by Penny Aimes
If she didn’t want a boyfriend, he was out of luck. If she didn’t want him, same. So he needed a way to test those waters ASAP, because he would jump off the roof of Frankie’s before he forced himself on her. But if she thought he wasn’t up to it? That was a challenge, and Dennis Martin thrived on challenges. If she wanted him, too, he was confident he could be what she needed...but first he had to be sure she did.
They cooked breakfast together. He fried bacon while she cut up some fruit and tidied up in his wake. Then he had to test his memory of Gordon Ramsay’s perfect scrambled eggs recipe while she watched.
When he tempted her to touch herself while he cooked, he didn’t have a plan yet, beyond watching the color mount in her cheeks and listening to the noises she made while she did it. She was self-conscious, which was understandable. She was obedient anyway, which was wonderful. It was an exercise in self-control not to burst out of the front of his boxers, but since that would be bad for the scrambled eggs and his dick, he managed it.
The idea came together as they ate. She was squirmy, blushing, staring at him hungrily, her self-consciousness about her body and her desires out the window. He liked her like this. I want you like this all the time, he thought. And he wanted a way to stay in her life, to not let the discomfort of last night’s conversation scar into an awkwardness that separated them.
“What if you couldn’t come without permission?”
Her reaction was subtle, but definite. “That could be fun.” She pretended to study her food before she went on. “Your permission or just anyone’s?”
“What would you be more comfortable with?” That took a lot of restraint, but the alternative was impossible, wasn’t it? They’d just agreed not to be a couple, and they’d known each other a week. If she promised him exclusive control it would be hard to believe her under the circumstances.
But when she said she’d be comfortable with that and framed it as a project, an experiment in submission—he knew he had her. She was comfortable playing with someone long-term; comfortable submitting to him long-term, with no specific expiration date. She wanted him, too, but he’d have to prove he was worth it. Well that was fine. That was just fine.
He was desperately hard as they cleaned up, but then she fished for permission to please him, and he realized he couldn’t let her. Denial had simple rules, but they were ironclad: give her what she wants but not what she asks for.
He could take care of it himself. And he would, as soon as humanly possible. But she didn’t need to know that. Her cry of outrage (and running underneath it, arousal), told him he’d made the right call.
When he made it back to Jason, his old friend was awake, hungover and rooting through the fridge. They grunted at each other in a traditional masculine greeting, and then Jason peered blearily at him. “So what was I right about?”
“Nothing important,” he said swiftly. He no longer wanted Jason’s advice; he was pretty sure he wouldn’t like it.
Monday morning, he turned up early to his new job. He wanted to take the lay of the land before meeting new people. In his experience, on your first day in any office there was someone who wanted to take you under their wing and show you everything in a specific order they had in mind and wouldn’t rest until they had. He was all right with that—it was human nature, and you got valuable context that way—but he also wanted his first impression to be his own and in his own time.
He looked around the building. There was a gym, which was great, and no restaurant on the premises, which was a mixed bag but shaded towards good. If there was a restaurant on-site, he’d eat there more often than not out of convenience and miss the chance to get out of the building. Security seemed attentive to an unknown wandering around at 7 am, but not overly attentive to an unaccompanied Black man. Well, at least one in Gucci. He gave them only provisional approval until he saw how they dealt with him in his workout clothes. But for now, they were cordial and helpful as they checked his ID and provided a temporary visitor badge.
He knew the company had offices on both the tenth and fourth floors, and that he would be spending most of his time on the fourth. He looked around there first, where they had only a small space, a bullpen of cubicles and a row of offices along the back. So many of the developers were remote, and the call center had their own space north of town. It was empty right now, and he left his bag in the office already marked with his name before venturing higher.
Surprisingly, the tenth floor was not empty. They had the whole floor, unlike their limited spaces on the fourth, but what he could see of this room was largely a dark field of cubes. Offices were arranged around the walls, and there was one lit up; through a glass door he could see an extremely tall white man practicing his putt while he talked on a Bluetooth headset.
Surely this was the elusive Leo Graham? He was thin as well as extremely tall, the kind of person who looks like they’ve been stretched out on a table, and his hair was black thatched with silver. He looked about the same age as Dennis; maybe a little older.
Dennis couldn’t make out any more of the conversation than a mumbled drone, but as he walked through the offices, Graham’s head jerked up and skewered him, as if Dennis had walked in on him in the toilet. He seemed to end the call and beckoned to Dennis through the glass office door.
“So. You must be Dennis Martin. Leo Graham.” He had a broad Boston accent—Mah’en—and didn’t sound particularly impressed by what he saw. “Sorry we couldn’t meet up the other night. Howarya?”
“I’m good,” Dennis said, and before he could say anything else the COO plunged in.
“Just get into town?”
“No, I’ve actually been here a week or so, I—”
“Great town, great town. You got a house yet? Where you looking? Travis Heights is nice, pretty neighborhood, close to downtown, expensive—but from what I hear you can afford it, huh?”
