Fall: a Sean Poole short

by Sara Taylor Woods

  

  FALL

  ———————

  a Sean Poole short

  Sara Taylor Woods

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2017 by Sara Taylor Woods

  Cover image © 2017 by

  Cover design by Ashley Poston

  Cover copyright © 2017 by Sara Taylor Woods

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN 9780998738826

  For Brianna, for her encouragement and her incorrigibility

  The air pressure changes, and the captain announces we’re beginning our final descent into Boston Logan International. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with a bag for trash, and the cabin is filled with the clicks and thumps of seats and tables being returned to their locked positions.

  Talia is pressed to the little window. I reach over and tug on a lock of her hair. She whips around to face me, her eyes huge and bright.

  “Do you want to see?” she asks. “Have you ever—” She turns around again to look out the window. I lean close to her, and she makes room for me to see, my chin on her shoulder. The familiar lick of Cape Cod curls white and tan into the impossible blue of the Atlantic, and I can feel Talia’s smile against my cheek.

  This is all right.

  “I know it’s ridiculous,” she says, “but this looks just like a map.”

  “Well, no one can ever tell you you’re not observant.”

  “Oh my gosh.” I can feel the heat of her blush against my face. “I told you I knew it was ridiculous. I mean, you know what it looks like, but to see it actually look like that?”

  “Perspective is wild like that.”

  “Don’t you dare get deep on me.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” I kiss her cheek and sit back again. “Get your stuff together, cupcake. Upright and locked and all that.”

  The temperature in Boston is about ten degrees cooler than it was in Charlotte when we flew out, and it’s only going to keep going down. We’re going up to New Hampshire, into the White Mountains to camp and hike Mount Washington, then to spend a few days with my brother’s recently-expanded family in Manchester. It’s almost October, so the leaves up in the mountains should be good and peaking by now.

  She’s just as pressed to the window as we drive through Boston as she was when we were in the air. There’s not a whole lot to see from where we’re driving, but she’s fascinated.

  “Just wait,” I tell her.

  Getting out of Boston is a fucking nightmare. If there’s a time of day or night that 1A in Revere isn’t plugged up with traffic, I don’t know what it is, and I doubt Revere residents do, either. The roads don’t loosen up until we get on I-95, which I don’t think any living human has ever said before.

  We take a break for a mid-afternoon snack at Jenness State Park in Rye, New Hampshire, and Talia—brave Southern girl she is—lets the waves wash over her bare feet. Her shocked squeal actually frightens a seagull into flight and I’m laughing so hard I can barely stand up.

  “I hate you,” she says as she runs back up the beach to me. “It’s September, why is it so fucking cold?”

  “Because you’re almost in Maine, cupcake.”

  She makes an exasperated sound and I don’t know if it’s at me or water or the latitude, but I’m still laughing and I can’t think about anything except how much I love her. We rinse our feet off and put our shoes on and sit on the boardwalk while the sun warms her back up. She’s tucked up under my arm, her head on my chest, her legs crossed on the bench, her fingers playing with the hem of my shirt. I know she’s thinking about something, and she might tell me if I’m patient enough, so I kiss the top of her head and close my eyes and let the salt wind pin her against me, let the sun soften our edges until we’re inseparable.

  She says, “Sean?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “I love you.”

  I kiss her head again, the wind tangling her hair, whipping its sharp ends into my skin. “I love you, too.”

  “Thanks for bringing me up here.”

  “You’re welcome,” I say. “Anything for you, cupcake.”

  “But you know that don’t tell the Southerner the ocean’s cold thing only works once, right?”

  “I know. You should have seen your face, though.”

  She pulls away from me, looking positively betrayed. “Rude.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, and even I can hear how not-sorry I sound. “Was it uncomfortable? Should I add the beach to your list of limits?”

  Her cheeks flush, and she covers her face, and I will never get over this. I will never get over her shyness or her boldness, her sweetness or her sharpness, her hunger or confidence or depravity, her joy or wonder or goodness. I pull her hands away from her eyes and the way she’s looking at me is—so much, too much, and I lean forward and pull her to me and I kiss her because I don’t know how to talk about the enormity of what I feel. And not just right now, but all the time.

  I pull back from her and brush the hair out her face and she’s just looking at me with sleepy eyes and wet lips and I just—Christ.

  “Let’s head back to the car,” I say.

  “Why?” Her voice comes out hoarse, ragged on the edges. Probably for the same reason mine does.

  “Because,” I say, “if we don’t, I’m going to start doing unspeakable things to you, and I don’t know which is worse to deal with—cops or sand in unmentionable places.”

  She bursts out laughing, leaning against me, and the sure weight of her isn’t making this any easier. “Fine, fine,” she says, play-exasperated, and makes a big show of unfolding herself and standing up. She’s wearing an old t-shirt from a softball team she hasn’t been on in probably six years, and I don’t know, maybe she got it too big, because it fits her way too well now. Black leggings and tall brown boots. She’s all covered up but she’s managed to evoke this image of half-dressed, freshly awake, coitus interruptus, and I just want to tear her apart.

