by Ava Sinclair
He shakes his head. “That was unintentional. I came in there wanting to like that presentation. I could tell you had no recollection of what happened, and I wanted to part giving you something positive. But business is business. The ad was good, Jill. If you’d not lost your temper, I’d have told you so. It just wasn’t good for my company.” He pauses. “And it told me something about you. The imagery told me that your need for a daddy, that’s not just something you feel when you’re drunk. It’s always below the surface. That ad? You targeted that at yourself.”
I stand, crossing my arms, and turn away. “So you’re a psychologist now?” Even as I ask the question, I recognize the truth in what he says. How could I have not seen it?
I turn back to him and he stands and walks over. “As long as you keep ignoring this unmet need, you’re going to try and drown it in drink. And one of these nights, it could lead to your being raped or murdered. I’m not going to let that happen. I’m going to take care of you, Jill. I’m going to give you the guidance and correction and care you’ve been missing all these years. And you’re going to let me.”
There’s a ferocity to his words, a commitment I don’t feel like I deserve. Warmth washes over me. I feel the lure of what he’s offering. Protection. Safety. He’s not asking me if I want it. He’s taking it out of my hands. The independent woman in me should be offended, even outraged. But the flutter I felt over his knee has returned. I’m responding to what he’s saying not just emotionally, but physically.
“And now we come to the part where you ask for forgiveness,” he says.
“I already told you I was sorry, Mr. Iver,” I say.
“Call me Max,” he replies. “And this isn’t about me.” He takes my hand and leads me to a table against the wall. There’s a mirror over it and I’m facing myself. My blue eyes are puffy and red-rimmed. Tear tracks have dried on my flushed cheekbones. I’m staring at a penitent.
“You’re going to ask her forgiveness,” he says. “For every bit of blame and every negative thing you’ve ever told yourself about Jill Stafford, every lie you fed her that made her rush to the bottle. You’re going to ask her forgiveness, and put the blame where it belongs, honey, and that’s on the parents who let you down. Especially the son-of-a-bitch who shook you off his leg when you were four years old.”
I’m crying again, but this time my tears are a release as I look at myself with fresh eyes.
“It’s not her fault,” Max urges. He’s behind me, his hands on my shoulders. “Go on. Tell her.”
“It’s not your… my… It’s not my fault,” I say.
“Your parents were fucked up, baby. They wouldn’t take responsibility, so they blamed you for their failings. You understand?”
I nod. “I didn’t do anything wrong.” I begin to sob, feeling the pain I’ve bottled up seep out of me like a toxin. “I was just a little girl. Who the fuck does that to a little girl? I just wanted to be loved and tucked in. I just wanted someone to teach me right from wrong, to… kiss my boo-boos…” I stop, gasping heavily between my sobs. Max is supporting me from behind, leaning down to steady me. “All I ever wanted was to be loved.”
“That’s it,” he says. “Let it out…”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry I took all the blame. I’m sorry that I’ve spent nineteen years beating myself up since the day my dad walked out. I’m sorry that I never recognized that someone made me this way. I’m sorry that I wrecked every job, that I lost my best friend, because I tried to mask my pain. I’m sorry I brought myself so close to being a lush like my mother.”
“Forgive yourself now,” he says.
But I can’t. I open my mouth, but now that I’ve listened to the list of self-harm, I feel as unworthy as my parents for abusing my inner child, for beating her up.
“Do it,” he says, and I look into the mirror and see want etched on my face, a desire to be unburdened of this load.
“I forgive you,” I say. “I forgive myself.”
“Come here.” Max turns me to him, and moving into his embrace feels natural. He doesn’t say anything, and when the tears start this time, he pulls me closer so that my face is buried against the softness of his cashmere sweater. His chest underneath the sweater is hard and warm, the arms around me hard and strong.
“Does that feel better?” he asks, when I’ve sobbed myself past tears into gasping little hitches of breath. The circle of his arms opens, and he gently pushes me back so he can look at me. He produces another handkerchief from his pocket, mops my face with it, and then holds it over my nose and directs me to blow.
