The Dom Project (7 page)

Midmorning, they stopped at a 7-Eleven for a couple of cappuccinos poured out of a grumbling machine. “What was the name of that guy you dated senior year?” John asked. “I remember you got him one of these machine coffees once...”

“
Once
,” she said. “Chris, the coffee snob. He acted like I’d just handed him a cup of rohypnol topped with battery acid poured into the skull of his grandmother. My God! I thought I was doing him a favor because he was pulling an all-nighter on an essay. Apparently not.”

John laughed and took a swig of cheap foamy coffee. “Yeah, he was twitchy as hell. Always wondered if he was that way in bed too.”

“That never happened. I was too worried he’d be high maintenance. After the coffee thing I suspect I was right.”

They missed the next turn and had to drive in a big circle. Robin didn’t mind. They’d gone back to the way things were, joking about the past and having fun in the present and not worrying about the future. True, her heart pounded a few beats faster when he wiped the foam from his upper lip with his hand, and then licked his finger, but that was a simple physiological response. It didn’t figure in the grand scheme of things. They could do this. Navigate new boundaries, keep their friendship.

The address was in a dilapidated duplex, apartment number barely visible under the shade of a massive oak tree. John parked as close as he could, then got out of the car and leaned against it so he had a direct view of the door. He still had a tiny fleck of tan-colored foam at the corner of his mouth.

She raised her eyebrow. Caught his eye. Tapped the corner of her mouth.

“Oh,” he said, and licked it away. “All gone?” She heard another question playing hide-and-seek underneath
all gone
and knew he was teasing her.

No.
It’s still there.
Let me.
Let me help you be perfect.
Let me be your
—

“Yes,” she said, a touch shaky. “You...it’s all gone.” She broke eye contact and hurried down the walkway toward the door. His presence at her back was disconcerting—was she putting too much sway in her step? Too little?—but also made her feel secure.

By the time she knocked on the door, she was fully focused on the goal. Shoulders set straight, not slumped, pleasant smile, serious eyes—
don’t blink too much
.

She heard a muffled scraping noise, and knocked again. “Goddammit, I’m coming,” rasped a cavern echo of a voice.

Julio definitely would’ve had a panic attack.

When the door creaked open, she kept her professional smile fixed firmly in place. “Good morning. Am I speaking with Mr. Alfred Henderson?”

“That’s me.” He wheezed; it sounded like
eh
,
eh
—vaguely mocking. “What do you want?”

He was tall, but crooked, leaning down to near her level, weight resting against the wheeled metal stand that held his oxygen tank. He had a short beard and mustache, irregular white patches mixed with gray. Julio had mentioned he might have had a beard.

“Hi, my name is Robin Lessing.” He didn’t seem eager to shake her hand, so she rushed on. “A colleague of mine told me that you were interested in having a collection of rare photographs and letters appraised. I’d love to discuss some options for—”

“Who are you? Where are you from?” The whites of his eyes were yellowed, like old paper.

“My name is Robin Lessing,” she said, slowly. “I’m the Head of Special Collections at Saylor University.”

“A university? Bullshit.” Anger flared in her, and she shifted her feet so that she stood taller. “It’s all about the T-shirts—
eh
,
eh
—and the lunchboxes. You think I don’t know?” All right, so maybe he wasn’t being sexist, just deranged.

She kept her voice even and slow, despite her growing anxiety. “Here’s my business card.” He wouldn’t take it. “You can look me up on the university website. There’s even a picture of me. The university is prepared to pay for an independent appraisal. If you’ve dealt with unethical people before, I can promise you this is going to be different.”

He stood frozen, harshly breathing and looking off into the distance. Then he nodded once. Turned his back on her and shuffled into his apartment. Since he didn’t close the door, she figured there was still hope, so she cautiously stepped over the threshold.

“She died when I was young,” he said. “She told me no one really understood why she did it. It wasn’t about the money. Goddamn.” He turned again, transfixing her with his jaundiced glare. “How did you find out about the appraisal?”

