Nervous

by SM Johnson

  Wow. I’d had no idea.

  She didn’t bother to answer him, just picked up one of the coffee cups and executed a precise heel spin that turned her toward me.

  I kind of wanted to make her feel better. I shrugged with one shoulder and held up my tied wrists.

  Her eyebrows changed shape when she frowned, and her forehead creased.

  “Oh, and there’s the part where Julian is tied to his desk and can’t get his own coffee.” Avery’s voice held what sounded like humor, maybe even delight.

  She walked around me and set the coffee down on left side of my desk. “You okay?”

  I nodded, then used one hand to point to the fingernails of my other hand.

  She looked towards Avery’s desk. “You are such a control freak,” she said, but she was laughing, and the tension she’d brought into the office disappeared.

  The coffee was good. I started picking through submissions.

  Time passed.

  After a couple of hours, I realized my bladder was tight and I needed a break. I also realized that I’d never asked him to untie me before. He’d always just seemed to know. I cleared my throat.

  “Yes, Jules?”

  “I need the restroom. Please.”

  He came over and untied my hands. “Don’t ever hesitate to ask for that. I don’t want you suffering unless I’m making you suffer on purpose.”

  I nodded and went into the bathroom, pondering what the hell that meant. Unless I’m making you suffer on purpose. Like tying my hands? Did he think that was suffering? I’d only been caught up by the restraints once or twice this morning. It was kind of extreme behavior modification, sure, but it was working. Nothing had ever worked. Should I tell him that, or not? Would he be interested? Or… would it make him even more satisfied and arrogant?

  When I came out of the bathroom, he pointed to the victim’s chair. Er, visitor’s chair.

  “I’ve ordered lunch to be brought in today, and I have a meeting with an author at two this afternoon. Not sure what I’m going to do with you during that.”

  “I can’t hear much of anything beyond my headphones,” I suggested.

  “Hmm. Maybe. I’ll figure something out.”

  I nodded, not quite sure what the problem was. Well. No, that wasn’t true. It would probably be awkward to explain my presence, tied to a desk in his office, to someone who didn’t know him. It probably should have been more difficult to explain to Stephanie.

  I was feeling relaxed. I don’t know when I last felt that way in the presence of another human being. And then he said, “I read the story you brought for me.”

  I went tense in my chair, frozen. I couldn’t have been more mortified if I’d written that filthy tale myself. It was a story about an alien or a demon – I wasn’t quite clear which – capturing a man and terrifying him with threats of the depraved sexual things that were going to happen to him. The being had appendages like tentacles, and he eventually used them to restrain the man, stuff him full from both ends, and made him come while pleading for mercy.

  It was more than that. It was the stuff of nightmares and sick fantasies, but the way it was written… well. The way it was written spiraled the man into his own forbidden fantasies, turned him inside out with pain and pleasure until he was begging the creature to never, ever stop. And the reader went with him, down into this endless darkness, longing to be swallowed by it.

  I couldn’t even describe how much it aroused me.

  Avery was talking, while I was dying.

  “I looked at the submission log and read the letter you sent.”

  “Um. Uh. W-w-well. Phoenix & Phoenix doesn’t represent erotica.”

  “True.” Avery leaned back in his chair, his forefingers steepled beneath his chin. “Very true. Your letter was perfect.”

  I sighed in relief and relaxed, a little tiny bit.

  “Are you gay, Julian?”

  Whoops. All my tension returned, full force.

  “Um. I th-think so. Prob-b-b-ably.”

  “Oh. That stutter is back. Am I making you nervous?”

  Oh God. So much.

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. He knew he was making me nervous. In fact, I think he was enjoying it. Having that power.

  “You think so. Probably. Have you never dated anyone?”

  I shook my head.

  “Never had a crush?”

  I glanced at him. All his attention was on me.

