Slow Seduction (Struck by Lightning)

by Cecilia Tan

  I hesitated for a moment. I’d never given the “James phone” number to anyone before. But it was the phone I had to rely on here. I wrote the number down, tore it off, and gave it to them.

  They hurried to the front of the café, where I saw Damon standing. He paid the cashier, and all three of them waved to me as they went out the door.

  I thought, well, that was quite a different evening than I’d expected. I walked around a little, looking at the sights while I went in the direction I thought the Underground was. I ended up browsing in a bookshop, then meandering along the edge of a park where a band was playing.

  I had just come to the Underground when my phone rang from an unknown number.

  My immediate thought was: James?

  “Hello?”

  Surprisingly, it was Damon George. One of the girls must have given him my number. “Where are you, Karina? Do you need a ride?”

  “I can find my own way home, thanks,” I said. “Are you done with Nadia and Juney already?”

  “Ha. It’s been well over an hour, more than enough to finish their night’s lesson. Let me come get you in the car.”

  “Damon, my mother always told me not to get in cars with strange men.”

  “Even if I promise I won’t touch you?”

  He couldn’t have known that saying so would send goose bumps all over my arms and across my neck, as I thought about the things James could do to me without ever touching me. “I said ‘no,’ Damon.”

  “Ahem. Actually, Karina, you didn’t say no. You said your mother told you not to get into cars.”

  “You’re maddening! All right. I meant no, then. And I’m saying it now.” I looked around the street, wondering if he knew where I was, if he was nearby. But he wasn’t James, and that sort of thing happened only with him.

  “Okay. I understand. I do want to talk to you about my offer, though.”

  “Your girls convinced me. I’ll call the number on the card you gave me.”

  “All right. I think I can help you, Karina.”

  “Help me pass the audition, you mean?”

  “No. I mean help you understand your interest in dominance and submission.”

  “Well, if I pass the audition, you’ll have plenty of chances for that.”

  “True. All right, Karina, if you’re really not interested in talking, hang up on me now.”

  “I will! Ahhh!” He was so infuriating! If I didn’t hang up, that meant I kept talking to him, and if I did hang up, it was like I was following his orders. I hung up and resisted the urge to throw the phone at the ground.

  The truth was I did want to talk about it with someone who understood it all. But not him, I told myself. Not like that!

  I went back to the ArtiWorks, alternately fuming about Damon and trying to imagine what the audition for the secret society would be like. Michel was nowhere to be seen, and Paulina was in her studio. I could hear her singing along to some music while she worked. I went to my room rather than disturb her.

  I meant to spend some time working on the books, but the moment I got in I set up my laptop on my bed and took the envelope of photos out of my purse.

  I was searching for information on the Internet about UK postal codes when Becky popped up in the video chat window.

  “Hey, Becks!”

  “Hey, Rina! How’s it going so far? I got your e-mail! Are you at Misha and Paul’s right now?”

  “I am. And I think I have some leads, too.”

  “Oooh, like what? The postmark thing?”

  “That’s one. Here’s the envelope he sent.” I held it up so she could see it. “I don’t know yet what—”

  She leaned close to the screen, and it looked like she was writing something down. “I’ll look right now.”

  “Okay, Watson,” I joked. “But there’s more.”

  “I’m all ears, Sherlock.”

  “Ha. So, remember when you were telling me Renault was drunk and ranting about something called the Crimson Glove Society? I met a man tonight who had a red glove in his pocket.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “A single glove, satin, and oh, by the way, he had two female sex slaves following him around the museum? Yeah, I’d say it was unusual.”

  “At the museum!”

  “He was the big-money donor who got a private tour. Anyway, he sort of flashed the glove and then handed me a business card. Next thing I know, I’m invited to a sex slave job interview.”

  “What!” Her image jiggled as she grabbed her laptop like she was trying to grab on to me. “You’re not serious.”

  “I don’t mean slaves like illegal trafficking, Becks. I mean, you know, doms and subs. There’s a club here in London and they train the subs to do stuff. The point is it must be the same secret society that James is in. And if he’s here in the UK, how much you want to bet he gets in touch with them?”

  “Oh. Well, I can tell you one thing,” Becky said, typing some more as she talked to me. “Whoever mailed that envelope mailed it from York, England.”

  “You can tell from the code?”

  “Yep. Here. I’ll send you the link to the info site about it.”

  I didn’t really need to see the page about the postal service, though. I was already doing a search on York. A tourist info site came up, and I clicked on one of the links there touting “Art in York.”

  Jackpot. “York has glassmakers!”

  Becky was apparently looking at a different website from me. “And a ton of chocolate shops. What is up with that?”

  “I don’t know, but I think I’m more likely to find him through the glass artists, don’t you?”

  “Of course! Looks like York is only two hours from you by train. I’ll send you a link to that, too.” She tapped on her keyboard. “So. You’ve got two solid leads now. The glass people in York and your kinky rich people’s club.”

  “And Paulina and Michel,” I added. “They seem to think there’s a chance they’ll hear about his whereabouts at some point.”

