Ugh. So mortifying.
Hunter had laughed at me, calling me on the lie. Have you found a gym to train at yet? I’m a yodan. Perhaps we could spar sometime.
The kind of sparring I want to do with Hunter isn’t really appropriate at a gym.
I stop dead in my tracks. Where did that errant thought come from? And why?
After a hard workout, I drive home. I stand in the shower for twenty minutes and emerge from the bathroom clad only in my panties, hungry enough to eat a horse.
I cross my living room. My blinds are drawn, but even so, I feel naughty walking around almost naked in my apartment. I enter the kitchen and open the refrigerator door, and a cold blast of air hits my nipples, causing them to pucker.
A shiver runs through me. My imagination conjures up a man trailing an ice cube over them, teasing my nipples while I moan and writhe in response. “Good girl,” he whispers into my ear, his breath a warm caress. “You love this, don’t you?”
Good girls are my personal kryptonite. I want to open them up and see the secret well of depravity inside.
I slam the refrigerator door shut. What in the name of sanity is wrong with me? It’s as if Saturday night has unlocked something hidden inside me, and I will never again be the same.
My stomach rumbles. My refrigerator is bare. Unless I want to make a meal of pickles and possibly expired mayo, I need to order in.
Or you could go out.
Huh. Take myself out to dinner.
I get dressed in a navy-blue wrap dress—Mrs. Grace was a great believer in dressing for dinner—and hop back into my car. There’s a Thai restaurant I drive past every day that I’ve been meaning to try.
It’s a little past eight, late for a Monday night. When I pull into the parking lot, there’s only a handful of cars there. But the restaurant itself is brightly lit and inviting. Yellow light spills from the windows, and I can smell the mouthwatering aromas of curry and fried onions.
I park next to a beautiful, forest-green, vintage Datsun and go inside. The place isn’t crowded. Only three tables are occupied. A family is seated against the back wall—mom, dad, their grown kids and spouses, and one young child, a boy who is intently dunking his spring roll in plum sauce and stuffing it in his mouth. Immediately to the left of the door, a couple is engrossed in each other, lingering over a bottle of wine.
Directly across from me, a dark-haired man is bent over his food.
Then he lifts his head up.
It’s Hunter Driesse.
What are the odds?
Recognition sparks in his eyes. A smile of invitation touches his lips. I move toward him, a puppet tugged by hidden strings.
11
Dixie
“Hi.” My voice comes out breathless. My pulse races as if I’ve run a marathon.
Hunter lifts his head up. “Hello, Dixie. Are you eating in, or is this takeout?”
“Eating in.”
He gestures to the seat across from him. “Join me?”
“You don’t mind?” He looks tired today, far more so than he did on Saturday. There are dark circles under his eyes, and he looks like he hardly slept.
He lost his mother recently, remember?
“Not at all,” he responds with a smile. “I’d appreciate the company.”
I wonder how he’s doing. I remember only too vividly the first weeks after my mother died. My emotions had been all over the place. A part of me was relieved that she wasn’t suffering anymore, and then I would feel guilty about feeling that way. But mostly, I remember being numb and detached from reality.
My mother’s friends brought casseroles. Michael hung around the house too. Jessica would drop by, bringing my nephews Jonathan and Dylan with her, and it was impossible to feel detached when two toddlers were running around, leaving a trail of chaos in their wake.
Those first few weeks, people had made sure I wasn’t alone. It had helped so very much. It had been a lifeline when I desperately needed one.
Is anyone helping Hunter? Does he have family to lean on? A significant other?
I take a seat. A pretty waitress wanders over with a menu. “Hello,” she says. “My name is May. Can I get you something to drink?”
“A club soda, please, with a slice of lime, if you have it?” Hunter’s drinking a beer, and the idea of a cold alcoholic beverage sounds tempting, but I’m so tired that I’m likely to fall asleep in the middle of dinner if I add booze to the mix.
