by M. C. Cerny
“You went to Karim?” I made it sound like a question but I knew.
“Yes. Both my sister and I.”
“I always thought it odd neither of you sounded Texan. French, then?” I asked him, the quiet thudding in my brain sorted accents like shapes in my world placing the puzzle pieces together. The accent was light, barely there, but traced in his voice like a hint of smooth vanilla and spicy cinnamon mixed together.
“Originally, I’m Canadian. Ontario province up by Lake Huron but…please don’t hold that against me.” So he has a sense of humor…my mysteriously silent hero.
“I’ve never been, seems pointless I guess.” I fall deeply into my hole of self-pity and doubt unwilling to crawl out from the feelings that swallow me up.
“Travel is never pointless. You can still see places in the crisp smells; textures...places have a feel about them.” I snort but he continues talking. “I have a house on Lake Huron. You’d like it, it’s…peaceful.” Tuning off the car, I guess he decided we were out here long enough. He gets out of the car shutting the door with a gentle click. A moment passes and he’s opening my door and reaching in to unhook my belt and help me out on unsteady legs triggering another memory.
My legs give out as I fall to the floor. I can’t tell if it’s morning, noon or night. My eyes, they’re broken is the best way to describe my state of being. The tiles are cold, hard and unforgiving inside the hospital. My elbows and knees hurt from falling so many times and refusing to let anyone help me. My face is wrapped up like a mummy. I’m supposed to be wearing these stupidly soft socks with rubber soles but I don’t. I think they’re childish and stupid and I don’t want to be either. I want to rebel whenever and however I can. I don’t have much, but this I won’t give up on. I assume he’s a nurse or an orderly, but he doesn’t speak to me. And I don’t ask. His arms folded around me and he picks me up carrying me back to my room. The silence is the place between where we exist. He lays me on the bed and instead of putting the stupid socks on like my mother would have insisted on doing he picks up one foot and then the other rubbing them warm until I fall asleep.
I fall into his arms and he holds me upright letting my legs find stable ground. “Is that where you go…when you’re not here?” The question escaped quicker than I have sense to hold back. A pause and a sigh leave me waiting for my answer. I’m confused because I know somehow that not all of the pieces he was giving me fit together in nice neat picture.
He’s tense standing on my doorstep and the moment is disjointed at best. “Sometimes.” Using his own key, made from mine at some point I assumed, he takes my arm and guides me inside. I should have known he would have made one of his own. I know the way by heart, but tonight I just want it all to be a bad dream I’ll wake up from and gladly accept whatever help he gives me. He does have a canny way of sneaking in and out on me.
“Honey, we want you to consider moving back in with us.” The accident happened when I was seventeen and by the time I left the hospital I was eighteen. I moved to a special housing complex my uncle had found for me so I could manage on my own. My mother didn’t like it but when I fought with them tooth and nail there wasn’t much they could do. “It’s for the best.”
“The best for whom? You can’t even look at me. I’m freak to you and your perfect image.” I shouted back.
“Judith, that’s not true, we just think you’d do better with us, at home.”
“You mean away from the public, shut away instead of out and on my own. Hiding me won’t get you elected as the new school chancellor, Mother, but I guess it will make you feel better.” My parents left Texas after that checking in on me with a weekly phone call and plenty of guilt money in my account. Mom got a new school to run and dad a new law partnership on the east coast like they wanted. They escaped the prying, pitying eyes and got their fresh start.
“Three years and that’s all I get? A fucking sometimes?” Anger ripped through my chest worse than being violated at the club by some crazy Dom. I’m not sure what comes over me except time and space seemed to collide at hyper speed. I wondered how he could behave one way and then leave me for months on end leaving me to flutter in the wind in a tailspin.
“I’ll take you to Lake Huron so you can experience it, first hand.”
“Right, because I’ll never actually see it.” He grunted and I know I’m being a brat, but sometimes you just have to have the tantrum you didn’t get to have over your shitty life to begin with.
“You can feel the wind and smell the pine trees against the water. The sand is peppered with pinecones. It’s the best before the first snow falls.” He touched my cheek with his hand and a tear leaked, shaming me finally.
“So I can be fucking Pocahontas?” I said.
He chuckles which sounds uncomfortable than anything. “Ever the pessimist, Jude.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Jude–”
“No. You don’t get to Jude me. I want to know why you’ve been coming to me like this and then leaving me…with unfinished business.” I lamely retorted.
“I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about it,” he says and my frustration boiled over.
“Well, would you like to rub me to a near orgasm and leave me panting in frustration again? I’m waiting with bated breath.” Defensively, I crossed my arms over my chest. Enough was enough. Batman would have been less complicated than Lorand Duvall.
“Ouch. I’m going to assume you’re distraught and overly emotional by the evening’s events. I doubt this is really about sex right now and more about how I’ve treated you the last few years.” His voice harden, too bad, I wasn’t putting up with his crap anymore.
