by CD Reiss
“He hasn’t been himself,” she said.
She put her arms around me and held me as the ropes loosened and I fell. Debbie was my friend and more. She was a rock, a counselor. She put things in perspective even if I never listened to her. So I let her hold me, and she did it with affection and sincerity.
“I don’t know what to do,” I said.
“I have every confidence you’ll figure it out. Be patient with yourself.”
“Your hair smells nice.”
“Willem is here,” Debbie said.
“Ugh.”
“He was a great help while Deacon was laid up.”
Before I could articulate why I had to grunt at the sound of his name, Willem appeared. Deacon’s younger brother was a solid muscular mass of what Dad would call distemper. I’d just call him a cranky asshole.
And as he stood in the doorway with his arms folded and a sour face from here to the LA River, my opinion wasn’t changed. His hair was shorter than it had to be, as if he’d wanted to chop it off as an act of defiance. His eyes were as blue as Deacon’s, but colder, sharper, scarier to everyone but the few of us who thought he needed an attitude adjustment.
“Hello, Willem.”
His feet, in worn cowboy boots, were set far apart, knees locked, jeans rubbed-in with South African farm dirt. He got laid a lot because of his looks, but it was always a short-term thing.
“He might forgive you, but I don’t,” Willem said.
“Thanks for bringing that up. You can go home now.”
Rather than go home, he strode in, heels clopping on the hardwood. His hair was lighter than Deacon’s and his beard was a short growth of copper. “You bring shame on this family. You’re dangerous. You can’t control yourself. You’re a child. A goddamn child.”
Even without having been knotted ten minutes earlier, and even without Deacon having said terrible things to me and walking out, his words would have hurt me. I could tolerate being called a whore and a party animal. I didn’t mind if someone called me stupid, but his thinking of me as a child hurt. Hurt bad.
“You’re a bore, Willem. No wonder you can’t keep a woman.”
“That’s enough,” Debbie said in her Dominant voice. Willem wouldn’t recognize the tone, but I did. “Will, Mary set out lunch for you. You should eat it.”
I saw his conflicting emotions. He was compelled to obey, but he had more to say. He turned his body halfway to the door and looked at me as if he didn’t want to lose so definitively.
“I don’t deserve his forgiveness,” I said. “I’ll be around later if you want to yell at me more.”
He huffed and walked out. We watched him go. Once he was out, Debbie and I cleaned up the ropes together.
I caught myself doing something weird. Something that tied together two parts of a disconnected story. I was walking the Laurel Canyon property, trying to do it straight so I didn’t look like a rape victim, and as I looped the ropes into tight spirals, I had a fantasy.
In the fantasy, I told Elliot what Warren had done.
I told him straight and strong. I told him about my pain, physical and emotional. About where denying consent had gotten me. I told him I didn’t feel like it was my fault. That I’d been clear. That I felt all right with myself about it. Fiona didn’t blame Fiona. I blamed Warren and wanted to put my fist in his ass.
I fantasized that he understood. That he didn’t get mad. He didn’t try to wreak vengeance. He didn’t act like a therapist, and he didn’t act like a man on a mission. He took me in his arms and told me it was all right. That my reaction was normal. That my body would heal some day, but it would take time and I could be okay with that.
He kissed me in that fantasy, as he’d kissed me in so many. But I’d just been knotted, and my emotions were open and raw, and the effect of my imagination was sharp and strong. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, and I froze, because I could taste him. My lips shaped themselves against his, and his want was real and deep, man to woman.
“Fiona?” Debbie said.
An idea was fixing in my brain, slowly with every fantasy, that it could happen. That he’d allow it. That I’d accept it. That I could be the adult Elliot had faith existed and not the fuckup Deacon accepted.
Debbie caught the ropes as they dropped from my hands. “What happened to you?”
I shook off the crust of Elliot, but not the core.
