by CD Reiss
“Maybe you’re doing both.” His fingers caught the ribbon lanyard, stroking to down to the nametag. Diana Steinbeck. Our names were merged on my tag.
“I don’t know how to fix all this.”
“It’s amazing that you left me in the first place without thinking about how terribly inconvenient it would be.”
“I’m impulsive. If it didn’t take three sponsors to get into the Cellar, I’d be—” I cut myself off, but it was too late.
He increased the downward pressure on the lanyard just a little. “Excuse me?”
Fuck it. I had to stand by my actions or dance around them like an adolescent trying to get away with adult behavior. He wasn’t my father.
“I started the process before you redlined it.” I didn’t say how many minutes before, or how easy it would have been to halt. Maybe I was an adolescent. I yanked my lanyard away. I wouldn’t be physically threatened by him.
“Did Charlie write a letter?”
“I asked Stefan and—” Fuck it again. We said no lies of omission. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. “Serena.”
Adam let the tag drop, took me by the hand, and pulled me behind him.
“Adam, wait!”
“Don’t let go.”
He held my hand so tightly I couldn’t have let go if I wanted to, then he slapped open the door to the main hall and cut into the crowd. He didn’t slow down long enough for me to say help to someone I knew or cut a turn on my high heels.
“Adam! The floor is marble!” I barked after I slipped, avoiding a fall but not shame.
He stopped and, with the force of inertia that kept me moving forward, wrapped his arm around my waist. Then he kept crossing the room as if he were saving a life.
“What are you doing?” I hissed.
“Stefan. That’s what.”
“It’s not his fault.”
“The fuck it’s not.”
I followed more readily in an odd, unbelievable need to protect Stefan. “You introduced us. You made it possible.”
“Exactly,” he said. “I’m the only one who can undo what I did.”
“It won’t go through until after the thirty days.”
“Irrelevant.”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
He couldn’t lodge an objection because Stefan came into view. I didn’t know the man he was talking to. Looked like an old-school publishing guy with a comb-over, a five-thousand-dollar suit, and red tie.
I smiled at him as we approached, and since we were about to bulldoze his conversation, I mouthed the word, “Sorry.”
“Isn’t it funny how I don’t see you for years and now you show up here?” Adam said the second he was in earshot.
“Nice to see you too,” Stefan said. “Adam Steinbeck, this is—” he indicated the man with the comb-over but didn’t have a chance to make the introduction.
My husband was made of fuel and fire. “And the Greens too. Everywhere she is, you show up.”
Comb-over excused himself. Not that anyone noticed.
“It’s nice to see her.” He directed his words to me. “Do you want to see me?”
Adam didn’t let me answer. “No, she doesn’t.”
“I think he’s kind of interesting,” I said.
Adam leveled a finger at Stefan. “Rescind your sponsorship.”
“Is that what this is about?” Stefan faced me. “Are you all right?” He seemed genuinely concerned. He deserved an answer, but Adam didn’t give me a second.
“She’s fine.”
“That’s enough!” I said, pushing Adam’s arm off me.
“She’s mine, you understand? I’ll decide if she’s in or out.” Adam growled it as if it were deadly true, but we’d just had a conversation about how I wasn’t his. About how he could never love me and be happy at the same time.
“I am not.” I was flat serious. Not yelling, almost too quiet for Adam to hear through the rage in his ears.
“I’m watching you,” Adam continued. “And I’m watching her. So—”
“I’m not yours.”
“—if I ever see you near her again—”
“I’m not yours.” I raised my voice just a little.
“—I’m going to make it my business to —”
“I’m not yours!”
The ballroom gallery fell silent. The string quartet hit a speed bump and played again. Interrupted conversations continued. The world spun on its axis for everyone else, while I stayed suspended in time. Gravity stopped, and I floated in the space between us, where the tension between his shock and his rage vibrated.
“I’m not yours,” I said. “We talked about this.”
“For two days, you are.”
I shook my head slowly. I couldn’t utter the words releasing him from his last half week with me, but it was done. Something inside me had snapped under the weight of his words, the pregnancy test, and the burden of keeping love alive for the both of us. The charade was ending.
I held out my hand. “I need me coat check ticket, please.”
He gave it to me. “I’ll get you home.”
I snapped the ticket away and pushed through the crowd. He would follow. I knew him at least that well. If I turned around, I’d encourage him. I just wanted my coat and a cab—alone. Then I wanted to go to my father’s place and cry for a few hours. Maybe I’d cry hard enough to excavate my grief. I wouldn’t tell Dad why I was crying. I wouldn’t tell him how I knew we were finished. I wouldn’t talk about the submission or my own needs. I’d only tell him how bad I felt for fucking this up.
“Diana.” Adam sidled up to me when I handed the girl my ticket. “Let me take you home.”
“No. Just no.”
“Why not?”
My coat came. I pulled it over the counter. “Because I’m sad. And I feel hopeless. And trapped.”
“By me?”
“You want me to answer that?”
He guided me away from the coat check window. His jacket still smelled like Montauk snow and his body smelled like fennel as it pressed against me.
