Naughty Bits Part III: Bound to Please (11 page)

“Because I let her handle the complicated stuff, and I stick to the two most important tenets of running a business. Don’t spend more than you earn or can pay back within six months, and always treat your customers well.” He gave her buttock a light pinch. “But long and short of it, I’m a first grader when it comes to spreadsheets. Should I feel bad about that?”

“You know why it’s different.”

“No. I don’t. I know how to bring a submissive pleasure, how to break down her shields to maximize that, but I know nothing about actually being a submissive. Though Alice told me a lot about you secondhand, I’ve only recently met you. We’re on a journey together. I love seeing you discover this side of yourself and giving you guidance, but every step together is a new one for us both.”

She gave him a grumpy look. “I’m going to find a way to win an argument with you. Even if it requires a heavy skillet.”

He chuckled. “I’ll look forward to that. Are you hungry?”

She was, actually. Starving. But still she hesitated, putting her hand on his forearm. “I really haven’t made any hard or fast decisions about any of this. You know that, right?”

“I’d know you were lying to me or yourself if you said otherwise.” He brushed a kiss over her forehead. “Why don’t we get you dressed and eat some Mexican food? The restaurant’s only a short walk from here.”

“You just want me to sit on my sore bottom and know I’m squirming because of you.”

“There is that perk, yes.” His eyes glinted. “But I’m also hungry. Come on. I’m buying.”

* * *

She got a plate of burritos and a pretty lime green margarita. In contrast to the amazing twists and turns of their relationship thus far, this had the feeling of a regular date. Logan asked her questions about her life in Boston, her childhood with Alice. She asked him about his military service and his life before the hardware store. Being female, she couldn’t resist asking about previous relationships. For that, she earned a quirked brow and rolled eyes.

“Why do women always want to know that? Men have no interest at all in a woman’s previous lovers unless one of them happens to be her current husband.”

“That’s because men are so territorial. When they take over a pride, sometimes male lions kill off cubs that come from another male lion.”

“Ouch.” He winced. “Glad you have such a high opinion of us. How about we talk about your previous relationships, since I think they have a more significant impact on our current one?”

That did make her squirm, but he reached out, touched her hand. “I’d like to know what you’re comfortable sharing, Madison. And don’t give me sex details unless you want to see me go after some lion cubs.”

That made her chuckle, as she was sure he intended. Actually, she was quite happy not to talk about the sex side of her failed relationships. The whole mediocre history was just embarrassing next to the sizzling heat that Logan could evoke in her with barely a glance. “There’s honestly not a whole lot to say about them. They made me freakishly gun-shy when it comes to falling in love, because I don’t trust my judgment. It is what it is. You’re trying to distract me.” She pointed a finger at him. “Previous lovers. At least tell me you’ve been married once.”

He broke a chip in half, dipped it in the bowl of salsa between them. “Why?”

“Because you’re forty, or nearly there. If you’ve never been married, that means there’s something hinky about you. Dead body in the basement, mommy issues, pick your dysfunction. Maybe you’re unwilling to compromise anything about yourself, which is problematic when it comes to meshing two people together in a relationship.”

“Wow. All right. I’ve been married three times, and adapted wonderfully to every wife’s quirks and foibles.”

She blinked. “Three times? You’re lying.”

“Absolutely. You just said if I told the truth, that I’ve never been married, you’d assume I’m a lost cause.”

She gave him an exasperated look, but when he caught her hand across the table, linked fingers, she couldn’t find it in herself to pull free. “Whether you’ve had seven failed relationships or never had a single truly committed one,” he said, “it all boils down to the same thing, Madison. We didn’t find the right match.”

“Do you think you and I are?” she asked. “Seriously. I know it’s not a fair question, but . . .”

“On the contrary, it’s pretty fair at this juncture.” He held on to her hand as he picked up his beer, took another swallow from it. “I think we both see the potential. Are you willing to give it a try with me, or are you still pretending this is a fantasy fling you’ll walk away from in a year?”

Alice’s final letter to her had requested that Madison give running the store a year before deciding whether to keep or sell it. She withdrew her hand. “She told you about that?”

