I drop the pizza box and a small stack of napkins on the little table next to Lachlan. He flips open the lid and grabs himself a big slice and folds it half.
As soon as he finishes his first bite, he starts in on me. “What the fuck was that 'can't wait' bit on the phone?”
“It's a long story…” But it’s an opening. I’d spent the whole time between leaving Violet’s office and arriving here trying to think of a good way to broach the subject.
“I’ve got plenty of time. The PM is in a supper meeting with the speaker. Some shit went down in the House of Commons today and, well…it’s going to take a while.”
Wolfing down a slice of pizza, I gather my thoughts, then launch into my pathetic tale of woe.
By the time I’m done, Lachlan is howling with laughter. "How did you not realize sooner that she wasn't a call girl?"
Fuck this noise. That's all the help he can give me? The gloves are off and I come out swinging. “I don't even know why I'm talking to you about this. You can't even get your shit together with Beth.”
Lachlan’s eyes darken. “You’re right, I can’t. But this isn’t about me. What exactly is going on with you, Max?”
“I just told you. Then you laughed.”
“No, you gave me a chronology of events. What’s going on with you? You’re a guy who literally goes from regularly outsourcing his sexual gratification to only being interested in one woman overnight—faithful, even. You’ve broken rules for her. Why?”
That’s the fucking question I’ve been somewhat successfully avoiding for the last three months. “Damnit, Lachlan, I came for some simple dating advice, not therapy from an armchair psychologist.”
“If you were truly looking for simple dating advice, you’d have consulted the internet. It’s jam-packed with information, and you’re a fucking rock star when it comes to research.”
"I'm pretty sure it's normal to be attracted to a woman and want to spend more time with her."
"With all due respect, when have you ever been normal?"
I reach for another piece of pizza. Violet ate all the bread, and green beans and chicken medallions have never filled me up. "Now's as good a time as any to give it a go."
“That may be, but until you understand where it’s coming from, and why, are you going to be able to do the right thing when you get the girl?"
I stare at him. I hadn't thought that far ahead. Get the girl? I just want another night with her. Or two. Three sounds pretty good, too.
The truth is, that night with Violet had been incredible. At first, I'd just been reluctant to overwrite that experience with another. And then the dreams started.
"I can't get her out of my head," I finally say, less cocky now. "I think about her all the time. And I know that's not normal, I know it's some kind of crush. But it's taken over and I need to get my life back under control."
Lachlan shakes his head. "That sounds like your problem, not hers. Figure out what you can do for her, and then you'll know what to do."
"Is that your plan with Beth?"
He gives me another hard look. "Yeah. I haven't figured out what I can do for her yet. And don't give me some bullshit pat answer about taking her over my knee, you fucking sadist. Real life is more complicated than that."
Exactly why I've avoided it as much as possible my entire adult life.
The conversation with Lachlan has me more worked up, not less. Maybe I should have turned to the internet for advice. I can just see my post on Fetlife now…or not.
Fuck!
I need new friends, at least on the advice front. Gavin is Mr. Moonlight-and-Roses and Lachlan is channelling Sigmund Fucking Freud. I briefly consider turning to Tate Nilsson for help, because every time we've played hockey together we've found yet another shared thing in common, but he’s probably even more ill-equipped than I am when it comes to matters of the heart. And I'm pretty sure he's on an away-game road trip right now. Can't call him up and ruin his NHL hockey game with my love life problems.
Love life problems?
I need to keep this focused.
I've got kink life problems. As in, I no longer have a kink life because I'm being fucking mopey about a love life I don't have, either.
Something needs to change. I grab a beer and head down to the playroom I’ve been setting up in my new house. There’s still plenty to do before I’m ready to host my first party—because when your best friend is the prime minister, you can't very well hit up a sex club. So you bring the sex club to you. I had a great reputation for hosting private parties in Vancouver and I'm looking forward to resuming that tradition here in Ottawa.
And maybe some manual labour will help take my mind off Violet.
The yellow pages don’t tend to list anything in the way of kink-friendly inter-provincial movers, so all the pieces of my playroom furniture—moved by regular movers, with labels like 'bookshelf' and 'coat rack'—are sitting in a corner awaiting reassembly.
Rather than put all the furniture together in one spot, then move them, I decide it’s better to assemble them in their final resting places.
I already know how the room will be laid out, so it’s just a matter of shifting shit. I start with the Saint Andrew’s cross because there’s not much to it and it’ll be a quick easy job.
Mistake. My mind is filled with visions of Violet strapped to it while I work her body over, turning her pale skin all the shades of pink and red.
My cock swells and I’m struggling with overwhelming need. Need to fuck. Need to dominate. Need to lash out and be rewarded with a cry, a scream, or best yet, a muffled whimper.
Need for Violet.
I spot my cane bag propped up against a bunch of moving boxes innocently labelled Rec Room. I haven’t opened it since before that night with Violet. I’m woefully out of practice and my fingers suddenly itch to play with the contents.
Need for Violet, whimpering from my marks.
