Nervous

by SM Johnson

  “Kiss me. Please?” I said, and Avery did.

  “That wasn’t a punishment, it was a test,” I said a little while later. We were at our respective desks, and I’d tried to read more, but was still ruminating.

  “Why does it have to be one or the other?” Avery asked.

  I could feel him looking at me, so I lifted my head and looked back. His eyebrows were raised, mirroring the question, waiting for an answer.

  “Because, well. Just because.” I had no idea. The hardest part had been calling out to him, with Evan there. Interrupting their conversation with my neediness. “Because it wasn’t much of a punishment,” I finally said.

  “Ah,” he said.

  That was all.

  “What was that? What does ‘ah’ mean?”

  He smiled. “Ah, you liked hanging on my wall.”

  “No. I didn’t like it. It was boring and uncomfortable.”

  “Which makes it a punishment.”

  Oh. Oh.

  He was saying… what was he saying? I got hard when he spanked me, so a spanking couldn’t be punishment? Hmm. I’d already recognized that, I guess, right after the spanking, when that teeny-tiny inner voice told my brain to take note so I could make it happen again. All I had to do was chew on myself. I’d registered that I could manipulate him. He was telling me now that I couldn’t. He wouldn’t allow it.

  “What are you thinking, Jules?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Bullshit. I’ll expect an email in oh, two or three minutes.”

  Fuck. Here we go with this again.

  I clicked compose and typed Dear Mr. Avery Phoenix SIR. And then I paused because I wasn’t sure what to write. The truth, I decided. You won’t spank me anymore because I liked it too much. I don’t know how to play a game where you use the things I like against me. Yours, Julian Sparks.

  I snuck a peek at him when I heard the soft click of his mouse. He was smiling at his computer screen. He typed something. And then he typed more and more somethings.

  The new mail icon on my screen flashed.

  I clicked it open.

  Dear Jules. I am helping you learn how to stop bad behavior. You have indicated, by your very attempt at obedience, that you appreciate this help. Punishing you in ways you like will increase bad behavior, not deter it. Punishment is sometimes also a reward, but I will not reward you for bad behavior. I have said this before: if you want me to spank you, you need only to ask. There is no need to manipulate me to get what you want. Sincerely, your master, Avery.

  Reading it made me go hot all over. I’m sure my face was an unattractive shade of red, so I buried my head in my arms and let myself feel whatever I was feeling. My inner self was conflicted. A combination of embarrassed, excited, and scared. The feeling that twisted up my guts was none of these, though, it was a rolling sense of delighted shame. I shouldn’t like feeling the way I was feeling. And yet I did.

  ‘Your master,’ it said. Those words, together like that, made my insides squirm, made my thoughts dissolve into a confused muddle. It sounded so dirty.

  I raised my head and read his email again, and felt that internal electricity skip along my nerves, freezing me in place. The hair on my arms stood up. A chill settled onto the nape of my neck.

  Fight or flight, I’ve read, begins with an activation of an area of the brain called the amygdala, and leads to a whole host of chemical reactions in various glands of the body. People who have generalized anxiety tend to have a smaller left amygdala, for whatever that’s worth, which to me is practically nothing. It was more helpful to learn how concentrated breathing slows my pulse rate, and grounding myself with The Big Five can sometimes abort a panic attack.

  What I felt reading that email was utterly foreign. I wondered if it was the less talked about reaction, freeze.

  Prey animals freeze when startled by a predator. It’s not the most useful response, as far as species continuation. Someone, probably a reference librarian, said the paralysis comes with an inability to feel pain, which is somewhat comforting if you’re about to be eaten. Still not useful.

  I read Avery’s words a third time, and again the electric, physiological response froze me in place.

  “Jules.”

  His voice startled me so much I nearly yelped. My head jerked, turned in his direction so I could see him.

  “Your eyes are so big, Jules.”

  I blinked. Couldn’t seem to stop blinking.