“I had to help her with the will, coordinate with the attorney. I saw the provisions.”

She rubbed her forehead. “See, there you go again. Always a step ahead of me, waiting for me to play catch-up. It makes me feel like a child, like I’m being handled. That was how it felt with Alice, and what aggravated me so much. I mean, she fucking waits to tell me she’s going to die, three days ahead of time . . .”

She bit back the words as the waiter came back to offer Logan another beer and top off the ice water she’d ordered with her drink. When he departed, she shook her head. “Christ. I’m sorry.”

“You know she didn’t intend it that way, Madison. I don’t either.” A look of frustration crossed his face, a rare enough occurrence that it sharpened her attention, drew her out of her resentment. “Here’s the truth of it. I’ve never been able to sustain a relationship that’s more than the Dom/sub thing, as you call it. I tend to get to know them first as submissives, inside that environment, and when we get out of it, it doesn’t translate well. But it’s such an important component to what I want with a woman, it’s hard for me to go the opposite way. Imagine me picking up a woman at church. ‘Hey, that was a great sermon on loving thy neighbor today. How would you feel about being tied up and spanked?’”

A smile wreathed her face. “You go to church?”

“Certainly. My mother raised me as a good, God-respecting, little-white-church-on-the-corner-of-Fifth-and-Main-whose-denomination-I-don’t-know member. The ladies make great cookies for Sunday school,” he added, as she choked on a laugh. Then he gave her a speculative look. “I know Alice ranged all the way between fiery Old Testament and New Age Goddess worship.”

“Don’t forget the Buddhist influence. She shaved her head when she was ten and went around for a week swathed in a harvest orange tablecloth our mother had from the seventies.”

“What did you do?”

“Who do you think shaved her head? I made her shave mine, too. Only I didn’t want anyone to think I was copycatting, so I wore a brown robe and told everyone I was Gandhi. It’s a wonder our mother didn’t just throw herself off a cliff, all the things the two of us did.”

Logan burst into laughter. The pleasure of the sound, what it did to his handsome face, eased the tension. To hell with it. Enough crazy emotional shit for one night. As if he’d come to the same conclusion, he caught her hand, tugged. “Come over and sit next to me. I want you closer.”

When she obliged, she liked leaning against that large, warm body, his arm on the booth behind her. She laid her hand on his thigh, looked up at him as he took another draw at his beer, his upper torso turned toward her so he surrounded her in an altogether pleasant way.

“What if I can’t be all you need me to be, in the Dom/sub department?” she asked.

“What if I can’t be all you need to be happy?” he countered. “That’s the risk of every relationship, Madison. That we’ll both fall short of the mark. The question is whether we both think there’s enough here to give it a serious go. The whole ‘I’d-rather-just-keep-you-a-fantasy’ thing isn’t going to fly this time.” He gave her a mildly threatening look over the top of his beer. “If those words come out of your mouth, I will dedicate myself to being the antithesis of your fantasy. I’ll stop bathing, belch loudly in your store and make crude comments about women in crotchless panties.”

She rolled her eyes, but took a healthy sip of her margarita, thinking. Then she put it down next to his beer bottle, nudged it close enough that they clinked together. “I let you cuff and beat me tonight, and that’s still tons less scary than considering us in a serious relationship. Why is that?”

“You already know the answer to that. There’s a detachment to pure BDSM play. You can walk away from every session, and keep treating me as the friendly store owner next door. Get involved with me, it becomes harder to do that.”

He fell silent, gave her a look. Waiting. His finger slid along the side of his beer bottle and back up, leaving a slick track in the condensation. She hadn’t answered his challenge, and he wasn’t letting her get away with it. Sighing, she laid a tentative fingertip on top of his hand, staring at it rather than speaking to him directly.

“My mother is dead and my father is pretty much a non-entity in my life. Alice was my family. Even when we had our two-year separation, so to speak, we spoke by phone every week, and she emailed me practically every day. She was my one constant. I can’t really describe . . .” She stopped, collected herself, tried again. “I put so much into every one of my relationships. I really believed, every time, that I’d found the right guy. Leroy was the one that . . . he broke something in me.”

