by B. D. Dark
The waitress approaches the table with fresh coffee and refills both cups without asking.
“I shouldn’t,” I say. “I have an early morning.”
“Don’t worry, it’s decaf,” he promises. Turning to the waitress, he asks, “Could we have menus? We’ve decided to eat.”
“Eat?” I repeat, watching the waitress walk away.
“You haven’t eaten today,” he accuses.
“How do you know?”
“Your palm is trembling in my hand.”
“It could be your unbelievable magnetism,” I retort, sarcastically.
“Or your low blood sugar,” he counters. “There’s a difference in the way a person trembles, whether from fear, excitement, dehydration, low blood sugar, and I believe you are suffering from the latter; however, it would be more entertaining if it were the first two reasons. I’ll work on that.”
I have to pass the sentence through my brain a second time…fear, excitement…and the promise he wants me to feel both. I think he just made me feel both in less than a second. The returning waitress drops two menus on the table, startling me, making me jump. Everett asks softly as she treads back to her place behind the counter, “Have you eaten today?”
I shake my head.
“When was the last time you ate?”
I consider telling him about the granola bar and OJ, but that was days ago. I know I’ve eaten more recently than that. Thinking hard, I realize it was yesterday because I remember racing to meet my friend Skye for the once a month midnight showing of Rocky Horror at the Fuchsia Room. We dressed in character, her as Magenta, me as Columbia, and because we came dressed we performed one of the scenes onstage as the movie played behind us. I remember eating a handful of popcorn stolen from Skye’s bag and drinking most of her Coke while she flirted with a Dr. Frank-n-Furter impersonator. So, I kind of ate…does that constitute a meal?
“Yesterday,” I answer confidently.
“Pancakes, for both of us,” he tells the waitress I hadn’t realized returned to the table. Tilting his head, he asks me, “You do like pancakes?”
I purse my lips, thinking, answering with a shrug. “I think so. It’s been a very long time.”
“Pancakes, for both of us, butter on the side, and warm the syrup,” he repeats to the waitress, dismissing her.
A busboy meanders between the tables, clearing from an earlier rush. Stacking plates and separating trash from food scraps, he hums softly to himself. He is followed by another who pushes a mop over the dingy white laminate tile that has seen better days, making soft, sloshy noises to accompany the first’s humming.
“Where are you?” Everett interrupts the quiet.
“Remembering my mother. Sor ‑‑” I stop myself from apologizing and smile up at him sheepishly.
He smiles and nods, letting me know he is pleased I caught myself.
“The last time I ate pancakes was in her kitchen.”
The waitress returns, setting the plates of steaming cakes in front of us, butter on the side, the small glass pitcher of syrup between us. I can’t resist touching the side of the syrup to see if it is warm as requested. It is. For some reason, it makes me smile, a big smile, larger than I’ve smiled in years, and accompanied by a soft laugh.
“You should do that more often,” he comments.
“Do what?”
“Smile. You have a beautiful smile, Julia. It lights up your face from the inside. I can see now why Jonathon raved about your beauty.”
I’m not beautiful but instead of arguing the point, I change the subject. “Do you always get what you ask for?”
“Yes,” he answers, and there is a glint of amused mischief in his eyes. “It’s my personal belief that everyone is entitled to what they ask for.”
Taking a bite of pancakes, I close my eyes in pure rapture, suddenly hungrier than I’ve felt in ages, and I make quick work of the first half of the stack. I’d forgotten how much I really like pancakes.
“How long has your mother been gone?” he inquires gently.
“Fourteen years.”
“You were fifteen then?”
“Yes,” I whisper, an old sob catching in my throat. I assume I can thank Jonathon for telling him my age.
“Where’s your father?”
At least Jonathon didn’t tell him everything. I debate whether to tell him the real truth or the truth according to my birth certificate. I decide on truth. “My mother didn’t know who the father was when she got pregnant with me, so she picked the name of a high school senior from a rival school who’d been killed in a car accident three months before I was born. As far as I know she never met the man who contributed my last name, and his parents, who’d lost their only child, were more than happy to have a living memory of him when they found out. So, it worked out for everyone.”
“Did it work out for you?” he asks, taking the last swallow of coffee from his cup.
“I don’t know.” I shrug with a sarcastic snort. “I don’t see that it caused me any lifelong trauma.”
“Don’t kid yourself, Julia. You were a girl raised without a father, lost your mother way too young, and married a man more than twice your age. I think it’s safe to say that you have a few issues.”
“My issues aren’t any of your fucking business.” I stand, grabbing my bag. Just when I was beginning to like him, the arrogant jerk has to make an appearance. I really don’t need this and as soon as I can find Jonathon, I’m going ring his chubby neck.
Everett stands, catching my arm as I start to walk away from the table. He stops my escape and holds me still. I don’t fight against him. I’m not that angry; hurt but not angry. I’ve had my whole life to get over angry.
