Bound Hearts

by C. C. Galloway

  Before she knew it, Wednesday night arrived in its rainy glory delivering a very handsome, dominant male to her doorstep.

  “Hello, Gorgeous,” she greeted him while taking note of the overnight bag in his hand. He didn’t even bother responding before he promptly dropped the bag and pulled her to him in an embrace that was distinctly him. He smelled the way he always did, like clean soap with a hint of underlying sin. His lips found hers as he wrapped his hands all around her, seeking out her most sensitive spots, molding her to his hard, angular body.

  Pulling his lips away while keeping his hands locked on her waist, he stroked his thumbs against her stomach as he looked down at her, concern clouding his perceptive gaze. “You’re upset,” he said unequivocally. “What’s wrong? You’ve been bothered by something all week.”

  Truth time. She could let him in, thereby divulging the strained nature of her relationship with her mother as well as her history with her father, or blow him off and insist he was imagining things, or fabricate some other reasonable explanation. Maybe the mid-week blues were bringing her down or maybe her defenses were otherwise occupied, but at that moment, she had no desire and even less energy to tell him anything less than the full, unvarnished truth.

  “I don’t want to talk about me. I want to hear about your mother,” she said instead.

  “Whether or not you like it, we will discuss what’s on your mind. If you prefer telling me later, that’s alright.” He deftly maneuvered her through her front door and into the loft.

  “You planning on staying awhile?” she asked, motioning to his overnight bag.

  “Someone needs to protect you from yourself,” he responded, shrugging off his jacket.

  “So generous.”

  “I told you I was a giver,” he said as he moved into her kitchen, opened up the refrigerator and helped himself to a beer.

  “Nice of you to notice my brand,” he said, taking a long pull from the amber bottle while a gentle smile played across his lips.

  She shrugged, still uncomfortable with his insight and the fact that he knew she’d purchased it for him.

  “You want one?” he offered.

  Taking a deep breath, she said, “Yeah. Why not.”

  Twisting the cap, he gave it her, took her hand in his and walked them both towards her couch as they settled in.

  “You play tonight?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I wasn’t planning on it, but at the last minute, I decided some fresh air and some well-kicked balls would do me good.”

  “Give me your feet.”

  “Why?”

  “Why are you so suspicious?”

  “I want to prepare myself in case you’re intending to subject my little piggies to the same treatment you gave my nipples last week,” she tartly replied.

  His grin crinkled the lines around his eyes, simultaneously aging him and making him appear half his age.

  “You should be so lucky.”

  Tentatively, she lifted both of her legs over his so they rested in his lap. He removed her socks and immediately began rubbing her feet, giving much needed attention to the arches and balls of her feet. She should have been embarrassed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a pedicure or performed any beauty treatments on her feet. But his touch made her feel too good to even contemplate removing them. Digging into her arches, he hit pressure points that released tension she hadn’t even realized she’d been carrying.

  Allowing him to do his thing, she took a sip of her beer, closed her eyes and savored the moment.

  After a few heartbeats of not unpleasant silence, he said, “Mom will be fine. The doctors determined the problem was a very slight blockage that they were able to fix.”

  “That’s what you called the heart catherization?”

  “Exactly. The doctors were kind of surprised because she’s fairly healthy all the way around. I mean her diet and exercise habits would make any nutritionist proud.”

  “Do they have any idea what else, if anything, caused it?”

  “Mainly heredity.”

  “Does that mean the next time we’re doing it, you’re going to pass out from a heart attack?” she teased, trying to lighten the mood.

  He laughed. She’d succeeded. “Maybe.”

  “What’s she got to do now?”

  “The good news is she was able to avoid riskier surgery. The bad news is that she’s now on a boatload of medication that she’ll be on for the rest of her life.”

  “Better than the alternative.”

  “That it is. Now, are you ready to tell me what’s been on your mind this week?” he asked as he finished her foot rub.

  “It’s my mother. We don’t have what one might consider a close relationship.”

  “And by that you mean?”

  “I mean, we pretty much don’t get along on any level. She doesn’t get me and I don’t understand her. Sometimes, I’m not even sure how she raised me.”

  “You don’t mention anything about your dad,” he said, gently as though afraid of spooking her.

  She let out a harsh breath and concentrated on the fascinating label on her beer bottle.

  “He’s not really in the picture,” she finally responded.

  “As in, you don’t call him on Christmas and don’t expect to be mentioned in his will or as in you have no memory of him?” he asked, now stroking her legs in easy comfort.

  She frowned while her stomach churned for reasons completely unrelated to the man who usually made her stomach jump in the best ways.

  “All of the above. I have no recollection of him. As far as I know, all of which is from my mother, who’s her own special brand of crazy, is that they were married and he split around the time I turned two.”

  “That’s it?”

  She nodded and took a long pull on her bottle to fortify herself as much as anything else. “I’ve never heard from him. I don’t know the first thing about him other than his first and last name.”

  “You’ve never tried to Google him?”

