The Dom of My Dreams: A BDSM Novel (9 page)

           
He smiled enigmatically and said nothing.

           
There was amusement in his expression, coldness in his eyes, and his silent answer alarmed me.
 
Had I stepped into a trap I couldn’t get out of?

           
“You don’t have to wake up your driver,” I said, dazed.
 
“I can get a taxi.
 
Or I could just walk.
 
It’s only a twenty-minute walk to my house.”

           
“You can’t walk home at three in the morning wearing nothing but a raincoat.
 
George is awake.
 
He’s on my beck and call at all times, especially during the night.”

           
I raised an eyebrow.
 
“Oh?
 
On call to take all of your little sex slaves home after you’ve had your wicked way with them?”

A puzzled expression passed over his face, then he looked away for a few heartbeats.
 
His face was carefully blank when he spun back to me.
 

“George is waiting outside, Miss Fordham,” Seton said, voice dull and detached, before turning his back to me again.
 
“Thanks for the lovely evening.
  
You will hear from me soon.”

“But—”

“Goodnight.”

           
The last thing I heard was the sound of a door slamming behind him.
 
I was all alone.

Chapter Four

My friend Jeremy once told me that I would blend in well with a New York crowd.
 
He had lived in Manhattan for a couple of years before moving to Northampton, and he told me that I had the “New York rudeness” down pat.
 
I guess he was right.
 
Every morning on my way to work, I walk fast, avoid eye contact with other morning travelers and, more important, ignore strangers who try to stop me to ask for change or for directions.
 
I don’t mean to be deliberately rude when I do this, but time is precious, especially in the morning, and I hate wasting it on trivialities.

           
But things were different the morning after my tryst with Seton.
 
I bounced out of my apartment with a big smile on my face, and not only did I make eye contact with the passersby, I smiled at them and wished them a nice day.
 
Some of them reciprocated, while others, like me under normal circumstances, either ignored me or pretended they hadn’t seen me.
 
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who would ft right in New York City.
 

In addition to being friendly to my fellow Northamptoners, I had made the effort to look nice for work.
 
Bookends AtoZ was very informal—most of us showed up for work in jeans and a t-shirt whenever there weren’t any important meetings—but that morning I wore a pretty floral dress, a red cashmere sweater and red strappy shoes (to show off the ankle bracelet and toe ring).
 
My red Balenciaga bag bounced with every step I made.
 
I looked and felt like someone who had all the time in the world—my BlackBerry and Bluetooth headset the only visible signs of a busy day ahead.
 
It was a gorgeous late-April morning, and I felt so good I could have danced my way to the office.
 
That’s what a mind-blowing orgasm does to a person, I suppose.

           
I went to Starbucks to order my daily caffeine fix and to meet up with Mitch for that chat I’d promised him the evening before.
 
He’d called me this morning to remind me of our coffee date.
  
I grudgingly agreed to see him.
 
I would have preferred to spend the morning strolling happily to work, but a promise is a promise, and Mitch would never forgive me if I turned him down again.

           
He was perched on a stool next to the front window, scrolling through his iPhone, a small coffee in his hand.
 
He looked adorable—if a little rough—in an unbuttoned flannel shirt, a red t-shirt underneath with the words “Girl Toy” emblazoned on it, and a pair of torn jeans.
 
He kind of looked like British soccer player David Beckham, only sloppier and not as attractive.
 
I smiled at him and mouthed “be right back” as I went to the register and ordered my coffee drink.
 
I always ordered black coffee, but I went for one of those super-fancy frozen concoctions this time.
 
Today was a special day, and so I ordered something different for the first time in ages.

Though it was just past eight in the morning, the coffee shop wasn’t as full as it usually was.
 
There were people waiting for their coffees and only a couple of them were sitting at tables, one of whom was Mitch.
 
Mac Guy was the other one.
 
Mac Guy was always at Starbucks.
 
It didn’t matter at what time of the day I went in for coffee, he was always there, at one of the tables out back, with his shiny MacBook Pro and a Venti iced latte in front of him.
  
I envied Mac Guy.
 
I wished my job consisted of spending the entire day at a coffee shop.
  

“What,” Mitch said as soon as I sat across from him, “a new drink today?”
 
He leered at me, his gaze sliding casually down my body before flashing me with one of his lecherous grins.
 
“You look great, by the way.
 
Feminine and very…happy.
 
What gives?
 
Sex life pick up?”

I twinkled prettily at him.
 
As a matter of fact, it has, no thanks to you.
 
I knew he’d give me shit if I told him I was seeing someone else, so I said nothing.
 
Not that he had a right to complain, but he felt “entitled” to know what the members of his little harem were up to when he wasn’t around.
 
It wasn’t out of concern for his health or that of his partner’s, but more out of competition.
 
He didn’t want his girls, as he called them, to have more partners than him.
 
Mitch believed in open relationships, as long as he was the one with the better sex life.

