Then I saw two more men approaching from the other direction. Oh great, it was a party now. Come one, come all, some girl is trying to walk home alone and it’s after midnight, so she’s fair game. But then the men behind me stopped and crossed the street. I soon saw why. The man coming towards me was one of the most threatening, muscular men I’d ever seen, and next to him, even dressed in a tuxedo, Mr. Norris looked pretty threatening himself.
“Come on,” was all he said to me, and he put his hand on my elbow like he’d done twice before. This time he guided me over to a black SUV and pushed me into the back seat. No, he didn’t actually push me. He just opened the door and helped me in. I guess it was the fury on his face that made me feel manhandled. He got in beside me and slammed the door behind us. I just sat in silence, not looking at him.
“Felt like getting raped tonight?” he finally muttered.
“There were no cabs. I left the theater too late.”
“I offered you a ride home.” I watched the muscle man leaning against the door outside, lazily rolling a cigarette.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“My driver.”
We both just sat there, two feet apart. It was chilly in the car and I shivered.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you think?” he snapped.
And that was enough. I started to cry. The sound of my sobs disturbed me but there was no way to silence them. I pulled my coat around me like I could pull myself together, but I couldn’t.
I couldn’t stop. It had been far too long since I’d cried.
He sat still and silent next to me and watched me, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown. I cried forever, months worth of tears. I cried staring out his front window, then dropped my head in my hands until my fingers were slippery with tears. How long had I needed to cry like this?
An eternity. I cried until I was breathless, until I felt weak. He didn’t try to soothe me or hold me, although he did eventually offer me a tissue. I realized he had dug in my own bag to get it.
He held it in his lap, my big ugly dance bag, while I dried the tears and blew my nose. After a moment he offered me another one, and then another again.
“Thank you for helping me,” I said when I was finally calm enough.
“Are you finished now?”
“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I act this way around you.”
“Don’t you?” He flicked his wrist impatiently and looked away with a frown.
“What do you want from me?”
“Let’s get some coffee, Lucy. We need to talk.”
At some unseen signal, the driver walked off down the street, and Matthew climbed into the driver’s seat while I stayed in the back.
“Why do you have a driver, if you can drive?” I asked him.
“He’s more than my driver.” And he left it at that.
* * *
He drove me to a coffee house right near the theater. I’d never noticed it before but he seemed to know it well. I must have looked like a mess as we waited at the counter for our drinks, but I really didn’t care. It was after two by this point, and the whole world seemed to have taken on an air of unreality.
He led me to an isolated table in the back. Low music played as we sat in darkness and clouds of cigarette smoke. There was a hum of people talking, laughing. They were night time party people, wide awake and full of life.
But not me. I was beyond tired. I was so tired that I was painfully and frantically awake. I sipped my coffee and stared down into my lap. He sat across from me, leaning back in his chair, looking like a million bucks. He’d taken off his jacket and loosened his silk bow tie so that it hung perfectly over his open collar. His short blond hair was ruffled just so. It looked like all he had to do to style it perfectly was to run his fingers through it. He watched me. Stared at me, really.
“You don’t talk much,” he finally commented under his breath.
“I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry I cried for fifteen minutes in the backseat of your car.”
“It was more like thirty minutes.”
“It’s been a really hard couple of weeks,” I said.
“Has it?”
“Let me put it this way. I was supposed to have been on my honeymoon this week.”
“Your honeymoon?” I could tell he was taken aback. “Well, what happened? Do tell.”
“Do you want the long version or the short version?”
“The true version.”
“Do you think I’d lie to you?”
“No, not really. I’m just a lover of truth. It thrills me,” he explained in an ironic tone.
“Okay, then.” I took a deep breath. “My fiancé invited his ex-girlfriend to our wedding.
When she came into town, he fell back in love with her. He cancelled our wedding and took her on our honeymoon.”
He thought a moment. “Was it to have been a big wedding?”
“No, a very small one.”
“So he wasn’t sure all along.”
“No. I guess not.”
“And neither were you,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
“No.”
“Why did you get married, if you weren’t sure?”
“We didn’t get married.”
“You almost did.”
“Are you really going to lecture me? You haven’t exactly got a stellar marital record yourself.”
His eyes narrowed.
“At least, I read online that you were divorced,” I finished weakly under his darkening gaze.
“Well, that’s not fair. It seems you know more about me than I know about you. Now you have to tell me something about yourself. Something deeply personal and humiliating, if we’re going to be fair.”
“I just told you I was left at the altar. That’s not humiliating enough?”
“Did you love him?”
“Did you love her?”
He didn’t answer me at first. Then he said, “Yes, I loved her very much. She didn’t love me though. When you have money...” His voice trailed off, and then he looked right into my eyes.
“There was no truth between us. Did you love your fiancé?” I shook my head slowly.
“Why not? Why didn’t you love him?”
