Slow Surrender

by Cecilia Tan

  “Again, Karina?”

  “Please! Oh God, yes, please!” I was squeezing his fingers with everything I had and I rocked my hips forward.

  And then he fucked me with his fingers and a deep pulse of an orgasm rippled through me, getting stronger with each thrust of his hand, until I cried out again, pressing my head back against the door of the car. All I could feel was pleasure, expanding outward like a sun going nova. I went limp. He sat back and pulled his hand away softly, and I saw he had the Ben Wa ball hooked in his two fingers. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped his face and mouth with it, then the marble and his fingers, and then handed the cloth to me. I wiped up as best I could.

  The car came to a stop, and with a jolt I realized we were outside my building again. “Wow,” I said. “Good timing.”

  He chuckled. “Give yourself a minute if you need to.”

  “That’s a good idea because I think that orgasm turned my legs to jelly. And it’s not easy to walk on jelly.”

  He laughed again. “No, indeed.”

  I picked up the skirt. “Oh jeez, I’m going to have to wash this. Well, she knew I was wearing it on a date, anyway.”

  “She being your roommate?”

  “Yes, it’s hers. I borrowed it.”

  He cocked his head. “Were you unable to find a suitable skirt at the store?”

  “Oh, I never got to one. I asked Becky where the best thrift stores were and…” I trailed off as I realized how sharp his gaze was. “Oh no, I didn’t do what I was told. Is that what it is?”

  He nodded slowly. “That is exactly what it is.”

  I knew I was in trouble, but for some reason I couldn’t stop smiling. Maybe because I’d had the best orgasm of my life.

  He rubbed his chin. “Hmm. You’ll have to be punished. Are you available Wednesday night?”

  His seriousness finally sobered me, and I began to wonder what the punishment would be. “Yes. Yes, I’m free Wednesday.”

  He pulled a business card from inside his jacket, wrote something on the back of it with an expensive-looking pen, and handed it to me. I saw an address on the Upper East Side, Suite 324, and nothing else. “Eight o’clock sharp. Be late and the penalty will double. Wear whatever you like. You won’t be in it long.”

  I swallowed, hating the feeling that I’d disappointed him. “I’m sorr—”

  He cut off my apology with a flat hand to my lips. “No apologies are necessary, my sweet. You will make it up to me entirely on Wednesday. And I look forward to it.”

  “Oh.” For some reason that made it feel quite different. I mean, I was in trouble, but it wasn’t like he hated me for getting it wrong. In fact, I had the feeling he was holding in a smile. “Oh, then so do I.” My own smile crept back a little.

  “Good girl. Now, I think getting back into that skirt in the car is a challenge not worth attempting.” He took several things out of his jacket pocket and set them aside, then slipped the jacket off. His shoulders looked lean and sculpted through his dress shirt, and I wanted to slide the shirt off and run my hands over his skin. “Here.”

  He wrapped me in the jacket and then knocked on the window. The driver got out and came around to open my door. I looked back at my date, the warmth of his body inside the jacket enveloping me.

  “Good night,” he said as I exited the car. “I enjoyed myself thoroughly tonight.”

  I leaned back in slightly. “What do I have to do to earn a good night kiss?”

  He laughed again, a laugh that sounded like I’d surprised him. “Just lean over a little farther.”

  His lips met mine firmly, deliciously, like one small bite from a bursting ripe fruit, and then he pulled back. He sucked in a breath and quite suddenly the driver ushered me away from the car.

  The driver accompanied me to the door while I fumbled for my keys. “Listen,” he said, and I nearly jumped. I hadn’t been expecting him to speak. “Be careful.”

  “Careful about what?” I whispered back as I found the right key at last.

  “Hurt him and you’ll have a lot to answer for,” he said.

  It was yet another thing that was completely backward from what I expected. “Wait, me hurt him?”

  “Just be careful,” he repeated, then stepped away as I turned the key in the lock and went inside.

