The table is set with an array of sandwiches and drinks, and he sits down. I sit down across from him. “I don’t understand.”
“You don’t understand lunch?” he smirks.
“No,” I say. “I don’t understand what just happened.”
He doesn’t say anything, just takes a bite of a sandwich and waits for me to continue.
“You were…nice. You didn’t tie me up of tell me what to do. It was just sex.”
“I can be spontaneous just like any other person. Kinky people are capable of having regular sex.”
“But why?” I ask. “I mean, are you trying to trick me into asking for the submissive stuff so you’ll win the bet?”
I see him freeze. He puts down the food in his hand, and when he looks at me, the playful light that was there is gone. “I’m sorry?”
“If I admit that I want to be submissive, you win. So if you don’t do that stuff and then I ask for it, you win and you get me for a whole month. Was that why you were so nice with the massage and the…” I trail off because the way he’s looking at me dries up all my words.
“You think that I’m trying to trick you so that I can keep you prisoner here for thirty days? After everything, that’s what you think of me?”
“No,” I say. “It just felt…odd.”
Matthew sighs and scrubs his hands across his face. “I’m capable of being kind, Emma. My every action is not build into trapping you into a lifestyle that you don’t want. I made the bet to get you here, so that you could see that this life isn’t what you thought it was. From the very beginning you’ve had this…preconceived notion about who I am. And I know that we have a lot of intimacy now, but you don’t know that much about me. I thought that after last night you would have gotten a pretty good idea of who I am, but clearly I was wrong about that, and you’re wrong about me.”
He stands and leaves the room, and the silence is huge. Crap. What on earth did I just do?
Fourteen
I walk after Matthew, and I can hear his footsteps ahead of me. He’s gone back to the playroom, and I find him cleaning the table that we just had sex on.
“Matthew,” I say, and he doesn’t look at me.
“I like you, Emma.” He stops, hands on his hips and looks at me. I can’t meet his eyes because I realize that I was wrong before. I wasn’t seeing him at his most vulnerable on the patio, I’m seeing it now. “I like you, and I know that I shouldn’t, because clearly we don’t want the same things. I had hoped…I don’t know what I hoped. But if you’re only here for the money, then you can have it. I’ve tried to show you that a Dom/sub relationship is about trust, and if you would really think I’d do something like that then you don’t trust me.”
“I don’t want the money.” I don’t even realize it until I say it, but it’s true. My gut churns and I think I might be sick. I don’t like the way he’s looking at me, and I don’t know how to fix it, but I know that I want to fix it. “It’s not that.”
“Please, help me understand,” he says.
“Last night, when we were talking about my ex—”
“Jeremy,” he says, eyes darkening.
I nod. “Yeah. I didn’t…I couldn’t say how much he hurt me. How I can’t trust people. How every time I like it when you tell me to do something I feel sick to my stomach because I think it’s happening again. And I know, I know that you’re not like him.”
“Then why? Emma, I would never do that to you. I would never force you against your will, would never hurt you like that. Why?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
He takes a step towards me. “Yes, you do. You just don’t want to say it.”
“No. I’ve been trying to figure it out for the last three days and nothing.”
Another step. “Then tell me why you don’t want this. Everything about your reactions when we’re together tells me that you’re a sub and that you love it. So why do you keep running away from this? Why do you keep pushing it away?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me.” Another step closer. “Don’t lie.”
“Because I don’t want to be broken anymore!” The words burst out of me, and the tears follow. “After Jeremy left I was broken for a long time and I still might be broken and wanting this—wanting you— liking you telling me what to do makes me scared. But I do want it, and that means I must be broken, because a sane person can’t keep choosing to give up her freedom.” I run out of steam and I stand there, breathing hard, tears streaming down my face, and I know I’ve shocked him because he doesn’t look angry anymore.