that would be stronger than his simple command. I don’t fear him. He makes me strong. He makes me dare.
“I’m not one of those girls who’s going to ask you where we are in a relationship,” I say. “Because I’m not stupid. What we have is exactly what I want. I have you when you’re here, which is most of the time. But if I want to fuck someone else, I just do it, no questions asked.”
“As long as you stay fit and safe, kitten.”
&n
bsp; “My problem is, I’m starting to feel guilty about it.”
He nods and looks down at our clasped hands. “I see.”
“That’s not the deal. We agreed. It’s all clear, and it all works. But when you picked me up tonight…” I press my lips together and look out into the sparkling black skyline. “I wanted to run into your arms. I wanted to promise you my body and soul. Forsake all others. Beg you to make a commitment. And I wanted to run the other way and get high. Call Earl. Call Amanda. Fuck anything that walked. Fly to China to search for real opium.”
“I can get you that.”
“But you won’t.”
“Never.”
“Why are we even this far?”
He laughs a little to himself then puts his eyes back on my hand. “You…” He looks back up at me, eyes lit from one side by the light through the door and the other by the candles. “I’m not a jealous man. I’ve seen too much. And you, it was always a choice to share you or not have you.”
“I know and—”
He cuts me off with a finger to my lips. “You did something to me. I was functioning, but I was in absolute despair. And you bang on my car window.” He shakes his head. “You breathed life into me again. You gave me hope that everything on this waste of a planet isn’t shit. You gave me permission to enjoy myself for the sake of it. I needed it. I needed you for that, and now, things have changed. We’d be crazy to pretend it’s the same as it was two months ago even.”
I know what he’s asking. I want to sit, just to relieve the ache in my heart that’s traveled all over my body, but I’m afraid to move.
“You want to do this?” I ask.
“Do you?”
Did I? What reason would I have to take him up on a promise of fidelity? What was in it for me, except him? “I’ve never been faithful to anyone in my life. I’m not built for it.”
He laughs. “You’re built for a lot of things, kitten.”
“I want you, Deacon. I want you so bad.”
“I think we need this.”
“I won’t fail you,” I say, believing it from fingertips to core. I believe I can be exclusive to him.
“I know.”
He leans in to kiss me, his breath a draft of mint and the floral bloom of gin. I melt into his lips. My face scrunches, and the ache in my body slams back into my chest. I’m thrown by a bucking memory.
Fucking brain. Goddamn brain won’t let me kiss him. I’m on my bed in my stupid condo, weeping uncontrollably, and my sheets stink to heaven of fucking.
Fiona. I’m not going to wake you. I’m going to count to three. On three, think of your happiest moment.
I claw at the sheets until they rip.
One.
He is not the indestructible Dom. He’s just a man. I want to destroy the sheets, the bed, the room. In the middle of my self-loathing, a weight between my legs grows, a siren call to forgetfulness and obliteration. I throw a leg over the bed’s footboard and ride it.
Two.
I cry out, and that cry is drowned out by the breaking dam of my orgasm.
Three.
I’m on a small plane, on my back. Charlie fucks me, and Amanda’s face is right before me. Her tits brush my shoulder, her blond hair in my face. She smiles. She is beautiful. I open my mouth because I’m going to come. Charlie puts his lips on my cheek, grinding his sweet cock. Amanda’s eyelids drop when I put my wet fingers on her clit. I’m high, on some delicious drug that lets me feel the connection between us three, our surrender, the tightening and expanding space between us, the puzzle pieces of cocks and cunts and asses, how we all fit together like one big universe forever and ever, amen.
***
I breathed as if my lungs had been vacuum-packed into my rib cage. Elliot moved to face me as I gulped air.
“I’ve never seen anyone have such an intense experience,” he said.
“That’s me. Intense experience girl.” I grabbed his hand because I still felt as though I was falling.
He brought his other hand over mine. “You still don’t remember.”
“No. I’m tired.”
His green-grey eyes looked at me as if they were peeling me open. “What are you feeling?”
“Tiredness.”
“Don’t shut down.”
“I’m tired, and I want to…” I took a deep breath.
“You want to use.”
“Yes. But I got it. It’s not a problem.”
“You’re so sure? You haven’t promised yourself this before? That you would stop using drugs or having sex to keep from feeling?”
“Don’t push me. Please.”
“It’s my job to push you.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes. I shut him out. He may have said something. I felt his presence in the room, his breath, his existence, his virility, and I closed myself to it completely.
CHAPTER 7.
I didn’t sleep in the dark.