  As if that weren’t enough like something out of a spy movie, as I reached the elevator, a text came through on my phone. I checked it while waiting, wondering if I’d left something in the car. The message was from him and read, When we are alone, call me James.

  When I got upstairs, I was carrying the damp skirt in one hand and I still had his tie bound around the other, I was wearing his jacket buttoned shut, and the heel broke off one of the pumps as I tried to hurry down the hall from the elevator to the apartment. Becks took one look at me as I limped to the couch and collapsed there, and then we both burst out laughing.

  “Would you say you had a good time?” she asked with a touch of skepticism.

  “Yes! I would say I had a good time.” I held up the bound wrist. “Could you help me with this? Um, and sorry about your skirt. It’s kind of soiled.”

  She sat down next to me on the futon and picked at the pale green and silver necktie until it came loose. “But you had a good time.”

  “Yes. I had a great time,” I said, putting the emphasis on great. “That is, he was extremely good to me. We had a fancy dinner and then, well, then some kinky action in the limo on the way back here.”

  Becky’s skepticism deepened.

  “It’s not what you think!”

  “What do I think?”

  “You know, that he’s treating me like a whore and just trying to get his rocks off.”

  “He’s not?”

  “He hasn’t even let me touch him below the waist yet. Well, except once, accidentally.” I didn’t tell her it was with my face. “I know he’s hot for me. He just…when I’m with him, all the attention is on me. It’s all about my needs, my desires. I’m the one who gets off. He said I’m going to have to earn the privilege of his cock.” I could barely say it without giggling. No, that’s a lie. Once Becky started giggling, I did, too. I know, we were twenty-six, not six, but you wouldn’t know it at that moment. We’d both had pretty sheltered upbringings.

  “So he’s like a big-time BDSM dom, then?” she asked when the giggles subsided.

  “Maybe? I don’t know that much about it,” I admitted.

  “Well, do you call him master?” She wrinkled her nose at this new mystery.

  “No.”

  “Daddy?”

  “Definitely not!” I remembered his halfhearted suggestion of it. “Nothing like that.”

  “You said you were playing the part of sleazy secretary.”

  “For about five minutes,” I said. I wondered about the name James. Was it his real name or an alias? “Role-playing doesn’t stick with us.”

  “That isn’t like any BDSM I’ve ever heard.” She stood up and got her laptop from the tiny kitchen counter.

  “Becks, don’t do a Google search on BDSM right now. Please. All I can tell you is, it’s complicated but feels right.” I took a longer look at her now that she sat in the one armchair we had in the living room/bedroom. She was in electric-blue spandex tights and an oversized shirt with the British flag lined with sequins. It looked like she had been wearing blue mascara and scrubbed it off only partially. “So where have you been lately? You said you’d fill me in.”

  She looked up from the computer, which added a bluish glow to her face. “Oh yeah, I finally met some other Lord’s Ladies right here in the city! I was kind of afraid to meet them at first, but it turns out they’re not weird at all. They’re really nice.”

  My impression of them from that night at the bar hadn’t been so nice, but I was sure Becky had found the good ones. “Are the fan clubs going to keep going now that the guy is retired?”

  “Well, see, that’s what I wondered. I read about some gr
oups that were having their last meet-ups the day of the concert, but of course that turned into like a three-day party. The women I met took me over to a scholarly conference where people were presenting pop culture analyses, and then we went to someone’s loft and…what I’m trying to say is that the fan clubs will keep going. In December there’s going to be a release of the concert film and a conceptual film and documentary to go with it. People are so excited for that!”

  I yawned. I’d missed part of what she said. “Wait, why are people so psyched for this documentary?”

  “Because he’s always been so secretive! No one knows his real identity, like a superhero or something. You know how he always wears a mask or is heavily made up on stage and in his videos? And the concert film, they’re going to do it as a theatrical release, so that’ll be huge. And people aren’t done talking about him.” She closed the laptop and hugged it to her chest. “It means I’m not too late! I thought maybe I was but I’m not!”