“I’m fine,” I said, convincing myself I could muddle through. “Just fine. I have a shoot tomorrow with Irving Wittenstein. Can you imagine? It was scheduled six months ago, and I’m back just in time. It’s crazy how things get back to normal. The machine keeps turning no matter what.”
I smiled. She looked at me long and hard. She didn’t believe me, and as much as I wasn’t supposed to care what she thought, I realized I did care a great deal.
CHAPTER 8.
Two years earlier
fiona
Number Two Maundy stank of sex, and though there was low ambient music, I heard the cries and moans of people in pleasure and pain. Thwacks. Pops. The whoosh of a whip in the air and the hick of it meeting flesh. I’d done it all before, but there was something new about that night. I crossed my legs under the table and fidgeted with my soda, clicking the ice around until the edges were gone.
My friend Ahmed and I had gone to the Dome in New York a few times. We’d rented a couch and a Mistress had led a girl to me on a leash. She’d knelt before me, and I opened my legs to her. I called her a good little bitch when she licked my cunt, and I came good and hard. But I’d felt like a visitor even after the Mistress kissed me on the mouth.
I didn’t feel like an observer on Maundy. I wasn’t looking in the window. I wasn’t an honored guest but a piece in a puzzle. I only had to be snapped into place.
In front of me, across a narrow marble strip, crouched a naked woman on all fours. Her hair was tied in a neat bun, and her back was planar under the weight of a man’s feet as he reclined on the grey couch. She didn’t move, even when the sole of one shoe pushed on her, leveraging against her as if she were a coffee table.
He put his iced drink between her shoulder blades. No coaster. She winced from the cold but didn’t even look as he turned to the second woman kneeling before him. She wore garters and had pink hair and tattoos.
He put his finger down Pink Hair’s throat. She took it. All the way down. He thrust his finger into her repeatedly, fucking her mouth with his hand. He wore a suit, but he wasn’t Deacon.
Master Deacon Tiffany had called him. Suited him. I wasn’t surprised.
I sat alone, riveted by the coffee-table woman. Tiffany had walked away seconds ago, after walking me through and seating me. I’d seen all the trappings before: the straps in the walls, the hooks in the ceilings, the wooden Xs between the windows that overlooked Los Angeles.
“What do you see?”
I spun around to see Deacon standing by my side. I’d only seen him sitting in the front seat of his car. He was gorgeous when he stood. Tall. Straight. Shoulders in a dark suit tapering to a slim waist. Shirt open a few buttons. Tooled leather belt with a buckle shaped into two twisted feathers.
“A lot.”
“May I sit?”
“It’s your party.”
He sat. To my left, someone came with a grunt and a cry. I couldn’t even look, he was so gorgeous. So self-assured. He had confidence where most men had no more than their cocks.
“I don’t usually come downstairs, but Tiffany said you were here. She said you came with a friend.”
“She left.”
He nodded. The light from the little table lamp brought out the hard precision of his face. The short beard, the scar on his cheek, the one on his beautiful upper lip. His tongue flicked out, licking his lip so quickly I barely remembered it happening. “What do you do, Miss Drazen?”
“Like, for a living?”
“If you want to call it that.”
I shrugged. “I’m seen. I get paid to
wear things people want me to wear. Or get photographed. Otherwise I have plenty to live off.”
“Who photographs you?”
“I have something with Irving Wittenstein on Wednesday.”
“Impressive.”
“Not really. I just go and smile. Look defiant. La-di-da.”
“You make people think of you for a living. You remind them you exist.”
I hadn’t ever thought of it like that, but something about it made me bristle. “I don’t care what they think.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”
He didn’t believe me. I could see it on his superior grin. He’d believe it soon enough.
“What do you do?” I asked. “Just the club?”
“I’m a photographer.” He’d only lied a little. He didn’t know me well enough to tell me what he really did.
We smiled at each other then. Stupid thing. To find a connection between his job and mine. I met Hollywood people all the time and had more in common with them than I had with him, but I felt something click nonetheless.