He speaks softly, so softly that I have to strain to hear each word. “If you are going to be mine, your issues are a very big part of my business. Every hurt, every disappointment, every unmet need, every fear will be my business. Understood?”
I nod, keeping my eyes on the freshly mopped tile that looks just as dingy as before they pushed almost soapy water over it. Tears well up and fall, my heart breaking ‑‑ not because of the loss of my mother or Jasper, but because of the promise just made by this man. I wonder if he realizes what he’s done. I wonder if my heart can take it if the words were an empty promise.
“Good,” he says, molding against my back, his heat seeping through my cashmere dress.
I have an uncontrollable urge to hug him, just to see what he feels like. I restrain myself.
“Let’s get you home. I believe you have an early day tomorrow.”
“Earlier than I want to think about,” I admit as we walk toward the cash register. Everett pays and walks away, not waiting to get his change. Not that I was paying that much attention, but I was sure he left enough behind for the waitress to receive a twenty-dollar tip.
“Jonathon said that you're a school teacher.”
“Junior high.”
“And that you love it.”
“Yes, I do.”
Nodding toward the window, he turns to see wet, heavy snow showers caught in the street lamp’s ray of light. As promised by the weatherman, the rain and sleet turned into a wet, slushy snow. Everything is white and fresh; not even tire tracks break the snow in front of the diner. “Who knows? We may have a snow day.”
“Just in case you don’t, you need to get home.”
My heart falls. Things had been progressing so well. Between jokes and innuendoes, I was beginning to hope that I might actually get lucky and find myself tied up and spanked before dawn. Obviously, I've misread the signals. I try to keep my voice even as I answer, “You can walk me to my car. It's around the corner.”
Lifting my coat over my shoulders, he promises, “Don't worry. I want you, Julia, and if being part of my life seems interesting to you ‑‑” he shrugs “-- we’ll see how things progress between us.”
What? How things progress? Can we start with one night?
Everett holds open the doo
r and we walk into the cold night air.
The walk to where my car should be parked is short, and for a second I think I am on the wrong block. Then I notice the snow, really notice the snow. “Oh, no fucking way!” I scream and stomp my foot in the soft, wet snow that comes to the middle of my shin. “No fucking way! Fuck, fuck, FUCK! They did not declare a fucking snow emergency!”
“Your car was towed, I presume?”
“You think?” I answer sarcastically. “I cannot fucking believe this!”
Everett spins me around and shoves his gloved hand halfway into my open mouth. I’m sure I was ready to say something, but his hand stalls any thought. “Enough!” he demands quite firmly.
The slick material against my tongue tastes like leather, so I assume they are, and as much as I’m not really happy about having his hand shoved so deeply into my mouth, I can see the insane logic behind his action. He wanted me quiet and he didn’t want to be bitten. He succeeds in both.
“You have some serious issues, Julia, and I don’t think I can be the one to help you. Normally, I would punish a slave for every curse word that escaped her lips, but with you ‑‑ no, you are an impossible task.”
I blink at the last part, the part about me being an impossible task, and then I am blinking faster, blinking back tears, because it makes me wonder if he’s telling me the truth. Is that why I am still alone? Not because I am being too picky, but because I am an impossible task?
Everett uses his free hand to brush tears from my cheeks. “I am going to remove my hand from your mouth and you are going to answer my questions calmly, all right?”
I nod, tears flooding over my cheeks.
The hand is removed from my mouth, and in reflex I rub my mouth, tender in the corners from the pressure of being forced wide.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” I whisper the answer.
“You curse entirely too much.”
“I know.”
He looks at me hard under the green-gold glow of halogen street lamp. I am sure I am a mascara-smeared mess, made absolutely hideous by bad lighting.
“If I took a cane to your ass, one strike for each curse word you uttered in a day, what would the number be today?”
I shrug, looking away, terrified that he might seriously be considering doing just that. Does he seriously believe for a second that I will give him an honest number?
“If you had to guess,” he presses, taking my face in his hands and forcing my gaze to meet his.
“A lot. Ten, maybe.”
“Ten?” He laughs. “Try ten in the last ten minutes.”
“I did very well in the diner. I didn’t cuss in the diner,” I lie. Then, seeing his raised eyebrow, I amend, “Once, I only said one curse word in the diner.”
“And the rest of the day?”
I sigh heavily, mouthing sarcastically, “Look, this isn’t going anywhere. You have established that I cuss, I cuss a lot. I should fucking stop saying the word fuck.”
Everett pinches my cheeks so hard between his gloved hand that my eyes water but he succeeds in shutting me up. “You are impossible! Have you always been this way?”
My vision blurs with new tears, and though I try to look away, he holds my face firm, even though my nose is starting to run with my tears.
“No, sir,” I answer around his gloved palm.
“What happened to you, Julia?”
I shrug.
Still pinching my cheeks, he asks, “Would it please you to get to know me better?”
I nod, tears and snot pooling on the leather, making his gloves shinier, slicked wet beneath the glow of the street lamp.
