by Reiss, CD
“I’m sorry,” I managed to spit out. I had no choice but to surrender to it.
“Monica, what—?”
“It’s not you.” I gripped the footboard railing, ass not up, legs barely spread. I wanted him to correct me, to push me into place. Turn chaos into order.
He sat on the edge of the bed and put one hand on my back and the other on my face, pulling me toward him.
“No,” I spit, my chest heaving with hitched breaths. “Just do it. Finish. I want it hard, and I want it to hurt.”
“I will not.”
“I need it. Please. Whatever you had planned.” I couldn’t see him clearly through the tears, couldn’t read his face or intentions. “I need…” Breath. Hitch. Breath. “I need to get out of my own head.”
“About what?”
About what? My incompetence and lack of talent. My play at being something I wasn’t. If I told him what was going on, he’d try to support me and say nice things. And I didn’t want that, because it was all lies. Even if he, in his ignorance, believed them, they were lies I’d told that he was repeating back to me.
“Monica, what is it?”
“Jesus fuck, Jonathan. Do it. Do something! I’m on my knees already!”
He stood. “I’m sorry, goddess. It doesn’t work like that.”
I got up on my knees. “What the fuck do you mean it doesn’t work like that? How is it supposed to work?”
“It’s not safe.”
I didn’t know what I’d expected him to say. I didn’t know what he could have said that would have adequately soothed my loneliness. But he knew damn well he was safe, so what he was saying was that I wasn’t safe. Not only was I a lying faker conwoman, I was somehow a danger to him. Or I was doing it wrong.
No, that was it. That fit. I was doing it wrong. I didn’t know how to sub to the only Master I’d ever known. I was shitty at submitting. Shitty at fucking. I was going to get someone hurt.
Right? Wasn’t that exactly it? What was I good at? Where was my core competence if I couldn’t even please my husband? Not just please him, but submit. Meaning do nothing. I couldn’t even sit still correctly.
I couldn’t take it. My own head betrayed me. I was going to have a complete nuclear meltdown, sitting on a bed naked, because my husband wouldn’t fuck me.
“Monica,” Jonathan said from the next galaxy over, reaching light years to brush my cheek. “It’s because—”
“Stop talking.” I think I growled it before I slapped his hand off me. “And don’t touch me.”
I hopped off the bed. I think he was talking, but I couldn’t hear shit past the whoosh in my ears and the yacking in my head about how he didn’t want me, and how I couldn’t sing, and it was all over. I wasn’t a singer. I wasn’t a goddess. I was a failure. A fraud. A waste.
I pulled my dress on as if I wanted to rip it apart, and I jammed my feet in my shoes.
Jonathan caught my arm at the door. “Where are you going?”
I didn’t want his hand on my arm. It was the source of all my rawness. That hand. Not his soft eyes or his gentle look of compassion. No, all that was a lie. It was pity. I was beneath him, and he felt sorry for me. Fuck him.
When I glared at him, he lightened his grip, letting his fingers slip down my arm.
I had a split second of clarity.
I could fall into his arms, into his green eyes. I could break down without a beating and a fucking and just tell him how worthless and shitty I felt. I had a classic case of the Freudian Slips. Gabby’s term.
And I got mad at myself again, because I’d also failed to take care of her when she needed me. The clarity went out the window.
“Monica, what is it? Talk to me. Sit down and tell me—”
He let go of me to gesture to the tea table, a comfortable place to sit and dump all my shit on him. I took the opportunity to not talk about anything.
Chapter 5
JONATHAN
She just walked out. She even closed the door.
I was torn between the desire to wrestle her down and demand an explanation and the need to just let her walk out so she could cool off. I didn’t know which I wanted and I didn’t know which she needed.
She was in the car before I decided none of that mattered and I had to get her. And it was too late. She screeched out of the driveway and down the hill, and I was left there wondering what the fuck had happened.
All right.
Well.
I knew what had happened.
I’d scared myself.
Sadism is confusing if you’re not a sadist. And if you are, and your personal battle with decency is won or lost in a moment of indulgence, it’s beyond confusing. It’s a war between ten equally-matched nation-states who are willing to fight to the death.
She had been on the bed, naked, on her knees, and ready for me to inflict whatever the fuck I wanted on her. And I was ready. I had a plan or five. I had a boner that was breaking my zipper. I was going to rip her apart until she screamed and cried.
Fuck. She’d been gone ten minutes, I’d paced the floor for nine and a half of them, and the thought of the way she’d looked gave me an erection all over again, because I knew what I had intended to do to her. How I was going to break her.
I had to draw out the pain and tears. I had to bring her to the brink and hurt her as she tipped. The process went from A to B to C, and she’d skipped steps. Crying ahead of cue did two things.
Three things….four…ten—who the fuck even knew how many—factions went to war in my head.
I pulled the chair away from my desk so hard it went across the room, and I snapped up a pencil.
One. You cry when I say, not sooner.
