SEAL'd Trust (Brotherhood of SEAL'd Hearts)

by Gabi Moore

I found a loose jump ring on the table and twirled it in my fingertips. I was seldom wrong about people. Sometimes you can tell what people are into just by looking at them. You can tell by the particular flavor of hunger in their eyes what they’re really all about. But she took long enough to reply that I briefly wondered if I had overstepped. The drawings I had shown her were …obscene. I watched the effort it took her to maintain a straight face.

  She pushed the book back to me.

  “No. No this isn’t want I had in mind at all.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “I don’t know what gave you the impression that I’d like to …to have that done to me, but no.”

  “Oh. My apologies then. To be fair, though, you haven’t actually asked for anything specific,” I ventured.

  She sighed loudly and trilled her fingers on the leather cover.

  “You’re right, I didn’t. That’s my fault. So I should say that …well, I don’t want something so …violent. I won’t want to be …well, to be…”

  “Paddled?” I said and grinned. She shot me a fierce look.

  “Fine, if that’s what they call it, then no, I would not like to be ‘paddled’.”

  “Caned, then?”

  “What? No.”

  “Whipped, maybe?”

  “Oh my god, none of that. No, of course not!”

  I laughed.

  “Kind of like going to the ice cream shop and being angry they only sell ice cream, huh?”

  She didn’t look impressed.

  “Mark, do you have any idea of just how widespread the problem of violence towards women really is?”

  “I’m, I’m sorry, what?”

  “Violence towards women. I have just spent the morning working with a young woman who has endured unbelievable violence done to her. She’s been abused in ways you couldn’t even possibly imagine…”

  “What has that got to do with—”

  “Do you ever even think about that? About how unethical it is to go and deliberately promote more violence, more gender imbalance, more sexism?” she said, raising her voice.

  “Woah woah woah, Kat, just calm down for a second. None of this is violence, don’t be ridiculous.”

  She was on her feet again and looking agitated.

  “I’m sorry, you’re right, I don’t know why I keep coming back here, it’s so stupid of me. I just have this …this morbid curiosity, I don’t know. You probably think I’m a nutcase.”

  “Kind of.”

  I caught her eye and for a brief, glorious moment, her face opened up and we laughed together. But then her brows knitted again and she looked down at the sketches.

  “Don’t you have anything …I don’t know. Classier? A bit more politically correct? For real adults. Mature people, you know. It’s so humiliating to be …paddled.”

  I grinned.

  “Yeah, well, that’s kind of the point for some people.”

  “People are crazy,” she said with a smile.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I want something …more egalitarian.”

  “Egalitarian?”

  “Yeah. Like, feminist sex furniture, you know?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “I’m serious. No paddling. No tying up. Just …equality.”

  “Sure, sounds hot,” I said.

  She tried to give me a sharp look but found herself laughing along with me.

  “Maybe you should start by giving me some idea about who else you intend to use it with?” I said cautiously.

  She stopped smiling.

  “Well… there’s nobody that I have in mind. I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m thinking, I just keep finding myself drawn to this idea over and over.”

  “Sounds like it’s your intuition.”

  She cocked her head at me.

  “Yeah maybe.”

  “I don’t mean to pry, but are you and Mr. Burgess…?”

  “Anthony? Oh yes, we’re pretty serious,” she said and nodded so hard her ponytail bounced.

  She all at once reminded me of a little girl who had broken into her mother’s closet and was playing dress up with her serious grown up clothing. I was struck with something like desperate thirst, only what I was desperate for was to see her, truly see her, stripped of everything, naked and without any bullshit, any defenses, nothing at all.

  “Oh? That’s cool. He’s a …good guy,” I said. It was all I could manage.

  “Oh he’s fantastic. A person with real principles. Not too many of those around these days.”

  The thirst was deepening. She was so tightly wound, so deeply knotted …and she was trying to rile me, no question about it. What the hell was she doing here, anyway? I had met some repressed, conflicted personalities in my time, don’t get me wrong. But there was something in her that was so much more than just repressed. Somewhere deep in me, somewhere down on the cellular level …it felt like she was provoking me. She stood before me in her tasteful work gear and subdued ponytail and it’ll sound crazy, but some animal part of me registered all of it for what it unconsciously was: a dare.

  “You do know that …well, Anthony is pretty intense, right? He’s looking for a wife.”

  “I know that.”

  A lump grew at the back of my throat.

  “Well, then, in that case, you’re right, the sketches I gave you are completely the wrong thing. I misunderstood the situation,” I said quickly.

  “What do you mean? What situation?”

  I smiled at the sketches and then back up at her. “You honestly see a man like Anthony going for anything like this?”

  She frowned.

  “That’s kind of rude. Anthony is a very …interesting man. Just because he’s respectful and polite it doesn’t mean he’s not…” she struggled to finish her sentence.

  “So you’re going to marry him?” I asked outright.

  Her faced colored a little.

  “Yes, actually. I think I will,” she said and the ponytail bobbed again.

  I stared at her.

