Andrew took my sandwich and put it on the table, and pulled me into his arms. “Oh, Chere. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what’s right.”
“I wish he was like Craig. I wish this was easy and civilized, and that I didn’t have all these
feelings
.”
“I know. It sucks.”
“I don’t know how to let Price go and wait for someone better, when he’s the one who’s still consuming all my thoughts. Since I met him, since the beginning, he’s consumed me.”
“I know, babes. I know.”
“So how do I just give all that up? Ugh, this sucks so bad. It’s so horrible. And now, after the things I said...” I swallowed hard, feeling panic. “He’s blocked me out, my calls and emails. Even if I apologized, I’m not sure he’d take me back. ”
Andrew snorted. “He’d take you back. He’d have you back in a heartbeat, because as much as you think you need him, he needs you more. But Chere, honey.” He made me sit up, and wiped at my tears. “How much are you going to give him? You need to draw a line before you even consider going back. After Simon…you know what I mean? There has to be a line in your mind that you won’t cross. You can’t lose track of yourself again, and wind up stuck in another bad relationship you can’t extricate yourself from.”
“I wouldn’t let that happen. I’m different now. I met Simon when I was younger than you, and I’m in my thirties now. I’d recognize the signs.”
He arched a brow. “Age does not convey wisdom.”
“You’re too young to say that.”
“And you’re not exactly an old hag. Think about it. You’ll have other opportunities, other guys you’ll meet…”
His voice trailed off as I shook my head. “Not like this guy.”
He grimaced. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“I need to go see him. We need to talk things out when we’re not all overwrought about running into Simon. I think that’s what set everything off, running into Simon at your party, and the fight, and getting hauled off to jail.” I shuddered. “But Simon’s the past, and maybe…maybe Price is…”
“Your future?”
I let out a breath. “Yes.”
We both lay back on the couch under the weight of this decision, this choice that felt like life or death. “You should wait a couple more days,” he said. “You should wait until you’re feeling a little stronger. I mean, what if it doesn’t go well? What if he tells you to get lost?”
“He might. He probably will.” I shrugged and twisted my fingers together. “He’s probably going to say all kinds of awful things and order me to stay the fuck away from him. I still have to go.”
My house was quiet, but I liked it quiet. I wasn’t a big TV watcher, or a music person. I was a reader, and I was reading a lot to keep thoughts of Chere from crowding my mind. If I thought about her too long, I’d go to her, and I was determined not to. I’d put away the binoculars. No more stalking. No more manipulation. She’d had enough, and I...
Well, I had a stack of books in my living room, and a bottle of wine, and silence to lose myself in the words. I was halfway through Pablo Neruda’s
Winter Garden
, a collection of poems I’d read numerous times. It was always a transcendent experience, but I hadn’t been able to lose myself in the imagery the way I normally did. Maybe it was too quiet.
In the silence, I heard a footfall outside. The neighbors across the hall? It was late, after ten. I glanced at my watch but didn’t go back to the poetry. I had a sense of recognition, of waiting. Then, the knock.
It took just a second, maybe two, for me to realize it had to be Chere. No one else could get by the doorman at this hour, and besides that, I think subconsciously I’d registered the rhythm and weight of her steps. I thought for a moment of not answering. Just a moment, though. If she was here, I was going to see her. Maybe something had happened, some emergency.
I put my wineglass on the side table, and lay the book of poems on top of the others, still opened to my place. I’d go back to reading it shortly. I would not embrace Chere and invite her inside, or kiss her, or fuck her. By her own words, I had nothing to give her.
She knocked again, louder, then rang the doorbell. And rang the doorbell again. She wanted in, the little nutjob. Of course she’d ring the doorbell repeatedly. If I waited a few more seconds, she’d do it again. I pictured her with her finger poised over the button as I threw the lock and opened the door.
And there she was, standing two feet away. She lifted her chin as I stared at her in her pink Lanvin suit, and the black leather mask I’d instructed her to wear to our first meeting three years ago. The air whooshed out of me, taken up by the emotion in my chest. That pert nose, her set mouth, even the tilt of her chin was the same.
