I followed him, into the kitchen.
Finally, he turned to look at me. He was reaching for something in the wet bar. "If we're going to talk about this, I'm making myself a drink. What do you want? Lemon drop martini?"
I frowned. "That's not what I ordered at the bar."
"But it is your favorite drink." That wasn't a question. He turned his attention to filling a shaker with ice. "But for whatever reason, you don't treat yourself often. Maybe you think it's too girly, or it's too extravagant, or too sugary, or too many calories. Hell if I know."
There was a knot of frustration in my chest. This wasn't the direction that our conversation was supposed to go. "Okay, Sherlock Holmes. Fine. Yes, I'll have a lemon drop martini. Not that you seem to be giving me any choice."
I sat down at the island.
"It was the menu," he explained, coming towards me with a glass. "The specialty drink menu at the bar. You were looking at it, and you kept your finger by the 'Skinny Lemon Drop Martini' the whole time." He took a sip of his Jack and coke. "Not that you need skinny drinks, mind you."
"I'll drink what I want, thanks." I looked up at him. "Seems like you have a little bit of a sweet tooth, yourself."
"Nothing wrong with that." He sat down nearby, but a few stools away, giving me space. "We can't all drink straight tequila and trap scorpions under the empty glass."
I had to laugh at that. "You think James Bond was into spanking women?"
"Oh, definitely." He smiled. "That's certainly the face of a man who engages in a little rough play every now and then."
"Huh." I was pressing my knees together, protectively, without really understanding why. "I always would've thought that any man who feels really secure in his masculinity wouldn't need to hit a woman."
His face softened a little. "I don't need it," he said. "If anyone needs it, it's them."
My heart constricted. "So that's how you look at it, huh?"
A frustrated sigh escaped his lips. "That's not how I look at it, it's the truth. Do you really think I'm forcing anybody into something they don't want? Do I strike you as that kind of guy?"
"I don't know!" I insisted. "I don't really know you at all. But I do know that people can hide who they really are. It's easy. And the only time I ever met you when you weren't 'on,' you treated me like I didn't matter." I hadn't intended to talk about our first meeting in the store, but it was all coming out in a rush. "You treated me like I was less than you. Maybe your excuses were legit - maybe you really were just tired and out of your mind. Or maybe that's how you really feel, and you just didn't have the wherewithal to hide it."
I expected him to have a knee-jerk reaction - to be offended, maybe even to yell at me. But he just sat back and re-crossed his legs. I wondered how many times he'd had to have this sort of conversation with a woman, and felt slightly chilled.
"Jenna," he said, "if you didn't matter, I wouldn't be talking to you right now. You matter. Disbelieve me about anything else you want, call me a liar, call me insincere, but don't doubt that you matter to me."
His eyes locked with mine, so serious, I had no choice but to believe him. Even if none of this really made sense, I couldn't argue with that logic.
Why I mattered to him was another question entirely - and one that I wasn't prepared to ask.
Taking a deep breath, I fought to hold on to rationality. It was a myth that hurtful, controlling men were just unable to reign in their emotions, that every bad thing they did happened in a fit of passion. Their choices were cold, calculating, meant to entrap and twist the mind into undeserved sympathy. I had to remember that. More likely than not, Mr. Chase was a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Fine," I said. "So tell me why you're into...that."
The corner of his mouth twisted at my tone. "Is there anything I could say that'll make a difference?" he mused, aloud, not really expecting an answer. "Well, I wasn't always. If that makes it better. A woman asked me if I would do it. She liked the idea of the whole BDSM scene, the dominance and submission dynamic. But the culture didn't appeal. She was sort of...old-fashioned, I guess. She told me that she'd looked into it, and she finally found a version that made sense to her.
"When I started looking into it, my skin crawled, too. It didn't feel right. It was against everything I'd been taught, it seemed regressive, it seemed...well, I don't have to tell you. It wasn't all that different from 'normal' BDSM, but at the same time, it felt like another world. It felt more serious - less like a game. I told her no. It made me uncomfortable. I looked at her, and I just couldn't picture myself acting like some parody of a stern parent. It was distasteful. I respected her too much."
He paused, smiling humorlessly into his glass. "At least, that's what I told myself."
After a moment, he started again, softer this time, his tone laden with the full conviction of his words. "Finally I realized that if I respected her, if I really respected her, I'd trust her to know what she wanted. I was treating her like she was fragile. Like I knew better. She was asking me to live out that fantasy of 'Mr. Chase knows best,' but instead, I was giving her the reality. She was strong enough to understand what she really wanted, to admit it, even in a culture that might punish her for wanting exactly what women were supposed to want, just a few generations ago."
I'd expected some kind of impassioned defense, but he was talking like a women's studies textbook. I almost snorted the last mouthful of my martini. "So domestic discipline is a revolutionary act?"
He quirked an eyebrow at my skeptical tone. "Our culture creates certain desires, cultivates them, and then judges you when you actually want to act them out. You're only allowed to 'know your place' as long as it doesn't bring you any pleasure." His eyes glinted. "I say, fuck that. Fuck them. Take it back."
"Oh, boy," I said, looking down at my empty glass. "I think that's the first time somebody's used that line on me."
"It's not a line," he said, earnestly, leaning towards me a little. "I mean it. Every word."
"Yeah, well." I glanced around, looking for some escape that didn't exist. "I think you'll have to find somebody else to help you dismantle the patriarchy through spanking."
Ben leaned back in his seat, a reluctant smile tugging at his mouth. "I wasn't offering," he said. "I was just explaining. It's not backwards, it's just a lot of harmless fun."