by Cecilia Tan
“I didn’t hear any false pretenses in anything you said.” He rubbed his thumb across the back of my hand. “I think you meant every word.”
“You’re bending the truth.”
“Am I? The truth is relative, perhaps. Karina, seriously, you’re clearly very deeply in love with this individual. Enough to make your judgment questionable, perhaps. But don’t beat yourself up about having not-sex with me. If he abandoned you, I’m sure he doesn’t expect you to go live in a nunnery or something now.”
“I guess.”
“If a man abandons his cat, is he going to be angry at the cat for getting fed by a neighbor?”
“Well, he shouldn’t be, but that doesn’t mean he won’t feel betrayed anyway.”
“True. Is your former master that irrational? If so, I’d say he’s not worth your loyalty.”
“It’s not that simple. I’m the one who feels guilty anyway.” I squeezed his hands in mine, hard. “What should I do?”
He pulled his hands away then, shaking one of them like I’d overdone it. “I think you should get dressed and have lunch. We’ll talk about it after.”
“We’re not allowed to talk during lunch?”
“No, dear. You’re going to go have lunch. I’m going to fuck Ms. Juniper’s brains out while you do.” He stood as a knock came at the door. “That’s probably her now.”
“Really?”
“Really. You turn me on tremendously. Since I can’t have you, why should I suffer?” He opened the door and Juney came in, grinning from ear to ear. She gave me a little nod and a wave.
“Hey, Juney.” I smiled. “Okay, I’ll leave you two alone for a bit.”
I wandered down to the gym, which was deserted. I wasn’t planning to work out—I’d already had my workout, thank you very much—but I wasn’t hungry for lunch yet and I wanted to stretch my legs a little. Everything in the gym was black and red, with the most stylish-looking barbells I had ever seen. They looked like they belonged in a science fiction movie.
As I walked around the hotel, I thought about James. And myself. I didn’t come to any big conclusions, but when Damon met me for lunch I was a lot calmer.
Instead of lunch, in fact, we had tea, and although it wasn’t quite as fancy as the Buckingham Palace Hotel tea, it came pretty close.
When we were settled with a pot of tea each and a tower of tiny sandwiches and pastries between us, he shook his hair out of his eyes and said, “Now, where were we?”
The next closest table to us was across the room, four women who were chatting animatedly and paying us no mind.
“I think we were talking about whether I was going to join the society or not.”
“Ah, yes. I think you still should.”
“Even though I’m doing it to find this guy?”
“Look at it from my perspective, Karina, or from the club’s perspective. We see a bright young woman who is delightfully responsive to sadism and dominance. She’s old enough to have her wits about her, educated enough to be good conversation, but young enough to maybe turn into a lifetime companion for someone. What’s that? She’s had her heart broken by some lout? Well, that doesn’t make her different from half the girls we take in. And what’s the other thing? Oh, if she met the right fellow while at the club, she might marry him? Well, that certainly happens often enough, too.”
“I guess so. So I wouldn’t be breaking any rules by it.”
“No. Though of course if the director and Vanette thought the only reason you joined was to search for him, well, they wouldn’t take too well to that. However, I think you have plenty of good reasons to join outside of this one motive. After all, what if you find this fellow and then he rejects you? You will need a support system.”
“I guess you’re right…” I let out another long breath. “There’s also the fact that I’m supposed to go back to the States at the end of the summer. What about that?”
“Tell me truthfully. If this man turned up at the club, reconciled with you, and asked you to stay with him here in London, would you?”
“Yes,” I said, without hesitation.
“Then I think you have as much chance of staying after your training is done as any other S-type we take on these days. No need to mention to the others what may happen.” Damon set down his teacup then and leaned forward, staring into my eyes until I felt all I could do was stare back. “I will make you a promise if you make me one.”
“What promise is that?”
“I will promise to do everything I can to help you find this man, if you promise me that if he rejects you, you come to my bed for one night. One night of anything I want, no restrictions.”
His eyes were intense in the afternoon light, wide but lit with a hunger in them.
“Not being able to fuck me really has you bothered,” I said quietly.
“It does. Do we have a deal, Karina?”
“Okay. I promise. One night with you, I’ll do anything you want if J-Jules rejects me, and you’ll do everything you can to help me find him. The first thing you can do is buy me a train ticket to York on Thursday.”
He smiled brightly and sat back, clearly pleased with himself. I could see him already plotting what he wanted to do with me. “Easily done. One moment.” He pulled out his phone and sent either a text or an e-mail. “There. It’s as good as done.”
“You really think I’m a masochist?” I asked.
“I do. Are you worried about that? All that means is you get sexually excited by intense sensations like spanking or being caned.”
“Pain, you mean.”
“Pain, and other challenges. On the psychological side, you find control arousing, too. Honestly, I think most people do, they just tell themselves they don’t because it’s not socially acceptable. You’re supposed to be turned on by, what, bouquets of roses and bubble baths? That’s nice if what you want is to fall asleep side by side. Physically, we’re a lot more complicated than that.”