  I had a crush once, on a library customer, and it was agony. All day, every day, waiting, hoping, wishing for him to need a new book. Lurking in the stacks to catch sight of him. Assigning meaning to the smallest interaction, was his smile more than a smile? Was he gay? Obsessing. Fantasizing about leaving work sick and following him home, only to find he had a wife and five children. Or no wife, but what then? If I got up the nerve to ring the doorbell, what would I say? What could I say that wouldn’t be totally awkward and weird? I imagined going on dates, saying, “how was your day, dear?” and then had the terrible, crushing realization that I’d never be able to read his mind, I’d never know what he was thinking. And I’d never know if I was about to say the wrong thing and ruin the whole relationship. The reality of that gave me so much anxiety that thinking about him anymore made me feel like I was going to throw up.

  I couldn’t live like that. I wasn’t a person destined to be in a relationship. I had too much anxiety. Anything could go wrong at any minute, so I’d always live in fear that it would end, and there was nothing I could do about it. Ever.

  “I had a crush,” I said to Avery. “It made me sick.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” he said, and he was laughing, but it didn’t sound like it was meant to be unkind.

  “I should get back to work,” I said.

  Sitting in this chair while he asked me questions was unbearable.

  He cut off his own laugh, so it was a short, sharp bark. “Yes, okay. You may go back to work. Just know this. I might not have tentacles, Julian, but if you want a monster in your bed, believe me, I can be that.”

  I fled to my desk and took a gulp of my coffee.

  Wrote some letters.

  At some point, Avery came over to my desk, and, without a word, gently disengaged my fingertip from my mouth and re-tied my hands.

  I hadn’t put my headphones in, so the quiet of the office was pervasive.

  I could hear him typing. He typed a lot of words. I wondered who was on the receiving end of that email. Hoped it wasn’t me.

  After some time his phone rang, and he picked it up, listened, and said, “Yes. Thank you.”

  He was untying my wrists when Stephanie arrived with an array of take-out cartons that contained our lunch. She didn’t say anything this time, but gave me a pointed stare while she watched Avery release me. Only when my hands were free did she set a large paper bag on his desk.

  “I don’t know what you like,” Avery explained, lifting several cartons out of the bag. “I ordered Szechuan, a bit of variety.”

  I liked the fried rice, and the egg rolls, and the chicken inside a pastry puff, but I didn’t like the red sauce that came with it. I didn’t usually like sauces of any kind.

  Before two o’clock, Avery stood and stretched. “My appointment is confirmed. I think you should pack up and work from the hotel for the rest of the day. Promise me you won’t chew on yourself.”

  I found myself acutely disappointed.

  I liked being here, liked his quiet company in the office. It felt almost like having a friend. I tried not to think about it because it wasn’t something I wanted him to know, ever. It was startling, how comfortable I was here after not even a week. How, mostly, I wasn’t nervous.

  He untied me. It seemed like he spent a lot of time doing that, tying and untying me, but he didn’t seem to mind. It made me feel strangely childish and helpless, and even more strangely, it felt like he was taking care of me. Was caring for me. About me? But he didn’t want me to meet his professional c
ontacts, I guess, because he sent me back to the hotel, where I spent a restless and unsettled evening wondering what was right with me and what was wrong with me. Maybe he was embarrassed about the way I was dressed, even though he said he wasn’t, maybe he was… like, sparing my feelings, because if he wanted me dressed better he’d have to help me figure out where to get nicer clothes.

  And every once in a while my head got jammed up by some of the strange things he’d said.

  I don’t want you suffering unless I’m making you suffer on purpose.

  If you want a monster in your bed, believe me, I can be that.

  Did people just come out and say things like that? Or was there something wrong with him, too? Did he like the story? He never said if he did or not, only that it seemed to raise a lot of questions about me.