“Of course.” She bustles away, returning in less than a minute with my drink. “Today’s special appetizer is nam tok nua,” she says. “It’s a grilled steak salad with onions, red peppers, cilantro, mint, and chili. For the main, we have barbecue pork, marinated in garlic, honey, and coriander root. It’s served with sticky rice and a papaya salad on the side.”
That sounds delicious, but so does everything else on the menu. “I’m going to need a minute to decide,” I tell her frankly.
“I’ll be back in a few.” She gives me a friendly smile. “Dr. Driesse is a regular, so he can help you out.”
She walks away. “You are?” I ask Hunter.
“It’s next to the hospital,” he explains. “I work there Mondays and Tuesdays. I’m here practically every week.”
“What do you recommend?”
“You really can’t go wrong with the special.”
“Done.” I set down my menu. May comes over immediately to take my order. When she’s gone, Hunter tilts his head to a side and surveys me. “You left rather abruptly on Saturday,” he says. “Did I offend you?”
I still haven’t processed the complicated tangle of emotions from my visit to Club M. The peculiar longings it had stirred in me, the hidden desires that it exposed. “No,” I manage to respond.
“Good.” He takes a long swallow from his bottle. “It was not my intention to make you uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t.” There’s a moment of silence. “Xavier told me about your mother. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” He pushes the plate of spring rolls toward me. “Have one. They’re excellent.”
My mouth is watering, and my stomach is going to betray me at any moment by grumbling loudly at the lack of food, and so I take him up on his offer. For a few moments, we make idle conversation. I ask him about his work, and he tells me he divides up his time between Highfield and Washington DC, where he works at a veteran’s hospital.
“Do you commute from the city every Monday and Tuesday?” I ask curiously. It’s technically feasible, but it sounds exhausting to have to drive almost two hours after a full day of work.
“No,” he says. “I crash at my mother’s place. Her house is just fifteen minutes away.”
Oh. If I knew him better, I’d ask him how he feels about that. When my mom died, I couldn’t wait to get out of her home. I had too many memories of her there, and I felt her loss keenly every time I stepped into her foyer. It would always be the place where she suffered as her cancer worsened. Michael and I had agreed—a rare occurrence—to sell it as quickly as we could.
The waitress brings us our food. “Can I get you anything else?” she asks me. “What about you, Dr. Driesse? Do you have everything you need?”
Her voice turns breathy when she addresses him. She leans forward, and the buttons of her blouse strain against her ample breasts. They’re really working overtime, those buttons.
Ouch, that’s a catty thought. Seriously, Dix? I scold myself. Get a grip. If the waitress wants to flirt with him, she can. I have no business being proprietary about Hunter. He expressed interest on Saturday, I turned him down—more accurately, I ran away—and he’s accepted it. He’s a good-looking guy. Women are going to come onto him. I have no business getting bothered by it. Besides, if Hunter eats here every single week, May knows him far better than I do.
Hunter’s giving me a peculiar look. “You have the strangest expression on your face,” he says. “Is everything okay?”
I shake myself. “Yes
, of course. Sorry, what were you saying?”
“How are you liking Highfield? You’ve been here six months, right? Are you enjoying it?”
“I haven’t had much of a chance to explore,” I reply. “Work has been crazy. But I can’t complain too much. My biggest fear was about meeting people. It’s a little intimidating to make friends as an adult, you know? Especially if you didn't grow up in the area or if you don't have a school-aged child. But I’ve been lucky. Fiona is fantastic, and she’s welcomed me into her life, and she’s introduced me to Avery and Kiera. It’s great to have girlfriends.”
“Interesting.”
I look up. “Interesting how?” God, this pork is delicious. Tempting as it is to scarf it down, I’ve already made a fool of myself in front of Hunter once. Well, twice. I make myself take small, ladylike bites. “Hunter, you’re a psychiatrist. It's intimidating when you say ‘interesting’ in that tone of voice.”