“Because he didn’t make me happy.” I stopped and shook my head. “No. Because he didn’t know the real me. Because there was no truth between us,” I finally admitted.
He looked over at me, leaning forward on his elbows.
“Would you like to hear some truth, Lucy? Right now?”
“Yes, that would be really refreshing.”
“I’d like to bend you over, stick my fingers up inside you, and see if you really can do more than pony tricks.”
My mouth dropped open. I closed it a moment later and stood to leave.
“Sit down,” he said in a way that halted me in my tracks.
I turned back to him. “You’re being rude to me.”
“You were rude to me too, weren’t you? More than once. Now we’re even. Sit down.” For some reason, I did as he ordered. I sat back down across from him, my gaze in my lap.
“Lucy, what do you think is happening here?”
“I really don’t know. I wish I did!”
“I think you do know, but I’ll play along. What did you think of me? How do you feel around me?”
“I... I...”
“Think first, and then tell me the truth.”
“You scare me.”
“Why do I scare you?”
I looked down at my hands, swallowed hard. “Because of how you make me feel.”
“How do I make you feel?”
I shook my head. I couldn’t admit it, never.
“Answer me,” he pressed. “We won’t get anywhere until you talk to me. Just say it.”
“I...you... You make me... I want you to... I want...”
My voice trailed off, my fac
e on fire. I want you to be an animal. I want you to eat me alive.
“Can’t you say it?” he asked. “I’ll tell you, Lucy, since you seem unable to form the words.” He paused and looked right at me. “You want me to master you. You want me to rough you up a little, don’t you?”
I bit my lip. I had no idea what to answer to that. Again, I felt dangerously close to tears, even after all the tears I’d already shed. I brought my cup to my lips and drank the coffee to assuage the tightness in my throat.
“Your fiancé, he didn’t understand, did he? What you like. What you need.”
“I don’t understand either.”
“You will,” he said.
I blinked, looking at him. He stared back at me without a hint of a smile.
“Do you know what a submissive is?”
Breathe. Swallow. Don’t cry.
“Answer me, Lucy.”
“I...maybe... I think I do.”
“Have you ever been submissive to someone? Your fiancé?”
“No, I...no.”
“No, he had no idea, did he, what he had in his hands? You’ve never been disciplined, trained? Controlled?”
His sharp perverse words brought a flood of warmth between my legs. My nipples tightened under my shirt as I shook my head.
“Answer me out loud, Lucy,” he said. “Look at me.”
I looked up in abject mortification. “No, I never have been.”
“Would you like to be? Look at me,” he insisted. My eyes met his and he held them hard.
“Would you like to be?”
“I don’t know!”
“I don’t know. That means, no, I’m too scared.” I closed my eyes and lowered my head. “I already told you I was scared.”
“How long?” he asked then.
“How long what?”
“How long have you wanted it? To be dominated, to be tied up and beaten and fucked?” I just shook my head. How do you answer a question like that?
“A pretty little girl like you couldn’t find someone to take you in hand? You’ll settle for some vanilla fuckboy who was still in love with his ex?”
“Why do you care so much?”
“I’m sure you can puzzle that out if you try.” His jaw clenched a little and he looked away from me, scratching his neck with a frustrated sigh. I looked at him, beautiful Mr. Matthew Norris, sitting there in his tuxedo and his unkempt tie. I just looked as my mind spun with a thousand questions. But there was one question I had to ask right away.
“How did you know?”
“The same way you knew. And you did know, Lucy, from the moment you saw me. I can’t explain how.” He leaned very close to me, speaking low. “You set off alarms. Look at me.” I dragged my gaze to his.
“When you started talking about pony tricks, I nearly laughed out loud.”
“I’m not into that animal stuff.”
“I have no interest in playing ponies, believe me. I have no interest in ninety percent of the stupid games dominants play with their submissives.”
Dominants. Submissives. I felt like I’d just fallen ass-backwards into the life I’d wanted but thought didn’t really exist. I honestly had no idea people really did the things I wanted. I honestly couldn’t believe he might want to do them to me.
“What are you interested in?” I asked.
“Owning your body and doing whatever I want to it.”
There it was again, the hot rush of wetness between my legs. I looked at him from under my lashes while my cheeks burned crimson. He wanted my body, wanted to do things to it. That man sitting there, virile and dangerous, he wanted me. I shivered and pressed my thighs together.
Somehow I couldn’t phrase a response. I could barely draw breath.
“Is that something that might interest you, Lucy?”
I stared down at my hands twisting in my lap. “I don’t know.”
“No more I don’t know‘s,” he said. “Yes or no?”
“Maybe! I can’t say! I don’t know what you want to do to me.”
“I’ll do a lot of things to you. I’m only asking you if it’s something you’d like to try.” My mind raced in circles, stimulated by horniness and caffeine. All around us, regular people talked and laughed casually, but my life had changed. I scrabbled for words, my thoughts in a tangle. I lifted my cup to take a slow drink, buying time.
