by Jason Luke
Leticia’s eyes opened and she blinked at me. A self-conscious little smile passed across her face. She looked away shyly as a crimson blush of color rose from beneath the collar of her blouse.
“What happens next?” I asked.
Leticia didn’t answer for long moments. She seemed still to be drifting amongst the lingering tendrils of her imagination. “Nothing,” she said at last. “That’s all there is. That’s all there has ever been.”
“You don’t have sex with this dream lover?”
“No.”
“He doesn’t undress you?”
“No,” she said again, more firmly this time.
I frowned. The rain outside became a downpour so that I had to raise my voice above the hissing sound as it overflowed the guttering and spilled down the drainpipes.
“Did you ever act out this fantasy with your boyfriend?”
She shook her head.
“Did you ever try to talk to him about it?”
“A couple of times.”
“And…?”
“And nothing,” Leticia said. “Dwayne dismissed the whole idea as a waste of time, and wondered why couldn’t I be satisfied with what we were doing in the bedroom.”
A wicked flash of lightning ripped the dark night apart. Flickering stark light filled the room for a split second, and the echoing thunder sounded like the roar of artillery. The rain seemed to intensify, and a swirling gale of wind flung leaves and dust and debris against the window. I stared out into the storm-filled sky.
“You’re not going home tonight,” I decided.
Leticia recoiled. “What?”
“You’re staying here,” I said. I turned to confront her. “You’re not driving all the way back into the city in this storm. There are plenty of spare bedrooms. You can sleep here and go home in the morning.”
She shot a speculative glance at me and started to protest. “I don’t have anything to wear.”
I waved her words away. “Then sleep in the nude. It’s not safe to drive in this weather.”
Leticia smiled at me graciously, and then lapsed into pensive silence.
* * *
The storm raged throughout the night. When Leticia came down from one of the empty upstairs bedrooms the next morning, driving horizontal rain still slammed against the windows, and the wind moaned and undulated through the swaying treetops.
Leticia looked tired. She had her handbag on her shoulder. She came into the kitchen the way a cat walks into an unfamiliar room – her steps uncertain, her eyes everywhere at once.
I was sitting at the breakfast table. Mrs. Hortez had extra places set on either side of me. She smiled at Leticia and shooed her to the chair beside me in a spatter of Spanish and nodding smiles. Leticia pushed at her hair and smoothed her hands down her skirt. She sat beside me and I could smell fresh perfume in the air.
“Sleep well?”
Leticia nodded. I slid coffee in front of her and she cupped her hands around the mug like it was the Holy Grail.
Over the rim of her mug I saw her eyes settle on the third place setting. She set her coffee down but said nothing.
There was bacon, eggs, toast, and more eggs. The aroma of cooking drifted through the house. Leticia seemed to slowly come awake and relax. She nibbled on a piece of toast and stared out through the big kitchen windows at the driving rain.
Footsteps echoed on the tiles in the hallway. Leticia turned towards the sound, and I watched her eyes carefully. Trigg came into the kitchen from the room I had set up for her at the back of the house. The two women saw each other at the same instant. Trigg’s steps faltered for the briefest of seconds, and then she came to the table with a strained smile on her face.
“Leticia Fall, this is Trigg Alexander,” I introduced the women and they nodded and smiled at each other.
“Trigg is an old friend,” I explained. “She’s staying here while her house in the city is being renovated.”
Trigg was an attractive woman. She was a little older than me. She had a slim figure and long dark hair, pulled back over her shoulder in a ponytail. Her eyes were clear and grey, and her manner exuded an air of no-nonsense competence and efficiency. Trigg poured herself coffee.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Fall. Did you stay the night?”
Leticia nodded, and I cut across the conversation.
“I wouldn’t let her go home,” I explained to Trigg. “Not in this weather.”
There was a flash of something between the two women – some kind of intuitive assessment that was purely feminine and impossible for a man to understand. It lasted only an instant – a split-second electric charge that peaked and then began to taper without ever quite disappearing.
I turned my attention back to the bacon and eggs that Mrs. Hortez had piled up on my plate, and while I ate I imagined Trigg and Leticia standing beside each other – the younger girl’s naïve, sweet innocence and gangling self-consciousness set against the poise and quiet confidence of a woman such as Trigg. Leticia would seem perhaps immature and girlish, and I wondered how much of Trigg’s smooth, perfectly presented appearance would suddenly appear contrived without the natural fresh-faced beauty that glowed upon Leticia’s skin.
There was a long silence. The only sounds were the sizzle of frying bacon and the gentle clink of knives and forks.
“I understand you’re a journalist, Miss Fall,” Trigg spoke into the silence, and Leticia smiled graciously and then her tone became self-effacing. “I’m just an intern,” she said. “I’ve got a twelve month trial with one of the newspapers in the city. Hopefully I’ll be good enough to make a career of it.”
More silence. There seemed to be nothing more either woman wanted to offer or volunteer in the way of conversation. I didn’t spend too much time thinking about that. I waited until Leticia had finished her slice of toast.
