The Right Thing (8 page)

Nodding, he followed his cousin out of the apartment without any
regard for his appearance, clambering into the limo. Gerald pulled out into
traffic and despite Michael’s raving hurry, got them there in a remarkably
short period of time. McKenzie was hiding in plain sight. His heart pounded so
hard he was certain the windows were vibrating in concert with the thumping and
it hurt to breathe. His sub was alive and he would go in and find her there and
she would run to him and apologize for worrying him and he would take her home
and punish her and propose to her and it would all turn out. He walked through
the door with Jenifer hard on his heels and the fantasy all went to shit.

He saw her immediately. McKenzie raised her head in response to the
weight of his stare, not, he was certain, as a result of the little tinkling
bell over the door. He never wanted to see that look again, although knew he’d
see it in his sleep for decades to come, a poignant reminder whenever he fucked
up. The blood drained from his woman’s face and even her lips looked colorless.
Eyes resembling nothing less than starburst sapphires shone above the dark
circles etching the fine skin beneath them, dominating her sweet face. McKenzie
looked absolutely exhausted, thin, totally beautiful and horrified and his
sadist didn’t respond an iota, not even when her expression turned to abject
terror. Her small hands came away from the heavy iron she’d been pushing along
some fabric to lift in front of her, as if to ward off evil. Sweet lips parted
and even with the cacophony of sounds in the shop he swore he could hear McKenzie
suck in a gulp of air with the intensity of being administered last rites. She
began to back away, body trembling, even hidden from view as it was beneath
some kind of white smock.

 
A little Chinese woman
shrieked something, breaking the spell, diving for the iron beginning to smoke
against the material it rested on. The grey, curling vapor added to the bizarre
affect and Michael wondered if the sprinkler system would engage and cast a
further pall over the whole scenario. The woman waved her hands frantically and
distracted him for a moment. When he looked again at McKenzie she was clutching
the circular rack from which all kinds of clothing hung, and he could see her
white knuckles even from his position on the other side of the counter.

Pushing through the opening by the cash register, he slowly
approached his terrified sub, never breaking eye contact, broken but gentle
words falling from his mouth, trying to reassure McKenzie so she wouldn’t run,
to ease the look on her face. A large woman stepped between them, followed by a
man a quarter of her size, presumably the other half of the woman now
brandishing the iron, and he halted.

“McKenzie. Please.” He didn’t think he had ever pleaded with her
before but would crawl through broken glass, through fire if need be. “I’d like
to talk to you.”

“This the guy who fucked you up, ’Kenzie?” The female wrestler
tossed the question over a broad shoulder in McKenzie’s direction, no doubt
wanting to toss him out the door on his ass.

“We don’t talk that way in my shop, Donna,” admonished the Chinese
man in a marked
Texas
drawl, which threw Michael for a moment. And then the other man turned to him,
fixing a look better suited to a fellow toting a six gun. “What do you want
here, sir? I am Mr. Lee. This is my shop.”

Michael could feel Jenifer behind him, all agog. His cousin wasn’t
used to anyone standing in her way, and Jenifer always initiated any
confrontation. He was the same, but these people were clearly championing his
sub and he was smart enough to know alienating them could cost him. So he
retreated back behind the counter and tried to look as normal and yet as
powerful as he could, donning the mantle of authority that came so easily. The
Amazon didn’t look impressed, and the little Chinese woman joined her husband,
still clutching the iron. Yet another woman, this one small like ’Kenzie, but
resolute, moved to stand beside his recalcitrant sub, resting a hand on McKenzie’s
arm in a gesture of reassurance. Stand off.

“I’ve been looking for McKenzie for months and just want to talk to
her.”

“Well, I guess that would be up to ’Kenzie, now wouldn’t it?” Donna
was overtly hostile. He wondered what McKenzie had told her.

Clearly, he hadn’t made a good impression. Michael appealed to Mr.
Lee with a look,
mano
a
mano
,
but received a blank stare. His wife spoke to him in their language and the
other man broke eye contact for a moment before resuming his intent look.
Michael managed not to fidget, striving for a calm and reassuring demeanor. Mr.
Lee nodded and turned to Michael’s woman who sheltered from his gaze, taking
cover behind them. What the fuck did she think he was going to do to her? Well,
he guessed he knew the answer to that. Feeling sick he sucked air to will the
nausea back.