She’d gotten this far by being honest. “You threw it away. My colleague picked it up. I know it’s—”

“
Eh
,
eh
. Get out!” He ripped her business card in half, and she finally flinched and backed out. What could she have done differently? No. She’d done everything right. She couldn’t let this...

“You damn vulture! Damn vultures, this is a new one!”

“Please—” She tried to placate him, backing down the sidewalk with her hands extended in peace offering as he advanced on her.

If he fell... If he laid a hand on her, even...

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, now!” John came barreling down the sidewalk toward them, palms out and a nervous laugh in his voice. Trying to defuse the situation, of course. “Come on Mr.—
Al?
Al-fucking-Steelhammer?
”

Alfred had stopped up short too. Robin stood between the pair of them, looking back and forth in bewilderment.

“Johnson?” Alfred-or-maybe-Al said, screwing up his eyes to peer at John. “My God, it
is
you. I haven’t seen you in—since—wow, you’ve been working out.”

John flexed his biceps, gave it a kiss and then the two men fell into embrace, clapping each other on the back. “Didn’t recognize you without the chaps and chest harness and the rest of it,” he said, making Al laugh in between the wheezing.

“I didn’t recognize
you
without women crawling around at your feet. Oh! Unless—” Extricating himself from the hug, he gave Robin a mischievous, wondering look. She bristled.

John raised his eyebrows and sucked in a breath. “No, no, no. She’s a colleague of mine at the university. Strictly professional.”

“Right. Saylor, was it?”

Robin forced herself to be diplomatic. As strange as this encounter was going, she still had an important acquisition to make. “Yes, sir. Saylor University, like I said. Do you two mind explaining what’s going on, here?”

Al looked to John for guidance.

“Oh, um,” John said. “Well, Al—
Alfred
—and I know each other. From the scene. He’s a veteran—”

“Leather Daddy, I believe they call me,” Al said with a wink, and took Robin’s hand in both his own. The man had done a complete one-eighty since John had stepped in. “If Johnson says you’re all right, I’ll think about getting another appraisal. The first one was a piece of shit.”

“In my professional opinion,” said Robin, squeezing his hand, “that about sums it up. It was insulting. But I can assure you I’m not here to make a buck, or any money at all. I only want to preserve your aunt’s contribution to history.”

“Contribution to history!” Al chortled. “Is that what they’re calling it now?”

“In my line of work, yes. That’s exactly what they’re calling it.”

“You can get a leather PhD nowadays,” added John. “Maybe you could go back to school. Start off with some credit for life experience.”

“
Eh
,
eh
.” Al-slash-Alfred-slash-Steelhammer dropped her hand and bent nearly double, holding himself up with his hands on his knees. “I’ll think about the appraisal. Just can’t think straight right now—the COPD is literally fucking killing me.” He managed to rise a bit, enough to look directly into Robin’s eyes. “Give me another card and I’ll call you back.”

Robin dove her hand into her purse and quickly handed him another one.

John offered him an arm with a courtly flourish, but he shook his head and stumbled his way back into his house unaided.

* * *

John watched with reptilian anticipation as Robin squeezed her chopsticks too tightly...and there it went. The salty-sweet eel meat popped off the rice ball and fell down to her plate. He was lightning-fast. While she still fumbled with her own chopsticks, he snatched up the eel—he knew how much Robin loved eel—and swallowed it down with a grin.

“So who’s the vulture?” she asked indignantly. The mock exasperation in her crooked smile was desperately, hopelessly charming.

“I’ll make it up to you.” He picked up one of his soft-shell crab pieces and hovered it an inch from her lips.

“Well...” She opened her mouth.

He waited. He didn’t really know what he was doing, just operating on the impulse. But things usually worked out when he did that.

She sighed delicately, leaned forward and bit it off his chopsticks.

Jesus
. He’d better turn this to business before his head exploded. Or his pants melted. “I think you’ve got a good chance at the collection.”

“Mmm. Yes. It’s so exciting. I was worried there, but thanks to you, it started coming together. Poor guy. My grandfather died of COPD and emphysema.”

