“I don’t need longer,” he says with an arrogant lift of his head. “I want you.”
“And do you have anybody else in your keeping?”
“Do you think I’d be spending my Christmas sorting through art provenance papers if I did?”
“Why isn’t there anyone else, then?”
He lets out a long breath. “Because I’m cruel and I’m cold, and sometimes I like to make the people I love cry. Any other questions?”
“Yes,” I say. “We haven’t put a name to this . . . we haven’t said the words. But I’ve only ever done this before in a formal setting.”
“In a club, you mean.”
“Right. I’ve never done this in real life. I’ve never had a Dominant who was mine for more than a session, I’ve never had a man who wanted my heart and my pain.”
Sidney’s eyes look impossibly tender. “Never? You are so young.”
“And you’re not,” I say. “You’ve done this before? You know how it works?”
“You mean, have I had men that I took to the movies and out to dinner and that I also flogged and humiliated? Yes.”
Now I think I’m a little jealous. How ridiculous that we should be jealous of each other’s pasts when we’ve known each other for less than forty-eight hours, and yet . . . I can’t lie to myself. The jealousy is invigorating, it’s potent and intoxicating. It feels like being alive, wanting what I can’t have, wanting total and complete occupation in the heart of a near-stranger.
“You’ll
find that it’s not so different,” Sidney says. “The club and real life. You’ll tell me your limits, and you’ll tell me what gets you hard. You’ll tell me what you desire most and what you’ll do to earn it . . . tell me how far I can go, and tell me what you expect in return. And then we’ll begin.”
“And when I find the book and have to leave?”
His hand tightens on mine, as if he’s already trying to keep me from leaving. “You don’t have to go, you know. Not if you don’t want.”
“Mr. Blount.”
“What has you so eager to return?” he asks. “If there’s not a job or a lover waiting, then why not tarry with me?”
I don’t have a good answer to that. The truth is that after four years of doing nothing but attending to someone else’s needs, I have plenty of savings and no real urgency to find another situation. The lease on my tiny D.C. studio is up next month and I still haven’t decided what to do about it. My life is as shapeless as candle smoke right now.
The interesting thing is that Sidney’s offer makes my candle-smoke life seem like a good thing, an exciting thing, as opposed to the burden it felt just a day ago.
I feel free instead of lost.
“I’d need a place to stay.”
“You could stay with me,” he says, and I know the caution in his voice is because he doesn’t want to spook me. “I have plenty of space, plenty of room.”
“You’d want me to stay with you?”
He tilts his head. “Does that bother you?”
“I don’t know.” The words are uncomfortable in my mouth.
I’m just like everyone else: I grapple with uncertainty, nuance, ambiguity. The only difference is that for the last four years, I wasn’t allowed to say I don’t know, I was always expected to have the answer. Or to find the answer as fast as possible. It feels oddly good to say it again, the initial discomfort disappearing into the soothing power of the words. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have to know,” Sidney assures me. “As long as you tell me when you do.”
“And until then?”
“Until then, I want to guide us. I want to lead us. Is that a problem?”
