Missing Ink

by E J Frost

  Mac’s eyes lift to the middle distance, trace a flight of pigeons. “We all want better for our kids.”

  I squeeze his lean waist with the arm I have around him. “Sorry, Sir. I didn’t mean to remind you . . . what do you want for your daughter?”

  “I just want her to be healthy. And happy. But mostly healthy.”

  “I can tell you have a lot of love for her, Sir.”

  Mac sighs. “It’s not enough. All the love in the world can’t fill the hole in that kid’s heart. I should know. Her mother’s got the same damn hole and all my love didn’t fill hers, either.”

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat. “Is that why things didn’t work out between you two?”

  Mac shakes his head. “You sure you want to hear this now?”

  “Whenever you’re ready, Sir.”

  He snorts. “Amy’s not something I’m ever ready to talk about.” He kisses my temple. “No matter how I say this, I’m going to sound like an asshole. All I can say is that I’ve grown up a lot since I married Amy. Navy made me a man. I hope, a good man.”

  Mac seems like a very good man to me, but maybe he wasn’t always.

  “You married young, didn’t you, Sir?”

  “Yeah, as soon as Amy finished high school. That’s where we met. I was a junior when she was a freshman.”

  “High school sweethearts?” I ask as we turn the corner onto East 6th Street.

  Mac makes a choking noise in his throat. “Not quite. I . . . I said I was an asshole, Bren. I wasn’t exaggerating. When Amy started high school, she was this tiny thing. Not even five feet. All eyes and elbows and knobby knees. I was already six feet. I played football. I worked out every day. I must’ve outweighed her by a hundred pounds. She didn’t stand a chance.”

  I don’t understand. I try to read his expression, but he’s looking at the pavement as we walk slowly down the street. If I had to guess, he looks . . . remorseful.

  I try to lighten the mood. “What’d you do, force her to be your girlfriend?”

  “Worse.” He nods sadly. “I forced her to be our slut. Me and my three best friends. We called ourselves the Four Aces. Stupid, I know. We were kids. Not a brain between us. And we did a lot of stupid, fucked-up shit. If Teddy’s father hadn’t been a cop, we’d have all ended up in jail long before we graduated.”

  No wonder the things I got up to when I was a teen didn’t make him flinch. And I bet Mac was super-hot as a high school bad boy with his three, bad boy friends. Being their slut doesn’t sound so bad to me. If not for his expression and the way he said he forced his ex to be their slut, I’d be tempted to make a joke.

  “So, there wasn’t, um, consent?”

  Mac squeezes my shoulder as he steers me around a mother coping with a crying toddler.

  “No, there wasn’t,” he admits. “Not the way I think of consent now. I bullied her into being my toy and then I groomed her to be our slut.”

  That doesn’t sound good at all.

  “But things must have changed if you got married?”

  “We got married,” Mac says. “And everything changed. But not for the better. I’d trained her to be our slut. I’d taught her to crave constant, negative attention from several men. Then I stuck her in a tiny house on a naval base, five hours away from her family and friends, and expected her to be a perfect little housewife while I went off and lived on a sub for six months at a stretch.”

  I turn my face into his shoulder and let him guide my steps while I think. This is like every sub’s nightmare: getting trapped into a relationship with a Dom who wants to remake them into Suzie Damn Homemaker. Worse, his ex was clearly a full-time sub and that’s what he wants from me, too.

  “Mac, I—”

  He stops walking, turns to me, and lifts my chin so I have to meet his eyes. “Bren, I’m not that man anymore.”

  “I understand that, Sir. People change. It just makes me a little nervous that she was a full-time sub and that’s what you want with me.”

  Mac releases my chin to rub his hand over his brow. “I don’t know what to say to that, sweetheart. You and Amy are absolutely nothing alike. You’re opposites in so many ways I’d have trouble listing them all. I can’t imagine making the same mistakes with you that I made with Amy, but if you want to back off the twenty-four-seven thing until you’re sure you can trust me, I’d understand.”

  I already trust him. He won my trust imperceptibly, moment-by-moment, and although I still struggle to let him in, I unquestionably trust him.