“You get turned on by seeing a woman in pain.”
“Physical pain, yes. I’m not so big on emotional distress.” He sipped his tea. “Making women cry has never been my thing.”
“Oh. Then I’m sorry about before.”
“Sorry? For what? It was fantastic to make you cry.”
“But you just said…”
“I said I didn’t get sexually turned on by it. But I was very pleased to get that result out of you, Karina. You opened up. It helped you tell the truth. And now that you told the truth, I can help you.”
“You’re right. It did.” I nibbled at the cucumber sandwich. “Well, what should I tell you about him?”
“How about starting with his name?”
“He told me in the U.S. society a lot of people don’t use their real names, so they never even know sometimes.”
“Someone in the group must know because they run background checks.” He frowned over his teacup.
“Yes, but the members don’t necessarily know one another’s names, I meant. He went by the name Jules, or Jewels, I guess, depending on your accent? He said he got the nickname because he wore a lot of diamonds and gems when he first started going to their parties.”
“Diamonds?”
“That was what he said. They have elaborate balls and people get quite dressed up.”
“So I’ve heard. Trying to imitate us, though we hardly do that sort of thing anymore. I mean, we do, but not for the society. You have the regular ones for nonerotic purposes, and then you have private ones on various estates by invitation. But anyway, that’s fascinating. Sounds like he was quite ostentatious, then?”
“I have no idea. He made it sound like a long time ago. Anyway, he told me about the group here, too, so when you pulled out that card, I jumped on it.”
“How did you know it was the same group, though?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t have, except you know the professor I turned in? He was trying to gain membership, and I scuttled it by reporting him. He showed up at my bui
lding drunk and ranting. My roommate tried to tell him I wasn’t there. He went on and on to her through the intercom, and she told me he used the phrase Crimson Glove Society.”
“Ah, so that’s where you got the designation crimson. I wondered why you used that word instead of red.”
“He might have been saying crimson-gloved society, but she heard it as a name, anyway. And so when I saw yours, it clicked.”
“All right, and this Jules, describe him?”
“About six foot, built like a dancer, all muscle but no bulk, blond. His mother was British and I guess he did some school here. Sound familiar?”
He shook his head slowly. “Can’t say that he does. But don’t be discouraged by that. But you still haven’t told me why you think you’ll find him here, rather than back in the States. Is he in York?”
“He might be. Another mutual friend, my boss at the museum, got a letter from him with a York postmark on it.”
“And you’re going to walk up and down the streets calling his name like a lost puppy?”
“Jerk. I figure I’ll start with the post office, ask around, and there are a few art-world-related connections I may be able to follow.”
“Aha. All right. You pursue him that way, and I’ll start inquiries within the society. It’s a shame we can’t start your society training this weekend if you’re out of town, but there will be ample opportunities to get worked over at the club.”
“You think I’ll be approved?”
“Vanette will go along if I give you the thumbs-up. Which I will. The director is already quite taken with you. You’ll be fine, Karina.”
Seven
Camouflaged Face
My weekend with Damon wrapped up with much more “not-sex.” He definitely kept his word when he said my clit would be sore, but we didn’t have any more deep talks. On Monday I went back to work, and if I sat somewhat gingerly because of the welts on my butt, no one noticed.
If I thought the previous week had gone by slowly, this week dragged even more. I gave two more after-hours tours, both to couples, none of them remotely like Damon. One was a man in his sixties and his slightly younger wife, both quite knowledgeable about the art, and one was a late-forties-ish couple who didn’t know much but were enthusiastic listeners. I was a bit hoarse after the evening with them. The daytime tours I was giving had become monotonous, though. I started to wonder if people were even listening to what I was saying. Then again, I was barely listening to what I was saying. Damon messaged me to say Vanette and the director had accepted my application for training, which would begin after I got back from York. The demolition finished at the gallery and we moved on to plastering. I chatted online with Becky a few times, but now that I was on a schedule I was usually asleep by the time she came online.
The night before I was to leave for York, I checked my e-mail and was surprised to see a ton of notification messages from the LL fan site. I had nearly forgotten about the story post I had made.
There were more than a hundred comments. I started to read them in the e-mails, then logged in to the site, where I could see them all at once.
I was amazed at how many messages I’d received, most of them surprisingly sympathetic. “I miss him, too!” one wrote. “Oh, GlassTiara, you have perfectly captured the longing we all feel in this superb piece of writing!” said another. “I feel your heartbreak,” said a third.
I had thought it was nothing more than a silly porno piece. But somehow what I felt had come through. It hadn’t occurred to me before that there was any emotional connection between me and Lord Lightning fans. And yet they all felt like I did: abandoned. Why? Because they loved him too much? It made me wonder: why had he decided to retire from performing? It was yet another thing I wanted to ask when I saw him again.
I would see him again. I had to believe that.
I caught the train on Thursday morning from King’s Cross. There were several trains leaving, every five minutes or so, for all different parts of the country, but exactly like they did at Penn Station, everyone would stand around until the track number for their train was announced. It was nowhere near as confusing as I feared it would be.
