by Reiss, CD
His expression was impassive, walled off. The box filled further, and I felt not only trapped, but alone and scared. If he said another word, I would lose my shit.
“Okay, I get it,” I said before walking back into the house.
CHAPTER 21.
JONATHAN
When the screen door slammed behind her, I kicked over the glass-topped coffee table. It shattered. I considered doing more violence to the furniture, but I wasn’t angry at the furniture. I was angry at myself. I had no business feeling what I felt for Monica. I had no business getting involved in a kinky, emotionally charged relationship with an unpracticed submissive. Stupid. This, I’d earned.
When I’d held Jessica’s hands down during sex, she told everyone I wanted to rape her. One slap on the ass, and I was an abuser. It hurt badly enough when she called me those things to my face. When she did it behind my back, it was worse. Later, I realized she’d had a rough time with men before me. I should have been more understanding, but it wasn’t like I didn’t have my own shit.
When Monica sang her song in the husky voice of a fallen angel, I knew her intentions were pure. I also knew the results would suck. Enough of our social circle hated me already. Who knew what or whom her performance would affect. My business? My family? The possible repercussions came in flaming scenes of scorn and derision. Lost deals. Uncomfortable dinners, come-ons from the wrong women, bruised ribs from jocular elbows of men thinking Monica was my whore, or worse, available to share.
Jessica had added humiliation to my confusion by confiding in our whole social circle and enough of my family to make Easter dinner a nightmare. I never dug out of it, and the song could just bury me further in a reputation I didn’t earn and didn’t want. I didn’t want an entire lifestyle of bondage. I didn’t want the clubs or the costumes. I wanted to be normal, except when I wasn’t. Yet again, I’d be branded.
I paced around the pool. Monica had to go. She and her song and her god damn artistic aspirations had to get cut out before I got infected. I had to do it quickly and move on. I had to ignore any and all pleas for forgiveness. I had to forget my feelings, how she wrapped herself around me, how she’d charmed me and disarmed me. I needed to shock her out of my system.
I stopped, and like a siren’s call, the pool invited me. I kicked off my shoes and dove in. The water was cold and heavy, and my clothes only made me sink lower. I swam to the surface, and the effort brought me back to my head. The panic and worry came back, but a lower grade. The usual stuff, not the all-consuming stuff.
I navigated to the edge of the pool. I was afraid to get out because I would freeze my ass off, but mostly, I was afraid to deal with the woman on the porch, if she was even still there. I leaned my cheek on my forearm and said, “Monica, Monica, you were perfect.”
I was sad to lose her, but I couldn’t be seen with her if she was singing that song, and she’d made clear I wasn’t to interrupt her work. I knew my little string of sadness would grow into a ball of yarn. I knew how much I wanted her, and why, and how. After knowing her only six weeks, I’d miss her.
My phone rang. It had been on the glass table I’d smashed and apparently survived. I pulled myself out of the pool and dripped my way over to it, my pant legs sticking.
It was Will Santon.
“Hi, Will.”
“We found five, with mikes, all over the house. They were on wireless, and they’ve been disconnected. Probably after she sprayed the car outside.”
“We’ll need you to work on finding out who did this.” I wasn’t supposed to care anymore, but I found myself talking as if I did.
“Any ideas?”
“She’s working with an artist, Kevin Wainwright. They have a history.”
“We’re on it,” Santon said.
“Send my sister the bill.”
“You got it.”
I was about to hang up. “Santon?”
“Yeah?”
“Any in the kitchen?”
“Nope.”
“Thanks,” I said softly and hung up. My relief dripped off me with the cold water. None in the kitchen. What did we do in the bedroom? I’d kissed her eyelids. Not optimum, certainly. Definitely a problem to be solved, because the fact they’d gotten inside at all was bad news, but nothing kinky got on video. At least if my private life was all the buzz, her dignity might be saved.
I don’t know how long I stood there holding my phone, but when my teeth chattered, I went inside.