  “We don’t need to do that, Sir. I’m sorry. I was just surprised. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I assumed your marriage ended because of your daughter’s addiction rather than because your power-exchange was fucked up. But I do understand you’re not that man anymore. It was, what, twenty years ago?”

  “Twenty-five.” Mac nods, his eyes still searching mine.

  I take a deep breath and let it out, releasing all those little niggles of uncertainty. Emily and I have talked a lot about those moments when the most important thing a sub can do is show her Dom that she has faith in him. This is one of those moments.

  Mac smiles. “There’s my bold girl. You don’t back down from much, do you?”

  “No, Sir.”

  He takes my chin again, stroking with his thumb. “Thank you, Bren. Other than my daughter’s health, nothing’s more important to me than your trust. Amy and I never had trust. That was a hundred percent my fault. I tried, over the years, to regain her trust but she couldn’t forgive me for the things I did when we were kids.”

  “Twenty years is a hell of a long time to hold a grudge, Sir.”

  Mac nods ruefully. “I don’t know how to even explain it to someone on the outside, but it became this godawful game between us. Counting coup, we called it. Every time she did something to hurt me, she’d count it off against the things I did to her when we were in high school.”

  “Did the scales ever balance?”

  Mac shakes his head. “Not in twenty years.”

  I step into him and put my arms around him, sliding them under his tailored coat. “Tell me to shut up if I don’t know what I’m talking about, Sir, but that’s fucked up. There’s no way you should pay for the mistakes you made as a kid for twenty years. That’s a life-fucking-sentence. Murderers get less time. Why didn’t you leave her?”

  “Til death do us part,’” he answers. “I made the vow. I took it seriously.”

  I hug him tightly, ignoring the fact we’re in the middle of a busy sidewalk. “I admire your—”

  “Stupidity?”

  “I was going to say fortitude, Sir.”

  He hugs me back, shifting the leash so it doesn’t yank on my collar. “Thank you, girl.”

  After a long minute, Mac moves me back under his arm and begins steering us down the sidewalk again. “I wish that was all of it, but it’s not, and since Amy will probably bring it up when you meet her, you should know the rest.”

  “I’m listening, Sir.”

  Mac glances up at the cloudless sky, looking, I think, for forgiveness. “I’ve probably made it sound like my marriage was pure hell, but there were good times. Especially after I’d been deployed for a while. When I went home, Amy was warm and loving, at first. Things got better for a while after Naomi was born, too. Amy’s a good mother in a lot of ways and she loved being a mother, especially when Naomi was small. They were always off to another class: ballet, art, piano. Kid had a million friends. Every weekend it seemed like it was someone else’s birthday party. Always dressed to the nines. Nomes had it all.

  “But when Naomi hit high school, it fell apart. Amy was on her about her weight all the time, even though Naomi’s never weighed more than a hundred pounds. I didn’t know about it until it was too late, but Amy gave Naomi diet pills. Naomi was only fifteen. They fucked her all up. She ended up in the hospital after taking too many. When the Doctors told me what had happened, I went crazy. I blamed Amy for giving Naomi the pills and Amy started counting
coup and I lost my temper. I slammed my fist through the wall in our kitchen and stormed out. I spent two days drunk, sleeping on a buddy’s couch. When I went to visit Naomi in the hospital, Amy had a restraining order served on me. She said I’d been violent with her.”

  Mac blows out a long breath and I squeeze his waist, clinging to him to show my support, even though it makes walking awkward.

  “I swear to you, Bren, I never hit her in anger. She had lots of bruises, and plenty of friends who were willing to say that they’d seen them over the years, but I wasn’t beating her. I did discipline her; she was my sub. We did lots of bondage which left her marked to hell. And I thought it was consensual, but maybe I damaged her so badly when we were kids that she couldn’t really consent to a power-exchange. I’ll never know.”

