Day 6
Despite the constant stab of anger with Garrett, I spent the morning pouring all my frustrations into my book. The story was beginning to take shape and the main character, Ralph—yes, I kept the name to piss off Garrett—was turning out to be as much of a son of a bitch as the man who he was based on. I put everything into those first few chapters. Our dinner date, the time we had spent together at The Edge bar, and even my introduction to the De Sade Club.
Eight chapters in and the story was progressing nicely. How would it end? Did Ralph and my lovely heroine, Elise, end up happily ever after with a baby and a house in the suburbs? Unfortunately, I didn’t see that kind of life for Garrett. If anything, I pictured him as an old man, attempting to train subs who had more sense than he did. Shaking my head, I pushed such disturbing images away. I did not want to picture Garrett old or weak. I could only see him as the man he was.
The jarring interruption of my cell phone made me look away from my laptop. Normally, I didn’t answer the phone when I was working, but I thought it might be Garrett. God, I had it bad. Picking up the phone, I sighed heavily when I spotted Al’s name on my caller ID.
“Hello, Al,” I said, with all the enthusiasm of a woman heading into her gynecologist’s office.
“Lexie, I don’t know what kind of shit you’ve tapped into to write this new book, but it’s fucking great.” The excitement in his voice was unsettling. Agents never got excited unless they were getting paid.
“Yeah, well, I’ve been doing a lot of research for this one, and it’s paying off.” My fingers itched to get back to my manuscript.
“You all right, Lexie?” The concern in his voice sounded sincere. I knew better.
“I’m fine, Al.” I attempted to sound upbeat.
“You’re not in trouble, are you?”
Trouble? The taunting word danced around my head like a circus bear with an umbrella. I was a little like that bear, broken and humiliated.
“No, Al. I’ve just been doing a lot of…research.”
“Hope you’re not getting into that sick shit. It’s fine to put all of that submission crap in a book. It don’t work in real life.”
“Not to worry, Al. I haven’t lost my objectivity,” I lied.
“That’s good. Keep e-mailing me the chapters. I can’t wait to find out what happens next,” Al chuckled into the phone speaker.
“Neither can I,” I mouthed, not wanting him to hear me.
“This could be a great series, Lexie. I know you’ve got Ralph hooked up with this one broad in this book, but the way this bondage crap sells, you should be thinking of doing more with this character. He’s really interesting, and the women readers would eat him up.”
“I never thought about a series, Al. You’re right, maybe bringing in a new woman with each book would be something new.”
“New sells, Lexie, and new sex stuff with bondage really sells. Be thinking of that when you write the ending. You could even introduce the next woman in the series at the end of the previous book. With any luck, you could get several books out of this.”
I was invigorated with the new angle for my book. “Thanks, Al. I knew I kept you around as my agent for some reason.”
“Here if you need me, Lexie, and watch your back. I don’t know where you’re getting all of your research, and I don’t want to know. Just be careful. If there is a real Ralph out there, he’s one sick son of a bitch.”
After he hung up, I put my phone to the side when it rang again. This time it was the sick son of a bitch. Watching his name and number flash across my phone screen, I contemplated letting it go to voicemail. On the fourth ring, his intense dark eyes came to mind. I answered the call.
“Are you in a better mood?” His luscious voice poured into my ear, arousing my hunger for him.
“I’m not speaking to you.”
“Then don’t speak. Listen. I’ll be coming by to take you to an early dinner. Dress casually.”
“You asshole. Do you honestly think I want to—?”
“We both know what you honestly think, Lexie. I’ll see you at six.”
Slamming the phone down on my desk, I vowed I would in no way, shape, or form, go out to dinner with the man. I was done. Enough was enough.
For ten minutes I sat at my desk, stewing. Then I rose from my chair and went to my bedroom. I had to find an outfit for dinner.