  Instead, I say, “Hop to, cupcake,” and we get back in the car and get back on 95 and my hand’s on her thigh but I’m back in control again.

  Until: “Sean?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Sure, baby. Anything.”

  Hesitation. I glance away from the road, over at her. Her hands are pressed together, palm to palm, between her thighs. She’s not looking at me. She’s nervous.

  That’s okay.

  I say, “Was that a prelude to an actual question, or are you just asking for statistical purposes?”

  She snorts, and we look at each other at the same time, just a second, just what I can spare from the road. She turns back to the windshield, too, but she’s relaxed a little. Her hands are on her lap now, instead of squeezed between her knees.

  “Yes, it was a prelude to an actual question,” she says. “You big jerk.”

  “Jerk? Me?”

  I can’t see it, but I know she rolls her eyes. I know her reactions and her mannerisms and her habits and her tics. I know her movements and her moods. I know her, and the knowledge feels like being soaked through by the sun.

  “My question was,” she says, with great exaggeration and also great stalling, “if you’ve ever—you know. Been on the receiving e
nd.”

  “The receiving end of what?”

  “You know what.”

  “I don’t, actually.” I do.

  She probably rolls her eyes again; her palms flatten together and slide back between her knees. It’s likely she doesn’t even notice herself doing it. “The stuff—you know. That we do.”

  “Pretty sure I never even called my own father Daddy.”

  She barks out a laugh and covers her face. “Oh my God, Sean. That is—that is not what I meant.”

  I don’t try to hide my smile. I love her laugh, Jesus. Especially when I can coax it out when she’s quietly worrying about stuff she shouldn’t be worrying about. “Then what did you mean?”

  “You know, the—impact stuff.”

  I glance over at her, and her hand’s at her mouth, so I reach over and pull it away. “Why are you nervous about asking me this?”

  She shrugs. “I mean, it’s pretty personal, isn’t it?”

  “Incredibly, yes.”

  “You don’t have to answer.”

  “I know that,” I say. “But I don’t ever want to hide anything from you.”

  “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” she says.

  “I’m not.” I squeeze her thigh. “The answer is yes. A couple of times.”

  Silence, and then, “WHAT. ARE YOU SERIOUS.”

  I glance over at her, and she’s staring open-mouthed at me. “Yes.”

  “TELL ME EVERYTHING.”

  I snort out a laugh. “Lower your voice, cupcake.”

  All her words are jammed together when she whispers, “Sean-oh-my-gosh-tell-me-everything.”

  “I have a lot more limits than you do.”

  “Like what?”

  I cut my eyes at her; she’s lit up like a kid on Christmas. “Blood, bathroom, kids, obviously. I won’t let anyone take me over a knee. I won’t be bound in any way I can’t get out if I want to. I’m not academically opposed to being blindfolded, but I wasn’t comfortable with any of the people I played with doing it.” I smile. “Why are you so interested in this?”

  “Why am I so—seriously?”

  I shrug. “Yeah.”

  “Because I literally cannot imagine you letting someone top you.”

  I couldn’t either, for a long time. And even still…it’s a very particular set of circumstances that let me imagine it now. “No? Nowhere in that dirty little brain of yours?”

  “Well.”

  I snort. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Listen,” she says, laughing, “whatever, man. I don’t know, I guess I can buy once? Intellectual curiosity, and all that. But more than once—that means you liked it.”

  “There’s some stuff I like about it, yeah.”

  “Like what?”

  I rest one elbow against the door and run my hand over my beard, then shrug. “I like knowing my self-control is solid. Because I won’t let anyone actually bind me, it means I can, at any time, do what I want. So I like to know that when I tell myself not to do something that I won’t do it, no matter the temptation. And I like the—I like ferocity. I like a fight. You know that. I like biting. I like being bitten.” I glance at Talia, and she looks like she’s about to explode, panties first. My mouth curls into a little smirk. “There’s something to be said for sensory play, you know. And my coarse man-hide can take it a little rougher than most.”

  “Whew,” she says, laughing a little. I can hear it—in her voice, in her laugh—she’s turned on. And I can’t really do anything about it for another hundred and twenty miles. So if I can’t make it better, I might as well make it worse.

  So I say, “Does that do something for you?”

  “Well, yeah,” she says, like, duh.

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No?”

  A glance over at her shows me her scrunched-up nose. She’s so fucking cute. “Well—it doesn’t make sense, does it?”

  “What doesn’t make sense?”

  “That obviously I like it when you’re in charge,” she says. “And obviously I like not being in charge.”

  “Likes aren’t absolutes,” I remind her.

  “Sure,” she says, “but—”

  She stops, like she’s trying to formulate the rest of her sentence but can’t quite figure out what she’s trying to say.

  “You’re allowed to think both dominant and submissive men are attractive,” I say.

  “Well, obviously,” she says. “But I don’t, really.”

