Don't Come

by Jessica Gadziala

  "It's been a long night," he agreed, looking across the room toward the clock. "Are you going to get going to get some sleep?"

  "Yeah, that's a good idea," I agreed, turning to move off the side of the bed, clutching my blanket to me like a lifeline as I went to fetch my clothes, doing a dance of trying to slip back into them without exposing myself, something that Nathaniel clearly picked up on because, by the time I was done, he was off the bed with his pants back on, watching me with almost concerned eyes.

  "You sure you're okay?"

  "Yeah," I agreed, giving him another small smile as I handed him the blanket. "Cold," I told him.

  "Want to borrow a jacket?" he asked, motioning toward the one he had been wearing where it was slung over the nightstand.

  I didn't think I could take another thing from him. But I moved toward it, fishing out my clutch and bracelets.

  "No, it's okay. The cab will be warm. It's not a long ride," I insisted as I turned to start walking down the hall, out into the living space, making a beeline for the door, trying to keep it together, trying to remind myself that it was only a couple more minutes.

  "Adley..." he tried again as I got to the door, opening it, and moving outside.

  "Yeah?" I asked, turning, chin as high as it could be with the weight I felt on my shoulders.

  He fumbled for a long moment before shaking his head. "Goodnight."

  "Goodnight, Nathaniel."

  It was goodbye.

  I didn't say it.

  But it was goodbye.

  And I turned and carried myself into the elevator before I let my shoulders slump, my head fall, the burn at my eyes win out, spilling tears down my face.

  Stupid, stupid girl.

  As I reached up to swipe my cheeks, I wanted to be mad at him, I wanted to place blame on him. But that was only because the burden was fully on mine, right where it belonged. And it was hard to shoulder.

  No matter what went down, even the mishap with the collar, it wasn't his fault. He couldn't have been more clear right from the beginning.

  Casual.

  Fun.

  That was it.

  The fact that I could not keep sex and emotion separate, that was all on me.

  "Miss... are you alright?" Richard greeted, face falling from a big smile to a concerned frown.

  "I just need to go," I told him, sniffling indelicately.

  "Okay. Hold on, got a cab right here," he said, rushing to the curb to hail it, then opening the door for me. Quick. Efficient. "A good night of sleep usually helps," he told me in parting as he closed the door.

  I mumbled off my address to the cabbie who had likely seen dozens of women crying in his backseat, so stayed blissfully quiet about it as I sniffled and swatted tears on the short drive back to my apartment building.

  I couldn't get out of the clothes fast enough, stuffing the dress and delicate underthings in the way bottom of my hamper below that one pair of pants that I never wanted to wear anyway and therefore never put in the wash, so they had been sitting there for the better part of half a year.

  The earrings got pulled out, placed back in their box, then left on the counter. Because those, at least, didn't have a tag. I could send them back to him. I would send them back to him. I wouldn't be that girl. That sad, pathetic, heartsick girl who ran her fingers over that one nice gift a guy had given her, wringing her own heart dry over and over instead of getting rid of it, trying to move on from it.

  Besides, he shouldn't be out that kind of money because I changed my mind. Because my heart wouldn't listen to my head. Especially so soon. I maybe wouldn't have felt guilty if this had gone on for a couple more months. But as it was, it was wrong to keep them.

  I took myself into the shower, scrubbing until I knew his scent was off me, though I knew there was no way to get his touch off. It was too deep. I was sure there would be times when I could always feel it.

  Dressed in an oversized sweatshirt and leggings, I climbed into bed, curling up on my side, and letting it out.

  Why did I have to be the way I was?

  Why couldn't I be a perfectly healthy empowered woman who enjoyed casual sex without getting hurt?

  Why couldn't I be a part of a no-strings-attached deal without getting myself all tied up in knots?

  I didn't have the answers to these questions, all I concluded was that I couldn't.

  I couldn't have sex without emotion.

  I couldn't detach Nathaniel, the Dom from Nathaniel, the man.

  And I couldn't change the fact that I had given parts of myself to him that no man had ever gotten to know existed, let alone held in their hands. I gave him my fantasies, my submission, my fears, my exaltations.

  I had given him everything.

  And he had taken care of it.

  But he didn't sign on for the ramifications of those gifts.

  And judging by the way he had taken back the collar after explaining the significance, he had no intentions of dealing with them even if I did share them with him.

  So the only fair thing - for him, and for myself - was to cut the strings I was wrapped in, let myself fall down, learn how to climb back up.

  Let him move on.

  To another girl.

  Another sub who knew the rules, and would play by them.

  God, even just the thought of that sent a shooting pain through my chest, knocking out my air on a sob.

  I wasn't naive, though; that was what would happen.

  After he figured out this was done.

  He would go right back out and find a replacement.

  Because I wasn't irreplaceable.

  That was the whole damn point.

  I was not the exception to the rule.

  If there was one thing every woman should know, it was that. There are exceptions to the rule. But you should always assume you are not it. It saves you years of misunderstandings and crushed dreams and shattered hearts.

