A Is for Amour

by Alison Tyler

  “Of course, Tom. Like I’m one to judge.”

  “Thank you, Nicole. It’s such a relief to hear you say that.”

  “Can you accept me the way I am, Tom?” I asked, more out of a sense of parallelism than anything else. I figured it would be nice to be reassured, especially after I had gotten myself into so much trouble.

  “Not a chance.”

  “What?”

  “I warned you that I was rigid and needed things a certain way.”

  “But I can accept that.”

  “Good. Then I need you to stop stealing and get out of debt.”

  “But what if I need you to accept me the way I am?”

  “Nicole, sweetheart, you don’t even accept yourself the way you are.”

  Touché.

  “And you propose to fix me?”

  “Come back to my place and I’ll tell you what I propose.”

  I could have been offended, or gotten scared, or mistrusted his motives, but instead I just let him pay the check, got in the passenger seat of his car, and went agreeably to his house. Tom made me very obedient.

  His place was even neater than I had imagined it; totally modernist, black and white, and minimal. I expected the glass of wine and the awkward sitting next to each other on the couch and the fumbling first kiss, but instead we had hardly gotten in the door when Tom turned to me, looked me in the eye, and gave me the first of many thousands of direct orders.

  “Take a shower. There’s a clean robe hanging on a hook on the door that you can put on afterward.”

  I looked at him. Was he serious? Did he think I was dirty? Was this his way of bypassing the fumbling scene on the couch? Was he taking me for granted?

  “Nicole, I’ll never tell you to do something if I think you might regret it. You can always do whatever you want, but I think we’ll be happiest if you do what I say.”

  He sounded both kind and menacing. I liked kind, but menacing felt electric. I turned and headed toward the shower, swaying my hips to whet his appetite.

  The rest of the night went better than I dared expect. I got pretty hot with anticipation while I was in the shower. I emerged, still wet, in his robe and we began kissing. I wasn’t even dry when he made me come for the first time, licking my clit right through my first orgasm and clear to my third. I had to pull him by the hair to make him stop and kiss me.

  I ended up straddling him that first time. The second time he lasted longer and really had to fuck me hard to come at all. I don’t come from fucking very often, but he gave me plenty of time to come twice more. He was behind me and I touched myself while he was doing it. Afterward, we cuddled until our sweaty bodies got chilly, and then we pulled up the covers and went to sleep. I’ve always thought that if you pay attention to how he fucks, you can tell whether a guy likes you or just likes fucking.

  Tom liked me. I had no doubt.

  The alarm went off frighteningly early the next morning. By the time I had stumbled into the bathroom and put on his robe, he had set a place for me at his table and made me an omelet. It was the first time I’d had anything but Pop-Tarts or cereal for breakfast since I stole that prosciutto.

  “What are you going to do today, Nicole?”

  It was an innocent enough question, but I don’t think he meant it that way. He knew that bankrupt shoplifters don’t usually make the right choices. It was his way of cutting to the chase. I was too scared to go where I knew he was going to take it, though, so I lied.

  “I’ve got a job interview coming up. I’m going to go home and prepare.”

  I tried to be vague and ambitious, in hopes it would discourage further inquiry.

  “Nicole, I’m a prosecutor. I spend my whole life taking apart people’s lies. But I don’t start work for another two hours. Just tell me the truth. What are you going to do today?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s better.”

  “I need to figure out what I’m going to do about repaying my debt.”

  “You should get a job.”

  “Duh.”

  “No, I mean you should get a job today.”

  “It’s not that easy, Tom.”

  “I’m pretty sure that it is that easy, Nicole.”

  “Come on, Tom. I was thinking I really should go back to law school. Anyway, I haven’t even updated my resume in eight months. Plus, I need to get resume paper and envelopes before I can even send any off.”

  “You mean steal resume paper and envelopes?”

  It sounds like he was being mean, but he wasn’t. He said it with a bit of a smile because he knew he was right, and I didn’t deny it.

