“Have you been a good girl?” I asked, drawing out the words, studying her face.
The look she returned was priceless. Part scared, part guilty, and part delighted that I’d asked. Because she hadn’t been good, that was obvious. I shook my head. “You naughty little horndog.” I lifted off her glasses, glaring at her. “You disobeyed my orders. I can see it in your eyes.”
“I was mostly good,” she pleaded. “I only slipped up once.”
I tsked, gripping her chin harder. “You mean you ignored what I told you on the phone?”
“Please, Sir, I’m sorry.”
She shifted on her toes as I fixed her in my most intimidating glare. “We’ll have to take care of your behavior later,” I said. “Michelle is expecting us.”
Her lower lip trembled with such delicious fear that I couldn’t resist biting it, and once I bit her lip, I couldn’t resist kissing her. The spell took over me, the one that gripped me whenever she was around. I ended the kiss as abruptly as I’d dived into it, and replaced her glasses.
We got in my car for the ride to Michelle’s studio for Ella’s fitting. Most women ooh’d and aah’d over my car’s luxury interior and European purr, but Ella was interested in the science, as usual. She asked about horsepower and fuel mileage, and complimented the engineering behind the streamlined chassis. I wanted to fuck her brain right through her skull because she hit on all the reasons this was my favorite car.
When we exhausted my car as a topic, I asked how her work was going. She deflected and asked, “How is everything with the crash? I mean, the near-crash? The investigation?”
“Everything’s fine,” I assured her. “They traced the leak to a faulty part from a manufacturer, so Gibraltar’s off the hook, and Ayal and I were commended for keeping our cool and landing the plane.”
That was the short version. The long version had been two days of testimony, and playback of our cockpit conversations with air traffic control, which was eerie, because I’d barely remembered the things I’d said. I’d spoken in a flat, disconnected voice, doing what needed to be done, deploying the coping mechanisms I’d developed as a child when my father, my first father, my real father, had beaten me or my mother.
I shook those memories away and fielded her questions about NTSB post-accident protocols until we arrived at Michelle’s place. The truth was, I couldn’t wait to put the crash ordeal behind me. Right now, it was one of the few experiences Ella and I shared, but that would change soon, when we made new memories at The Gallery. I’d invited plenty of women there over the years, but none quite so masochistically gifted as Ella.
She was going to be really fucking fun.
Michelle was an older submissive who frequented The Gallery, who also held a degree in theatrical costuming. She spent her days outfitting the Metropolitan Ballet, but she’d been moonlighting as our exclusive costumer for as long as I could remember.
“Got a new one for you, Michelle,” I said, as we stepped into her workshop. “Ella’s anxious to try out The Gallery. She’s ready for it,” I added, as Michelle raised a brow.
“I hope so, if you’re going to be her sponsor,” she teased.
I chose not to explain to Ella that the costumer and I were good friends because I brought so many women to be fitted. Michelle, the epitome of circumspection, didn’t give that away, just whipped out her tape measure and asked Ella to undress.
Out of respect for Michelle’s workspace, I didn’t pull out my dick and masturbate to all this, but I wanted to. There was something about the process: the girl-on-girl primping, the smoothness of the tape measure against Ella’s skin, the effort to please the male gaze. As Michelle worked, she described the various aspects of the uniform, from the nipple-exposing bra to the body-skimming garter belt and stockings. I could see Ella getting more and more excited. Her nipples were hard as rocks. I wanted to hurt them.
I would hurt them. Soon.
When her fitting was done, and Michelle had all the necessary measurements tucked away in her book, I took my sexy scientist to a dim, noisy sushi bar I visited whenever I was in SoHo. Ella didn’t like to chat about her work, but I forced her to do it anyway, for two reasons. One, because it was the only thing that would keep me from looking at her like a piece of sex-meat the entire dinner, and two, because I’d grown fond of the way her eyes lit up when she talked about the vastness of the universe and the elasticity of time.
Instead, she told me about the men she was working with, making all of them sound like nerdy bores. Did she think of herself that way? She was fucking interesting to me, for all the filthiest reasons. I tried to focus on the words she was saying, not the fact that I wanted to stick my cock between her lips. Her phone buzzed on the table between us, demanding her attention.
