“I understand what you’re saying. You’re in control. When you said you didn’t want to go I should have dropped it. I just wanted to do something nice for you.”
“No. You just wanted to do something nice for yourself, and you wanted to bring me along.” The cramp in my stomach moves up to my chest, and my eyes start to sting. Pilar goes on before I can argue anymore. “You do realize that I’m on vacation right now, don’t you?”
“I—yes.” Of course she is, and she’s been spending every minute of her free time being supportive of me while I struggle with the worst account ever.
“This is a break for me. This, well, not this conversation, but this time between seasons on the show is relaxing for me. I’m doing what I want and spending time with the people I want to see. I don’t need or want you to take me on vacation. My job isn’t stressful. But you are stressed out and you do want a break from the city, so instead of just telling me that you need a break and you would like to get out of town, you suggested that you take me away and then got offended when I said no.”
“I didn’t think of it that way.”
“I thought this was about your need to control certain situations, especially since you’re feeling so helpless at work, but in the car it occurred to me that this is about trust. I don’t think you trust me to do the best thing for you.”
“I do!” I dropped to the floor without even thinking and put my hands on her knee. “I trust you more than anyone.” Pilar’s expression finally softens and she strokes my cheek. I lean into her hand.
“But what does that mean if you don’t trust anyone? I don’t have to tell you anything that goes on between me and another Mommy or Daddy, but I told you what happened between me and Valerie, and you didn’t believe me. You didn’t trust me to tell you the truth so you kept pushing until you knew I wasn’t going to give you the answer you wanted. You’re scared that Valerie said something to me. Instead of believing that she really didn’t say much at all, you choose to believe that she said something that you needed to hear and placed the blame on me for keeping you out of the loop.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I say quietly.
“But it’s what you said and it’s what you did. Intentions only get us so far, Suzy.” I don’t know what else to say so I apologize again. I’m not sure Pilar accepts it. It’s like there’s this muddy hole and I keep slipping deeper and deeper to the bottom. She sighs and strokes my hair. I don’t want to cry, but I hate the way she’s not looking me in the eye. She’s looking at the floor beside me. She’s somewhere else, thinking of what to do with me. I forced her to do that. I forced this distance between us.
“What can I do to make it better?”
Pilar tortures me with nearly a minute of silence before she answers. When she does, the tears I’ve been fighting break their hold. She wants to know what she’s doing wrong. She wants to know if she’s letting me down, if there’s some way she can earn my trust. I spring up on my knees and clutch both of her hands. I tell her, nothing. She’s done nothing wrong.
“I don’t just love you, Suzy,” she says. “I care about you and your happiness and well-being, but we have an agreement and I need your trust for this agreement to work. Do you want this to work?”
“Yes. I want to be with you. I want this to work. I’m stressed and paranoid and worried that this thing with Valerie will become an issue at the office. But I trust you.”
“What we have between us, it’s beyond the point of selfishness for me. I feel like I understand you pretty well now. I feel like I understand what’s best for you, but I would help you find another Mommy before I kept you for myself if I felt that’s what you needed.”
“No,” I say. “I want you.”
“Well then, baby. I know we’ve already talked about this, but you need to keep the lines of communication open with me before things get this far. Way before you feel the need to push back and way before you start confusing my needs and wants with your own. They are complementary, but they aren’t the same.”
She’s right. I tell her so. I want to climb into her lap and beg her to hug me, but I stay put right there on the floor. I’ve already pushed my luck with her too far.
“Valerie thinks you’re a very pretty girl, and I will be more than happy to take you on vacation. Okay? That’s all there is to it.”
“Okay, Mami.”
She leans down and kisses me then. She asks me if there’s anything I need to tell her or anything I want to get off my chest, but I’ve got nothing. I’m just mad at myself for, once again, making the wrong call, for being too afraid to let her lead me the way I want her to. And for letting my fear of Valerie supersede my love for my Mistress.
Pilar kisses me one more time, then tells me to go change. We spend the rest of the afternoon on the couch, both of us snoozing with the TV on. Me in her arms where I need to be. She feeds me dinner and helps me with my bath. I only get a kiss at bedtime, and a light one at that. Although I think I’m forgiven, I go to sleep with the worst feeling in the bottom of my stomach. Something is still off between us, and the next day I’ll have to face Valerie. Frank is there to soak up my silent tears, but still, he’s of very little comfort.
*
Monday morning, I know I’m out of line. I know it’s tacky, but I have to tell Liam what happened. I have to tell someone. We offer to grab lattes for a bunch of people, then power walk down to Hearth Cafe. Liam almost drops his coffee when I dish the whole story.
“You are fucking kidding.”
“No, I’m not.”
“And she has two little girls? Why is everyone’s sex life more interesting than mine? I’m the double-jointed gay guy. My sex life should be making headlines.”
“This isn’t exactly headline worthy.”
“But it’s pretty damn juicy. What are you going to do?”
“Nothing. I can’t bring it up. She shouldn’t bring it up. Plus, I already got in trouble with Pilar for making such a big deal about it. I just have to live with the fact that Valerie is an active Mommy Dominant.”