  She shook her head. “No. When I was growing up, I thought about him a lot, but my mother didn’t really discuss him with me. My mother’s the only child in her family and my grandparents never talked about him. She moved out here with me from Connecticut. By the time I was old enough to do something on my own to locate him, I was pissed off. Violently angry. I mean, I know that my mother’s a handful and I can’t imagine whatever compelled him to marry her and have a child with her, but I’m not her and I was outraged that not once did he even try and reach out to me.”

  “You know that for a fact?”

  “What?”

  “That he never tried to contact you? What if he did, but your mother blocked him or otherwise prevented him from getting to know you?”

  “I guess it’s possible, but as controlling as Lauren Stuart is, even I don’t think she’d intentionally keep us separated if he initiated communication. She’s a fairly straight shooter, even when poorly intentioned.”

  “Lauren. You both have rich girl names,” he said with a smile.

  “Yeah, well, as you know, I’m limited to a public school teacher’s salary, so the ‘rich’ aspect is purely limited to my name.”

  “So, what’d you ask your mother about him? About why he left and didn’t contact you?”

  “I asked her the obvious. Why, when, how, and if he was ever coming back. According to her, he shouldn’t have settled down in the first place and had no desire to bring up a child, which took him approximately twenty-four months to figure out. When he did, he hit the road.”

  “She have any idea where he ended up?”

  “I don’t think so. She wouldn’t have kept tabs on him and as I said, by the time I realized I could try and hunt him down, I was over it. Fuck him. If I wasn’t important enough to him for the first twenty years of my life, he has no right to share in the rest of it with me.”

  David remained quiet, still rubbing her legs, gazing at her, soaking it all in and
letting her expel it all out. After awhile, he said, “So tell me about the fight with your mom.”

  Her shoulders immediately tensed up and she forced herself to tell them to relax. This was David. It was okay to tell him about her mother. If he couldn’t deal with it, better to know that now than later.

  She craned her neck to both sides and then launched. “My mother sees the world through two lenses: fat women and those who aren’t fat. If you’re a fat woman, in my mother’s worldview, you might as well either consider giving lesbianism a good, hard look or kill yourself because you will never land a quality man, nor succeed in your career, regardless of your chosen career path. And by fat, I mean anything over a size six is critical.”

  “What do fat women have to do with you?”

  “Everything. Growing up, she was very disciplined about our diet and she drilled it into me. Lean protein and vegetables only. Starches are Satan along with fruit and refined sugar. Chocolate is one of the bigger sins, but then again, any type of sugar, including fruit, is just asking to land on your ass and stay there for awhile.” Repeating the words reminded how out of sync her mother was. And consequently, how out of touch she’d become while listening to her for years. She feared looking at him, concerned he’d decide this was where the fun stopped.

  “Can I tell you something?” he asked.

  “Please do.”

  “With all due respect, your mother sounds like a nut job. Fruit? Really? Anti-fruit? That makes about as much sense as not brushing your teeth because you’re worried the enamel will wear off.”

  The breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding released and suddenly, she felt twenty pounds lighter, with only his words to thank.

  “I know. Trust me. I know how crazy this must sound. It is what it is and it is how she is.”

  “So, the fight was about….” he prompted.

  “So, she called me up Saturday to have dinner. I haven’t had much of an opportunity lately to check in with her and I’d been avoiding her calls. I gave in and met her for dinner and she launched into yet her five thousandth diatribe about how fat women are the scum of the earth. To hear Lauren Stuart tell it, they’re responsible for all civil wars, the obesity epidemic in this country, and the failure of our president to achieve world peace.”

  “This is her issue, then. Not yours.”

  “It’s as much my issue, unfortunately. I can’t magically erase the years and years of her conditioning. If I could, I would, but I think too much is ingrained at this point.”

  “What can I do?” he asked, his eyes as tender as his hands.

  “I think you’ve done a lot, listening to me tonight without immediately bolting.”

  “Why would I bolt?” he asked, his confusion clouding his eyes.

  “Umm, I don’t know. Maybe because now you know all about my neuroses. Know about my gene pool. It’s some heavy stuff that would send a lot of guys for the car.”

  “I’m not a lot of guys.”

  No, he certainly wasn’t. Her year-long crush on the rugged, virile man in front of her, now stroking her calves, had morphed into something much more serious in the last few weeks. Something good that made her feel warm thinking about it even when he wasn’t around. She couldn’t pinpoint the date or the event that transformed her fun and entertaining sex romp into a more serious endeavor.

  “I know. Trust me, I know. I’ve never let any man do what you do to me in bed.”

  “You love it,” he stated, firm as a nun in catechism class.

  She couldn’t and wouldn’t deny it. Not tonight when he made her his first priority upon returning from his trip. Not when she’d shared her troubled and turbulent history with her mother. Not when they were sitting together, on her couch showing each other a lot more than their sex moves.

  “I do. And I missed you.”

  “Come over here,” he directed, pulling her towards him. She positioned herself with her back to his front as he rested his head on top of hers.