I nod, because it does.
He picks me up then, cradling me in his arms, and walks through his penthouse apartment to another room. “Lights, thirty percent,” he says, and a soft glow fills a beautiful bedroom with soothing pastel walls and a white bed with the softest duvet imaginable. Max lays me down and wordlessly undoes first one shoe, and then another.
Then he lifts me to sitting, which hurts, and pulls back the cover. I lie down, cocooned in warmth so comforting that I almost forget the soreness from the spanking. The vortex of emotions he’s put me through has left me exhausted, and even though I’m not in my pajamas I find myself drifting into sleep almost instantly. My last thought before slumber overtakes me is that I’ve never felt so safe in my life.
Chapter Seven
I have to see Becky. Max tells me I have no choice, that running from my problems won’t fix them. After hearing our history—and I was brutally honest about it—he confirms what I’ve finally admitted to myself; my friend has every right to distance herself from me for her own good.
He makes me write a list of all my bills. He’ll handle them for now, he says, and as much as this kind of dependence makes me nervous, it’s either this or bankruptcy. My belongings will have to go into storage. He rents a small unit for me, and the next afternoon I show up to find Becky has already piled most of my stuff in boxes by the door. Megan is there, moving her stuff in.
Megan, at least, seems slightly uncomfortable when I enter to find my belongings stacked against the wall.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I tell Becky.
“I didn’t think I could count on you to get it all together before you were supposed to be out,” she says. I can see the tension in her posture as she addresses me. She’s expecting a fight, or a guilt trip.
“You’re doing the right thing, kicking me out,” I tell her, and she seems unsteadied by my admission.
“Where are you going?” she asks.
“I have a place.”
“Where?”
I look at the boxes. I may have been a bad roommate and a bad friend, but I don’t feel like I owe an explanation to someone who packed my things without permission. I can tell she understands. She just nods.
“You’ll keep in touch?” she asks.
“Maybe,” I say. “Eventually.”
I hear the truck pull up outside. There are boots on the stairs. Max hired a mover with a couple of guys, even though I don’t have much to haul. Becky looks at them curiously; I know she’s wondering how I can afford this.
“Will you be getting some help?” she asks.
I consider not answering, but decide this is a fair question considering what I’ve put her through. “Yes,” I say. “I think I’ll be okay.”
She steps forward as if to hug me, but before she can, I turn away. “See you around, Becky.” I look at Megan as I leave. “You’ll be a good roommate for her.” There’s no spite in my words because I mean them. Becky deserves a better roommate, even if it does hurt like hell to feel her cold distance.
And just like that, I’m officially out of a home, and wondering if Max Iver will make good on his promise to help me if I decide his oversight isn’t something I can live with. Before I left, he promised to give me what I’d planned for myself on Monday—a reset. But he said it would come with rules, which we would discuss when I was finished tying up loose ends today. Going to
the apartment was the first. Now I’m on my way to Brinkman Advertising, to pick up my last check and a few things Patty called to tell me I’d forgotten to remove from my cubicle.
I don’t want to go alone. I wish someone was here to hold my hand. But Max reminded me that my outburst burned a bridge between me and Mr. Brinkman, and I need to close out this chapter with some dignity. It’s a start, he says, to learning to face my fears instead of drowning them.
I’m uncertain and nervous when I arrive. I feel like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime, only the crime I committed was self-sabotage. But Max is right. It gives me a sense of peace to pick up my check and small box of belongings. Patty and Casey meet me in the HR office. Casey is particularly emotional. She says she misses me, and tells me she tried to plead my case with Mr. Brinkman. She describes Max Iver as ‘mean.’ It’s an awkward moment. What would she say if she knew our mean client spanked my ass last night? What would she say if she knew I let him? What if she knew how it’s made me feel? Would she understand? How could she, when I don’t?