I didn’t really sleep, period.
I wasn’t a woe is me kind of girl, because it wasn’t as though I actually had problems. I didn’t pretend I was ever going to live under a bridge. I didn’t pretend bad shit didn’t exist. I didn’t pretend I didn’t live in some wider world. I got it. I had a television. I had the internet. But what was I supposed to do? Devote my life to serving the poor? Take away all the suffering in the world?
But usually the minutes before sleep was when the woe-is-me cantered in, and if it was dark and I couldn’t see something to focus on, they got bad. I hated them.
Your best friend died. You’re in a mental ward. You nearly killed the only man who ever understood you. Half your life floated in a grey blur. Big fucking deal. Buck up. Fuck everyone. There was nothing they could do to me I wouldn’t do to myself first.
Assholes.
Fucktards.
Animals feeding at a trough of fucking bile.
I didn’t even know who I was cursing anymore, but fuck them.
I was fine. And when I got out, I was going to bathe in hundred-dollar bills and cocaine just to prove it.
I crossed my legs and blacked into an orgasm that was flat and rageful and over too soon. In the aftermath, I wept, because my best friend died, and I was in a mental ward, and I’d nearly killed the only man who cared for me.
Fuck me.
CHAPTER 8.
“Your parents are in the waiting room,” Elliot said when I entered.
“Should I go see them?”
“After the session.”
“Making my dad wait?” I said, lying on the couch. “You’re a brave man.”
He seemed unimpressed with himself. “I want you to start with something pleasant,” Elliot said, getting into the seat behind me.
I wanted to turn and look at him. Without seeing his face, the calm, dusty timbre of his voice was without flaw, and it soothed me, which made me anxious. I didn’t trust my soothed, unregulated self. “I can just tell you about stuff. We don’t have to do the hypnosis.”
“Do you not want to?”
“Well, what do you want?”
“You have to make your own decision about how this goes.”
I didn’t trust my ability to make a decision. That had been my problem from the get-go. I could have just said that, but I was starting to think he didn’t trust me any more than I trusted myself.
“Can you tell me why you like the hypnosis?” I asked.
“You have an anxiety disorder. We’re medicating it, but the hypnosis backs up the relaxation without making you tired. And there’s a time limit on how long you can be in here. I think we need to do whatever we can to move this along.”
“I like all that.”
“Okay, you can stop any time you want by saying a word.”
“Like what? Like a safeword?” I wondered if he could see me smile.
“Sure. A safeword.”
“Pinkerton.”
“Pinkerton? The assassins of the old west?”
“The assassin of the 405.” I di
dn’t elaborate, because despite the slurry of medicine in my blood, I was going to cry.
“Okay,” he said after I sniffled audibly. “I’m counting back from five, and start with something pleasant.”
***
I’m horny.
The feeling hits like a freight train between my legs, before a scene or setting even comes into my mind. The swelling rush of blood to my clit begs for release. And then, the preoccupation. I have to get it. I don’t care where it comes from. I need arms and legs all over me. I need to smell sweat, cunt, and sticky sperm.
This is the last thing you remember? Can you take me back a minute or two? What happened before?
Elliot’s voice, in its pure perfection, doesn’t break the reverie, but the realization that I was speaking aloud about the bite of my arousal certainly does. I tell him no. I’m not going backward, because the smell of wet cock and the subtle sting of cocaine fills my face. At this point, I have no idea what I’m narrating and what I’m keeping to myself, and I have no feelings about it either way.
I’m sitting on a toilet in a tiny club bathroom stall. Everything is marble and glass, but a bathroom stall is a bathroom stall. I hear the thump thump of music. The Pompeii Room. I look up. Earl. He’s all right. Six-foot-four of pure stupid. Easy pickings. His dick is dusted with a fine powder.
“More,” I say.
“Greedy bitch.” He smiles and holds a baggie of coke over his erection. He taps a line onto it while I hold it level.
“I’m worth it,” I say before I snort the line off his cock. Ah, that’s just right, just that rush. The feeling of unmotivated pleasure exploding heart-to-brain-to-toes. I’m totally in control of everything in my line of sight, especially this fucker. “I’m going to suck your cock so hard your daddy’s gonna come.”
“Touch your pussy, baby,” he growls.
But I don’t. I won’t ever touch myself, and this dumbass never remembers. I swallow his dick before he can ask again.
“Oh, fuck, baby—”
The music suddenly gets louder as the bathroom door opens, smacking Earl in the ass.
“Excuse me,” the man in the dark suit says. He’s halfway to closing the door.
