Hers to Choose (Cannon Cousins) (32 page)

“Okay, Alex, but you have
to do something for me.” She was glad he let go of her hands. If she kept
touching him, if the warmth shooting through her body went on for one more
second, she would be throwing herself into his arms and never let go. “You have
to take better care of yourself. Eat. Sleep.
Exercise.
Nothing is worth this kind of pressure, right?” She forced him to meet her
eyes. “Promise me?”

And there it was, that
intense shock of connection, his eyes burning into her, and for an instant she
was certain he was going to lower his mouth to hers and she would feel his body
against her.

“Yes, ma’am, I promise.
Better care for me.” His eyelids dropped to that half stare that set her on
fire. “Have to keep the body in shape, right?”

“Yes,” she breathed, “for
me.” Damn it, she did it again, a personal comment that no longer had any
place.
But what the hell?
He was walking out the door
and probably didn’t hear her anyway. She watched him get in the car and then in
minutes he was gone from her sight.

Alex
sat in his car in the parking lot in front of the strip mall on the north side of
St. Louis. He’d never been this conflicted about anything in his life. He ran
his palms down his thighs, drying off the fresh wave of perspiration.

“Damn it,” he muttered. “Just get it over with.”

He slammed the door and stalked across the space to the entry. It felt
like an eternity since he’d been here with Dan. The glass front had been
papered over and only a small sign beside the door told him he was in the right
place. “Couples Training,” it stated. He took a deep breath and opened the
door.

A young woman with tattoos looked up from a table. One of her wrists was
shackled to a chain fastened to the wall.

“Hi.”

“Wade said I should ask for Terry.”

“Oh, yes, Master Terry.” She smiled. “He’s down the hall in the meeting
room. You can go ahead.”

Alex shook his head slightly as he walked down the hallway. What the
hell was he getting himself into? The words “Meeting Room” were handwritten on
a piece of notebook paper and taped to a side door. He pushed inside.

A middle aged man stood at the front of room, dressed in black leather
pants with a leather vest over his bare chest. His look immediately pinned
Alex, so that he felt intimidated. Jesus.

Four other people sat around the room, all in regular clothes. A fifth
person knelt on the floor near the black leather man, whom Alex assumed to be
Master Terry. Terry rested his foot on this person, a naked woman trussed in
leather straps with a gag in her mouth.

“Can I help you?”

“Yes, I’m Alex.”

“Take a seat, Alex.”

Alex slid into the nearest chair. He already hated this, whatever the
hell it was. It bothered him to see someone being treated this way, tied up,
subjected
to this man’s foot on her back. He resisted the
urge to leave.

“Now, as I was saying,” Terry continued, “it’s not about getting off on
hurting somebody. It’s a consensual thing. If you don’t have communication,
you’re doing it wrong. Whether you’re the
dom
or the sub, if you haven’t talked about what you expect, what you want, then
back up and do that first. Your sub, whether it’s for a night or a lifetime,
may want spanking one day and not the next. Don’t take it for granted.

“For some of you—
who’s
new to this?” He looked
at Alex.

Alex raised his hand slightly, glancing around to see two other hands and
exchanging a sheepish grin.

“Since I’m serving tonight as your dominance mentor, let me point out
that just because someone wants to be submissive doesn’t mean you can do
whatever you like to that person. Your sub has specific needs and wants. It’s
your job to provide it. Likewise, we assume your specific need in this is to
dominate, be in charge, intimidate and humiliate according to your need to
assert control and in line with your sub’s need for whatever you’re dishing
out.

“Once you’ve communicated honestly with each other about the details of
your play, you take a firm, self-assured attitude. You know what you want from
your sub, and you aren’t going to apologize for wanting it. The sub wants to
feel you’re in complete control. This relieves him or her from any need to
think beyond obeying your commands.

“In most cases, this activity is sexual. Not always. In a sexual
setting, you may want to prolong a session by teasing the sub and ending before
he or she has achieved the end they desire. Extending can go for hours or days,
but always with the full agreement of both parties. And consider more than the
torment the sub experiences in arousal without satisfaction over a period of
time. It can be exhausting to exert control over someone over a long time frame.
You’ll learn as you go as to what you can handle.

“What you hope to achieve, both for you and the sub, is a trance-like
mental state where your endorphin levels rise. This is called subspace or
topspace
, and it’s a key element in BDSM. For some, it’s
like an extended orgasm. At any rate, how you reach that space depends on what
you and your partner decide to do, what you like, and how well you develop your
play.

“My sub tonight enjoys bondage, public humiliation, and a medium pain
level in her punishment. Later, we’ll move to the dungeon where I’ll fasten her
to a rack and demonstrate flogging…”

Alex’s mind shifted. This shit was real. He let the man’s words flow
over him, his cautions about safe words, aftercare, and being clear about the
toys and tools to use. He followed as they moved to the dungeon, and stood
slack jawed as the woman’s wrists and ankles were fastened.

His mind kept flashing on Bryn and her shivering buttocks as Dan spanked
her. He didn’t understand then. Maybe he still didn’t. But it was starting to
be less alien. Setting goals, training for specific activities—he glanced at
the printout as he left.
Homework.
Jesus.

***

Bryn settled finally on Anne Grayson,
an older woman lawyer who handled a lot of real estate transactions. She delivered
photocopies of the proposed contracts and the deed she had received from her
granddad’s estate and all the other papers Anne requested. A week later, she
went in to discuss things.

“My opinion,” Anne said
after a few minutes of small talk, “is that the papers are all in order. My
question to you is whether this is what you want?”

“What do you mean? I want
to sell the land—it’s been a completely unexpected project, but if I had
thought of the development idea myself, I would’ve wanted to do it.”

