And even if I had wanted to pull away, to argue or resist, Jack was hardly giving me time to consider those options. They must have switched to some stronger stuff than wine at some point after I left, because I could smell the alcohol on his breath, taste it when he pulled me over to kiss me. I could feel his erection already firm against my hip, and it was with a certain amount of vicious spite that I kissed him back, thinking about the possible origins of that erection.
Of course he couldn’t have maneuvered a way to sleep with Marisa. But here, back in his assigned room, he had me. Convenient, already-broken-in me. And why not? Once more for old time’s sake.
When I bit his lip too hard, he winced and pinned me down more firmly with his legs and one arm, only shifting his hand enough to shove the t-shirt up roughly, exposing my breasts. Then it was back to gripping my forearm, tacking it to the mattress with his superior strength and weight, and I got the bite back on the sensitive skin just under my nipple. My already traitorously hard nipple. He rubbed his cheek against the tip, the day’s worth of beard rasping at the sensitive flesh until I squirmed and inadvertently knocked him in the chin with my elbow.
“I’m not getting the cuffs and shit out, Katie, just hold still, damn it.”
I couldn’t believe myself. Or maybe I could. Maybe it was just the clue I needed about who I was that all I could do was fall motionless and say, albeit miserably, “Yes Sir.”
“Good girl.” His voice was a little slurred, the result of all the liquor. It surprised me, to the extent I had the capacity to feel surprise just then. I had never heard he was much of a drinker. He didn’t seem the type.
He took me—and it wasn’t all that much fun. He’d told me not to move so I stayed put, and he hitched my legs up and pushed his way inside without any of the usual formalities. I was aroused but not quite enough, and the sting of his entry woke me up all the way. More awake than I really wanted to be. His usually bright features were clouded, either by the alcohol or—I tried not to think it, but the thought worked its evil way into my brain anyway—because he was trying to envision someone else. Someone who had perhaps indicated a willingness to accept a relationship on his terms, were she given another chance.
I hated that just watching him work his way deeper, brow furrowed in concentration, one hand reaching out to tweak at my bared nipples, was turning me on. I grew slicker and he thrust deeper—and my self-loathing was sealed when I realized I was asking him for permission to come.
Permission he granted carelessly, as though it really didn’t matter much to him, because he was already at the end of his own stamina. He shot off inside me, filling my body and leaving me just as empty as before. He fell over me, catching himself on his elbows, and murmured my name and an apology into my mouth as he kissed it. And then, before he’d even caught his breath, he pulled off to one side and fell asleep with my hair caught painfully under his heavy shoulder.
He took me and I let him, because it was what I did, and perhaps because it was who I was.
His sleep after he’d finished was instant and profound, leaving me wakeful and restless against my damp pillow with only the soft rasp of his breathing to keep me company. Soon it was not enough to cancel out the noise I’d somehow missed the night before, a night that seemed to belong to a different and much happier lifetime. This night I listened, and ran out of creatures to assign to all the hundreds of sounds that crept slowly but inexorably into my awareness until I was nearly overwhelmed, startled at each new whisper or rustle that might be a frog or a drowsy monkey or a poisonous viper curling watchfully beneath the bed where I lay so far apart from Jack.
I don’t know how I fell asleep, only that I did, and when I woke up it was morning and Jack was already in the shower, and it was time for us to go home.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The silence would have been awkward if Jack had noticed. But he was hung over and seemed mainly resentful of that fact, as though righteous indignation and the ability to place the blame at Mario’s feet for having a higher tolerance would somehow make Jack’s head stop pounding or his stomach stop roiling every time the car lurched around a corner or flew over a bump. He wore his dark glasses ostentatiously even into the airport, sucking on his water bottle until they made him throw it away at the security check-through.
I had been more circumspect about what went into my carry-on bag this time. Nothing I thought I couldn’t live without at home had been checked through. This meant I was lugging a bag full of souvenirs, a book I strongly suspected I would be unable to read on the plane and my toiletries. I didn’t know what Jack’s priorities were, and had to keep reminding myself not to ask, not to pay attention to what he’d packed, because it was not my business and never would be.
That had been my mistake, I thought. The flight home gave me plenty of time for thinking, and even if Jack had been in a conversational mood I would have hardly been interested in talking to him. My huge and eminently avoidable mistake. Picturing the future, growing comfortable with the idea—the idea Jack firmly supported, it had seemed at the time—that these things would be my concern henceforward. That it hadn’t just been a fling, hadn’t just been something we both knew was a bad idea but felt like we could get away with so far from home. That it hadn’t been just another stupid, tacky office affair.
I had envisioned domesticity. I had pondered questions like whether we would take Rufus out for long walks in the evenings through Jack’s posh, tree-lined neighborhood. I had even, horror of horrors, wondered whether at some point it would become my posh, tree-lined neighborhood. I had thought about how I would learn to give dinner parties and be a senior vice president’s wife, God help me. And now…
Now Jack was snoring softly, his neck at an awkward angle against the pillow he’d shoved up against the window, and I elbowed him a little more sharply than perhaps was necessary until he shifted his position with a grunt and a mumble. He had finally taken off his sunglasses and I couldn’t help staring at his face as he slept, each line of his profile grown so dear to me over the past week, the past two years, and now I had to wipe that feeling away as if it had never existed. And I just wasn’t sure I could do that.