“Don’t answer,” he said. “Just listen. We have a few days. Only a few more before things get even more complicated. Will we be together? Apart? Some middle thing? Something so painful we can’t even imagine it? These few days we have, they’re precious. It’s all unknowns after that. So let’s just lock ourselves away. You and me. We trust each other. We’ll close the door on love and celebrate trust.”
Running my fingers along his lapel, I avoided meeting his eyes. He pressed his lips to my cheek, then my neck.
“I want to tie you down one more time.”
“What’s the point?” I was arguing about nothing. I was going with him. I just wanted him to work a little harder.
“The way you try so hard to stay quiet when I hurt you. That moment of hesitation before you get on your knees.” I felt the line of his erection against my thigh. “I want it as long as I can get it. I can keep you on the edge for fifteen minutes. I want to see if you can stay quiet before I let you scream.” His lips traced a line across my forehead.
“I hate you.”
“But you trust me.”
I pushed him away, looking into his eyes. “I do. And if you break that trust, it’s broken forever.”
“I won’t.”
I walked past him, pushing my arms into the coat sleeves, tying my scarf, my heels clopping and echoing in the cavern of stone. A doorman opened the brass doors, and I went out into the cold.
Chapter 33
I got into the cab with the word trust written on my heart. But it wouldn’t stick. Trust didn’t want to be on the heart. It was in the mind. Maybe it was in the hands or voice, but though I knew we trusted each other, it wasn’t the same as love written on the heart.
We got to Murray Hill before I decided what to do about it. So I abdicated to complicity. Trust would have to write itself wherever it wanted.
When we got into the apartment, he took my coat like a gentle
man.
“Go into the bathroom. Take the dress off and put your hands on the vanity.”
All the command and dominance were there. All the confident intonations that ensured my obedience were present. I should have hopped off to the bathroom to do his bidding.
If it were Montauk, I would have.
The day before, I would have.
But it wasn’t Montauk or day twenty-three. It was the night of day twenty-eight, and something had changed. I went to the bathroom with my chin high and my shoulders back. Not to please him, but because I wanted this dead weight out of my ass and I didn’t know how to get it out myself.
Naked, leaning over the vanity with nothing but the French stone countertop in my sight, I laced my fingers together and bowed my head. The diamonds on my wedding ring pressed hard against my fingers. After the first meeting with my lawyer, I’d put it back on. He’d had his ring on, and it seemed disrespectful to take it off before papers were signed, or he took off his, or we both agreed that the marriage didn’t exist anymore.
It was as if my world had always revolved around his pleasure.
He came in behind me. We made eye contact in the mirror. When he put his hand on my lower back and pressed down to get my ass up, I turned back to the top of the vanity, pressing my forehead against the cool stone.
“You’re perfect. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“Not even you, sir.” Sir was marbled in sarcasm. Damn. I didn’t want to show my hand. I didn’t want my words painted in four coats of my feelings. I wanted to hide, and didn’t.
He wasn’t stupid. He heard it, but he chose to ignore it.
“When I take this out, you’re going to be open for a few minutes. I’m going to lubricate you.” He leaned down and whispered in my ear, “It won’t hurt when I fuck you. Not more than a few seconds, maybe. You’re going to come like you’ve never come before. Are you ready?”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered back with my eyes closed.
He stroked my skin, warming me, then tugged gently on the plug. “Push out a little.”
I did, and the thing slid out. He wrapped it in a towel and snapped up a bottle from the cabinet.
“How does that feel?”
It felt odd. It felt as if my body was doing its own thing. I felt stretched, empty, as if I’d made room for something that wasn’t there anymore.
He squirted lube on me.
I wasn’t scared. I thought I’d be tense at the prospect of getting fucked in the ass, but it wasn’t the fear of pain or humiliation that caused my anxiety.
His buckle clacked and his zipper hissed.
“Do I say pinochle, or can I just say stop?” I asked.
“Don’t think about that yet.”
“No. I mean now.”
“Why are you safeing out?”
“I just am. I’m not in the mood.”
He continued to massage my bottom. “The sub doesn’t get moods, Diana.”
I stood up straight. Naked in the mirror with him behind me, we looked like normal people. But we weren’t. Everything was wrong.
“Pinochle.” I said it without question. I said it like he said get on your knees. And just in case he missed it, I repeated it. “Pinochle, pinochle, pinochle.”
“Why?”
I faced him. “Because this is too intimate for how I feel right now.”
“Diana, I—”
“I’m moving back to the loft. This…” I put my hands on his lapels. “This is a complete waste of time. I mean… it’s not. It’s fine. It’s what I signed up for. But I’m just saying pinochle to the whole thing.”
I gave him a little push and brushed past him to get to the bedroom. The afternoon’s jeans hung over the back of the chair. I couldn’t wait to get into them. I couldn’t jam my legs in fast enough. My foot got tangled in the fabric and I nearly fell before he jumped to steady me. His hand on my arm, perfect pressure, just enough to hold me up but not hurt. His posture and expression were pure concern for my bodily well-being.
Oh, to be taken care of by a man who loved me. Something I’d never desired because I never wanted to be taken care of was now a lofty and far away fantasy.
