Coda

by CD Reiss

  coda.

  The Submission Series - Book Nine

  CD Reiss

  CODA

  CD Reiss

  Copyright © 2015

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to persons living or dead is purely coincidental

  Cover art designed by the author

  The first four chapters of this book are a modified version of “Monica” which was available as part of the “Dominance” collection.

  The bonus story at the end was previously published for the SUBclub books as “A Valentine From Jonathan Drazen”

  A small modification was made for the sake of consistency.

  Table of Contents

  dedication

  chapter 1.

  chapter 2.

  chapter 3.

  chapter 4.

  chapter 5.

  chapter 6.

  chapter 7.

  chapter 8.

  chapter 9.

  chapter 10.

  chapter 11.

  chapter 12.

  chapter 13.

  chapter 14.

  chapter 15.

  chapter 16.

  chapter 17.

  chapter 18.

  chapter 19.

  chapter 20.

  chapter 21.

  chapter 22.

  chapter 23.

  chapter 24.

  chapter 25.

  chapter 26.

  chapter 27.

  chapter 28.

  chapter 29.

  chapter 30.

  chapter 31.

  chapter 32.

  chapter 33.

  chapter 34.

  chapter 35.

  chapter 36.

  chapter 37.

  chapter 38.

  chapter 39.

  chapter 40.

  end notes.

  bonus scene.

  Dearest Son: If you are reading this, I hope I am dead. If I am not, put it down, for the love of all that is holy. If you insist (as usual) on poking your nose where it doesn’t belong, I want you to know this is a romance, not an instruction manual. Get your tips on picking up girls from your dad. His sincerity and earnestness opened my heart. He is a perfect example of the man I want you to be.

  chapter 1.

  JONATHAN

  I brushed my thumb against her nipple, bending it, then I leaned down to suck it. She wove her fingers through my hair. I tasted the shower water on her, the tinge of soap. Steam still fogged the room.

  “Jonathan,” she whispered, “I’ll miss the plane.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  I drew my tongue down her belly, flat and tight, stopping at the navel bar she still wore for me, then traveled down between her legs. I bent one of her knees and put it over my shoulder, giving my mouth access to her.

  “I haven’t packed yet,” she said, but I knew I had her.

  I opened her lips with my thumbs and licked her clit slowly, tip to taint and back again, tasting the fresh, clean skin and clear, rushing fluids.

  “Pack fast,” I said. She’d be gone for a week. I wanted her before she left.

  “I have to pack the Theremin, and it’s oh, God.” She moaned when I sucked her, hitching her other leg over my shoulder. “Delicate. Jesus, what is with you lately?”

  I stood and wiped my mouth with my hand. She sat spread-eagled on the bathroom vanity, wet and ready. She was mine, and I loved her.

  “What’s with me lately?” I was in my underwear, which I didn’t bother taking off as I pulled out my dick. “Maybe I’m bored.”

  “You could work again.”

  “I could.” I slid in nice and easy.

  As I fucked her on the vanity, I had a feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Something was missing. She was wet. I was hard. Her tits bounced when I thrust, and there was enough nudity between us to get my dick inside her.

  But her arms. I didn’t know where they would go next. She moved in unexpected ways. I put my arms around her, holding her together, and I leaned in close to kiss her, dragging my stubble over her cheek and the sensitive part of her neck.

  She whispered, “Ouch.”

  I felt powerful. I’d been fucking her for months with this borrowed thing in my chest, but when she said ouch, I wanted to more than fuck her. I wanted to tear her apart. I lost my shit at the thought of it, coming in her the way I had been since the hospital, without control or intent, just because I was ready.

  Monica came a second after I started, and we gripped each other, quivering. The steam had barely cleared from the mirrors when I kissed her shoulder and realized I had a problem in my arms.