  “You’ll find him, Karina. I know you will.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, Becks.” It was nice to hear her say it. But I wondered if he wanted to be found.

  Four

  This Girl Is Made of Loneliness

  The next day I called the number Damon had given me. I was a bit surprised that a woman answered. I’d been expecting someone like Damon, I guess. She told me the earliest they could audition me would be the following week. When I asked what the audition would include, she told me that not knowing was all a part of the test. She did tell me the date and time, but said that the exact address wouldn’t come to me until an hour before so I would have time to get there. When I asked what I should wear, she laughed, called me a “dear thing,” and hung up.

  Fine. In the meantime, Michel had just finished stripping the back hallway of the ArtiWorks and we started retiling the front entrance. I planned a trip to York for two weeks later, by which time I’d have collected enough of my pay from Martindale to have a little to spend on getting there and back.

  I also started leading an afternoon group tour of the exhibition every day, filling in for one of the regular docents when she took her summer vacation. Many of the visitors seemed to think it was charming that they got an American art student to lead them around the museum. Tristan followed my tour a couple of times, but claimed he could never speak so knowledgeably and authoritatively about the subject. I knew from chatting with him over lunch that he knew plenty about the pre-Raphs, but he shrugged it off.

  By the day of the “audition,” I had a blister on one hand and some scrapes and bruises on my arms from renovating, and I still hadn’t figured out what to wear. I took a hot shower and then sat on my bed, contemplating the clothes I had to choose from.

  What would James have wanted? I thought suddenly. Thinking about him brought everything into focus. It was a job interview, right? I put on the outfit I wore to meet Martindale that first day, matching blazer and slacks,
but with one difference. I left my underwear off. Just in case.

  My phone rang as I was slipping my shoes on. “Hello?”

  “Go to the address you’re about to receive by text,” said a female voice that I thought was probably the same woman I had spoken to before, but I couldn’t be sure.

  An address appeared on my phone a few moments later, and I set about figuring out where I was going, in other words, which of the London Underground trains to take. The Underground wasn’t that much trickier than the New York subway, but sometimes it took some figuring out.

  I took the train to Green Park, and as I came out of the station, my phone pinged with another text. It read: Ring #3.

  I walked a few blocks to the address I was given and was surprised that the building seemed to be a modern block of apartments. A mother escorting two young children was making her way down the front steps as I approached. I pressed the buzzer for number three. A moment later the door unlatched and I went inside. Number three was on the first floor, at the back. A large envelope with my first name on it was taped to the door. I opened it and pulled out a letter.

  If you are to join us, the bond will be built on trust.

  If you believe you can trust us, you will follow these instructions. Place your phone inside the envelope along with this letter and tape the envelope to the door again. Then take the Tube to Holborn. The address you seek is printed on the card.

  Card? I looked in the envelope again and saw a business card at the bottom I had missed before. It had only a street address, no name or even the city. I put the card in my pocket, put my phone in the envelope, then stood there thinking.

  This was fairly heavy cloak-and-dagger stuff, although it seemed very unlikely they were trying to steal my phone. I supposed they didn’t want me taking a camera where I was going, and they had to be careful I hadn’t brought the police or a TV news crew with me. They were probably watching me right now. I taped the envelope to the door and went on my way.

  It felt distinctly odd to be without a phone. I’d gotten so used to having it, using it to check the weather, the map, read the news, and so on, all the time. Not having it was like wearing a blindfold. Which was probably the other purpose for them taking it away.

  Fortunately, it wasn’t hard to get to Holborn Station, and there was a map on the wall of the train station that let me get my bearings and find the address I needed. I walked a few blocks from the station on a quiet residential street that opened onto a square running around a small park. The buildings here were what I thought of as brownstones, only larger than I was used to. Each was four stories tall and quite wide. The sidewalk was paved in large, flat stones, and each building had a front patio surrounded by a wrought-iron fence.

  This looked much more like what I was expecting, but I braced myself in case this doorway, too, had another hoop to jump through. I went up the stone steps and saw the entryway had only one doorbell. There were no envelopes in sight. I pressed the button.

  A moment later the door opened. A slender woman in a pillbox hat and stylish suit, her skirt tapering to her knee, looked me up and down. Her eyes were shadowed by the netting from the hat, and she looked like the starlet of a noir film. “Your name?” she said coolly.

  “Karina. Karina Casper.”

  “Come in.” She stepped aside so I could enter and then shut the door firmly behind me. I was in the plush-carpeted front hallway. A large staircase led upward and parlors were off to either side. She cleared her throat. “If you’ll go forward and to your right.”

  I went down the hall and then into a sort of library or sitting room. One wall was built with cabinets up to waist height and then bookshelves going up nearly to the high ceiling. A rolling ladder was attached to one side. In the middle of the room was a large table with a sculpted edge. Three chairs sat on one side of it, a single chair on the other, with a folded napkin in front of it.

