He’s watching me closely, standing close but not crowding me. So, he does want me, but the elation I might have felt is tempered by uncertainty. As far as I’m aware the world of dominants and submissives is filled with frightening things like gimp suits and handcuffs and humiliation. What would he become in that world? I wouldn’t know him. “I like you as you are,” I whisper. “I don’t want you to get all ‘dom.'”
Understanding dawns on his face. “Minette, if you wanted to try this with me I would still be the same person as I am now. Maybe a little more myself in some ways, but I’d still be me and you’d still be you. I like you as you are, too.”
My heart doesn’t seem to know how confused my head is and turns somersaults hearing this. “Oh. Well, what is it then, obeying you?”
A small, self-satisfied smile appears on his lips. It’s the same smile he gave me when I was sprawled in the road in front of his car and I said his name. I narrow my eyes at him. Frederic d’Estang, you are so goddamn pleased with yourself. I haven’t agreed to anything, so you can just wipe that smile off your face.
“It means being respectful and doing the things I ask you to. It means letting me do things for you. Look out for you. It means following my rules.” He runs his eyes over me, smiling wider. “Though you’re such a good girl I can’t even imagine what rules I’d have for you. You go to bed at a reasonable hour. You’re polite. You don’t get into strops. I’d probably just want to sit you on my lap and tell you what a pretty little angel you are all day.”
I frown, puzzled. “That doesn’t sound very dominant.”
“It is if you crave being told that by me.”
A thud of alarm goes through me. I do crave that. When he says good girl I feel like I’m floating. How did this happen without me permitting it?
He continues, and his voice keeps working its soft, insistent magic. “It means you like being in my control when I take you to bed. Being tied up. Being tied down. Having your ponytail wrapped around my hand. Having my hand wrapped around your throat.”
I stare at him for several moments, struggling to fight through the images he’s put in my head. “Well, this was an interesting hypothetical conversation. Good, um, background color for the book.” I turn away, fiddling with the hair at the back of my neck.
“Evie,” he says, drawing my name out with an exasperated edge. “We weren’t talking hypothetically and you know it.”
He touches my arm and my stomach lurches. I remember those women and their smiles. Frederic est très régnant. “You do this a lot, don’t you,” I say, pulling away.
“Yes. I like it.”
I can feel my affection for him dim somewhat.
“Evie? You look annoyed.”
“I’ve interviewed a lot of your lovers, haven’t I? Even Sabine was your lover. I suddenly don’t feel very special.”
“Well, that’s ridiculous, because you are. Chérie, we all have pasts, and I’m older than you.”
“Yes, you are. I feel like a habit of yours.”
“You’re not. Any woman that I suggest lets me take her to bed and be her maître is very special to me. I don’t go through my life hurting people for my own amusement, and I don’t take lovers out of habit.”
The women who called him régnant all did so with smiles on their faces. None of them seemed to bear him any ill will. Where are the ones who hate your guts? You can’t be this nice. No one’s this nice. “How do they end, these affairs of yours?”
“Sometimes they have a natural time limit. I have to leave the country, or they do. Sometimes they fizzle out to friendship.”
“Do I have a time limit?”
He folds his arms and thinks. “Either until you get tired of me, or the end of the London show. You have your life in England and I have mine here.”
Jane Eyre wraps in January. It’s not that he says it unkindly, but it’s so clinical having the time limit of a love affair laid out like that. From my limited experience and what I read in books people usually fall into them and figure them out as they go along. But then, I suppose if you have unconventional tastes it’s best to lay out all your expectations up front for the other person. Maybe that’s the secret of why those other women think about him today with smiles on their faces. They knew exactly what they were getting into so there were no hurt feelings and muddled expectations.
You’re thinking about it. Even though you tell yourself you’re unsure if you agree with the sort of relationship he’s offering, you’re thinking about it. Otherwise you wouldn’t be asking these questions. I tell myself there’s no harm in thinking or talking, but that same snide voice says, Oh? Curiosity killed the minette.
“What do you get out of being someone’s...” What did he call it? “Maître.”
He lifts his hand to my hair and plays with a loose strand. “I get to be your protector. I get to feel needed. When you sit in my lap and smile at me and tell me you feel good, I know that everything’s right with the world. When I fuck you and you look at me like you’re coming apart in my arms, that’s even better.”
I feel a whimper rise in my throat. That’s what I ache for, losing myself in the hardness of Frederic’s body, the fierceness of him. His hand around my throat, holding on to my hair, I crave that. But there are other things I don’t understand. “Calling me ‘little angel.' The way you say good girl and princess and kitten. Giving me Christine to hug. It’s so strange.”
&nbs
p; “Why? You like it, don’t you?”