  Doms are so vulnerable to allegations of abuse, and it sounds like Mac’s ex knew exactly how to use that vulnerability against him. I don’t even know what to think about the question of her consent. Could I have given consent that young? At fifteen? I don’t know. I’d like to think I could, but I’d seen a lot already by fifteen and knew I didn’t want to have anything to do with boys or sex. I waited for another year to lose my virginity, which at that age is a lifetime, and even longer to start acting on all the weird desires I had. What I do know is that the decisions I made when I was fifteen haven’t defined my whole life.

  “Anyway,” Mac continues, “That was the end of our marriage. I moved out. I went to counseling for a year before I was allowed unsupervised visitation with Naomi. She didn’t speak to me for months. I did a better job rebuilding my relationship with Naomi than I did with Amy, though. Naomi forgave me. After she graduated high school, she came to live with me for a summer. She was healthy, happy, she even had a boyfriend. Nice kid, too. Then she went off to college and she started using again and it’s been this fucking roller-coaster ever since. Each time she overdoses, I have to wonder if I’m to blame for it all. If I hadn’t screwed up Amy so badly when she was a teenager herself, would she have been a better mother to Naomi? Would they both have stayed off the speed? I don’t know—”

  No, that’s just bullshit.

  “Mac, Sir, stop. Not everything is a consequence of what you did twenty-five years ago. They must have told you that in counseling.”

  Mac sweeps his hand up into my dreads, tips my head to him and kisses my forehead. “Yeah, they did.”

  “You don’t believe it, though.”

  “It’s hard to when I had Amy constantly telling me that everything was my fault.”

  That sounds just like all the crap my father’s family used to lay at my door. If my mother hadn’t been so careless, if she hadn’t had me before she finished high school, if Dad hadn’t given up his dream of playing football to marry my mom, if, if, if, yadda, yadda, yadda. So much bullshit.

  “I get that, Sir. I really do. I’ve had people in my life who told me everything I did was wrong, too. But I stopped believing them. I realized they were trying to tear me down to build themselves up. You must have stopped believing her at some point.”

  Mac nods slowly. “Deployment was good for me that way. Being away from her helped me gain some perspective. Being separated for nearly seven years didn’t hurt, either. But I’m still stupid about her, Bren. I still believe in her. I was her Dom. I shaped her; how can I not believe in her? Even when I know she’s wrong, even when I know she’s lying to me or herself, I still believe in her.”

  “That’s admirable, Sir. But I can see how it would fuck you up.”

  I honestly don’t know what else to say. I came into this conversation believing that Mac’s a good man, and a good Dom. Nothing he’s said has changed my mind. He clearly feels a huge amount of remorse for the way he treated his ex when they were teenagers. I won’t hold that against him.

  But I also came into the conversation believing that Mac was over his ex, and now I’m not so sure. Is he trying to recreate their relationship with me? Did he want someone so much younger than him because he thinks he can mold me, make me the submissive he wanted Amy to be? Because I’m no one’s damn substitute.

  It’s something I chew over long after we return to my shop and I sit down to work on the cityscape designs.

  *****

  I bounce on my toes, once, twice. Loosening up, finding my center. Then I settle back into guard and brace myself. Mac pounds the combination into the pads I’m holding. Left cross, right cross, left body hook, left hook, duck, left cross, right cross.

  As he goes to do the kick, he does the same thing he keeps doing: putting his weight on his left foot before he rocks back onto his right.

  I sweep his leg.

  Mac lands on his ass on the mats for the third time tonight.

  “Fuck,” he hisses through the mouth guard.

  “Weight on your back leg, Sir,” I remind him, with a grin through the pads I’m still holding up, because Kru likes nothing better than to whap my face with his damn pool noodle as soon as I let my guard down.

  Showing Mac consideration, because of his age or because it’s his first time at the gym or because of that mantle of authority Mac always wears, which Kru never shows me, Kru offers Mac a hand up off the mats.

  “She’s a smartass,” Kru says with a huge smile splitting his round, brown face. “But she’s right. Weight on your back leg.”

  Mac rolls his shoulders and lifts his gloves again. I brace and absorb the impact as Mac hammers the combination into the pads again.

