Everything I’d done afterward? Like the possessiveness? The overbearing rules? The punishment anal? The humiliation for my own pleasure?
“Someday you’re going to figure out what an asshole I am,” I said.
She laughed, but I wasn’t joking. I slid my fingers down over her welted ass cheeks. Even in the darkness, I could make out the pattern of whip marks by feel.
“I’m proud of you.” I leaned closer to her, pressing my lips to her temple and the soft line of her hair. “I’m proud that you found a client, even if it only happened because you broke a rule. Sometimes shit works out that way. Sometimes bad things turn into good things.”
“I think that’s true,” she said after a moment. Maybe she was remembering our first session at the W Hotel, which was bad and crazy and definitely sketchy in the area of consent. I’d still enjoyed it, and she had too, and here we were. Sometimes awful things could turn into wonderful things.
Unfortunately, the opposite was also possible. Sometimes wonderful things could turn wrong and bad.
Chapter Six: Clarity
Chere rarely sulked, but there was always that time after a hard punishment when things felt tense between us. She spent the next couple days partly with Vinod and partly in the museums and artistic quarters of Paris, while I languished in conference meetings. I say I languished, but the truth was, I lived for international architecture, and appreciated the privilege of sitting on these panels and discussing ways to beautify the world. I attended this conference annually, but this year, Chere was with me and I missed her.
It wasn’t only the sex, although I fucking loved the sex. No, it was some part of me that relaxed and unwound when she was near me. To put it simply: she made me happy. My past relationships had been full of anger and artifice, and disgust with everything to do with love. How did I feel about love now? Jesus.
Fuck.
The conference ended on Friday, but we didn’t fly out right away. I’d arranged a little extra time so we could walk around Paris together. Why not? We’d had so much fun exploring Oslo earlier in the year.
We spent the first part of our free day in bed, grasping one another, fucking, struggling, kissing. Faint welts lingered on Chere’s ass, but the post-punishment distance between us had mostly melted.
It was tempting to remain in bed, but she was happy and bright, and excited to walk around the city with me instead of being on her own. She was thrilled to spend time with me, an emotional shock I never got used to. She liked me, sadism and all. She loved me.
I took off her collar and we left the hotel to stroll through the Tuileries Garden. Like so many things in Paris, the sculptures and statues were enough to make any designer’s head spin. Green lawn, fountains, flowers, and stately lines of trees…there were so many things to look at, and so many people.
Chere didn’t point out the broad motifs—the grand circles and intricately planned walkways. No, as always she was drawn to things ninety-nine percent of people never noticed, things like minute etchings on the statues, or the berry bushes that were just starting to turn orange for fall. Orange was my least favorite color, but she made it seem beautiful.
“Does this inspire you?” I asked as we gazed across the grounds.
“Yes,” she said. “But it’s so busy here.”
I could take a hint. We left the Tuileries to explore some of Paris’s quieter streets, hidden avenues with narrow shop fronts and historical architecture. We proceeded at a snail’s pace, her avid eyes taking in everything as I attempted to teach her some French. Her accent was awful as she ordered our lunch at a corner bistro. I asked for wine, and we lingered for almost two hours talking about art and culture. She asked how I’d become interested in skyscrapers and bridges and I told her the truth. It was an ego thing.
“An ego thing?” she repeated, laughing. Her cheeks were flushed pink. Maybe it was the wine.
“An ego thing,” I retorted. “Don’t act like you’re surprised.”
She asked me about my schooling, about my travels, about the most favorite thing I’d designed. I told her the truth about that too. There was no favorite thing. There were always regrets after the fact, when the pylons were sunk and the construction too far underway to make changes.
“You don’t like your designs? Any of them?” she asked, as if this was the most tragic thing in the world.
“Don’t you sometimes design things you don’t like once you’ve executed them?”
“Yeah, but when that happens I melt them down and start over. I guess you can’t do that with a bridge.”
“No. They’re a bit too permanent for that.”