“I have to be at work in half an hour,” I said sharply, “so this had better be quick.”

“And here I thought you were my friend,” he muttered bitterly.

I rolled my eyes.
 
Mitch was such a drama queen.
 
It was difficult to feel sympathy for someone who treated women like disposal washcloths.
 
He was lucky I had agreed to meet with him at all.

“All right,” he snapped, annoyed with my impatience.
 
“I just want to talk to someone.
 
Believe it or not, I do love Mel, and I’m heartbroken.”
 
He sighed.
 
“I just…I never thought she would actually dump me, yanno?”

“Uh huh,” I muttered, scowling.
 
He never thought she would actually dump him, huh?
 
Translation: I thought I would be the one to dump
her
.
 
The cynical side of me couldn’t help reading between the lines.
 
And with guys like Mitch, it wasn’t difficult to read between the lines.
 

I remembered the day I met him.
 
I was having drinks with Jeremy at a sports bar, and this cute, scruffy-looking blonde guy approached me and said, “If I told you that you had a great body, would you hold it against me?”
 
Mitch wasn’t exactly what you’d call an enigma.
 
He was very easy to read—the human equivalent of a Danielle Steel novel.

“Mel and I had something different,” he lamented, “something special.”

“Yes, I know you guys had something truly
special
,” I said, not unkindly, for I didn’t want him to notice the sarcasm.
 
 
“Who did she dump you for?
 
Who’s the guy?”

“Not a guy,” he bit out.
 
“A girl, if you can call her that.
 
A big butch one with hair underneath her armpits and a nasty tattoo of a snake on one of her beefy arms.
 
And get this, she drives a fucking Harley!
 
How could Mel dump me for a nasty-ass dyke like that?”

“Mitchell!” I hissed, embarrassed, as I cast a worried glance at two women holding hands near the cash register.
 
“Don’t talk that way!
 
What do you have against gay people all of a sudden?
 
You’d better be careful.
 
They pay your salary, you know.”

Mitchell Briars wrote a column for
The Queer Bohemian
, a local newspaper that catered to arty homosexuals.
 
Mitch was the token straight guy writing about his sexual exploits in a town where available straight men were a dying breed.
 
His columns were witty and sometimes surprisingly clever, and the gay community found his tongue-in-cheek approach to heterosexual dating both silly and entertaining.
 
Bookends AtoZ published Mitch’s collection of essays last year.
 
The book, titled
The [Straight] Male of the Species
, was quite successful and received a rave review from the
Boston Chronicle
, calling Mitch the “male Candace Bushnell.”

“I know, I know,” Mitch said, shamefaced.
 
“I’m just pissed, yanno?
 
I was a good boyfriend.
 
I even let her fool around with other people.
 
What more could a woman ask for?”

I took a sip of my frozen coffee drink and shot him a give-me-a-break look.
 
“You’re forgetting that you, too, fool around with other people.”

Mitch ran his fingers through his dishevelled hair.
 
“Yeah, so?”

I raised an eyebrow.
 
“So maybe she wanted something else.
 
Maybe she was looking for…I don’t know.
 
Something meaningful, I guess.”

“Oh, yeah, like what?
 
Like monogamy?”
 
He snorted.
 
“Please!
 
Monogamy is dead.
 
No one’s monogamous anymore.
 
You shouldn’t expect someone to settle for just one person for a lifetime.
 
It’s not natural, especially for men.”

In other words, any woman foolish enough to aspire to become Mitch’s one and only was in for a major disappointment.
 
Fortunately, I was not one of those women.
 
I couldn’t care less what Mitch did with other people.
 
In fact, I didn’t even like the guy!
 
All I cared about was that he scratched my itch once in a while, and that he used a condom while doing it.
 
However, that, too, was about to change.

I took another sip of my half-full cold drink, then gazed into Mitch’s puppy-dog blue eyes and blurted, “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

A flicker of shock flashed in his lovely eyes.
 

I hurried on, not giving him a chance to respond.
 
“This hasn’t been working for me.
 
You go days, sometimes weeks, without seeing me, and when you finally do you expect me to drop everything for you.
 
And I can’t do that anymore, Mitch.
 
I’m courting this big author who could change the course of Bookends AtoZ and I have to devote a lot of my time trying to convince him to—”

“So you’re dumping me too?” he asked, face so sad he looked like an abandoned puppy at a dog pound.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘dumping you,’ Mitch,” I countered softly, reasonably.
 
I was aware of the rising level of people at the coffee shop, and I didn’t want Mitch to cause a scene.
 
“We’re not a couple.
 
I…I just don’t have time for you anymore.
 
I—”

“Aww, this is fucking great!” Mitch shouted, throwing his hands up in the air in outrage, startling me and the people waiting for coffee at the register.
 
“I can’t believe I’ve been dumped twice in one week!
 
Ain’t I enough for you or something?”