The Submission Gift

by Solace Ames

  He gave her a quick embrace and a peck on the cheek. “It’s the scrubs,” he said. “Everyone looks better out of scrubs.” She’d been his very first supervisor at the hospital, a full-fledged medical social worker—what he hoped to become. “How’s Pilar’s friend doing? I haven’t heard from anyone yet.”

  Daniela stared at him in a friendly but frankly appraising way. Maybe she was deciding how much information she could legally disclose. In the meantime, he tried to think of a simple, casual way to compliment her, but her baggy sweatshirt outfit really wasn’t a step up from scrubs. Maybe he should skip the superficial stuff. Go ahead and tell her that she was a role model.

  Before he could start fanboying, she spoke up again. “There wasn’t any friend, Jay. It was her. It was Pilar. She’s at another shelter now, but she’s all right.”

  Times like this were when Jay remembered the human stomach was actually full of acid, he couldn’t remember whether it was hydrochloric or sulfuric, but goddamn, it was powerful stuff. Nausea and misery churned together.

  I thought they were good together. Oh. Oh.

  “I had a feeling in the back of my mind,” he said, not realizing it until now, but yes, it had been there all along. “But if that’s what Pilar needed to get herself in here, I’m just glad it worked.”

  “It did,” Daniela said. Her tone had changed, grown softer but no less intense. “So. We’re a twenty-unit domestic violence shelter, here.” She waved her arm. The lobby was clean and bright with terracotta-colored walls hung with framed children’s art.

  “I’d love to find out more,” he said, grateful that she’d moved on. The thought of Pilar was heartbreaking, and as for Arnulfo—might as well visualize a vacuum in the shape of a human being. I thought that motherfucker was someone else, someone like me. “I’ve never done this kind of work, but I had coursework in it, and some experience at the hospital. Would I be working directly with the client population?” God, that sounded like an asshole thing to say, but he was already slipping into a clinical, professional mode. “I mean, since I’m a man.” That, on the other hand, didn’t sound professional at all. He might as well beat his chest.

  “It’s a part-time job backing up the residential advocate on shift. It’s not bad to have a man in the role. We’ve got plenty of women with teenage sons that come through, and we’re trying to serve the LGBT population better. I did actually look for a woman who identifies as a member of that community, but the one who qualified and applied didn’t speak Spanish that well, and that’s crucial here.” She adjusted her glasses and smiled. Jay remembered that she rarely smiled, and rarely raised her voice, but carried herself with the kind of gravity that caused people to quiet their own voices to hear her. “Your Spanish is better than mine. And I’ve seen you under pressure. Remember when that eight-year-old girl was getting released after a tonsillectomy, and she started puking blood?”

  “And her dad fainted dead away. God, that was awful. She got it all over my shoes.”

  “But you just held her hand and said the doctor was coming soon, and she’d be fine.”

  “Oh! I did, didn’t I.” The ego rush was amazing. Daniela truly believed he could be a superhero social worker again—not that he gave a damn about his name in the papers, but way back in the childish part of his mind he sometimes imagined himself wearing a fabulous cape with the name SUPERJAVIER spelled in hand-sewn sequin letters. He’d stopped being ashamed of that mental image a while ago, because as long as he didn’t develop a savior complex, and it got him through the rough days, who cared? “That means a lot to me, that you remembered. It’s been difficult being unemployed. But I really feel like I’ve made a good recovery, mentally and physically, and I’m excited about helping people achieve positive change. I couldn’t play volleyball or soccer with the kids, but I could do, umm, Wii bowling, for example.”

  “We could work around any physical issues, I’m sure. I’m going to show you around the family room now and talk about some of the security procedures. I want to make sure you can commit to this. But once you pass the drug test and the background check—and you will, right?”

  “Sure. I’m on muscle relaxants and a low dose of tramadol, and the Percocet might come up although I’m not taking it anymore, but I can bring in the prescriptions for all of them,” he said all in a rush, absurdly happy. “And I wouldn’t need to bring any of my meds to work.”

