by Hannah Ford
“I’m sorry,” I said, the lump returning to my throat. “I can’t.”
His hands tightened on my wrists and he pulled me toward him as hard as he could, my breasts flattening out against his muscular chest. I looked into his eyes and saw the urge to dominate flash there, to punish me for defying him, for not giving me what he wanted. But this time, he was somehow able to get control of it, and he let go of me.
He pushed me off his lap gently until I was standing in front of him.
He stood up and began clearing the plates from the table, even though we hadn’t finished our breakfast.
It was over.
His walls were back up, his stony façade completely obliterating any chance we may have had to go deeper with each other.
“Callum,” I tried.
He didn’t answer me.
Instead, he strode down the hall back toward my room, and when he returned, he was putting his keys in his pocket, sliding his shirt on. He dropped his sneakers on the floor, slipped them on.
“So what, you’re just going to leave?”
He nodded. “There’s nothing left to say, Adriana.”
“But can’t we… I mean, why can’t we just…” I trailed off. I wanted to tell him that we could just go back to doing what we’d been doing, but that made no sense. How could we keep doing what we’d been doing when what we’d been doing was so insane?
He crossed the room and kissed me softly. “I won’t bother you again,” he whispered. “I won’t. I promise. Take care of yourself, Lemon.”
And then he turned and walked out the door.
* * *
I thought I would cry, thought I would collapse into a puddle on the floor, weeping uncontrollably until Nessa came home and discovered she was going to have to scrape me up.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I swallowed around the lump in my throat, gratefully accepted the numbness that had begun to wash over me, then took a shower and got ready for work.
On my way to the train station, I ducked into Starbucks and treated myself to a venti caramel latte, sipping the steaming hot drink as I rode the subway to Midtown.
There was a gnawing pain in my stomach, the kind of gnawing pain that let me know something was wrong, but it was like I was feeling it through some kind of haze, as if my body was disassociating itself from what had just happened.
He can’t stay away from you.
He’d said it himself.
He would text me, I was sure of it.
I pulled my phone out of my bag and clutched it in my hand, just in case.
But by the time I got to work, I hadn’t heard from him.
I’d planned on telling Kiersten about Dean Bellingham’s invitation as soon as I got in, but her office door was closed, and so I headed to my cubicle and checked my inbox. Sure enough, Kiersten had sent me some changes Callum had requested for his tour, along with a slew of edits to the catalog copy for Jojo Kye’s book.
I was done with all of her requests by lunch.
I spent my break with a chicken cobb salad and an iced tea from a Café Metro, somehow scoring one of wrought iron tables on the sidewalk. I pushed the salad around on my plate and flipped the top of my iced tea around on the table absentmindedly.
I still hadn’t heard from Callum.
I missed him.
I reached into my bag and pulled out the contract he’d left sitting on my kitchen table, took a deep breath, and slid the pages out of the envelope.
There it was, all laid out in black and white.
The expectations he’d had for me.
The Submissive Agrees To:
Live in an apartment of the Dominant’s choosing, to which he will have access to at all times. Said apartment will have at minimum two bedrooms, and it will be up to the Dominant’s sole discretion whether or not he sleeps in bed with the submissive.
The Dominant will keep the kitchen stocked with foods of his choosing, and the submissive will eat only from these provided foods, unless she has the prior permission of the Dominant.
The submissive agrees not to consume any alcohol or be in places where copious amounts of alcohol are being served.
The submissive will wear only the clothes that the Dominant has preapproved. She will be provided with a clothing allowance of twenty thousand dollars per month.
The submissive will allow the Dominant to do whatever he pleases to her sexually, and will be ready and willing to provide for the Dominant’s sexual needs as he requires. This includes being shaved and ready for the Dominant at all times.
The Dominant will use any toys, ropes, whips, cuffs, or bondage equipment which he deems acceptable and conducive to his pleasure. The submissive agrees that she will not push the Dominant into sexual situations that invoke an emotional response in the Dominant, and that there will be no expectation of any romantic overtures from the Dominant.
It went on for pages and pages, but I stopped reading. My stomach rolled on itself, a sick feeling that gnawed at my insides, this time bitter and raw, with no filter.
How could Callum have asked me to sign something like this? The contract I’d signed in Florida had been one thing. But this was a whole other level of twisted. To expect me to give up my whole life, to let him take control of me, and for what? Just so he could use me sexually? It was messed up.
Reading the words in black and white just solidified the choice I’d made when I’d told him no this morning. Because the truth was, Callum Wilder was not capable of loving anyone.
And the sooner I got that through my head, the better.
* * *
The afternoon passed in a whirlwind.
Kiersten had left the office while I at lunch, but she began emailing me nonstop, firing off instructions at me rapidly – a dinner reservation to be made at Pastis, a sample publicity plan she’d uploaded to the server that needed to be forwarded, a list of bloggers that needed to be vetted and approved.
Every time I emailed her back, I wondered if I should tell her about Dean Bellingham. But there wasn’t really a seamless way to do it, and I decided I would wait until she was back in the office and I could tell her in person, hopefully tomorrow.
