Dark Secret Love (4 page)

I returned from a tryst with Connor to find Byron livid, ready to confront me. Someone had spilled our secret. I don’t think I said a word. I had no defense. When Byron and I parted, he took all of the keys from my ring save my car key: the two house keys, garage key, two office keys, key to his parents’ house. Since he’d worked for Jody longer than I had, he easily had me fired. Almost all of our friends were his friends. I remember feeling free but terrified. When he asked me for his ring back, I gave him the ultimate fuck-you—pulling it from my red leather change purse rather than off my finger.

He called me a cunt, and I suppose I deserved it. I had become such a remnant of my former self that I was practically unrecognizable. At twenty-two I had been cleanly transformed into a robotic Stepford wife (“Must buy Dial. Must buy Tide. Must buy Charmin.”) But I knew what I wanted—I didn’t need a man with positive future prospects or a rich daddy. I needed what I’d had in high school,
someone who could look at me and see who I really was. Someone who wouldn’t laugh or scowl or turn away in disgust when I confessed my darkest fantasies.

Someone who had a brush and a belt and a set of cuffs and was not afraid to use them.

As I was walking out of the office, my solitary key in hand, Byron called out for me to stop. I turned around to face him, wondering what he might possibly have to follow up calling me a cunt. It still brings a smile to my face to remember that he spat out: “Los Angeles isn’t big enough for the both of us.” I don’t know what part he thought he was playing. I do know he didn’t hold much stock in my ability to survive on my own. Maybe he was right, because my first instinct wasn’t to try to line up housing or call my friends, or even have a drink.

The first thing I did after leaving Byron was head to the mall.

Perhaps I ought to have been better prepared for our inevitable parting, but when we finally broke up, we were at work. When Byron took away my keys, I had no way to get back into our house to pick up my belongings. My parents lived eight hundred miles away. Most of my friends were Byron’s friends, who I was sure would not see me in a very positive light.

One of Byron’s many quaint little quirks was his insane insistence that I never change my perfume. I’d been wearing Anaïs Anaïs since I was twelve, and as far as he was concerned, I was going to wear that sickly-sweet scent until I died. So after running through the whole slew of perfumes at the Macy’s counter, I wound up with a classic bottle of Chanel #5. (And since that day, I have been extremely fickle. I’ve never managed to choose another signature scent.) I also bought several bras and knickers
and a silky little golden nightgown before crossing the street to Rexall for toiletries—and no, I didn’t buy Dial or Scope or Crest or any of the mandatory items on Byron’s persnickety shopping list. I could break the rules for once—Colgate and Listerine and Chanel, oh my! Luckily, I did have clothes. Byron always hated my constant refusal to pick up my dry cleaning on time. When we broke up, I was able to collect several of my favorite dresses from the cleaners—my procrastination paying off.

I headed to a French hotel I’d always admired and booked a room. I had almost no money, but I had plastic. Connor came to stay that night—of course he did—and for the first time since we’d begun flirting months before, we had time.

Everything we’d done together so far had been shadowed by the need to rush, to look over our shoulders, to watch our backs. Now Connor could work slowly. He didn’t say a word after I let him into the room, simply backed me up until I felt the bed against my legs. I sat on the edge of the heavy brocade comforter, then slid away from him toward the plush pillows, unsure from the look on his face of what he wanted me to do, what he expected me to say. Connor wasn’t unsure at all. He stared at me with his head cocked to the side while he slowly pulled his belt from the loops of his jeans. My heart went crazy. I couldn’t stare directly at him, yet I knew better than to look away. I sat up on the bed with my feet curled under me, shifting my hips while I waited for him to speak. Flashes of what we’d done so far played like movie clips in my mind: the way he’d held me against the wall while he kissed me. The way he’d taken my panties down, inch by inch, then slipped them into his pocket, forcing me to go bare, like Brock had. The way he always let up on me
before leaving a mark, knowing I had to go home at some point. Knowing other eyes would see me.

Nobody was going to see me now. Only Connor.

“Roll over, Sam,” he said, that husky rawness to his voice. “You know what to do.”

I did know. I’d been sliding my fingers between my thighs late every night for months now, knowing. I’d had vibrant, Technicolor dreams where I’d wake up with my hands trapped under me, thinking I was bound to Connor’s bed before realizing I had simply bound myself in my fantasies.

“Come on, Sam, don’t make me wait.”

There was power in the way he spoke. I tend to choose older men, always going for experience over youth. But Connor was somewhat of a prodigy. Only twenty-five but with a dominant side already well tuned and finely polished.

“I’ve waited long enough—”

He was right, yet I was frozen, mesmerized by the look of his worn belt in his hands, by the glinting light in the room, by the sounds of the traffic outside. I thought of that time in the movie theater, when we had worked not to touch one another. I thought of making him come outside, against the wall of the building, my hand stroking the faded denim of his jeans. I thought of Byron and the look of disgust on his face after our night out partying, when I’d drunk vodka straight from the bottle and then humiliated myself by begging him to spank me with his hairbrush. Was that why I’d stayed with him for so fucking long? Because he owned that image of me and I’d been desperate to erase it, to prove that I wasn’t broken after all?

Connor didn’t say another word, didn’t give me
another chance—he moved with feline grace, grabbing me and pulling me over his lap into a slightly altered position from the one he’d initially requested. I lowered my head, tears of shame already stinging my eyes. Not because he was going to punish me over his lap, but because I’d already failed him, failed to follow a simple command. He dropped the belt and started with his hand, smacking his palm against the semi-sheer fabric of my brand-new nightie. I held myself as still as possible, emotion flooding through me, trying to behave for Connor as I’d tried for Byron. I’d made Byron my Dom. He hadn’t given me anything I wanted, but I had supplicated myself for him, suffocated myself for him, hoping perhaps somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain that he’d ultimately reward me if I was good enough.