  “Good. You know about the dark side of the role.” Daniela seemed unaware of any irony or pop culture references to what she’d just said. Jay only nodded in response, matching her solemnity. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”

  “I’m married to a woman.”

  “Oh,” Daniela said, a little confusion in her voice.

  “I’m still gay-ish. In fact, we go to an LGBTQ church group thing all the time. We have barbecues. I could pass out the center’s card and make contacts. And I could run a support group here, have a space to talk about internalized homophobia and transphobia and abuse, that sort of thing.”

  “I love your enthusiasm.” He could tell she was sincere—that however much he might confuse her, she trusted him. “Come on, I’ll give you the tour.”

  He had the feeling that Adriana wasn’t going to like this. Maybe Paul would back him up, reassure her that Jay was good for it, that he wouldn’t crack under the pressure of other people’s pain.

  Or maybe they’d both gang up on him.

  He did his best to drown out the doubt as he moved deeper into the shelter. This wasn’t the kind of place that left any room for doubt.

  * * *

  “He’s going to take the job. I can’t do anything about it,” Adriana said dully, and rubbed at her temples. Paul couldn’t see her face. Head bent forward, hair like a veil, she’d closed in on herself.

  He sat next to her on the couch and stroked her slumped shoulders. A complicated, morally ambiguous satisfaction crept over him. Being included in her life at moments like this felt powerful, and therefore...good. But she wasn’t happy, and he couldn’t make her happy. He couldn’t really do anything at all.

  “What’s the worst that could happen?” he asked. At least he could learn enough to keep from hurting anyone on accident.

  “He could have another breakdown.” She lowered her hand to her lap, smoothing the leg of her pajamas. That had been the first sign something was wrong—coming to their apartment at eight at night, and finding her fresh from the shower and totally unprepared to go out, wildly distracted. “Although what happened didn’t seem like a breakdown at first. More like a...plateau. He was physically getting better to the point that he could walk in physical therapy, and we’d take him home, and he’d go to bed but he wouldn’t sleep, he’d just stare at the wall or the ceiling. He didn’t sleep and he didn’t eat and he kept losing weight and his lips were cracked dry and—oh God—he could barely even talk. I started thinking it was some kind of delayed brain damage from the concussion.”

  Jay had never told him. Maybe he’d be angry at Paul learning this way. It’s not just you, Paul imagined consoling him. An unstoppable current had begun to circle between them, dissolving all their crystallized secrets. Paul’s own were no exception. It would happen whether he wanted to or not. The fatalism felt strangely liberating.

  “We finally took him back to the hospital, and I screamed until they listened. A psychiatrist diagnosed him with psychotic depression and maybe PTSD. The accident—they were drunk kids and they spun out on the highway and clipped Jay’s car. He saw one of them die in front of him, basically.”

  “That’s—I don’t even have a frame of reference.” He’d been to a few open casket funerals, stared down on ancient people with masklike faces and peacefully folded hands. His imagination failed.

  “The meds worked. It felt so good having him back again. You know Jay, though. He’s hyperarticulate. Not afraid of
much. Optimistic. Sometimes he’ll talk about what happened, but it’s all through rose-colored glasses.” She raised her head and put on a marionette smile as she spoke in Jay’s musical pitch. “‘Hey, problem solved, lots of people have it worse, I’m psychologically resilient and mirroring reality,’ and then he starts throwing out words like decompensation and I just...back off.” By the end, her voice had gone flat, and she’d closed her eyes.

  “You’re afraid it’s going to happen to him again.”

  When she opened her eyes again, she seemed calmer. They’d come to a new equilibrium, he hoped. “Of course I’m afraid. He talks a good game about being professional and separating his emotions...and one day he’s going to care too much and fall apart. I couldn’t do the job. Just the thought of trying makes me want to fucking die. But he’s got stars in his eyes. And the pay is terrible and there aren’t any benefits. I already resent the place, maybe because I’m a cold-hearted bitch. Like I’m—”

  “You’re not. I’m happy to listen, but I can’t be quiet and nod my head when you say something like that.”