I was in the elevator on my way out of the Archway offices at the end of the day, pressed in with about fifteen other people, when my phone buzzed.
Callum.
I checked it, my heart hammering in my chest.
But it wasn’t Callum.
It was Nessa.
U out of work? Sephora run?
I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t really want to hang out with Nessa either, not because I didn’t want to see her, but because I knew she was going to ask me about Callum, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell her. But I couldn’t avoid her forever – she was my roommate. And I knew there was a good chance that being with her would take my mind off things.
So I texted back.
Sure! Twenty minutes?
“Hot date?” a voice chirped in my ear.
I jumped. “What?”
I turned to see Bailey, the girl from yesterday, standing in the elevator next to me. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed her.
“You’re texting,” she said, nodding toward my phone. “I just thought maybe it was with the mystery man who sent you those flowers yesterday.”
“Oh,” I said, shoving my phone back into my bag. “No, it was my roommate. And there’s no mystery man. I told you, those flowers were from my mom.”
“Riiiight,” Bailey said, but not in an unfriendly way. “Anyway, if those flowers did happen to be from some hot guy, I’d definitely take your chance to spend time with him while you can. Rumor has it Kiersten was somehow able to steal Dean Bellingham away from Royal House.” She shook her head in awe, then slipped a hair tie from around her wrist and gathered her long red hair into a loose ponytail. “Shit is about to get crazy busy.”
The elevator doors opened and Bailey stepped out and into the lobby bef
ore I could ask any more questions. But for some reason, there was a queasy feeling in my stomach. How had Kiersten stolen Dean from Royal House? Had she slept with him? Whatever, I told myself as I passed through the revolving doors. This isn’t any of your business, Adriana. It’s above your pay grade and responsibility. Your job is to just keep your mouth shut, follow orders, and try not to screw up.
Twenty minutes later, I was at the Times Square Sephora, under the fluorescent track lights, the bass line of the pop music remix that was blaring over the speakers helping to drown out my tangled thoughts as I tried to avoid the made-up Scary Barbie sales staff who wanted to sell me mascara that cost almost as much as my rent. Nessa was high on her newfound romance with Isaac, and you could see it on her face and in her body language. Her shoulders were relaxed and her tone was giddy.
“He’s just so different than what I expected,” she said as she picked up a sample bottle of Daisy perfume by Marc Jacobs and sprayed it liberally on her body. I wrinkled my nose and tried not to choke. It wasn’t that the perfume smelled bad, it was just that she’d sprayed so many of them already that they’d morphed into a cloud of scents that had never been intended to go together.
“How so?” I asked, turning away from her cloud of perfume toward a display of lip glosses. I selected a pale peach one and pulled it out, testing it on the back of my hand.
“He’s just… I don’t know, sensual I guess,” she said. “And good at making me feel relaxed. Like after we had sex, you know, he made me feel like he really wanted me to be there with him, made me total secure in the fact that he wanted me to stay. And then last night, he took me to dinner and then asked me to spend the night.”
A frisson of jealousy moved through my body as I slid the lip gloss back into its place in the display. It wasn’t that I wanted to be with Isaac. He was cute enough, but not my type. No, what I wanted was that security, the idea that the person you were with wanted to be with you in exactly the same way you wanted to be with them.
On other hand, I was also a little suspicious. I wasn’t sure if it was my newfound cynicism about romance and men, but I found it odd that Isaac was suddenly so enamored with Nessa. They’d lived near each other all this time, and now he’d decided to not only take an interest in her, but to spend all his time with her?
“What do you think of this one?” Nessa asked, puffing her newly-lined lips out in a duck face. “It’s called Rose Petal Pink. Do you think Isaac would like Rose Petal Pink?”
“Do you like Rose Petal pink?” I asked pointedly, which was really ironic coming from me, since I’d just been considering signing a contract which would have given a man complete control over my body. For me to encourage anyone to value their own thoughts and opinions over what a man wanted was laughable.
“I think so,” she said, studying herself critically in the mirror. “Do you think I should get collagen injections? I get a discount at work.”
“In your lips?” I picked up a soft bronzer and used a disposable cotton pad to brush it across my cheeks.
“Yes.”
“No.” I shook my head. “You’ll look fake.” I hope that working in a dermatologist’s office wasn’t going to cause Nessa to start injecting her skin with all kinds of chemicals.
“Yeah,” she said, making another duck face in the mirror. She placed the Rose Petal Pink lip gloss into the small mesh shopping basket that was slung over her arm. “Anyway, tell me about you and Callum!” she said. “I can’t believe he showed up at Aubrey Zane’s party like that. Did anyone from work see you guys together?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.” I caught sight of my reflection in the mirror. I looked like a clown with all this makeup on my face, so I reached up and started wiping it off with some of the disposable wipes they provided for when people inevitably got overzealous with the samples. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m not going to be seeing him again.”