“You don’t get to dismiss me, Lorand Duvall. I dismiss you and I’m done being played.” Shaking with anger, I turned and walked into my own wall, overcome from the evening’s events forgetting where things are in my own home. “Shit.” I covered my bruised face, my nose literally feeling bent out of joint and flushed with embarrassment. That’s what you get for spiting yourself.
“Easy, Jude. Let’s get you settled and I’ll answer your questions.” Annoyed, I sulked, letting him guide me to me bedroom, his strong arms, heavy around my shoulders. “Do you want to take a shower or a bath first?”
“No.” Lorand propped me up on my bed removing my shoes. I wanted so badly to take him to task, but as I replayed the night’s events I think about how he did save me. What was he doing there, in a sex club?
“Here, I couldn’t find an ice pack, but I found a package of corn.”
“It’s just as well. I never liked corn anyway.”
“Good because it’s really peas.” He flicked a stray hair off my forehead before pressing the cold vegetables against my face.
“Jerk. Now you’re lying to me about the vegetables in my own freezer.”
“Hey, I got a smile out of you and that counts.”
“I still don’t understand how you came to be here in Karim or why you’ve been entangled in my life so secretively. Or–or why you were in a sex club tonight. It’s unsettling, Lorand.”
“There’s a lot about our situation that is unsettling and I’m trying to unravel the tangles.” Kneeling on the bed next to me he runs his fingers through my messy hair which surprisingly calms me.
“I feel like an idiot for trusting Ella,” and that was a hard truth to face. I was growing tired the more we spent time in the bedroom and I bit back a yawn. He was finally here and I didn’t want him to leave me if I drifted off to sleep.
“She didn’t show you her true self until it was too late, that’s not your fault, Jude.” So why did I feel like it was? Could I trust myself to trust anyone? Could I even trust him?
“And neither have you.” I said sadly.
Eight
LORAND
She definitely wasn’t an idiot.
She was blind.
She was perfect.
She was mine.
And I wasn’t being honest wi
th her. Shame heated my face because when, not if she found out, this would all be over faster than a car wreck on the 35 running through Austin. Tossing the frozen vegetables in my general direction, she stalked off the bed on shaking legs as much as she could on her own pushing my helpful hands away. Convincing her that she was mine would be an act in futility. I wanted her, but factors out of my control made sure it would never happen. Jude had always been a feisty thing. It was part of my draw to her and why I could never, might never be able to stay away from her.
I followed her into the kitchen now slamming various items on the counter and pulling food out of the refrigerator.
“Hungry?” Standing out of her way in case she wanted to throw more things, I leaned against the wall, my arms crossed as I asked her what she was doing.
“Yes. No. You never spoke to me in all this time and now….” She waved her arms wide, “This!” She leans against the counter, her fingers white and rigid gripping along the edge, eyes closed.
“I don’t mean to be difficult, but sharing…this is new to me. I’ve never had to explain myself to anyone before.”
“I know. You haven’t said much in all the time you’ve been here with me. Not much has changed except now I have a name and a voice to go with the complete stranger taking over my kitchen and now my life.” She’s pouting, and I don’t feel like doing this tonight. Rehashing the past is brutal and painful to my male ego.
“Jude don’t be a brat.” Even blind her eyebrow rose in challenge.
“You try going through life scared shitless because you have to rely on all your other senses and your intuition which apparently just failed me in the friend department. I’m a ship without any fucking sails or navigation ready to crash into something that’s likely to rip me apart.”
I take a step towards her. “So let me guide you from the storm. I know I’ve fucked things up, but it wasn’t my intent to hurt you. Far from it, but life has a way of complicating things.”
“Is that your excuse now? Complications?”
“No. I’d much rather make sure you’re okay after what happened tonight at the club.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well, I do because I found you there. Why were you there and with Ella?”
“Why were you there?” She wants to ask me if I was there with someone. The look is written all over her face even if she can’t see it herself.
“Jude.”
“Please don’t placate me, Lorand. Why were you there?” Her shoulders slumped looking horribly defeated. I wasn’t going to make her suffer needlessly.
“I was meeting someone.”
“Of course you were.”
“For work purposes. Not a woman which is what you really wanted to know.”
“Unlike me.”
“Yes, well maybe a bit rash letting yourself be tied to the cross, but I won’t hold it against you.”
Defiantly, she raised her head looking at me with soulful dark eyes. “You seemed pretty familiar getting me untied from it.” I crossed the kitchen and cupped my hands on her shoulders squeezing them reassuringly when she brushes my off to turn around.
“I’ve been there before.” I’m under no illusion she’ll let any of this go.
“So…you like that? To tie girls up and do those kinds of things to them?”
Scoffing, I’m appalled she puts me into the same category as that scumbag who attacked her and I paced the kitchen to calm myself. My voice is harsh with disgust. “No, Jude. I don’t like to tie up grown ass women against their will, but I do like when they give me permission to bring them to the heights of pleasure under certain restraints.”
“Oh.” She clearly didn’t understand anything about the lifestyle and I didn’t know if I could do this to her, expose her to it after the horrible things I’d already done.