“So you understand that
you will be paid only twenty percent of the value per parcel until the
construction is completed and that unit is sold?”

“Yes. It seems fair.”

“It’s a risk. What if the
property sits there on the market for a while? And meanwhile, you’ve got all
the other parcels tied up in this long sequence.”

“Yes...” Bryn paused. She
hadn’t looked at it like that. “But—if these guys weren’t doing this, I
probably wouldn’t be selling any of it anyway.”

“Why
not?
Did they
pressure you into this deal?”

“No,
not at all.”
She
shrugged. “I hadn’t thought about it, I guess. I mean, it seems like they’ve
already spent a lot of money just getting the land surveyed and divided up.
Where would I ever get the money to do that? I don’t see how I could sell any
of it if I didn’t have someone financing it.”

“I see. So you’re getting
five thousand an acre, according to this contract.”

“Yes. I think that’s
shockingly high, but they said with the water line through there and being able
to tap into the line for each parcel is key to the valuation. I’m taking their
word for it.”

Anne tapped her pen on
the stack of papers. “That’s a fair value, for you and for them. Evidently they
did their homework.”

“I have complete
confidence in these guys.”

“Oh, do you know them
well?”

Bryn almost laughed and
managed a slight cough into her hand.
“Uh, more or less.”

“Well,
good
.
That’s good. But of course nothing ends a friendship faster than business deals
gone wrong. Now let’s see, the deeds are in order. So you can start signing
those,” she handed over the documents, “then I’ll notarize and get them
registered. Let them know I’ll mail copies for their files, but as of this
afternoon, the land will be theirs. How are they conveying their down payment?”

“I don’t know.
Probably a check.”

“Their twenty percent is
one hundred thousand dollars, you realize. That’s a large sum. Perhaps a
cashier’s check would be the best option.”

A
hundred thousand dollars.
Bryn had figured it out before, several times, each time
setting aside the number as a possible fluke of her overheated imagination. Now
that the words were coming out of Anne’s mouth, the reality of it settled on
her shoulders like a heavy weight. What in the hell would she do with a hundred
thousand dollars? It made Alex’s ten thousand shrink in comparison and even the
ten thousand had been more in one lump than she had ever possessed in her
entire life.

“As for your tax status
on this,” Anne continued, “you’ll have the expense of interest on the current
mortgage to deduct against the income, but you may have capital gains tax
depending on the valuation at the time you inherited. Also, income tax will
take a chunk unless you want to try to structure some kind of shelter, maybe
invest in other real estate. I’d recommend rental, if you’re interested, or
maybe commercial.”

“Wow, I have no idea
about any of this stuff. What if I don’t do anything?”

“You’ll lose a lot of
money. But you have until the end of the year to get it squared away. Do you
want some things to read?”

Bryn drove home with her
mind swarming in ideas and worries. How ironic that as soon as there was money,
there was a whole new batch of problems to worry about. She liked the idea of
socking the money into a savings account, but the interest earned would hardly
keep up with inflation and taxes would be at the max. In the short term, she
didn’t know what else to do.

When the check arrived
with all its zeros and a business letter acknowledging receipt of the deeds, she
propped the pale green rectangle of paper against the dining table vase for a
couple of days before taking it to the bank.
Alex and Dan—a
hundred thousand dollars from them, to her, for a project that wouldn’t bring
them income for who knew how long.
Her eyes swam with tears when she
thought about it.

Each morning with coffee
she did a bit more reading about investments and tax shelters and then had to
walk out on the land to make the headache go away. Jonquils bloomed in bright
yellow clumps by the house, and the iris along the front walk had fat buds.
Sometimes she added to her defusing time by tilling up more of her garden. The
dark moist ground smelled so rich and sweet. Already she had put in onion and
garlic sets and fresh mulch around the perennial herbs.

In between were the
county meetings and septic field tests and consults with Randall, plus emails
from Dan or Alex, to the point that by the time she shucked off her boots and
crawled into bed, she hardly had time to pine over Alex. But she still wanted
him, missed him like a part of herself every day, all day. It was a slow deep
ache that she couldn’t make go away.

She had given up on
trying not
to feel
. Now her hope hinged on surviving
however long it took to get over him and regaining her sense of independence.
She’d made her decision about her future, and it wouldn’t include a man. Alex’s
commitment to another woman helped, even if it did rip at her insides. Much as
she didn’t want him burdened with any sense of urgency about the project, she found
herself hoping fervently that he would have to come to the land again soon.

***

Instead it was Randall and a
land-clearing company with a team of men and low tractor trailers hulking with
bulldozers and backhoes. The parcel developing first was the one nearest her
house, and even though she couldn’t see it from the porch, she could hear the
equipment clacking and
chainsaws buzzing
and felt the
earth vibrating through her feet.

She went down there each
morning for her walk, swallowing hard at the shocking upheaval of the land.
Giant tree roots stretched into the air with dirt and rocks still clinging in a
mass. Raw ground smell was thick in the air. Red or gray clay, tan layers of
sandy loam, and black humus on the top layers shoved up in piles with rocks of
all sizes. Stacks of tree limbs and bigger stacks of tree trunks heaped up in
long tumbled rows. She felt excited and upset and sad and happy all at the same
time. She felt like she had betrayed her best friend.

She consoled herself over
her second gin and tonic that this was necessary. If she didn’t do it, she
would have been forced to sell the place, maybe even to a lowlife like
Thompson, and then he might have done far worse than put a mere hundred acres
to the saw. And only a tiny percent of the hundred acres was being violated
with the heavy machines of men. She hadn’t thanked Alex enough for his idea.