“I don’t understand either.”
“You will,” he said.
I blinked, looking at him. He stared back at me without a hint of a smile.
“Do you know what a submissive is?”
Breathe. Swallow. Don’t cry.
“Answer me, Lucy.”
“I...maybe... I think I do.”
“Have you ever been submissive to someone? Your fiancé?”
“No, I...no.”
“No, he had no idea, did he, what he had in his hands? You’ve never been disciplined, trained? Controlled?”
His sharp perverse words brought a flood of warmth between my legs. My nipples tightened under my shirt as I shook my head.
“Answer me out loud, Lucy,” he said. “Look at me.”
I looked up in abject mortification. “No, I never have been.”
“Would you like to be? Look at me,” he insisted. My eyes met his and he held them hard.
“Would you like to be?”
“I don’t know!”
“I don’t know. That means, no, I’m too scared.” I closed my eyes and lowered my head. “I already told you I was scared.”
“How long?” he asked then.
“How long what?”
“How long have you wanted it? To be dominated, to be tied up and beaten and fucked?” I just shook my head. How do you answer a question like that?
“A pretty little girl like you couldn’t find someone to take you in hand? You’ll settle for some vanilla fuckboy who was still in love with his ex?”
“Why do you care so much?”
“I’m sure you can puzzle that out if you try.” His jaw clenched a little and he looked away from me, scratching his neck with a frustrated sigh. I looked at him, beautiful Mr. Matthew Norris, sitting there in his tuxedo and his unkempt tie. I just looked as my mind spun with a thousand questions. But there was one question I had to ask right away.
“How did you know?”
“The same way you knew. And you did know, Lucy, from the moment you saw me. I can’t explain how.” He leaned very close to me, speaking low. “You set off alarms. Look at me.” I dragged my gaze to his.
“When you started talking about pony tricks, I nearly laughed out loud.”
“I’m not into that animal stuff.”
“I have no interest in playing ponies, believe me. I have no interest in ninety percent of the stupid games dominants play with their submissives.”
Dominants. Submissives. I felt like I’d just fallen ass-backwards into the life I’d wanted but thought didn’t really exist. I honestly had no idea people really did the things I wanted. I honestly couldn’t believe he might want to do them to me.
“What are you interested in?” I asked.
“Owning your body and doing whatever I want to it.”
There it was again, the hot rush of wetness between my legs. I looked at him from under my lashes while my cheeks burned crimson. He wanted my body, wanted to do things to it. That man sitting there, virile and dangerous, he wanted me. I shivered and pressed my thighs together.
Somehow I couldn’t phrase a response. I could barely draw breath.
“Is that something that might interest you, Lucy?”
I stared down at my hands twisting in my lap. “I don’t know.”
“No more I don’t know‘s,” he said. “Yes or no?”
“Maybe! I can’t say! I don’t know what you want to do to me.”
“I’ll do a lot of things to you. I’m only asking you if it’s something you’d like to try.” My mind raced in circles, stimulated by horniness and caffeine. All around us, regular people talked and laughed casually, but my life had changed. I scrabbled for words, my thoughts in a tangle. I lifted my cup to take a slow drink, buying time.
“Is this how you pick up all your partners?” I asked. “You give them this tough little talking to?”
He tapped his fingers on the table impatiently, as if he already owned me and I was already making him mad. “First of all, this is far from tough. And secondly, I haven’t picked up a partner in six years. I had a girlfriend and we recently broke up. I would have thought you knew that from your reading about me.”
“She was your submissive?”
“That’s really none of your business.”
“What happened? Why did she leave you after six years?” He frowned down into his coffee, then looked back up at me with narrowed eyes.
“She didn’t enjoy it. Power exchange. I thought she did. But she did it for me, for my money, I guess.”
“All those years?”
“Yes, Lucy. Now you see why truth thrills me. I’ve lived without it for far too long.” Truth. He talked about it an awful lot.
“If you’re so rich, why don’t you just buy a hooker?”
“Because I don’t want a hooker. I want you.”
“How do you know? You don’t even really know me.”