  The lesson lasts for ninety minutes: long enough for our Kru to beat us, or have us beat each other, into sweaty, jelly-muscled submission. Although I like Kru a lot and have taken weekly lessons from him for over three years, I don’t know him outside of his gym, so I don’t know if he’s a Dom in his personal life, but he’s a complete and utter sadist in the gym, so he’d be a fearsome one if he is.

  As the class of twelve lines up to bow at the end of the lesson, even Mac is looking fatigued and that man has insane amounts of stamina, as my ass can attest. Once we’ve shown respect, Kru dismisses us and walks toward Mac. He holds out his hand and Mac shakes.

  “Happy to have you back any time. Anyone who can get a ‘sir’ out of the smartass over there is good people.”

  Kru throws a wolfish grin at me, which Mac echoes. Fuck. I do not need the two of them ganging up on me.

  I roll my eyes, and from the thunderous expressions I get back, I’m not sure who the gesture annoys more.

  “R-E-P-E-C-T,” I say. “That’s how I spell respect, sirs . Meet you out front in ten.”

  Mac unwraps a sweaty towel from around his neck and snaps it at my ass as I scamper off to the women’s’ locker room as fast as my noodle legs can carry me. I hear Kru’s bass laugh boom out behind me as Mac lets him in on the joke.

  As I reach the dubious safety of the women’s locker rooms, Scary Manda, as everyone calls her under their breath, steps out of one of the two showers. I don’t think Mac will come in here to teach me a lesson, but I’m not entirely sure and the uncertainty makes my pulse race faster than the previous ninety minutes of kickboxing. I nod to her as I shed my T-shirt, boxing shorts, and underwear, toss them into my “Fight Like A Girl” bag and step into the stall she’s just vacated.

  She leans against the plastic shower door and props her chin on her fist, which she can do because she’s six-two, the tallest biological woman I’ve met. Her height makes her punch-reach absolutely terrifying and I’ve never sparred with her personally, thank the Benevolence, because I probably wouldn’t be standing here today if I did.

  “Is he taken?” she asks without preamble.

  Is that a trick question? “Uh, yes?”

  “You don’t sound sure.”

  The only thing I’m not sure of is what I’m going to do if she decides to take out the competition. “I’m sure. Sorry.”

  Why am I apologizing? She’s asking if she can horn in on my damn Dom. I should be angry, but I’m too worn out by the kickboxing and every
thing that’s happened over the last few days to work up much emotion.

  “He’s not exactly a spring chicken,” she says. She’s right. Mac’s closer to her age, which I’d peg at early forties if I had to guess. She doesn’t look it. She’s in absolutely tip-top shape, the best female fighter at the gym, and has great bone structure so she has one of those ageless faces, but I vaguely remember a couple of people from the gym going to her fortieth birthday party shortly after I joined, and she has a few gray strands in her short, black hair. “Isn’t he a little old for you?”

  Man, she doesn’t pull her punches emotionally, either.

  “I’ve always liked older guys,” I tell her with a grin as I lather up. “They know how to find a clit on the first try.”

  She laughs and moves off and I step under the spray to rinse off, but her words linger like a bruise long after we return to my apartment.

  Mac notices, because he’s a fucking mind-reading Dom and I can’t get away with anything now. He doesn’t mention it as we scarf down his firecracker chicken, which lives up to its name. We don’t talk about anything heavy while we eat, just our plans for the weekend, which don’t involve going to see his daughter until Sunday, so I’m fine for my meeting with the club chairman. Mac tells me not to plan anything for Saturday night, so I figure there’s a date on the horizon, which warms my belly more than the food.

  But he doesn’t let it go, either. He waits until we’re curled together on my bed, with him reading his thick hardback—which turns out to be Michelle Obama’s autobiography, much to my surprise, because I’d kind of pegged him for a Republican—in his ridiculously hot glasses and me sketching cityscapes, which are coming together better than I deserve for how distracted I got during our walk.

  He turns a page, kisses my temple, and murmurs, “Are you quiet because you’re caught up in that design, or because of what I told you this afternoon, or because I’m horning in on your relationship with Lewis?”

  It takes me a moment to figure out who Lewis is. Oh, Kru. I don’t ever think of him by his name, but it figures that he’d introduce himself to Mac that way.