  I was not the exception to his rules.

  There was nothing there for me.

  Sex, sure.

  The kind of intimacy that broke me into pieces.

  But it would never be enough for me.

  It would hurt worse each time.

  And I would begin to resent him, blame him, when that wasn't fair.

  So I wasn't going to do that.

  I was going to do the right thing.

  I let myself cry.

  I attempted to get some sleep.

  In the morning, I got up and blocked his number.

  Then I tried, tried to move on.

  ELEVEN

  The Dom Nathaniel

  Three days.

  Three motherfucking days.

  My texts said they failed.

  My calls went right to voicemail.

  For three days.

  I knew it.

  I knew something was fucking wrong in that room. She had been acting too strange, too guarded and distant. But I had convinced myself at the time that she had just had a hell of a night. The club had been a new experience for her. Then I took her home and fucked her ass for the first time.

  I figured maybe she was overwhelmed.

  She needed some sleep and a little space to think things through.

  But I should have known better.

  If there was one thing Adley was after sex, it was soft and sweet. She liked to curl up. She liked to be stroked and talked to. She liked to cuddle in. To her blanket. To me.

  She didn't pull away, put up guards, shut down, make excuses, and walk away.

  That wasn't her.

  And my stupid ass had been too wrapped up with all that had gone down to insist she stay and talk it through.

  It was an amateur move.

  To put myself before her.

  Especially when it came to aftercare.

  And now I was paying for being such a fuck.

  "Boss," Fagan said, coming in for the umpteenth time today to ask questions I was only half paying attention to. "Alright. Are you si
ck?" he asked, making my head shoot up and look over at him. "This is the third cup of coffee that I have brought in that you haven't even touched. Seeing as, normally, you have more caffeine in your veins than blood most days, this is, I believe, a warning sign of some kind of ailment."

  "I'm fine," I dismissed him, shaking my head, pretending to focus on the paperwork he had dropped in front of me this morning that I hadn't even bothered to look over until now.

  "Yeah, okay," he said, dropping down across from me, snapping closed his planner, something he almost never did, so I knew he wasn't going to let this go. "So, I'm assuming you talked to Adley about her collar."

  He was assuming that because he had dragged me away from her to scold me about it at the goddamn party. It was interesting as fuck to be chastened by your goddamn submissive assistant in the middle of a BDSMPA event.

  He wasn't wrong to be pissed at me.

  And I knew we had to have the talk about it.

  "Yes."

  "And?"

  "And what? I told her what they meant, and I took the collar off. And that's it."

  "Except that's not it. Clearly. Since you're off your game and in a pissy ass mood. What the hell do you mean you took her collar off? You mean you both agreed that you weren't ready for that step yet, right? Right?" he asked, eyes going wide when I didn't answer. "Oh, you fuck. You fuck," he said, shaking his head. "You just went and took the fucking thing off her like it was no big deal."

  "It was no big deal. It wasn't supposed to be on her in the first place."

  "Yeah, because I'm sure she looked at it like that."

  "We were casual. That was the agreement."

  "Oh, please. You weren't casual from the first night you took her home. Who the fuck are you trying to convince, me or yourself, boss? We both know this was different. She was different. How you approached her was different."

  "Just because I don't normally take on a novice..."

  "It has nothing to do with the fact that she was untrained. It has everything to do with the fact that you gave her three months of your undivided attention even before she would meet you. It has everything to do with the fact that she clearly threw you off your game if you collared her by accident then didn't immediately remedy the situation. You took her to BDSMPA--"

  "I've taken subs to BDSMPA before," I cut him off, tone almost a little defensive.

  "Sure. Yeah. But subs decked out in designer shoes and dresses and rubies? Subs that you scolded another Dom about? Subs that you allowed to question you and use your real name?"

  I exhaled my breath.

  He wasn't wrong.

  Everything I did with a submissive was rote. Each time was exactly like the last. The rules were always abided by both parties. No lines ever got blurry.

  Not only were the lines with Adley blurry, I wasn't even sure I knew where the fuck they even were anymore.

  She said my name when she came.

  I wasn't sure the last time I had heard that, my name on a woman's mouth as her body shook with an orgasm.

  Years?

  Longer?

  I couldn't have been much older than a goddamn kid the last time I let a woman use my name.

  By design.

  The rules were there for a reason.

  It kept everything casual.

  Mutually satisfactory.

  But temporary.

  When a woman knew my name, knew what I did, knew about me as a person, that was when she started to...

  "Oh, fuck," I hissed, raking a hand down my face.

  "Just now realizing that pretty little Adley is head-over for you, huh?"

  "Head-over is pushing it."

  But he wasn't wrong.

  I had been so isolated by my community, by subs who knew the game and knew how to play it to their own satisfaction, albeit temporarily, that I forgot that not everyone was like that. Not every woman could compartmentalize.

  Adley wasn't like that.

  Adley was just a normal woman with kinky fantasies.