“You’re watching this scene play out,” he said, pointing across the marble path.
Another man had joined the scene, kneeling in front of the coffee-table woman and unzipping his pants. He was in his twenties, handsome, tattooed—what hipsters tried to be when hipsters tried to be rough.
“Yes.” I didn’t have more words, because the rough man put his cock in her mouth and pumped, looking elsewhere, and she couldn’t rock with him. Couldn’t spill the cold drink. I was a throbbing gushing mess, watching him fuck her face. My clit was a hard nodule, and I pressed my thighs together because it felt good.
“What about it appeals to you? Or disgusts you? What intrigues you?”
“That’s a personal question.”
“It is, but you’ve got your legs crossed for a reason. I bet if I put my hands between them, like this”—he slipped his hand over my knee to uncross my legs and drew his palm up the inside of my thigh—“you’d open your legs.”
Under the table, my knees parted for him. He went under my skirt. I was on fire, and I was a whore, generally, so letting a strange man finger me was just another Tuesday.
Except it wasn’t, because no one had ever touched me like they owned me. No trepidation. No questions. No fumbling. Just his thumb along the line of my underwear.
“This scene,” he said. “He’s fucking her face, and it’s doing something to you. When I touch you, you’re going to be wet, and your clit is going to be hard. Your lips will be swollen, and you’re going to come in only a few strokes.”
He had a point. No reason to be coy. Fuck it anyway. I was above people’s judgments.
I ripped my eyes from the scene and put my elbows on the table. I wasn’t ashamed of feeling the way I did, and I wanted to be utterly clear with him about that. “Make me come, then.”
“What turns you on, Kitten? What about the coffee table?”
“He’s using her. I see the scene, and I’m turned on. She’s not even a whore. She’s insignificant. Nothing. Unworthy of anyone even looking at her. Not even worth degrading… and I want it. I want it now.”
“It takes time to get there, Miss Drazen.” He spoke as if his hands weren’t teasing my skin.
“Time is one thing I have plenty of,” I said. “And money.”
He pressed his lips together and looked me up and down. “I don’t need money.” He seemed genuinely interested and detached at the same time.
His thumb brushed my clit.
“Oh—”
“Shh. Look at me. Act as if nothing is happening under the table.” He put his fingers on the walls of my opening. “Do you imagine you’re her, or the man with his dick in her mouth?”
I obeyed him, trying to look as if this was dinner conversation, but there was no tablecloth. Anyone who looked could see his hand under my skirt. “I am her.”
His finger brushed my clit.
“Watch her.”
I turned from him as he stroked the length of my wetness so gently. The rugged man pumped the naked woman’s mouth as if she were a hole in the wall.
“She’s not even moving,” Deacon said. “Not even sucking his cock. She’s a receptacle. She has no will of her own but to please him.”
He pulled out and shot streams all over her. She left her mouth open, but it was obvious he wasn’t interested in keeping it neat. He came in her mouth, on her cheeks, her eyes. He left her with her mouth open, come dripping off her face, not wiping it away or looking at her as he tucked himself back in. It was so dirty and degrading, especially when he stood and zipped his fly as if she wasn’t even there. She couldn’t wipe it away. She just dribbled like an object.
The man in the suit dropped a wadded up napkin on her back. It was that act and the Master’s fingers on my clit that brought me to orgasm.
“Look at me,” Deacon growled.
My face contorted and my muscles tightened, yet I stayed still as his fingers stroked my clit, and I came and came. Eye to eye. He was so powerful, and I was under him. I’d known him a few minutes, and already I was a servant in his kingdom.
CHAPTER 9.
fiona
I checked my watch. I could make it to my appointment with Elliot before Irving. Just get it done with. He was across town from the photographer’s studio, but I could do it. Just take the 10 to Robertson. Go north.