  Avery stood, walked around his desk, and loomed above me. “Do you want a spanking, Jules?” His voice was soft, but full of promise.

  Every time he said my name, my heart felt like it stuttered.

  He cradled my face between his warm hands, and tilted my head so I had no choice but to stare up at him. Somehow his touch released me. I became aware of my breathing and the fast beating of my heart. Hyper-aware of my buttocks, which were tightly clenched.

  I whispered the truth, because I was sure my voice wouldn’t work properly. “Yes, sir.”

  The way he pulled me to my feet and nudged my chair away from my desk was graceful, effortless. How he pushed my jeans and boxers down, also effortless. He took both my wrists in one hand and folded me over his lap, trapping my hands between his thighs. Awkward, and yet not awkward at all. I wasn’t nervous or scared or anxious. I felt… I felt like I was waiting. Only that, nothing else. Just waiting.

  The flat of his hand landed on my ass and forced a gasp of surprise out of me. There was no pause between strikes, just another and another and another, until I was panting, groaning. Until I could feel the hard length of my dick against my own forearm. He paused, and said, “Color?” and I gasped, “Green.”

  And again and more and harder. My ass burned, and the heat flowed through me until I felt my whole body break out into a sweat. He didn’t have to tell me to stop tensing, because my body remembered, all by itself.

  He stopped suddenly, and hauled me up, spun me around, and set me on his lap.

  His fingers curled around my aching dick and squeezed.

  The muscles of my thighs and ass reacted, thrusting my length harder into his hand. I was leaking, and it made his fingers slippery, and it felt, oh, my God, so good. Better than anything. Better than my own hand slicked with lotion. I thrust, and I thrust, and I was going to come.

  Except. Avery’s fingers clenched too hard, and at the same time he pinched my inner thigh, so instead of ejaculating, I let out a surprised shriek.

  He chuffed a soft laugh. “No. Not in the office.”

  “Wh-what? You’re kidding.” My stutter was from breathlessness this time, not nerves.

  “Not kidding. If you’re very, very good, perhaps we can repeat this whole scene later, at home.”

  I slumped back against him. He wasn’t kidding.

  He slipped one finger into my mouth, making me taste myself. It should have been gross, but it wasn’t. It tasted like me, like the inside of my mouth, but not exactly. The word dirty went through my head, accompanied by an enjoyable shiver. I sucked his finger, wondering what it would feel like to give him a blow-job.

  As if he knew what I was thinking, Avery shifted me forward on his lap. “Up. Get yourself dressed. Back to work.” He was laughing for real now, his fingers beneath my shirt, tickling my sides.

  Playful. Avery could be playful.

  I groaned, sighed, and used my hands to push off his thighs to get to my feet. I pouted at his back as he went into the bathroom and I pulled up my pants and underwear. Was still pouting when he came out again. “Not fair,” I said, as he sat down. And when he looked at me, I gave him what I hoped were puppy dog eyes and stuck out my lower lip.

  His whole body laugh almost drowned out the knock at the door. “Get the door, please. It should be Evan, here to finish our earlier conversation.

  I stalked to the door, and when I opened it, Evan looked me up and down.

  “Julian. Are you okay?” He looked concerned.

  “I am. Yes.” I felt
the flush trying to creep into my face, and took a deep breath, fighting it. “Everything’s fine, Evan.” My voice might have been higher than usual, but I was being silly. Evan had no idea what had just happened in here. I had no reason to be embarrassed. When I peeked over my shoulder at Avery, he looked comfortable sitting behind his desk, still grinning. I glanced down and saw my erection obviously tenting my jeans. My hands flew down to cover myself and I rushed back to my desk, but my chair was still in the middle of the room.

  I glared at Avery, tugged the chair into place, and made a show of putting earbuds in my ears.

  I would pretend neither of them were in the room. I fumed for a second, and then was almost overcome with the need to giggle. Because I suspected Avery was hiding his own erection behind the desk.

  Avery’s email was still open on my desktop, but I didn’t dare read it again. I clicked to close it, and a dialogue box popped up. Do you want to download the attached file?

