“Yes.”
X reached into the container she held, pulled out a handful of popcorn, then began to gently place the snack along the seat. A few pieces rolled into the water, floating on the surface.
“Eat them.”
Compton took off his gloves, then picked one off the seat and popped it into his mouth, smiling at her as he did so.
“Don’t use your hands,” X demanded.
So then he leaned down, sucking up the food one at a time into his mouth, looking up every now and then at X. When he finished, she told him to drink from the bowl.
Compton had to lift the lid to reach the water. His head descended toward the liquid, a posture he typically did not attain unless suffering from a particularly heavy night of drinking or from the flu. He hovered above the water for just a few moments before jutting out his tongue and lapping the water into his mouth. Over the course of his life he had owned dogs which seemed to prefer the toilet to the filtered water in their own bowls. It was fresh and cold with the slightest hint of chemical residue. Compton continued to drink until X told him that was enough, clean the sink and the bathroom floor and then let her know when he was done.
He did as he was told, and when he let her know that he had completed the tasks, X told him to get dressed. She watched him as he did so, and once his clothes were back on, X turned off the movie and told Compton to sit on the couch.
“Stay there,” she said as she left him to go into her bedroom. She returned with something in her hand, a photo which she gave to him. Compton examined the image, one in which his eyes were taped shut, all the bondage gear of his dungeon behind him, his small penis uncovered and bared, a humiliating measurement written on his belly.
He opened his mouth, and X shushed him.
“Don’t say a word,” she said. “You are going to wonder if I am serious about my request, but I assure you, I am not joking.”
X sat onto the arm of the couch, spreading her legs enough that the satin descended between her thighs. “I’m not sure what you would find more embarrassing, being known as a submissive or having the world know what a small cock you have. But it doesn’t matter. The images of you would stick in the mind of every person you ever do business with. You’ll be discussing acquisitions or currency with them, and they’ll be sitting across from you, feeling sorry for you that your dick is so small. People will say that your pursuit of wealth is just you trying to compensate for your shortcoming. Even after you are long dead, when your name is mentioned, people will add in that you had a very small member. You will never escape the association.”
X took the photo from him. “The image could be all over the internet in a few hours.” Compton reached to his crouch and adjusted his hard penis, and X noted his gesture. “And as much as the idea of it might excite someone as pathetic as you, I know that you don’t really want that to happen. And just so you are aware, if anything happens to me, I’ve created a signed statement which rather matter-of-factly says that you are responsible.”
“Tell me what you want,” Compton said, the words coming out in a breathless whisper.
X stood and went over to him. X had brought him to her apartment not just so he could clean, but because she feared that Compton’s dungeon was bugged and she didn’t want Simeon to have any idea what she was doing. She leaned down and whispered the figure into his ear, an amount that she planned to offer to her brother if he agreed to also go on the lam. “A million.”
“Cash?”
“I’ll make you a painting and you will pay me the money directly.”
“Of course.”
“Now go.”
Terry Compton left X then, and a few days later, a small painting was delivered to him. He opened it eagerly, pulling off the cheap brown paper which concealed it. Two dark crimson lines crossed each other on the blue background of the eponymous work. Perfect.
He wrote out a check then, masturbating immediately after he had signed it. He told Steinberg to have it delivered to X along with the object he had purchased and had customized specifically for her.
The check arrived to X that afternoon, delivered by a uniformed man requesting a signature. He handed her an envelope and she opened it to find the check in the exact amount she had requested.
“Your other delivery is outside,” he informed her, X realizing then that the form stated that there were two deliveries.
X followed the man outside. Once in the parking lot, he handed her some papers and a pair of keys, then pointed to a silver Mercedes SL 550 Roadster convertible.
“You’re a lucky woman,” he said before departing. “That’s a beautiful vehicle.”
In disbelief, X opened the vehicle and sat in the driver’s seat. A simple post-it note was stuck to the steering wheel. Thank you, it read.
5.
The day came for X to go to Santa Fe with Michael. She packed her things in the morning and then went over to Michael’s house after making sure that Simeon wasn’t following her.
“Nice ride,” Michael said as he got into the passenger seat of X’s new Mercedes. X had put down the top, allowing the early morning sun to hit them. The man tossed a small bag behind his seat and they departed. There was a long trip ahead of them.
They stayed in Arizona the first night, sharing dinner and a few drinks at the hotel restaurant before returning to the room. The place reminded X of the fake hotel room Simeon had taken her to, and she had to shake off the uncomfortable feelings that had created in order to succumb to the man’s advances.
Long after Michael had fallen asleep next to her, X was still tossing and turning. Desperately, she longed for sleep to come. The woman tried everything—deep breathing, counting sheep, side/stomach/back positions, visualizations—but nothing worked. She tried to list the various eras of art backwards from contemporary to prehistoric, adding in as many movements and schools as she could remember, but still had no success.