Abandoning the cross assembly, I stalk across the room to snag the case. I unzip the top and spill my collection of canes over the glass coffee table.
My favourite is the old-school rattan cane with a curved handle. I pick it up and slice the air with it a few times. Now I’m imagining Violet in a short tartan skirt and a white blouse with only the bottom half of the buttons fastened. White knee-highs and black high-heel Mary-Janes complete the outfit. I place a folded blanket over the arm of the leather chesterfield and order fantasy Violet to bend over it.
The hem of her skirt barely covers the upper half of her naked buttocks, revealing smooth creamy skin, perfect for decorating with pretty red welts.
Months of pent-up energy and frustration have me wanting to put everything I have behind each cane stroke—hold nothing back. But I know I’m better than that, even in my fantasies. Especially in my fantasies, because they’re more rehearsals for scenes I want to play out in real life.
With a steady rhythm, I bounce the cane all over her ass. Gently at first, then slowly working up the intensity until finally, I lay a nice firm stroke in that sensitive spot where her thighs and buttocks meet.
She yelps more from surprise than pain. I go back to the gentle bounce and when the mood strikes me, I snap my wrist. Violet lets out another yelp, and a beautiful red stripe appears across the fullest part of her ass.
My cock strains against my trousers as I continue leaving my marks all over Violet’s ass. Her control falls apart and she starts to shake, even though she's trying so hard to hold still for me. It isn’t until I reach the end of the caning that my fantasy completely crumbles.
I can't toss the cane aside and slide into her wet, clutching pussy. I can't fuck her cunt until she's crying for an entirely different reason, because I won't let her stop coming.
This is why I need her.
I've had the real thing.
Violet's special, and it has nothing to do with fucking. It’s easy enough to imagine the arm of the sofa as Violet’s ass, but now I want to hold her in my arms, and
for that, only the real Violet will do.
7
Violet
I eat Max’s chocolates all week.
I didn’t want to, at first. I thought about sending them back to him, but that would be a waste of incredibly good chocolate.
Plus they confused me, and I don’t like to leave a puzzle unsolved.
Max isn’t a chocolates kind of guy, I’m sure of it to my core. He’s more of a, “hey, that was a great fuck, here’s a thousand dollar tip,” kind of guy.
I think.
Who knows, maybe he’s both.
The last truffle disappears early Friday morning after a particularly stressful deposition that ended abruptly. I track the billable hour-and-three-quarters with one hand as I lick the salted dark chocolate off the fingers of the other.
Multi-tasking.
I glance at the clock. I have fifteen minutes before the staff meeting. I grab another file from my desk, one that I know has a phone call waiting to happen, and squeeze that in.
When William Novak starts talking about contemporaneous billing as the focus of the staff meeting—because apparently some people, who aren’t me, need a reminder—I get to mentally check out for a bit and think about Max.
I mean, that chocolate.
Not Max.
Okay, daydreaming was a mistake. I grind the tip of my pen into my notepad and try to force myself to pay attention to the meeting. He’s still talking about tracking hours as we do the work. For serious? I can’t handle this.
More chocolates, I scribble on the notepad.
I tap the page and add Kale below that to even out the healthiness of my shopping list.
Apples
Celery
Peppers
Chicken Breasts
Muffins
Zucchini
Secret second stash of Chocolate
Then I cross out both lines of chocolate, because I don’t need them. And everything else I can get at the farmer’s market tomorrow.
Ottawa has a bunch of options for farmer’s markets, including a permanent indoor market that’s open year round. I prefer the outdoor market in the east end, and thanks to the quickly approaching winter season, this is the last weekend it’s open.
It’s held in the parking lot of a popular rec centre. This time last year the lot was jam-packed with beer league hockey players, but I guess that’s starting later this season, as the crowd outside is mostly the regular farmer’s market people.
I hit the coffee stand first, because it’s kind of chilly, then do a lazy loop up and down the row of vendors. I’ve got my list, but sometimes it’s nice to see what people have on sale. I pick up a bag of gourds to decorate my kitchen table, then grab all the vegetables I wanted.
I’m at my favourite baker’s stall when I notice two sedans pull around to the front of the arena. Big ones. Black.
You know that moment when you know something? This is one of those moments. I know those are the prime minister’s cars. Well one of them. The other would be for his security detail.
I work two blocks from Parliament Hill. I’ve seen those cars before, although I haven’t yet seen our new leader with my own eyes.
I suspect that’s about to change.
The woman working the stall twists around, following my gaze. She’s probably thinking something about Gavin Strong.
I’m not. I’m thinking about his best friend.
He’s got the ear of the prime minister. I’ve thought about that revelation ever since Max came in to our office.
And now the PM is right there, coming out of the arena.
This explains why the lot is mostly empty.
It also makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up and my throat to close tight, because what if Max is inside the arena?
I should leave, just in case.
I watch as the nation’s leader exchanges a joke and a quick smile with his driver and a member of his security team before disappearing into the back of the lead car.