  I hadn’t even noticed there was an attached file, but okay, sure.

  The file was titled <>

  Once it was saved, I opened it, curious as to what Avery had sent me.

  Stephanie knocked on the door, shoved the person I assumed was the reader from Minnesota into my office, and fled, her snicker trailing behind her like the grin of the Cheshire cat. I don’t get her. I really don’t. She periodically gives me an unfathomable stare, shakes her head, and mutters something under her breath about normal human beings, but I’ve never managed to catch the actual words. Sometimes it’s the stare alone. Makes me feel like she knows all of my secrets, though I’ve never confided in her.

  The reader from Minnesota, on the other hand, was worthy of that kind of stare.

  Now, I expected a nerd, because most slush pile readers have nerdy qualities. They’re somewhat fashion ignorant, tend to wear glasses, and I’d bet eighty per cent of them wear their hair tied back with hairbands. Another five per cent have honest-to-God ‘man buns’. I have a difficult time taking those ones seriously. If I’m being completely honest, I have a difficult time not smirking at anyone with a man bun, which isn’t fair of me at all, I know. I’m the last person who should be smirking at anyone.

  But I digress.

  I was saying that I expected Julian Sparks to be a nerd. Late-twenties or thirties. Glasses. Ponytail. Ingratiatingly polite. Yeah, me and adverbs, I’m aware. But I’m a literary agent, not a published author.

  He met my greeting with silence, looked at my outstretched hand as if it would burn him, and instead of shaking it, waved at me with a pinky finger.

  He wasn’t in his early thirties, more like early twenties. He was ridiculous.

  But at least he didn’t have a man bun.

  He had longish, blondish hair that fell over his eyes and half-hid his face. He looked at me with quick flicks of his eyes, then dropped his gaze to the carpet and kept it there.

  When I asked him for the envelope he was clutching to his chest, he acted as if he didn’t remember he was holding it. It felt like it took five minutes just to confirm his identity, and in that time I realized he was terrified.

  Of me. He was terrified of me.

  I had sent him a fairly standard email thanking him for bringing ‘This Terrible Juncture’ to my attention. And he had sent me a nonsensical, rambling reply, chatty and informal. And here he stood just past my office door, too scared to speak at all. It was so at odds from what I expected that I found him utterly charming.

  And when I got him to meet my eyes for longer than half of one second, I discovered he had gentle brown doe eyes, skittish. The kind of skittish that made me want to tackle him to the floor and feel him squirming beneath me while I ordered him not to look away.

  I did not do that, by the way. I am capable of a certain measure of restraint.

  Which is a secret all on its own.

  So yeah, suffice to say that while I expected a nerd, nothing prepared me for the scruffy, yet adorable bundle of nerves that was Julian Sparks.

  This was going to be interesting.

  I read it twice.

  I watched Avery talking to Evan for several minutes. They were deeply involved in conversation, and Avery didn’t look over at me, even once. Either he was a really good actor, or he was not expecting me to be reading this. Had he sent it by accident? Or did he want me to know what he thought of me that very first day?

  I squirmed.

  Shit.

  I didn’t think he sent it to me on purpose.

  He thought I was interesting. Also ridiculous, but I forgave him that immediately. I knew other people found me ridiculous. I was used to it.

  I tried to go back to reading the gay romance, but my concentration was shot. I would still read the whole manuscript, but there was no way I could do it right now. Instead I went to my letters folder and retrieved contact info for a couple of authors whose submissions didn’t make the cut. I scrolled to the beginning of each story, reminded myself of the problems, and wrote the letters. I had a more or less standard rejection letter template, so this was easy. As I wrote, I remembered Avery telling me he used to do this, but his letters started sounding mean-spirited. I guess I could understand how that might happen – if you read a lot, you can quickly identify what’s publish-ready and what needs a little work. You can identify almost immediately the ones that need a lot of work.