  I should have brought a different submission. What on earth had made me brave enough to bring that one? I had envisioned myself cocky and flippant, teasing him a little for being willing to pass up great writing because it was explicit. Stupid. I should have known better, shouldn’t have got lost in a fantasy in which I was an entirely different person.

  chapter four

  exhale, counting to six

  The next Wednesday the office door opened, and someone who wasn’t Stephanie stepped into Avery’s office.

  I froze. Avery had not tied my hands to my desk, but the ties were hanging there, and I’m sure they looked strange and out of place.

  “What the fuck is this, Avery?”

  He was a good-looking black man in a sharp suit, and he was waving a sheet of paper. I had no idea who he was.

  “What the fuck is what, E?” Avery sounded calm and reasonable, despite parroting the other’s curse words.

  “It’s a request for secure entry to your office.”

  “Oh,” Avery said, unruffled. “The button.”

  “Yes, the fucking button. It says right here, ‘I want a button I can press to unlock my office door. And an intercom so I know who it is before I let them in.’ Are you out of your mind? We’re not millionaires, despite that art-deco monstrosity that makes up the wall behind your desk.”

  “It bothers me when people come into my office uninvited.”

  “Well, we don’t have anything like that in the budget. How about this: keep your kinky sex games at home, like everyone else.”

  I was still frozen. But now I was shocked. Kinky sex games? I wondered if tying people up was a habit of Avery’s. A bad habit? A perversion? I decided I had to say something or I was going to be humiliated forever. Everyone in the company would know Avery had me tied to a desk in his office, like a slave or something.

  “He’s s-s-stopping me from ch-chewing m-m-my fingernails.”

  “Yeah? And who is he to stop you, and why should he care?”

  I felt myself go red in the face. It’s not like I hadn’t had those same thoughts, but somehow Avery got me to avoid examining them. He stopped me from thinking altogether. I had no idea how he did it, or why he bothered, and I couldn’t explain it, but the more he gave me orders, the less nervous I felt.

  “E. Don’t yell at him.” Avery’s voice was a quiet chill. “This is Jules, the reader who discovered ‘This Terrible Juncture’. I’m helping him break some nervous habits he’s had all his life. Julian Sparks, meet Evan Wolters, the other Phoenix.”

  That didn’t make sense at all. Evan was clearly black, and Avery was clearly white. Neither was old enough to be the father of the other. They couldn’t be brothers, could they? Maybe I was being an idiot again.

  Avery seemed to read my mind. “E is my brother-in-law. My father planned to live much longer than he managed, and my sister is an actress with no interest in running Phoenix & Phoenix. Her husband, E, manages her side of things. My suggestion. Well, not entirely. My suggestion was to take him on as a silent partner, but E sucks at being silent, and he never listens to me.”

  I snuck a peek at Evan, and he rolled his eyes, and lifted his hand to show me an alligator shape, jaws flapping. I would have laughed, but Avery was still talking.

  “I’m in charge of acquisitions, he’s in charge of the money side of things. Hence his budgetary concerns.”

  “Cute, Avery,” Evan said. “Mr. Sparks is your latest acquisition, then? Pet project?”

  Avery’s facial expression grew stern and somehow remote. “He’s our best reader.”

  “He’s still staying at the hotel?”

  “For the moment.” Avery almost sounded defensive. “If it’s an expense concern, I can move him into my spare bedroom until he decides if he wants to stay in New York permanently.”

  I already loved New York. I was less weird here, because weirder people than me lurked on practically every corner during my short excursions of the neighborhood. They talked to themselves, or shouted at everyone, while everyone ignored them. Women walked in shoes with ridiculously high heels. Men walked the streets openly dressed as women, and were hardly spared a second glace. I thought I might want to stay here forever.

  “Stephanie doesn’t approve of what you’re doing, by the way. So. I’ll get your key from her, and you can just lock the damn door, you freak. You’ll have to deal with getting off your ass to let visitors in.”

  “Fine,” Avery said, and Evan spun on one heel and left.