  ***

  I stretched out in the sun, with my scarred chest to the sky, and felt that thing beating. The July heat baked me, muggy and sticky. I was sharing sweat with a stranger’s tissue and grateful to be alive, yet I was in a state of constant bewilderment, thinking, How the fuck was I pulled from death for this?

  And who was I? I’d eaten and enjoyed blowtorch-spicy food, but suddenly I found it intolerable. I felt a new pull to run that I knew, intuitively, came from the same place. I jogged in the morning, and if Monica was away, I jogged at night. I loved it. I loved the burn in my throat and the fully energized exhaustion when I’d pushed myself too hard and too long. But I’d never wanted to run before. The desire wasn’t mine; it belonged to the heart, which had grown in someone else. Was I still wholly me? I pondered it too often and for too long.

  “Hey,” Monica said, stepping into my sunlight. She wore a pale blue dress and clunky bracelets. “I’m going.”

  I patted a place for her to sit next to me.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Lil’s waiting.”

  I flipped my sunglasses up so I could look her in the eye, and with that gaze, I let her know I was entitled to a minute of her time. “Goddess.”

  “I’ll call you when I land.” She bent to kiss me, and when her lips hit mine, I held her head there an extra few seconds. She smiled and trotted away.

  I had a problem. She was going to Caracas for three days to open two shows with some madhouse band, and I wasn’t going with her because of doctor’s orders. The impulsive side of me wanted to follow her and let the team of highly-paid specialists kiss my ass, but I stayed behind. There was no need to rush. Three days wouldn’t change anything.

  When I’d met Monica, I’d known what I was. Who I was. I knew what I was made of, and I knew how to get what I wanted. I’d still been in love with my idea of my ex-wife, but my goddess had cured me of that. I’d thought being happy was what had made me demand control in the bedroom, but I was wrong, or at least only partly right. All the soul-searching in the world had led me to a false conclusion.

  I’d been dominant because I knew myself. In knowing myself, I had the confidence to bind and hit and hurt, because I’d know when to stop.

  When we got home from the hospital, Monica and I eventually made love again. Still, I wasn’t myself. I was mostly me and partly someone else. An alien piece of meat had been lodged in me, and I didn’t know what it would do. Would it beat right for me or for the person it was meant for? Would it skip a beat at the sight of some strange woman? Would it break over a different past or a lost present? I kept imagining it jumping out of me like a frog from a frying pan, slapping on the kitchen floor with a splat, and beating on the tiles while squirting yellow plasma. Once, I dreamed it bounced out of me and landed in the pool to swim with Sheila in a trail of curly red blood. I laughed in my dream, but when I woke up, I ran to the bathroom mirror to make sure I had a scar instead of a hole.

  I’d felt like a foreigner in my own skin, draggi
ng around a sack of muscle and bone held together with medicine. Even after the doctor appointments dwindled and life returned to something that looked like normal, I hadn’t adjusted to being two people in one body, and my wife knew it. She was drifting away like a bottle bobbing in the surf, tide by tide. She wasn’t Jessica. She’d never leave for someone else, but she’d leave with distraction and indifference. At the thought of the lost intimacy, I felt a blade of ice cold rage so thick, I had no room for a reaction or an emotion. My head was clear. The anger had pushed out all the clutter. She was mine to lose, but she was mine.

  chapter 2.

  MONICA

  I missed two things.

  I missed my freedom, and I missed slavery.

  I was caught in a nether region where I couldn’t come and go as I pleased, and I didn’t feel protected.

  I was being unfair, and I knew it. What man could be expected to keep up Jonathan’s intensity for any length of time? No human could be a raging lion after having their heart ripped out.

  So though we burdened each other with many things, I never burdened him with my longing for my dominant Jonathan. That man was gone, so I loved the man who’d replaced him. He was everything I’d almost lost in that fucking nightmare of a hospital. He was funny and thoughtful, gracious and wise. He was still the best lover I’d ever laid my hands on.

