by Harper Cole
In the center of the circle of comfortable chairs and couches was a table with a couple trays of food on them, and a bucket of champagne chilling on ice.
“Overkill?” I asked as he surveyed my extravagant surprise.
He grinned widely and suddenly, and his usually impassive, craggy-jawed face was transformed. “Not at all. Nothing is too much for us.”
Us. The way he said it made me shiver with glee and I knew I was grinning back; not a lady-like smile, no regard to looking pretty or restrained - simply sheer delight.
“And now,” he said, “I’m famished. Let’s eat.”
* * * *
We sat on the couches and worked our way through a selection of cold foods; there was none of that silly playing about that you see in movies. We were too busy talking and eating to feed one another crab sticks and God knows what else. By the time we’d worked our way down most of the bottle of fizz, though, we were sitting very close to one another, and the lights were turned down low.
I reached out my arm to replace my now-empty glass on the table, and my loosely-tied robe fell open, exposing my bare torso. It was so cheesy that I giggled, and he laughed and took my hands in his. When he drew me close to him, I melted into his arms. Finally he was kissing me the way I had longed for; not hard, not insistent. Just tender and willing.
“My head is spinning,” I said as he pulled away, leaving the taste of him on my lips.
“That’s the champagne.”
“No, it’s you. You twist me and turn me inside out. Thank you.”
“For twisting and turning you? You’re welcome. I think.”
I realized I was gazing up at him like some adoring dog, and I tried to compose my face but I couldn’t help it. I wanted to sink into his gaze and swim in his love and drown in this moment.
He brought one hand up to stroke my cheek gently, and I fell forward into his kiss once more. His fingers wove into my hair, holding the back of my head, and he curled his body over mine, lowering me to the floor by slow degrees.
As I lay there, he kissed down my body, letting the robe spread open around me like angel’s wings. I clutched at his shirt, fumbling at the buttons with eager fingers, and pushed it back over his wide, athletic shoulders. He sat up for a moment, straddling me, and peeled the shirt off completely.
I wanted to speak, but I didn’t know what to say. This felt different to how it had been before. Our lovemaking up until now had been brutal, hard and had a strange kind of mental and physical energy - almost aggression. He had shown me that BDSM had many sides, and it wasn’t “just spanking” as I had assumed before.
Although I did like the spanking and the knife-edge of pleasure and pain that I danced along to reach some earth-shattering orgasms.
No, our relationship in the bedroom had deeper currents than that. He owned me, and he commanded me, and what he told me - I obeyed, and willingly.
I was still shocked at my capitulation.
But not tonight. This was slow, gentle and … shared.
“What’s up, beautiful one? You look thoughtful all of a sudden.”
“Nothing. I’m so glad you’re here. I was just …”
“Say it. We have to be honest with one another.”
Yeah, we had learned that the hard way, too. I smiled weakly and said, “Something feels different. You’re not ordering me around. Have I done something wrong?”
“If you had, I’d be punishing you.” He bent his head and tweaked my nipple with his mouth, making me squeal.
I still didn’t quite get it. I liked being spanked. So I had to play up if I wanted that. But then I’d be called a “brat.”
There was a lot to get my head around.
As if he read my thoughts, he moved back up to hover over my face, and he said, “Don’t overthink it. Let’s enjoy this.”
He lowered his body and pressed against mine, his pant legs soft against my bare skin. I raised up my pelvis to meet him, and he nuzzled at me, his kisses trailing from my ear to my collarbone and unlocking my desire in a great flood of need.
Soon, his belt was undone and we were both naked, and he was moving over me, teasing me with his hardness as I opened my legs and begged him to press inside me. With no great fanfare or exclamation, he began to enter me, and I sighed out in relief as I was finally filled. He moved slowly, pressing in and out, in such contrast to our previous lovemaking when we’d been frantic and passionate and noisy and harsh.
“Oh please, please,” I found myself begging. I was used to him hammering into me, but this long, slow thrusting was delicious and yet so tantalizing.
He grinned at me. “All in good time.”
“I can’t wait!” I almost wailed.
He slowed his pace even further and I clawed at his back. My hips were bucking up under him in desperation. “Fuck me,” I growled.
“Oh, Jasmine.”
And then he was unleashed, and slamming into me so that I was pushed across the carpet, the robe scrunching up underneath me as he fucked me hard from one end of the hotel room to the other and my skin was rubbed and sore and my buttocks bruised and my orgasm finally, wonderfully, exploding from my belly to my brain and I wrapped my legs around him and pinned him to me as he came.
We lay as one for a few moments, our tangled limbs hot and damp. He rolled sideways to take his weight on his elbow and look down at me.
“You look tired,” he said.
“I’m fucked.”
“Lovely language. But yes. So am I.”
Now, in the post-coital relaxation, I felt better able to ask him some difficult questions. And the fact that I didn’t think I could ask these things before made me worried. He’d told me to be honest with him, but I had seen that he had an angry side, and if I were perfectly truthful - he still scared me. Not that I thought he’d do anything to me. But I was still concerned about his … I dunno … potential? Capacity for violence? He’d knocked his own father out, after all.