He laughs, and his chuckle washes over me, rich and warm. “Your choice of friends is interesting,” he says. “All your friends are in decidedly unconventional relationships. For someone who emphatically declares that she's not interested in BDSM, you certainly seem to surround yourself with a lot of people that lean that way.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t interested in BDSM.”
“Are you?”
I duck his question. “I like them. I’m not going to judge them by their relationships. They’re consenting adults, and they’re with good people that treat them well. That’s all that’s important.”
“Sure.” He notices I haven’t answered his question, but he lets it go.
For a few minutes, we eat in silence. My thoughts are all over the place. Finally, I summon up my courage. My emotions have been in turmoil since Saturday night. Perhaps Hunter can help me make sense of the way I’m feeling. “Can I ask you a question about sex?”
He grins wickedly. “I don't know,” he murmurs, his voice dipping low. “Shouldn’t you buy me dinner first?”
My cheeks flame. “It’s a serious question. What do you get out of it? BDSM, I mean.”
He regards me for a long second. “It’s a complicated answer,” he says finally. “Bondage doesn’t do a lot for me. I’m not a rope guy; I’m not going to spend hours on shibari.” He takes in my confused look. “Japanese rope bondage. It’s something of an art form.”
“Ah, okay.” I gulp down another piece of pork. I wanted him to answer my question, but I didn’t expect him to. Now we’re talking about sex in a brightly lit Thai restaurant. At least the family is gone. Grandma and Grandpa don’t need to hear this.
“Should I stop?” he asks.
“No.”
“Okay. The SM part of it—sadomasochism—doesn’t do much for me either. I’m not into pain. Which leaves the dominance and the submission aspects.” He lifts his shoulder in a shrug. “I like control. Maybe it's because of the nature of my job. I want to help people, but whether they get better or not is mostly out of my control. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't. That’s difficult for me; I really do want to make a difference.” He leans back with a smile. “But that’s only one part of the answer.”
“What’s the other part?”
“It turns me on.”
My insides tighten. My face feels like it’s on fire. Not just my face. Heat sparks through my body, heat and a strange, keen sense of anticipation. I take a sip of the club soda, hoping the chilled beverage will calm me down. “Have you ever been involved with somebody that wasn't interested in it?”
His answer comes without hesitation. “No.”
“Kink or nothing?”
“Something like that.” He sets down his chopsticks. “It sounds pretty inflexible when you put it that way but let me see if I can explain. There are people, men and women, who have very definite ideas on what sex should and shouldn't be. They are emphatic about what is acceptable to explore and what is off-limits. What is wrong, what is dirty, what is sinful.”
“Are you talking about me?”
“Why do you think I am?”
I stare at him in exasperation. “Stop answering my question with a question.”
He picks his chopsticks back up. “I wasn’t talking about you,” he replies. “I don’t know you. I doubt that’s who you are—the people I’m talking about would never, ever, set foot inside Club M. The idea of seeking the pleasure you want is far too hedonistic for them.”
I take another sip of my club soda. Once again, it does nothing to quench the fire burning through me.
“Of course, some people change their minds,” he continues. “Attitudes about sex aren’t carved in stone. But when I’m sleeping with someone, I don’t want to be their therapist. I just want to have a good time. It doesn't have to be whips and chains, stages and public performances. It could be as simple as a blindfold over your eyes during sex. An ice cube trailed over your nipples. Some light spanking, maybe. It’s not the specific sex act that’s important; it’s the attitude. A willingness to explore your desires, uninhibited by society's many rules.”
He says ice cube, and my brain short-circuits. I had this exact fantasy less than an hour ago. There’s no way Hunter could possibly know that.
“Sexual compatibility is important to me,” he finishes. “It’s only one component of a relationship, but I know myself. I would not be happy in a relationship where my sexual needs weren’t being met, and I wouldn’t be happy if I wasn’t meeting my partner’s needs either.”
“Okay.” I wipe my damp palms on the napkin in my lap. “I think I understand.”
