In Love With a Master

by Jason Luke

  Leticia picked up her glass, twisting it between her long fingers to study the pinpricks of bubbles as they drifted up through the pale amber wine. She took a tentative sip and then raised an eyebrow in pleasant surprise.

  “Very good.”

  She took another sip and I watched her soft lips with fascination. The directness of my gaze caught Leticia off guard and she blushed under its intensity. She set the glass back down on the table, sensing the change in my mood with some intuitive feminine understanding. She hooded her eyes and glanced back at me, the smile melting from her lips. In an instant the womanly poise disappeared and she became agitated as a schoolgirl. She plucked at the hem of her skirt nervously with her fingers, unable to hold my gaze.

  Leticia shifted in her seat, and the neckline of her blouse slid off one shoulder so that I could see the strap of her bra and the soft, perfect skin there. Her blonde hair broke like a wave then rippled with the small movements of her body. She used the back of her hand to brush loose strands from her forehead then looked up at me, her smile back in place.

  “There is so much I want to talk to you about tonight, Leticia,” I tasted the wine then set the glass aside. “There are so many things I want to tell you, and so many things I want to ask you.”

  Leticia pressed her hand gently to the skin of her chest and her fingers fluttered lightly across her throat, then she leaned forward.

  “I am a good listener, Jonah. If this is about Tiny, if this is about your illness… it doesn’t matter. I’m happy to be here and I’m happy to listen so you can talk.” Her head lifted, and I saw that her lips were soft and moist, her eyes sparkling bright.

  She laid one hand on the table, her fingers extended towards me in some kind of a gesture to reach out to me, or maybe an appeal to connect. She had the long, slim fingers of an artist or a piano player. Her nails were manicured, but not long. I looked from her hand into her eyes, and then lowered my gaze again. Leticia’s blouse gaped open and my eye caught the silky sheen of her skin where the beginning of one breast pushed against the lace trim that edged the cup of her bra. I looked for an instant before I reached out to her, and our fingers touched in a tiny jolt of electricity.

  The shock of it spread like ripples through my body. All the emotions I had held so close suddenly came toppling back upon me as a deep yearning ache for this woman.

  I could feel the warmth of her skin and see the tension of her body in the way she held herself. I was tense too. It was tension that stretched out between us that seemed to spark and crackle in the air. It was a tension borne of anticipation… of things to be said that had been held in check for too long.

  “It is about Tiny and it is about my illness,” I nodded. “But it’s also about us, Leticia.” I said it calmly, in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. I didn’t move at all. There was silence – just faint noises far away in the background and a thumping in my chest.

  Suddenly Mrs. Hortez came bustling back into the kitchen and hovered over the table like an unwelcomed waiter. Leticia withdrew her hand, and the shutters came down on her emotions. She looked up at Mrs. Hortez with a charming smile.

  “This is amazing, Mrs. Hortez,” Leticia said. She suddenly became fascinated by the food spread around us. She heaped Paella onto her plate. “I love Spanish food,” Leticia enthused with a forkful of the colorful rice dish close to her mouth. “You must give me the recipe before I go.” She was silent then, nibbling at her food with perfect white teeth and dabbing at her lips with the tip of her tongue.

  I am not a lover of food – I eat because I have to. I like simple meals, generally of food types I can recognize like steak and vegetables. What Mrs. Hortez had created was some kind of explosion of food that I could neither identify nor enjoy. But Leticia did. She ate with appreciation, and I reveled silently in watching her eat. Each dish seemed to evoke new gasps of appreciation, and new moans of delight. She was a good cook herself and perhaps she had a depth of appreciation for the food that escaped me.

  While Leticia turned her full attention to the food, I sat back quietly musing and sipped at my wine. I watched Leticia carefully. She seemed unaware of my scrutiny. Her preoccupation with eating while Mrs. Hortez looked on was total, but beneath the façade I wondered what dark, shadowy emotions smoldered there.

  The last rays of afternoon light slowly burned out, and the candle on the table guttered and flickered, throwing a small pool of light across Leticia’s soft features. I sat back in the gloom until Mrs. Hortez drifted out of the room, and then I spoke at last so that my voice seemed to come from out of the darkness.