Two. I can hurt you. Your defenses are down. I can go in and really fucking hurt you.
Three. I’m concerned about you. Very concerned.
Four. I want to kill whoever made you cry.
Five. You don’t call the shots.
Six. I wanted to reach into your injured places and destroy you.
Seven. My heart breaks when I see tears on your face.
Eight. What kind of man thinks, “I wonder how far I can take this?”
Nine. Ten. Eleven. They were all the same. She was hurt, and I was concerned and broken, and my dick was the first thing I thought of. I hated myself for it. I wasn’t an emotional sadist, but maybe I was on some level. I pressed my hands to my desk, pencil still woven between my thumb and first finger.
I had to get past the self-loathing. There was nothing there for me. Monica had taught me that I didn’t have to hate myself for what made me happy. My proclivities didn’t keep me from having something real and permanent, unless I let her walk away when she was hurt.
I circled number three. That was where my love was. The rest was fleeting and I’d dealt with it already. I wouldn’t let her go over a little slip.
I slipped the pencil down, and my mind put together four and six.
Four. I want to kill whoever made you cry.
Six. I want to reach into your injured places and destroy you.
Maybe I was the masochist.
Chapter 6
MONICA
I was mad. Just steaming mad with little black lines and gritted teeth. I was foot-stomping, fist-clenching, spitting mad.
He always had to call the fucking shots. Safe. Out. Foul. He was umpire, batter, and pitcher. And fuck him. Maybe for once he should take his stinking ego and put it like… over there. Outside the bedroom. Leave it in the driveway or in the trunk of that ridiculously expensive car, because it was getting in the way of my motherfucking needs.
“I’m not mad at him,” I lied to Yvonne. She knew Jonathan was my Dominant, and it made her uncomfortable. I didn’t feel like explaining, yet again, my need to get hurt. “I missed you. Stay out with me. Have the sitter stay a couple of extra hours.”
“Nope,” Yvonne said, her body jerking back and forth with the joystick. Her huge afro moved with her, and her gold mascara
glowed in the blue light. She worked three nights a week at a shithole bar on Western Ave that only took cash and gave change in quarters. The walls were lined with eighties video games at fifty cents a pop. Her shift had just ended, and she was getting loose on Galaga.
“It’s on me.”
“Ian’s coming over once I confirm my son’s asleep. And I pay my own sitter.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you. And who’s Ian?” I felt out of touch. She’d mentioned the name as if I should know, and I didn’t. Too much travel. Too much work.
“He’s the real thing.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
Her spaceship exploded, and she whacked the red ball of the joystick. “I haven’t seen you in three months unless you’re on TMZ or something. So first you tell me what’s eating you, and I’ll tell you who’s eating me.” She waggled her brows.
How was I supposed to explain this? I’m so fucking mad at him because I feel rejected and stupid and fake and Jonathan didn’t hurt me when I asked him to. Breaking me is his responsibility as a husband and he refused and it is not cool.
That wasn’t going to fly.
Her spaceship regenerated, and she was back at the game, her dark skin shining blue from the screen.
“Nothing,” I said. “Maybe hormones.”
“Girl, you got a face from here to Jerusalem, and it’s got Jonathan spray-painted all over it.”
“You’re not even looking at me.”
“I got peripheral vision for this shit.” She held two fingers in a V and pointed them at me with one hand while her other hand worked the joystick.
The fact that she wasn’t looking at me made it easier to broach the subject.
“I have needs,” I said.
“Yeah.” She threaded a needle between bombs, jacking the stick back and forth.
“And he’s responsible for them.”
“Yeah.”
“And I can’t sing. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Star-Spangled-Fucking-Banner, and I can’t find the notes.”
Boom. She lost her spaceship. Game over. She slapped the console and turned to me. “Did you ever hear Whitney Houston’s version? Holy hell, I get tears in my eyes.”
I imagined gold mascara running down her dark-skinned cheeks.
“She eased up on the phrasing,” I said defensively. “I have to do it the hard way.”
She smirked. “Oh, so you’re that good, huh? Hardest song in the world shouldn’t be anything for Mrs. Perfectopants.”
She’d nailed me. I mean, right to the matte black wall. She’d caught my ego midair and held it still so I could see it twitching in her palm.
“I’ll beat you at Galaga.” I changed the subject like a real pro.
“Girl, you got nothing on me.”
“Right here. Right now.”
“One game, then I have to go home to the boy.”
Galaga was something I was perfectly comfortable losing at. I would play my heart out and take my lumps and not even care. I reached into my bag for two quarters and saw my phone in the pocket, lit up like a Christmas tree.
Jonathan.
The sight of his name was like a little empty place in my chest. I still felt rejected. I still felt like a fraud in every aspect of my life. And I was still mad, because there were so many things I couldn’t bear to lose at, and he was one of them.
“You playing or what?” Yvonne asked after she’d put her money in and hit the two-player button.
“Phone’s almost out of juice.” I slipped it back into my bag. “Tell me about this Ian person.”