  “Your spare b-b-bedroom?” I asked, almost choking on my nerves. God, I’d never get away from him.

  “Yes, Jules. My spare bedroom. New York is expensive. You’ll need roommates, if you want to live here. And that means making friends.”

  I swallowed hard. Friends. Other people in my space.

  I must have gone pale.

  “Tell me the truth. Do you want to go home?”

  I shook my head. “I like it here. I mean, I like New York.”

  “Good. Pack your things tonight, and I’ll pick you up from the hotel in the morning.”

  I tore a tiny strip of flesh from the inside of my lip.

  “Stop that.” He got up, walked over to my desk, and took my head between his hands. “Show me.”

  Shit.

  I pushed out my lower lip, unsurprised when he used his thumbs to roll it inside out. My hands crept up and curled around his forearms, like they did the day I thought he was going to kiss me. I’d mostly given up the notion that he might kiss me, but when he held my head like this, it made me feel like I was falling, and I needed something to hold onto.

  “I’m going to be watching you full-time now, and thinking of all the ways I can punish you for disobeying me. Which means you might want to try harder.”

  All the ways he can punish me? Oh, God.

  His eyes looked right into mine, intense, knowing.

  Shit. Maybe it really was a kinky sex game, and I hadn’t even realized I was playing.

  I tried to decipher the message in his eyes, whether he was measuring my worth, or if he was about to tease me. But no, he didn’t look playful, he looked serious. Dead serious.

  And then he kissed me.

  He kissed me.

  Avery-fucking-Phoenix kissed Julian Sparks. Right there in his office, my head held between his hands, my fingers clutching his wrists.

  I had no worrisome thoughts, just white space in my brain where the words buzzed over and over again. Avery Phoenix kissed me.

  The firm press of his lips did something funny to my stomach, something I might have incorrectly called anxiety in my past life, but if it was something I wanted to feel over and over again until I died, it couldn’t be anxiety, could it?

  How could lips feel soft and hard all at the same time? His lips nibbled at mine for a millisecond before he pulled away, letting go of me first with his lips and then his hands. He straightened to his full height and ran one hand through his hair, still looking at me.

  My eyes felt stretched wide open, startled. Shocked.

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I’d never been kissed before.

  “Should I tie your hands now, or w
ait?”

  I swallowed, still staring at him, still shell-shocked and unable to speak. I finally managed to look away, and my eyes went to the tie at my left, and then the one at my right. I picked up the end of the right one, light blue pinstripes on black, and held it up.

  He smiled, and said, “You really are a weird mess.” I thought for a second he meant to be cruel, but his smile said otherwise. And, as if he realized it might have been hurtful, he added, “It makes you one of the more interesting people I’ve ever met.”

  That made me smile, too. “Thank you. I think. Sir.”

  He tied my right wrist, and then my left.

  We worked in silence for an hour or more, and every once in a while I remembered the kiss and it sent a shiver through me. And then I imagined him kissing me while my hands were tied to my desk, and that shiver went all the way to my dick and made me glad I was wearing baggy jeans.

  He had three appointments that afternoon, but didn’t send me back to the hotel. Oh no, nothing that simple.

  He sent me into the bathroom, each time, with my hands tied behind my back and instructions to be quiet.

  That was another of those things that didn’t feel real. Would a regular person meekly go into the bathroom and try very hard to be silent, just because someone like Avery Phoenix told them to?

  I had to pee so badly the third time that I eased the toilet seat up and wriggled my jeans and underwear down, sitting on the seat in hopes that the noise wouldn’t be heard beyond these walls. The problem came when I was unable to pull my jeans and underwear up again. There’s only so much you can do with your hands tied behind your back, I discovered. Getting undressed was possible because gravity kind of helped. Getting dressed again was a different story.

  I sat there in misery, railing at myself. Why didn’t I just wait? Surely I could have been more patient. Was I trying to humiliate myself? Did I like that sort of thing?