Jessica sighed. “Gabe never told me personally, although he talked to Brett. Here’s all that I know, okay? They were pretty serious but they split suddenly. Rachel took me out for drinks one night before she moved out of town. She said that Gabriel had been pushing for more and she didn’t want to give it.”
“More?” Myka was sickly enthralled.
“Well, she said that he started to push her to take more pain, to much higher levels. And she wouldn’t cross her hard boundaries, so she left him. She said she loved him but she couldn’t deal with his requests. She was broken-hearted. And Gabriel? He seemed so upset. I guess the breakup hit him hard. We all thought they’d get engaged. She was talking about how he wanted kids… and then it ended. It goes to show, you never know what can happen.” She rolled her eyes, then her expression turned as she saw Myka’s face drop.
Myka felt ill. “No wonder he can’t promise me love. He wanted everything once… with her. Now that he can’t have it with her, he doesn’t want it with anybody. I guess I’m a rebound fucktoy to console him after losing his true love. Maybe I need to increase my wimpy limits in order to make him happy.”
“Oh, Myka, no! That’s not what I meant at all. I think he looks at you in a way that means far more than you realize. I think he is maybe starting to—”
“No, it’s fine. Let’s get back, okay?” Myka stood up and smiled. “I’m fine.” She walked out swiftly to prevent Jessie from talking further. Jessica opened her mouth, bit her lip, and followed Myka back to the men, who were laughing together.
Brett stood up to greet Jessica, and gave her a kiss on the mouth. “Sweetness. Ready to head home?” He whispered something into her ear that made her blush.
“Yes,” she said, her mouth pulling up into a smile, but she shot an imploring glance at Myka, and mouthed, “I’m so sorry.”
The drive back to Gabriel’s house was quiet. Gabriel queried, “You looked different when you came back from the bathroom. Did Jessica say something to upset you?”
Myka hesitated. “No, not on purpose. She’s nice.”
Gabriel turned to glance at her before looking back to the road. “Not on purpose. Tell me.”
“Really, everything’s fine. I’m just a little tired, I guess.” Myka crossed her arms over her chest and looked out her window at the lights zooming past in the dark. Gabriel was silent. Then Myka couldn’t resist. “So why did you break up with your last sub? Rachel?”
She didn’t like saying Rachel. It felt like saying some kind of evil incantation. She was halfway worried that the word alone would spur Gabriel into some kind of belated attempt to win his ex-sub back. It also felt like an intrusion, as if even saying the name were akin to spying on something intensely private.
“Is that what upset you? Did Jessica talk about Rachel?”
Myka shook her head. “I asked her about it.”
Gabriel sighed. “I don’t want to talk about this. I want us to be about having a good time together, yes?”
“Well, I’d still like to know.” Her voice was flat. She wanted to hear it from him—the marriage-readiness, the limits, the bionic ass, the breakup. How would he describe it all? She felt a sort of sick anticipation.
“We didn’t work out.” Gabriel’s voice was taut. “Relationships always end. This one did. Ours will too, someday. But for now…” he reached out, softening his harsh words with a touch on her thigh, “for now we can enjoy each other. We get along well, Myka. Mentally and physically. Let’s take advantage of it.”
Myka nodded, bit her fingernail. “Sure. That’s fine.”
“Myka.” His voice held a plea, but also a warning. “I’d like us to have a good night, yes? Let’s focus on that.” His voice turned persuasive as he glided his fingertips up her leg. “We have amazing chemistry, and why shouldn’t we make each other feel good? Take pleasure while it’s there for us to grab?”
Myka nodded. “I’d like a good night, too.” She took his hand, held it in hers while staring out the window. He clearly didn’t want to talk about it, not yet, and she could sense that pushing the conversation at this time wasn’t going to end well. She tried to accept the fact that he was hers, but only for a time. She had agreed, after all, that first night together.
“What are you thinking?” His low voice broke the silence.