“I don’t want to distract you.”
“Distract me. I’m going to lose anyway.”
The game started with a wheep whoop erp erp, and my feelings of unworthiness and rage got stuffed away for later.
Chapter 7
MONICA
When I got home, it was dark outside. I walked through the empty house, and found him on the back deck, reading with his feet braced on the table in front of him and his sleeves rolled up to reveal his magnificent forearms.
“Hi,” I said.
He put down his book.
“I’m sorry,” I continued. “I was being a baby. I trust you. You know how to keep me safe, even from what I want.”
“I’m a little torn about apologizing myself. I didn’t feel comfortable, but I have a responsibility to give you what you need.”
“You wouldn’t make me do something I wasn’t comfortable with.”
“Yes, I would.”
“Yeah,” I said ruefully.
“If you told me what you were bawling about, that might help.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
He laughed. Motherfucker. It wasn’t even a chuckle but a real laugh, as if I’d told a whopper of a joke.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“I tie you up and beat your ass raw until you beg me to fuck you. I can’t even imagine what this big embarrassing thing is.”
I took a deep breath and sat across from him, my knees pressed together, elbows on them as if I was trying to defend my heart by curling into a ball. “It’s not embarrassing because it’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing because of my reaction to it.”
“Tell me how you’re reacting, then tell me the thing.”
I nodded, unscrambling the words in my head, tapping my fingertips together. “I’m acting like a fucking egomaniac. Like I’m perfect. Like I have this fragile shell around myself and someone comes and, like, taps on it—doesn’t even break it—just threatens it the slightest bit, and I fall apart. Not just that—I asked them to come tap on it. But I didn’t really want them to. I just wanted them to admire my shell and say how wonderful it was.”
“I’m assuming this has to do with music?”
“Yes.” I sniffed, feeling broken all over again. “Mrs. Yuan. I don’t even know her first name. But she pointed out that I suck real bad. I don’t think I’m perfect. But I do. I must if I run away the first time someone tells me what I already know. Like they looked at me and recognized what everyone else couldn’t see. That I’m terrible. That I’m a liar. That I fooled everyone into thinking I have talent. And I started to believe my own lies, and I’m, like, goddamnit, why did I believe me? I feel—” Here was where I really started choking on my own spit. I couldn’t slow the crying down long enough to finish the sentence.
Jonathan reached for me, but I pushed him away.
“I feel worthless.” The last word squeaked out.
Jonathan pulled one of those monogrammed hankies out of his pocket and snapped it open. I smiled then sobbed again.
He put the hankie up to my nose. “Blow.”
I laughed and cried at the same time.
“Just blow it out, Monica.”
I blew. He squeezed my nose and rocked it back and forth.
“Hey!” I said, sounding as if I had a cold.
He pulled me to him by my nose. “I love you. And if I tell you you’re not worthless, you won’t believe me.”
He took the hankie away and balled it up on the table. His lashes glowed amber in the patio light, and the mating calls of the crickets suddenly sounded sexy as hell.
“If you never sang another note, I’d still love you,” he said.
“I know and—”
“Shh.” He held up his hand then held mine. “That being said, your voice is what I fell in love with before I fell in love with the woman behind it.”
“So you say.”
“And your body. I liked that.”
“Yeah, well—”
“And your moxie.”
“My moxie? How old are you, grampa?”
His eyes glittered green with amusement, and his hands found their way between my knees. He yanked my knees open with a swiftness that made me gasp.
“Tonight, I’m going to hurt you. I’m going to make you beg for mercy. I’m going to break you down so hard so you don’t have to be broken down over this bullshit. I’m the onl
y one who gets to make you cry.”
“God, yes.”
“What’s your safe word?”
“Tangerine.”
He leaned back and crossed his ankle over his knee. After looking me over for a second, he picked up his book and opened it. “Go into the bedroom. When I get there, you’d better be ready.”
Chapter 8
MONICA
He made me wait.
He always made me wait when he was serious, and the longer I waited, the more serious he was. I thought, as I waited on the bed with my cheek on the bedspread and my ass in the air, that he was making me wait longer than ever. The anticipation made the backs of my legs tingle. I wanted to touch myself. At first I thought I’d just see how wet I was, but he’d know and he’d punish me by not letting me come.
He said nothing when he finally entered the room. He stood by me. I couldn’t see him. I could only feel his presence, hear his breath, sense his intentions.
He laid his hand on my lower back and pressed down. It was the standard correction. My ass was never high enough.
“Thank you,” I said.
He stood and undid his belt. “Thank me later. Get on your back and open your legs. Knees up. I want to see that cunt.”
I did it. He positioned himself at the foot of the bed, where I could see him between my legs. Half-open shirt and cock-strained trousers. Belt looped in his right hand. Watch and wedding ring on his left.
I almost came just looking at him. When he reached over and pulled my legs apart wider, I lost myself in a rush of sensation.
“Did you just come?” he asked.