No cameras in the kitchen. Monica’s imagination had saved me a shard of embarrassment. Meanwhile, she was having a huge crisis, and I threw a temper tantrum over something she apologized for. I had been ready to abandon her when she needed me to protect her because she wasn’t perfect. And why? Because I was worried about what people thought.
They didn’t know what I knew. They didn’t know what it was to be completely in control of a woman’s body, her pleasure, her thoughts, her emotions. They didn’t craft moments the way a sculptor molds clay, tapping her consciousness during the day to create anticipation for the night, pushing her, crafting our climaxes not just as a pleasurable endpoint, but as a carefully timed, deliberate act. The culmination of my intention was what was most gratifying, and I couldn’t give up control any more than Monica could give up music.
I had tried it with other women and failed or come up short. But not Monica. It wasn’t just what she allowed and how she obeyed; it was the ways she didn’t. Her moments of spontaneity came not in response to a weakness on my part, but the openings for surprise that I left her. Like the kitchen. The last place I expected to find her might have been the only safe place in the house.
What we made together was greater than what I would have created myself. Monica was my perfect canvas. The rest would have to fall into place. She was mine. What we had was mine. I’d earned it.
Fuck the rest.
CHAPTER 22.
MONICA
The blanket I’d wrapped around myself smelled of the old Jonathan. Sage. Fog. Jessica had chosen it for him, but I buried my face in it anyway. I stared at the open gate. A cab was on its way. If he didn’t show up before the cab, I would just fold myself back into the world and never see him again. It couldn’t be any harder than what I’d done before.
I smelled him before I heard him. The leather-and-sawdust Jonathan. I looked back inside and saw him standing behind the chair closest to the door. His hair was wet, but his clothes were dry. He wore his trademarked mask of implacable amusement.
“You waited.”
“Cab’s coming.”
He sat in the chair. “I’m sorry I went off on you.”
“It’s fine.”
“I feel like I should explain.”
“Look, you got mad. I know why,” I said.
“No, you don’t.” He leaned back in the chair and crossed an ankle over his knee. “When I married Jessica, I was a nice vanilla guy. We had plenty of sex, and we thought we were just fine. We were. Except I always had this dark place because of what happened with Rachel. I was so young, and not ready. And my father… well, I couldn’t look at him. I still can’t. I never told anyone. No one knew about it, except Jessica. Her knowing made me happy, and being happy, well, I started getting ideas about how good it would feel to fuck her just a little harder. Hold her hands down. Tell her when to come. Slap her ass.” He paused, as if remembering some specific incident. “It didn’t go over well. I didn’t know how to stop, and she didn’t know how to shut up. All her friends were convinced I got off on beating her up. They told their husbands, and before you know it—”
“No one’s talking to you at the Eclipse show.”
“Right. And I lost her. When you get divorced, you don’t just give up the person, you give up all the dreams you had with that person. Those are harder to let go of.” He uncrossed his ankle and put his elbows on his knees. “Now I’m with someone else, and she’s beautiful with me. But she sings this song, and everyone will hear it and think I’m trying
to rape and abuse her. It all came back.”
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“You should cancel that cab.”
“I really want to go home.”
“You’re not going home tonight. They found cameras.”
“Oh, God.” My chest felt as if a spike went through it. That was my house. It had always been my house. I felt myself breaking down and I had to grind my teeth to keep together.
“It’s clean now. And there were none in the kitchen.”
I laughed with relief. The episode on the kitchen floor was the first thing I’d worried about and the one thing I tried not to consider as a possibility.
“We need to find out who did it. And now I really want to have you watched.”
I shook my head. “I’ll stay with Darren.”
“That’s not a long-term solution.”
I got annoyed. He’d taken the conversation and made it his own. “Jonathan, stop it. Long-term solutions are my problem.”
“How’s that?”
I took a deep breath. I knew what I wanted to say, but after finding out about my house, and his story, I didn’t know if I had the strength. I curled deeper in the blanket. “I’m sorry, Jonathan. What I did with the song was wrong. I’ll do what damage control I can. I’ll record something else and get it to Jerry. I can’t make Jessica unhear it, but it’s not like she didn’t know about your preferences.”