Simeon had not explicitly forbidden her from leaving California, nor had he demanded that she tell him of any major changes in her life. Sure, Simeon hadn’t been precise in telling X that she couldn’t split, but she knew that he would not approve of her actions, might even punish her for them. She had taken the $75,000 from Simeon and never even dominated that Ventura man. Agent Simeon, if he did locate her, was going to be angry. Very angry.
X hadn’t relinquished her apartment, her old car, or even disconnected the utilities at her apartment. She had told Anne and a few of her friends that she was going to be traveling for a few months but would stay in touch (which she planned to do via a pay-as-you-go, untraceable phone).
Perhaps Simeon would find her and drag her back or find a way to get her brother tossed back in the slammer on another drug charge. And then she’d probably have to return to California and cover the cost of a lawyer for his defense. X had tried to get him to lay low for awhile, had told him that since she was involved with Compton that there was the possibility that something might happen to her or someone close to her, lying to him and saying that she had been told that there were men who might want to hurt him as a way of getting money from Compton. What sort of man would turn down his girlfriend when she begged him for the money to save her brother?
But Daniel had been unfazed. “Listen, sis,” he had said, “I survived two years in federal prison and you don’t want to know the kind of crazy mother-fuckers that were in that place. Thanks for your concern, but I can take care of myself.”
And when X had told him that she’d give him whatever money he needed to just get out of California for a few months, he had admitted that he didn’t want to leave Sabrina. He was in love. She was a girl like no other and he didn’t want to go messing up the best thing in his life. And anyway, he stayed at her place. Everything was in her name. He’d be a hard person to find. And to that, X had told him simply that if you really wanted to find a person that they could be found. It was just a matter of time.
Maybe she would return eventually. When exactly she
might go back, X wasn’t quite sure. What she hoped was that she could manage to stay away for a long enough time that Compton would lose interest in her, find another woman perhaps. Or maybe Simeon would be told to direct his energy to some other pressing issue, to somebody other than Compton.
But she knew that it wouldn’t happen that way. X longed for the comfort that could only be found in denial of the situation, a denial that would not come. As she tossed around in bed listening to the slow breaths of the man next to her, a man who was trying his best to help her, X knew that she could not run forever. She would run as long as she was able. The money she had accumulated would buy her some time, but not an eternity. Her own words echoed in her mind: It was just a matter of time.
Sleep came after X finally admitted her defeat and bought a small pack of sleeping pills from a vending machine in the lobby. In the morning, the two made love, showered, ate breakfast, and then headed out for the final stretch of the journey.
X, still groggy despite the high-test coffee, let Michael drive the car and he was glad to do so, happy to test the power of the vehicle’s 8 cylinders on the long desert highway. They were going so fast that they had to pull over and put the top up. As X looked out into the desert, at its buttes and cacti and seemingly endless variations of the color tan, she wondered how she was going to bear to live in such emptiness.
They made it to Santa Fe late in the day, Michael pulling the car into the garage of the house that she would be calling her own for the time being. It was a small house. The décor was outdated. There was a faint lingering scent of mothballs. The house, which had been his mother’s until her somewhat recent passing, was still furnished. Her clothes were still in the closet. The man hadn’t gotten rid of anything that was hers. Michael said that just hadn’t decided what to do with it yet.
Being with him was easy, comfortable. X had thought that a man like Michael, one who seemed to have no interest in her dominating him, would bore her, but instead, their interactions seemed to galvanize her, invigorate her. X appreciated his gallantry, the way he was trying to protect her. The man made her feel safe.
They spent a day painting inside, another day cleaning out the garage. Michael took his father’s motorcycle to the mechanic, leaving it there for a tune-up. X helped him take his mother’s clothing to a donation center. They photographed all the furniture and put it up for sale on the internet.
One morning when the pair cuddled in bed, Michael asked her if she was missing tying up her partner.
“It’s more than just tying someone up,” she said.
“Or whipping them?”
“It’s more than both of those.”
“What do you do to them, to your, what are they, your submissives?”
The man ran the tip of his index finger over her breast and then kissed and licked her nipple gently. She allowed him to continue while she thought about how to answer.
“I’ve done many different things to them.”
“Like what?” he asked, lifting up his head to look at her.
“Whatever I wanted,” she laughed.
“Tell me,” he said, the man smiling as he opened up her legs and put his head between them, licking her.
“I like to taste you in the morning.”
X closed her eyes and moaned softly from the pleasure of his tongue and fingers.
When she did not answer, he said, “You’re going to tell me, or else.”
This made X laugh.
“Or else what?”
“Or else you’re gonna get fucked.”
“And if I do tell you?”
“You’re gonna get fucked.”
This made them both laugh and then the man went back to what he had been doing. X stretched her arms above her head, barely able to concentrate anymore.
“It wasn’t all sexual. Sometimes I’d make them clean my apartment. I made one man go out and beg on the street because he was always insulting the homeless.”
Michael concentrated on using his fingers.
“What would he say to them?”
