Closer and Closer

by Jenna Barton

  Lazy and naked Erin with a side of the world’s best chocolate pudding. He had a new high-water mark for his best time. And then she called him Sir.

  So much for my best time.

  It didn’t make sense at all, getting turned off at the word. Walt didn’t object to titles, after all, and he’d been around all manner of them for nearly half of his life.

  Still. It made him tense in a list of different places she’d just helped him ease tension from.

  “You don’t have to call me that now.”

  Erin smiled up at him and tucked herself into his chest. “It’s okay. I’d like to.” She sat up suddenly. “Is it odd that calling you Sir makes me feel so happy?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “So, can we keep going?”

  “Going? You mean stay in D/s?” Damn. He tried to tell himself this was the last thing he’d expected from her, but it was a quick out. Of course she’d want to go 24/7 with it. She barely knew what that even meant.

  Walt resisted the urge to scrub at his face, instead reaching across Erin and depositing the take-out container on her bedside table. Her hands skated over his back and down to his ass.

  Much better. Keep thinking about moving that hand lower, not shit about 24/7 you don’t get.

  Erin sat up, pushing him away from her with shock and awe written all over her face. “Oh my God. Did I do that to you?” Her hand hovered by the shoulder she’d had her head on seconds before.

  He glanced down at a line of four deep-red gouges stretching from his collarbone to well past his bicep. “Huh, what about that. Must’ve been you. I haven’t had my nails done in ages,” he finished with a drawn-out prissy voice, wiggling his fingers at her as he spoke. The giggle he wanted, hoped would come, never did.

  “I’m serious, look at those. I hurt you.” She wriggled away, shoving the sheets behind her.

  “Erin, it’s okay.” He tugged at her hand and grinned, wide and with his best goofy crossed-eyed expression that always made her laugh.

  She didn’t laugh.

  Instead she gnawed at her lip and reached toward her dresser.

  “No, no, no. Not clothes. Put that away.” He swatted at the T-shirt she held between them.

  “We should talk about those marks. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m not sure when those…happened, but I’m so sorry and—”

  “Erin, I don’t want to Monday morning quarterback this. We just played, and it was hot. C’mon, put down the shirt. Sit.” When she did, her head fell into her hands. Walt rolled over and pushed himself upright, beside her. “Hey…don’t.”

  Even muffled by her hands, her voice still sounded defeated. “I’m so sorry.”

  “I think it’s not a couple of scratches you’re worried about. And by the way, they’re like badges of honor to guys, even from vanilla sex.”

  Her head turned toward him and she peeked out from behind her hands. “What’s a Monday morning quarterback?”

  “It’s a football…analysis thing. Look, the point is that we don’t need to pick over every second of your first scene just yet. Hell, I’m still buzzing a little off of it. Let’s not beat it to death yet, okay?”

  “Was I okay?”

  Her voice was too cramped up and small. Walt hated seeing her this way, and hated the part of himself that was so quickly frustrated with her insecurities about kink.

  “I suspect I’m going to have a matching set of your fingerprints on my back tomorrow. I like that, just like you do. Y’know, you don’t just lie there, Erin.”

  “How could I, with you…” She dipped her chin with that pursed-lipped smile of hers as she took a long look at his body.

  This was serious, not the time to show off for her, but he tensed his arm for her a little anyway. “Sounds like what you’re worried about isn’t doing something right or not knowing how to do whatever some book told you the right sub things are, but what you do—how you are with me. And just so you know, it’s exactly right.”

  Her shoulders dropped a little and she turned to him with a little hopeful smile starting to ease her face again. Walt reached over and smoothed at the wrinkle between her eyes.

  “I never forget I’m new. And you’ve done so much. I don’t want to bore you.”

  “Bored? All of that experience you’re so concerned about doesn’t touch what happens when we’re together, Erin.” He lifted her legs across his lap, allowing himself a couple of passes over her skin. “You…shit, it’s like night and day. You’re with me, giving as much as you get.”