  “But you’re into the idea of me taking a beating.”

  She coughs out a nervous laugh. “Yeah,” she says. “Really weirdly into it.”

  “And you don’t know why?”

  “I mean, I feel like you’d be pretty, uh—pretty mad about it.”

  I lift my eyebrows. “You like it when I’m mad?”

  “Well, no. Not—not really. I mean, kind of. Not like actually angry. I don’t like that at all. But when you’re—you know. Looming.”

  “I loom?”

  She laughs. “Oh my God, Sean. You’re basically always looming. But sometimes you’re like, capital-L looming, and that’s hot.”

  “Do you think I’d be able to loom if someone was flogging me?”

  “Without question,” she says. “Not only would you be able to loom, you would definitely be looming. The whole time.”

  “Explain that to me,” I say, because I think she’s coming from the right place, and I’m really interested to see where this conversation ends up.

  “Because you’d be mad you weren’t the boss,” she says. “You’d be mad that someone was telling you what to do. But you’d do it because you said you would. And you’d be mad about it. So you’d probably have this so help me when I’m allowed to move again look on your face the whole time. You’d probably lose count of the lashings because you’d be too busy plotting your retaliation.”

  I’m smiling because she is, in fact, very good at this.

  She sees it. “What are you grinning about?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Nothing,” she muses. “Of course not. What about nicknames? You let people call you by a pet name while you’re fake-tied up?”

  I snort. “Fake-tied up. No. I mean—I’m not against it, but no one’s done it. Why? You want to call me something besides Daddy?”

  “Well, I’m not going to call you Daddy if I’m the one holding the horse whip.”

  I cut my eyes over to her. Her chin’s higher than usual, her eyebrows arched in defiance. She’s so beautiful, so fucking perfect. “The nagaika isn’t on the list of things I’d let you use on me.”

  “Why not? Does it hurt too much?”

  “Watch yourself, little miss. Don’t let your mouth get your ass in trouble.”

  She folds her arms. “So tell me why not, then.”

  “Because it’s dangerous,” I say. “It’s a weapon. That’s the thing you have to remember. All that stuff. It’s all dangerous. I’m not going to let you use anything on me before I’ve shown you how to use it, and I feel good about you using it. No one should let someone beat them who doesn’t know what they’re doing or how to handle the implement they’re wielding.”

  “What would you let me use on you?”

  “Right this second?”

  “Yeah, right now,” she says, and she uncrosses her arms. Shifts in her seat. “If you pulled off the interstate right now, and you got on your knees in front of me, what would you let me do to you?”

  Well, shit. This wasn’t exactly what I was planning on, and she’s not the only one who needs to adjust their seat. “I, uh—” I have to clear my throat, and there’s no way she doesn’t know now. “I wouldn’t let you use any thing on me, not without knowing you know how to handle it. I don’t want your learning curve to involve me pissing blood.”

  She snorts a laugh. “Fair. But you didn’t answer the question.”

  This girl. Jesus. “We’d negotiate limits, and then I’d
give you an hour to do whatever you wanted.”

  Silence, save the hum of the highway.

  Then: “An hour, huh?”

  I chuckle. “I should have started with thirty minutes, you little sadist.” But honestly, my heart is hammering and my mouth is dry and I’m…nervous? No. Excited. Anticipatory.

  Not nervous.

  “Yeah,” she says, and her voice is different—languid. Arrogant. It sounds like mine. “Plenty you can do in thirty minutes. An hour just seems like you’re asking for it.”

  “Careful,” I say. “We haven’t negotiated anything, and I haven’t agreed to anything.”

  “So let’s negotiate,” she says.

  But when I say, “Okay,” I swear she shrinks a little in her seat, just an inch, just for a second.

  Pay attention, I want to tell her. Come find out what happens when little girls get their bluff called.

  “No blood, bathroom, kids,” I say, tapping my fingers against the steering wheel to count. “No food, no booze, no fire, no implements, no OTK spanking, no restraints I can’t free myself from in fifteen seconds or less.” I glance over at her, and she’s listening, eyebrows peaked. “There’s a lot on the list, so you probably want to take notes.”

  She rolls her eyes but pulls her phone out to tap the list out. “Sorry, what was the time limit on restraints?”

  “Fifteen seconds.”

  “That’s specific.”

  “I worry about the house burning down.”

  “But fifteen seconds?”

  “You don’t have to stick around and let me out,” I tell her. “You can get out of the house in fifteen seconds. I’ll be right behind you.”

  She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t leave you.”

  “You would if I told you to. Add that to your list—fire, natural disasters, break-in or other emergency, or act of God, summarily ends the hour, no questions asked, and I’m back in charge.”

  “Act of God,” she mutters. “Should I have someone draw up a contract?”

  “Do you think we need one?”

  She shakes her head, but I can hear her laughing quietly. “All right, control freak. No, we don’t need one. Anything else?”

  “I said no food?”

  “You said no food. You’re really adamant about this no food thing.”