  “Since Tiny’s death I have spent a lot of time thinking – a lot of time examining my life and my soul. It has been a very dark time for me, Leticia.”

  She nodded. “I have tried to reach out to you, Jonah. I tried my hardest to let you know that you didn’t have to go through your illness alone and that you didn’t have to mourn Tiny’s death alone.”

  I leaned forward suddenly so that the candlelight picked up the edges and dark shadows of my face. “I know you did… but I wasn’t ready until now, Leticia. I had to discover how black the darkness could be before I was able to reach out to you.”

  Leticia’s face showed sudden empathy and compassion. “And is that why you called me, Jonah?” There was the faintest trace of hope in her voice and in her eyes. “Are you starting to emerge from that darkness?”

  I smiled, but it was a wintery, bleak gesture with no trace of humor. “I want to, Leticia. That’s why I needed to talk to you tonight,” my voice dropped suddenly to a despairing whisper. “I am looking for the light…”

  Chapter 7.

  Leticia carried the bottle of wine and her glass and followed me out of the kitchen. I paused at a liquor cabinet in the foyer for a full bottle of whisky and a crystal tumbler. Leticia raised an eyebrow.

  “This looks serious,” she said with a hint of a smile.

  I glanced over my shoulder. “It is,” I said.

  Leticia slung her handbag over her shoulder and we drifted towards the staircase.

  “Are we heading to your office?”

  I froze for an instant. “No,” I said. The office had become a dark and dangerous place for me, filled with corrosive, bitter memories that seemed to invade the walls like the stains of cigar smoke.

  “We will talk in the training room,” I said.

  We went up the stairs in silence, my mood thoughtful. Leticia followed me to the training room door. I pushed it open and led her into the room.

  I set the bottle of whisky down on the small table in the middle of the room. It was a simple piece of furniture, just a few feet square with wooden legs and a soft, polished wooden surface. There was a single chair. Leticia sat at the table and arranged the wine glass and the bottle at her elbow.

  I went into the study and found an old, straight-backed chair with a decorative, padded cushion and a padded backrest of the same material. I carried the chair into the training room and set it across the table from where Leticia sat.

  The training room was a good size, with just a few pieces of furniture and a window. It was the room I used when instructing submissive women in the skills of sexual pleasure. Leticia had been here before, and I saw her eyes drift to the dressing table where the handcuffs and toys were stored. Atop the dressing table was a large, oval mirror and Leticia saw me watching her in its reflection. A soft flush of heated color spread across her cheeks. She turned her head and looked back at me and I knew by the hectic flash in her eyes that she was remembering the moment I had cuffed and then kissed her.

  I reached across the table and poured more wine into Leticia’s glass, then I unscrewed the cap from the bottle of whisky and poured until the tumbler was half full. I set the bottle down but didn’t screw the cap back on. I swallowed the contents of the tumbler in a single gulp and winced as the alcohol and the fumes burned the back of my throat. I set the glass back down on the table and the sound of it was loud in the silence.
/>   “Leticia, do you believe in God?”

  Leticia flinched with startled surprise. She shook her head, not in denial, but in confusion. “What makes you ask?”

  I leaned forward earnestly. “Because I want to know.”

  Leticia shook her head again. “No… I mean what has prompted you to ask?”

  I felt my fingers clench into tight, tense fists. “Tiny’s death,” I said. “Ever since Tiny died I have been wondering about the meaning of life, and why we’re here.”

  I could feel the tension building in my body. It spread stiffly up my back and across my shoulders. “Leticia, I know there is a hell because I have been living in it ever since Trigg first told me that I have an inoperable brain tumor. So I know hell exists – therefore I have to hope there is a heaven,” I said. “But I want to know whether you believe in God, and whether you think that maybe Tiny’s death had some kind of a meaning for me.”

  Leticia’s expression became clouded and furtive. Her eyes searched my face for any sign of humor, and then satisfied, she reached with a jerky hand for her glass of wine.