  She startled but didn’t jerk away from him.

  “Jay isn’t normal. I love how not normal he is. And you can’t follow all the steps he’s taking in his mind any more than I can.” He was so attuned to the lines of her face that he caught the minute tightening perhaps even before she did. Too far. Step back. “Even though you know him a lot better.”

  “True. But maybe you do know him better, in a way. I don’t have to give a shit about anyone, at my job. And you have to care, and then you have to...stop caring.”

  “I’m a cold-hearted bastard. Stopping was never hard. Except when it came to you.”

  Her gaze darted away, then came inching back until he felt her full regard, her eyes so starry dark and swallowing light, he was suddenly terrified of losing himself.

  The terror brought a joyful recognition as well: all he had to do was be here for her. His complicated, regimented life reduced to only this one challenge, and it was easy.

  Don’t turn away.

  Stay.

  No second thoughts. No hesitation. No other course.

  Adriana smiled innocently. She probably didn’t even realize what she’d done. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t stop caring.”

  “If it happens again, I’ll be here too. He won’t have far to fall.”

  “Can you really promise that?”

  He touched her chin, tilted her close enough to kiss, and spoke against her lips. “I already did.”

  Pins and needles, he thought, not the pain but the sheer sensation of it. Every hair on his scalp stood on end. Needles and pins and Oh God I shouldn’t have touched her. The gesture of his hand on her face wasn’t just to convince her, to make her believe. Not anymore. He suddenly wanted to do the opposite: make her stop thinking. Hit her and hurt her and fuck her to the precise measure of her desire like Jay couldn’t, like no one else could.

  No one but him.

  Step back.

  He moved his hand away from her face and leaned away from her. She let out a long shivering gasp and blinked furiously. “Jesus, Paul, what just happened?”

  “We were trying to have a conversation about the future. Jay, depression, caretaking, etcetera.” Thoughts, words, trickled slow as syrup. He wondered if he’d made her wet, wanting her slick pussy stretched around his naked cock now, no condom, the taboo fantasy already turning him hopelessly hard. “And then we got distracted.”

  “Wow. No shit.” She laughed shakily. “Okay, yes. I remember. Yes, it was really important. And you promised. And I believe you.”

  “Good.” He’d let things careen out of control, if only for a few seconds. It wouldn’t happen again. “Now that we’ve got that settled, it’s your night tonight. Stay in or go out, movie or café, massage or rough sex with a side order of erotic humiliation. There’s really not much that’s changed since you stopped paying me. I don’t disappear afterward, that’s all.”

  She hugged her knees to her chest, the cotton of her lavender pajamas making crisp little whispers, and looked at him from the side of her eyes. Her lips tightened only because she was trying not to smile. He kept his face impassive, daring her to flirt with him first. “What would you like to do to me?” she finally asked. “If I’m your girl now—”

  “You most definitely are.” He toyed with the closest hem of her pajamas, pinching a playful crease and tightening the material around her ankle.

  “—then you get a say.”

  “Tricky. Lazy, too. I don’t think so. You’re going to tell me what you want, Adriana. Does that make you uncomfortable?” He asked the question with the kind of rising intonation she might, perhaps, mistake for sympathy, then bared his teeth to make sure she understood his deeper feelings on the matter.

  “Yes. It does.” She lowered her arms until her palms rested on the couch. Steadying herself. “But I’ll try. You don’t have to hurt me first.”

  “I will, if you choke up, and you’ll like it.” That brought a shy smile to her face. He circled her ankle, tracing the struts and stays underlying smooth skin, the ingenious architecture of her body. “But yes, please try first. Either way, you’ll get what you want tonight.”

  “I like...being used. You understand that.” Her eyes almost met his, then drifted out of focus. “I have a fantasy where I’m taken to a room full of men, and they—not that they force me, exactly, but they don’t care what I feel, what I want or don’t want, they just use me hard.”