“I know Eddie from Carnival Records, by the way. You met him at the Loft Club. Buddy from—”
“Penn. Right. I’m sorry. I can’t make him unhear it either. Maybe he’ll think you’re hot shit now?”
He shrugged and swung his legs over the chair’s arm. He seemed really relaxed for a guy who looked about to belt me twenty minutes ago.
“I was careless with your feelings,” I continued. “I should have run it by you first. Because it’s your life, and you may not want your kinky shit all over. I mean, it is all over, but you don’t need your lover confirming it. I thought about it, and I don’t want that shit all over either. I could play it off as metaphor, but your rep means I can’t. Then we become the couple no one can talk to because we make them giggle.”
He laughed a bitter little laugh, as if he knew exactly what I was talking about. He did. I was just repeating history for him. I’d be the second woman to leave him because he was dominant. Before he came outside, I’d consoled myself with the fact that he didn’t love me and we hadn’t known each other that long. That seemed untrue, though. I was going to hurt him, and I was powerless to stop it.
“So,” I continued, “that’s when I realized if I’m going to be with you, I can’t talk to anyone. I have to keep a whole part of my life locked up tight or people will look at me. I’m the submissive here. I’m the sucker getting her ass spanked. I’m the one walking around with bruises on her wrists. You’re the master, and I’m under you. I mean, what the fuck am I doing? Do I not care about my life and my career? How am I supposed to get a leg up in a meeting when the guy on the other side of the desk is imagining me with a ball gag? How can I be seen as a musician who can deliver in front of a crowd if they think I’m a man’s slave?”
The cab pulled into the driveway in a flash of headlights.
“I’ll send him back.” Jonathan swung his legs straight.
I unwrapped myself from the blanket and stood. “No, I’m going. What we have is not what I want. It’s too much. I’ve never met a man like you, and god willing, I never will again because I don’t think I could take it. I already can’t imagine myself with anyone else.”
He looked at me. “You’re not leaving, Monica.” He took my hands. His were cold, and the temptation to warm them between mine was unbearable.
I said, “I wanted you to know, before I go, that I love you. I thought I didn’t want to love anyone again, and maybe I didn’t. I mean, look what it comes with, right? The more I fell in love with you, the harder it got to leave you. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
When he stood, he seemed taller, closer, more solid. “You’re not going.”
“I am.”
“No. Don’t you see how perfect we are? What you’re breaking isn’t some little, meaningless coupling. We aren’t some casual fuck, and we never were. Not from the first night. Not from the first time I laid eyes on you. You were built for me. I denied it as long as I could, but we were meant to be together. You are the sea under my sky. We’re bound at the horizon.”
“Please don’t make this worse.” My voice cracked. I sniffled. God. Damn. Those fucking tears.
He stood and put his arms around me, engulfing me. How he fit. How his touch felt perfect on me. How I wanted him as he kissed my cheek and neck and breathed my name. “Don’t go,” he said softly. “I want you, little goddess. Always. Please. Tell me what you want. Tell me what I have to do.”
The cab driver honked.
“Let me go, Jonathan.”
“No.”
I pushed him away with all the force I had, and still he held me. “Let me go.”
He squeezed me harder. “We’re not finished.”
I wanted to fall into him, to acquiesce completely. Giving in to his embrace and his touch, letting him take me upstairs would have been so easy. That night would have been beautiful and tender, but what about the next day, and the next week, and the next month?
When I pushed him away again, he released me. I stepped back, almost falling. He held his hand out to help me, but I avoided him.
“Good-bye. I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be sorry.” He stood straight, his chin proud and his shoulders relaxed. “This isn’t over.”
I wanted to tell him I loved him again, but it would have done more harm than good. I ran down the steps. The cab was about to leave without me, but I grabbed the door handle and opened it. The driver stopped, and I got in.
With one last glance back, I saw Jonathan backlit on that magnificent porch, standing as if he had complete control of the situation, every inch a king.
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—To Be Continued—
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Book 5 – Burn will be released on or before 6/20.
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Contents
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.