Hadn’t I learned anything from Brock? With the right man in charge, I would never be good enough. That was the whole point. Connor taught me that little lesson again, his strong hand carefully slipping the golden fabric to my hips, then dragging my panties down my thighs. He used his open palm again and again, and soon thoughts stopped as the flush of pain took over. Still I didn’t struggle. I didn’t make a sound. Which told Connor quickly enough that he had to work me more seriously. He didn’t want my silence. He wanted to know that the spanking was having a proper effect. Only when my skin was cherry-flushed to his satisfaction did he push me back onto the bed and tell me to lock my hands together over my head. I licked my bottom lip, then bit into it as I saw him double his belt before making the leather snap.

I felt as if I’d been underwater for three years. Felt as if for the first time in ages, I could finally breathe. Connor set his hand against my cheek. He bent down and kissed
me, and then stood back and let the belt meet my ass for the first time. The sound of the belt was more intense than the first stripe. That whip-crack of leather through silence, then the intake of my breath, and Connor admonished me, “Stay still, Sam. Don’t move. Don’t move an inch. You’ve got a long fucking night ahead of you. And you know it, too. Because you deserve this. Don’tcha? Don’t you deserve this?” It was a crooning question, almost singsong, making fun of me somehow, teasing me.

When I didn’t speak right away, he was on me as Brock had been. Always answer a direct question. Don’t forget this. Learn from my mistakes. His hand tilting my chin up towards him, his eyes flashing a look I’d never seen in their striking blue before.

And suddenly I understood. He wasn’t punishing me because I wanted it, because I touched myself at night and dreamed of him being rough with me. He was doing this because for four months I had flirted with him, had kissed him, had fucked him, and then gone back home to someone else. He had never asked me to leave Byron, had rarely mentioned the man’s name at all. But he had known that I kept my clothes lined up neatly next to Byron’s in the closet. That I ate breakfast each morning at his table, when I could stomach a bite. That I spent weekends with his family.

I hadn’t been unfaithful to Byron. I had cheated on Connor.

The belt flashed in the air, and I gritted my teeth and told myself that I would take whatever he had to give. I owed him. Sure, I had almost zero money in the bank. But that didn’t matter to Connor. That night he made me pay with something far more precious than cash.

In the morning, Connor had to get up at five for a photo shoot. We’d had a ferocious night fucking, and I remember looking up at him, bleary-eyed, as he gave me his classic smirk and pulled on his boots. I ordered room-service coffee and stared out the window, watching Los Angeles wake up and realizing I’d never have to worry about whether I’d bought the proper mouthwash again.

Goodbye, Byron.

When I rolled over on the mattress, I saw that Connor had left his belt hanging over the back of the chair. My stomach tightened and I closed my eyes, picturing the previous evening, imagining what might happen to me on the next. I simply had to wait sixteen hours or so until we could be together again. After the modeling gig, Connor had to work at the restaurant. And where did I have to be? Nowhere. The whole time I was with Byron, I went to school part-time and worked part-time. Over the three years, I had worked at the newspaper, at a clothes store,
as a personal assistant, at a magazine, at a movie theater, and as a masseuse.

Recently, I had been splitting my time between the screenwriter’s office and the home of a fairly well-known movie star. But I’d been let go from the movie star’s house because I had worn a diaphanous dress around her director husband, who apparently hadn’t been vaccinated against girls in sheer sundresses.

“Diaphanous” was her word. It was simply a sundress, one of my favorites, pale pink with tiny pearl buttons down the front. The dress wasn’t tight, or even all that short, and I wore a slip beneath and stockings, yet had managed to catch the husband’s eye regardless.

Now I had no job, and I desperately needed to find housing that was less costly than $240 a night. Connor called from work with the happy news that I could stay with a friend of his named Lois. She had two male roommates (don’t look at me like that!) and she was happy to put me up. Connor lived with a whole slew of guys out at the beach and they had a rule against moving females into the house. (Girls in the house were considered bad luck, same as on a ship.)

I spent the morning at a café perusing the help-wanted ads, trying to figure out what I was good at. Byron hadn’t thought I was good enough to do much of anything. He liked to taunt me and say that within three years, we’d have a station wagon with three kids in the back. According to Byron, I was good enough to be a wife and mom. End of story. Every time I heard his voice berating me, I closed my eyes, searching for a mental “erase” button. Free from his critiques, I answered every ad I was remotely qualified for. I spent my days driving all over the city and my nights with Connor. Everywhere with Connor.

We were back to searching for outdoor locations, for privacy in a very public city. His Venice pad was bus-stop busy with twelve guys and no place to hide. Lois and her roommates were cool, but I couldn’t see paying them back for their kindness by fucking all over their apartment.

So Connor and I got creative. We used the back seat of his car, a huge cherry-red ’67 Chevy. We found alleys. We fucked in Griffith Park. We went all the way in a department-store dressing room—I’d needed to buy more clothes: jeans, T-shirts, underwear. We had no fear any longer. Who the fuck cared if someone saw us? Exhibitionism has always been one of my weaknesses. Connor was more than ready to play. He wrapped my wrists with his wallet chain and spread me out in the Chevy’s huge rear seat. He always took his time, looking at me, making me feel even more naked by the way he evaluated every part of my body. His hands roamed over my shoulders, my small breasts, down to the basin of my belly. He liked to hook his fingers into my nether lips and spread me wide, blowing a puff of air over my pussy before locking his lips on my clit and sucking. Making me come was no challenge for him. I melted at the way he touched me—sometimes so rough I was shaking. Sometimes so softly I’d beg him to stop teasing.