His gaze rests on me. “I answered your question. Will you answer one of mine?”
I manage a nod.
“What do you fantasize about, Dixie? What do you want?”
He’d asked me the same question Saturday night. I can’t meet his gaze. “I don't know.”
“Is that really true?”
A shiver runs through me at his firm tone. “There is something,” I whisper. I’d written it down in my Dare List. And then I’d torn out the page from my notepad, crumpled it, and tossed it into the trash because good girls did not do that.
“Tell me.”
“It’s outdoors.” I can’t believe I’m telling Hunter this. “A trail or something, somewhere anyone can walk past us. It’s late. Dark. I’m with a guy in a car, and we’ve pulled into this deserted area to make out.”
William and I had tried to do it in his car once. It hadn’t ended well. I push that thought out of my head.
“What happens next?” Hunter prompts.
“Someone catches us. Instead of stopping us, he watches.” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “The idea of someone walking in on me is…” My voice trails off.
“Hot,” Hunter finishes. There’s an odd note in his voice.
My hands are shaking. “Yes. It’s just a fantasy, of course.”
Ask me who I picture in the car with me, Hunter. Ask me who watches us. Make me tell you everything.
He opens his mouth to say something, but just then, the waitress comes up to us. “How was everything?” she asks cheerfully.
Hunter smiles up at her. “Delicious as always.”
The spell snaps. The anticipation heating my blood drains away. Hunter isn’t volunteering to participate in my fantasy. He expressed interest Saturday night, I turned him down, and he’s probably figured it’s for the best. He knows what he wants, and I’m not it. I’m too inexperienced. I have too many hang-ups. Sex with me is, as Eric so bluntly put it, missionary with the lights turned out.
For a few minutes though, when Hunter had listened to my fantasy, his entire attention on me, I’d believed otherwise.
None of this is real, I remind myself again. I described a fantasy, that’s all. Something to keep me warm at night. I’m not going to do anything to make it come true.
May brings us the bill. One bill. Hunter reaches for it, and I protest. “You don’t have to pay.”
“It’s not a b
ig deal, Dixie,” he says. “You can grab the next check if you’d like.”
What next check? There isn’t going to be one. I grab a couple of bills, a twenty and a ten, and hold it out to him. “Please.”
“If you insist.” He doesn’t look thrilled, but he takes the money from me, and for some inexplicable reason, that irritates me even more. (Yes, I’m aware I’m being ridiculous and irrational. Toddler-like, even.)
We go outside. The sun has set, and the parking lot is dark. There are only two cars left—the Datsun and my VW Beetle.
“Nice car,” he says appreciatively. “What year is it?”
“Nineteen seventy-two,” I reply. “Yours?”
“Seventy-three.” He circles the car. “No rust?”
I shake my head. “It’s my mother’s car. One owner and she basically drove it once a week, to church and back.”
“And there’s no snow in Mississippi. Are you planning to drive it in winter? They put a ton of salt on the roads here.”
“I doubt it.” I love this car, and I’d be shattered if anything were to happen to it. “I’ll probably buy something more practical.”
His eyes gleam. “If you’re thinking of selling, give me a call. I’ll be happy to take it off your hands.”
I make a scoffing sound in my throat. “Are you planning on selling the Datsun?”
He chuckles. “Fair enough.” He takes a half-step toward me and then stops in place. “See you around, Dixie.”
I get into my car; Hunter enters his. I go right; he goes left.
So much for that.
I take a deep breath inward and then let it out in a long exhale. I didn’t really want them, I tell myself. I don’t want Hunter, and I don’t want Eric. When I described my fantasy to Hunter, I wasn’t picturing him in the car with me. I wasn’t fantasizing about Eric coming up to the window. Shining a flashlight in our direction and staring at me a moment too long. I wasn’t imagining him opening the car door and joining in.
Liar, liar, pants on fire.
Daring Dixie Page 7