Forbidden: A Standalone (18 page)

When he stood, I saw him slow for a second as he shifted. He’d been stabbed in the chest almost two weeks before with a wide, thick blade, yet he’d shown no signs of injury until that moment. Even then, it was so slight I knew no one who wasn’t trained to observe people would have noticed it.

“You’ll be restricted to the grounds,” I said. “And I’m sorry, but you’ll have to be supervised.”

“Of course. Wouldn’t want her to crack another molar.”

He didn’t seem the type to joke over something so serious, but the fact that he had sent a chill up my spine.

FIONA

I
 skipped lunch to sit at the window. Karen went down to sit in front of a plate of food because she had to, but no such requirements were made of me. I could stare into the grey winter sky and wait.

Deacon was everything to me. What a sad turn of events that someone with a perfectly functioning brain, identified as gifted in third grade, should let her life revolve around a man for her sanity; an unreliable, overcommitted man at that. Worse than a doctor or a cop, there were times he couldn’t be around, and I was ill-equipped to deal with them. But that was my fault, wasn’t it? A strong woman would have been able to manage during his absences without fucking around, without pissing him off, without breaking every single rule.

But what other man would tolerate my needs? Who else would work with them instead of fighting them? What other person could help me function the way he did?

The goal, once I got out of there, was to either remove Deacon from my life or make sure he didn’t leave Los Angeles all the time. Or something between those impossible poles.

I shifted in my chair. The pain in my right wrist ran to my inner elbow. I’d been leaning on it for too long. When Deacon had pinned it against the wall, it had hurt.

But the day he’d showed me how to hold my arms for a knotting, he said that it wouldn’t hurt. I’d only realized later that I’d damaged it, so I had to be extra mindful of where the ropes fell before I went into subspace.

He’d knotted me, that time after he returned. The last time. A simple shrimp tie during play, and I’d cringed when he moved my arm.

That was off. If he’d damaged my arm when he pinned it, it wouldn’t have hurt until later.

I rubbed my arm. It might never heal. He was very serious about the wrists. Would he have pinned me? Even in anger? And had he held my arm long enough to really injure it?

The soup of questions didn’t confuse me, but as I dug into the memory of what happened, it became clear.

***

His breath falls on my cheek, and a pain in my arm runs from my wrist to the sensitive side of my bicep.

“You did not let someone else knot you,” he says from deep in his throat. He’s naked, stunning. He pins me to the wall, the friction making the open skin on my ass scream.

Regret. Pounds of it. Miles wide. Regret to the depth of my broken spirit.

“I’m sorry.” I am. I’m devastated and ashamed.

“Why?”

My wrist hurts. He’s pressing it so hard against the wall, as if I’d leave, as if I’d ever turn my back on him. Yet I want to get away, to run, to show him that I can abandon him the way he abandons me.

I wiggle, but he only presses harder and demands, “Why?”

“Get off me!”

“Tell me why!” His eyes are wider, his teeth flashing as if he wants to rip out my throat. “Why?”

“I need it!” The words come out before I think, and they’re poison to him.

Before I expect it, he grabs my jaw, and I feel pain where his fingers press. He looks into me, cutting through me with his eyes, and I want to curl up into a blackened char of desiccation.

He lets me go, and I fall to the floor.

***

I almost missed Deacon come out of the building. The valet handed him his keys, and he took them without moving his face from the window. He looked concerned. I didn’t know if he could see me since I’d leaned back in the chair, thinking about the last time we’d been naked together.

He stood still, looking up at me. He wouldn’t move out of the driveway until I acknowledged him. It was all over his face and posture. I leaned forward and put my finger to the glass. Seeing me, he smiled and put up a finger.

He needed me.

ELLIOT

I
 used to be happy at Alondra.

Maybe I was freakish to think of it that way. It was impossible to explain how working with such troubled people made me content, but the small victories looked so large. Then I went to Westonwood, and wound up feeling as though the small victories were the same no matter who the patients were. I felt as if the world was full of too much pain to soothe.

After I left Westonwood then went back, I didn’t want to be anywhere, and I wanted to be everywhere. My discontent flourished in a garden of anguish and brokenness.