“I know enough. I know that your body turns me on. I know you’d get off on submitting to me.”
“That’s all you need in a girlfriend?”
“A girlfriend?” He laughed. “Sorry, I don’t want another girlfriend. I just want a submissive to put through her paces. I’m giving you truth here, Lucy. I’m not saying that to hurt you.” So it showed then, the hurt and humiliation I felt at his words. My face burned with it. I felt like I’d just been kicked.
“I want to use your body because I find it beautiful and perfect. I just want to play with you, but I think you’ll enjoy it all the same. And if you want,” he added as an afterthought, “I’ll pay you for your time.”
I made a nauseated face.
“Yes, I thought that’s how you’d feel. Anyway, the pleasure will be payment enough.” My God. My God. My God. My God.
“Okay,” I said. “Here’s some truth for you. I’ve never fucked someone I’m not in a relationship with.”
“Oh, we’d be in a relationship. Just a non-traditional one. Do you really want another boyfriend? So soon?”
I thought for a minute. God, no. I didn’t.
“And it wouldn’t just be fucking, Lucy. Exchanging power is erotically charged, yes, and it can be deeply sexual, but it’s about much more than just getting off. It will meet needs you didn’t even realize you had. It will meet needs for you and me both. And it would be safe, of course.
Everything we did together would be absolutely safe and consensual.”
“Consensual?”
“Yes, it would have to be. You know what I mean by consensual? You would be there because you want to be. And we would use safe words.”
“Safe words?” No explanation was forthcoming. “What are safe words?” I was a little afraid to find out.
“Safe words are words that keep people like you safe.”
“Safe from what?”
“Safe from people like me.”
He leaned back then, stretching casually, as if we discussed nothing more unusual than the weather. I sat across from him and wrestled with my feelings. Anger, indignation, shame, curiosity, lust. Then his eyes returned to mine and he spoke to me with intensity in his voice.
“You know, I want to own you and I want to use you. I want your obedience and beauty.
But what I really want is for you to find joy in it too.”
“Joy?”
“Yes, joy. And perhaps, at times, a little pain,” he said with a faint
smile. “I’m not going to lie to you. There’s a good bit of the sadist in me. There will be times that I’ll purposely hurt you, times that I’ll try to make you cry. There will be ups and downs, and, well, a considerable amount of pain. But somehow I think you’ll enjoy it.”
My God, that I could even be sitting here considering it. But his warnings about pain didn’t frighten me at all. In fact, he was right. The idea was exciting me. What kind of pervert was I?
He must have seen that I was weakening, that even in my fear, my uncertainty, I wanted to say yes.
“We could start slowly,” he said. “I would teach you and guide you. I know right now you’re afraid of the unknown. You barely know me, I realize that. I barely know you. But there are some very elemental desires you and I share. And if we get to know each other better and discover that we don’t suit each other, we’ll be truthful to one another, won’t we? Can you promise me that?”
I thought about six years of deception, the toll it would take on someone’s trust. “Yes, I would be truthful to you,” I said with conviction. “I would always tell you the truth.” His expression deepened as he looked at me. “You have no idea how those words make me feel. Because I believe you, little girl.”
Little girl. He had no idea how those words made me feel, the tingle that raced across my skin. I desperately wanted to be his little girl, his lover, his toy, whatever he wanted me to be.
But he’d warned me I couldn’t be his girlfriend. Would everything else be enough?
“What do you think?” he asked.
“You drive a hard bargain.”
He laughed, an exhalation of nervous energy. “I’m trying. I really am. I suppose this isn’t what you expected.”
“You planned all along to ask me this when you invited me here?”
“I started putting words together the very second I laid eyes on you.” That made me shiver a little. All that time, he’d been thinking of doing these things to me.
“When was that? When you first laid eyes on me?”
He rubbed his forehead and sighed. “It was a while ago.” I just stared into my coffee, overwhelmed by the moment, by the decision. It seemed to me that the next words I chose to say would alter my life in a significant way, whether they were yes or no.
“I know that I’ve shocked you,” he said. “Why don’t you take some time to think it over?