I drag my attention back to the vendor in front of me, now patiently waiting for me to pick which muffins I want.
“He’s pretty cute,” she says with a wink. Or maybe she's waiting for me to finish drooling.
Not as cute as his best friend, my traitorous heart whispers, because Max isn’t cute, exactly. He’s scary and intense and fiercely good-looking if we’re being specific. And the prime minister is cute, in that boy next door kind of way. I nod. “Maybe I’ll take six of those apple walnut muffins?”
“Sounds good.” She boxes them up and I hand over a ten dollar bill. “Did you see the rock he gave his fiancée?”
I did. I shamelessly read pretty much every article about Ellie Montague. Between the two of them, I probably have a bigger crush on her, although I respect the PM and am glad I voted for him even though he didn’t have a huge amount of experience.
But his girlfriend—now his fiancée—just blows me away. She’s a graduate student at one of the universities here in Ottawa, and she seems so down-to-earth and real. And smart.
Plus she puts up with a high-profile relationship even though it’s really clear that would never be her first choice, because she’s head over heels in love. And despite my jaded post-divorce cynicism, I’m a romantic at heart.
I have to believe in true love—because I walked away from a marriage that was really just a good friendship, and then in the end, not very good at all. If true love doesn’t exist, that was one hell of a risky call.
But I’d rather be alone than settling for something just good enough. Settling for nice and safe, if lonely.
Because not once since I left Toronto and left my ex-husband have I ever felt as alone as I did inside our marriage.
I’ll never put myself through that again. True love or bust, that’s my new motto. And some serious fun in the meantime, because I’m not going to be celibate. In theory, I’m a big fan of try, try again in that search for the right guy.
That I haven’t managed to bring myself to try again since Max…well, that’s a problem. But not one that’s going to be solved today.
At least I have muffins.
“He’s lucky,” I finally say. I don’t really want to gossip about the PM’s relationship.
“I think she’s the lucky one.” The baker laughs, and just then someone else comes up, giving me an excuse to move on.
The last thing on my shopping list is chicken, so I head down to the end of the row. The butcher has a portable refrigerator in the back of his van, so he’s out in the open, past the row of pop-up tents. I stop there and give him my order.
I look back at the arena. Another guy comes out. Big guy, good-looking, but not Max. Maybe he’s already gone, if he was here.
I try not to be disappointed at that thought.
The last time I saw him, I yelled at him and kicked him out of my office. I drew some serious boundaries and stuck to them even when he pushed me.
Hoping to run into him is beyond foolish. It’s stupid.
And yet when the door swings open again and I see a familiar tall form step out, broad across the shoulders and moving with a confident stride that means so much more to me than it should…my heart leaps.
Yep. Stupid. And yet I still stand there, staring at him, hoping that he’ll feel my attention.
Then a woman comes out behind him, blonde and sporty, and she calls out to him. My heart plummets, which is equally irrational to the leap that preceded it.
He turns and stops. They talk. I go through an entire roller coaster of emotion before landing on the genius idea of hiding. So I take my groceries and dart back into the row of tents.
Of course, I’m heading away from my car, and I’ve already done this lap twice. I stop and buy some honey, just so the vendors don’t think I’m insane, then I decide to go around the back of the entire set up to get back to my car.
That’s where I run right into Max—behind the honey stall.
He stops a few feet short of me.
I keep going, because my feet aren’t listening to my brain, and when I finally skid to a halt, there are just a few inches left between our bodies. My grocery bag whacks into his hockey bag, and he steps back.
“Oh,” I say like an idiot.
“Violet.” His face tightens. He gives me an up and down look, then glances behind me.
What are you doing here would feel like a disingenuous question when I already know he was playing hockey with the PM. And admitting that would mean I’d noticed him and sprinted in the opposite direction. So instead I say nothing, staring at him dumbly. It might lower his estimation of me as an attorney, but it still seems like the safest course of action.
“You were shopping?” It’s in question form because that’s the polite thing to do, but his voice is tight and clipped.
I nod.
“I haven’t seen you here before.” He pointed in the general direction of the arena. “We’ve been playing here every Saturday for a couple weeks now.”
“Hockey?” Of course hockey. It’s an arena, in October. And he’s got a big-ass bag over his shoulder.
And because Max is scary smart, he picks up on my nerves. I can see the moment he realizes I don’t feel in control of this situation. I expect him to press, to push into that pain and make me squirm, but he doesn’t.
That leaves me more unsteady than if he had.
“Yeah. Hockey.” He clears his throat. “I like this market, too.”
“I usually come first thing,” I offer unnecessarily. “Better selection.”
He nods. “I was just going to grab some muffins.”
The apple walnut are all gone. Again, I keep myself from voicing that thought, even though it takes a fair amount of effort. It’s the strangest impulse, this desire to tell him everything.
“Are you leaving?”
I hesitate. “Yes.”
He lifts an eyebrow, and heat pools in my belly. “You aren’t sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m done.” I lift my bag. “I’ve already got my muffins.”
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