  Erin reached behind them, drawing the rumpled sheets around her. Her eyes skipped away and that damn line between her brows came back. He was going to have to talk more, which always made him more irritable, and his post-scene Top high had already washed out.

  Fuck, Erin, don’t do this.

  Screwing on his nice guy face, he tipped his head toward his shoulder. “I told you when I took you up to the overlook the day after I met you that I don’t spank and tell. I was trying to make you laugh, but there was a little truth in it, too. You know I’m no angel, and I’ve played and been around with a lot of people. I don’t regret it. But I’ll tell you something—in general—about new girls. By and large, they don’t participate much. They think they should just lie there. It’s like they see themselves as a target, nothing more. There’s no connection with me, and half the time they’re checked out from their own head, too.”

  And as soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he’d backed himself into a corner.

  “I want to be like that for you all the time, Sir.”

  Fuck. She did it.

  This moment, right after an amazing scene, with their bodies still raw from fucking and play was when the happy-endorphins painted the challenge of 24/7 over with a soft-focus brush, not showing the hard reality. With another girl, Walt would have gone there, and had had to, more than once. More so over the past couple of years with so many new people.

  But not Erin. He couldn’t shut her down. His damn feelings were in the way.

  What was in that damn notebook of Claire’s anyway? Had she told Erin the other side, the one where Paul could send his own wife downstairs into seclusion for a week while he hit it with a twenty-two-year-old in red pleather platform boots? For a trial run, whatever the hell that was.

  Trial run.

  “You should give it a try first,” he said before he could think too much about it.

  Her chin rose. “I know what and who I am, Walt.”

  “See,” he said, grinning. She didn’t. “Erin, take this a step at a time. Hell, look at me. Most of those male-led straight white guys think I’m barely a Dom, just more of a scene whore. And most of the people I know are pretty damn switchy by old school definitions.”

  “I don’t care what they think. I do care what you think.” Finally she smiled, a little sheepish and over her bare shoulder. Ah, better. There’s my girl. “And maybe Claire. I think I’m afraid of what Lucy thinks.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably not the only one.” He settled against the headboard and held his arms open for her. Once she was beside him, he reached for his dessert again and tried to ignore a persistent notion that Lu would be laughing her ass off at him, lying there naked with Erin and a big Styrofoam pan of chocolate pudding, preaching the Way Kink Was like some old caveman.

  “Okay, what was it like for you? How did you know what to do?”

  “It was a lot different before the Internet and all of those books people treat like they’re gospel. People aren’t as simple as they’re boiled down to be in a blog or some insider guide. After so long around the lifestyle, I’ve seen people do things I’d never have expected from them.”

  She looked up at him. “Like Melissa?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know who I am, Walt. And I’m not a girl.”

  That word. Girl. It was where they started this thing they were doing, and could be where it ended too. “Not a girl, no. But you’re asking to be one.”
>
  “No, I’m asking to be yours.” They stayed quiet for a long stretch of minutes, both of them too stubborn to give in. Finally, she picked up his hand and held it in both of hers. Her long, pale fingers curved around his, clean and tidy and never injured or rejected. “So, a trial?”

  “Not what you’re thinking, like it’s gonna be the twelve labors. Just a step at a time.”

  “I can do that.” She nodded, smiling.

  “All right.” He set the last of his dessert aside, uneaten. So much for riding Top space for the last few hours he had with her until she flew out to ThinkMine’s headquarters in Silicon Valley for a week. “You get your packing finished up and I’ll put together some things I want you to do.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  WHEN I CAME BACK to Los Altos for work, I rarely rented a car. There were at least five hotels within walking distance to the Main House, and if I ventured anywhere else, I had a small number of friendly coworkers I could depend on for a ride.

  This time, though, I had rented a car. Because I would never subject a friend, especially one whose connection to me ended at the ThinkMine parking lot exit, to my mother and sister. Once I mentioned I’d be in town the first week of July for my annual review and a final meeting of my management skills class, the two of them had insisted I drive up to their place for a late brunch before I flew home.

