When her personal health was all squared away, the next step was putting Clayton’s house back to rights. She cleaned and polished every wall, floor, and surface, and hired people to repair any damage she couldn’t. She sorted through Clayton’s things, donating nearly everything to charity. All his thousand dollar suits, his designer shoes. His books, his electronics, crying the whole while. His family took his cars and watches, and other extremely valuable things she didn’t want.
Molly kept some things too. A belt she knew well, a pair of cufflinks, a delicate silver leash. His wedding ring and his pillow. It still smelled faintly of him. She put it in an airtight bag in her closet at Mephisto’s place, to hug sometimes when she missed him badly. She couldn’t bear to sleep on it at night. When Mephisto returned her old collar she slipped it down inside the pillowcase. That too she couldn’t bear to look at or wear, although she kept on her wedding rings.
Yes, she missed her old Master. She wasn’t angry at him anymore, or at herself. She was simply unsettled, lonely, and unsure what to do next. When Clayton’s house was empty and clean she locked it up. She couldn’t let it go, nor could she rent it out to strangers. Later. She’d decide what to do later. With that squared away, self-improvement began in earnest. She walked to the library and read books about relationships and meditation, about gardening and health, and strangely, child rearing, although her old Master had fixed her so she could never have kids. She told Mephisto every evening about what she’d read. He’d ask her such probing questions that each day she’d read more carefully than the day before.
Other days she exercised, or got her nails done. She shopped for clothes, because she had to wear them every day now, even when she was home with Mephisto. Non-sexual. For now. Sex wasn’t even distantly in her thoughts most of the time, until it intruded in an uneasy, powerful pang, usually when Mephisto was close to her, or looked at her a certain direct way. Authority turned her on, no matter when or how she encountered it. Those moments of sexual awareness always took her by surprise and left her feeling unsettled.
She took yoga classes and some computer classes at the community college. One day she went to the cell phone store because Mephisto ordered her to join the living and set herself up with a smart phone. She learned how to text and how to surf online and even how to send emails to Mephisto from her phone, keeping him informed of her whereabouts throughout each day. Mephisto returned her violin, restored and in a new velvet-lined case. He urged her to start back to her lessons, but she hid the instrument under the bed.
Luckily, he didn’t require her to do everything he suggested. Still, there wasn’t a moment she didn’t feel he was looking out for her, and it gave her so much strength. She knew she should have been strong enough to take care of herself without reporting to him, without him standing over her, but she wasn’t, and that was just the way it was. She could blame daddy, she could blame mommy. She could blame any number of things, but by now she understood that changed nothing. As Mephisto said, Who the fuck knew why? Who cared?
Mentally, Mephisto was all over her, engaging her, demanding her ideas and thoughts—but he never touched her. He didn’t fondle her or caress her in passing. He didn’t hug her or “accidentally” brush against her, or do anything else to make her feel physically imposed upon. Still, sometimes the memory of their past and his blatant sexual charisma invaded her mind and she almost wished he would touch her, even if the idea scared her to death. When he went out into the club to work, she never went.
Three months passed. Four. Eventually, she stopped keeping her head down and started feeling like part of humanity again. She became part of a new world where she accomplished things, where she helped people and made them smile. Men she worked with started to notice her, even flirt with her. Nice men. Normal men. Men on the street would turn and look at her and she’d feel conflicting feelings of attraction and fear.
Molly started eating lunch now and again in a neighborhood diner, mostly to study the lunch crowd, soak in the real world. Some businessmen were always there, reminding her vaguely of her Master. Today a group of delivery guys clustered around a table nearby, talking and laughing. Did any of them have slaves? Doubtful. One of them was giving her the flirty eyes. He was young. Handsome. Fresh-faced, with scruffy brown hair, a broad smile and a great laugh when his friends cracked jokes. He had that confident energy she was always attracted to. She found herself wondering what he would be like in bed.
Molly frowned and looked down. Ridiculous, to salivate over him. He looked pretty buff in his brown shorts and UPS shirt though. She cast around for any memory of urban legends about delivery guys and perversity. Hmm. Nothing there.
He caught her looking at him, and she dropped her eyes to her BLT. A minute later she looked up again. He was just so...lively. He was sunny. He had to know by now she was peeking at him. She forced herself to look elsewhere, to gaze around the room. A mother wrangled a toddler in the corner, while a group of college students huddled over their smart phones in a booth. Two older men, a father and son from the looks of them, argued at the table behind hers. She should have brought a book. She had nothing to do but keep looking at the smiling man. He wasn’t her physical type. He’s no Mephisto, she thought.
Maybe that was why the guy fascinated her so much. He wasn’t imposing like Mephisto. He wasn’t brooding or studying her like some puzzle he was trying to figure out. He didn’t have an ounce of dominance on the surface, and she doubted he had much underneath. He was still sexy in a wholesome, normal type way.
