Girl In Pieces (9 page)

“I don’t want that either. I want this.”

“Good. Do you like steak?”

“Absolutely.”

Thomas grinned and waved down our waiter.

Our date lasted three and a half hours. We talked about books, movies, first dates, worst dates, and cars. Well, he talked about cars and I nodded enthusiastically. I lived in a city with excellent public transportation. I knew more about subway schedules than I did about right of ways.

And yet I never got bored and we never talked about rope or pain or obedience. We talked around it, played at the edges, hinted at our history but never spoke it out loud. By the time we headed outside, I felt warm headed with wine and happier than I’d been since before Halloween.

It began raining between dinner and dessert. The pattern of drops against the window had felt romantic, though now that we stood together on the sidewalk trying to say goodbye I enjoyed it a lot less. My bus waited six blocks away. Six blocks through rain and wind and me in a skirt in November. Excellent.

“I had a great time, Katrina,” Thomas said. We stood beneath the awning, his hand on my elbow. He smiled and I smiled and my butterflies got drunk and celebrated a job well done. My first Dom date! And it had gone well! Score one for Kat!

“Oh!” I laughed as I pushed into him to get out of the way of a couple and their umbrella leaving the restaurant. He caught me around the hip effortlessly. “I had a great time too. Aside from the salad thing, it was pretty perfect.”

“I let my mouth get away from me a little there. I had no business ordering you around yet.” He glanced towards the parking lot. “Can I walk you to your car?”

“I took the bus. It’s just a few blocks that way.” I waved in the direction of the bus stop and anxiously looked anywhere but into his eyes, suddenly afraid he might try to kiss me. Kind of afraid he might not. “It was really nice meeting you Thomas.”

“Wait. Katrina.” I took a step into the rain before he could try anything, but he grabbed my wrist and pulled me back. “You’re not walking in this.”

“I don’t think Le Chat will let me move in.”

Thomas blinked. “But it’s raining.”

I shrugged. “Such is the life of the car-less. I’ll be fine. It’s just a little rain.”

He didn’t let go of my wrist. “Look, I had a wonderful time. You had a wonderful time. Let me take you home. It’s the least I could do.”

“Oh, no, thank you.” Butterflies! Nervous, drunken butterflies! “I promise I won’t melt.”

“At the very least, you’ll catch a cold.” Thomas ran a hand through his hair, suddenly looking a little annoyed. “At worst, you’ll catch attention you do not want. You can call a friend and tell her you’re getting into my car. Let me do this for you. Let me protect you for at least a few minutes.”

The way he said it like that,
let me protect you
, I felt him in my knees again. I leaned and he caught me and we stood there in the cold, wet night while I tried to decide if he was so bad that I couldn’t try to trust him.
Let me protect you
. It sounded lovely, to be protected. I’d been unmoored for too long.

“I’m not ok with you walking alone in the rain.”

If I was worried about a kiss goodnight, this was probably worse. I swallowed and tried not to get swallowed up in his Clark Kent eyes.

“Ok,” I said.” Just a ride though. No funny business.”

He grinned. “No funny business. I told you, I like willing obedience. Force is not one of my turn-ons. Come on, we’ll make a run for the parking lot. You’ll love my car.”

We dashed into the rain together, his hand wrapped around mine as we splashed our way through the crowded parking lot. We dodged down one row and up a second until we came to a sporty yellow two seater with racing stripes that just screamed
I love my car more than anything else in the world
. His license plate said
RichBoy
. Swear to God.

He ran his hand along the spoiler and up the curve of the passenger window before unlocking the door and letting me slide inside. It smelled new, like we were the first two people to climb in and I felt panicked that my wet butt was going to leave a wet butt-shaped ring on the black leather. It sighed when I settled into it, butter soft as it molded to me. He jerked open his door and fell in. We didn’t look like we belonged in such a nice car.

“Beautiful, isn’t she?” He stroked the dash before starting the car with the press of a button instead of a key. Fancy.

“It’s a very nice car. Best I’ve ever been in.”

“
Nice
 
isn’t even in her vocabulary, sweetheart. This car is fucking
gorgeous
.”

He threw the car in reverse and swung out so fast I thought he was going to hit something. I carefully put on my seatbelt.

“It smells new. Is it new?”

“You could say that.” He laughed and slung himself deeper into the leather. He did not put on a seatbelt.

The Clark Kent thing looked skewed in the small, dark interior with its blue neon dashboard lights and racy sensation as we peeled out into the street. Thomas slid between first, second, third gear as smoothly as he smiled and for the first time my stomach twisted uncomfortably. Little alarm bells waited nervously in my brain -
Do I panic? Should I be worried? Good guy? Bad guy?

Certainly, a guy who liked to drive fast.

The rain seemed to part for the slick, speedy car as we dashed through the wet streets, around traffic, back and forth between slower cars as if they weren’t even there. He still smiled, he still sparkled, he still left my knees wobbly, but there was a tightness to his smile now as he pushed the gas and hurled us through the rain. It made me nervous.

It was the car. It was the speed. Clark Kent, I realized, was a thrill seeker.

“Maybe we should slow down? It’s raining.”

He
tsk
ed softly. “You don’t drive slowly in a car like this.”

“But you do if you don’t want to hydroplane into oncoming traffic.”

He shrugged and let up off the gas, though not significantly.

“Only because I want to spend more time with you.” He flashed me a smile before sliding in between two cars in the left hand lane. I wasn’t even sure he looked first. “We should talk. About what we want out of this arrangement.”

“You want to talk now?” I wrapped my hands around the seat belt. “Ok, what do you want to talk about?”