How could anyone understand unless they’d experienced it? Give someone everything, then have it rejected, like it was a tacky, inappropriate gift? Treating her like she could never imagine treating them.

“I couldn’t process his indifference, the sheer cruelty at the end. The same way I can’t process ugly divorces. How can you watch a couple’s wedding video, see that time when there was nothing that was ever too much to ask of one another, and then, in the end, they can’t even give each other basic civility, let alone compassion?”

She sighed. “After Leroy left me, it was like him and all six of my other serious relationships rolled up together into this big, messy ball of string sitting inside my gut. When I’m in a session with you, it’s like I can let that go. Who I am, really me, is all there, without all those knots and tangles. As much as it sometimes freaks me out a little, it’s the best I’ve felt about myself in a while. I’m afraid if I take it outside of that . . .”

“The ball of string will take over, and you’ll lose sight of that woman again. The one seven idiots never saw, even though she was right in front of them. Though part of it was your fault, wasn’t it?”

She drew back a little. “What?”

“You’ve thought about it yourself.” He met her gaze. “Once or twice, it could be them. But seven? There’s only one common denominator, right?”

She wanted to move back to her side of the booth, but he merely held on to her, kept her still. “I’m not insulting you, Madison. You’re an intelligent, fascinating woman. Remember, you’re talking to a guy who has repeatedly failed at relationships outside the scene. I’ve faced the same thing in myself.”

He was right. He’d just ruffled her pride, and she’d reacted in that typically perverse human way. It was one thing to say something critical about yourself; another entirely to hear the same thing from a lover. “Yes, I’ve thought it.”

“Did you come up with any explanation?”

“Did you?” she asked defensively. When he gave her a look, she sighed.

“No. That’s what’s so frustrating. I thought I did everything they wanted, everything to make them happy.”

“Were you happy?”

“I didn’t . . . I never really thought about it.”

“Bingo. You were a chameleon. You became everything they wanted you to be, except it wasn’t you. You know why things feel so different between us, Madison? It’s not the D/s stuff. It’s that you reached the point you’ve said the hell with it and you’re reaching for what
you
want. Plus, I don’t
want
you to become everything I think I want. We both have the track record that proves we suck at that.”

At her startled laugh, he nodded, a wry acknowledgment. But the whole conversation was making her antsy. This time when she slid away, really needing to retreat to her side of the booth, he let her. She stared moodily at the basket of chips. “Knowing what we did wrong doesn’t really change much, does it?”

“It can. It can keep us from going down the same path.”

“And then, yay, we kiss against a magical sunset and say happily-ever-after. It’s not right,” she snapped abruptly. “To go through all that heartache and pain, every horrible moment, then say, ‘Oh gee, it was always as simple as taking Path B instead of Path A. Be yourself, and all will be well.’ People in relationships don’t want you to be yourself.”

“The wrong people don’t.” His gaze sharpened. “A lot of people assume a Dom is a misogynist who wants a woman who says “Yes sir” and
“No sir
,
” no mind of her own. I’m a strong Master, I don’t deny it. I demand absolute obedience as part of the charge for us both, when the time is right, but you’ve already proven you have the intuition to know when I don’t want that. There’s a lot of room inside that circle between us. I don’t want a brainless robot.”

When she said nothing, a note of impatience entered his voice. “Do you want
me
to be any different? You might say ‘Put down the toilet lid’ or ‘I wish you’d watch a chick flick instead of football,’ but would you really want me to be that all the time? Don’t the edges make the shape more interesting?”

She heard him, but it was a murmur behind her memories, playing out on the reflection of her margarita glass. Her fingers played with the damp coaster. When she heard him sigh, she looked up in time to see the ironic twist of his lips. “It’s funny, isn’t it?” he said. “My problem was finding a woman I wanted to be with outside of the scene as much as in it, and here you are; a woman who only wants me inside the scene because you’re afraid of being hurt again. It would be perfect, except it isn’t. We were both meant to reach for more.”

“But you just said it. You really don’t know anything about me, except what Alice told you.”