The Dom Project (5 page)

And just what
was
happening between them?

“Do you...” John cleared his throat. “Have you done this before, Robin?” He wanted to say her name over and over again. Invoking her like a spell, or a patron goddess to be called up into service.

She didn’t answer. He couldn’t see her eyes anymore. She was kneeling too low, bending her neck. Her hair swept down over her shoulder, exposing her nape and the delicate line of the choker she wore. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t
her
.

Before he could stop her, she had her lips against his leather. Kissing sweetly, gratefully, and he couldn’t help wondering if the tip of her tongue was in play too. He loved this, he lived for this, but why hadn’t she answered him? Something was wrong, and not just the fact that he’d come here to find her and let things go this far.

“Robin. We’re going,” he said. “
Now
.” He stood abruptly, shifting so that he stood beside her instead of in front of her. Hooked his arm under hers so he could raise her without grabbing her, lifted, and walked. Their audience, apparently confused about what was going down, applauded and catcalled.

She pushed herself away once they were off the stage, teetered and rebalanced. “What are you doing?” she rasped.

“Getting you out of here. You’re out of your head. Come on, I’ll buy you some pancakes.”

“I don’t
want
pancakes, John. I want what we...what we had back there.” She looked lost and angry, but her composure seemed to be returning. She didn’t turn away or avoid eye contact. In fact, she was glaring at him. “That’s what I came here for. Why the fuck are you here, if not for the same thing?”

Swearing. Apparently the composure wasn’t quite back yet. Not that he was about to mention it, or anything. John sighed. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. You’re right. You’re a grown-ass woman and I—”
I
have no business protecting you
,
either from other men
,
or from yourself.
“I found your blog. I followed you. But I wasn’t spying.”

“If that’s your idea of spying—” she waved at the stage, where another pair had taken center stage: a man caning a woman all up and down her thighs. God, fuck. “Can we talk about this somewhere else?” She sighed and wrapped her arms around herself. “I’m not drunk or high. But I
am
a little disoriented. I’ll tell you all about it over a stack of chocolate chip pancakes. You’re buying.”

* * *

The restaurant was bright and almost empty. It was too late for dinner and too early for the stumbling-out-of-nightclubs crowd. Robin sawed her pancakes into neat squares as she talked, which released her aggression nicely.

“He touched me when he met me. I should have taken that as a warning sign. I mean, nothing terrible happened, he got kicked out, but it’s still...” She shook her head and knew that John would never really understand. “That’s a pick-up artist trick. Not a dom thing. Although the two really aren’t mutually exclusive, I’ve figured out.”

“Creepy men in every set,” John agreed through a mouthful of hash browns. Now that he’d put his Battle Royale T-shirt back on and with his pants and boots hidden by the table, he was back to his normal self. Hard to even picture the demigod she’d been ready to worship at the feet of. Now it was just John, who at thirty-one hadn’t quite mastered chewing with his mouth shut.

“And when he said
you will leave with me now
, oh my God—you did the same thing!” He was about to protest, but she kept on. “It’s different with you though. I mean, you know I needed pancakes because we have a history together, and that everything was about to get weird, that’s all. Not because you think you have telepathic powers.”

“Actually, that’s why I wanted to talk,” John said, his face deadly serious. He swallowed his bite of runny egg and reached out for her hand. “I have something I’ve been keeping from you. It’s eating me up inside.”

She took a deep breath. With his hand on hers, the memory of seeing his body in a different light hit her hard and set her heartbeat racing. He took up so much space on that stage, and now here in front of her, his broad shoulders blocking the light...

“I
am
psychic.”

“Oh fuck off!” She threw his hand away, pointedly not smiling back when he grinned at her.

“But seriously. We should talk.” Now he’d put his fork down, even though his plate was only half-eaten. Wow, he really was serious.

“Okay, talk.”

“Well, I still want an answer to that question I asked you.”

“What question?”

“That distracted, huh?”

“Um, yeah.” Suddenly, she didn’t want to look into his eyes, so she stared down at her mug of coffee instead.