It’s a funny contradiction, giving up control to somebody you’re counting on to hurt you. But in a way, I think that might have been the pull, the psychological draw of my particular favorite flavor of relationship. In any relationship, you’re going to get hurt. But here, the hurt is delineated clearly in the signing contract. We talk about limits, we talk about what is and is not on the table, we agree in advance as to the manner, length, duration of the hurt. We make the hurt literal, quantifiable, controlled.
Which is, perhaps, why so many relationships in the parallel universe of D/s aficionados are necessarily short lived. Months, a few years perhaps, but very few lifetimes spent together. Because at some point, if you stay with somebody long enough, they will hurt you in a way that is not in that contract, and it hurts.
Some would argue that in fact it hurts more, because you’ve laid yourself so open and you’ve taken so many stringent precautions to protect yourself before doing so. Having kinky sex with a blindfold on is dabbling in the unknown, but the range of possibilities there is not, in fact, infinite. There will be some combination of physical plain and pleasure, sometimes pleasure turned to agony through intensity and duration, and there will either be release or there will not. There will either be words of humiliation, a sense of deliberate debasement, or there will not. There may be many variations but the themes remain the same.
I had never hurt like this before, because I had never let down my guard this way before. Either by accident or design, I genuinely couldn’t say which, at some point during that week of repeated bouts of sex, things had ceased to be about the sex, ceased even to be about control, and had just become a relationship. Or, if I tried to be more honest with myself, the relationship had begun weeks, maybe months or years ago, and it was only the sex—the lovemaking—that made us
acknowledge what was already there between us. Not making love, but recognizing it.
The brutal awareness that I had been the only one recognizing it felt like it might actually choke me to death.
To keep myself from crying or screaming or keeling over, I drafted my resignation letter in my head for approximately three hours of the flight from Rio to São Paulo to Houston. Jack napped for about half the time, sat working on his laptop for the rest, still lightly hung over and not saying much, for which I could only be grateful.
I slept for most of the rest of the flight, an unpleasant sleep punctuated by nightmares I couldn’t quite remember when I woke up. At one point I came to with Jack leaning over me, holding my hand, kissing my forehead, saying soothing things like ���it’s only a nightmare, Katie, everything’s okay…”
I wanted to punch him, to hurt him, to scream into his face until he disappeared. I wanted to go back in time and live the entire week the way I would have, had I been in my right mind.
Instead, I just went back to sleep. Even my nightmares seemed preferable to the reality of Jack sitting next to me, pretending to comfort me after what had happened the night before. And even nightmares had to be better than what it would be like back at work, after the mistakes of last week.
* * * * *
As bad as the plane ride was, it wasn’t nearly as bad as what would follow. Because Jack, in preparation for our trip, had offered to drive us both to the airport and leave his car parked there. This meant, of course, that he would also be driving me home.
I had been dreading it, trying not to think of it, but hadn’t had any time to myself to somehow arrange an alternate ride. Now I was too embarrassed and just too tired to argue when Jack automatically picked up both our bags from the baggage claim and starting walking briskly toward the shuttle that would take us to long-term parking.
So after a short shuttle hop spent crowded between a family with three children and a group of weary-looking businessmen, including one we recognized from the conference, we were at Jack’s Land Rover and he was lining our two suitcases up neatly in the back. He opened the passenger door for me and I thanked him automatically, although climbing into his car for what was likely to be at least forty-five minutes alone together was the very last thing on earth I really wanted to do at that moment.
The first few minutes were bearable. There was the parking fee to pay and the tricky navigation from the airport to the freeway to negotiate, and all of that provided some distraction. But once we were on the open road—or as open as a Houston freeway ever is—there was nothing between us but a heavy tension, a silence that had gone on far too long to be comfortable and it was clear neither of us wanted to be the first to break it.
Jack, to my tremendous relief, was the one to break it. “So what’s going on, Katie? I know I’m the talker, but I’m getting a little worried that you’re being this quiet for this long. Earlier I thought you were just being polite around my hangover, but that’s pretty much okay now. So go on ahead, chat away. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
He didn’t really seem all that worried, I was astonished to realize. Astonished and something else—something almost like rage. He was paying attention to the road, really, and sounded casual and relaxed and almost as though he really didn’t know why I might be upset.
“I’m…what’s on my mind? Are you serious?”
“I…huh?” Total bafflement. But at least I had a bit of his attention.
“What’s on my mind at the moment is… Oh, forget it, there’s no point. Really. Just take me home, okay?”
“Is this about last night? Because I know I was a little sloshed, but I think I remember the whole thing and I don’t remember doing anything that would get you this pissed off…did I?”
I just stared at him, trying to figure out what wasn’t being said. “Didn’t you?”
“I didn’t think I had.”
“Really, why are we even having this conversation in the first place?”