  “That’s awesome, Becks. I’m so glad for you.”

  “I’m thinking of changing my dissertation topic, in fact.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. This is what came to me while listening to his last album a few days ago. While tipsy.” She blushed at that admission, which I thought was cute. Becky didn’t have any tolerance for alcohol. “The entire thing can be interpreted as representative of a feminist utopia.”

  I yawned again. “Becks, I think I’m too tired to wrap my brain around how a bunch of pop songs by a white male billionaire equate to feminist utopia.”

  “Okay. I’m going to bed now, too. I’ll explain it to you over breakfast and see if it makes sense then.” She bobbed up. “Good night!” She went into her room. I could hear her singing along to her MP3 player as she got ready for bed.

  I popped into the bathroom to do my bedtime regimen and then stumbled back out to the futon. I was too tired to flatten it out into a bed, so I just fluffed my pillow and lay down with my back against it, like lying across a car seat. I kept the jacket on, wrapped around me, surrounded by his scent. She was right. The way he talked didn’t sound like any BDSM how-to article I’d ever seen on the Internet. They were all about how to tie people up safely and master/slave contract negotiations. What we had was a lot simpler than a contract, wasn’t it? It was only a couple of rules. By following them, we could express our interest in each other, as well as desire, respect, and loyalty. I couldn’t care less whether he measured up to some bogus online standard or not. I swallowed, a deep thrill running through me as I remembered the next time I saw him would be to make it up to him. To take my punishment, whatever that would be. Spanking? Flogging? Something else? I slipped easily into vivid dreams of his arms around me, his hands seeking my soft places, for both pleasure and pain.

  Six: Just Be Still

  I almost didn’t go. By the time Wednesday came, I had done the following: researched sexual harassment cases at the university, hidden in the apartment the whole day afterward, called Jill to tell her about it, chickened out and didn’t tell her anything about Renault, and gone to my part-time job working in the alumni relations office.

  The university website had very clear information on how an employee of the school should report sexual harassment, but almost nothing about students other than listing lots and lots of places to report it. I could go to the campus police or any one of ten different agencies, but none of them provided any information at all about what “reporting” entailed. Nothing about anonymity, nothing about protection from repercussions or retribution, nothing about how investigations would be conducted or by whom. That was not confidence-inspiring. There were lots of detailed procedures for when the student was the one being charged with any kind of misconduct, but zero about how students could go about charging a faculty member.

  I ended up on the rape crisis center page and found it even more frightening: It sounded like if I didn’t have a semen sample, I was up a creek. Looking at the employee guide didn’t inspire hope, either. If grad students were treated like employees, then I’d first have to schedule an interview with an investigator, then wait 30 days after the interview while they conducted a review, which could be extended for another 30 days if inconclusive. Ugh. By 30 days from now, I’d have missed my window to file for graduation. And really, what would the investigator find? I’d say Renault made inappropriate comments, and he’d say he didn’t. I’d say he threw out my thesis, he’d say it was no good. I’d be right back where I was, with no leg to stand on and needing another semester of thesis seminar credits to graduate.

  You can see why I hid for a whole day after reading all that. I imagined the procedures could easily be more victimizing than the original comments.

  I finally decided to call Jill. My sister was a take-no-nonsense sort. I really didn’t feel comfortable talking to her about this kind of thing, but I at least got up the courage to dial her phone number. Becky was out. I sat on the one rickety stool we had in the kitchen, at the end of the tiny countertop, and put the phone to my ear.

  “Jill Casper,” my sister answered. I could hear the sound of something metal banging into something else in the background: kitchen noises.

  “Jill, it’s me.”

  “Oh, hey, Karina, calling for your job back?”

  “Hah, you wish.”

  “No, seriously, where the hell did you run off to the other night? The only reason I didn’t worry is Luis told me you came in the next day when I wasn’t here to pick up your envelope. I worry when people flake out, you know.” By people she meant our brother. Troy was a stoner who sometimes got so high he forgot the day of the week. He hadn’t lasted a month working for Jill before he moved out West.

