by Kitty Thomas
When she reached the passenger side door, she leaned down, her long loose curls falling into the car in a cascade. “Hey, you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Get in. You hungry?”
“Famished,” she said as she got into the car. Nervous energy buzzed off her.
What a cruel joke of the universe. She wanted him as desperately as he wanted her. And yet... they were pieces to different puzzles, never intended to be put together to make the same picture.
“Do you like Japanese? I know a very nice Japanese place,” he said.
“Sakura?”
“You know it?”
“I’m passingly familiar. But, I’m not dressed nice enough for that.”
Gabe very much disagreed. If she looked any better he’d find some snug cave to drag her off to. “You look great. Anyway, I’m in jeans, too.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I would have been shocked if you’d been dressed up.”
Gabe chuckled. “Yeah, not much of a suit guy. I like to keep things simple.” You’re mine. You do what I say when I say it. That was simple enough, right?
He shoved those thoughts out of his head and started the car.
“Is it one of those places where they cook the food out in front of you at a big table?”
“No, this place is a lot more intimate. In fact, I’ve got us a private room.”
“Good. I want you all to myself,” she said.
God, this girl was gonna kill him.
She was quiet during the drive. Shy and nervous. If she knew what he was, she’d bolt out of the car the first time they stopped at a red light and flee him forever. He could have talked to her, eased the tension, but he liked her tension. If this was the most of that delicious energy he could get from her, he’d take it where and how he could get it.
When they arrived at Sakura, he helped her out of the car and led her through the parking lot, his hand pressed against her lower back. She didn’t tense or bolt from him, so at least she didn’t seem completely against being led. Surely she must sense or realize the paternalism in the gesture, the control. She didn’t buck like a wild horse, at least, or turn cold.
When they reached the door, he opened it for her.
She dropped her gaze slightly and murmured, “Thank you,” and then went inside.
Maybe he was wrong about her. She might be ignorant of the kink world, but there was something in her that wanted to submit to him even if she didn’t yet realize it herself.
A petite Japanese woman named Ishi smiled and bowed and guided them to a private room at the back of the restaurant. “Do you need a menu, Mr. Griffin, or should we bring your usual... for two?”
“No menu,” Gabe said. Ishi nodded and left them alone.
He watched Julie’s expression for some rebellion or offense that he would dare to decide what she would eat instead of giving her a list of choices to pick from, but she only smiled that nervous smile again. He might actually be able to work with this.
He pulled out her chair. “Sit.”
Again, she sat, offering no complaint at the order. He smiled.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He sized her up. Watching her reactions wasn’t enough. He wanted to know what lurked inside that cute little head of hers. “Are you bothered that I told her no menu?”
“Why would I be bothered? You seem to know this place well. I trust your judgment.”
I trust your judgment. Would that trust extend to the bedroom and all his darker desires? How long would that trust remain once he let loose with his full intensity on her? Five seconds? Maybe ten?
She kept looking down at the table, at her hands, around at the Japanese paintings on the walls.
“You’re very shy,” he said. “You aren’t like this at the bar.”
She blushed. “Oh. Well, the bar is loud, and there are a bunch of people. I have to force myself to be bigger.”
So I don’t get trampled, seemed to be the unspoken completion to that thought. She felt safe enough with him to reveal vulnerability. A positive sign.
“Gabe?” she said suddenly.
“Hmmm?”
“D-does it bother you that I’m shy? Am I not... am I not what you thought?”
“Some of my assumptions have already been proven wrong, but believe me, they are welcome mistakes.”
A soft smile curled her rose-tinted lips.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-two. You?”
“Thirty-six.”
“Oh.”
“Is the age difference a problem for you?” he asked. Gabe knew he didn’t look like the average thirty-six year old man. By this time, a great deal of them had let themselves go, if they’d ever kept themselves together to begin with—beer guts, hair starting to fall out, lines from hard living forming on their faces.
“No, it’s not a problem. I’m just surprised. I-it’s kind of a big gap.”
“Indeed it is.”
“Is it a problem for you?” she asked.
“No.”
Food was brought in then. The kitchen staff must have already started on it before they’d arrived, in case he wanted his usual. Empty plates were set in front of them, as well as chopsticks, some saki, and some tea both hot and iced. A second table was drawn up near the first where the food was brought in and placed. Extra tea, both hot and cold, and saki were left on a third table. As he’d requested. They were prepared not to interrupt him and discretely left the check.
“Ishi?”
“Yes, Mr. Griffin?”
Gabe pulled out his card. “I’ll go ahead and pay now. We’ve got everything we need here.”
“Of course, Mr. Griffin.” Ishi left the room with his payment, and he turned back to Julie. “Shall we?”
He took first her plate, then his own, and filled each with food.
“Do you like saki?” he asked, prepared to pour her some.
“I’ve never had it. I don’t drink.”
It was the last thing he’d expected her to say.
“At all?”
“No. I-I was raised kind of religious. Nobody at my house drank. I’m not really religious now, but I don’t drink. Not a moral thing, just not my thing.”