* * *
When Garrett arrived at my door, he had removed his brown suit jacket and rolled up his pale yellow shirtsleeves, exposing his strong arms. His wavy, dark brown hair was a little disheveled, and his pants had the hint of a few wrinkles in them.
“You look rumpled,” I announced after leaning against my doorframe, not sure if I was going to let him in. “What happened? Did your dry cleaner go on strike?”
He motioned to my extra tight skinny jeans and very snug dress top. I had left my hair down, teased it to add some sexy volume—what every woman’s magazine told me I needed—and put on a liberal amount of red lipstick, mascara, and dark eyeliner.
“You look like you’re trying too hard.” He walked into my apartment. “Is that outfit for my benefit?”
“No.” I slammed the door closed. “I felt like dressing like this. It has got nothing to do with you.”
He nodded, folded his arms over his chest, and stared at me. “Wash your face, and put on something you’ll be more comfortable in. May I suggest pulling your hair back? Where we’re going there might be a lot of wind.”
“Wind? What are you talking about?”
He spun me around, placed his hands on my shoulders, pointed me to my bedroom door, and then playfully slapped my behind. “Go on, or we’ll miss the sunset.”
I headed toward my bedroom door and glanced back at him. “Why didn’t you just do that last night?”
“Do what?”
“Spank me,” I replied, entering my bedroom.
I went to my dresser and pulled out a favorite pair of blue jeans that were out of style, faded, but so soft that when I wore them, I felt as if they were a part of me.
“Because I did not want to spank you,” he said, standing in my bedroom doorway. “That would never have proven my point.”
“What point?” I walked over to my queen-sized trundle bed and put down my jeans.
“Withholding pleasure is punishment. Spanking you would not have been pleasurable for you,” a cocky grin crossed his lips, “or for me.”
That grin spoke volumes to me. I had been getting through his heavy defenses after all. Shaking my head, I gestured to the door. “Shut that while I change.”
He never budged. “Undress in front of me.”
The low insistent sound of his voice enticed me. Five days ago, I would have protested adamantly against taking off my clothes in front of him. Now, I relished it. Somehow in the space of a few days, I had gone from a modest good girl to a wanton wicked woman. Taking up the challenge in his eyes, I faced him and slowly began unzipping my jeans. It took a little bit of effort to get the tight jeans down my hips. I think I looked more like a contractor hanging sheetrock than a woman trying to enticingly remove her clothing. When I finally got the too snug top over my head and stood before him in my bra and panties, the look of longing in his eyes made my heart soar. I knew then that he wanted me, had always wanted me, just as much as I wanted him.
His eyes once again turned frigid. “Get dressed,” he barked, breaking the spell. “Dinner is getting cold.”
* * *
Dinner actually turned out to be a picnic, but it was the setting that had impressed me more than the meal. As a surprise, he took me to City Park just as the tip of the sun was touching the horizon. He found a spot for our picnic beside an odd-shaped lagoon filled with ducks, and surrounded by oaks with their hanging branches brushing against the surface of the water. Garrett had even brought four extra loaves of french bread for me to feed the quacking mallard ducks and assorted swans taking an early evening swim next to us.
> I eyed the dark wicker picnic basket and long brown bag of french bread placed on the red blanket. “You’ve really outdone yourself.”
“Martin’s Wine Cellar did the food,” he said, reaching into the basket. “They usually cater most of our office lunches when I have meetings with my staff.” He pulled out a clear plastic container of fried chicken and handed it to me.
I put the container on the blanket, as Garrett retrieved a bottle of white wine from the picnic basket. “Where is your office?”
He popped the cork on the wine and acquired a crystal glass from the basket. “On Camp Street. Not far from my apartment in the Warehouse District. Why do you ask?”
“You just never talk about your job.”
“Nothing to tell. You already know I’m an architect.” He poured the pale yellow wine into the glass.
“Why did you become an architect?”
Garrett handed me the glass. “I always liked watching buildings go up when I was a kid.” He reached into the basket for another crystal glass. “Office buildings, homes, strip malls. It didn’t matter. Just the idea of dreaming something in your head, and then seeing it come to life, was always the ideal job for me.”