My jaw hurt from holding back with gritted teeth. None of this was her fault, but now this was out in the open and I felt vulnerable to her because I cared about her. I didn’t like it on the flip side. “The club is a part of who I am. It’s something I have participated in with consenting partners, I like it. Do you get what I’m saying?”
“You say that like…maybe you wanted me there.” She has no clue how badly I wanted her there in that environment.
“I might have thought about it, but it doesn’t matter now because it’s probably something we’ll never do.”
“Why?”
“Aren’t you afraid?”
“Of the company Ella keeps, yes. Of you, no. I guess in a way I just know you wouldn’t take it past a certain point.”
“But that my darling is where you’re wrong. So very wrong. I want to blow past your barriers and go beyond your comfort zone. That’s why I’m partly afraid to tell you everything about me.”
“So take me back. Show me what it can be like.”
“Absolutely not, that’s crazy.” She’s crazy. She looks at me as if her eyes would burn right through me. Crazy was one of those female trigger words and I was kicking myself. I should have known better than to use it.
“So I’m not an idiot, but I’m crazy?” I kind of liked crazy. This kind of crazy could be hot on Jude if I handled it right.
“No you’re absolutely infuriating, stunning and defying at every turn.” Yes, much better. I stepped closer to her and see the moment her body realizes I’m there, so close to her like an animal waiting to pounce. The baby fine hairs on the back of her neck rise in goosebumps. “Don’t put words in my mouth just because I’ve been silently bidding my time here.”
“Then you should put that mouth to good use don’t you think?” She is so fucking crazy it turns me on in seconds with her suggestion. Standing behind her I let myself breath in her scent for a moment before laying a soft kiss against her exposed neck.
“It’s a horrible idea, Jude.”
“But I want you to do it.”
“You might want that, but I’m not ready for that. Besides you’re trying to top me and I don’t like that.”
“Top?” She tests the word out and I realize she doesn’t have a damn clue what that means, what any of it means.
I am so fucked right now.
“It’s a BDSM thing.”
“BDSM?” Her face softens testing out the letters together. My dick pulsed realizing how much ground there was to possibly cover with this darling girl.
“Didn’t Ella tell you anything?” Standing so close to her was poison whittling away at my self-control.
“Not much beyond experimenting, I’ve read some, but I thought she meant we would be experimenting. Alone. Not with her idiot master.”
Turning her to face me, I use my finger to pick her chin up and look into her eyes, curiously a soft brown. “That’s the whole point of The Club.”
“Uh.”
“Of course she didn’t.” Groaning, I step away from her proximity trying to shake sense into myself because this was all a very bad idea. A very arousing bad idea.
“So tell me.”
Sighing, I leaned into her pulling her to me. “I’d rather show you, but I think you’ve had enough lessons for one night.”
“Lorand.”
“No Jude. I think we’ve had enough excitement for one evening then to be experimenting with that stuff.”
“You mean sex.” The little minx has me wrapped up tight, one more pull of the string and I’m likely to unravel.
“I’m not doing this with you right now. So behave.” I’m trying to shake off the images of Jude up on the cross at another man’s mercy. Forced submission was not what I was into, but explaining it to someone as untried as her would be…much too heady for me to get into right now without some time and distance between the event of today and our history.
Her lips grazed my ear whispering, “But I don’t want to behave.”
“Jude.” My teeth grind.
“Then I’ll just go to the next open Friday night and ask someone else.” Or maybe time was completely irrele
vant? She certainly knew how to push my buttons.
“The fuck you will.”
“Please, Lorand?” She wrapped her arms around my neck pulling my face down to hers and the proximity of her lips was like offering a thirsty man a cold drink in the hot sun. She practically batted her eyelashes at me over those cloudy dark eyes that I loved and I was lost, over the edge and sinking.
Gone.
Done.
Toast.
Nine
JUDE
His hands held me at a safe distance away from his muscular chest I wanted so badly to rub up against. A cat in heat had nothing on how turned on and primed I was for him. His face met mine forehead to forehead. “Take the rest of your clothes off.” He’s growly and tense.
“But?”
“Stop trying to top me, Jude, and do what I said. Now. You want to know what being a part of the club is like then listen with those gorgeous ears of yours instead of trying to see what you can’t with perfect sight.” I swallowed back my apprehension. I’m not afraid of Lorand, but this vocal bossy side of him is completely new and unsettling. My body clenches liking this side of my quiet man.
The counter opposite.
I feel him stand close to me brushing up against me, his fingers grazing along my rib cage to settle on my hip bones pinching. “I’m waiting, beautiful girl.” Sensing this was now or never, I stripped off the rest of my torn dress with panting breaths.
“What next?”
“Don’t be impatient. I’ll tell you what happens next, but first we start with a word.”
“A word? Like a safe word?” I knew the basics of BDSM, since the movie Fifty Shade of Grey came out, but I was a little behind on my overall sexual knowledge. Tumblr only goes so far without visually seeing it. It was something like bondage, domination, submission and masochism…some parts were obviously more interesting to me than others.