This morning he gave me more than enough cash to pay for the movers and the storage unit. I could have taken the money and left. But instead, I’m coming back to Ingram Tower, back to a man I barely know who says he wants to change my life. He even gave me a key, which made me feel more awkward than the money.
When he handed it to me along with the wad of bills, I’d looked at it warily.
“You don’t know me, and you’re giving me a key to your place?”
“It’s your place now, too,” he said. “And I have enough faith in you for both of us, Jill.”
I’d nodded, feeling strangely touched, like I was being handed trust I didn’t really deserve. Maybe it’s wanting to earn it that’s drawn me back here. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s the memory of the soft throbbing between my legs during the spanking, the mingling of pleasure and pain when Max squeezed my spanked bottom.
I enter to find the place quiet. Is he here? I place my purse on the table in the foyer and walk through the house. I can hear music coming from another room. I follow the sound. I’ve not seen the whole place. I didn’t know there was a home gym until I find myself staring in through the doorway. The walls and floors are honey-colored wood. High-tech fitness equipment lines one wall. Along another are weight sets. Max Iver’s back is to me. He’s shirtless, and lifting what must be thirty- or forty-pound kettle balls in each hand, holding them straight out to his sides as he raises them. With each weighted ascent, the muscles of his arms and upper back ripple under his bronzed skin.
In college, I took an anatomy course and even toyed with the idea of becoming a nurse. As I stare at his back, I silently identify the flexing muscles. Trapezius. Teres Major. Latissimus dorsi.
He’s wearing sweatpants that hang low on his narrow hips. When he leans down, they stretch across an ass that I’m sure is as muscular and hard as what I’ve glimpsed so far. Even though it’s been years since he played professional football, I can imagine him on the field even now, his huge frame crashing into another player.
I’m still staring when he turns. His arms and chest are sweaty. My gaze runs downward. Pectoralis major. Rectus abdominus. External oblique. My favorite muscle escapes me, the furrowed ridge that runs down in a V-shape to the top of his pants. The Adonis belt, some call it.
“Jill.” He puts the weights down. “You came back.” He’s smiling a little, and I realize it’s the first time he’s smiled at me since the start of our ill-fated presentation. He mops his face with a towel hanging over the edge of the weight bench and tosses it aside. “I thought you might get cold feet.”
To go with my hot bottom, I think. What does it say about me that I returned of my own free will?
“I said I would.”
“Good girl,” he replies, and a weird little buzz runs through my body at his praise. “Are you ready for our talk?” He’s walked past me to head back to the main part of the house and I follow. This time we bypass the living room and he gestures me to sit at a dining room table that’s bigger than the conference room table we had at work.
When he comes back with two drinks and a folder, I can’t help but ask him about his penthouse.
“This place is big,” I say, observing the obvious. “Do you entertain a lot?”
“Sometimes,” he says. “When I have to. I’m not really the partying type, at least not any more. I got my fill of that when I was playing ball.” He puts two glasses down and fills each with sparkling water.
“Was it hard, when you were injured?” I ask.
“Someone’s done her homework,” he says.
I hasten to clarify. “Before the presentation, I read up on you. I thought if I knew more about you I’d know what would appeal to you.” My voice trails off.
“There’s a lot more to someone than what appears in the media, Jill. I’ve sat down with a lot of reporters who got up thinking they knew who I was. They didn’t. I tell them what I want the public to know. Nothing more.”
“Maybe they should interview you when you’re drunk,” I say, and instantly regret the comment when I see his expression.
“That’s one of the reasons I rarely drink, young lady. Once your secrets are out, there’s no turning back.” He pushes the folder in my direction. “I’ve given a lot of thought to your situation based on what you’ve told me. You don’t just need limits, Jill. You want them.”
I open the folder and my eyes move down the list of rules. I look up at him in disbelief.