She looked down at it, then muted the ringer. “My dad,” she said.
I didn’t know why that surprised me, that she had a dad and that he might call her on a Tuesday night. “You can call him back if you need to talk,” I said.
“I don’t need to talk to him right now. I’ll call him later.” She sighed, kind of laughed. “He only wants to talk about my research.”
“Is he a scientist, too?” I asked. “Because my dad’s a pilot. Well, my adoptive dad.”
“You were adopted?”
“Not by strangers, no. When my mom remarried, my dad adopted me so I’d have the same last name. Well, he adopted me for lots of reasons, foremost because he loved my mom, which made him a hero in my eyes.” Why was I telling her my life history? I shoved more sushi in my mouth and pointed at her with my chopsticks. “So, does your dad work in the same field as you?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, yes.”
“You compete with each other?”
Her brows drew together and she made another face I couldn’t interpret. “My dad is half crazy,” she finally said. “He started losing it the year my mother died. Like, fifteen years ago, now. He’s gone pretty crazy in the meantime.”
“I’m sorry. About your mother, and your dad.”
She waved a hand. “I mean, he’s intelligent and he keeps up with my career, but what he really lives for is…” Her hands waved again, helpless angst. “He wants to find a way to go back in time, because he misses my mother. Isn’t that crazy? She drank too much at a holiday party and tried to drive home, so he wants to travel back and tell her not to drink, or change his own mind and go with her to the party. He hated parties, so that night…”
“Oh, man.” I felt bad for the guy, dealing with that guilt. “Sorry to hear you lost your mom that way. That’s really tough. Sudden.”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her forehead. “My dad really loved her. Really, really loved her, to the point where I remember this…” She held her arms wide. “This, like, billowing love between them. Then she died, and my dad got weird about reversing time, and getting her back somehow. Like, he really thinks it could be possible. He’s always studied physics related to time, and he pressed me to study time, although I sidestepped into the field of gravitational waves.” She stared at the table, no longer eating.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “That must be…weird.” Jackass. It’s not weird, it’s heartbreaking. I could read all the feelings on her face. She’d lost her mom, and she still had a dad, but he was caught up in some bizarro quest to reverse time.
“It’s weird that he doesn’t want to be here, now,” she said, frowning. “All he thinks about is my mother and the past. That’s why I shy away from relationships. Watching what love did to
him…” She bit a nail, looking off into the distance. “I mean, I loved my mother. I’ll always love her, but he loved her to the point of mental illness, to the point where…” Where there’s no room for me. She didn’t say it out loud, but I could read it in her hurt expression.
“Are you the only child?” I asked.
“Yes, and I was adopted, which is why I was curious when you said you were too. But I was adopted because my mother couldn’t have kids. I guess my father did it for her, because he’d always do whatever she wanted, whatever would make her happy.” She shrugged. “Except go to that party that night. He’s not evil or anything, just more into science than being a dad. I don’t like to be around him, which makes me feel like a bad daughter.” Both of us were talking over the noise in the crowded, echoing sushi bar. She said bad daughter really loud, then fell silent, putting her hand over her mouth. “Everyone heard me.”
“Who fucking cares?” I held up a piece of sushi and aimed it at her mouth to get her eating again. Ah, those lips. No, damn, we were having a serious conversation. “You’re not a bad daughter, he’s a shitty father.”
“Not shitty,” she protested.
“Okay. Not shitty.”
“And I’m interested in time travel, too. I’m interested in anything that’s huge and groundbreaking, and unknown.”
She was such an unrepentant nerd sometimes. I’d never known anyone like her, quirky and smart and thoughtful. Maybe that’s why I opened up about stuff I’d never told any woman before. “Want to hear about my father?” Even as I debated how much to say, I spilled out everything. “My real father was a dope dealer, a criminal and an abuser. He was an angry, horrible person. My earliest memories are of him hitting my mother, kicking her, punching her, making her cry. I thought it was…” My jaw ticked as I ground my teeth. “I thought it was normal. That all men did that to all women.”
“Oh, no,” she said softly. “That’s horrible.” She thought a moment, and covered her mouth. “Wait. Is that why you turned into a sadist?”