  “Hello?” Jonathan’s voice was thick with sleep. The sun was just coming up over Caracas, tainting the sky brown.

  “I’m coming back early,” I said as I walked across the tarmac toward the Gulfstream.

  Jacques waved. His copilot for the day took my rolling suitcase and stowed it underneath the plane.

  “Really?” Jonathan sounded as awake as if he’d had a gallon of coffee. “I have something for you.”

  “But I have to go right into the studio,” I said. “Jerry wants me to work on ‘Forever’ for this sampler idea he’s—”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’ll walk in the door the same time as if I’d stayed here. I just wanted you to know what I’m doing with your plane.”

  “Well, thank you.”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “Goddess,” he said, and I heard something in his voice I hadn’t heard in half a year. It stopped me on the steps up to the fuselage door.

  “Yes?” I was shocked by the small sound of my own voice.

  “I don’t give a fuck about the plane.”

  “It’ll be fast. I’ll be home by lunch.”

  “Text me where you’re going to be.”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  Fuck. I’d promised myself I’d never forget what Jessica had done to him, yet there I was, serial-bailing and giving him attitude about it. “It’s the same place as always,” I said, backpedalling as I snapped my seat belt. “I’m fine.”

  “Maybe you are,” he said, then his tone changed to sound more pensive. “Maybe you are.”

  He hung up, and I was left with an oddly shaped emptiness.

  Jonathan loved me. I never questioned that. His love was in everything he did. I heard it in his voice and felt it when he fucked me. Even when he took me like a stranger and reveled in hurting me, there was love in his abandon.

  I also didn’t question his commitment in what he’d thought were the last moments of his life. I was worthy of his love. I’d earned it, and he’d earned mine. We’d earned the easy part and the hard part. Most couples don’t face life-and-death tests of their love until they’re old and grey, or until they had children in middle school, but he and I had been put through the fire unprepared and come out stronger.

  Yet we’d missed the basics, and they weighed on me. I constantly forgot that we loved each other because of the daily misunderstandings and confusions.

  Like buying our house, which had been a series of misspoken desires, concessions, and bitter words left unspoken. Like water flowing downhill, it had been chosen via the path of least resistance. I didn’t even remember choosing our real estate agent. I just remembered her showing up.

  “So,” she had said pertly. Her name was Wendy. It suited her. “I understand you want to get moving on this before Mrs. Drazen goes to Paris?”

  I sat next to Jonathan on his couch, frozen in shock. “Paris? I didn’t say I was going.”

  “You’re going. It’s a huge opportunity.” He’d turned back to the agent, who wore a decal of a smile. “She’s the opening act for—”

  “Nobody,” I interrupted. “I’m not going. So anyway, no.”

  Like any real estate agent in Los Angeles, Wendy had been perky, perfect coiffed, and blandly unthreatening. She’d come highly recommended for her discretion, her taste, and her ability to seamlessly manage massive amounts of money.

  “What kind of house are you looking for?” she asked.

  “Kind of house?” I asked, stalling.

  Jonathan had been out of the hospital for a month, and we’d spent it managing a heart transplant. Appointments. Doctors. Medical procedures I didn’t understand. Big pills in little boxes. A diet and exercise regimen that made me shudder. And Jonathan himself, my husband, felt shaky and unsure. I woke up most mornings feeling unqualified to live my life.

  “Era,” Jonathan said impatiently. I heard the rasp in his breath. It was late afternoon, and he needed to rest. “Something modern. Fifties. I’m sick of leaded glass.”

  “I, uh—”

  “Did you have a neighborhood in mind?” Wendy interrupted me, making eye contact with Jonathan.

  “The hills,” Jonathan said. “Beechwood, maybe.”

  “Really, I think the ocean—”

  “Great. How many bedrooms? Or do you want to go by square feet?”

  “Big,” Jonathan told her. “This house is cramped.”