“I want to know you, Julia. I want to know the girl that doesn’t hide behind big, ugly words. I want you to feel the pain inside your chest and inside your guts and inside your mind, instead of hiding from it. I want you to feel that pain so that you can embrace it, and make love to it, and when you are really ready, to release it so that you never have to feel it again.”
He releases my face suddenly and I grind my jaws together to keep from screaming at him that my pain is none of his business and that he would never in a million years be able to understand.
“Say you’ll give it up cold turkey for a chance to get to know me, Julia, because you are special enough for me to desire it to be so, and someday I would like to have the opportunity to make love to you.”
“Oh, God. No, no, no. Don’t say that!” I close my eyes, tears falling, so hard it is a torrential downpour of tears, snot now so thick in my nose that I have to pant through my mouth to breathe, and even that is getting difficult because there is also snot in my throat.
“Cussing is that important to you then?” he demands, shaking my face and my body with a jerk that makes my eyes pop open.
“NO!” I wail, “Not the cussing part. Don’t say the other part…the I’m special part, because I’m not special. You just said it yourself, I am an impossible task!”
Everett’s mouth closes over mine, and I cannot breath for real, too many tears, too much snot, too much tongue, but I don’t care that I can’t breathe because he is kissing me at my most gross, at my most disgusting, and in the process he breaks my heart because only Master Jasper has seen me in such a similar state and loved me anyway.
This can’t be real.
This can’t be real.
Oh, God, I want to feel again. Please, God, make this be happening for real.
Everett releases me and it is a full second before I realize I am not breathing. He holds his gloved hand to my nose and insists, “Blow!”
I shake my head, coughing around snot.
“I said blow!”
I obey, blowing snot into his expensively covered palm. I blow again, and cough out snot, spitting and gagging in the snow.
He holds my shoulders while I gag, trying not to throw up pancakes. I don’t vomit. I sputter and shake uncontrollably but I don’t vomit. Thank you, God, for that. I don’t think I could have faced him again if I’d also upchucked on his shoes.
Holding me against his chest, he asks, “Feeling better?”
Crying softly, snow blowing into my face, I answer, “Not really.”
He laughs, removing the now ruined gloves and shoving them, soiled, into his coat pocket. “You will. Now, let’s get you home. I parked in the parking garage across the road.”
We walk in silence as the snow falls harder around us, and along the way his arm finds its way around my waist, but I spend the entire time trying to get brave enough to ask all the significant questions: when can we get together, where, what do you want to do to me, do you have any peculiar kinks I need to know about, and probably belatedly, are you HIV negative?
Shaking badly, I manage to scoot into the passenger seat. Finding my buckle, I lock it over my lap while he still stands inside the open door. Lifting my face to say thank you, I am surprised when his lips close over mine in a soft kiss, a teasing kiss designed to leave me wanting more than I ever realized was possible.
Releasing my lips, his bare hands cup around my chin to hold my face toward his. “Meet me tomorrow?”
“I have to wait until then?” I pout, adding hopefully, “It will be a snow day tomorrow.”
“Brave words for a woman whose lips have turned blue in the cold and has no idea what I have planned for her.”
Startled, I lean back but his hands hold my face still and close. His eyes seem to glow. My breath comes in short pants. “Do you want me afraid?”
Chapter Five
I never feared Jasper, because although I'd been his submissive for most of my adult life, he'd never pressed my mental or physical limits, and the thought that I've found someone who might be willing to do so excites me beyond words. I should feel guilty that I am somehow betraying Jasper’s memory…but how can I feel guilty while feeling so giddy on the inside?
“Do you want me to make you fear me?”
I shake my head no. I want to scream yes.
“Good, because I want you to respect my power, just as I respect yours. I want you to know going in that you may not like the results of being mine. I am a very exacting Master, Julia, and I don’t think you have ever experienced what I have planned for you. Think long and hard tonight about whether you are ready to meet me.”
He hands me a business card from the Netherlands Omni Plaza Downtown. He turns it over for me before I take possession, ensuring that I see his suite number written on the back, then he closes the car door and I am left waiting for him to join me in the car. My teeth are chattering by the time he does. Cold, shock, terror, it doesn’t really matter the cause; I quake the entire trip to my little house in the suburbs twenty minutes outside of downtown, even though he turns the heat on full blast. Along the way, the car radio announces that there is indeed a snow emergency and that all public schools are closed. Yay for me, a snow day.
Opening the car door for me, he helps me out, walks me up the icy sidewalk to the front door, holding my elbow as if I am a little old woman. I’m glad. My wobbling legs wouldn’t have gotten me halfway without his assistance. I battle the shakes as I aim and re-aim the key toward the deadbolt lock; he finally takes the keys and pushes me through the door with the command, “Take a hot bath and go straight to bed,” and as he pulls the door closed, “I’ll send a taxi for you at noon. Don’t be late.”
I fall back against the door, leaning heavily against it to keep from dropping to my knees. His voice booms from the other side. “Turn the deadbolt, Julia.”