“I’m renovating a house now,” he replied. He wasn’t flustered by Graham’s attempt to control the conversation by steamroller, but he was annoyed. He reminded himself that if he wanted to achieve anything, he would need to work hand in glove with this man. “You’re in early.”
“You got to get up pretty early to beat me, yeah, yeah,” Graham chuckled. “Well, you’re here, I’m here—shall we get into it?”
Dennis had hoped he could draft up some kind of orgasm control agreement for April sometime today—weren’t first days supposed to be a little light on the scheduling to give people time to settle in?—but he didn’t have a chance to even think about it. It turned out that Graham had presentation after presentation lined up for him, mostly on the theme of all the important revenue-generating work Operations was doing and how Technology’s biggest responsibility was, in short, to get the fuck out of the way.
Somewhere in there he also had to meet his own team. He managed to find a few moments for each of his lead developers (mostly by phone, since they were predominantly remote), the frazzled head of the Help Desk (who was clearly terrified of him), and the data services manager who looked after their massive Medicaid claims databases (a Santa Claus–looking gentleman who seemed sleepy and hard to stampede).
His first impression was that they were mostly competent, mostly white (some of the devs were people of color, but he had yet to meet another Black person), and mostly very worried about what his hiring meant for their futures. He’d tried to reassure them, but he hadn’t had much time to earn their trust, and to be honest some of them probably should be worrying. The Help Desk was in shambles, and the developers had no real process or procedures. He had a lot of cleaning up to do.
There were still more people to meet, but it would have to wait until tomorrow. Surely, hopefully, most of his team were themselves home by now. He stifled a jaw-cracking yawn, just in time for a very pregnant woman to knock on his open door.
“Hi,” he said. “What can I do for you?” The knoc
ker was a pretty South Asian woman in a colorful headscarf, who looked at least eight months pregnant and thoroughly over it.
“I just wanted to see our new overlord in person,” she said cheerfully. “I’m Fatima Nayeem, I work under Alvin in Data Services Management. For a few weeks longer, anyway.”
“I can see that,” he said, moving quickly to shake her hand. “Are you coming back to us after your maternity leave?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”
“Good, glad to hear it.” It wasn’t the world’s most challenging conversation; in his head he was already ordering dinner.
“You know Leo Graham hates you, right?” she said, still in the tones of a casual observation.
Well. Time to pay attention again. “I might have picked up some vibes,” he said carefully.
“A CTO was not part of his master plan. He wanted us to work under him. I believe he still does.”
“Well, you don’t,” he said. It was the first day, and none of the politics were clear to him yet. What did she have to gain by this? True or not—and he was pretty sure it was true—what was the point?
“I don’t know you yet,” she said, “but I know him and all in all... I think we’re better off. Good luck, Mr. Martin.”
“Thank you, Ms. Nayeem, and—hang on. We met before, didn’t we? You were in one of my interview sessions.”
“Oh, you remember that? I was a lot...” She sighed and caressed her stomach. “Smaller then.”
“Of course I do.” She’d been sharp. Good questions. Didn’t waste words. He mentally filed her advice several rungs higher than he had initially intended. “I appreciate you dropping by to say hello to the new guy, and I look forward to seeing you around the office.”
She was almost out the door when she asked, “Is it true you’re a millionaire?”
He looked up sharply. “Who said I was a millionaire?”
“Oh, you know, people say things.”
“Fatima, I appreciate people who are candid and speak their mind. I also appreciate—”
“—when people know to shut up?” She tapped her nose, and for good measure, winked at him, then waved goodbye. So everyone would know by the end of the week, he interpreted.
He sighed and grabbed his laptop bag. On the drive back to Jason’s he called his contractor.
The man’s name was Reggie Douglas, an older Black guy he’d found online in the spirit of supporting local business. He was well-reviewed and was painstakingly polite with Dennis; Dennis had seen him loosen up with subcontractors and his employees, but Dennis was A Client and got the Client Voice no matter what. Dennis didn’t think the delays were Reggie’s fault, but he was running out of patience.
“Well...” said Reggie, when Dennis asked for a status update. The longer the ellipses went on the more money it was going to cost, and this one set a record. Reggie outlined the issue with city code inspection and the delay in redrawing the floor plan again; the shipping delays on the flooring; the subcontractor who had had to be fired and who Reggie swore had been stricken from his Rolodex, a punishment just short of beheading in the contractor lexicon.
“But here’s the big thing, Mr. Martin. About thirty years ago, the homeowner replaced the pipes here with clay pipes. Pretty fashionable at the time.”
“Uh-huh,” said Dennis, who didn’t like where this was going.
“People don’t use this so much anymore because, well, it turns out that after about thirty years, they, ah...”
“Reggie,” said Dennis. “I’m a man who’s wounded in love. Lay it on the line for me.” It was a flip comment, delivered with a wry grin that Reggie couldn’t see, but in truth it startled the hell out of him. He had a picture in his head of exactly how he wanted this house to look, always had, but when exactly had April French slid into all those pictures? Perched on his kitchen island, tangled up in his bed, laughing on his couch?