Gabe poured himself some and put the porcelain bottle back on the table. “But you work in a bar.”
Julie shrugged. “Yeah, but Danika likes that I don’t drink. She’s had problems with girls who drink too much on the job. She says it makes you too vulnerable and that we have some shady characters that come in. She doesn’t want us at risk.”
And I’m one of those shady characters.
Danika wasn’t the only one who liked that she didn’t drink. He probably wouldn’t be very interested in a girl who either drank too much or smoked. To echo Julie, not a moral thing, just not his thing. He’d wondered why he’d go for a bartender, knowing this. But now that he thought of it, he’d never seen her take a drink on the job.
“Tea, then?” he asked.
“Yes, please.”
“Hot or cold?”
“Hot.”
As he poured her tea, Ishi quietly re-entered the room with Gabe’s card.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
“Everything is great, Ishi.”
“Will there be anything else?”
“No, we have all we need.”
“If you decide you need something...”
“I’ll come to the door and let someone know.”
She smiled and gave a small bow, then turned and left them to their meal, closing the doors quietly behind her.
They ate for a few minutes in silence, then Gabe resumed his interview. “Are you in school?”
“I was. I’m taking some time off because I’m not sure what I want to do. It was okay to be indecisive at first because I had to get all the basic core classes in. But now it’s to the point where if I don’t have a declared major, I’m flying blind and wasting money I don’t have to waste. I don’t
want to be like some slave with massive college debt I can never climb out from under.”
And she probably didn’t want to be Gabe’s slave either, he thought. But aloud he stuck to the conversation she thought she was having and said, “You have no idea what you want to do?”
“I mean... in a perfect world I know what I’d like, but it’s silly and unfeminist and... you’ll laugh. Or be offended.”
“Try me.”
Julie’s face turned nearly as red as her sweater. There was some resistance to this admission but somewhere within her she seemed to find the courage to say the words. “I want a simple life. I want to find the right man, someone who can take care of me. And then I want to take care of him and his house. And children if we have them. God, I can’t believe I said that out loud. It’s so mortifying.”
Gabe laughed.
“I knew you’d laugh at me.”
“I’m not laughing at you. Trust me. I was just thinking you were in college to get your MRS degree.”
Julie looked down at her plate. “Yeah. Kind of, I guess. It’s pathetic.”
Gabe reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “No. It’s not pathetic at all. You want what you want. At least you’re brave enough to say it instead of chasing an ambition that doesn’t truly interest you.”
In truth, Gabe found himself ridiculously happy she had no large goals of her own. The idea that her sole ambition in life might be to serve him sent a thrill down all his nerve pathways. At least if things progressed and he became the demanding bastard he knew himself to be, he wouldn’t be robbing her of some other great ambition and life.
“Do you want children?” He worried this might be too much for a first date—not exactly light conversational fare—but kids didn’t fit into his life. He had to ask all the important questions now before he let himself get carried away with plans for their future.
“I’m not sure. I’m pretty young. It’s a little early to decide that now, I think. Do you have kids?”
“No.”
“Do you want them?”
“No.”
“O-okay.”
“I got the snip. I never wanted them and wanted to be sure I never had them.”
“Oh.”
He watched as she carefully brushed her hair over her shoulder. More a nervous gesture than a flirtation. Dammit. She did want kids. This was clearly a dead end that was only going to make her uncomfortable, so Gabe shifted the conversation. They could worry about this kid thing later.
“So, you’re looking for a rich husband then?”
“No. He doesn’t have to be rich. And if he makes a small wage and needs my help to earn money, that’s okay, too. I’d prefer to stay home, but I have a job. I can work. It’s not a problem.”
“I’m teasing you,” Gabe said. “I don’t think you’re a gold digger. Do you have any hobbies or interests?”
“I-I like to play the piano.”
“Are you any good?”
“Well, I’m not concert caliber if that’s what you’re asking, but I’m good to the untrained ear.”
“You didn’t think to pursue that as a career?”
Julie’s lip turned up in a look of disgust that was almost too precious given her soft, sweet features. “God no. If I turned my love into a job, it would turn into... well... a job. I want it to be something I do because I love it, not something I’m striving to compete with the whole world for. I don’t want to be the best. I just want to be.”
She might be innocent—far too innocent to work where she worked and to have reached the age of twenty-two—but she had all the makings of a submissive in every other aspect. Could he not gently lead her along this path? She seemed willing to be led, almost starving for it.
Leaving aside the kid thing. But maybe later she’d change her mind. Or maybe she was being honest and it wasn’t a priority. Maybe she’d just been taken aback by how firmly he’d said no. And if he had to live a double life with her, couldn’t he set her up somewhere in suburbia and adopt a couple of kids? Men in crime families did the suburban family thing all the time. Probably not the best rationalization or example, but he was reaching for anything here.
“W-what do you do?” she asked, bringing him back to the present.
Gabe stiffened, still undecided on what he would tell her about that. But of course if he was grilling her, she’d begin to return the favor.
