by L. DuBois
“I don’t need aftercare.”
“—not optional.” His voice hardened as he spoke.
And damn it, she wanted to submit to that tone of command.
“I don’t need it.”
“You do, as do I.”
“Then I’m using my safe word,” she snapped. “I’m leaving.” It felt ridiculous, talking to him without facing him—her words strong, but her body language defensive.
“Go ahead.”
Cali closed her eyes, hating herself. He’d known she wouldn’t use it, and called her bluff. She could prove him wrong. Just say the word and walk out the door.
She wasn’t strong enough, brave enough, to make good on her threat. Because as much as she might hate herself for it, she needed what he could, and would, do to her. Needed it from him, even though it was something she’d forced herself to stop longing for.
The quiet was heavy, loud in the way of uncomfortable silences.
Zidan didn’t mock her for staying. That wasn’t his way.
When he came up behind her, pulling her back against his chest and sliding his hands down her chest, he made soft soothing noises, somewhere between a hum and a shushing sound.
She let her hands drop, let him cup her breasts. He massaged them, once more placing a fingertip directly on each nipple and pressing on them rhythmically. The last of the pain from ripping off the clamps faded.
And once it did, and though his touch hadn’t changed, her body—a body that knew his touch so well—didn’t just desire him. What she felt was far more powerful than want.
It was need.
Cali stepped forward, his fingers sliding off her breasts. He gripped her arms briefly as if he would stop her from walking away.
But his hands fell away, and she pulled the robe closed once more, fumbling to find the tie and knotting it around her waist.
“Have you eaten?” Zidan asked after a moment.
“And if I have?” She grimaced at herself. She sounded petulant and stupid.
“Then I would ask if you’d like to get a drink rather than some food.”
“I’m a bit hungry,” Cali murmured.
“Then, please, let me escort you to the dining room.”
She listened to his footsteps receding, but it wasn’t until she heard the door open, felt the wash of cool air from outside, that she turned.
Cali raised her head, smiled briefly at him as she passed by, while he held the door. He closed the door behind them, then fell in step beside her, one hand very gently resting on the small of her back.
“I didn’t realize you used your membership,” she said after a few dozen steps.
“Does it bother you? I’ve…enjoyed seeing you here.”
Cali stopped walking, and her jaw clenched. And for a moment she hated him, because the hint that he wanted to see her made her heart leap.
There were things she wanted to say, things she wanted to do, at least one of which was to slap his face.
But that wouldn’t help anything. And it wouldn’t be fair. After all, he wasn’t the one who’d changed. She had. He’d never said he didn’t want to see her, or scene with her. She was the one who’d ended their relationship in reality, if not yet on paper.
A relationship that had meant so much to her. He had been her friend, lover, master, partner, and confidant.
Cali took a breath and kept walking. Neither of them spoke again until they were in the dining room.
The large room had dark wood tables and chairs, as well as a few sunken seating areas. The food, set out on a sideboard, was catered by a high-end restaurant in Malibu.
Zidan held her plate for her as she went down the buffet, then carried it over to a small table in the corner. He went back for drinks for each of them—a glass of white for her, a scotch for him, only then filling his own plate and sitting down with her.
For a moment they ate in silence, but it wasn’t tense, rather…familiar. It was the silence of a couple finally sitting down to eat after a long day of work, and focusing on their food before they started talking about their days.
There was a bitter taste at the back of her mouth and Cali put down her fork, taking a long drink of her wine.
The clink of her glass on the wooden table top reminded her of the sound the dildos had made when he set them out on the tray. Bitterness was briefly engulfed by need.
“Very domestic of us, don’t you think?” She wanted to feel bitter again. That was safer than wanting him.
Zidan’s fingers tightened around his fork, but then he carefully set it down before picking up his own glass. He didn’t drink from it, only held it.
“Domesticity is an illusion.”
“Ah, yes, of course, how could I have forgotten?” Cali brushed one hand through the air dismissively. Mockingly.
“Calista.”
“Don’t take that tone with me; you’re not my father.” A sneer curled her lip.
“No. Of course not. I’m—” He stopped, bared his teeth, and then took a sip.
“Oh no, please finish. You’re what, Zidan? What are you to me? My husband? Legally, of course, but not in any other way. You made that quite clear.”
“We should not fight.”
“Why not? Of all the things we’ve done to one another, this is the one we didn’t. We didn’t fight.” She choked a little on the last word. They hadn’t fought—hadn’t yelled and screamed at one another on that miserable day in New York.
And he hadn’t fought for them. For her.
“Husband,” he snarled the word. “And clearly you want nothing more than to be the good little wife?” The question more of a sneering statement as he gestured around with one hand. Drawing her attention to the opulent sex club where she spent her weekends.
Cali took a deep breath, held it, then released it. He wasn’t wrong. Neither was she.
She also wasn’t crying.
The last time she’d had a private conversation with him, she’d left heartbroken and crying. This was better than that had been.
It was one of the reasons that now whenever she did have to be seen with him, her publicist was involved.