“Well, they pretty much disintegrate,” Reggie said. “We’re digging up the lawn and replacing those now, but obviously it pushed things back. If we don’t get too much rain in the next couple weeks, it should be okay and then we can circle back to the interior.”
“Reggie,” said Dennis, his grip tight on the steering wheel. He was a patient man, he was a patient man, but it was maddening to have all the money in the world to throw at a problem and not be able to make traction. It wasn’t Reggie’s fault, but it was maddening.
“I am sorry,” the man said, and he sounded like it. Or maybe that was just his Client Voice coming through. This is why he doesn’t treat you like one of the guys, said his inner critic. At the end of the day, you aren’t.
He counted to ten and exhaled slowly. “I know you’re doing your best.”
As he turned onto Oltorf, the first drops of rain hit his windshield. Life certainly does come at you fast sometimes.
Tuesday went by in a flash—a flash of rain and lightning—and it was Wednesday before he could get his document to April. It was a bit more formal than he wanted it to be, too close to the self-important submission contracts he had scoffed at before, but it was hard to pivot from writing a charter for the Technology division without bringing a little of that chilly precision with him. When she joked about code switching between formal business writing and her soft-on-soft submissive persona in text, he knew exactly what she meant.
The email banter was fantastic, actually; exactly the palate cleanser he needed after two days of holding his temper and letting Leo Graham bodycheck his ego in the name of teamwork. When she replied with a half-teasing, half-serious capitalized You it might have felt silly, over the top, but in that mood it felt great.
Then he fucked up.
He’d tried to be careful; give her space to bail out, to say no if she had to.
If you can, I’d like you to edge right now to seal our agreement. I know you’re at work...
He thought there was a reasonable chance she’d do it, and if not, it would still come off as playful. Her response hit him in the stomach like a two-by-four:
Like in a public restroom? Like me, a trans woman, masturbating in the women’s public restroom in the building where I work?
When she put it like that, it sounded like a monstrous thing to ask her to do.
Damn it, he’d been careful!
But not careful enough.
He grabbed his phone and called her immediately, knowing he was panicking, not able to stop himself. But she was at work, and unlike him, she probably didn’t have an office door to close. Almost as soon as she picked up, he realized that by pushing her to talk to him he was making it worse, and when she hung up on him, he tossed his phone on his desk and swore wearily.
He covered his face with his hands and when he looked up, he had sixteen work emails. Self-flagellation was going to have to wait until after hours. He made his way through the rest of the day with his mind mostly on his actual work, but a significant fraction dedicated itself to the puzzle of April French as he worked, as he drove home, as he made a meal for Jason and himself in a desperate bid against scurvy.
When she’d said she didn’t want anything exclusive, he’d been frustrated. He understood it, of course, but just as surely, he wanted to be enough for her all by himself. He wanted to be everything she needed. Up until now, on some level, he’d felt like he just needed to prove that he could and things would be all right.
Now he didn’t know. Did he really not know enough to be with a transgender woman? Was she right to assume she couldn’t trust him with her whole heart? He’d had a relationship like that in college, a white girl who thought her Black boyfriend gave her a pass to call things “ghetto” and sing along with all the words to Nicki Minaj songs.
Sometimes being dominant felt simple—easy, natural, liberating and celebratory. His parents were progressive folks, for suburban Illinois anyway,
and they’d raised him to be aware of his own power and the power other people had over him. It could be paralyzing to be a man and to be aware of all the ways he could make a woman feel unsafe, the ways his attraction and sexuality could be weaponized. Not to mention the way his Black body especially was seen as inherently dangerous, inherently violent. Kink had been revelatory, a way to put those truths on the table and acknowledge them and make them into a game that could be halted anytime it went too far.
Then Sonia had made him all too aware of the ways those safety mechanisms could fail. The ways he could fail. He’d hurt her; by mistake and naivete, with errors on both sides, but at the end of the day he was responsible. He was the man he’d never wanted to be. He had made her feel trapped in her own home, unable to escape a situation that had palled for her without escaping him.
So did he really want to try again with someone whose risks were so many times greater? Where his capacity to do harm was so much more?
But he had to try with someone, someday. Did he really want to start over? He’d been approached by a few subs from his club in Seattle while he was still recovering from Sonia, and yes, he hadn’t been ready. But they hadn’t been right, either. The worst had fetishized him, and even the best hadn’t charmed him the way April had. The right energy, that click, with a sub was lightning in a bottle. He didn’t want to throw it away. He didn’t want to throw her away. Wasn’t that exactly the worst thing he could do?
“Hey. Earth to Martin. You okay, man?”
He blinked up at Jason; became gradually aware that he’d housed his dinner without really tasting it and hadn’t been listening while his best friend talked for the last ten minutes.
“Yeah. Um. I was somewhere else. What were you saying?”
Jason squinted at him. “I was saying I thought I might hit up Frankie’s tonight. You in?”
“Yeah,” he said slowly. “Yeah, I’m in.”