The Dom Project (10 page)

A man in a suit gripped the arm of a woman dressed as a maid. He had dark hair, but he wasn’t John. “You’ve been stealing,” he said, in a flat voice. The maid widened her eyes in an approximation of fear. The poor acting didn’t bother Robin—in fact, she liked the ritualistic monotone, the stylized poses. It struck the right balance of conceptual danger and reassurance that it was all a show. Oh yes. This was perfect.

“Don’t hurt me,” she said.

“Don’t hurt me,” Robin whisper-echoed. She licked her finger and didn’t think of John.

* * *

“You guys gave me a defective machine,” Professor Arkin grumbled. John was already wriggling underneath the shelves behind the podium, tracing cables with his fingertips, following his instincts. He found the problem pretty quickly.

“Try it again.”

“Why? It’s only going to fail! I’ve wasted a third of my class trying to fix the damn thing.”

What a dick
. “It’s called a projector. And you got the cables confused and plugged it into itself,” John said, making sure to speak loudly enough so the whole class would hear. As he wriggled back out again, he caught a few muffled laughs coming from the back of the auditorium. “Should be fine now. Give us a call if you have any other problems.” He dusted off his jeans and clambered to his feet.

Starting with one of the laughers in the back, Professor Arkin’s class started to applaud John, a couple of students even hopping up to give him a standing ovation.

He took a bow.

Then, before Professor Arkin seized a chance to kill John with his eyes, he got the hell out of there.

He was halfway back to the A/V department when light from the library’s mirrored windows caught his eye. Feeling like a magpie, he leaned against a nearby tree and studied the gleaming patterns. Robin was perched somewhere on the fourth floor. The ego boost he’d gotten from his just-like-magic plug-in performance drained away when he contemplated their contract. He’d thought the time limit had been brilliant, at first, giving them both an out, but now it felt more like a countdown. What happened after? Was he supposed to turn back the clock? Having breakfasts with her, teasing her about her work, trying desperately not to think about the time he’d seen her wide-eyed and panting, breasts rising delectably out of the top of her bustier?

The thought of making a serious play for Robin—now that was a contradiction in terms, but it seemed to fit the situation—entered his mind. He imagined her wearing the pearl choker every day, coming to him every night, and the idea was so electrifying he might as well have stuck his goddamned tongue in the socket back there. But. But, but...that was assuming she felt anywhere near the same about him.

Reading her body and reading between the lines of her blog posts, he was cautiously confident about his chances of ending the contract with something beyond friendship. He wasn’t some vain egotistical prick, but he also wasn’t one of those timid guys who talked themselves into believing they were completely undesirable. He had a steady job, he was funny, he had a nice body. Basically, he had a lot to offer. Nothing instantly ruled him out, even if they’d been just friends up to this point.

But then what? He’d have to change his entire lifestyle, the one he’d so carefully constructed to fit his personality. And what about her? Sure, she’d learned to accept his “eccentricities” as a friend, but as a full-time lover? If they moved in together or—God forbid—shared a room? When he’d first met Robin, she’d been a real “fixer”—always psychoanalyzing him and wanting him to join yoga with her and nagging him about the deadlines for his assignments. One fight too many about the subject had gotten her to back off, but could he really expect her to be so hands-off with a man she wanted to share her life with?

Jesus
,
John
,
share her life?
It’s just sex.
Not even sex.
Maybe it could be sex
,
but that’s still all it is.
So they were friends and they were clearly sexually compatible. He should know better than anyone that sexual compatibility didn’t automatically lead to hearts and flowers and collars.

He turned his back on the glittering library, walked toward the low-slung bunker-like building that held the A/V department and tried to put his mind back on business. Not that business was particularly taxing. His boss would be cloistered in the back room behind a thick metal door, where he did God-knows-what all day. The student assistants would be giggling over tentacle porn while rehearsing K-pop dance moves and playing online games. Anything but actual work.