  “Get a job by the end of the day and I’ll buy you dinner and make you come twice as many times as I did last night.”

  “And if I don’t get a job today?”

  “Then I’ll spank you and send you home without dinner or sex.”

  “But…”

  “But what, Nicole? You didn’t expect me to be so true to my word? Or is it the spanking thing?”

  “It’s… Well, it’s both. It’s everything.”

  “So, you know what you have to do, then?”

  “Yeah.”

  How did he do that to me?

  Then the most amazing thing happened: I got a job. Actually, I got three jobs and was scheduled to begin the following day at whichever of the three I decided to show up for. All three sucked, but at least I would end the day in less debt than I began it. I had imagined that I would be ashamed to grovel for work that was so below me, but I created a persona for each job who was better suited for groveling than I was. Besides, Tom’s spanking remark gave me something else to think about.

  The truth was, I kind of obsessed about it. I had always assumed that fetish was all kind of a joke, like French maid outfits or S/M dungeons. Something about it turned me on, but the fact that Tom had mentioned the concept worried me, too. How far was he willing to take things? I wouldn’t find out that night, because his doorman buzzed me in at 6:55 with three job offers in my purse, in case he required proof. Dinner and many orgasms arrived as promised and I went to work at two of the three jobs the next day.

  All went smoothly for a few weeks and I wondered if I might avert a spanking altogether until I lost both jobs in a single day. At that point, I realized I was certainly in for it. He hadn’t named any specific punishment for getting fired twice in a day, but I was pretty sure it would be bad. Worse still, having been late, bitchy, petulant, and attitudinal with everyone else that day, I found that I couldn’t turn off my attitude. I couldn’t stop being bad, arriving late back at Tom’s even though I could have arrived on time and adding a few additional misdemeanors to my accumulation of transgressions.

  I was under the mistaken impression that these additional fuck-ups wouldn’t really make a difference. I was going to get a spanking. What use was there in trying? Was I ever wrong.

  It began with the looks of disappointment and him preparing to punish me while I waited, panties unceremoniously lowered around my ankles and hands behind my back holding my skirt up. Then, after hearing what he had in store for me but without any frame of reference to know what it would be like, I had to go into the bedroom and wait in the corner. Even alone, I was utterly humiliated. Who the hell was he to make me do this? I thought about leaving, but I knew I wouldn’t. Something needed to put a stop to behavior that even I knew was ridiculous. If this could put a stop to it, it would be worth it, no matter how much it hurt.

  I had always been bad with pain. As a child, I had begged off of even the most mild ordeals. Being special came naturally to me, but lying ass-up on Tom’s lap didn’t make me feel very special at all. I wondered how many asses had been there before mine. The spanks hurt like hell—was it any wonder that my thoughts were getting bleaker? My ego was getting as bruised as my butt. He was just doing his job—prosecuting the accused, holding the guilty accountable, and administering clear, immediate feedback. He was a prosecutor, through and through, and I k
new how prosecutors felt about people like me. He was just getting his perverted kicks.

  Tom was all about swift and clear reinforcement, of the painfully memorable kind. He was doing a good job, too. It was quite horrible. I had forgotten the way that one part of your body could be so possessed by agony that everything else disappeared. Spank. Spank. Spank. The blows just kept coming, delivered mercilessly; each worse than the last. I imagined his point of view. He saw nothing of the agony, of the way my face contorted, the way my breath stopped, the way I felt like I would explode with pain and fear. All he saw was my fleshy ass bouncing and reddening as he brought his hand down on it over and over again. It was so unfair that it made me cry.

  From that day on, I would always be on my best behavior after a spanking offense, knowing it was essential not to make things worse. Every little bit of behavior, whether good or bad, made a difference come spanking time. But I wished I hadn’t had to learn that lesson the hard way.