“Let go,” I said. “Let me fall, okay? Just let me fall.” I stood straight, buttoning my jeans. I was still naked from the waist up, but his only interest was my face.
“Stay,” he said. “Stay tonight and go tomorrow.”
“No. I’m getting a cab.” I snapped a shirt out of a drawer and pulled it on. No bra. Didn’t care. The coat would cover me. “I’ll come back for my stuff in the morning.”
“Wait.”
I didn’t wait. I went to the front door. A pair of boots and the heels I’d worn to the event were under my coat. I stuck my bare feet into the boots.
“Diana!”
“What?”
In his nice blue suit, tie halfway undone, sock feet, and unbuttoned trousers, he looked like a man falling apart at the seams. He looked the way I felt.
“I want you to stay with me.” The desperation in his voice was new, and I was upset enough to be immune to it.
“Whatever.” I got my coat on.
“You’re acting like a brat.”
“I’ll be one by tomorrow.”
I turned the knob, but he leapt for the door, pressing his hand on the seam between the door and the jamb.
“Adam. Let. Me. Go.”
“Stay tonight. Please.”
“Look, if you can’t love me, I get it. It’s fine. I can save you the trouble. Just save me the trouble too. Save me the heartache.”
“Just stay.”
“Why? What’s the difference?”
“I want you to finish what you started.”
He said it with all the Dom bells and whistles, but it landed like a squib, not a bomb.
“I’ll decide what’s worth finishing. Me. I’ll decide. Now let me out.”
I yanked the door with all my might. His hand came off it, and I swung it wide with everything I had. It slapped the wall so hard the bell rung. I didn’t waste a second, getting out into the indirect, warm lighting of the hall just as he put his arms around me. They grabbed nothing, sliding away like a scarf that wasn’t wrapped tightly enough.
Chapter 34
DAY TWENTY NINE
The rain sounded like a percussion section. I wrapped myself in my covers, alone at four in the morning. Wide awake after three solid hours of sleep.
I’d walked out on him to save my dignity. He’d made sure I had a car home, but I could barely look at the driver.
I’d reveled in feeling like a piece of meat with Adam. Rejecting my identity for a few hours. Existing for his pleasure. I didn’t know what had changed. Something enormous and abstract. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I got on my stomach and put my arms between my chest and the mattress, trying to squeeze out the panic that Adam and self-respect were incompatible.
I took my journal off the night table and scribbled in the half light.
At some point, it was going to come to this.
There was never hope for it. I’m running west to chase the sun. It’s going to set, no matter how fast I go.
I’d stopped writing questions in my journal. I was making statements. I didn’t even notice the change for the first two pages. I didn’t realize something had broken until the third page, when I was unable to get the stream of consciousness back to questions.
Take a page from Adam’s book. He didn’t need love all those years. I don’t have to love a man to get satisfaction from him either. Maybe. What would it be like?
Finally. A question. And yet, it was unanswerable because I couldn’t imagine it. Couldn’t sink deeply into a fantasy about some Dom I’d never met, seen, spoken to.
What was it like for Adam? How did he give himself to that intimacy without being intimate?
Practice.
Maybe.
Maybe peeling Serena and subs like her down to the core built him up until intimacy wasn�
��t intimacy anymore.
The valid, even productive train of thought veered off the rails as I imagined him fucking Serena. Eating her pussy. Pulling her hair. Pretending to rape her by a creek.
My heart was a spool of emotions spinning as the thread was pulled faster and faster. She wanted him. She could have him again. I’d known it before, back when I was confident that I’d win him back, but all my imaginings of them weren’t an imagined past, but a possible future.
I grabbed my phone.
His green dot was planted solidly in Murray Hill, in his kitchen, if the satellites were dead on.
That should have helped, but it didn’t, because Montauk Adam wasn’t limited to a single room. If he could take me anywhere in the house, he could take Serena too. She’d said she was going to Tel Aviv, but wasn’t she back already? Or he could be with someone else. Or texting her. Or thinking about how he was going to get her in bed.
“For the love of God, Diana. Get control of your life,” I said, tossing the phone back on the table. I hugged my pillow. It was a sad substitute.
Get control.
All right. Well, the first thing I had to get control of was the next few hours. Because sleep wasn’t in the cards, and I wasn’t going to lie in bed and mope like a freaking loser. If I was awake, I was going to do something. I put on sweat pants and a hoodie, laced up my sneakers, and went for a fucking run in the fucking rain.
The utter, blanket stupidity of this move wasn’t apparent until I got around the corner and stepped in a puddle that left one sock soaking wet. The other didn’t meet the wetness challenge until the next block.
Yet I felt better. Cold. Wet. Slipping every dozen steps, I still felt as if I’d gotten control of a few minutes of my life. All I needed to do was tack together more minutes, hours, and days.
I heard splashing footsteps behind me about four blocks from home, on a cobblestone stretch of Crosby. New York never sleeps, but it does go into a fugue state in the wee hours. A few cars splashed past. The bakery lights were on. But I didn’t see another soul on the street. I turned. A man jogged half a block behind me, but not jogging. Not really. He was in jeans and a T-shirt. His hood shadowed his face.