His phone rang with the first bar of “Tainted Love.” Someone in his family contact list was ringing him. When he saw
Jim Sun
flash on his phone the words of the song might as well have been
fuck my life
because the last person in the world he wanted to talk to now was his brother.

Don’t be cynical
. Maybe Jim was only calling with belated birthday wishes, or belated apologies, or a belated repayment for that time John had hired a lawyer to make sure Jim’s misdemeanor public indecency conviction for passing out naked in the Mulholland Memorial Fountain didn’t turn into an automatic sex offender registration.

“Jim!” he said, as cheerfully and optimistically as he could.

“Dude! Bro! What the fuck?” John’s optimism vanished when he heard his brother’s voice. “I checked that plant outside your door for the key, and it’s not there anymore.” No context, no explanation, not even a hello. And oh God, John thought he knew where this was going.

“What are you doing at my apartment?” He said it very slowly through gritted teeth, not putting a rising intonation at the end because he had a feeling he didn’t want to hear the answer.

“Trying to get in! How come you moved that key? Shit, man, the cops are almost here.” In fact, John could hear the sirens now. “You better come over here and let me in and, uh, tell the popo I’m legit. I think your neighbor called them when she saw me trying to jimmy open the window.”

“I’ll have to thank her later,” John said. “Just lie down on the ground slowly and put your arms to either side. You can sort it out at the station because I’m at work. Good luck not getting shot.”

Jim must have sensed he was about to hang up. “Wait! You can’t do me like that, bro! I just need to crash for a few days until I get a place with my girlfriend.”

“Stay at Mom and Dad’s, then. There is no fucking way I’m letting you into my apartment after what you did last time.” John had once seen a documentary about amazing animal recoveries in which a dog therapist successfully toilet-trained a brain-damaged terrier—the therapist’s slow, crisp voice had been very impressive. He tried using the same tone now on his brother. “Put the phone. In your pocket. And get down. On the ground.”

“Fuck you, you fucking—oh shit! Sorry, Officer!” The line went dead.

John kept walking robotically back to work, even though what he really wanted was to go to the library and commiserate with Robin. Not that she had any truly nightmarish relatives herself, but at least she knew what a pain in the ass Jim was.

An hour later, he was back at work sorting through headsets for the language lab when his mother called.

“We got problem. Your brother in jail.”

John prided himself on self-control, or else he would have pounded his fists against the wall. He settled for rubbing his forehead and groaning softly.

“Why you no go get him?” his mother shouted. “Not like you doctor or lawyer. You got time.”

He tried a variant of the same voice he’d used on Jim. “Do you remember that flyer about codependency I gave you? And Dad and I had that long talk with you and we went over all the bullet points?”

She let out a mild curse in Mandarin and hung up.

People never really changed. It was a sobering lesson, and one he definitely needed to remember when it came to Robin. She wasn’t going to change him, and he wasn’t going to change her. Only...lift her up a little. Help her figure out a way to move forward on her own path.

The thought made him smile.

* * *

“Saylor University Library Special Collections,” Robin chimed.

There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. Harsh breathing. Either a pervert or really good news.

“This is Al.”

Correction. Good or bad news. Although if he was bothering to call, she was assuming good. Unless he was the type to have really polite phone etiquette.

“Al! Hello!” she said, trying to sound optimistic but not desperate or smug.

“I looked you guys up online. You’re not big, but you’re serious. I don’t want to have these images go commercial as soon as I croak. I want my aunt’s legacy to be respected. Tell me now, once and for all, that that’s your intention.”

It was all she could do to keep herself from jumping into the air and screaming with joy. “That is absolutely my intention.” She had to keep going, though; honesty demanded it. “But I’m going to strongly recommend you consult independently with a copyright lawyer and your estate planner.”

“Makes sense. I’m gonna show you the stuff at the safe-deposit box. Bring John if he’d like to come—I bet he will,
eh eh
.”

Seemed like a good idea, the John thing. After all, he’d been the one to get her foot in the metaphorical door with Al in the first place.