“You can’t be serious,” I say, and look back down to see if I’m reading what he’s written correctly. He’s giving me a dress code. No more blue jeans. I’ll dress conservatively and neatly with clothes he provides. I’ll exercise an hour a day. No alcohol. No swearing. I’ll be required to study a foreign language I don’t know, for which he will provide a tutor. I will refer to him as ‘sir’ from here on out. I will keep my temper in check. I will be in bed at eight p.m. And lastly, I will submit to discipline should he deem it necessary. Correction will be decided by Max Iver, and may be physical in nature.
“I’m taking you back to square one,” he says. “I’m giving you the kind of guidance and consequences you’ve missed out on.”
I drag my gaze from the paper up to his face. “This would be fine if I were ten,” I reply. “But I’m an adult.”
“You said yourself that you were only an adult on the outside, Jill…”
“I was drunk!” I object.
“So, you deny it?”
I grow quiet. I can’t deny it. He’s right. In my drunkenness, I bared my soul. His tone is gentle as he lays his hand on the paper. “This isn’t about humiliating you. It isn’t about diminishing you. It’s about giving you want you want. A father figure. A daddy.”
I look back at the paper. I can’t help but to focus on the last line. The word ‘discipline’ jumps out from the other words. I remember being over Max Iver’s lap, how he told me to part my legs.
“Can I ask a question?”
“Yes, Jill.”
I look up at him. “Is this… sexual?”
I brace myself for an angry denial. For a moment, he doesn’t say anything.
“Jill, what’s your level of sexual experience?”
I feel like we’re treading into uncomfortable territory. “I’m not a virgin,” I say. “I mean, I don’t sleep around…”
He nods. “You don’t have to explain. Have you ever heard the terms ‘dominance and submission’ or ‘power exchange’?”
I almost roll my eyes. “I haven’t been hiding under a rock,” I reply. “I know about Fifty Shades of Grey.”
He chuckles at this. “That’s the romanticized, Cliff’s Notes version. It’s not always about handcuffs and blindfolds. I’m a dominant, Jill, but not the kind whose dominance is purely sexual.” He stops, and I can see he’s choosing his words carefully now. “My dominance has a paternal edge to it. It fills a need in me that goes beyond sexual. Be
cause you revealed something of yourself, I’ll reveal something, too. Yes, there’s a sexual component to my dominance. But when I met you, that’s not what was triggered. When you came into Serrano’s that night, the daddy dom in me instantly recognized a little girl who needed saving.”
Daddy dom? That’s a new term for me, and since there’s a sexual component to this, does that mean he wants to…? It’s a question I do not have the courage to ask. I look at the list again.
“A month,” he said. “That’s how long we’ll test the rules. At the end of that, we’ll reevaluate whether you can handle what I’m offering.”
“I’m supposed to… agree to this?” I put my hand flat on the paper.
“The way I see it, young lady, when you agreed to the arrangement, you agreed to the rules. Understand?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Yes… sir?”
“Good girl.” He stands up. “Now let’s go shopping.”
Chapter Eight
I shouldn’t have these thoughts about Max Iver. I shouldn’t be sitting in the limo across from him, fantasizing about what it would be like to have him rip off the clothes he’s bought me.
He has conservative taste. I look like a private school student in my white silk blouse and pleated navy blue skirt. For the first time in my life, I’m wearing knee socks—white ones—and blue Mary Janes. Max treated me to a facial and my skin is glowing under minimal makeup; my newly styled hair is pulled back into a glossy ponytail.
Lolita, I thought when I looked in the mirror, and I wonder if he thought the same. I’m too old to be Lolita, but I wonder if he’ll end up wrecking me like Humbert Humbert wrecked her. How awful is it that I want him to? Under my expensive skirt, my panties are soaked at the thought.
“What are you thinking about?”
I jump at the question, and flush. Then I lie. “Oh, just how generous you were,” I say. “I’ve never had anyone buy me clothes. I mean… my mom bought me school clothes, but she complained about how much it cost.” I look down at my shoes. “I’ve never had anyone pick my clothes for me, either. They’re pretty.”