“Andrew, what are you going to do, now you’re here? I need to go speak to my mom, and find out who this guy called ‘Jack’ is, but what about Leonard?”
“I don’t know yet. Don’t worry.”
“I am worried. We know what he’s capable of.”
“So, what’s your plan?”
“I don’t have one. Carlee told me Leonard was here and helping my family but beyond that… I dunno. I have to find out what that help is, but I don’t want to cause more trouble.”
“You’re saying I should stay out of it, aren’t you?”
“No, not at all.”
He kissed the tip of my nose and began to sit up. “Yes, you are. And I understand. Go see your mother and find out what you can. After all,” he added, as he got to his feet. “Knowledge is power.”
There he went again. Power. Andrew, Leonard and power; it was an uneasy triumvirate. Wasn’t a triangle supposed to be the most stable arrangement?
I could only see tension and I was filled with nervousness about what was to come.
Chapter Four - Andrew
I had to play a slow game. I had made my mind up on the flight over that there could be no compromise with Leonard, my father. He had to be destroyed.
But Jas wanted me to go in softly. She thought she’d be able to win this through talking. She was wrong, but for her sake, I’d go along with this for the moment. She didn’t know my father like I did, though.
She thought she did. But she hadn’t been raised by him, that bully of a man. He had sent my mother crazy, so that she sought solace in the arms of strange men, or the gin bottle, or the couches of expensive therapists. None of that had worked, of course. She divided her time between retreats and resorts and manic shopping sprees these days.
I had to ask myself one question: what did I mean by “destroyed?”
Was I prepared to kill?
The thought both appalled me and electrified me. And if I could and did kill - where did that leave my relationship with Jas? I’d told her that I was d
ifferent from my father. I would not raise a hand to her in anger.
But if I could do that to my own father then what did that make me?
* * * *
Jas had also hired a rental car as soon as she’d landed. She stood by her enormous gas-guzzling American beast and looked at my sporty little convertible number with disdain.
“I don’t trust you to drive on these highways,” she said. “Come on. Anyway, you don’t know the route.”
“You’ve got a lot more uppity now you’re back on home turf,” I told her. I was partly serious. Our relationship was on ever-shifting sands but central to it all was my dominance and her submission.
She stuck her tongue out at me, a willful disobedience that made me smile, even as I said, “That’s a spanking.”
“I know.”
“Brat.”
“Get in the car.”
In truth, I didn’t mind being driven around. She was correct about the unfamiliar traffic here, and I wasn’t tuned into the road signs, either. As for the way the traffic was controlled by the overhanging signals and lights - well, I was looking in all the wrong places for the stop signs and I had been the victim of many blasts of the horn on my journey from the airport.
We’d risen late and had a leisurely breakfast but now it was time to visit Jas’s mother.
“Have you had any further information from Carlee?” I asked as we sped along the freeway.
“Not really. She said my mom had been dating; there’s that guy called Jack. And I thought that was your father at first but it can’t be. Because Carlee was worried about this other guy. Jack’s friend. Leonard, a Brit, who’s loaned them a whole fuckton of money. Angie was gonna lose her house. My dumb ass sister. When will she learn?”
I held my tongue. I had never met Jas’s sister but I knew that she had stolen money and even Jas’s identity so she could take out loans in Jas’s name.
A fact that their mother still refused to accept.
Instead, I said, “Have you managed to speak to your mother yet?”
“No. She’s not picking up my calls.”
“So this is going to be a surprise visit.”
“Sure is.”
We fell into silence, each nervously chasing our own thoughts.
* * * *
Jas drove us into a slightly run-down suburb. Unlike the more salubrious areas we’d been through, where the wealthier owners could afford to water their lawns, these houses had yellowed, parched grass in the front yards.
“Why don’t you people have proper hedges?” I grumbled as she pulled up outside a wooden two-story house. There was just chain link fence separating the plots. It looked sparse and bare.
“Why do you people get all possessive and territorial about your little tiny houses and yards?” she shot back at me.
I was going to continue the teasing banter but as I glanced at her, I saw she was rigid with tension. Her hands were curled tightly around the steering wheel and she was almost gritting her teeth as she stared out the windshield up at the shabby house. It needed a lick of paint and at least one window was cracked and broken.
I reached out and rested my hand lightly on her shoulder. She stirred and took in a deep breath; I could see that she was arming herself.
Then she almost shrugged me off, moving to the side out of the car. “Come on, then,” she said, grimly.
I was not used to following.
But this time, I made an exception.
* * * *
I wanted to stand in front of her and protect her from the onslaught. But I couldn’t. Right now, this was not my fight. Not yet.
So there she was, my precious Jas, standing with her shoulders back and her head held high, every inch a warrior Queen and channeling Boudicca for all she was worth. She stood on the front porch of the run-down house, and readied herself to face a verbal torrent from her mother.
Her mother, Grace, stood in the open doorway, but behind the screen door which she refused to open. Through the mesh, I could see she had Jas’s bone structure but her face was lined and careworn.