“What?” Nessa asked, glancing up at me sharply, her hand around the Naked 3 eye shadow palette. “Why not?”
“I just don’t think it’s going to work out.”
She opened her mouth like she was going to ask more questions, then clamped it shut, obviously thinking better of it. “I’m sorry,” she said after another second. “That really sucks.”
“Yeah, well, live and learn.” I gave a little shrug. “It was fun, at least.” I knew I sounded glib, even though glib was the last thing I felt. What I felt was gutted. But I didn’t want Nessa to know that. It was one thing if she was going to be miserable with me. It was quite another if she was happy in a relationship, and I was all alone.
“I’m sure it was,” Nessa said, obviously buying my whole I-don’t-care routine. “I mean, Isaac’s hot, but Callum…” She shivered. “You don’t end up with a guy like that. He’s the guy you fuck and then forget about.”
I laughed, but a pit was forming in my stomach.
“Did he – ” Nessa started to say, but her phone trilled with a text message, and she reached into her bag and pulled it out. “Isaac,” she said, reading the text. “He wants to take me to dinner again.”
She glanced up at me, an anxious look crossing her face. I knew what she was thinking – Nessa and I hadn’t had any kind of dinner plans, at least not officially, but we might have gone to dinner after this if she hadn’t gotten that text.
Now she was worried that she was going to be ditching me for her new boyfriend. She was probably even more worried now that she knew Callum and I were done.
“You should go.” I tossed the used wipe into a sleek black trash basket. “I mean, don’t stay on account of me. I have work to do anyway.” It was a half-truth. I didn’t really have any work to do, but I was determined to say ahead of Kiersten and anticipate any demand she might have of me.
Which meant heading over to Barnes and Noble to finally buy Aubrey Zane’s book and to see if there had been anything written about Dean Bellingham. I knew I had just as good, if not a better, chance of finding things out about him on the internet, but I wasn’t quite ready to face my empty apartment just yet.
“Are you sure?” Nessa asked, but she was already putting back the stuff in her basket, the anticipation of a date with Isaac trumping her need to buy overpriced beauty products that would do nothing they promised.
“Yeah, I’m sure, go ahead.”
I wandered around the store a little longer, but I couldn’t justify spending eighteen dollars on an eye liner or a lip gloss, especially when I hadn’t even gotten my first paycheck yet. I’d checked with HR, and my thirty-two thousand dollar-a-year salary in New York City definitely didn’t justify designer lip glosses.
I left the store with a sigh.
Maybe I’d sell some of the clothes Callum had gotten me, I thought.
I could buy a thousand lip glosses then.
* * *
Thirty minutes later I arrived in Union Square, a super cool area of the city that always had something going on -- art festivals with homemade jewelry and abstract paintings, farmers markets with heirloom tomatoes and leafy greens in bright, vibrant colors that made you convince yourself that you actually wanted to eat healthy, street performers and sidewalk artists.
The Barnes and Noble was across the street from the square, and it took up an entire three-story building that was always busy and teeming with shoppers. I headed for the café, which was on the top floor, and treated myself to a venti hazelnut cappuccino with whipped cream before heading back downstairs, drink in hand.
I found Aubrey Zane’s book right away, on a cardboard end cap in the middle of the biography section. It was a nice end cap, with a picture of Aubrey on it, wearing a sparkly white crop top and a pair of white hot pants.
Her long hair hung in beachy waves around her shoulders, her smoky eye makeup making her look sexy and mysterious. Her six-pack was brushed with glitter, and I wondered what it would feel like to be that beautiful, to have men stare at you as you walked by, to not be able to go a whole day without so
meone commenting on how good you looked.
Although obviously it hadn’t made her happy, since she’d developed an eating disorder and a penchant for cutting herself.
I grabbed a copy of the book and then wandered into the romance section. If I couldn’t have my own real life happy ending, then at least I could read about someone else’s.
I was trying to find a good series to get into, nothing with BDSM, thank you very much, when I felt someone’s eyes on the back of my neck, watching me. I’d always thought when people in books or movies said they could sense someone watching them, it was kind of crap – how could you sense someone watching you? It was impossible.
And yet, I could – I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, my back arch instinctively, a strange alertness brush over my shoulders.
I turned around.
There was a man standing at the end of the aisle, and I instantly felt trepidation. You didn’t see many men hanging out in the romance section. This one looked nice enough – he was good-looking, actually, with sandy blond hair and a wide face. He was wearing khakis and a blue and white striped sweater. In fact, he looked kind of looked familiar. Was he someone I worked with at Archway?
He gave me a smile, and I smiled back at him, but that same feeling of uneasiness skittered up my spine.
I grabbed the book I was looking at and began heading toward the registers, anxious to put as much distance between this man and me as I could.
“Excuse me!” the man called, his voice friendly. “Adriana, right?”
I turned. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Do I know you?” I didn’t want to have a conversation with him, but if he was someone from Archway, I couldn’t afford to be short with him, either. I could just imagine Kiersten calling me into her office first thing in the morning, lambasting me for being rude to someone we worked with.