They set up a time tomorrow. When Robin put down the phone, she pumped both fists in the air and whooped. Julio wasn’t around to celebrate with—he’d been laying low for the last week out of embarrassment, even though she’d been very understanding about his backing out.

She called John before she could even think about whether it was a good idea. As the phone rang, though, she had plenty of time to second-guess herself. Would this still be okay? Would they be able to talk like normal? They’d intended to stay friends through this thing, but then the best laid plans...

“Hello?”

John sounded irritated. Big-time irritated. The kind of irritated that only came from one source.

“What did Jim do now?” she asked in a singsong voice.

“Fuck, I don’t even know the full extent of the damage. The situation is evolving. Devolving, whatever.”

All of Robin’s misgivings about meeting up with him went out the window. “Lunch? A pitcher of beer at the shack? I’m buying.”

“Sure. I might have to leave on short notice if the cops call me though.”

That didn’t sound too promising.

She grabbed her tote bag and left the office. God,
Jim
. He was funny in a guilt-inducing train-wreck kind of way. His drug-addled antics were a lot more amusing to outsiders than they must have been growing up in the Sun family. She tried to be extra understanding, since her own relatives were a pretty sane and trustworthy bunch. She even let her sister read her blog.

It was late in the day, so the lunch crowd had thinned, making it easy to spot John slumping in a booth to the back. He brightened when he saw her though. A subtle shift of his shoulders and a cock of his head and the way his body took up space suddenly changed from passive to active, so that he was—what was the word...oh.
Dominating
it.

No
, she thought, reaching up and touching the base of her throat—she hoped inconspicuously—to remind herself that she wasn’t wearing her pearls. This was their off time. They were just friends now. It wouldn’t do to think of John in those terms, not if she ever wanted to go back to what they had. And she couldn’t afford not to.

Boundaries
, she recited to herself, and went to take her seat.

John poured her a pint of beer and slid it across the table. She raised an eyebrow. “Got started without me?” she asked.

“Yes, yes I did. If you had the morning I just had, you’d probably be into your fifth margarita right now, so cut the judgy-judgy.”

Harsh, but true. Robin wasn’t equipped to deal with the family drama John faced on an almost-daily basis.

“Are we still on for tonight?” she asked. “If you need to reschedule, tomorrow isn’t good for me, but Friday—” She stopped and put a hand over her mouth, overcome by the strangeness of bringing the night into the day, surrounded by blithely unaware college students. Then she forced her hand onto the table because the gesture seemed juvenile, and that wasn’t her.

“Oh we are still on, believe me. No way I’m letting Jim ruin
this
. Anyway, I need to let some aggression out.” He paused. “No, wait. That sounded kind of scary.”

“You’re just joking. Or at least you’d better be.”

He grinned. “I am. And I plan on being stone-cold sober by then, and turning off my phone. Speaking of aggression—” he tapped two fingers against his chin, “—I was actually thinking of a no-contact night. But with orgasms.”

He made that awkward word sound marvelously smooth and sleek.

Her knee bumped against the table, almost spilling their beers. She repressed the impulse to look around wildly to see if anyone had overheard. One, the gesture would draw attention to her and their conversation, and two, if she was going to have this conversation in public, she was going to damn well own it.

“That’s a relief,” she said, in the spirit of
owning it
. “I still agree with the no-sexual-contact rule, but the no-orgasms thing may be a dealbreaker. I just can’t live that way.”

“Well, that saves money on chastity devices. Those things can get...” He let out a low whistle and shook his head. “I do have another piece of jewelry for you. This one, you’ll have to keep.”

She raised both eyebrows at him. Wait—was he upset she hadn’t taken the pearls? No, she was reading way too much into it. No way John was that sentimental about
anything
.

Through the rest of their lunch, she turned over the issue in the back of her mind. It was only when they’d paid up and said their goodbyes that the easier-to-decipher implication finally hit her, and she sat up ramrod-straight, every muscle in her body tightening.

This one
,
you’ll have to keep
.