But Julie continued and supplied a story for him. “I was sure you were in construction.”
He laughed. There was a weird sort of truth in that, if you counted what he did with the girls who came to the house for training construction. Maybe reconstruction. But definitely something new and grand was being built through his hands.
“You’re pretty perceptive,” he said.
Her face lit up. “So you are in construction?”
“I am.” But even this recombining of the truth turned his stomach. He didn’t want something fake with her. He didn’t want to have a whole secret life behind locked doors miles away from her. He wanted to be able to confide the truth. But there was no way he could tell her without bringing her to the house. And then she’d be his prisoner. Even without great ambitions, he didn’t think he could do that to her. She wasn’t just some girl. She was the girl who’d been tugging plaintively at his heart for months now.
“Are you close with your family?” Gabe asked.
“For a long time I was. They offered to pay for my college, but they wanted me to go to seminary. They had this idea in their head that I’d meet some nice preacher boy and that I would make an ideal preacher’s wife. But I think it was this last ditch effort to keep me religious—like he could somehow babysit my thoughts and convictions. When I told them I didn’t want to go to seminary and that I wouldn’t marry someone religious, let alone a minister, they flew off the handle and disowned me. Supposedly I was killing my poor father with my rebellion.”
She looked down at her plate as if realizing how personal she’d gotten with him. “I-I’m sorry. That was way too much information probably for a first date.” She took a slow breath, smiled nervously, and said, “No, I’m not close with my family. You?”
Suddenly her working at a dive bar made sense. It was perhaps the least religious place she could immerse herself in... well, besides the house Gabe helped run, anyway.
He swallowed a bite of food and took a drink of saki. “I am similarly estranged from my own family. Though for very different reasons. They’re all a bunch of raging alcoholics. I left home the second I could be free of them.”
Julie stared pointedly at his cup of saki, then no doubt followed that up with thoughts of him drinking whiskey at the bar.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. I have much more self control than they have, and I have other vices to self-medicate with.” Off her somewhat concerned expression, he added. “Not drugs, either.”
Sex. Control. Domination. Power.
But that might be too much information for a first date.
“What about relationships?” he asked. “Any jealous ex-boyfriends who haven’t gotten over you that I should know about?”
“Ummm...” Suddenly she became very interested in her hibachi chicken and the finer points of chopstick usage.
“Julie?” He’d only been kidding. Was there a crazy ex to worry about?
“I... no.”
“Okay, you have to give me more than that. There’s a story there.”
“No, that’s the thing. There isn’t a story there,” Julie said. “I-I don’t have any exes.”
“What do you mean you don’t have any exes? You’re a grown woman. Religious upbringing or not, you aren’t a nun.”
“Well, in high school, my parents watched me like a hawk. They needn’t have bothered. I was... small for my age and...” she got flustered and trailed off.
The light bulb clicked on. “Undeveloped,” Gabe supplied.
She flushed. “Yes. And you know high school boys. They were into boo
bs. And as the boob fairy had not yet blessed me, I was spared their attentions.”
“Trust me, you didn’t miss much. High school boys are selfish lovers. I know, I was one once upon a time. But you look like a woman now, so what am I missing?”
“Well, I was busy with school. I didn’t have time to date. And then eight months ago I met this man I liked, so... I guess I was waiting for him to ask me out.”
God, this girl.
“I see.”
“Does that put you off?” she asked. “I mean, I know there’s a big age difference. And I’m not stupid. Despite the whole virgin fetish some guys have, I know most men get creeped out by it. I guess that’s another reason I haven’t dated. I feel like I’ve somehow missed my window. And with every month and year that passes, it gets weirder and weirder. If I’m not careful, the only suitable man for me will be a minister. Then at least I can say I was saving myself because of Jesus or something.”
He chuckled. “I really like you, Julie. Much more than I probably should.”
Gabe pulled up to the curb at Julie’s apartment, got out of the car, and went around to her side to help her out. He was pretty sure this was the last time he would see her.
“You’re much more of a gentleman at the end of the date than you were at the start,” Julie said.
“Oh? How so?”
“Well, I mean, you didn’t even come up to my door.”
Because he’d been planning his escape.
“Sorry about that.”
When they reached her door this time, they stood for a few long awkward moments. Finally, Gabe said, “Tell me you’ve at least been kissed before.”
She became very interested in her shoes. “When I was eleven.”
“So, no then,” Gabe said.
“Well, it was a boy. And he liked me. And it wasn’t my cousin or anything. I told you I keep missing my window.”
Gabe pressed her against the brick wall beside her door, and wrapped his hand around the back of her neck, pulling her close. He tasted her. Her lips parted beneath the onslaught of his kiss. She melted under him. Finally he pulled away. No woman had reacted that way to his kiss in a very long time. They were all too jaded and experienced and kinky for a simple kiss to mean so much. He found that he wanted to take this sweet innocent girl who knew nothing of love and mold and train her so that she didn’t know what was normal and what wasn’t, so that the only thing she cared about was that he kept touching her and approving of her.