My mind blanks at the ease with which he switches from the topic of sex to violence. It should be more horrifying, but it only pulls me deeper into a Rafe-fog.
Trying to focus on his question, I recall the night I walked into his sex room and didn’t know it was a sex room until I saw the floggers. “No. I saw them in your… in your play room. I was curious; I didn’t know what most of that stuff was, so I looked it up.”
“See anything that made you curious?”
His hand continues to trace my thigh and I shift, my body heating up at the memory of all that research. Wondering what he liked. Picturing him in that dominant role, and inserting myself as his playmate. I couldn’t ask about his sexual appetites, so my imagination had no limits. “I saw that you had a cane,” I state.
“Mm hmm,” he murmurs casually.
“And I guess you’re supposed to be—I guess those can be—” I don’t know what I’m saying. My normally neat, fluid thoughts tangle into messy knots as his hand creeps up my thigh, dangerously close to my panties. I’m tempted to visualize his hand under the fabric of my dress, his rough fingers on my soft thigh, but I don’t need to imagine it this time. It’s really happening. I need only look down.
He finishes my thought for me, even though I’ve half-forgotten it already, too distracted by the current location of his hand. “Caning isn’t for everyone,” he says simply. “Many have a bad first experience with it, a top who doesn’t know what he’s doing, turns them off it altogether.”
“Right. Yes, that’s what I was saying. Not everyone is good at it.” I bring my gaze back to his. “I guess you are?”
With a nonchalant nod, as if we aren’t discussing his sexual appetites, he says, “
It’s not difficult, you just have to possess control over yourself and knowledge of the technique. Anyone who cares to learn could do it, but some men don’t. Some Doms are abusive, and some sadists just don’t care.”
I swallow. “So, which are you? Dom or sadist?”
“Dom,” he says easily, almost as if reassuring me. “I’m not a sadist. I don’t even use the cane much, to be honest. Cassandra liked it—or pretended to,” he says, his lips curving up faintly, but there’s no amusement there. “I’m not sure if anything I knew about her was real.”
I hate the mention of Cassandra. I hate it more because just saying her name brings a cloud of sadness to the table, like it follows him. Like she still follows him, and I won’t have that.
Without consideration, I rest my head on his shoulder. It works extremely effectively to bring him back to me, back to the present. His brown eyes glow with warmth and his hand on my thigh halts, resting there.
“Do you still think about Nate?” he asks.
“Never,” I answer honestly.
“No, he wasn’t worth thinking about, was he?” he murmurs. “Do you have another ghost from your past?”
My only ghost is him, and he never even appropriately haunted me. Pressing my lips together, I shake my head. “No specters worth mentioning.”
“I can’t decide if I find that sad, or I think you’re lucky.”
“It’s not sad,” I tell him, shaking my head. “It’s not like I don’t know what love feels like; I do. I know the rush and excitement, the sinking in your stomach every time they walk into a room, and I know the less intense, steadier version that comes after that. It’s just… I put my heart on a shelf a long time ago, so I haven’t given it away in a while. Last time I did it was to Nate, and, well, you made that break-up a lot easier.”
He smiles faintly. “You put your heart on a shelf, huh? In a jar, or a box?”
I smile, settling into the crook of his arm. “Well, it was a jar, but some dimwit thought it was a box, so… I guess that’s the story we’re going with.”
“Virginia’s jar. That sounds unimaginably dirty,” he states.
“Virginia’s box sounds even crasser.”
“It does,” he agrees, reaching for his drink on the table, tipping it back, and draining it. As his glass thuds on the table, he looks over at me and says, “What do you say we get out of here?”
“Get out of here? And go where?”
“Somewhere I can play with your box,” he says lightly. “Doesn’t seem like you’re ready for exhibitionism yet.”
I stare at him like a petrified object, frozen forever in this moment, unable to escape it. I won’t, either. I know this moment will end, and we’ll both move on, but I am already so fucked from coming here with him tonight. Now I have this to contend with. The knowledge that he wants to take me somewhere alone, that some of my fondest fantasies could come to life… and I’m obligated to tell him no.
That’s just mean and unfair.
I can’t quite get the words out, so I shake my head no.