Jessica and Sharon (3 page)

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 asshole.

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 assholes.”

She took my hand in both of hers and looked me in the eye. “No assholes.”

“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 fucking 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 fuck?”

I checked my watch as if it was a possibility. “Got a meeting with Tim LaShaun from District 34. Then a tenant’s advocacy group that wants my head on a stick. More bullshit tomorrow and the next.”

She nodded. I always had at least that much bullshit when I came to San Francisco, but things was different, and she knew it. There wouldn’t be one last fuck. I’d done it. I’d come out unscathed and true to my word. I was less confident about Sharon. She had a way of putting a nice face on everything until she decided the pain was too much to bear.

We parted outside. I gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. I felt that relief again, but unlike the previous night, when I’d walked out on Jessica, it felt less like getting hit in the head by a two-by-four.

My phone rang as I put Sharon in a cab.

“Hi, Debbie,” I answered as I handed the valet my ticket. “Speak of the devil. I was just with Sharon.”

As usual, she wasted no time getting to the point. “Jessica met Monica last night?”

“Correct.”

“She came here and insisted on sitting at her station.”

Ugly. It was just like Jessica to highlight any class difference she could tease out. Having Monica serve her would be a way to humiliate her with a smile.

Debbie continued, “I don’t expect you to do anything about it. Except your wife—”

“Ex-wife.”

“She said something to Monica. I don’t know what, but now the girl looks like she’s been slapped.”

My fingers got ice cold. Jessica could have said a hundred things, secrets she could have revealed or implied. A million half-truths. Without a man to lean on, she was a cornered animal. I’d forgotten how dangerous she was when I was busy choosing another woman over her.

“Did you ask Monica?” I asked.

“She won’t repeat it.”

Apparently, my beautiful goddess was also a woman of honor. “I’ll call her.”

“She’s working the floor, so her phone is off. Fix it, please. I don’t like it. The power trip. It’s sneaky.”

“I will, Debbie. I will.”

I hung up. My car came, and I parked it around the corner to give myself a minute to think. What did Jessica know? Everything. What was she willing to share? Or imply? Or use? I had no idea. I knew for sure I wasn’t ready to share everything about my past with Monica, not a word or deed I didn’t have to, because I’d lose her. Any woman would run for the hills.

I texted Monica before I drove away.

—
Can you call me?
—

***

When I got out of my first meeting, she still hadn’t called. She’d gotten the text, so her silence was intentional.

If I were her, what would I do?

Whatever Jessica had said, I’d be finding out if it was true. So I had to make the investigation impossible to complete. That meant moving Rachel, touching base with each sister, Deirdre especially, and stressing their silence. And Thomas. And the hospital. And dad, who would laugh in my face. And… Fuck. There were too many fires to put out. Too many pieces to move across the chessboard.

I put my phone in my pocket.

It occurred to me that I’d longed for Jessica because she knew all the ugliness of my past. I didn’t have to reveal a thing to her. I didn’t have to bear the uncertainty and loneliness of wondering what someone thought of me. But if she loved me through it, couldn’t someone else? Couldn’t someone else keep a secret or ten? Maybe, but I was getting ahead of myself. I was letting my excitement get ahead of my sense. I had to finish up here and get back to LA without panicking.

I made my way to my meeting with the tenant’s rights group. That bunch would use that information to take me down, even if I gave them what they wanted. I had to deal with Jessica at some point, no matter what, unless I was willing to live without intimacy the way I wanted it. Or I would risk losing Monica before we even started.

-----------------------

Thank you for reading.

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Sequence One

Beg

Tease

Submit

Omni edition

Sequence Two

Control

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Contents

***

JESSICA

***

SHARON