“You know what I’m thinking, right?”
“No…”
“She was sizing you up that day.”
“Oh, shut up.” I’d give Liam a little shove, but my hands are full of latte. Instead, he lets out his evil little laugh and just bumps my hip.
“No, you’re right. I’m sure that was just a coincidence. You’ve just made it so easy to fuck with you.”
“Thanks.”
“I say you don’t worry about it. It’s awkward, but it’s not like she wants it getting out. Though, now you have a little leverage in case, say, you need a reason to blackmail her.”
“You really must be bored, huh?”
“Yesss.”
“We need to get you and Gary into a bondage class pronto. You need something to do.”
*
On edge doesn’t come close to describing my mood that day. I wait and wait and wait for Valerie to walk by my desk. I almost crave the moment where we have to face off and exchange that look that says, “Oh, I know what you did this weekend, you little freak,” but the moment doesn’t come.
At eleven, we get an e-mail that she’ll be out for the day. My imagination goes back into overdrive. Is she sick? Or is she taking extra time to spend with her little girls? Thinking of her with them makes me feel weird. It’s a bit of a turn-on. She’s not an ugly woman, after all, but she’s just not who I expected in that role. But knowing her in this other way? There are just things about people you’d rather remained a secret. This is one of those things. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look at her the same way. It’s too much to consider the ways she might be thinking about me. Or Pilar.
As the e-mail stated, I don’t see Valerie for the rest of the day, but first thing Tuesday morning she’s there for our status call with 21 And Up. I almost gag when she walks into the conference room, but her demeanor hasn’t changed. I don’t know, maybe I expected her to wink at me or
give me that knowing nod, but she greets us all in her regular fashion, and then we hop on the call. I’m hypersensitive to everything she says and does during the meeting, but from the way she only looks at me while I’m speaking and sometimes not even then because she’s making notes, I realize that Pilar was right; Valerie knows where the professional line is and has no interest in crossing it. I should have listened to her.
By the end of the call, after ten or so snide comments from the 21 And Up reps about how long it’s taking us to get the paper-doll function up, I’ve forgotten all about Valerie. The weekend is definitely over, and work is waiting not so patiently to swallow me whole.
Late that night, I get a frantic e-mail from Katie about the paper-doll banners. 21 And Up has requested ten more. I’m too tired to think about it. It’s more code, more flash design. I’ll just have to deal with it in the morning.
I wake up tense and a little miserable because Pilar and I haven’t actually spoken since Monday morning, and our Sunday conversation is still sloshing around in my head. When I get to work, I find that in her frantic scramble to find out when the banners can be ready, Katie has CCed Valerie on our e-mails. She calls me into her office. I quickly scan the chain of e-mails sent while I was trying to sleep, then grab a notepad and head to her office. Valerie’s leaning over her desk, as she often does, clicking on her mouse.
“I will handle the banners,” I say just as I cross the threshold.
“No doubt in my mind that you will.” She takes a seat and leans back in her chair. “Why don’t you close the door?”
I freeze halfway to her desk, and that moment arrives. We stare each other down. There’s no wink, no evil smirk, but the shift occurs right then. I can flee and make an ass out of myself if she really just wants to have a closed-door meeting about 21 And Up, the kind of meeting we’ve had before. Or I can wait for Valerie to cross that line that almost seems tangible and I can defend myself. Either way, I turn and close the door. The smile on Valerie’s face when I step back to her desk tells me exactly the way this meeting is going to go.
“Put down your notepad and come here.”
What I feel next can’t be expressed in words, rather in temperatures and reactions from my skin. I walk to the side of her desk, just next to her chair, fear dictating my every step.
She touches my leg first. I regret wearing a skirt. I close my eyes and try not to react to the change in her tone—that practiced, precise tone that a vulnerable submissive is hard-pressed to resist.
“Did you have fun this weekend?” she asks.
I don’t reply. I can’t. My whole body is burning hot, and if my skin could actually crawl, it would be trying to escape. My heart pounding against my ribs is the only thing keeping my whole stomach down. I can feel her in my neck that is strained so tight I know it will be sore later.
She trails her finger down to my knee. I don’t know what to do. “Answer me.”
“Yes. I had fun.”
“Carly says you’re quite the kisser. Did you enjoy kissing my little girl? Look at me when I talk to you, Suzanne. Or is it Suzy?”
My eyes snap open. “It’s Suzanne, please.” I can’t control my legs. It’s like my feet have turned to Jell-o, but that name belongs to Pilar. The wider the cruel smile on Valerie’s face stretches, the more I realize she knows who I’m defending.
“Suzanne, then. You haven’t answered my question.”
“I don’t know.”
Her eyebrows go up, but her tone is soft and playful. “You don’t know? What kind of answer is that?”
“It was fine. She’s very nice.”
“Carly is a very nice girl. How did seeing me with my girls make you feel?”
“Uh…nervous. Anxious.” Terrified, with justifiable reason.
“Seeing you made me feel anxious, too. I didn’t know how you’d react here in the office, but you know how to keep a secret, don’t you, Suzanne?”
“Yes.”