  I knew she felt me staring but pretended she didn’t notice. I was no cheater. Not by a long, long shot. If this woman was seriously engaged, seriously committed to this guy, well, I’d back right the hell off. I had no interest in sharing, in stealing, in borrowing. I wanted all of it, or nothing at all. But something told me she wasn’t being completely honest with me.

  “Anthony is a wonderful guy, and we connect on so many different levels, and I know it’s soon and everything, but I really, I care for him.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  I looked her up and down.

  “I don’t believe you. You’re saying one thing, but your body is saying another.” I didn’t know what I was getting at, but something in me just wanted to get her to shut up, to stop saying what she was saying, and to just kiss me again.

  She laughed cynically.

  “My body?”

  “You’re not very good at lying, I’m afraid. Look at the how much more quickly you breathe when you speak about him. Look how your shoulders have sunken in, how much tension is suddenly in your hands… maybe you now want to tell me that none of that means anything?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “You know what I think?”

  She glared at me.

  “I think you hope that by marrying him, it’ll keep you safe and stop you from doing what you really want to do…”

  “Oh yeah? And what’s that?”

  I lowered my gaze and gave her a long, intense look, cocking one eyebrow ever so slightly. We were at least four feet apart, her bundled in her conservative work uniform and me still wearing a thick raw leather apron with tools in the pockets. But with that look I wanted to tell her: I can see you. All of you.

  “How dare you,” she spat. “I would never, ever be unfaithful to someone I cared about,” she said with high indignation.

  “Ok, so be honest… has he fucked you?”
/>   The look on her face was priceless.

  “Has he even kissed you? I mean, properly kissed you? Are you actually even engaged yet?”

  Her lips tightened.

  “So let me get this straight, you’re not married, you’re not engaged, you haven’t slept with the guy, you haven’t kissed him, hell, you don’t even seem to like him that much. How exactly would you be cheating?”

  She opened her mouth to protest but I interrupted her.

  “Look, I don’t care what you do, honestly, but you have to admit that it’s kind of strange that you came all the way over here to tell me how much you don’t want to have anything to do with me, don’t you think?’

  She got up, took her coat and made as if to leave.

  “Kat, don’t go.”

  She turned and looked wide eyed at me.

  “For someone who doesn’t want any violence in her life, you sure do fight with me a lot,” I said, and tried a smile. She couldn’t help but return it.

  I walked slowly up to her. Her white hand was trembling on the door knob. I gently touched my fingertips to hers, then slowly, slowly slid that touch up her hand, over the crease of her wrist, hovering it there where the blue-green threads sunk deep and disappeared beneath her creamy skin. Her eye caught mine and we held one another’s gaze.

  I took a bold step forward, bringing me close to her, very close, but with only an electrically charged inch of air between us. I pressed closer toward her, hearing how her breath had stopped, and her puffy lower lip had parted and hung open with nervous anticipation. I inched closer and tasted the air around her lips, came so close I could almost smell her excitement, could almost hear her heartbeat. But I couldn’t go any further. I wanted her to want it. I wanted her to come. To come to me, to travel that last little distance… I wanted her to willingly tear off all the bonds she had fastened around herself, to unknot her pretty hair and open her body to me…

  Suddenly she burst into dark laughter.

  “You can’t seduce me, you know,” she said, and pulled back.

  The spell was broken. I blinked at her.

  “I’m not like you. I don’t expect you to understand. My life is complicated. I have responsibilities. I have work to do. It’s not so simple….”

  “What’s not so simple? Just kiss me.”

  “And then what? What happens next? I’ve been here too many times before.”

  “I hope you never stop coming back here to me,” I said quickly. The look of fear that flashed on her face was truly remarkable.

  “Why? I don’t even want the stupid furniture, you know that…”

  “So don’t come here for that, then,” I said, and pinned her with my eyes.

  As long as that delicious thread linked my eyes and hers, I had her, and she couldn’t escape. She nervously fussed with the collar of her coat.

  “I can’t come back,” she said quietly.

  “I don’t care how long it takes you to come back, but you will. In fact, the longer it takes the better.”

  “I can’t come back, Mark.”

  “I know you won’t submit easily, but when you do …it’ll be all the sweeter.”

  She looked as though someone had slapped her. I could almost hear her thoughts whirring in her head. I could see her gearing up to argue with me, to give me a billion reasons why she couldn’t submit, couldn’t come back, why she simply had to marry that boring old carcass and live a boring life with him and feel righteous about every single boring second of it… but her pretty little lips seemed tangled on the words, unable to spit them out. I held her gaze tight.

  “I have to go,” she said, this time even more quietly, as though the words were drained of all meaning and were said just to say them.

  “Then go. The next time you come, don’t hide your body from me. You’re beautiful. So wear something beautiful.”

  She turned to leave and in a second she had gone. I stood for a moment, the air still charged with her scent, my head still dizzy with the thought of her, with being that close to her perfect body.

  I took a deep breath and just as easily as my body took in that clean air, the idea began to crystalize in my body. She was the one. She was my goddess. The woman I’d elevate on a tower of the most intense depravity. The woman I’d worship. She was a sad princess sleeping behind endless locked doors, but I knew now what the key was, and I knew once I slipped it inside and turned it, those doors would come crashing down, one after the other.