  In seven months, it seemed, they had managed to climb the ladder from hostess and apprentice sommelier to co-owners. I’d looked over the restaurant’s web site, procrastinating about my drive up to Yountville by looking over the La Stanza Blu’s extensive menu, and it still stated Dante Boriello was sole proprietor.

  Danielle and Kathy were twenty minutes late after their “we’re running behind” phone call, leaving me seated alone at the restaurant’s bar for nearly an hour. I heard them before I saw them. Danielle first, of course, because this was her stage, and then on her heels my mother, her laughter fighting for dominance with Dani’s. They both worked at La Stanza Blu, and likely had been there the evening before, but for the next twelve minutes, I listened to them greet everyone in the restaurant like dear, long-absent friends.

  Finally I caught the bartender’s eye, giving her a weak smile and nod toward my empty glass.

  “Another Diet Coke?”

  “Please.”

  Having spent more time parked at a dim back table with my schoolbooks than most adults when I was an elementary-age child—and served an on-the-sly dinner of soup and complimentary bread or a basket of chips and salsa—I still felt more at home in a far corner of a lounge or bar than out for observation in the dining space. I liked my back against the wall.

  Bartenders were a comfort and fascination when I was young—and still were. Their efficiency as they worked, managing so many details while maintaining friendliness without the imposition of too much familiarity, always impressed me.

  “Didn’t you say you’re waiting on Dani and her mom?”

  “Yes, I’m Danielle’s sister. And Kathy’s daughter,” I said and tipped a few grains of salt over the new beverage napkin under my freshened drink.

  “Oh, huh? Really?”

  Before I could see the look on her face, I reached for my glass again, intent on twisting the salt grains into better contact with the soggy napkin and glass. Not looking at her, so we would have to make the unspoken agreement required to avoid the truth. No one, most likely not a single person with whom Danielle and my mother made such a display of effusive greetings within earshot of me, knew who I was.

  My hand shook, and I realized it too late. The glass went tipping away from my fingers, dumping a full glass of Diet Coke and ice over the bar and into my lap.

  Jesus. I spent two hundred dollars on a weekend car rental, drove two hours north of Los Altos, and waited for over an hour to be a nonentity.

  “I’m so—”

  “Hey, kid, you’re cut off!”

  Brushing ice and soda from my hands, I crouched into my mother’s hug. “It slipped.”

  “God, Pudge, seriously?” Danielle was behind her, a new incarnation in discreet beiges and pale grays, her hair blown-out smooth. On a Sunday afternoon, the day she had always reserved for ponytails and ragged sweatpants.

  The bartender, a nice woman named April—I learned this during my mother’s forty-five-second, hugged-out greeting to her—stepped away to find some clean bar towels. Danielle watched the production at a distance.

  “What?” She added an indulgent laugh after for good measure.

  “You couldn’t give me a hand? Maybe shove some bev naps at this mess or something?”

  What was that hairstyle anyway? And a manicure? She kept petting the perfectly flat-ironed ends of her hair like it was a ferret laid across her shoulders.

  And then I noticed. My sister was engaged.

  Dani glowed and sparkled and shone as we were moved to a center four-top table with fresh drinks all around.

  “It happened last weekend,” Dani said as we sat. And my mother looked upon her like a racehorse she’d trained who’d just taken the grand prize. “Dante took me up in his investor’s hot air balloon at dawn. Can you believe it?”

  “Just like a television show.” My mother’s also newly manicured hands feathered over the ends of paper napkin under her wine glass. Apparently Kathy had developed a palate for Pinot Gris instead of Bud Light. “At dawn, isn’t that romantic? They went right up over the valley where Dante’s vineyard is, just as the sun rose and—”

  “And he asked me.” Danielle presented her left hand with its evidence of the asking, saluting me with white, glimmering light.

  “Nice.” I nodded.

  Danielle fluttered her fingers. “Nice? Are you kidding me? I know marriage and love and happily-ever-after is all beneath you, Erin, but come on. Three carats.”

  “Flawless carats,” my mother added.

  Lucy’s face, complete with rolling eyes, came to me and before I could stop her influence, she took over my voice. “Three flawless carats, huh? You got an appraisal that quickly?”