“It’s still too dangerous on the roads for you to go home.”
She looked sideways at me. “Mr. Noble, I have to go home. I need to change. I…”
I shook my head. “I saw your car in the driveway. It’s a little hatchback. A toy car like that would get blown off the road. You would end up in Kansas.”
She smiled, despite herself, and I went on. “If you leave here today, it will be with my driver, Tiny. In my car. He can pick you up later tonight and bring you back if you want to continue interviewing me. By tonight the storm will have passed.”
She thought about that like she had a choice. She didn’t.
“Okay,” Leticia nodded. “But before Tiny drives me home, I wanted to ask you a question that occurred to me last night, if I may.”
“Sure,” I shrugged. “I told you from the start – you can ask me anything about my life, or about my experiences in the BDSM lifestyle and I will answer you honestly.”
Leticia looked thoughtfully down into her coffee cup and when she had her question framed, she glanced up at me. “Why doesn’t the BDSM lifestyle work for more couples?” she asked. “From what I’ve read, and learned, it seems that lots of women want to experiment with the lifestyle, but their partners either are against the idea of trying anything new in the bedroom. Or – even worse – they give the concept a try and fail miserably.
“Now these are people in committed, long-term marriages, so you have to assume that the bond of trust already exists between them. Surely BDSM should work for these women, shouldn’t it?”
I shook my head. “There are two problems. Men are scared of trying anything sexual they are unfamiliar with. And men have no idea how a woman feels. They don’t understand what’s required to make BDSM sex-play work for the woman.”
Leticia made her eyes wide and raised an eyebrow at me in an artful challenge. “And you do understand women?”
“I understand what women need to make BDSM work in their bedroom,” I said.
She sat back on the chair and reached for a new page in her notebook. “Well,” she said with a smug little mocking smile, “this should be interesting.
If you’re right, then what you’re about to tell me is the secret to success for the average married man. I’d hate to miss a single word.”
I scraped my chair back and got to my feet. I started pacing across the kitchen like some kind of guard on sentry duty.
I stabbed one finger into the air. “Point one,” I said, “is that men have a limited knowledge of sex. Generally their education has come from barroom conversations with their co-workers and buddies, and from reading things like ‘Penthouse Letters’. They never made the effort to learn about women. When they were younger, the couple of ‘tricks’ they used in the bedroom worked, and since then they’ve served up the same thing over and over again. It’s all they know, and it’s all based around their pleasure. That’s not to say men don’t make an effort to please their wives, but the fact is that most men are interested in pleasing themselves. The things they do work for them, and they always have – or so they believe. Anything new – anything as exotic as BDSM sex-play is so totally foreign to most of them, they are too scared to try it. Because they might fail.
“Men believe they can’t possibly live up to their wife’s expectations, even though most wives would be happy simply if their man made an effort. The guy thinks it is far better to avoid making a fool of himself by failing, than it is to try the things his wife wants – because he knows he will probably never fulfill her fantasies. No matter how low women set the bar – no matter how little they ask for from their man, he will rarely rise to the challenge because it means learning new things that he is uncomfortable with, and because it means he is going to stumble and fall along the way. His ego can’t deal with that.”
I waited for a moment. Leticia was scribbling furiously to get the last of my words down into her notebook. She looked up. “That’s a broad generalization.”
I inclined my head. “Sure,” I admitted. “There are some men in the world who are experimenting with BDSM, because they understand how much it means to their wife. They are the exceptions to my rule. I take my hat off to those guys.”
For a moment I lost my train of thought, and I couldn’t remember why I was standing in the middle of the floor with a finger in the air. Leticia was looking at me expectantly.
“And your theory about women…?”
Ah. That was it.
“Women today are very different to the women of previous generations,” I said. “The gender roles have altered. A woman now sees herself as an independent person, strong, opinionated – equal to a man.”
“Right on, sister,” Leticia said dryly. She made a little fist and punched the air. Then she shook her head in wonder. “The great Jonah Noble sounding like a feminist? Readers won’t believe me.”
I smiled. “It’s a variation on ‘know thy enemy’,” I explained. “If a man understands the way a woman thinks, then both people in the relationship will be satisfied.”
Leticia stayed staring up at me for a moment longer, and then she hunched over her notepad and her hand began to race across the page.
“Because of a woman’s newfound independence, the days of Neanderthals have long passed. Women don’t want to be forced to their knees. They want to be made to feel weak at the knees. Husbands and lovers need to make the woman in their life feel conquered.”
Leticia looked up from her book and shot me a short, sharp speculative glance. “Conquered?”
“Yes,” I said. “Every woman who is aroused by submission is also aroused by an alpha male who can tame her. These women aren’t looking for a husband in the bedroom who will make them feel safe and loved. They already have that in their relationship. These women are looking for a man who is strong enough to conquer them. That way the woman can still feel vibrant and independent… but also feel comfortable submitting to their lover. That’s the turn-on for women. They don’t want to be submissives… they want to feel like they can’t resist submitting.”