“I was thinking that I like the flare of headlights and taillights in the dark, small flickers all around us like urban fireflies. My mom used to call backups on the freeway diamonds and rubies, and we’d think about gems to make the drive shorter. Even better is seeing the night lights in the rain, when I’m driving in a warm car, going a fair distance. Then it’s pure pleasure to see the other cars winking into existence and out again as we pass them and pass again.”
Gabriel squeezed her hand warmly. “That’s a poem, Myka. Beautiful.” He looked at her for a second but Myka stared straight ahead, trying to get back to a place where she could enjoy him for what he was giving her.
“I was thinking,” she continued, “how I used to want to collect the highway lights into a necklace, as a child; to string all those diamonds and rubies together and keep them. But now I try to appreciate the magic that comes with a short-lived joy. You have to learn to lock the images and memories into your brain and save them for later, like a Buddhist sand painting. I suppose some things are meant to be ephemeral, and their beauty is enhanced by their fleeting nature.”
Gabriel let her hand go, put his back onto the wheel. He started to speak, checked himself. Then his voice was casual. “Have you ever seen a sand painting?”
“Yes, once. Some Tibetan monks were doing a tour, and I went to see them. It was fantastic, Gabriel. I felt moved to do new things after hearing them talk. They made an amazing pattern out of colored sand, so incredible. It was hard for me to understand how they could pour so many hours of backbreaking work into those intricate designs, only to have the wind wash it all away in minutes.”
“Did you ask them why?”
“I did. I asked one monk. And he answered me, and I still remember this: But the design isn’t gone. It’s still here, in my mind, and in yours. If you want it, it’s still here.”
“That’s hard to do, though.” Gabriel’s voice was even.
“Yes. And I still wanted the design to be there, to see it with my eyes! One of the many reasons I could never be a monk, I suppose. I don’t have the patience for it. The insight. The self-knowledge.”
“I could never be a monk either,” Gabriel said, shooting her another glance. “Especially not tonight, Myka. With you in that skirt. Wearing a plug inside your soaked panties.” And like that, they were back to the passion.
“While we drive,” he told her. “I want you with your skirt up and your legs spread again. Touch yourself for me. Use your left hand.”
Myka did as he asked, opening her legs and using her index and middle finger to rub her clit. It didn’t take long for her to start feeling an orgasm coming; she’d been so worked up all night that her body was swollen with need. Except for the conversations about Rachel, which made her feel cold and icky, the entire night had been an extended foreplay session with Gabriel. She moaned, her fingers making wet sounds as she rubbed.
“Fuck, you’re wetter than I’ve ever seen you,” said Gabriel in wonder, reaching over to touch with his own fingers.
He held the wheel with his left hand, tilting his body to give his hand access, their fingers touching and twirling together as they both stroked. His hand was hot and her skin was hot too, and Myka wrapped her fingers around his in a tight embrace. They used the same rhythm to move back and forth, and soon Myka arched her back into their joint touch, thrusting her hips forward.
“Oh, God!” she breathed. “I’m on the edge. I don’t think I can hold it.”
“I want you to come now,” Gabriel told her harshly. “While I’m driving on the expressway, with your diamonds and rubies all around us. Come on, ma chèrie, onto our fingers. Scream it out into the night f
or me.”
Those words alone were enough to tip her over the cliff, and she did scream out in pleasure as she rode their hands into a breathtaking orgasm. She was out of breath when she came back to herself, her hair wild and sweaty, Gabriel’s hand possessive on her thigh.
“God, that was good,” she said, darting him a look of emotion and satisfaction.
Gabriel took her left hand and brought it to his mouth. “Let me taste you,” he demanded, and sucked her fingers clean. “I can’t wait to get my tongue into you,” he told her. “When we get back to the house I want you naked the minute you’re out of the car.”
And that night when he fucked her hard, making her cry out with pure bliss, she tried to let go and enjoy the moment for what it was, and also to save it up for later, for a future night when she’d be alone and might want to remember this night, this flicker of incandescent joy against the backdrop of an ordinary life.