“Is this how you pick up all your partners?” I asked. “You give them this tough little talking to?”
He tapped his fingers on the table impatiently, as if he already owned me and I was already making him mad. “First of all, this is far from tough. And secondly, I haven’t picked up a partner in six years. I had a girlfriend and we recently broke up. I would have thought you knew that from your reading about me.”
“She was your submissive?”
“That’s really none of your business.”
“What happened? Why did she leave you after six years?” He frowned down into his coffee, then looked back up at me with narrowed eyes.
“She didn’t enjoy it. Power exchange. I thought she did. But she did it for me, for my money, I guess.”
“All those years?”
“Yes, Lucy. Now you see why truth thrills me. I’ve lived without it for far too long.” Truth. He talked about it an awful lot.
“If you’re so rich, why don’t you just buy a hooker?”
“Because I don’t want a hooker. I want you.”
“How do you know? You don’t even really know me.”
“I know enough. I know that your body turns me on. I know you’d get off on submitting to me.”
“That’s all you need in a girlfriend?”
“A girlfriend?” He laughed. “Sorry, I don’t want another girlfriend. I just want a submissive to put through her paces. I’m giving you truth here, Lucy. I’m not saying that to hurt you.” So it showed then, the hurt and humiliation I felt at his words. My face burned with it. I felt like I’d just been kicked.
“I want to use your body because I find it beautiful and perfect. I just want to play with you, but I think you’ll enjoy it all the same. And if you want,” he added as an afterthought, “I’ll pay you for your time.”
I made a nauseated face.
“Yes, I thought that’s how you’d feel. Anyway, the pleasure will be payment enough.” My God. My God. My God. My God.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s some truth for you. I’ve never fucked someone I’m not in a relationship with.”
“Oh, we’d be in a relationship. Just a non-traditional one. Do you really want another boyfriend? So soon?”
I thought for a minute. God, no. I didn’t.
“And it wouldn’t just be fucking, Lucy. Exchanging power is erotically charged, yes, and it can be deeply sexual, but it’s about much more than just getting off. It will meet needs you didn’t even realize you had. It will meet needs for you and me both. And it would be safe, of course.
Everything we did together would be absolutely safe and consensual.”
“Consensual?”
“Yes, it would have to be. You know what I mean by consensual? You would be there because you want to be. And we would use safe words.”
“Safe words?” No explanation was forthcoming. “What are safe words?” I was a little afraid to find out.
“Safe words are words that keep people like you safe.”
“Safe from what?”
“Safe from people like me.”
He leaned back then, stretching casually, as if we discussed nothing more unusual than the weather. I sat across from him and wrestled with my feelings. Anger, indignation, shame, curiosity, lust. Then his eyes returned to mine and he spoke to me with intensity in his voice.
“You know, I want to own you and I want to use you. I want your obedience and beauty.
But what I really want is for you to find joy in it too.”
“Joy?”
“Yes, joy. And perhaps, at times, a little pain,” he said with a faint
smile. “I’m not going to lie to you. There’s a good bit of the sadist in me. There will be times that I’ll purposely hurt you, times that I’ll try to make you cry. There will be ups and downs, and, well, a considerable amount of pain. But somehow I think you’ll enjoy it.”
My God, that I could even be sitting here considering it. But his warnings about pain didn’t frighten me at all. In fact, he was right. The idea was exciting me. What kind of pervert was I?
He must have seen that I was weakening, that even in my fear, my uncertainty, I wanted to say yes.
“We could start slowly,” he said. “I would teach you and guide you. I know right now you’re afraid of the unknown. You barely know me, I realize that. I barely know you. But there are some very elemental desires you and I share. And if we get to know each other better and discover that we don’t suit each other, we’ll be truthful to one another, won’t we? Can you promise me that?”
I thought about six years of deception, the toll it would take on someone’s trust. “Yes, I would be truthful to you,” I said with conviction. “I would always tell you the truth.” His expression deepened as he looked at me. “You have no idea how those words make me feel. Because I believe you, little girl.”
Little girl. He had no idea how those words made me feel, the tingle that raced across my skin. I desperately wanted to be his little girl, his lover, his toy, whatever he wanted me to be.
But he’d warned me I couldn’t be his girlfriend. Would everything else be enough?
“What do you think?” he asked.
“You drive a hard bargain.”
He laughed, an exhalation of nervous energy. “I’m trying. I really am. I suppose this isn’t what you expected.”
“You planned all along to ask me this when you invited me here?”
“I started putting words together the very second I laid eyes on you.” That made me shiver a little. All that time, he’d been thinking of doing these things to me.
“When was that? When you first laid eyes on me?”
He rubbed his forehead and sighed. “It was a while ago.” I just stared into my coffee, overwhelmed by the moment, by the decision. It seemed to me that the next words I chose to say would alter my life in a significant way, whether they were yes or no.
“I know that I’ve shocked you,” he said. “Why don’t you take some time to think it over?
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