When he reached across the table for her, he didn’t take her hand, but instead gripped her wrist, his fingers covering the skin that had been under the manacle.
He squeezed her wrist and a flood of memories came back. Vignettes of vivid memory, not dimmed by time.
Zidan—many years younger than he was now—holding her down, his hands pressing her wrists into the bed as his mouth slid down her body, teeth closing on her nipple while his long hair slid along her skin.
Zidan nodding along while holding the curled and tattered pages of a script as he helped her run lines for an off-off-Broadway production.
Zidan looming over her as he knelt on the bed, using soft words as, for the first time, he bound her wrists with leather cuffs and straps, the first night they had used real, custom BDSM equipment instead of silk scarves.
Zidan’s head bent over his computer as he typed furiously, writing a play in their tiny little studio apartment.
Zidan’s hand stroking her hair as she tentatively unbuttoned another woman’s pants the night of their first threesome.
Zidan guiding her into a private sex club in New York, his hand on her back the only thing keeping her from either running…or throwing herself into the dark, decadent world in front of her with no regard for her own safety.
Zidan with a bullhorn standing on the steps of an embassy, rallying the crowd at a protest.
Zidan’s hand on her head, pushing her mouth down onto another Dom’s cock while a female sub lay on the floor between Cali’s spread legs, tonguing her pussy.
Zidan winking at her when they stood before the justice of the peace, the wink indicating that this was a joke, that things like marriage weren’t for people like them. They were free-thinking artists and rebels who didn’t bother with physical monogamy, for whom the world was a limitless place of creativity, desire, and
action.
Zidan frowning and checking window locks as he walked through the small apartment she’d rented when her career moved her from New York to L.A.
Zidan looking intense and delicious on the red carpet the night his new play premiered not at a twenty, fifty, or even hundred seat theater, but at Lincoln Center.
Zidan ending his video chat with her long before she was ready because his current lover had just woken up.
Zidan looking at her with confusion and a little thinly veiled contempt as she explained that they needed to act like a couple in public. That she needed him to keep his affairs quiet because she didn’t want casting directors passing her over because she was a gossip liability.
Zidan standing beside her at movie premieres, just as she’d stood beside him at premieres of his plays. First at small events where the “red carpets” were literally a narrow strip of carpet on a sidewalk with a sponsor’s backdrop behind them. Then the red carpet in Cannes, Sundance. The Golden Globes, Oscars.
Zidan smiling and greeting people at elegant New York parties thrown by theater patrons after the premiere of one of his newest, soon to be award-winning, plays. Her beside him, playing the role of devoted wife, propping up that facade, knowing all the while that when they went back to his spacious SoHo apartment they wouldn’t be alone. Knowing, and dreading, that he would invite some of the young, beautiful people around them to share their bed.
“It wouldn’t suit you anymore than it would me,” Zidan said quietly, answering his own question. “I am no one’s husband.”
The word “anymore” hung heavy in the air.
Cali looked away. She hated that her aching nipples, clit, labia, and ass wouldn’t let her forget their recent intimacy.
Zidan was, apparently, undeterred by her silence.
“I never intentionally lied to you, Cali.”
Weirdly, there was a slight emphasis on the “you.”
That was enough to make her unstick her jaw. “No, you didn’t, did you? You were careful about that. You’ve always been careful.” She turned to him, meeting his gaze for the first time since the scene ended. “Carefully introduced me to the poly lifestyle, swinging, when I was barely even into BDSM. I tried it all, for you.”
For a moment he looked shocked that she was still angry, still wanted to fight.
“You tried, because you wanted it, too.” His shoulders squared. “I never would have made you do anything you didn’t want. Never could have. You’re far too stubborn for that.”
“I’m not saying you forced me,” she snapped. “I’m saying that desires, needs change and—” and I loved you. Wanted to build my life with you. A life that was just us.
“Not that much.” Zidan gestured around.
Cali didn’t want to have this conversation right now. She took a sip of wine, then with a quick mental fuck it finished the glass. The moment she set it down, he picked it up and rose to get her another.
The ever-solicitous husband.
After he set the glass down, he put his hand over hers, squeezing gently.
“Let’s not talk about this. It’s not the time or the place.” He wasn’t looking at her, and for a moment his face was drawn.
Cali nodded. She was tired and sore. That hadn’t been much of a fight, but coming years too late, it was enough to exhaust her already tattered emotions.
Looking across the table at him, she felt…sad. Maybe still a little heartbroken, but it was an old ache, like when a once-broken, now-healed bone ached before the rain.
Years ago she’d asked the man she loved for something. Asked him to change because she’d changed. He’d said no.
He hadn’t loved her the way she loved him, and she’d learned to live with that.
“If you’re done, it’s time to go back to the room.”
Cali had been too lost in her thoughts, in the strange numbing feeling the conversation had elicited, to notice that time had passed.
She nodded, not really thinking about what he’d said, or what it meant. When Zidan came around to her side of the table and offered his hand, she placed her fingers in his palm and rose from the table.