“Are you there?” she asked when I couldn’t produce any words. She reached out, groping for me, not quite touching me. Then she reached to take off the mask. I almost stopped her but then I remembered,
you can’t stop her. She’s not yours to control. Don’t touch her. Don’t look at her.
She pushed off the mask, blinking at me through a sheen of tears. She held it out to me, and gestured down at her outfit. It hugged her curves as enticingly as it had that day.
“I just thought...remember? The W Hotel?”
“I remember.” I drank in the sight of her, trying not to look like I was dying inside. “I remember,” I repeated, keeping my tone neutral and civilized. “Why are you here?”
“Well, I thought... I wanted to come back and...” She looked past me. “Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Is there someone else here?”
Ha, someone else. Like I would have moved on from her in the space of a week. “No one else is here,” I said, “and you shouldn’t be here either.”
She clutched the mask in front of her, twisting the straps. “I’m here because I need to talk to you. I’m sorry for the crazy shit I said to you, about you being empty inside. I didn’t mean it. I was just freaked out from seeing Simon.”
“Chere—”
“No, wait. That’s not the truth. The truth is, I freaked out on you because I love you. I tried not to fall in love, but I did, and you said—”
“Chere, I need you to go.”
She was so sad, and so beautiful. It was so hard to keep my walls up when she looked at me that way, her clear brown eyes full of longing and apology.
But I had to keep my walls up. I nudged her back and shut the door.
The doorbell rang as soon as I threw the lock. I returned to my wine and my book, but my quiet had been shattered. She rang ten more times before I got up and yanked open the door. She was wearing the damn mask again.
“I’m not interested,” I said through my teeth. “If I wanted a whore, I’d have called one.”
She pitched herself at me, knocking me backward. I tripped and fell and she landed on top of me, a masked pink dragon, breathing fire. Somewhere along the line I’d forgotten she was such a fighter.
“I know you love me,” she said, holding me down.
“I don’t believe in love.”
“Then surrender. You believe in surrender. I tried my best to be the kind of partner you wanted. Why wouldn’t you ever let me in your dungeon?”
I glanced at the open door, wondering what the neighbors and their two young children might think of this scene. “You’re a fucking pain in the ass,” I said, pushing her off me.
She lay back on my floor in her damned designer suit. I remembered it as vividly as I remembered that day we met. The skirt I’d cut off her that day was still in the back of my closet, folded into a pale pink square. She kicked off her shoes.
“I’m not leaving until you talk to me,” she said. “Or hurt me. Either one.”
“I’m very close to hurting you. Why don’t you move on with your life? Why don’t you get a fucking job?”
“Because I want to work for you. I want to work at Eriksen.”
“You don’t have the resume for Eriksen.” I took off her mask and flung it across the room so she couldn’t put it on again. “I paid for you to go to school so you would make something of yourself. Wasn’t that the plan?” Her eyes widened as I yelled at her. “Now you’re lying on my fucking floor in the same outfit you wore three years ago—”
“I’ll get a job, okay? Is that what I have to do for you to love me?” She crawled over and slammed the door, and leaned back against it, drawing in her knees. I read the body language easily enough: she wasn’t leaving. I thought with longing of my wine and Neruda poems. Damn her and her long, brown, curly hair making a halo against the pale wood.
“I’ll get a job,” she said. “I’ll design things. I
want
to design things. Why does that mean I can’t have you too?”
“Because I want to put you in a dungeon,” I answered in a sharp voice. “It’s not about the job, it’s about this relationship shit you’re looking for. I want sex and slavery. I want you as a toy, not a partner, and it’s not fair to draw you into a dynamic like that when you want
love
and
commitment
. Why can’t you fucking see this?”
“We can’t compromise?” she asked. “There’s no way for us to have the sex and slavery and still have love?”
I gave a bitter laugh. “You’d love me for about a week before you tried to run the hell away.”
“That’s not true. I want your intensity and your roughness. I love to surrender to you.”
I got to my feet, waving away her silly declarations. She had no idea what she was volunteering for. “It wouldn’t just be sessions,” I said. “If I had what I wanted—my ideal relationship—”
Stop. Stop talking, Price. Just stop.