  But despite the interoffice forum gossip about the dragon, nothing about Avery seemed mean-spirited.

  He was forward, yes, and carried himself as though he expected and deserved respect. He was polite to everyone at the club last night. Well. Almost everyone. He wasn’t very nice to the man who’d been hitting on me, but I’d been relieved about that. It felt more like a rescue than an exercise in rudeness. I remembered him saying he thought Stephanie wished he had prettier manners, and I had witnessed him barking at her now and then, but it seemed more like friendly banter than actual animosity.

  He mentioned secrets, twice. Maybe I didn’t know him very well, after all.

  I discovered I wasn’t worried about him having secrets. It was the thought of keeping my own secret – that I’d read this – that worried me the most.

  He seemed to understand me, right from the beginning. He wasn’t put off by my nervousness, even when some of the things I was nervous about had to seem stupid. But he was kind to me. He figured out right away that giving me orders calmed me down. He got me to tell him things I’d never told anyone. Not that anything I’d told him would be considered a secret, just that I wasn’t very good at carrying conversation.

  He allowed me to be angry with him, without blowing it out of proportion, without turning it into an argument I had no idea how to navigate.

  Avery knew how to navigate me, and in turn, maybe, how to help me navigate a whole new life.

  Next Wednesday, I would be working from the submissions pool. I would not continue to whine about it, and I would do my best not to worry before I actually got there. And when I did get there, I would sit at my desk, listen to my music, and do my job.

  Because Avery Phoenix believed I could.

  chapter eleven

  mindfulness

  After work, I was working. Well, pretending to work. I didn’t know how I would get through the weekend pretending I hadn’t read that file, but decided that attending to mindfulness was worth a try. Mindfulness is about gently encouraging yourself to attend to the present moment. I’d sent the gay romance manuscript to my tablet, and hoped I’d be able to concentrate on it, as long as I gently did not allow myself to think about Avery’s file.

  Avery had the television on in the living room, but it was tuned to the National Geographic station and he seemed to be ignoring it in favor of his laptop. I suspected he was working, too.

  I’d planned to stay in my room, but he coaxed me out, first to eat some salad and a ham sandwich, and then because, quote, “the furniture in the living room is more comfortable.”

  Friday night with Ave
ry wasn’t much different than Friday night alone at home. Except always at the back of my mind was the file. And the threat (promise?) of repeating the scene we’d started in the office.

  I shifted on the couch, and noted that my buttocks were sore. Not in a bad way, more in a reminding way.

  There was a red mark on my right wrist, from the cuff in the office bathroom, and that was a reminder, too.

  Avery set his computer aside. “We should plan the weekend. Evan gave me tickets to my sister’s play tomorrow night. Would you like to go?”

  Was he asking me out on a date? Avery and me on a date? I couldn’t… I didn’t… but a play was like a movie, right? Just watching. Not making conversation. Would it be like a romantic date, or like, just two guys going to see a play? My leg was twitching, and Avery’s hand came down on my knee, holding it still.

  “Are you overthinking this, Jules?”

  I denied it. “Just thinking. Trying to imagine going to a play. Yes, all right, I would like to go. If you want me to.”

  “Wow, that was almost easy.” He released my knee.

  “Would you… would you take me somewhere cheap to get more clothes? I can pay for them,” I added, hastily. “I just didn’t bring much with me, and I didn’t realize I’d lost so much weight living on my own, until you pointed out the clothes I did bring don’t fit well. A second-hand store would be good.”

  “I can buy you clothes, Jules. I don’t mind. Do we not pay you enough?”

  The Julian who had never met Avery and never been to New York City would have been horribly embarrassed by this question. But the Julian sitting in Avery’s living room was only a little embarrassed. “It’s not that – I can pay for my own clothes. It’s just – I like thrift stores. They have so much more stuff – all kinds of brands and sizes, and I can always find something. And no one bothers you – sales people, I mean. No one pushes things at you that you don’t want.” Like too-tight jeans or too-tiny underwear.