  “You don’t understand how much it hurts, Tom!” I finally cried. “You don’t understand. It’s not fair.”

  “None of it’s really fair, is it? Most shoplifters get away with it. Lots of girls have daddies who pay off their credit cards. None of it’s your fault, is it?”

  “Why do you have to hit me so hard? It’s only making it worse.”

  “If you still think so afterward, then I’ll never spank you again. But you’ll thank me for it, Nicole. You really will.”

  “No, I won’t. Never!”

  I said it more in despair than denial. I would thank him for it because he cared. The more it hurt, the more I knew he cared. As if to emphasize the point, the spanking got harder until I couldn’t talk or think or even cry. I saved up all the tears for after it was over, when they finally poured out because I hadn’t gotten away with it. God, why did life always have to be so hard for me? Then Tom held me, and suddenly I felt as if maybe the next year wouldn’t be as hard as the last one.

  That’s not to say the next few months weren’t hard on my backside. I hated the spankings; loathed them, feared them, and avoided them every way I could, including behaving myself. But spanking also began to turn me on.

  Why?

  Well, it was how he did it to me. It was the way his masculinity and strength held me in place, grounded me, hurt me and yet contained all the chaos of my life. Spanking was the keystone of my private submission and exposure to him. My life was an open book to him; he could open me whenever and wherever he wanted. The spankings were a mixed bag. They reflected both his kindness—the attention and patience and way he cared for me—and his cruelty, too, his obsessive-compulsive rigidity, his cold adherence to the prescribed punishment, the inflexibility of it. The rules were the structure for the relationship. No rules, no relationship, and that, I confess, turned me on, too. I was an object. I liked being an object. It turned me on, whether I was his object to fuck, his object of desire, or the object of his rules, subject to his rule.

  I knew our strange love wasn’t for everybody, but it suited us just fine.

  “The law makes us free.” He liked to quote Kant and it felt true. It was our catechism. When I had believed myself to be free, I had really been a slave to my bad habits. With Tom, subservient to his elaborate order, I was truly free.

  THOMAS S. ROCHE

  THE BLONDE IN 1812

  AS SOON AS SPENCE CRUZ saw the blonde coming like an angel out of 1812, he stopped dead in his tracks. A natural instinct for subtlety told him he shouldn’t stare, but he couldn’t help himself. She was a knockout.

  Not to say that she was classically beautiful, the way you’d expect from a model or actress. There was just something special about the shape of her face, the smolder of her eyes, the curve of her body under the well-tailored black suit. The hem of that suit was maybe just a tad shorter than propriety would have dictated, showing Spencer that the blonde had a pair of the most incredible legs he’d seen in a long time. She carried a black purse over her shoulder and an Elmore Leonard paperback in her left hand.

  There was something intriguing about her, something that said she was too classy to touch the Earth, and definitely too classy for the Harrison Arms, a third-rate business hotel that was anything but classy. Sure, it had history, but it’d needed remodeling since at least 1960. Whereas the blonde in 1812 wasn’t in need of any remodeling at all, that was for damn sure.

  The blonde gave him the cold look of a woman who’s just been checked out, knows she’s just been checked out, and isn’t giving an inch.

  Spence watched, enraptured, as she walked down the hall and disappeared around the corner to the elevator.

  He felt like an idiot.

  Spence couldn’t believe his luck, or maybe his lack of it. This late on a Tuesday night, the hotel restaurant was totally empty. But the maitre d’—if you could really call someone a maitre d’ when he looked so badly in need of a good night’s sleep (or a couple of uppers, maybe)—seated him one booth over and facing her. Her. The blonde in 1812. And she was even more of a knockout in the flickering candlelight, even sexier with her little round reading glasses on as she studied the menu.

  Spence ordered Glenfiddich, thinking it might offset the effect of the threadbare red carpet and sleazy booths.