  She was used to men who wined and dined her, who got to fuck her because she saw a future with them, who held her at night, and made her coffee in the morning.

  She was out of her depths just signing up for the website, which was why she had needed to be drunk when she did it.

  The signs were there, ones I chose not to see, or attributed to her simply getting to have her fantasies come true.

  "No, I don't think so," Fagan insisted, shaking his head. "I think head-over is exactly what I saw on that woman's face when she was with you at Limits. She beamed at you, boss. And, not for nothing, but I've never seen you look at a woman the way you looked at her."

  "I looked at her like I look at all my subs." Hell, even I didn't believe it as I said it.

  "Sure," he said, smirking. "That was why all the subs in the room who have known you or who have tried to were shooting fucking daggers at the poor girl, because you were looking at her like a piece of meat." He rolled his eyes, leaning a little closer. "You look at her like she was the last present on Christmas after you had given up all hope of getting what you truly wanted, and then there she was, what you had been wishing for."

  "I never figured you for sappy, Fagan."

  "I never figured you for dense, boss."

  "Christ," I hissed, finally reaching for the newest cup of coffee, chugging it back, hoping it would help the fog my brain was in. Thanks to not sleeping. I was up all night worrying about this shit.

  "So what is going on?"

  "She's not answering me."

  "Let me guess," Fagan said, a strange smile in place. "Texts don't get delivered. Calls go right to voicemail."

  "Yeah," I said, brows going low.

  "I know gods such as yourself have never known the indignity that we mere mortals have, so you don't see the signs. But you, Mr. Almighty, have been blocked."

  Blocked?

  Adley wouldn't block me.

  She was too soft and sweet and... well, no, that wasn't exactly true, was it? She could be soft and sweet. When she was fucked into submission, given orgasms that made her see the face of God.

  But that wasn't who she was.

  Who she was was a woman who liked to have control over her life, who liked the predictability that gave her, the security.

  So to suddenly realize she had feelings for someone she knew she shouldn't, to be caught up in an affair that gave her so much of what she wanted, but not everything she needed, yeah, her life must have felt off kilter. Thrown off its axis. In chaos.

  So what would a control freak do in that situation?

  She would roll up her sleeves, dig in deep, and drag herself out of the muck, get herself clean again, put everything back on the shelves where she liked them with clearly defined labels, nothing amiss, nothing to make her feel out of control and powerless.

  The only way she could do that in this situation was to completely cut ties with me, the one who took her power away.

  I bet she wasn't actually getting her control back, though. I bet she was doing what people like us - workaholics - did. I bet she was working too much, eating too little, drinking too much coffee. I bet she was running on fumes because she was having trouble sleeping, so she just got up and hustled instead.

  I bet she wasn't getting over me.

  She was faking it until it came true.

  Not that I wanted her to be hung up on me.

  Right?

  It didn't make sense that that was what I wanted. It was never what I wanted. I liked my life how it was. I liked subs who satisfied me in bed and left me alone all other times. I liked my work. And...

  Well, there wasn't really anything else, was there?

  And it had never occurred to me before this how empty that was, to only have work to look forward to, and maybe the excitement of some control in bed. That was it.

  It had always felt like enough though.

  Maybe because that was all I had time for, because work wasn't always as stable, as se
cure as it was now, because I hadn't always lived in a nice place with nice things, because I hadn't always been able to have my bills on auto-pay. Back in the days when I borrowed from the lights to pay the rent, that was when work was enough. Because what mattered the most was getting myself a better life, getting stability and respect in my field.

  I didn't have time for more than casual sex.

  Then, as success came to me, slowly, then all at once, it had simply been how it was. It was my form of normal. It was uncomplicated and easy to navigate.

  But what now?

  I had the money.

  I had the respect.

  I had everything lined up.

  Was it still enough?

  The question wasn't even fully formed in my brain before I knew the answer.

  No.

  I had no idea if the urge had come before I met Adley, if maybe something about her naivety of the lifestyle, her interest, but overall normalness was what drew me to her in the first place. Had I seen a chance in her?

  Or was it the other way around?

  Had I simply been looking for a new sub, came across her, and then found within her something that I wanted to explore, the opportunity for more?

  I didn't have the answer to that.

  All I knew was... I did want more.

  And while it was foreign territory for me, I was pretty sure I wanted more with Adley.

  I wouldn't claim to know how that would go. How I was supposed to act toward her when the expectations were more than to give her mind-blowing orgasms.

  I had no idea what it was like to set my schedule based on someone else wanting to share my time. But maybe I was actually, for the first time, willing to find out.

  You know... if I could get in touch with her.

  "Fix it," Fagan said, seeming to sense where my mind was heading.

  "I'm trying to figure out how to go about doing that," I told him, feeling out of my depths.

  I knew how to handle women, their emotions. In the lifestyle I enjoyed, they came up a lot. Sex wasn't just sex. It was often therapeutic, cathartic. It brought shit up sometimes. I knew what to do when a woman was overwhelmed or upset or freaked out.

  But this... this was new for me.