I’d left my chaplaincy at Alondra and put away the collar. I put off ordination over God’s sadistic torture of his only son, and subsequent torture of millions of people, because what was the point of salvation if you still existed at the whims of God and man? What was the point of faith if you were still subject to suffering? I understood all the theologies, but I didn’t see why I had to align myself with it. I understood the idea of God as compassionate observer, healer, and strength. Those were all nice ideas. But why choose to stand by them as partner? Why become a mouthpiece?

My mentor, and old horse who never wrote down a sermon in his life, told me I was scared to wear the collar, and though he said it kindly, as if it was totally normal, I’d stormed out of the office.

He was right of course. A step away from becoming a man of God, a commitment I’d always wanted to make, and I ran like a coward. I had no excuse besides fear and an unwillingness to conquer it.

I dried myself after my shower, putting my day together in my mind. Therapy, then a session at Alondra, paperwork, and a quick meeting at Westonwood to discuss scheduling. I couldn’t do this for long. I couldn’t hold down two jobs. The commute was deadening. Alondra had to go and Westonwood had to go, but I needed them. Everything I was doing, I was doing for the wrong reasons. I was proving to Jana I could do what I wanted by being at Alondra, and I was sating some indefinite hunger by being at Westonwood. I still didn’t know what I wanted.

Jana came into the bathroom, her long hair tangled from sleep, her nipples poking through her cloud-and-kitten pajamas. “You done?”

“Just about.”

“You going to that place today?”

“That place? Yes.” I hung my towel and stood naked in front of her.

“My father is worried about the gangs again, since you’re back at Alondra.” She turned toward the mirror. “He wants to get us an alarm system.”

“No.” I moved her hair from her neck.

“He’ll pay for it.”

“I’m not living in a cage.” I kissed the back of her neck.

She shrugged me off. “It’s not a cage.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “The triggers are so small. You can get one so the alarm just notifies the police. It doesn’t even make a sound here.”

Her wrist looked so delicate peeking from her pajama sleeves, so vulnerable, with a little gold chain around it. Nothing was more feminine than the wrist. Between her exposed throat and the bracelet, I was fully erect.

From behind her, I wrapped my fingers around her wrist and pulled her arm down. I whispered, “I don’t want an alarm system.”

I pushed my dick against her and pressed her wrist to her lower back. She tried to pull away, but I held firm. Her resistance sent a wave of pressure between my legs, and something else came to mind. Something that shouldn’t have been there while I was trying to seduce Jana.

“I want it,” she said.

Was she talking about the stupid alarm system? I didn’t care. I had a head full of pink ass cheeks and paddles, of bound wrists and begging.

“You’ll get it.” I bent her over the vanity.

“Elliot, really…”

I held her wrist with one hand and yanked her pajama pants down with the other. Her ass—unblemished, round, perfectly soft in my hand—creased as I grabbed the flesh.

“Ouch. I have to go to work. What are you doing?”

She wriggled under me, and I held her down. “Something different. Tell me how you feel about it.” I slapped her ass. “Later.”

“Elliot!”

I slapped her ass again. The sound and the sight of pink finger-shaped marks on soft skin swelled my cock against her.

“I’m at Westonwood. You should be happy.” I slapped her again.

She squealed. “What are you—?”

Slap.

“I’m getting ready to fuck you.”

She looked around at me, as if checking to see if I was the man she lived with. I couldn’t do this much longer or I would come all over her back. I put my dick against her. She was wet. Very wet. And she hadn’t told me to stop.

I pushed inside her, and I twisted her arm behind her back, pressing her to the vanity, when I felt her shudder. Her mouth opened a little. Her cheeks flushed when I moved inside her. God, she’d never felt so tight. When I slapped her ass again, she clenched around me.

I leaned over her, letting her wrist go as I curved my body to hers. “You get tight when I spank you. Did you know that?”

I pulled her a little away from the sink and put my fingers on her clit. I’d never handled her so roughly, and I wanted more. I wanted to bite her shoulder. I wanted to pull out, pull her onto the bed, and drive her crazy for an hour. I wanted to tie her up and call in sick. I wanted control over her body as I’ve never wanted anything before.