“This new firm you’re starting, is it doing well?” I took a sip from my wine.
“Yes, surprisingly so.” After filling his glass with wine, he returned the bottle to the picnic basket. “Several big contracts have already been signed, with a few more in the works.”
“You think this is because of that De Sade Club, don’t you?”
His eyes grew somber and he peered into his wine. “What’s your point, Lexie?”
“Maybe it’s you, and not the club, making your business successful.”
He swallowed some of his wine and turned his eyes to the lagoon next to us. “Being a member of the club helps, especially in this town. The business community here is very close-knit. I needed something to help me break in quickly. Without the club, it might have taken me years to get ahead.”
I had more questions I wanted to ask about his life and past, but I found myself tongue-tied.
“Will you tell me why coming here with your mother was your best childhood memory?” His voice was soft and pleasing.
I sat back on the blanket and crossed my legs while attempting not to spill a drop of wine. “I don’t know. Maybe because she paid attention to me here.” I put my glass down on the blanket and snapped up a loaf of french bread. “It was one of the few times I remember laughing with her. My mother never laughed…at least not with me.” I ripped a few pieces from the loaf and threw it into the water.
A furor of quacking waterfowl swam toward our spot. Garrett put down his wineglass and grabbed for another loaf of bread. “I think they’re going to attack,” he laughed.
We frantically began pitching pieces of bread to the ducks heading our way. Several climbed out of the water and came right up to us, quacking for more bread.
“Was it like this when you were a kid?” he asked, tossing piece after piece of bread to the ducks gathered about our blanket.
“I don’t think there were this many.”
When the bread came to an end, at least twenty ducks of various colors and one lone black swan sat at the shoreline next to us, staring.
“Should we throw them the chicken?” Garrett posed with a half-grin.
I wiped the crumbs of bread from my hands. “No, that’s for us.” I picked up my wineglass and gazed out over the lagoon. “What was your best memory growing up?” I glanced back at him. “You know…something that made you happy, something you miss.”
He lifted the container of fried chicken from the blanket. “Dinner with my family. We used to sit around our big dinner table and talk. My two sisters would talk more than me, but I remember how much I liked listening to their stories. It made me want to have a family of my own one day. Sit around the dinner table and talk with my kids, like my parents talked with us.”
I got comfortable next to him. “You want kids?”
“Wanted, past tense.” He selected a chicken wing from the container. “I was idealistic growing up. Now, I think I’m more realistic.”
“It’s not idealistic to want a family, Garrett.”
“No, I agree. It’s just that the more I see of the world, the less I want to bring a child into it.”
I eased over and inspected the friend chicken in the container. “Your world isn’t the real world.”
“It’s my world, Lexie, and I’m not going to change it.”
He took a bite of his wing and as he chewed, I was reminded of the image I had created of an old and gray Garrett still training his subs.
“How is the book coming?” he inquired.
I picked a thigh from the container. “Good. I sent the first few chapters to my agent this morning, and he loved it. He said he can sell the….” I paused, recalling Al’s exact words. “Crap out of it.”
“Is Ralph going to get Elise in the end, like a good little romance, or are you going to keep him searching for his ideal mistress of domination?”
I frowned at him. I swore I didn’t know how the man did it. He was always reading my thoughts. “Funny that you mention it, but today I got an idea for a second book. I’ve been thinking all afternoon about a series. Every book could be a new woman and how Ralph tames her.”
“You’ll have to change the title. Perhaps Taming…someone. You can insert the new woman’s name in with each book.” Reclining on the blanket, he tossed the bones of his chicken to the ducks gathering at the water’s edge.
Two brown mallards, with brilliant blue stripes on their wings, went after the bones, diving to the bottom of the shallow shore. Garrett chuckled as he watched the birds rummaging for the bones. “See, they do like chicken.” He returned his eyes to me. “The women in these stories, who will you base them on?”
