Fuck. Her voice squeaked with nerves. Bad start. I should have told her to be dressed when I texted her. Total miss on my part.
“No, baby. You’re fine. We have to talk, and it’s hard to do that with your beautiful ass in my face.”
I held out my hand and helped her up. Her face was a blank slate of fear. She had no reason to look scared with me. When we met, any implication of my displeasure was greeted by her acceptance of punishment I had no intention of meting out. It wasn’t my thing, but history was hard to shake. She held onto my hand, then pulled it toward her mouth. I twisted away and cupped her cheek. Her grey-blue eyes were full of questions, and her lips were pressed tight, not a position I was used to seeing them in.
“Where do you want to go for breakfast?”
“Wherever you like, Sir.”
“Can we not play right now?”
Her posture changed from erect to relaxed. “So,” she said, “who is she? Or did the wife come to her senses?”
I smiled. She couldn’t have dropped character like that two years ago. “Are you going to get dressed or is the whole town getting a look at you?”
***
Jessica hadn’t up and left a perfectly happy marriage. This took a year or more for me to sort out. As I’d become more comfortable with my past, and the man I was, I changed. I became sexually dominant and emotionally controlling. I wanted her to submit to me in bed, which she wouldn’t have any of. I wanted her body to be available to me more often, which annoyed her. I wanted her to dress for me, even if I wasn’t there. I wanted her to do things during the day, when we were apart. Simple things. Touch herself. Roll her sleeves up. Open her legs. Say my name. It made me feel as though we were connected, but she didn’t want to play the game, at all. I became frustrated and unsatisfied. We both dug in, and by the time I was willing to cave on both points to keep her, it was too late.
It had been my fault. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know what to ask or what I wanted, I only knew I had new ideas, new excitement, new desires. My requests sounded like demands, when they should have been demands that sounded like requests. I became, in two words, a controlling ass**le.
To Sharon, however, I was a sweetheart, and through her and Debbie’s stories, I learned just how kinky the kinky world was. I learned how her past men had done things and adjusted what I did to suit me and show her a life that wasn’t based on fear, where her needs weren’t just important but pleasurable for both of us. It was a shame I couldn’t work up an emotion outside general tenderness in the two and some years I’d known her.
Sharon chose a place we’d gone to a hundred times before, with coffee handpicked by college graduates, roasted in the sun only during working hours, trucked in on fuel-efficient vehicles, and made onsite with organic water.
She had her hair tied back with a black velvet twist I’d used to bind her any number of times. No doubt she wore it on purpose. She was used to getting by on her looks and had little to recommend her in the way of conversational skills, but she wasn’t stupid. She leaned on her elbows over her skinny latte.
“So?”
“So.” I sipped my black coffee. “I wanted to tell you what you’ve meant to me. You helped me define things I thought had no definition. You’ve had a big part in making me whole again. I want to thank you for that.”
“You never answered my question. The wife or someone else?”
Our relationship was built on honesty and trust but not on fidelity. She’d been on the lookout for a more permanent, full-time Dom, and I’d been searching for what I wanted out of a woman at all. “Both,” I said.
“The wife’s going to share? I thought she was vanilla?”
“No. Jessica’s not going to share, but she did almost get me in the sack. I resisted.”
“No way! And you turned her down? Why?”
Sharon was rapt. My life’s dramas always interested her, yet she’d never betrayed a confidence. “Because I just didn’t want her. Honestly. Just didn’t. And also, there’s someone I promised myself to, at least for the time being.”
“Tell me.”
“I probably shouldn’t.”
“What does she look like?”
I shrugged. “Nothing special.”
“Oh, please.”
I slipped my hand into hers and squeezed it. “You going to be okay without me?”
“You only show up once a month, and you’re too gentle anyway.”
“Without the tasks and the discipline and knowing I’m there. Are you going to be okay?”
“I think so.”
“No ass**les.”
She took my hand in both of hers and looked me in the eye. “No ass**les.”
“The apartment. Do you want it?”
“I have some modeling things coming up. I’ll pay you for it.” I cocked my head at her. She knew what that place cost. “Installment plan.”
“Fine.”
“Is she short? Tall? How old?”
There is nothing like a woman’s curiosity about other women. She’d never imply or even admit to herself she felt an ounce of competition between herself and Monica, yet she had to know so she could compare herself and decide if she was okay with it.
“I meet a lot of beautiful girls,” I said. “She’s… I don’t know. The first time I talked to her, in my office, she was a waitress at my hotel. I looked at her, trying to figure out why she looked so tangible, so present. Every curve looked exactly right. Even her skin is this perfect color… Not even color. The texture of it. I wanted to touch it like I’d never wanted to touch anything before. She saw me looking, and she stood with her hands on her hips, daring me to get an eyeful. No fear. She filled that f**king room.” I sipped my coffee. “She took my breath away. I was too stunned to even ask her out.”
“So?” Sharon might have been watching the last fifteen minutes of a Lifetime movie, her attention was so focused.
“So I got her a job at the Stock, where Debbie works. I figured she could check her out, tell me if I was crazy.”
“So smart, you. What did she say?”
“You know Debbie. She won’t rest until everyone’s happily coupled off but her.”
I sensed rue in Sharon’s smile. I rested my hand on her forearm. “You’ll find someone, baby.”
She shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t think it matters. Can you stay for one last f**k?”