  “Jonah, I do believe in God,” Leticia said. She sipped at the wine and then sipped again before setting the glass back down. The alcohol put a soft flush of color in her cheeks. She clasped her hands together and kneaded her fingers as if they were cold. She was suddenly tense too. “I have faith, Jonah. I believe there is something out there somewhere greater than us, and I do believe that Tiny’s tragic death should not be for nothing. If you can find some good in the sadness – if you can find something within yourself that celebrates everything Tiny was to you, then I would encourage it.”

  Leticia stood up suddenly and pressed her slim hips against the edge of the table. She set her handbag on the polished wood and unsnapped the clasp. She looked into the handbag and her hair fell forward. She thrust her hand into the bag and came out with a simple silver crucifix, about an inch long. It hung from a thin silver chain. She held it up for me to see, dangling gently from between her splayed fingers. She brushed the hair away from her face with her other hand, and sat back down. She laid the necklace on the table, and I stared at it.

  “I have been wearing this since I heard of Tiny’s death,” Leticia confessed softly. “I took it off after the funeral but I still carry it in my bag. Not because I am religious – not because I believe in the Church,” she went on, “but because I have faith in a God.”

  I sat back, satisfied. I refilled the glass tumbler at my elbow with more whisky. The air in the room seemed to be charged with energy. I caught a glimpse of us in the big mirror and realized it was like some interrogation scene from a bad movie.

  Leticia placed the crucifix into her handbag and snapped the latch closed. She sat back down.

  I shook my head slowly. “Don’t be alarmed, Leticia,” I said. “Don’t think that I have suddenly found religion. That’s not the case. I don’t believe in any organized religion, but I have come to believe that a life lived in misery and self-pity is no life lived at all. I have come to believe that today is the only day that matters and that no one – not even me – deserves to waste a single moment of the time we have. Fate and futures are out of our hands – we can only live for now.”

  Leticia reared back in her chair as though the energy and passion and raw intensity of my words had struck at her like a blow. She took another longer drink of her wine and set the glass down half empty. “Jonah, I am so sorry that you had to go through all this alone. I am so sorry that Tiny’s death came at a time like this for you.” Her eyes were locked on mine, her expression seeming to ache with compassion and pity.

  I shook my head. “That’s the point, Leticia. I had to go through this alone. I had to reach the darkest despairing moment before I could see clearly – before all this tragedy began to make sense.”

  She shook her head with slow sadness. “What did you do?” she asked slowly.

  “I spent a lot of time drinking, and a lot of time trying to understand. And when I could make no sense of it at all – when there seemed no reason to go on living, I put a gun to my head.”

  Leticia went white. She sat forward with sudden urgency. “No!”

  I nodded, and my eyes were steady, my gaze unwavering. “I stared down the barrel of a pistol and I was one second away from ending it all, Leticia. That was how deep and dangerous my despair had come… but that was also the moment where my thoughts suddenly cleared and the realization finally crystalized for me.”

  “What? What do you mean, Jonah?”

  “It was at that final, desperate moment when I was thinking back on my life and my regrets that I suddenly realized I had no regrets – the only regrets for me were those moments and opportunities I had not seized.”

  Leticia shrugged, but her deep concern was still etched across her face. “Jonah, you had everything. You have lived and experienced more things than any man I know who is twice your age. You have wealth, power… you’ve had a life filled with beautiful, exotic women. What could you possibly regret?”

  “Love,” I said softly, and then I leaned forward and reached for Leticia’s hand. Her fingers intertwined with mine and I felt the warmth of her. I squeezed her hand fiercely. “Leticia, as I was staring into the abyss I realized that I couldn’t die and have no regrets until I had fought for the opportunity to know love – to know what it was like to try to love someone,” my voice dropped to a whisper, “to love you…”

  Silence. Everything went very still and very quiet. Leticia’s eyes seemed to flutter and then glaze over. I heard the pounding thump of my heart in my chest and the rasp of my breathing, quick and unsteady as though I had run up a flight of stairs.

  For a long time Leticia gazed at a place on the wall beyond my shoulder, staring sightlessly into space while behind the distance of her eyes I could see her emotions boiling and gathering like clouds on a far horizon.