Chapter Nine
Myka spent every free night of the next month at Gabriel’s home, in his bed. And on his floor. And over his knee. Every time was different, and every time was amazing. He learned her limits and pushed them; introduced her to pleasures she’d never known. He cooked for her often, teased her, engaged her in long philosophical discussions that had them up until three a.m. some nights, arguing back and forth over a bottle of wine, then finishing in bed with some crazy love-making. Because he usually spanked her and introduced rougher pleasures earlier in the evening, the late-night sessions were more about pure soft passion, leaving them both glassy-eyed and sated, murmuring to each in bed until one or both dropped off into dreams.
The dark spot was his insistence that they were casual, just about sex; when he reminded her of it, she felt a stab of pain in her soul before she told herself that she was a big girl and she’d agreed to this arrangement, so she needed to toughen up.
Still, she called Lourdes at least once a week to discuss it, conversations that took such an identical path that she could probably have asked Lourdes to record snippets of her moral support and lectures to play when Myka felt down:
“You are amazing and wonderful, and if he doesn’t see that, he’s a loser.”
“Seriously, he’s lucky to have you, and I hate to see you crying because he won’t call you his girlfriend.”
“Sometimes you have to make a difficult choice based on what’s best for your self-respect.”
“You shouldn’t settle.”
She didn’t always like the lecture part, so she tuned those things out and let her friend’s voice soothe over her, a caress of caring, a reminder that someone loved her for her entire person and didn’t see her as a mere object.
Since Jessie, Dax, and Lili were becoming her friends, she wanted to have Lourdes meet them, but Lourdes was hard to pin down. Finally, Myka brought it up over lunch.
“Lourdes,” she asked, “are you avoiding meeting my new friends?”
Lourdes looked away and squeezed lemon into her glass. They were at a trendy lunch café called Sozito, which served organic tapas and gourmet iced tea, and Myka had to raise her voice to be heard over the lunch chatter, a beehive drone of young professionals, beautiful people, and business types. Every now and then a high note of clinking glass or sizzling from the open kitchen soared over the bass thrum of voices like a violin solo in an orchestra.
“No, why? I’ve been busy,” Lourdes said, not meeting Myka’s gaze. “I, of course I want to meet your new friends that take up so much of your time. And I’d like to spend time with Gabriel, who takes up even more.”
Myka nodded. “Yeah, he’s—well, it’s, with him it’s different. We usually hang out by ourselves, you know? But I’d like you to meet Jessie and Lili. Dax.” She squeezed a lemon of her own, surprised as always as the oily feel it left on her fingers.
Lourdes shrugged. “It seems like you’re pretty busy with them all, going to your kinky club and your whatever, kinky events. Stuff. And I’m not comfortable being around that, okay? So.”
“We don’t do kinky things together, Lourdes!” Myka’s voice raised louder than necessary to be heard. “That’s not my thing, you know that. We get drinks, or eat—like this. Like you and me. Normal people. I think you’d like them.”
But as she said it, she wasn’t sure. Jessie, maybe—Jessie and Brett were personable, educated, fun, and laid-back; she could see them getting along well with cerebral, serious Lourdes. But Lili and Dax? Who liked to say ‘fuck’ all the time and talk about sex in every conversation? Well… maybe not them so much. She didn’t think Lourdes would look down on them, nor would they disregard Lourdes as stuffy, but it didn’t seem like a personality match made in heaven. Still, she felt guilty and strange about keeping her friends separate, carefully stowed into discrete compartments, and wished it were easier for everyone to get along.
Lourdes stared at her glass. “You know, since you asked? I feel like you and I are different now. We don’t spend as much time together, and then you have this other—thing. This huge, different thing you do, that I can’t do. You know?” She looked at Myka finally, and her eyes were wide and sad. “I miss you.”
Myka twisted her paper napkin, watching the Sozito logo become illegible as the knot tightened. “I don’t know what you mean, you miss me. We still hang out. Or at least I try to ask you, and you usually say no.”
Lourdes shrugged. “You’re more closed off and it’s harder than it used to be to laugh together. You don’t talk about Gabriel much, or your job, and then you don’t want to talk about anything else either.”
