Well, there was a lot of dread too.
I walked across the glitzy hotel lobby and found my way to the elevators. I’d never met a client at the Four Seasons before. The rooms were ridiculously expensive. I felt like I was breathing in expensive air and walking along expensive ground. The Four Seasons seemed too stately, too old-world-wealthy to use for tawdry sex, but here I was. How did W afford these hotels, on top of what he paid for exclusive access to my services? Who was he? What did he do?
Believe me, I’d tried to figure it out. I’d badgered Henry for any scrap of information, but his mouth was firmly shut. I’d searched design magazines and design firms, and researched modern poets. No dice. I’d pored over fetish websites and personal ads, but there were so many profiles to sift through, and so many men in New York who claimed to be rich and dominant and sadistic. A quick scan of each profile, and I’d know it wasn’t him because the person was trying too hard, or coming off fake, and W wasn’t fake. He was irritating and scary, and unfathomable, but he wasn’t fake.
I tried to convince myself that this compulsion to know about him was only natural curiosity, not some deeper feelings. I had a boyfriend, after all, and W was just a client. He was a very small part of my big and complex life, and the fact that he gave me exquisitely mind-blowing orgasms didn’t mean I was falling in love. Oh, Jesus, don’t let me be falling in love.
I walked down a silent hallway to the fiftieth-floor room. W loved his corner rooms. I checked my carefully applied makeup and smoothed my hair, and knocked on the door. My stomach fluttered with familiar anxiety as the lock clicked and the door swung open. He looked stylish as ever, in dark dress pants and a white starched shirt, slightly open, no tie. I stared at the base of his neck, at masculine muscles and defined tendons.
“You came,” he said.
I looked up to meet his eyes. He smiled as he drew me inside, but it wasn’t a simple, friendly smile. It was a complicated smile, like everything about him.
“Are you being brave?” he asked, and that sounded complicated too, caught between happiness and mockery.
“I’m being stupid,” I said.
“No.”
That was all he said, no, but just like that he was in charge of me and I was scared. He took away my bag and stripped off my dress, barely sparing it a glance. I wore nothing underneath, which he liked.
“Take off your shoes,” he said, running his hands over my skin.
I kicked them off, wondering how W made me feel so much more naked than anyone else. He pinched one of my nipples, holding my gaze, and I was already white-hot, already willing to do anything on earth for him.
He backed away abruptly, releasing me.
“There’s a beautiful view.” His words sounded thick, or maybe my brain wasn’t firing on all fronts. I tried to readjust from his presence and control to this view he wanted to show me. We looked out together at Central Park fifty stories below us. So pretty to look at.
The room was pretty to look at, too. There was a polished wood desk beside the window, and a leather upholstered chair, and across the room, a wide king bed with smooth white sheets. But all I really wanted to do was look at him.
What’s your name? Who are you? His blond hair was dark and light at once, and his blue eyes could seem dark and light too. So many things had become dark and light in my life, good and bad at the same time. Like my boyfriend. Like escorting. Like W. I supposed this whole “view” thing was his attempt to go slower and be easier with me. I didn’t like it because it was fake.
I turned away from the window. “Well, I’m here,” I said. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Will you let me tie you to the bed?”
“You’re asking?”
“I’m asking if I can tie you to the bed. After that, you have no more say in what I do to you. And you probably won’t like what I do to you.”
That sounded more like him. “What if I say no? That you can’t tie me to the bed?”
That smile again. “I guess I’d try to convince you to let me.”
“With words?”
He shook his head, slowly. Seductively. When had I begun to find the threat of him so seductive? I glanced back at the door.
“You won’t make it,” he said. “And you’re naked. They frown on naked women tearing through the halls of the Four Seasons.”
I moved first, toward the door, because I knew he wanted me to. He grabbed me around the waist. Not gently. This wasn’t a game. I knew if he got me tied to that bed he was going to do everything in his power to make me regret my life choices, like the choice to fight him when I knew it would only make him excited.