* * *
I watched Tiny guide the big car out through the gates and then I pushed the front door quietly closed.
Trigg was standing in the foyer, her arms crossed, leaning against the wall.
“She’s falling for you,” Trigg said softly.
I glanced sharply at her. “You’re kidding.”
Trigg shook her head. “A woman knows,” she said mysteriously. “And she is suspicious of me. She is going to want to know more about us.”
“You’re an old friend who is having her house in the city remodeled. That’s the story. That’s how I want it. Leticia doesn’t need to know anything more than that,” my voice was cold so that it seemed my lips might be covered in frost.
Trigg made a small gesture of acquiescence and nodded her head. She stayed silent for another moment. “When she finds out – and she will find out, Jonah – she might hate you.”
I sighed. “I know,” I said softly. “But it won’t matter, will it? It will be too late by then.”
* * *
Leticia returned after dark. Tiny parked the car in the driveway and brought her in through the side door of the house. I was waiting for her.
She was dressed in a soft blue sweater and comfortable jeans. She had spent time on her hair and make-up. She glanced up at the night sky as she danced lightly up the steps, and then saw me and smiled.
I smiled back.
The storm had passed, but the weather had turned cold. The sky was heavy with dark rain clouds that hung close to the ground and blocked out any moonlight.
“Did you enjoy your day?”
She came in through the door and there was an awkward moment where I sensed her leaning towards me, as though to kiss my cheek. I flinched, and her head bobbed away, without the smile on her face ever altering. Her eyes were bright with energy and excitement. She stood very close to me and looked up into my eyes. She was trembling and bubbling.
“Fantastic!” she said. “I spent the whole day going over my notes so far, getting them in order.”
I frowned a little, but her excitement was infectious. I felt myself grinning. “That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.”
“That’s not the fantastic part.” She was standing so close to me that I had to resist the urge to slide my arms around her narrow waist and feel the warmth of her firm body pressing against my chest.
“The fantastic part was when I called my editor and the newspaper.”
I took a small step back from her and slid my hands into my pockets. “I see.”
“I read him some of the things you’ve told me, and he thinks it would be great copy for a four-page special feature in a Saturday edition.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Wow, indeed!” Leticia was brimming. “It’s a big deal in the newspaper world, let me tell you. The Saturday edition has the highest circulation for the week. It’s the biggest paper the Examiner prints. And for an intern to be given so much space – ” She seemed to get lost for words for a moment. She flapped her hands and drew crazy shapes into the air, “Well it’s just the biggest thing ever!”
I smiled. “Congratulations,” I said sincerely.
We went upstairs, past the closed door of my bedroom, and several other closed doors, to the library.
Leticia followed me into the room but stopped suddenly on the threshold.
“Wow…” she said again, this time her voice softer and filled with a subdued awe.
I didn’t use the library any more. I hadn’t been in the room for more than twelve months. The smell of old books and leather and cigar smoke seemed to linger in the air and permeate from the walls.
It was a big room. Every inch of wall space was given to antique dark wooden bookcases that reached all the way from the floor to the ceiling. There was a stepladder on a discreet sliding rail set in front of each bookcase, and the shelves were lined with an eclectic mixture of old leather-bound first editions, history books, mainstream adventure novels, and even some selected texts on occult magic.
There were thick Persian rugs spread over the top of polished wooden
floorboards and two enormous wing-backed chairs, their soft green leather smooth and shiny in patches, as inviting as a pair of worn comfortable shoes.
The chairs were arranged across from each other in the middle of the floor with a small round table between them. On the table was a bottle of whisky and small glass tumblers.
I stood to the side, glanced around the room, remembering it all in an instant. Leticia stepped slowly forward like a sleep-walker. Her eyes were wide, her lips parted, her head tilted back to see the gold-leaf spines of the books on the highest shelves. Her handbag slid off her shoulder and fell gently to the floor, forgotten.
Leticia went to the nearest bookshelf and ran her fingers over the books, her touch like a caress.
There was an antique-looking chandelier hung from the ceiling, but it was actually a fake. There was a dimmer switch on the wall by the door. I turned the brightness of the lighting down until it was subtle and soft.
I sank into one of the chairs and poured myself a drink while Leticia walked along the shelves of books with a wonderland-like look in her eyes.
“I love books,” I said. I sipped at the drink, sprawled comfortably in the big chair, and once again surveyed the heavy wooden cases. But for all the room’s magic and mystery, my eyes kept returning covertly to Leticia.
“I like your outfit,” I said quietly.
She looked at me and laughed in a low throaty chuckle. “Thank you for the compliment.” She did a little pirouette. It was just a sweater and a pair of Levis, but somehow she made them look extraordinary. Her legs were long and slim, her bottom firm within the tight shape of the denim. Her breasts were accentuated by the way the powder-blue fabric clung to their shape and hugged at her narrow waist. She stuffed her hands into her pockets and turned back towards a collection of leather-bound first edition novels by a famous author.