“Because… I’m not sure, Kate. I really don’t even know for sure what this conversation is about anymore. I sort of wish you’d tell me though. I feel like I’m missing something here.” He was starting to sound a little annoyed and it was like squirting starter fluid on the hot coals of my growing anger.
“I mean, if you’re trying to soften the blow or something, the moment’s kind of slipped you by quite some time ago. You know that I know. It’s not like it’s that surprising. Playing this out this way isn’t just pointless, it’s sort of cruel. That’s the exit. Jack, you’re missing the exit.”
“We’re not going that way. What are you talking about, Kate?”
“What am I talking about? I’m talking about the two of you! I hope you’ll be very happy,” I said sarcastically.
“The two of us? The two of who?”
“Oh honestly.”
“Since we’re obviously not on the same wavelength here and I truly have no idea what you’re talking about, would a blanket apology work? Just…I’m sorry. Whatever it was that I did, I’m very sorry. And I may never drink again if this sort of thing is going to happen.”
“You said that yesterday, Jack. You kept saying you were sorry. I mean, I knew because of that, even without…your going and doing what you did. But you really had nothing to be sorry about. These things are just inevitable sometimes. I mean, I can’t say the timing didn’t really suck for me, and I wish I’d never gone on the damn trip in the first place obviously, but—”
“I wasn’t sorry because of—”
“But I understand, I really do.”
“Katie—”
“So really, it’s just another few blocks that way to get on the 610, you can just—”
“Kate. Stop talking. Please stop.”
“Get on that, go down about three more exits and…okay. I’ll stop. You’re not going to start saying that at work, are you?”
Jack looked at me with a pained expression and I felt just a little bad. Only a little though. I was starting to think I might actually just e-mail my resignation and get Callie to collect my things from work, because I just wasn’t sure I could even walk into the office long enough to put the letter on his desk.
But no, I thought. Screw him. I’ll do it and I’ll march out and I’ll slam the door behind me while I tell him to go to hell and take the job with him. Not that that makes any sense, but—
“What in the… Shit! I can’t do this and drive at the same time, I’m pulling over. Just wait a minute, okay? Can you do that?”
I nodded silently, crossing my arms over my chest as he maneuvered through the traffic. Who were all these people out driving on a Sunday evening anyway? Didn’t they have homes to go to?
At last he made it off the three-lane thoroughfare we’d been on and into a parking lot in front of one of the ubiquitous strip malls that have taken over Houston like a virus. He jerked the wheel a little sharply so that the tires gave a tiny squeak as he slotted the Land Rover into a space. The emergency brake made a sharp ratcheting sound as he yanked it up—probably needlessly, since it was an automatic and the parking lot was completely flat.
And then he was turning and looking at me with a scowl, a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you look that I just couldn’t take. Well aware that I probably looked like a pouting twelve-year-old, I tried just staring out the window.
“Kate, what the hell is wrong? You’ve been pissed off at me all day long, why? I mean, yeah, I got pretty drunk last night, but I already said I don’t remember saying or doing anything that bad, and I’ve tried to apologize if there was anything I did do. So what’s going on here?”
I did look at him then, flabbergasted. “What’s…what’s going on?” I was growing angrier by the second, rage filling me until I almost felt like I really could see red. “You tell me what’s going on, Jack! You stay out half the night with your old girlfriend, who has made it painfully obvious she thinks dumping you was the biggest mistake of her life, you finally come to be
d at some ungodly hour, sloppy drunk, after ignoring me to listen to her sad tale all day long while she hangs all over you and then you just…”
I thought about it, and clamped down on what I had been planning to say. “No. That part doesn’t matter. That was my own fault, for letting myself get to a place where I didn’t feel like I could tell you to stop. This whole thing has been one bad choice after another and I just wish I could go back and do the whole week so differently, but I can’t. Neither can you, I guess, but somehow I don’t think it will matter quite so much to you. As I said, I hope the two of you will be very happy.” That last was probably a bit less than kind, but I felt entitled.
Jack just stared at me, his eyes narrowing in concentration a moment and then widening as if he’d just understood something vital. “But…wait. You thought that whole time after you left, I was talking to Marisa before I came back to the guesthouse? That I was still interested in her, but then I came in and…oh God. And you thought what, that I wanted to be with her and I was taking my frustration out on you? You think I would do something like that?”
For a second it sounded as though he was going to try to pull off righteous indignation, but then his voice seemed to crumble. “Oh hell—of course you thought that. Shit.” When I looked over, confused, he was rubbing his hands over his face, his head thrown back against the headrest. While I watched, he banged it there a few times, softly, as if trying to jostle the contents of his mind into some better order.
“Katie,” he finally went on, “I was up all that time drinking with Mario. Okay? Marisa never came back either after you left. She went to check on the boys and just stayed away. I stayed and got drunk with Mario because I can’t match drinks with him, I never could, and I always forget that. There’s a reason I live on another continent and only see the guy every couple years, my constitution can only take so much food and liquor. But Katie, the thing with Marisa is what’s been bothering him. Remember I said I thought there was something? I actually wanted to leave when she showed up, just pack up you and all our stuff and hightail it back to the hotel for the night.
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