Deacon had made sure my Bentley was waiting for me at Laurel Canyon. Complete tune-up. Full tank of gas, new wiper blades.
North to Wilshire.
Over to Westwood.
Wait. Right or left?
You’d think I hadn’t lived here my whole life.
I should have used a driver. I wasn’t functioning right. I was disoriented in my own head, never mind the west side.
I found Elliot’s office just north of Santa Monica. A pleasant non-descript building with industrial carpet and hardy plants in pots. The whole building buzzed with therapists and clinical social workers in private pods like a hive of encouragement.
I checked my watch outside his door. I had plenty of time to get to Irving, but I was as eager to skip my appointment as I was to make it, and a shoot with Irving was the perfect excuse.
Elliot opened the door clothed in professionalism.
What a handsome little fucker. He looked at me from toes to eyes, and I turned to liquid. Not fire. Just a melted mass of tears and emotions. A sort of surrender I hadn’t experienced.
I wanted to run toward him and away from him at the same time.
CHAPTER 10.
elliot
I took outpatients once a week in an office in Century City. It was small, and clean, and on the impersonal side. My office in Westonwood had more of my touches, but I was there twice a week, and the patients there would be put off by a standard, sterile therapy room.
I rearranged my desk, dusted a shelf that was already clean, and considered meeting her out on the patio. I hadn’t wanted to be her outpatient administrator, but once her sister/lawyer requested it, saying no wouldn’t have looked any better than saying yes. I still held out hope that this would all go away. She’d walk in and seeing her out in the real world would kill my feelings.
“I don’t think that’s in the cards,” I said to the brass cross on the back of the door.
My mother had given it to me when I’d taken my First Communion. The dying Jesus was symbolized by a flat, stylized shroud. No tortured three-dimensional body like a Catholic crucifix. Just a symbol of death and resurrection. I’d prayed to it a hundred times. It never answered, but it wasn’t supposed to. The conversation was with myself.
“I think I should just sign off on her. Just say she’s fine and let her go. I don’t… I don’t understand what’s happening to me. I love Jana. She’s good for me. A hundred times over, she made sense. And thank you. Thank you for her. But I’m throwing her back in your face. You set me up, and I reject you. Or not.”
Tell me something.
Tell me how I’m supposed to discern what to do?
She’s going to walk in here in a few minutes, and I’m going to what? Tell her how I feel? Lee is right. That’s a massive breach of trust. I don’t know if I can even sit through the five sessions with her. Five sessions. That’s all I have to last. The length of her outpatient probation. Then I cut her out of my heart. I have to do that. I have to guide her through the transition and move on. I need your help, God. Jesus. Holy Spirit, listen. Just give me the strength. Back me up here. Do what you’re supposed to do.
I wasn’t entitled to pray for God to do his job, because it wasn’t his job to make things easy for me. But I needed help, and when the little light went on telling me that there was a patient in the waiting room, my heart jumped.
Maybe I’ll open the door and I won’t care.
Maybe I just needed to leave Jana to change.
Maybe she’ll be just another patient.
I opened the door.
Her feet were pressed together, and her bag was in front of her. I was a dead man. She didn’t look particularly beautiful. She hadn’t made herself up. Hadn’t dressed to the nines, or any other number, but something about the color of her skin and the way the sun through the window hit the ends of her hair just clicked with my desire.
“Come in.” I stood to the side and let her in.
“No couch,” she said, surveying the room. “How are you going to hypnotize me?”
“I’ll get one in if we need it.”
She sat. I sat. My desk faced the wall, so I turned the chair around. There was nothing between us. I could smell her perfume.
Her foot pointed and straightened. Her naked flexing ankle. My lips around the bone, popping off, letting the tongue linger.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
She pressed her lips together as if she was keeping them from saying what was on her mind.
“You can tell me.”
This was a breach. Posing as a therapist so she could tell me what was wrong when I would use all that to bring her closer to me.
She looked down.