“What? Tell me.”
“It would be about more than sex,” I said, standing over her. “It would be everything. You wouldn’t just be a slave, or a sub. You’d be mine, my possession.”
“I want that.”
“You think you do, but you don’t.” I started to pace, desire and angst expended in activity. “I would take everything I wanted from you, everything I needed, no matter what you thought you needed. I’d torment you if I felt like it. An all-encompassing dynamic. That’s what I would want.” I stopped pacing and turned to her. “You’ve never been anyone’s slave before.”
“I’ve been yours,” she said. “For three years.”
She looked exhausted, like she hadn’t been sleeping well. I hadn’t been sleeping well either. Something was missing from my life, a person I needed to make me happy. A person I would end up damaging and hurting.
“Chere,” I said, and it was almost a groan. “Why are you putting me through this?”
“Because we belong together.”
She was so sure of that, sitting there with her back against my door, and her knees drawn up in her little pink skirt. She was so fucking sure this was possible.
“I’ll show you the dungeon,” I said. “I’ll show you what I want from you, and then…”
I wasn’t saying yes. But she realized I wasn’t saying no anymore either. I was saying maybe, which was fucking careless of me. She gave me a huge smile as I held out my hand to help her to her feet.
*** *** ***
I stuffed down nerves and walked her along the hall to my bedroom, and then to my walk-in closet. She watched as I pushed aside a line of suits, revealing a hidden door.
“That’s why I couldn’t find it,” she said.
I frowned at her. “You tried to find it?”
“Yes. The morning you left me alone.”
“If I wanted you to see it, I would have shown it to you.”
Her eyes flashed in the harsh closet light. “You’ve shown it to other women, haven’t you?”
It wasn’t really a question. It was a reproach. Yes, I’d brought other women here but they meant nothing to me, and Chere meant too much.
“I’ll tell you this,” I said. “No one I’ve ever brought here has elected to come back.”
With that warning, I turned the knob and walked her inside. On the surface, it was like any other room. It had dark gray walls and a smooth white ceiling, and a polished hardwood floor. But beneath the drywall, I’d had the entire space soundproofed, because I lived for the sound of a woman’s screams.
I walked around turning on lights. Lamps, overhead lights, paper lanterns, every kind of light to illuminate this darkly perverse world.
“Wow,” she said. “This is…”
It was over the top. I knew. I’d repurposed two good-sized bedrooms to create the space, and furnished it with top-tier BDSM equipment. There was a monster of a bondage rack screwed to the wall, capable of restraining a victim in just about any position. There was a broad, padded leather table for horizontal kink activities, and an adjustable spanking bench for forcing women’s asses into the air. There was a sawhorse spreader with interchangeable tops: a flatter, padded one for milder sessions, and a hard, triangular one for punishing a slave who’d been very, very naughty. There was a cage, only one, a low, Chere-sized rectangle with stark metal bars.
Aside from the various kinky structures, there were two tall chests full of thousands of dollars’ worth of butt plugs, nipple clamps, sex toys and punishment implements, all collected in the three years since I’d met her. I’d collected them for her, because I’d wanted her even when I shouldn’t want her. I’d wanted
this
, a painful, dark, selfish dynamic that could never fulfill her, no matter how sexy and exciting it might seem.
“What do you think?” I asked. From the expression on her face, I thought she was probably soaking her panties.
“So, this is what you want in a relationship? To hurt me here? To keep me locked away in here, all the time?”
“Not all the time. Sometimes. When I feel like cuffing you to one of these structures and doing unconscionable things to your body.”
She let out a slow breath. A flush crept up my neck. It had been one thing to admit I had a dungeon. It was another thing to allow her in here to see all the ways I wanted to torture her, to see the sheer magnitude of my perversion in the furniture and equipment I’d bought.
“I’m not afraid of this,” she said, a little too loudly. She turned to me and repeated herself. “I’m not afraid of this. If this is what you want, I want it too. I mean, we were always moving toward this, weren’t we? You like control…” She gestured around at the racks and chains and leather cuffs. “And I like when you control me. It excites me.”