“I asked... Well, I just wanted to know if you’d ever done anything like that before. Performed. Actually, I’d like to know a bit of your history in general. How experienced you are, that sort of thing.”

“You read my blog,” she quipped. “You tell me.”

“Your blog, as entertaining as your sexual frustration is, doesn’t talk about how you got started. Look, if you tell me, I’ll tell you, okay?” That smile was Cheshire cat levels of evil. Absolutely maddening, because more than anything she wanted to know why he’d looked so at home on that stage. She’d never understood John’s attitude to life, his lack of ambition combined with impenetrable self-confidence, as if he didn’t need to work for anything because he already owned the world. Maybe this was the key.

“All right. You know how I was engaged to Damon, and then not really, and then we broke up and he moved back to New York? I told you we drifted apart. It was true, but a lot of that was because of...well, because of sex. I kept blaming myself. I just wasn’t trying hard enough, because he was doing everything right.” He’d asked her about her fantasies, gone down on her as much as she went down on him, even tried out a little bit of spanking and hair-pulling when she’d asked. But it wasn’t
right.
She saw him getting more and more frustrated, and every time he tried to perform for her the way he thought she wanted, and it was fake somehow, the guilt only got worse. “At one point, I wondered if he was going to cheat on me, and all I felt was relieved. I knew it was over then. We didn’t break up too badly, but we don’t talk anymore, either. I lost the man I thought was my best friend.”

John’s face fell, and then he flashed her an exaggerated pout and a heartbreak gesture with his hands to cover up the fact that he’d been genuinely hurt for a second there.

She leaned up across the table and punched him in the shoulder. “I was
wrong
, you dolt.”

They smiled at each other like a pair of crazy people, then sat back into their respective benches at the same time.

“But you know, now that I’m actually looking for the guy to fulfill my particular...needs, and seeing what’s out there on the actual scene, I’m starting to wonder if maybe I’d actually be better off with someone like my ex, someone nice who’ll do fuzzy handcuffs with me, and I should find a way to be happy with that.”

John frowned. “You don’t have to settle, you know. Not for a vanilla guy, and not for an asshole dom. You just have to... God, here I go with the clichés again. You just have to keep at it. You’ll find the right person.”

“Trust me, John. I’ve been trying. I really have. I’ve had exactly three playdates that I
loved
, and then things started going bad. So I switched to internet and I’ve been trying and I’ve been waiting. I’ve been communicating my needs and I’ve been letting go of my highest standards and it’s not working. Maybe I just attract assholes. Maybe the creepy guy to nice guy ratio among doms is higher than among ‘normal’ dudes. Maybe I’m not really a submissive at all, and if I was, I’d be okay with guys calling me whore when we’re out at dinner or telling me to put my hair in pigtails or grabbing me and telling me they’re mind readers.”

“Maybe I can prove you wrong.”

“What?”

“Yeah!” John’s eyes were huge, like he was possessed. She’d always secretly admired how eloquent his facial expressions were—maybe because of those high cheekbones every emotion seemed magnified. He could switch between an impassive mask and passionate intensity so unpredictably. “I could prove you wrong. Look, it won’t be a sexual thing. I don’t see you that way, and you don’t see me that way, and really it’s a moot point, but we’ll still lay some ground rules. I’ll dominate you the way you say you want to be dominated, and then we can figure things out for you once and for all. You can document it in your blog.”

“Exhibitionist,” she teased. “You just want me bragging about your prowess to my readers so you can get some action out of it.”

“No way! I’m being serious, Robin. It could be like an experiment or something. I could come up with, like, a series of tests or challenges or whatever and we can report the findings.
Science
.” He wiggled his fingers like a magician, then put his hands down on the table like a lawyer making his closing statement. “I’m your best friend, you just said it. I know all about you. I know what makes you tick. If I can’t dominate you, then maybe nobody can. You won’t have to deal with any more asshole doms trying to row off with your oargasms.”

“What do you mean, it won’t be a sexual thing? Is this some kind of joke or play or something?” She didn’t want to think about what he was saying, didn’t want to consider it seriously. But she couldn’t look away or stop hearing, either. Seeing him this way, entirely focused on her, was almost like being drunk—no,
better
.