“He’d tell them to go get a job, tell them to stop sucking off society.”
Michael pushed himself up to his knees, lifted up her right foot, and began to suck on her toes.
“Did you make them do this?”
“Yes,” she said, a nascent ache present in her voice.
“What was Terry Compton into? What did the rich guy like?”
X pulled her foot away from him and sat up on her arms. X didn’t like where this conversation was going, didn’t want to answer his questions about Terry Compton, didn’t want to think about the man when she and Michael were in bed together.
“It’s private,” she said. “They even made me sign a confidentiality agreement.”
Michael stroked his hand over her thigh until his fingers had found her warm wetness again. He continued to caress her and then laid his body next to hers. He was prodding X, his strong body next to her own, weakening her with the kisses he planted on her neck, her shoulder and cheek, the way his hardness pressed against her hip.
“Did he like being violated?”
“Not him,” X said.
“But other men.”
“Other men, yes.”
“You’re a dirty little girl,” he said as he slid on top of her and between her legs.
She wanted him. It was more than sexual. X wanted to give herself to him, yield beyond the flesh. She thought about the connection between them, the fine crystal filaments of it. The wrong breath could break it forever. She reflected on her feelings. She liked the infinitesimal theorizing, the subliminal flow percolating to the surface. It was something about his gravity, a negligible force but enough, something as wide as the space between his teeth, the gap in his smile, which pulled her to him.
Michael pushed himself into her and X moaned in delight at the pleasure, imperious and rapt, the feeling of having him deep within her.
“Maybe I’ll do it slow,” he said, “or fast.” He changed the tempo of his movements in synch with his words. “We have all day.”
X surrendered herself to the subharmonic frequency of his lovemaking. He stroked her face, leaned down to kiss her. He grasped each of her wrists, pressed them onto the bed next to her head.
“Having a woman do what I want, I like that idea.”
X looked up at him, made a split-second imprint of the landscape of his face. He kissed her again. His movements accelerated, deepened. She wanted him to bring her to orgasm, make her graze the face of God for an instant.
“Then make me do what you want,” she said, and the man did as she commanded.
She felt the pain and the pleasure of it and then a particular transubstantiation until sleep arrived.
6.
X dreamed.
In it, she was in Compton’s dungeon, but instead of Compton being the one bound and leashed, it was her. Naked, her hands bound in front of her, X sat on the floor by the bondage cross. She reached up and tugged at the collar around her neck, one so tight as to make breathing a little difficult, but it had no give. Her mouth was gagged with a thick bit, horse-like. Her teeth clenched down on it momentarily, imprinting themselves into the latex that wrapped around the metal. She tried to find the clasps for the gag and the collar but was unable to locate either.
She stood but was unable to go more than a few steps because her collar was attached to a thick chain that went to the wall. With all her might, she yanked on the chain, feeling pain in her hands and shoulders as she did this, and then she saw that the chain had been welded directly to a metal plate on the wall. She pulled at it until her frustration caused tears to well up in her eyes. Finally, X let go of the chain, exhausted.
Her eyes wandered to the back of the room and she saw Compton there. The man was sitting on his simple wooden chair, fully dressed, watching her.
“Help me!” she said to him, but the words barely came out because of the bit in her mouth. A slim line of drool ran over her chin,
slick and humiliating. Compton didn’t reply or even acknowledge her, just continued to stare. After a few more moments, X started pulling at her chain again.
“I don’t belong here!” she screamed to Compton, the words just a mash of sounds. “I’m the Domme, not the sub!”
X looked past Compton. Behind him was the same pegboard wall of bondage gear. But instead of the words that had been stenciled on the wall before, there was another phrase, this one also in Latin, written in long, flowing letters.
Veritas Vos Liberabit, it read. X looked again, and this time the words were in English: The Truth Will Set You Free.
She noticed music playing softly in the background, Sexy Sadie by the Beatles.
“Your song is playing,” Compton said.
X scanned the room again. Now, instead of Compton in the chair, her mother sat. The woman was young and beautiful, the way she had looked in those years when she had modeled. The woman wore a long taffeta gown, its material spilling onto the floor. She had the eyes of a Renaissance painting, the luminosity.
X cried out to her to help.
“Pretty girls are a dime a dozen,” her mother replied.
Then X remembered how her mother had said that to her anytime X had expressed amazement when she had looked at the photos of her mother in her prime.
What her mother had left out was a simple two word command that she had always added in after she had said pretty girls are a dime a dozen. Why had she left it out?
X reached up to her collar again and tried to get her fingers between it and her neck but was unable. She was crying now, deeply sobbing, her lips trembling as tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Help me, Mama,” she whimpered. “Help me get free.”
Her mother made eye contact with her.
“Those collars slip right off, honey,” she replied.
This time when X yanked at the collar it stretched out easily, pliant like a rubber band, and X pulled it over her head.
Free now, X rushed over to her mother, but before she could get there, the woman was disappearing like an apparition.
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