He caught her eyes again. Her face burned as she dropped her gaze to the tabletop and stared at the lettuce scattered over her plate. How long since she’d known anyone outside the BDSM universe? How long since she’d had a friend, just some normal person she knew, someone to laugh and be natural with? There was Mephisto, but he’d always been more protector than friend. There was Mrs. Jernigan... No. Not a friend. Mrs. Bobo, the woman who’d come to do her waxing? Ugh, she’d been an enemy, the sadistic bitch. Molly had spent time with Master’s sisters, but she wouldn’t consider them friends by a long shot.
Molly wasn’t even sure she knew how to have a friend anymore, and that idea really troubled her.
“Hey. Why so sad? Not enough tomato?”
Molly’s head shot up, and there he was, sitting down across from her. She clasped her hands in her lap. “What?”
“They’re stingy with the tomatoes here, huh? I always get the BLT too. But there are never. enough. tomatoes.”
Molly looked down at her plate. “I— I didn’t notice. I don’t know.” Brilliant. She was a scintillating conversationalist. Not. His easy smile and flirtation suddenly saddened her, and she didn’t know why. Because she couldn’t keep up, maybe. Because he would definitely find her weird. His eyes were blue, the same blue her Master’s had been.
He leaned closer. “You look so down. What’s wrong? I think you need a piece of pie.” Molly gaped at him. “Have some pie with me. You can’t have pie and stay sad.”
That was a lie, but Molly didn’t have the heart to call him on it. She cast about instead for something cute to say in response to his suave banter. “Um. Okay. If you buy.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes now, not with him so close, but she stared at his smile as it widened. Clean, straight teeth. Sensual lips. “Of course I’ll buy,” he said. “Cherry or apple?”
“Cherry.”
He went to the counter. His friends ribbed him, but he ignored them and returned a couple minutes later with some pieces of pie and some forks. He’d chosen cherry too. Molly took a drink of water and gave him a belated thank you. He was already tearing into his piece. This restaurant had the best pie. Flaky, oozing with fresh filling that was obviously homemade, not pulled out of some freezer. They were like the pies Master’s cook used to bake.
“My name’s Eliot,” he said. “I know, it’s awful.”
Molly heart hammered with nerves, but she forced herself to smile at him. For a moment she considered gi
ving him a false name in return, but why? She wasn’t doing anything wrong, and he wasn’t dangerous. He was a sweet, flirty delivery guy who’d just bought her some pie to cheer her up.
“My name’s Molly.”
“Fighting with hubby?”
“What?”
He nodded down at her hands on the table. “You’re twisting your wedding rings and you seem upset. Nice diamond, by the way,” he said, eying her engagement setting. She put her hands back in her lap. “Thought maybe you were on the outs with your husband.”
“My husband died.” God, almost half a year ago. Had it been that long?
Eliot looked stricken. “I’m sorry. You have a good reason to be upset then, and here I’m buying you pie like an idiot.”
Molly smiled and took another bite. “It’s really good pie.”
She wanted another of his easy grins, but his face was different now. Not pitying. That would have irritated her. Just a little more gravity in his gaze. “How long were you married to him?”
“Eight years.” I was his slave. He kept me like a piece of property. I loved it. She choked a little on the bite in her mouth, and washed it down with a big drink of water. “I miss him. I feel like I lost a little of who I am since he left. Well, a lot of who I am. Or who I was.” She waved a hand. “I don’t know.” How weird, to be spilling out all this stuff to a perfect stranger, but now that she’d started she couldn’t seem to stop. “I feel like I’m in this weird Neverland between lives. I feel lost.” She shut her mouth. She tasted cherries and misery on her tongue. She didn’t want this. She wanted his brightness, not her sob stories. “Are you married?” she asked to change the subject.
He laughed. “Not even close. Although my mother wants me to get married.”
“But you’re too much of a flirt to settle down,” Molly guessed.
He gave her a look of feigned outrage. “Me, a flirt?”
“Worse than a flirt, I bet.”
He laughed then, and Molly trembled a little inside. With fear, with power. With the novelty of a man’s appreciative laugh. “Look, I don’t buy pie for every woman I meet,” he said.
It was her turn to laugh. “Only the sad ones.”
“Yes, only the sad ones. So I can see them smile.”
Not flirting now. Sincerity. Such kind sincerity. Their eyes met, Molly’s forkful of pie arrested halfway to her lips. She’d smiled more in the last five minutes than the whole previous week. “It feels good to smile,” she said. “It really feels good. So thanks.”
He seemed embarrassed now. He tucked into his pie with renewed vigor. “So what do you do, Molly? You work?”
“No. Well...” She thought a moment. “I guess I’m searching for a position right now. Deciding what to do with my life.”