  “Cramped?” I interjected. I thought his house was palatial, but I’d grown up with eleven hundred square feet, and I didn’t like being bulldozed.

  They both looked at me, and I felt ashamed. Then I felt ashamed for feeling ashamed. I wasn’t embarrassed because Jonathan and I disagreed on the style or size of the house; I was embarrassed because we hadn’t discussed it.

  “Wendy, I’m sorry,” I said, standing. “We’re obviously not ready to discuss this. Can we get you to come back some other time?”

  “Of course!” she’d chirped and was gone in a flutter.

  “What was that?” Jonathan asked.

  “We weren’t ready to meet with someone about this. Not until we can agree on the basics. I didn’t…” I drifted a little then came to the truth. “I’ve never bought a house before. I’ve never met with an agent. I didn’t know what was expected.”

  He’d looked tired, as usual. He’d always looked tired in those first months, which was why I didn’t talk to him about anything important. I’d tried harder after the non-meeting with Wendy. I agreed to stuff and put my foot down on others, and we bought a big fat compromise of a house that I lived in but didn’t love.

  I hadn’t wanted to exhaust him. I thought it was the best way to help him get better. I hadn’t had a period in months from the combination of anxiety and Depo-Provera. But when I got sick and thought I might be pregnant, I didn’t tell him because I didn’t want to start an argument about children. No stress. That was all I wanted.

  When he’d gotten back from the hospital, he couldn’t really walk. He just didn’t have it in him. He had a staff of people and a huge family, so he didn’t need me, yet I’d been surprised by how much he did need me. He needed to talk, and in those conversations, he laid out our future like architectural plans, pointing at the lines and angles I needed to see. I rarely disagreed with him. He was prone to frustration with his body and the exhaustion of small tasks, and I was still in a stunned state. I was functional, competent, and emotionally broken. But I’d thought I was handling our situation well. I was the picture of maturity and capability. I even laughed sometimes, when it seemed appropriate.

  “Children,” he’d said one night,
on his back in the bed. The lights were out, and the flat latte color of the Los Angeles night sky lit the room. “When can we start?”

  “You mean start having sex again? Your doctor said anytime.” I leaned over him, half-sitting. His bandage had just been taken off, and the scar on his chest was still pink.

  “Fucking with intention.”

  “I’ve never known you to fuck without it.”

  He smiled and touched my lower lip. “When does that shot wear off?”

  My Depo-Provera shots rendered me infertile and nearly menstruation free for two to four months at a time. “Right after Valentine’s Day, I guess.”

  “No more shots.”

  “Jonathan, I… I think we should talk about that again.”

  His expression became wary.

  I froze, afraid of upsetting him. “I want children. You have to understand it’s… this is hard to say.” I touched his chest, brushing my fingers over the scar. “Everything seems so precarious.”

  “You’ll stop feeling like that once I can walk more than ten fucking feet. Soon.”

  “Let’s revisit this then. Please. I just need to know you’re strong enough to handle running out in the middle of the night for chili chocolate ice cream.”

  “Who makes that? It sounds disgusting.”

  “It’s delicious.”

  He pulled me to him, and I laid my head just below his chest. His heart beat in my ear. It sounded perfectly normal, a functioning organ capable of sustaining his body until something else broke. But it wasn’t beating with life. It was a ticking clock, and it would stop too soon.

  I’d gotten another shot in early February. I reasoned that he didn’t need to know. I’d put him off. I couldn’t do it much longer, but we were taking it one day, and one white lie, at a time. I’d need the next in June or so, and we could revisit then. Or not.

  But it always came up, even when it didn’t. When we talked about the house, we needed a bigger room just for the elephant, and after I dismissed Wendy the realtor, the animal only got bigger.

  He’d leaned on the arm of the couch and crossed his ankles, the same posture as the first night I’d gone to see him at his office, when I threatened him with a lawsuit. “Whatever we get should be the exact opposite of what I had before you were in my life.”