“I see that. You lied to me when I asked if you were seeing someone. Your Mommy sent you those flowers, didn’t she?”
I tell her yes.
“She’s sweet, but she’s wrong for you. We talked about you, you know?”
“Yes. She told me. She told me it wasn’t much of a conversation.”
She laughs a bit. “I bet she did. How long have you two been together?”
“Almost two months.” Her hand is still moving up and down my leg. She strokes my calf.
“Oh. Not long at all. No wonder she hasn’t collared you. I like to claim what I want right away.”
“Then why haven’t you collared Carly?” The words are out and Valerie’s reaction is just as swift. She smacks me lightly on the thigh.
“You’ve got some mouth on you. I don’t plan on keeping her, that’s why.” She looks me up and down slowly. I feel my nostrils flaring. I can get through this, I tell myself. Just get through this. Though I have no idea what will happen next. Her palm rubs up and down the length of my thigh, all the way up.
“Lift up your skirt,” she says. My response is automatic because I don’t know what else to do. Sometimes you can’t run from a barking dog; you just have to wait for it to attack. I grab the hem of my skirt and pull it up. My panties are especially girlie today. White with little ladybugs on them. They’re new. Pilar hasn’t seen them on me yet. I stare out the window now, tinted from the inside so no one can see in, and try to ignore the perverse look of approval on Valerie’s face. When her finger brushes my slit, I do everything I can to shut my body’s reactions down, but it doesn’t work. I’m trembling, it feels like, but really I hold perfectly still. She takes her time, finding my clit through the fabric. Her touch is gentle, but her fingers are slimmer than Pilar’s, I distantly know. Just another difference that sets them apart.
“Your mouth could use some work, but look at that control. You’re very obedient.”
I close my eyes again and wait.
“I think we have ourselves an interesting situation here,” she says. “In a few weeks you’ll be working directly for me. More private meetings. I might even take you on a pitch meeting here or there. I have some plans for you, but I should talk to your Mommy first, I think.”
My eyes snap open then, but my voice is barely a squeak above a whisper. “Please. I—”
“Shh, Suzanne. Let me finish. I’ve already talked to Pilar about a trade. Carly is a very good girl. Pilar would enjoy her company. And it seems like you could use a little more discipline, discipline I could give you.”
A defense of Pilar and our relationship comes rushing to the surface, but it’s immediately halted as Valerie pulls my panties to the side. Her fingers stroke along my bare skin. I want to beg her to stop, but my words come out as a pathetic whimper.
“Son of a bitch.” She sucks in a breath through her teeth. “You have a gorgeous pussy, Suzanne. And look how wet you are.”
She holds up her finger, glossy with the evidence of my arousal and terror. I think I might pass out. Her fingers go back between my legs. She strokes me again.
“Pilar loves me,” I manage to say. “She’s not interested in a trade.”
“And how do you know that? Is that what she told you?”
“Yes.”
“And why wouldn’t you believe her. Such a good little girl. Let me tell you something. Pilar wants to keep you happy while she has you, but do you really think she’s planning to keep you forever? Even if she collared you, it’s not like a piece of leather is legally binding. If things aren’t working for her, she will move on. Or if something better comes along for you. It’s a conversation, one conversation. I explain what I want, make her see what she really wants, and it’s done.”
“I want to be with her.” My voice is shaky, but it’s the truth. I want Pilar.
“Sometimes it’s not about what you want. Sometimes it’s about what you need. You need more discipline, more structure, a little more training. And I need a little girl that I can have access t
o during business hours. Carly and Giselle are great, but I only get them on the weekends. I want more and I think you do, too. Imagine all the time I could spend spanking you right over this desk. All the afternoons you could spend right here between my legs. I think Pilar would want that for you. Along with a little attitude adjustment.”
She stands and pulls down my skirt, even though my slit is still exposed. “I think I’ll call her tonight. In the meantime, you can keep a secret, can’t you, Suzanne?”
I say yes because any argument will only keep me in her office longer.
“Good girl. Now why don’t you head back to your desk? I know you have work to do.”
I turn calmly on my heels, reminded instantly of how my underwear is bunched against my thigh. I grab my notepad and do all I can to walk, not run, back to my desk. Air is rushing in my ears, but the whole office is oblivious to the sound. Phones are ringing. Keyboards clicking. I hear Mitch laughing. I have to go. I pack up my laptop and grab my keys. No one seems to notice that I have all of my stuff as I slip out the door.
Chapter Thirteen
I miraculously make it back to my apartment without wrecking my car, but I fail to hold off a complete breakdown until I get home. I think this is the panic attack I’ve been waiting for. I’m prepared to hide my face and my tears from my neighbors, but the elevators are empty as I head up to my apartment.
I know what I need to do. I need to call Pilar. I need to tell her what happened, but I can’t. I can’t tell her that I let Valerie touch me. I can’t confess that I had a real sense of what she was capable of doing. I can’t admit that this isn’t the first time that Valerie has stepped out of line with me. Pilar was right. I didn’t believe that a short conversation between them was all that transpired by the rooftop pool. I blamed her for my omissions, and now I’ve trapped myself in this horrible corner.
At Her Feet Page 19