“’Kenzie, gal? Do y’all want to talk to this fella? It’s up to you.”

They all waited in the silence broken by a faint hiss ensuing from
the back of the shop and the murmur of street traffic. All the machinery was
shut down and ticked off the moments as it cooled. Another customer pushed
through the door, the bell tinkled and the tableau fractured.

“No.”

That barely breathed negative. A knife to his chest. Michael
involuntarily stepped backward against the searing pain, right into Jenifer,
and everything moved sluggishly forward. The wife reached for the customer’s
receipt, the husband and Donna moved as one to usher McKenzie into the depths
of the shop, and the other woman stepped around to block the counter. She
looked fierce to Michael’s jaundiced eyes, despite her slender size. They’d
left him no recourse at that moment so he walked out of the store, dragging an
enthralled Jenifer with him. Michael supposed it was a different kind of
entertainment for his cousin.

* * *
*

McKenzie managed to make herself accompany Donna and Mr. Lee to the
little storage room in the back. She couldn’t stop the tears though, nor the
sobs now tearing through her chest. Seeing Michael standing not twenty feet
away created the sense of time standing still and then being dumped straight
into a freezing cold vat of water. Her brain screamed at her to flee but her
body wouldn’t obey its commands. Her heart awakened and begged her to throw
herself at his feet. She thought she would go insane with the push and pull and
only holding onto the clothes rack had given any hope she wouldn’t go screaming
over the edge of oblivion. Donna came to the rescue and Mr. and Mrs. Lee
respected ’Kenzie’s decision. Michael had found her and wanted to take her and
had a woman with him. She wasn’t Joyce, although looked similar at first
glance, hovering behind Michael, a supercilious smile on her well-bred face. The
woman was his cousin Jenifer, and McKenzie couldn’t figure out why Jenifer was
with Michael. Had they found her inadvertently? Did he think to share her with
his cousin? Her head throbbed in confusion.

While terrified of her response, McKenzie acknowledged she hadn’t
gotten over Michael. Not one tiny little bit. The very intensity of their
relationship hadn’t palled at all, and on second thought he said he’d been
looking for her so it probably wasn’t an accident he’d shown up. She didn’t
know what to do, but somehow managed to refuse him. For the first time ever.
Well, the second, if one counted running away in the first place. But she
didn’t know what to do now. She was incapable of deciding. One look at him and
all the newly hard earned independence knocked into the proverbial cocked hat.

“McKenzie? Mr. Lee says you can go home for the rest of the day. You
can use the back door so asshole won’t know, if the jerk’s still hanging
around.”

McKenzie hadn’t noticed Mr. Lee returning to work, leaving her in
Donna’s capable hands. Nodding, not really trusting her voice, she reached to
wipe at the tears, accepting the tissues Donna passed over with muttered
thanks. She needed to get herself under control.

“You want me to walk you? I will.”

McKenzie managed to reply. “No, thanks anyway, Donna. I’ve cost you
enough time and probably cost me my job. I’m sorry I acted like an idiot.”

“Don’t be a dork. The Lees won’t fire you. You were shit scared,
kid. You looked like you’d seen your death. Fuck, it was something. What did
that guy do to you? Maybe you need to call a cop.”

“It’s something I can’t really explain, Donna. I’m sorry. But it
threw me.”

Donna snorted. “That’s an understatement. I thought you was going to
faint or something. Tell you what. I’ll come by with coffee after work and
maybe you can bend my ear.”

McKenzie cast around for something to say, and then just nodded.
Maybe it was time to talk to somebody who could be objective, and Donna,
despite really strong opinions, wasn’t callous or intolerant. Donna had several
of her own crosses to bear. And Donna hadn’t given up on her despite how
reticent ’Kenzie had been. Donna cracked open the back entrance, which looked
as though it hadn’t been used this decade although the garbage was set out
weekly, and checked the alley.