  “No, nothing like that. I just got fed up and I’ve got a lot to do,” I said.

  “Well, Mom’s worried about you, anyway.”

  “Oh no, tell me you didn’t rat me out to her.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call it ‘ratted out…’”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing, really. All I do is deflect her from obsessing over me by talking about you,” she said.

  “So she obsesses over me instead!”

  “Of course she does. Come on, Karina, you’re her one real girl-child. She dreams about that church wedding in June. Your dyke big sister here isn’t going to wear her wedding dress, and Troy sure as hell isn’t either.”

  “Where is he now? Still in Boulder?”

  “He’s beach-bumming in Santa Cruz, at least according to his Facebook. The cell phone number I had for him in Colorado is dead, but at least I know he’s not.” She must’ve shrugged; something made the phone crackle. “Seriously, Karina, you know what Mom wants, but it doesn’t have to be what you want. She wants you to have the perfect man because she doesn’t. You have to learn to ignore it.”

  “Ugh, that isn’t even it,” I said. “She wants me to be perfect, because if I were, that’s how I’d get the perfect man. Except her stupid definition of me being perfect is having the right man! It’s like nothing I do matters unless I have a man. What happens if I don’t want a man?”

  “That’s the argument I’ve been having with her since I came out, sweetie pie.”

  “Okay, okay, you win. But you know what? I bet even if I do get married, she still won’t be happy.”

  “Well, duh, I know that and you know that, but Mom doesn’t. We can’t make her happy, Kar’. The best we can do is try to make ourselves happy and hope she comes around to seeing what’s good in our lives. Speaking of which, I’m thinking about popping the question to Pauline.”

  “No way! You’ve been together how long? Two years?”

  “It’ll be our third anniversary. I’m saving up for the ring. I’m thinking I’ll take her out to dinner for our anniversary and then do it in a horse carriage ride through Central Park.”

  “Fairy-tale style!” I hopped off the stool and gave a little twirl. “Oh, you have to make me a bridesmaid then! Oh, except wait,
are you the groom in this case?”

  Jill’s laugh was low and slow. “We’ll figure it out. For all I know, Pauli will want to wear a tux, too. We’ll have some of each kind of attendant maybe. I’ve got a couple months of saving up to do first anyway, and…let’s not count our chickens before they hatch, okay? You’re the only person I’ve told.”

  “Oh my God, Jill, that’s so exciting! Wait, you haven’t told Mom?”

  “I haven’t told Mom.” She lapsed into a worried silence.

  “You don’t think she’d approve?”

  “I’m not sure. She made some comments last Christmas—I don’t even think she knew I could hear—saying things like same-sex marriage is a travesty, a parody of the real thing. I don’t know. She might have been just talking to talk, though, you know? Trying to say what she thinks people want to hear.”

  “She does that. She might not have really meant it,” I said, though my heart was breaking a little. I’d never heard Jill sound so nervous before. This must really mean a lot to her.

  “I want to ask you a favor.”

  “What kind of a favor?”

  “I want you to feel her out about the issue. Try to find out what she actually thinks.”

  I groaned.

  “It doesn’t have to be right away. We’ve got time.”

  “Jill—”

  “You’re the one on her good side, so you—”

  “I am not on her good side! Everything I do is wrong as far as she’s concerned!”

  “Karina, please. You’re the only one who has a chance at this.”

  She was right. And it wasn’t like I’d have trouble bringing up the subject since my love life and marriage were my mother’s two favorite topics when she spoke to me. “All right. I’ll try to see if I can get it to come up in conversation in a couple of weeks. I’ll have to be super casual about it or she’s going to guess.”

  “Crap. I know. It’s just that if we’re going to go through with it, I need to know how she feels.”

  “Look, if you’re going to marry Pauline, you have to do it for you and her, not Mom. Aren’t you the one who not five minutes ago told me to ignore her?”