Once they were out in the cool night air, some of the numbness faded. Thinking about their past, finally fighting with him about it, however briefly, had brought up emotions she thought she’d worked through. And now that the protective coating of anger was spent, all that was left were more damaging feelings.
Embarrassment. Shame.
The same things he’d made her feel in the scene, but this time they weren’t perverted and delicious. She wanted to cringe away from him, to hide her face as her memory flashed up technicolor images of the past. Of the night she’d asked him to love her, and he’d, oh so gently, turned her down.
Cali stopped walking. “I can’t do this, Zidan.”
He paused, looking at her through his lashes. “Scene with me?”
“I can’t handle any more humiliation.”
He regarded her for a long moment, then said. “The purpose of the last scene wasn’t humiliation.”
“But it was humiliating. Don’t play dumb.”
His brow arched at her tone, but all he said was, “I’m not. And I understand your embarrassment, but we’re done with that item from the checklist.”
Cali rubbed a hand over her stomach. “I didn’t realize until right now how much that feeling brought up other things.” Damn it, that entire sentence was a cluttered mess. In interviews she always managed to come across as well-spoken. But without preparation time or a script to guide her, Cali’s words were jumbled and fractured.
“What other things?” Zidan asked.
She just shook her head. But when she tried to take a step back and away from him, Zidan gently grasped her elbow.
“This is aftercare.”
“Aftercare is done.”
“Hardly. We just had food. I need to take care of you. And you know that includes looking over your body.”
Her cheeks burned, but it was with desire, not embarrassment.
Desire…that she could handle. She forced herself to relax into it, to let arousal mute remembered pain.
“We’re going to do aftercare and the next item on our list at the same time.” Zidan’s hand shifted to the small of her back and he urged her forward.
When Zidan opened the door to their playroom, she avoided looking at the exam table. It was made easier when Zidan dragged another large piece of equipment away from the wall, pulling the black sheet off of it.
A massage table.
Cali raised a brow, and Zidan’s lips quirked. “Ready for your massage?”
Chapter 8
Cali dropped her robe and slid onto the massage table, lying face down on the crisp white sheet. Unlike the medical exam table, which had clearly been modified to fit the aesthetic of the club, the massage table had the mauve colored padding she was used to seeing in spas.
Cali placed her face in the center of the ring sticking out of the top end of the table. Normally, this was when she started to relax, but her muscles were still tense. Her exposed back, ass, and legs felt very vulnerable.
To her surprise, Zidan dropped a sheet and heavy blanket over her, covering her from toes to shoulders.
He folded back the top, and she lifted her head, twisting to look at the precise turn over of the sheet. “Very professional.”
“I had a lover who was a masseuse for a while.”
“Ah.” Cali lowered her face into the doughnut.
Zidan pressed his hands to her shoulders. “Does it bother you to hear me say that?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me, Cali.” His voice was low, commanding, with a hint of threat. A Dom’s voice.
“You don’t get to do that.” Cali pushed up on her elbows. “Either we’re in a scene, or we’re not.”
“We are in a scene, and I asked you a question.”
“A question about our past.”
“It wasn’t. I merely asked y
ou if it bothered you to hear me mention someone else. As your Dom I have the right to know that, because it means understanding you, and your needs.”
He sounded so calm and reasonable. It was infuriating. Lovely, protective anger sizzled through her. She popped up, turning her head to look at him. “My needs? You don’t give a shit about my needs and haven’t for a long time.”
His face darkened, and his eyes took on a cold glint.
“Watch your tone.”
“If this is another role-play scene, then say so.” Her words were curt, but her tone less accusing. As pissed as she was, she’d been a sub for a long time, and she reacted to the warning in his voice almost involuntarily.
“It’s not,” Zidan countered. “And it shouldn’t have to be.”
It would be so much easier if he restarted the role play, if she could go back to imagining her fictional Dom who’d turned her over to a deliciously cruel trainer.
Zidan crouched, so they were more or less eye to eye and she wasn’t craning her neck to look up at him.
“The only roles we’re playing right now are that of Dom and sub. And they’re not roles, not in the way you and I usually use the word.”
Cali closed her eyes, then slowly lowered herself, resting her face in the padded doughnut. She whispered her next words. “If I didn’t need this, I’d walk out right now.”
“Need to scene?”
“Yes.”
And that was both a truth and a lie. She did need to scene, did need the emotional and stress relief of BDSM—it was why she was a member, after all. But she also needed to talk to Zidan. It was a need she hadn’t known she had until she saw him.
Maybe this time, when it was over, she wouldn’t walk away with a broken heart. Maybe she’d be able to smile and wink. Treat him like a friend and former lover.
Go back to being amused and nonchalant about their green card marriage the way she had been, once.
“I’m glad you didn’t walk out.” Zidan leaned forward over her head, placing the heels of his hands on her shoulders and pushing. The tense muscles gave under the pressure, elongating and stretching as he forced her shoulders back and down, away from her neck.
For several moments he worked her, his strong fingers kneading her muscles. Cali began to relax in truth, all the tension she’d carried in her shoulders and neck worked away by his magic fingers.