“Clear. But you’d better get a move on. He looks like a sneaky,
determined asshole, and he’ll figure it out. See you later.”

Slinking down the alley like a fugitive, hearing the door snick shut
behind her, McKenzie found the way onto the street from an exit two blocks
further down. Heart pounding, her lungs also heaved and her legs felt hollow,
but she did it. She had to backtrack a little, then climbed the steps to the
Wu’s without running into Michael. Mrs. Wu didn’t raise a hair when she passed
the woman on the way to her room, leaving her shoes at the entrance, and McKenzie
knew Mrs. Lee had given her a head’s up. She thought she saw something in Mrs.
Wu’s eyes that could be interpreted as pity. The emotion scalded her.

McKenzie decided to try to sleep for a while. In truth she was exhausted
from the shock and didn’t want to think about anything. Dragging her jeans off
she curled up on the narrow bed, resolutely shutting her mind off, and dreamed.

 
“Pool your saliva. Open.” McKenzie did as Master commanded, the dark
authority in his voice making her sex swell and moisten. Master shoved into her
mouth, lubricated by her spit, deep to the back of her throat, thrusting with
purpose, expecting her to take him without complaint. She sucked hard, tongue
laving him, seeking the prominent vein on the underside of his cock just as he
liked it, and was rewarded with his groan. He used her until her jaw ached,
lips tingling with the stretching, his fat cock a primal invader. Then he
surged to the back of her throat, hard against her palate and held himself
there, hands tangled in her hair, no way to pull back, not a fraction. She
fought to remain calm, to wait and trust him but this time Master didn’t ease
back in time and shades of black burst behind her eyelids. Tender tissues
fluttered and she began to fade…

McKenzie lurched upward, gasping for air, hands moving to her neck.
It felt so real. Her pussy tingled with the remembrance and she squeezed her
thighs together in denial or to prolong the sensation, not knowing which. All
of the coping over the past months desecrated. Damn him. They’d experimented
with all forms of sexual congress and Michael cajoled, punished and generally
talked her past all boundaries with the exception of two. She feared erotic
asphyxiation to the point of an anxiety attack, and while she would service
others in his presence, at his instruction, she hated the lack of monogamy.
Michael limited the latter to oral sex, conceding her point and it warmed her
heart, gave her hope.

McKenzie confided how truly disloyal it felt to be pleasured by
others, being so committed to him and nothing Master could do or say convinced
her differently. Insisting it gave him pleasure to share her, to see her being
pleasured, that it made him feel powerful to bestow her on others, didn’t
change her mind set and in the end Michael again conceded. Those two limits
were written in the explicit contract. And then she conceded the first one,
allowing him to cut off her air, choke her, to enhance the pleasure, the terror
adding to the ecstasy, and she allowed it. But Michael had never choked her
with his cock and it seemed to be a warning, an evil portent or a death knell.
Except she’d woken before he’d done her harm…

Seeing Michael crashed all her mental barriers down. Hard earned
routine and the relearned, yet false, sense of independence and control both
shattered. McKenzie let herself fall back on the thin pillow and the tears
again flowed, soaking the hair at her temples, dripping through the strands to
pool in her ears. Michael wasn’t going to go away and she wouldn’t be able to
withstand him. At a total loss, she decided to die. But how? Maybe Donna would
help her. She waited, eyes on the ceiling, carefully thinking about nothing,
until Donna’s heavy footsteps on the stairs announced her arrival.

* * *
*

“Are out of your ever loving mind? Kill yourself? What do I look
like? That Dr.
Karokian
dude? Get your ass out of bed
and drink your coffee. No asshole’s worth that.”

Well, framed like that, her idea did seem a little over the top, and
Dr. Kevorkian himself would probably tell her so. Blame it on the shock and the
erotic nightmare that was more like an erotic interlude if only a rehash of
suspect reasoning. Maybe symbolic. She would live to fight another day. She got
up, pulling on her jeans, secretly thinking Donna was like a loving mother
bear, and sat with the other woman at the little card table Mrs. Wu set up in a
corner of the bedroom.