  She gestured to the single chair and I sat in it, my knees suddenly feeling a bit shaky. What was about to happen? Were they going to ask me to do anything? Or were we just going to talk?

  She stepped up beside me then and picked up the napkin. “Call me Vanette. This is a blindfold.” She snapped it in the air and it unfolded.

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to, but I think it actually makes things easier.”

  “All right.”

  She went around behind me and smoothed my hair with her hands, then lowered the cloth in front of my eyes. She tied it snugly, but not too tight. I wondered how she knew how snug to make it. Maybe she had a lot of practice. She was right, though. I felt more secure with it on. Maybe it was like calming a horse by putting something over its eyes. I felt my breathing deepen in the peaceful dark. It was time to let whatever was going to happen, happen.

  I heard voices then, two men talking. They must have been coming down the stairs.

  As they came into the room I recognized one of the voices as Damon’s. “That’s something for the finance committee to work on,” he was saying.

  “No doubt you’re right,” said the other man. He sounded older, and his accent was different from Damon’s, with more r sounds. “Ah, and here she is. Good to see you, Vanette, my darling.”

  “Good to see you, Director.”

  I heard the sound of the chairs being pulled back on the carpet and them settling themselves. Vanette cleared her throat again. “State your name and that you are here of your own free will, that no one coerced you into appearing here, and that you are not being paid or compensated for your attendance.”

  “Karina Casper, and yes, I’m here of my own free will and no one is paying me.”

  She then addressed the other two. “American, as you can hear. Turned twenty-seven recently. No known family in the UK.”

  “What’s she doing in London?” the director asked.

  “Working at Tate Britain,” Damon said. “That’s where I met her. Karina, why don’t you tell us why you’re interested in serving us in the society?”

  Well, it was your idea, I wanted to say, except now that I had decided on checking the place out to try to find James, I couldn’t very well say that. “You made it sound very intriguing,” I said. “And so did Nadia and Juney.”

  “How would you describe your experience?” Vanette asked, her voice sharp and serious, like her clothes.

  “You mean, my sexual experience?”

  “With service or other S-type roles.”

  “Oh.” How should I describe my relationship with James? “I don’t know if I’m really what you could call submissive, but I do follow instructions well. I’ve done some rope bondage.” Let’s see, what were the other things I’d seen described on the Internet? “Medical play and shaving. Orgasm denial. I’ve been…played with in public a fair bit—”

  “In front of the general public?” Vanette asked. “Or at play parties?”

  “Mostly the general public,” I admitted. “Secretly, like going to a restaurant with my…partner, when he had me wear a sex toy, and also at things like performance art.”

  “Performance art?” The director sounded a bit amused.

  “At an art gallery in New York. Well, it was invite only, so I don’t know if you count that as public or private, but I was sort of a spectacle. People in the audience could pick up a riding crop and try to hit me on the ass.”

  “Did you enjoy it?” Vanette asked.

  “Yes. It was very intense. And arousing.” How much of my arousal was caused by the sensation of being struck, how much was the thrill of being naked and exposed, and how much was the fact that James was in control? I wondered.

  “And your partner, did he also perform more, ahem”—the director cleared his throat, and I was amused that a man who was the head of a secret sex club seemed to stumble over these words—“overtly sexual acts in public?”

  I paused before answering, trying to figure out which things would be considered overt or not. I decided the best thing
to do would be to give a frank description. “If making me come in public, like in restrooms or public libraries, counts as overtly sexual, then yes.”

  “Did he fuck you?” Vanette asked, and I heard a bit of a smirk in her voice.

  “Yes. Once.” I pressed my hands together. I hadn’t realized that cataloging everything I’d ever done with James was going to make me miss him even more. I didn’t think it was possible to miss him more than I already did, but now I felt his absence like an ache all over my body. Oh, James, does it have to be this way? And is it you I need so much, or the things you used to do to me?

  I drew a deep breath. Was I ready to find out the answer to that question? One more reason why I had to find him. I had to know. Did he miss me as much as I missed him? If he didn’t, then maybe it really was over. Maybe it was time to move on. But I had to believe, deep down, that he felt the loss. He was running scared from how much he loved me and how vulnerable that love made him. Right? He was a man of masks, but love stripped them away—or at least I had stripped them away. I had to believe he wouldn’t have let me go that far if he didn’t love me too.

  And I had to believe that if I could find him, I could break through the wall he’d built around himself. I could make him see he didn’t have to run.

  The questioning turned away from directly sexual topics after that, and it became almost like a job interview. We talked about art and my previous job as a waitress. I even told them Jill’s tips for reading customers. But things came back to the topic of submission when Vanette asked, “Have you thought about what your training goal is? What you hope to get out of serving the society?”

  “Well, I would like to understand what’s going on in the minds of dominant men,” I said. “Nadia said you become a sort of mind reader if you’re good. I would definitely like to develop that knack.”

  I think it was Damon who stifled a snigger. Vanette went on. “Society trainees have two other things to determine. One is what your slave name will be, and the other is your personal dictum.”