“Well, but that’s because you don’t approve of him or my job, and those are the only two things I actually do these days, so what am I supposed to talk about, then?” Myka shot out, her voice hard. She caught herself immediately. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t mean it like that. I’m just, I feel like I need to defend myself and I don’t want to feel that way around you.”
Lourdes shook her head. “We used to talk about everything, anything. You seem sad, lately. Maybe even depressed sometimes.”
Myka tried to tear the napkin, but twisted as it was, it was a solid rope and wouldn’t come apart, so she used it to wipe up water condensation along the edge of her glass, moving it carefully as if she were a window cleaner on a high-rise skyscraper. “I might be a little sad, sometimes, yes, but depressed would be way overkill, Lourdes.” Her shoulders were tight, and took a deep breath. “But you seem sad since you came back from your dig, too.”
She had said it to deflect attention from herself, but as the words came, she realized that it was true: Lourdes, herself, was gloomy and distant.
Lourdes blinked and tears rose in her eyes. “Well, I am! And it took you long enough to notice.”
“Oh, God. Is something wrong?” Myka sat up straight. “What is it? What happened?” Lourdes never complained, ever. Hopefully she wasn’t terminally ill. “Is it your mom? Is someone sick?”
“Nothing happened.” But Lourdes was crying. “Do you want to know the real reason I came home early from Italy?”
“The funding. You said the money ran out and your team needed to wait for another grant. Right?”
“Well, that’s not precisely true.” Lourdes sniffled and wiped her eyes with a napkin. “The real reason is so horrible and embarrassing that I never wanted to tell anyone. But it’s eating me up. I can’t—I keep thinking about it and I can’t get past it.”
“So tell me. You know you can trust me.” Myka was on the edge of her seat.
Lourdes sighed. “The grant money did run low, and Ethan, my, um, boss, needed to cut back on expenses until the next grant came. But I’m the best one for the job. He should have sent Tyler back to start the reports and the collation. Not me.”
“So—why did he send you?”
“We sort of had a thing, and I told him I loved him, and then he changed his mind about me all of a sudden. So that’s why I’m back.” Lourdes looked at Myka defiantly. “And I’m pretty sure it’s because I wouldn’t slee
p with him, okay? Because I wanted to wait until I’m married. There, I said it. I wanted to wait. And here you are, with your kinky whatever, and your friends who have sex in public, and I think you all would look down on me and think I’m a huge stupid prude!”
“But you’ve had sex before.” Myka had a hard time processing.
“Yes, I did. But now I want to wait. Is that so ridiculous to want to be in love and wait for the love of my life?” Lourdes started sobbing, her shoulders shaking, and she covered her face with her hands. Her voice was nearly unintelligible. “Everyone these days has sex all the time, and that’s fine, but what if someone wants to wait? Why does that have to make them into a strange, odd, abnormal freak? I just want to fit in, too. And now you’re at the other end of the spectrum, and I don’t know if you’ll want to be my friend anymore! You don’t even want to live at my hou-house! I’m a pariah!”
Myka rushed from her seat to put her arms around Lourdes, who was crying so hard now that she was making squeaks and snorts, and other patrons looked over curiously.
“Let’s go outside for a little,” Myka suggested, and mouthed to their waiter, “We’ll be back,” in case he thought they were going to skip out on the bill. She led Lourdes through the bustling kitchen, past cooks whose attention focused on hot steel surfaces that danced oil droplets in a frantic jig, to the cracked cement behind the restaurant. It was silent for the moment, backed up to a flat blacktop with broken glass and parked cars and no other people.
“Lourdes, I would never think you’re a prude or look down on you,” she promised. “Never. I mean, I’m taken by total surprise that you, um, want to wait. I wouldn’t have expected that. But no, it doesn’t mean you’re weird or anything. It’s your choice, and if he didn’t respect that, then he’s a jerk.”
Lourdes shook her head. “He told me it was a phase, and accused me of being a phony born-again religioso, and said I had been leading him on by flirting and acting sexy. He said he didn’t want to be the subject of some kind of psychological game. What does that even mean?”
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