  “There’s a lot of porn like that. Variations on a theme.” He stroked his thumb up and down the tender hollow behind her anklebone. He was proud of her for speaking out so well.

  “Yes. I don’t need that fantasy to get in the mood every time, but it’s a shortcut. Sometimes I’m scared it’s like a drug, and there’s addiction and tolerance and I should hold off. And other times I tell myself it’s all right. It’s not real.” She sighed and looked away. “I mean, I could have done it for real. I knew girls who joined gangs where they got passed around, and it never felt anything but sad to me.”

  The feeling of his hand stroking against her skin changed. Their touch became more of a thing in itself, a living link. “You want the choice,” he said, translating her words. “Not to fall into it.”

  “I don’t even know if I want the choice. And then there’s Jay. When he hurts, I hurt. When I hurt, so does he. That’s the way it works when you love each other, and being nontraditional about monogamy doesn’t change that. I don’t know if I’d risk it, even if I had his...blessing. I just don’t know.”

  “Not all fantasies need to be filled. We try to complete patterns that are incomplete, but the pattern itself doesn’t care about our compulsion for completeness.” Their exchange had turned so intense he almost didn’t realize how abstract it had gotten, how far into his personal language. Time to take it down to the concrete realm. “I used to jerk off to slasher movies when I was a teenager.”

  “Whoa. That makes me feel more normal,” she said, sucking in her breath and shaking her head. “But I guess it’s not that weird either. There’s so much sex in them.”

  “And power, too. I stopped because when I took a step back and thought about it, I didn’t want to be the guy who jerked off to slasher movies. I made a conscious decision to be broader in my tastes. Maybe that was the start of being good at what I do now.”

  “Thank you for sharing that with me. And you are good.”

  “I know.” He granted her a cavalier’s smile. He’d never had much use for modesty, and none at all for shame. “If you’d like to do something like that in the future, I could arrange it safely. You could even get paid for it, if you don’t mind being filmed.” She leaned slightly toward him at that, her mouth twisted in revulsion, eyes hazy with desire, deliciously conflicted. “Then again, you can get a simil
ar effect in other ways. That’s why you came to me in the first place.”

  “When you walked in that door...what you did to me...”

  He made an appreciative humming noise, remembering. “I could pretend I didn’t know you. That you’d been given to me.” He loved the roleplay idea. They could come together violently, like the first time. No, better, now that he had deeper knowledge of how to pull her strings.

  “Given,” she repeated, tasting the word like a rare candy.

  Another idea came to him suddenly, once he remembered what night this was. “Or I could put a collar on you, take you out and show you off, introduce you to some more formal BDSM.”

  She seemed more thoughtful, more composed, when she spoke again. “I’d like to try. I already know Jay would be okay with me getting more involved.”

  “Then there’s a private party tonight I could take you to. The only issue is that my ex might be there with her master.”

  “It’s not an issue for me if it’s not one for you. Or for her.”

  “Perfect. We only need to decide what you’ll wear.”

  She smiled sweetly and wriggled on the couch as if eager to shrug off the too-wholesome cotton pajamas. “Would you like to go through my lingerie drawer and pick out something for me?”

  “Of course I would.” God, what an invitation. He rose to his feet and offered her an arm. “But I’ll have to see them on you to decide. Showtime, Adriana.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  What happened in Adriana’s bedroom struck her as a prelude to submission, a kind of dress rehearsal.

  Paul angled the full-length mirror so that she couldn’t see herself. The message was clear. He was the only mirror she needed. A wave of sexual need so strong it bordered on nausea rolled through her, leaving her skin prickling and stomach lurching, her body pliant and ready for his direction.

  She tried on several combinations. He seemed pleased with all of them. He had her pose for him on occasion, asked her to cup her breasts, turn around, the last with a curt spinning motion of his hand that hit a hidden switch hard and made her go weak in her bones.