“No! Look, I’ve done this kind of thing before with, like, married people. They want to be dominated but for one reason or another they don’t want to do the sex part. I keep my pants on the whole time. I don’t touch them sexually at any point. Just bind them and humiliate and punish them and order them around, or whatever combination of the above they’re into. Everybody goes home happy.
We
could do that.”

“We could
destroy
our friendship.”

“You didn’t seem too concerned about our friendship at the club earlier.” Mentioning that moment made his expression darken somehow, his jaw locking shut and making his face more severe. Commanding. Robin’s body responded to that expression pretty much instantly. She had to look down at her plate just to breathe again. The food made her stomach twist—there was another kind of hunger charging through her now. “I’m willing to risk it, if it means making you happy, helping you find yourself. I guess it comes down to you. How much do
you
want this, Robin?”

Robin stared at her neatly sawed-up pancakes, all the whipped cream melted away. “I...” What John said was making sense. God, she was really considering it. “I need to think about it.”

From the edge of her vision, she couldn’t help seeing John shrug elegantly and wipe a spot of grease away from the corner of his mouth with his middle finger. He’d gone impassive again. Not angry, or defensive. Just totally unreadable.

She’d never be able to look at him the same way.

* * *

The first thing John did when he got home was take off his boots. And then he picked them up again and tried to remember which one Robin had kissed.

The right one. Yes, that was it. He had the urge to put it on a shelf, to preserve a fleeting moment that couldn’t really be preserved. He shook his head and put it back in the hall closet next to its mate. If his crazy proposal worked out, anyway, there’d be a lot more of those moments. He smiled to himself.

Sure, it was risky, but so were most things worth fighting for. He’d had friendships ruined by sexual attraction. He’d also had friendships deepened by it. Hopefully this would give Robin the experience and confidence she needed, while giving him...well, the no-sex limit would be challenging, but he could always find ways to enjoy whatever Robin was willing to give him and let off steam elsewhere.

Even without touching her, exploring the visual aesthetics of her willowy body would be an erotic journey in itself. His cameraman’s eye was already framing and focusing, remembering Irina Mareau’s flapper proportions and remapping them on to Robin’s reality.

Come to think of it, there was a private video feed of Fetish Friday, and it was probably uploaded already. He went straight to his laptop and, lacking Andy’s willing back as a table, sat on his couch and set it on his knees.

Wait, did Robin know about the video?
Fuck
. Usually people who went on stage already had a disclaimer filed. There went his masturbation plans for the night—he was suddenly too concerned about her privacy. He pulled up the video and fast-forwarded to the right spot, a weird mix of lust and dread rising in his chest and making his skin prickle.

The lights were low, and the angle wasn’t very good. Her face wasn’t really visible. He sighed in relief.

Her shadowy form dipped slowly downward.

May I
,
sir?

He imagined her with lips half-open. She had gorgeous lips, not full, but wide and curved in a classic cupid’s bow like a silent movie star. Like Irina Mareau. He imagined running his fingers over those lips, tracing their curves, pushing into her sweetly begging mouth...

He slammed the laptop shut.

No sex. He needed to be strict about that limit, even alone. If they were going through with their plans, he needed to draw a distinct line between Robin and his sex life, even the fantasy part. Which would be somewhat strange seeing as she’d factored into at least a few of his masturbatory sessions since they’d met back in college. But things had changed. Their
relationship
was going to change.

He texted Robin to let her know about the video. And then he called Therese, the girl kneeling at his left boot who’d left the scene early, to make sure she was okay. It wasn’t like her to just slip away like that; he hoped the way he’d acted with Robin hadn’t hurt Therese’s feelings.

Thankfully, Therese didn’t seem put out. “I think I’m not into performing like that,” she said. “I like to watch more than I like being watched. And speaking of watching, who was that girl you were with, the one who came in right before I left? She wasn’t on the sign-up to play with you, was she? I don’t think I’ve seen her around at all.”