But she wouldn’t. Not this girl. No time. Got to get to work. Got to argue. Got to talk about fear.

I teased her clit. She stopped pulling away.

“I’m not getting an alarm system, and I’ll work wherever I want,” I said. “The next time you suggest anything, I’m tying you to the bed with your legs in the air, and I’m going to spank you and tease you with my tongue until you learn who’s in control here. Do you understand?”

“No, I don’t.” The truth was in her moan, not her words.

“Let me be clear then.” I buried myself in her, pulled out, and slammed back in.

She clenched and grunted, coming with a gasp and a long vowel, stiffening under me. I lost control of my own imagination which, for some reason, had fixated on Fiona in the afternoon light, moving her finger against my desk blotter. The sexless cut of her shirt made the knobs of her nipples even more prominent, lips over her teeth in a half smile.

I let myself want those nipples. I let myself want to fuck her mouth. I let myself picture her under me, her red hair splayed on the pillow and wrists tied above her.

I came so hard, I thought my body had expanded to the size of the room, pulsing against the walls, the towel rack, the ass pressed against me. I collapsed against Jana, my girlfriend of two years, and kissed the soft skin of her neck.

When she spoke, she did it softly. Not hurt or upset, just matter-of-fact. “Get off me.”

***

Jana showered immediately after. She stayed in long enough to make it impossible for me to see her before I left.

So I drove.

When I was ten, I’d woken from a nightmare and tiptoed into my parents’ room. We’d just moved to Menlo Park from Fresno, and I was scared of everything. My mother, who seemed more and more withdrawn. My sister, who was growing breasts and curves, changing in ways that made me feel the loss of a friend and the fear of a new creature that I didn’t understand. My father, however, was the same. Bigger than life, never arguing or raising his voice, he was a lion whose power was in his gait and mien. I looked just like him in the end, but I knew that power he had wasn’t mine to wield.

On the night I dreamed of toilet bowls overflowing with reams of shit, I’d run to Mommy and Daddy’s room. I saw them. Mother and Father on top of the sheets, him taking her from behind like an animal. The noises. God, the adult in me had to laugh. I’d been through that memory a hundred times, how he had his hands on her throat. The way he hit her bottom. My mother, groaning.

I’d run back to my room, as if the terror outside it was greater than the terror inside, and curled up, trying to pretend my erection didn’t exist. Hadn’t I sought God for the same reason I shut my eyes that night? To bathe my mind and soul in light and goodness?

Right in my bathroom, I’d just replayed the whole scene, lick for lick. Why? Because of Fiona Drazen and her coyly baited nuggets of dirty talk. I wanted to be angry at her for it, but I couldn’t. I knew better. It wasn’t her; it was me.

I wasn’t sure I could continue to be Fiona’s therapist, and I was positive I couldn’t stop. She had abandonment issues, and my leaving the first time had sent her into a tailspin. Leaving again would only reinforce her idea that she was worthless.

Yet my sexual fantasies about her were affecting my life, and seeing her only reminded me that I wanted her. I kept thinking
just once
and
maybe after she gets out,
neither of which would help her.

I kept imagining her body twined with mine, her pink ass, her willing submission, her tiny breasts under my palms. I wanted to taste her. I thought about it whenever I got into my car. Whenever I stepped into the shower. She was like a ghost hanging over me.

“Countertransference isn’t about the patient,” Lee said.

“I can read a textbook any time.”

“You’re being hostile. You know as well as I do that you have to look at your own life and decide what needs aren’t being addressed that you’re imagining she can fill.”

“I met her partner. He’s an interesting guy. Grew up in South Africa. I think I’ve been out of the United States twice.”

“You talk about him like he’s competition. She’s not a conquest. She’s a patient.”

My sessions with Lee had gone from chiding, pleasant, and slightly annoying to highly uncomfortable. I wanted to run away, but like any good therapist, I stood astride my discomfort and observed it.

“I want to just feel something without turning it over constantly,” I said.

“That’s not your job,” she said. “I have to tell you, I’m getting concerned about you. This is dangerous territory. Wanting to explore feelings like this without scrutiny? Come on. What’s going on with Jana?”