  “Talk to me,” I invited. “I want to know what’s in your heart. Tell me what you are thinking.”

  Leticia lifted her face to mine and stared at me. For an instant I felt a sudden icy chill, for her eyes were blank and fathomless. I tried to read her expression but saw only wary caution that might have been contempt, or mistrust. And then the clouds behind her eyes suddenly seemed to clear and her gaze became warm and tender.

  At last she took a deep breath and sighed. “I think I would like that too,” she said softly.

  Leticia wilted back on to her seat like she was exhausted. The tension went from her and we stared at each other across the short empty space that separated us. For long moments neither of us spoke again. It was like the energy had gone from both of us and as it began to recharge, it became something different – a new kind of tension.

  “I don’t know what the future might hold for us, Leticia, and I don’t know how long that future will last. I will not promise you that I will learn to love. I can’t promise that I will ever feel the power of that emotion,” I felt my jaw clench suddenly into a hard uncompromising line. “Perhaps it’s something that I am incapable of. Maybe my past has made it impossible for me to let go enough in order to love with all my heart. But I want the chance – if you are willing. I want to know what love is, or at least die trying.”

  Leticia took a moment, like maybe she was gathering her thoughts or maybe she was carefully choosing her words. She looked down at the floor and then slowly raised her eyes to mine. “I want the relationship we had – and I want the chance to see where that will take us. When you gave me those interviews we developed a strong attraction for each other. I felt it, and I know you felt it too. And it was different, Jonah. There was sexual tension, but it was deeper than that. It was a closeness. I felt like those hard impersonal walls you had built around yourself for so many years were slowly coming down, and I became fascinated by you as a man.” Leticia’s voice grew soft and shy. She paused for a moment and then blinked. “I want you, Jonah. I want the chance to love you too if that’s how you truly feel.”

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nbsp; I nodded solemnly. “I do.”

  Leticia closed her eyes and a single tear trailed down the soft perfect skin of her cheek. She wiped it away with a fingertip and gazed at me. She seemed almost shocked – as if her words and the passion of them had surprised her.

  I reached out in the silence and took Leticia’s hand in mine. Her eyes sparkled and glistened. “Leticia, I have never been more attracted to another woman in my life,” I admitted. “Meeting you and spending that time together became more than the story of my life. It became a story about us, because for the first time I revealed thoughts and feelings that I had kept hidden. I shared parts of me with you that no other woman has seen. You are the first woman that I was attracted to where the relationship was not a physical one of domination and submission and not a mental one of power and control. Our relationship was an emotional connection, and it was for that reason more than anything else that I could not continue to see you. I couldn’t learn to love someone when I had no future to offer. Do you understand that?”

  “No.” Leticia’s fingers became tense within my grasp, and her words came out in a sudden tumble – sounding as though it was something she had rehearsed in her mind that broke down and got swept away by her intensity. I saw hurt and reproach in her eyes. “Jonah, I fell in love with you despite everything I tried to do to avoid it. I fell in love with everything about you – I just couldn’t help myself. That kind of love for a woman is unconditional. That kind of love is total. When you love someone you do so regardless of what they are. It is who they are that captures your heart. So no, Jonah, I don’t understand.”

  I drew a deep breath. “I didn’t want your broken heart on my conscience,” I said. “I didn’t want to start a relationship with you with an inevitable sentence of death hanging over my head. I couldn’t do that to you. It was easier to let you go than to drag you down in my despair. You are too young to wear black – too young to mourn.”

  I got up from the chair suddenly feeling restrained and needing to move. I snatched the tumbler of whisky off the edge of the table and carried it with me as I prowled around the room. “Leticia, you must understand that nothing has changed. I still have that death sentence hanging over my head – I am going to die within the next year or two. And I still don’t want your broken heart on my conscience.” I swilled the whisky in the glass and then swallowed. “So you need to decide if you can deal with loving someone and losing them. You need to know in your heart that I go into this relationship unsure that I can ever truly love you. The only thing that has changed since that day I sent you away is that Tiny has died and because of his death my attitude has changed. I am no longer willing to live my last days as a victim. I want to find love so that when I draw my last breath it will be with no regrets and no tears.”