  Dawdling over whether to get a steak or a Caesar salad, Spence tried hard not to look at her, but failed. Engrossed in the menu, she gave no indication of noticing him—except for the faint upward flicker of her eyeballs when he was imprudently staring at her with dreamy eyes. Finally, Spence decided this was ridiculous.

  Picking up his drink, he took the few steps over to the blonde’s booth.

  “Excuse me,” he said, as politely as he could manage.

  The blonde put down the menu, stared at him as if only slightly perturbed.

  “I…ah, I noticed you were on the same floor as me—I figured since we’re both dining alone…maybe you wouldn’t mind some company? I’d even love to buy you dinner.”

  She stared for a few seconds, as if amazed at his gumption. But then she smiled.

  “Especially since it’s Valentine’s Day, is that it?”

  “No, no, nothing like that,” he said. “And besides, it’s not Valentine’s Day.”

  “Yet,” she said with a glance at her watch.

  “Yet.”

  “All right,” she said. “Why not? But mine’s on my company, so don’t bother.”

  “Mine, too,” he said, and winked.

  Her name was Julia—no last name. She lived in New York. He told her his name was Steve, from L.A.; two lies. She looked suspicious, and thereafter on the two or three occasions when she referred to him by name, it sounded like she was putting quotes around it.

  “You know, there’s a lot of history in this hotel,” he told her.

  “Is that right?” She toyed with the stem of her wineglass. Cabernet sauvignon, to go with the steak she’d ordered.

  “In nineteen-sixty, Sam Giancana had Jacob Anzer killed in the barbershop. Same way Albert Anastasia got killed in New York—hot towels on his face and everything.”

  “I take it Sam Giancana is some kind of gangster.”

  “Was. Boss of all bosses, at least in Chicago.”

  “And…are you some kind of gangster?”

  “I would hardly go spouting obscure tidbits of Chicago Mafia history if I was, would I?”

  “Cop, then?”

  “No, no.”

  “Lawyer.”

  “Keep guessing.”

  “Wannabe mystery writer.”

  “Bingo. How’d you guess? It’s the white socks, isn’t it?” He was wearing black silk socks and Dexters, or he never would have made the crack.

  “No, that’d make you a cop. Well, if you’re not here to kill anybody or bust gangsters, what is it you’re in Chicago for? Oh, damn, sorry—I ended my sentence with a preposition there.” Her voice dripped sarcasm, but she didn’t crack a smile.

  “You should never end your sentence with a proposition,
” he said, and regretted it the second he’d said it.

  Julia laughed, as if vaguely amused by his forwardness. She toyed with her wineglass some more.

  “Sorry, that was in bad taste,” he said, reddening.

  “Oh, so you’re saying you want me to end my sentences in propositions.”

  “I sell computers for interstate trucking companies,” he said quickly, smiling broadly to make it painfully obvious that he was changing the subject. “I was here closing a deal.”

  “They send you all the way to Chicago from L.A. in the middle of February for that?”

  “Well, I would prefer it if they sent me in May, sure, but it’s a halfa-million-dollar system. In this business, what the customer wants, the customer gets.”

  She whistled, her eyes sparkling. “You don’t say.”

  “You?”

  “Considerably less than a half a million dollars.” She smiled.

  “Uh…no, I mean what do you do for a living?”

  “Oh, a little of this, a little of that….” She smirked. “I’m in advertising. I have a new client in Chicago.”

  “In town long?”

  “I have a six a.m. flight.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Well, I’ll be glad to get home. I hate the Midwest this time of year.” She got a crazy smile on her face. “Are you married?” she asked.

  He wrestled with that one for a full five seconds. “Yes. I’m married. Happily, to a great woman.”

  “Well, well,” Julia sighed. “She’s lucky to have a husband who speaks so well of her. I wasn’t making a pass at you, just curious.”

  “Well, thank God for that,” he smiled, trying hard to pump up the mojo and not succeeding very well. “And you?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes not.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “I’m a woman of convenience. You have any kids?”