“You haven’t told me about all of your adventures, yet. I seem to remember we left off with Mary Lynn. She started liking it rough and you ended it.” I took a bite of my chicken thigh. “Who was next?”
“Do you really want an accounting of all the women I’ve known?”
I hiked my eyebrows up, smirking. “All? Are there that many?”
“It could be a very long series,” he joked. Sitting up on his elbow, he reached for his wineglass. “The next woman I met was Kimberly. She had a love of horses, very rare steak, and an obsession with having sex in public.” He sipped his wine. “Taming her was a risky proposition for me.”
“Why?” I took another bite of chicken.
“She was my professor in my senior year of undergraduate school.”
“And you became the teacher’s pet, I take it.”
“No, I became the teacher’s punisher. Kimberly just loved to be punished.” He smiled as if lost in his memories.
I flashed back to how he had punished me and understood why Kimberly probably loved his punishments. They were memorable. “What happened to her?”
He lightly shrugged his shoulders. “She went back to her husband after me, worked out her marriage.”
“She had an affair with you?”
“No, she had a fling. They were all flings. I knew when I started with each of the women I’ve been with, that it would never last. I don’t have relationships.”
I wanted to ask if that rule applied to us. I didn’t. As long as he never told me the truth, I could hold on to my fantasy of having a future with him. I knew it was childish to harbor such hopes, but when a man started to eke his way into your heart, you were powerless to stop it. Summoning the courage to drive him out wasn’t something I wanted to do, just yet.
Garrett pointed to the partially eaten thigh in my hand. “Are you going to finish that?”
I shook my head. “No.”
He took the leftover chicken from me, and threw it to the few ducks waiting at the edge of the lagoon. His eyes burned a little brighter as he observed the ducks scrounging for the scraps. Maybe Al was right, maybe he was a “si
ck son of a bitch” I needed to stay away from. Problem was the more time we spent together, the less convinced I became that I would ever be strong enough to simply walk away.
* * *
Having been entertained by the ducks, eaten our fill of the chicken, and emptied the bottle of wine, Garrett took me back to my apartment. By the time we headed up the steps to the arched front doors of the subdivided mansion, darkness had taken over the sky and twinkling stars were popping out all over.
“I have a dinner meeting with clients tomorrow night,” he told me, while I opened the heavy double doors. “I won’t be able to come by.”
I gave him an encouraging smile. “You don’t have to explain, Garrett.” I stepped inside the foyer of the home. “You don’t have to tell me where you’re going every night. I’m not your wife.”
“True, but I don’t want to keep any secrets from you.” He banged the doors closed. “A night off from me will give you the opportunity to work on your book.”
A ripple of disappointment twisted in my gut. “The book, of course. Yes, that is the most important thing in my life, right now.” I began to sluggishly climb the steps, all my energy instantly drained from me.
We walked in silence up the rest of the stairs. When I crossed the landing to my front door, Garrett stayed right behind me. Putting my key in the lock, I debated if he was going to come inside, or if he had another session planned for me.
“I’ll call you tomorrow around lunchtime to check in,” he said, as I eased my front door open.
I looked back at him, noting how he remained rooted to the landing. “Aren’t you coming in?”
“No.” He took a step back. “Good night, Lexie.”
“Good night, Garrett.” I leaned forward, without thinking, to give him a peck on the check.
He stiffened and then recoiled from me. The irate glint in his eyes reinforced his disapproval.
I was so tired of the second-guessing and games with him, I didn’t bother to hide my disgust. Sighing heavily, I waved my hand at him. “What is it? I can’t give you a kiss on the cheek? After everything we—”
“I determine what you can and cannot do, Lexie. You can kiss me when I say I want you to kiss me.” The cruel intonation in his voice was not what I needed to hear at that particular instant. If anything, his haughty arrogance pushed me over the edge.
Taming Me Page 11