The seats were assigned on the train I was on, exactly like an airplane. Unlike on a plane, however, I had a window seat at a table. The trip would take about two hours, so I brought a book, but I ended up spending most of the time staring out the window. Very quickly we seemed to move past the city and into countryside. There were places we passed, with green rolling hills divided by hedgerows, that looked so idyllic I expected to see the doors to hobbit holes. Quite at odds with that were the gigantic nuclear power plants, towering over the landscape, sending up massive clouds of steam. I saw at least two like that.
The York train station was very historic looking to me, but it was new when compared to the rest of the town, much of which was built in medieval times. The guesthouse Martindale had booked for me was a few blocks from the train and just outside a massive stone gate that looked like something from a Dungeons & Dragons book. Except that cars were driving through it. The guesthouse had a pub on the ground floor and the rooms above. I dropped off my bag in the room, pocketed the metal key, and went out to look around.
I passed through the stone gate and walked on a narrow cobblestoned street, which opened up at the intersection to the plaza in front of the church Damon had told me about. It looked huge compared to the buildings around it, and likely full of fascinating art and architecture.
But I wasn’t here to look for art. I was here to find James. As I walked, it became quickly clear to me that wandering the warren of streets was only going to result in confusion for me. I found my way to the tourism center I’d passed when walking from the train station and picked up some maps and brochures.
My first stop was the post office, which turned out to be a counter inside a shop, which was confusing to me at first until I found it. There were about twenty people in line and two clerks working. When I saw how slowly the line was moving, though, I decided to go back later. I looked in the brochures I had picked up, trying to decide where to go next.
There was a shop called York Glass. That was as good a place to start as any. I took their brochure and went looking for it. It took some time, as the streets were narrow, winding. A few times I took the wrong side street, but ultimately the walled city wasn’t that large and I found the even narrower street called the Shambles, where the shop was located. In New York it would have been called an alley, not a street.
“This is like something out of Harry Potter, isn’t it?” said a woman standing on the corner looking at her map just like I was. Her accent was American. She got out her camera and took a picture of the alley. “It’s like right out of the movie.”
“Did they film it here?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t think so. They built a wider version anyway, so there would be room for the cameras and everything.”
“Ah, I see.”
She wandered down the street. She hadn’t even looked at me through the whole conversation, and it was a good thing there were no cars, because she wouldn’t have seen them, either.
York Glass was a tiny shop, with barely room for a handful of customers. A shopgirl sat behind a register in one corner, and the walls were lined with brightly lit cases and shelves of glass knickknacks and baubles, everything from glass Christmas ornaments to cat figurines.
I lingered while a few other people came in, and the shopgirl came out to help them. She had reddish brown hair and freckles across her nose. The people, a woman and her two daughters, made a fuss over what color glass cats they were going to buy, then left without buying anything, leaving the shopgirl standing there with several cats in the palm of her hand. She carefully put them back onto the rotating shelf in a case where they were displayed, waiting until an empty space for each one came around so she could replace them.
She turned to me as she closed the case door. “Can I help you with anything?”
“
Oh, um, I’m trying to find out more about the glass artists in the area.”
“Are you, now? A collector?”
“I work at a museum,” I said. That was true, after all. “I’ve got a special interest in glass. I’m fascinated by how it’s made. Are there studios nearby?”
“Oh, I suppose. Most of this”—she waved her hand toward the shelf—“is made by our own people, ’specially for the shop. I don’t know much about the artists around here. I’m just helping out the owner of the shop. You might come by later when my boss is here?”
“That’s a great idea. I’ll do that, thanks.” I stepped out into the alley again, deflated. That wasn’t much of a start. I would go back as promised and ask again. Meanwhile, I needed to eat something. Right across the alley was a small place—I mentioned they were all small, right?—called the Earl Grey Tea Shop. Perfect.
Inside was a series of low-ceilinged rooms. A very nice lady sat me down and explained the menu. I picked a rose-flavored tea and she bustled away to get my order started. I felt like I was having tea at someone’s grandmother’s house, which was perfectly charming.
The sandwiches were large compared to what I had been getting, made on full-sized bread, and the pastries included a whole slice of cake, so I was quickly stuffed. The rose-flavored tea made me think of what Damon had said. If all I wanted was roses and chocolates and bubble baths, I might as well be asleep.
I could see the appeal of that, but I wanted to feel I’d earned it. The cuddles and the bubble bath should come after the mind-blowing sex or whatever intense thing I’d experienced. Right?
I was toying with the remaining half slice of Victoria cake that I couldn’t eat when the hostess came back to bring my bill. “And what brings you to York?” she asked. “Seeing the sights?”
“Oh, pretty much. I’m in England for a summer job in London and I wanted to get out and see a little of the country.” Now’s your chance, Sherlock, I told myself. Ask. “I’m also interested in glassmaking and glass art. I hear there’s some of that here?”