“Your limits.”

“I…” My brain went silent. Traitor.

He made the car growl as he threw it from one gear to the next, and slung us onto a wide, mostly empty street.

Thomas made a soft, throaty noise of heated impatience. “Your limits, Katrina. Tell them to me.”

“I’m thinking anything over 90 miles per hour is a hard limit.”

Disappointment crinkled his eyes but he got the point and let up enough that the world stopped smearing by. He still raced, but the tension eased out of the engine.

“Do you know how amazing this car is? Slow down. Shit.” His jaw clenched, but his hands stayed soft on the steering wheel. “This is a once in a life time opportunity. This is a seventy thousand dollar car and it’s not like people like us get to play with this kind of speed very often. You should be grateful.”

My eyes snapped towards him. “This isn’t your car? You’re not
RichBoy
?”

He hesitated. “Not exactly. A friend let me borrow it.”

“I think you should just take me home now. South River Boulevard. We can talk about my limits another time.”

“Fine. Fine. I just…” He sucked in his cheeks and bit nervously at his bottom lip. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the whole world, he stroked the gear shift and said, “You must be willing to have anal sex, Katrina.”

My mouth opened.

Closed.

Opened.

Closed.

“I’m sorry, but what?”

He continued, undeterred, his eyes straight ahead. “I need to be upfront with you because it’s a deal breaker for me.”

My brain spooled to a standstill. What does one say to something like that? The idea that people kept their opinions on anal sex readily available made me giggle. Ludicrous. This whole thing was turning into something beyond belief.

What next?
Katrina, please rate your ability to swallow on a scale from 1 to 10.
 

“Are you kidding? I mean, who says shit like that? Who has that as their deal breaker?”

“It’s very important to me.”

He returned both hands to the steering wheel and smoothed them along the leather circumference. I should have felt that stroke in my knees, between my legs, but all I felt was a little sick. How’d we go from wonderful date to anal sex in 6 seconds?

He shrugged like this was no big deal. Maybe for him it wasn’t. “You must be willing to allow me full access or we’ll never be able to make this work.”

“I haven’t…” I stammered. “I mean, I’ve never…”

Nothing could bring me to say the words out loud. I’d never had anal sex. Not that I was opposed to it, but it had never come up, so to speak. No one I’d ever dated had the convictions of Thomas Tennyson.

“Oh,” he said softly and glanced across the seat at me. He reached for my hand. When he touched me, so gentle and careful, against my better judgment I immediately calmed. For a second he really did feel like Josh when he set a hand on my shoulder during our demonstration and told me to calm down, to breathe. Maybe I could almost pretend this man was… “You’re a little bit of a virgin then, aren’t you Katrina? You’ll be a pleasure to break in.”

I jerked to my hand away. “Let me out. I’ll walk.”

Thomas was not Josh. He’d never be Josh.

“God damn it.” He struck his palm on the steering wheel, the one he’d just used to gentle me. “I’m being honest with you and you turn into a school girl about it. I thought you wanted this.”

“
This
 
isn’t what I wanted.”

Josh would never have talked to me like this. He would never have spoken to me of anal sex like I was barely a participant.

Or would he? Was this what domination was? Was this the truth behind the curtain that I would have to lose pieces of myself to please someone else? I didn’t think I could do that. I didn’t think I
wanted
 
that.

No. Josh would never have asked me to be someone else, no matter what roles we played.

“Just let me out.” I’d be soaked through by the time I got home, but it seemed like a small price to pay.

“Kat.”

He took his foot off the gas and we decelerated quickly. He shook his head.

“I’m not letting you out on some street in the rain. I’m not an asshole.” When I made a rude noise, he looked at me, finally. “I’m sorry if I scared you. I didn’t mean…”

“It’s fine.” I released my death grip on the seat belt and held up a hand between us. A wall he wasn’t allowed to cross. “It’s fine. It’s what you want. It’s good that you know what you want. But I don’t know what I want. I don’t know what my limits are, not exactly, so I can’t possibly know if I can live up to yours. You’re looking for someone who’s perfect out of the box, and that’s not me. It would be unfair for you and a little scary for me.”

“But this lifestyle is about obedience,” he answered, squeezing those strong hands around the steering wheel again while struggling to keep the calm Clark Kent smile. “You will enjoy what we do because I enjoy it and you want to please me. That’s how it works.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think that’s how it works.”

“Really? And you would know that how again? No one has bothered to teach you anything.”

I flinched and looked away from him. No one had. That was true. I’d been rejected by the only person I’d been willing to submit to, so he had me there. Warmth suddenly burned my cheeks and as if sensing my embarrassment, he glanced at me.

“Your words, not mine.”

“I just want to go home. This was a terrible idea.”

“I’ll take you home. I said I’d take you home. I’m not leaving you on some street corner.”

“Fine. Just, whatever.”

His eyes flicked suddenly to the rearview mirror. His forehead knotted.

“Shit. Hold on.”

“What is it?”

“I said
hold on
.”

“I don’t want to hold on,” I snapped. “You’re freaking me out.”

“I said
wait
.” He threw me a look, hit the gas, and took a curve so fast the wheels squealed. I grabbed at the dashboard just as the lights from the car behind us lit up.

A police car.

He swore. “God damn it, Marcus.”

“Marcus?” I stared out the back window, the hair on my arm standing up. “Oh my god this isn’t happening. They want us to pull over.
So pull over
.”

He didn’t, not at first. For a second he seemed to hesitate, but common sense won out. The car slipped on the wet street as it decelerated.