  “Oh, envy,” Danielle sneered over the sounds of Kathy’s maternal tutting and shushing. “I know you’re still bummed over that Iranian guy going home, Erin, but seriously, don’t piss all over my happiness, okay?”

  “You were dating an Iranian?” Kathy’s eyes turned to wide, kohl-lined saucers. “Oh, Erin, those Arabic men can be so domineering and really don’t treat women like we—”

  “Indian.” I fisted the scraps of napkin I’d been mindlessly shredding. “Ardhi was Indian. From Mumbai. Bombay?”

  Two stilled, befuddled faces with the same blue eyes blinked back at me.

  Kathy finally spoke. “Well…where did you meet someone from India?”

  “At work, Mom. Ardhi and I worked together.”

  “Well, work’s a fine place to meet a man.” She patted the cream silk covering my sister’s arm. “Dani met Dante here, of course. Executive chef and owner. Two restaurants, this one and Boriello’s, here in the valley, and…” Her eyebrows rose over wide, excited eyes.

  “He’s talking to—” Danielle stopped short with a glance at our mother and snickered. She made a great display of composing herself and said, “Well, I can’t really talk le specifiche, but there might be something happening in Vegas or Guatemala.”

  “Can you imagine?” Kathy clearly had.

  “No. I can’t.” In English or in Italian. Suddenly I missed Trattoria Stella and Nonni Isolde, and the big, warm hand that usually held mine when we ate at the little restaurant in Callahan. I missed it all, very much. I swallowed hard at the swift, strong missing of Walt and kept it silenced in my throat. Instead, I glanced around the room, looking for a server. “I can’t imagine at all.”

  After the prolonged buildup of Dani and Mom’s arrival, dinner was a comparatively short event, consisting of nothing more than grilled octopus salads—with lemon instead of dressing. I winced with longing at the focaccia basket Danielle waved away. After the di
nner plates disappeared and the wine glasses were replenished, Mom excused herself to the restaurant patio for a cigarette. My sister adjusted the cuff of her linen jacket and once again her flawless three-carat diamond flashed in my direction.

  “So Erin,” she began, then paused to swish her hair over her shoulder. “While Mom’s gone, we should talk.”

  I glanced across the empty bar. Mom was out of sight and I was effectively trapped by her absence. Warning prickled across my skin.

  “Talk? Okay, what about?”

  “Mom. What are we going to do about her?”

  “Do? I—is she okay? She seems fine.”

  “She’s almost sixty.” Danielle sighed heavily, blinking over our apparently mostly dead mother. “And I’ve taken care of her for a long time now.”

  “She’s fifty-eight and you’ve been sharing an apartment.” I nudged my glasses into place, biting back that I help pay for. “Dani, what is it? Has something happened? She hasn’t mentioned—”

  “Dante and I want to travel, you know? And entertain.”

  I watched her for a moment, waiting for another statement to tie together Kathy’s apparent failing health, the hospice Danielle was convinced she had been running in their apartment, and her new fiancé’s travel plans. “Okay. So travel. What does that have to do with Mom?”

  “We just want to be newlyweds. Have fun and be spontaneous. And young.”

  Suddenly the real topic was clear as a wrinkle in my sister’s recently acquired linen blazer. “So how does Dante get along with Kathy?”

  “Oh, he loves her. Really. They get along so great.”

  “I bet.”

  “Everyone here just loves her. You know that, E.”

  I nodded again. She was really doing this. “Yes. I do.”

  “But she’s going to be so lonely when we’re away at the new sites. And our house at the vineyard won’t be finished for months, maybe even a year. So I think—”

  “Know what, Danielle? When it’s really time to be concerned about Mom’s care, I will be. Right now, I think Kathy’s capable of deciding where she lives and how she spends her time and probably is relieved to finally have the opportunity to be on her own. She doesn’t need either of us treating her like a something that has to be handled.” I gathered my bag to me and stood, as calm and unfussed as I could manage. My sister followed, not calm and very fussed.