  I stood there and breathed, her memory dissipating. I didn’t just want to fuck her. I wanted to get inside her.

  I darted over to the leather-bound book, threw it open and tore out the pages I had shown her. On the fresh page underneath, I began to scribble furiously.

  Chapter 10 - Kat

  “So, is he a good kisser?” she asked mischievously, and waggled her eyebrows at me.

  I stared dumbfounded at her.

  “How do you know about…?”

  “Anthony? Because you told me about him, you silly goose!” She slapped my arm.

  “Anthony. Right. He’s uh …he’s, yeah we haven’t kissed that much actually,” I said and clumsily folded a pamphlet down the middle.

  Lily was helping me put together some goodie bags for the massive conference we’d organized for various women’s empowerment groups that were visiting from India next week. We had hunkered down at her house; stocked up with gin and carrot cake and now we were making a dent in the hundreds of information packs we had to compile. She had suggested we rope in the kids to help us with the little jobs, so now we had a mini kitchen table assembly line, with my little one Nicky putting the pens in the folder loops and Lily’s daughter Jess slipping in branded notebooks and stickers.

  She took a sip of her gin and gave me a knowing look.

  “Really?”

  “Well, I don’t know, he’s kind of old fashioned that way.”

  “Oh my God, he’s a terrible kisser isn’t he?” she said and flashed me a naughty smile.

  I swatted her with an envelope.

  “Quiet, you. These things sometimes take time to develop, you know? Chemistry isn’t everything.”

  I roughly ran my fingernail over a pamphlet crease and tossed it aside with the others.

  “You don’t have to tell me. I get it, trust me. That chemistry stuff only lasts a few years anyway, it’s what he’s like afterwards that counts,” she said, and added her own pamphlets to the pile.

  “Like you and Ron?” I said playfully.

  “Well, that’s different, Ron happens to be a complete and utter asshole,” she laughed.

  I laughed too, but deep down, I couldn’t ignore how torn I was beginning to feel. Why was I in such a rush to get married again anyway? I had left Jeff with something of the feeling of the sole survivor of a gruesome car crash. I had almost run away screaming. So why did I want all of that again? Would I marry Anthony only to be sitting here with Lily a few years from now playfully joking about how much I hated him? And she’d laugh and we’d carry on like nothing had happened, like it was just the way things were?

  And yet… I did want it. I wanted a nice, sane man to swoop in and give my fractured life a little meaning, a little shape. No more games, no more deception or drama or resentment. If that cost me a few tingly feelings, if the price I had to pay was a few butterflies in the stomach, was it really so bad? I mean, there was a time when Jeff was the center of my erotic world …he was my whirlwind romance, my One. We had chemistry in buckets and look where that left us, right?

  “No, it’s my turn to be the blue princess,” Jess said.

  I looked over at the two girls, and they were squabbling over two colored plastic bangles, one with Disney princess Jasmine and the other with Disney princess Belle.

  “No, I’m the blue princess. You’re the yellow.”

  “Nuh uh!”

  Lily and I paused and watched the pint-sized argument unfolding before us. I raised an eyebrow at her and we both continued to wa
tch them, hands still automatically folding creases into the pamphlets.

  “First one to fold all of this gets to be blue princess,” Nicky said.

  “Nicky! That’s not nice, share with your friend,” I blurted.

  “But mom, it’s just a game.”

  “Nicky, don’t talk back, please. Give Jess a turn with the blue one.”

  “Mom you’re so boring!” she said and kicked her little feet against the table leg, before handing over the bangle. The girls looked at each other.

  “It’s OK,” said Jess, getting down off her seat. “I don’t want it anymore.”

  We watched as they both toddled off, taken with some new game.

  “Remind me why I thought it was a good idea to buy all that princess crap again?” I said laughing. Lily tilted her head to the side and smiled, but said nothing.

  “You’re right though, Lily. Sex is overrated. There’s more to life, right? Maybe this is what I should be doing, like, arts and crafts. Stickers and things, you know?”

  She laughed.

  “But then where would the world be, Kat, without you to boss us all around, huh?”

  “You just keep folding,” I said.

  My phone pinged with a message. For a wild, hot second, my brain ran off with a mini-fantasy that it was him. But those thoughts were quickly tempered by a crushing little flush of disappointment to see who it really was.

  “Is it the lovely gentleman in question?”

  I nodded.

  “He keeps inviting me on these awful PG outings,” I groaned. “I wonder what his dick looks like,” I added quickly, without thinking. “Probably beige and tasteful, like the rest of him. What do you think?” I asked.

  She started giggling uncontrollably.

  “Indeed, a gentleman’s cock, you know,” I said, putting on a stupid accent and play-acting like I had a monocle and lapel.

  Lily was red in the face with laughter.

  “You’re right. You’re absolutely right, I’m sure that’s just what it looks like.”

  “Go on, what does Ron’s look like?” I asked and jabbed her in the ribs. She looked horrified.

  “Kat, oh my God, have you suddenly turned into a four-year-old, too?”

  “Well?”

  She started giggling again.