I remembered what Jas had told me about her; about how hard she’d worked to bring up Jas and her sister Angie alone. How she’d instilled the great American work ethic in them, and how she still supported Angie in spite of her present difficulties.
“Mom, listen. I just want to come in and talk with you, okay?”
Grace opened and closed her mouth a few times. She didn’t look angry. As I studied her, I realized that she wasn’t going to unleash any fury onto her daughter. She looked simply confused.
“But you’re in England,” she said.
“No, mom. I’ve come to see you. We need to straighten a few things out.”
“You’re going to tell me more lies about Angie, aren’t you?” Grace’s eyes were narrow but they glinted; I thought she was about to cry.
She didn’t know which daughter to believe.
“No, mom. They’re not lies. But…”
“I won’t hear it! I don’t know what I have done to you that you hurt me so, Jasmine Turner. But I won’t hear it, you understand? I won’t.”
“Okay, mom, okay. I’m sorry. Come on. Won’t you let us in? I want to introduce you to my new boyfriend. And I hear that you are seeing someone, too. Is that right?”
Boyfriend? I felt like I was seventeen years old again. I’d spank her later, for that. I stepped up to Jas’s side, smiling as nicely as I could. “Good day, Mrs. Turner. Pleased to meet you.”
“Ms. Ramirez, thank you.” She made no move to open the screen door and I wished Jas had briefed me on her mother’s surname.
I smoothly apologized. She brought her face closer to the mesh and glared at me, and I knew where Jas got her fire from.
“Mom. Okay, so we can talk here. That’s fine. Tell me about this new guy. Jack? I’m happy for you. How did you guys meet?”
To my ears, Jas sounded forced and brittle, and I am sure that her mother wasn’t fooled. Still, Grace sighed, and said, “Jack’s over. Look, Jas. I’m sorry. I’ve been dating a while. I signed up with an agency before you left for England.”
“Really? Oh my God. You never said.”
“Well, no. I didn’t want…”
“What? What, you thought I’d be upset about it?”
“Well, yeah, sure, I did.”
“No, mom, not at all! I think that’s great. I wish you’d done it sooner, is all.”
Grace put her hand on the screen. “Really?”
“I’m happy for you, I really am. So. Jack’s off the scene?”
“I saw him for a little while. He was a Brit, like your man there.” She nodded at me and nearly even smiled. “But he’d lived here for decades, and sounded kinda weird. He was okay but he was always working and he lived too far away. I don’t want no long-distance relationship at my age.”
“I’m sorry to hear it didn’t work out, mom.”
They were sounding like normal people once more, having a civil conversation. Then Jas asked, “So, are you seeing anyone right now?”
For the first time, I saw a genuine smile light up Grace’s face. She struggled to stop the grin wrinkling up her features. “Well, yeah, kinda, but it’s early days, you know? A real nice man. He was introduced to me by Jack; I dunno if he’s a distant cousin or something, from London. Older guy and all, but I like that.”
I could feel my heart thumping hard in my chest. This was too much of a co-incidence. I slid my gaze to Jas and she was tense, too. We knew what was coming.
Grace said, “His name is Lennie.”
* * * *
I put my hand on Jas’s shoulder, holding her back with a squeeze to warn her to stay calm. She reached out to the screen door’s handle, but didn’t try to force it. “Mom, listen. There’s something you should know about Lennie. He’s called Leonard, right?”
“Yes. You don’t know him, Jas.”
“I do, mom. He’s Leonard Walker-Wilkinson, and–”
“So yo
u’ve been talking to Angie at last? She never said.”
“No, mom, I haven’t. I just know because–”
“Well, here’s your chance.”
We both turned. A beat-up pickup truck was pulling up at the side of the road. It was one of those with a bench seat running along behind the driver’s seat, so a whole family could be transported, leaving plenty of room in the back for crates of beer or dogs or fishing equipment or whatever it was that people bought that kind of vehicle for.
There was a couple in the front seats, and a brace of kids in the row behind. They didn’t get out. The engine turned off and everyone just glared at one another.
Then Jas started to walk down the broken path toward the truck. She walked slowly, as if approaching a frightened animal. The man in the driver’s side had his window wound down; clearly the old vehicle didn’t have air con. I thought everyone had air con around here. He was wearing a clean, tight tee-shirt and a baseball cap.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” he called out.
“Brian. Hi. Good to see you again. Hi, Angie. Hi, kids.” She waved enthusiastically at the truck, but no one waved back.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you,” Brian said again.
“Angie, come on. Please. I’m not here to cause trouble.”
“No one wants to talk to you,” Brian said loudly, and in the back, one of the kids started to cry.
Grace spoke out, remaining firmly behind the screen door. “Do you really want to cause a scene in front of those innocent kids?”
Jas stopped. She was halfway down the path. “No. No I don’t. Whatever you think about me – you’re wrong. Andrew?”
I nodded and went to join her, and we walked on past the truck and back to our rental car. I got into the driver’s side and she slid into the passenger seat without a murmur.
We had driven five minutes in a random direction before she spoke.