Death. That helped. “I think he’s got some other health issues too.” John finished the last piece of sushi and washed it down with some Asahi Dry. “I should show you some younger pictures of him. You can find them yourself, now that you know the right name to look for. He was a god back in the 1970s, I hear. Still a legend.”

“It’s an interesting sexual minority connection,” Robin mused. “He’s sort of an heir.”

He leaned forward. “I’d love to hear your thoughts on that, especially since you’ll probably be writing it up at some point. And that reminds me, a whole new topic of conversation just opened between us. Something we have in common.”

“You’re right.” Her smile was bright and happy, and God, he loved making her feel that way. Then she frowned. “It also reminds me, you never really opened up about how you got into all this stuff. I thought you promised to tell me.”

“Being evasive comes naturally. You’ve met my parents.”

“Point taken. And I do appreciate that you’re good at being private. I mean, given my job—well, thanks for the text you sent about the video feed.”

“I’m always going to look out for you. Nothing’s ever going to change that.”

That smile again, halogen-bright, intense, fleeting.

Hello, readers,

Picky Submissive here, with news of a new feature starting on the blog. Last week, entirely by accident, I learned that my best friend—let’s call him J—is a dom. After telling him the various problems detailed here, he and I have devised an experiment... of sorts. The long and short of it is, he and I are best friends and compatible in nearly every aspect of our lives, so why not work together on the puzzle of my Pickiness?

It’s not about finding out if I’m a submissive—I know that already, right down to my bones, even if I don’t have a lot of real-world experiences. But hey, I knew I loved shoes long before I bought my first pair of Jimmy Choos.

It’s more about finding out how I’m submissive. What makes me tick. What I like and dislike, what kind of qualities I’m looking for in a man and a dom, to what degree I’m comfortable being dominated—do I need a full-time arrangement, or just a man who can hold me down on occasion? It’s all about exploring my wants versus needs and getting down to the nitty-gritty of my submissive side.

Let’s call it The Dom Project.

Now that I’ve gone over the Why, I thought maybe I’d get a little bit into the How. As professionals J and I are both familiar with the idea of project management, although his conception of goal organization is a little...looser than mine. So we ironed out a basic project management type structure that should suit us both, as well as a more traditional (at least in the BDSM sense) one-month contract. And when I say worked, I mean it. Long, hard, not particularly sexy work. I’d show you readers the contract, but I’m afraid you’d fall asleep halfway through the anal clause.

The basic structure is, we’ll be meeting up three times a week for “sessions” incorporating various aspects of BDSM play, all planned and orchestrated by J. I asked him if he’d be willing to write up a list of milestones with completion dates and he gave me the bug eyes, so I’m putting aside my starry-eyed dreams of a BDSM-themed day planner and going in blind. I’m just going to have to trust that there’s a method to J’s madness. He knows my hard and soft limits, though, so whatever he plans, it won’t be anything I’m off-the-bat uncomfortable with. And of course I can safeword at any time.

There’ll be no sex. At least for me. On one level, it’s a limit to keep our friendship from getting, well, messy. The no-sex rule is going to be a hardship, sure, but it also holds a kind of twisted appeal for me. Chastity. Control. Denial. That’s on the list of milestones, along with Service, Restraint, Pain, Exhibitionism, Role-play, Voyeurism and Etiquette. Outside of our sessions, he’ll be taking full advantage of his freedom with other people, while I’ll be forced to wait for release. If I can’t take it, we’ll break or renegotiate the contract, no harm done. Except for the part where I’m back to square one.

I might not “pass” every milestone, but by the end, I’ll have more confidence, more self-knowledge. I’m iffy on Chastity—straddling the fence, you might say—but some of these other milestones are very, very appealing in and of themselves. Service, for example. Yes, please, thank you! I already know I’m into Pain—at certain levels and in certain contexts. I’m Picky, after all. I do love a good caning and I’ll admit it—even though our relationship has been platonic up to this point, you best bet I’ve noticed that J has the arms for it.