  “You want my opinion?”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Sure. If you don’t, say so and I’ll begin my imminent seduction.”

  “Alright, let’s hear it,” she said as she settled against him. His size made her feel small and feminine. His size and his utter maleness. He radiated testosterone from head to toe.

  “There’s nothing about your relationship with your mom that’s irreparably damaged. Everything that’s happened – both things she’s said and done to you and anything you regret on your end – can be repaired,” he declared.

  “I don’t want to apologize,” she said despairingly.

  “You shouldn’t apologize for something you don’t believe in. It’s insincere and will make you feel like a hypocrite, thereby exacerbating your feelings of frustration and hurt. I’m not hearing you say that you regret what you said, just the way in which you said it.”

  She let his sentiment sink in for a minute. “That’s true. I truly believe everything I said to her.”

  “Alright. That’s your starting point then. At some point in the future, and it doesn’t need to be this week or next week or even the week after that, but some time you need to call her up and set up a time and place to talk.”

  “I’m not sure she’d take my call.”

  “You’re still her daughter, Calleigh. She’ll answer her phone when you call and reach out to her. Set up a time for the two you to sit down and for you to express yourself. Tell her that there are certain things, certain opinions she carries, that don’t sit right with you and that bother you and have bothered you for a number of years. She’ll want to mend your rift as much as do. Maybe more. Make it so that there are some topics that are off limit, at least for awhile.”

  “Check you out, Mr. Sensitive. Who knew?”

  He lightly pinched her. “In my job, you wouldn’t believe the number and types of disputes I have to mediate. Between players and coaches. Players and other players. I’ve developed a lot of what are termed ‘reconciliation techniques’ that are applicable to all relationships.”

  “I would never have guessed.”

  “Give it a try. Not immediately or too soon cause you’re still too raw to face her and set some parameters around your relationship and your interactions. You’ll know when the time’s right.”

  She angled her body around so she could study him. His tough jaw jutted out at its traditional arrogant angle. His eyes were like sharp ice bathed in a midnight gloss. His cruel mouth that delighted and tormented her was relaxed.

  “I think that’s…actually some pretty good advice, Shalvington.”

  “Good. Then you’re going to owe me,” he darkly promised while delivering a smoldering look.

  “I always pay my debts,” she said, her body heating up at the thought of how she could pay him back. On her back, legs spread, at his mercy to do with as he wished. Oh yeah. Not a bad way to satisfy her debt.

  Taking her head in his wide hands, he tilted it slightly before he began kissing her. He didn’t start with her lips. Rather, her eyelids felt the softest caress of his lips, butterfly light and quick on each side before he moved on to her nose. Gently, he started playing Eskimo with her, rubbing his nose across hers in the timeless ritual she’d learned as a child as to how Eskimos kissed each other. The sweetness of the contact and his patience unraveled any last remaining hesitation perched in the deepest recesses of her heart and mind and blew them out of the universe. How could she not want to be with this man and build something for the future when he was like this? Patient and loving and understanding. The arrogant son of a gun had turned out to be one of the best listeners and friends she’d ever had. Not blowing her off about her fight with her mother or telling her to simply get over it. Or ignore it, as men were want to do. Smart and insightful. All wrapped up in an insanely hot package.

  “Calleigh,” he murmured.

  “Hmmmm,” she responded.

  “I brought the handcuffs.”

  § § §
>
  The following Sunday, a startling sensation notified Calleigh that it was, indeed, the morning, and a handsome, demanding man was trying to wake up in her in a tried and true way.

  “Mornin’ sunshine,” David stated, trailing his lips over the small of her bare back while his broad hands stroked her stomach and long legs, eliciting an entirely different round of sensations.

  “Morning,” she said, a yawn sneaking through her words as she rolled over to look into his eyes. She wanted them to be the first thing her eyes noticed when she woke up. His eyes had softened in the last few days, both in and outside the bedroom. Last night, they’d gone for a long, leisurely dinner at Equinox where they exchanged stories of their pasts, both significant and small, before retreating back to her loft and engaging in several long, sweaty bouts of sex. David used several accoutrements that were new, but she felt as though she had been reborn with him, willing to do acts, say words, and try new feats she would have assumed were primarily left to the imagination of erotica authors, not real life people. Certainly not real-life high school math teachers.

  David showed her differently. He showed her how much she could enjoy prolonging her release, how much a slight amount of pain strategically placed on her body could enhance the pleasure she knew would be hers eventually if she would willingly wait for it, trusting in him that he would always and completely see to her pleasure. He hadn’t suggested anything she’d turned down, not allowing her fear or judgment to interfere with their relationship. He was an inventive and exciting lover, teaching her more about her body than she could ever have learned otherwise.

  He looked at her through his tawny lashes, pulling his mouth away from her stomach for a brief minute. “What do you want to do today before the game?” he asked.

  She smiled at him and palmed his head in both of her hands. “First, I want you to finish what you’ve started.”