Slow Surrender (24 page)

“I’m breaking them. It’s time you understood, Karina, that you truly, truly make me naked before you.” He plunged into me again and began to fuck me.

It was like he had said at the beginning. He wasn’t my master; he wasn’t my boss; he wasn’t my owner. He was just…James.

Those were the words that came out of my mouth when he suddenly slowed, whimpering from how close he was, thrusting deep and holding a moment, then thrusting again when that wasn’t enough, five, six times like that. “Mine,” I whispered, feeling the twitch and throb that was probably him ejaculating inside me. “My lover. My partner.
My
James
.”

He thrust twice more and then lay limp atop me, panting hard, as if he couldn’t catch his breath.

And then, as I felt the hot juices running out of me, as he slipped free of me, I realized he was sobbing.

“Are you all right?” I reached up to stroke his back.

He pulled free of me suddenly.

“It’s okay, love,” I said. Plenty of people cried during incredible, emotional sex. At least in the books my mother liked to read.

I felt the bed shift. All right. Give him a moment. Maybe he was overwhelmed. It had taken him so long to let me even see his cock; this must’ve been as intense for him as it had been for me. I wondered if he was going to get a cloth and wash me like he usually did. Such a small thing, but it had made me feel so cherished. I let a flood of images of the previous hour rush through my mind. Mmmm. A night to remember.

Then I realized he hadn’t returned. Was the bathroom far?

I sat up and lifted the corner of the blindfold. I was alone in the room. The door was closed.

I pulled the blindfold off and looked around.

There on the chair was my dress and all my things. Everything of his was gone. I blinked in disbelief. Did he want to be fully dressed to…to what? And why wouldn’t he have gotten dressed in here?

I tried to get off the bed and found I couldn’t stand up with the rope still around my leg. It took me some tugging and cursing until I loosened it enough to slip free. I ran to the room’s balcony and looked down. There were various couples and groups milling around. The staff had changed over the hors d’oeuvres displays. A whole roast pig was being carved at one serving table. A bit farther down was the largest roast beef I had ever seen being sliced. The crowd was partly in their formal wear now, partly in various stages of nudity and silk robes, and some even still wore their artful ropes.

There was no sign of him.

I tore open the door and looked in the hallway, panic starting to climb up my throat. Where was he?

I ran back into the room, wondering if I could find something to put on besides my dress, but every drawer of the dresser was full of rope. Damn it. I pulled the dress up hurriedly and held it up since I didn’t want to take the time to try to get it zipped up by myself, jammed my feet into the slippers, and grabbed the lace jacket and my purse and ran out into the hallway.

The first people I ran into were the queenly woman and her groveling guy. She was in a different dress now, one much less formal, and he was in nothing but a collar. She held the leash. Damn, I realized, I couldn’t ask for him by name. Wait, they knew him as Jules. “Have you seen Jules?” I asked her. “The man I came in with?”

“Sorry, dear, I only just emerged from a private room,” she said.

I ran down the stairs and looked wildly around the ballroom again, but didn’t see him.

Then I thought,
Oh, you’re stupid. Use the phone. There’s probably an explanation.

I took my phone out of the little purse and hit the speed-dial entry that went straight to him.

A male voice answered, but it wasn’t him. “Karina—”

“Stefan?”

“I’m waiting for you outside.”

I hung up and ran to the front door. Maybe he was sick or hurt and had turned to Stefan.

When I arrived, Stefan was standing, very stiff, beside the back passenger door. He opened it and bowed formally. I could see no one else was inside.

I ran up to him. “Where is he?”

Stefan shook his head. He looked very serious. “I am directed to take you home.”

“Home!”

Stefan wouldn’t meet my eyes. He gestured to the interior of the car, with a half bow and a scoop of his hand.

The doorman was standing at the front door, watching impassively. I wondered if he was under orders not to let me back in.

I was half tempted to scream at Stefan that he shouldn’t bother taking me home but should take me to the nearest bridge so I could jump off. I’ve never really been a drama queen, though, so I didn’t think I could pull it off. Besides, my worth wasn’t what some man thought of me. Wasn’t that what I’d said?

I climbed glumly into the back of the car, and Stefan shut the door behind me with a solid
thunk
.

The party went on, but for me it was over. It was all over.

I
went through every kind of mood swing you can imagine sitting in the back of that dark limousine on the highway. I was upset, confused, scared, angry, confused again, righteous, hurt. There was still so much I didn’t know and didn’t understand. I played the scene over and over in my mind.

Finally I banged on the glass until Stefan relented and lowered it. I put on my toughest “New York City Do Not Fuck With Me” voice. “Okay, what the fuck is this all about?”

“I don’t know. All I know is I’m to take you home.” His accent was extra-thick.

“And you’re not supposed to speak to me.”

“No.”

“But you are.”

“Karina…I don’t know how to say it, but—”

“I told you so? Is that it? You told me once he fucked me he’d leave me, didn’t you? But then you told me that was a lie to try to scare me off. Which is it, Stefan?”

He shook his head.

“Are you going back for him later?”

“No. I am to go straight home.”

“Quit it with the Boris Karloff routine, Stefan. It’s not going to work. I know your English is perfectly fine, you Yale rat.”

“Ah, fuck, Karina, what am I supposed to do? He told me to take you home. That’s all I know.” He gripped the steering wheel tightly.

“Okay, then speculate about what happened.”

“I would love to know what the hell happened,” he said, hunching his shoulders a little. “I definitely didn’t predict this. You’re right, the whole love-’em-and-leave-’em thing was just to scare you. Why don’t
you
tell
me
what happened in there?”

I wasn’t quite ready to go into the details, but my mind was running a mile a minute. “Okay, first of all, does the name Lucinda mean anything to you?”

He sat up straight suddenly. “It’s just a name,” he said carefully.

“The name of a woman he used to know,” I said. “A bitter ex, he called her.”

“She was there?”

“Yes.”

Stefan shook his head. “There is no way he left you for Lucinda, so put that out of your mind.”

“Oh my God, I hadn’t even thought of that as a possibility!”

“Then why did you bring her up?”

“Because I thought hearing about her might jog your memory or something.” I clung to the edge of the window to the front seat. “Can I come up there?”

“Don’t try to climb through,” he warned, as if he were afraid I might actually do it. “Look, there’s a rest area. Let’s pull over where nothing bad can happen to you.”

“All right. Might as well visit the restroom while I’m at it.”

I had to gather my skirts to make it up the wheelchair ramp into the rest area. Stefan put gas in the car while I went to the ladies’ room.

When I saw myself in the mirror, I felt like crying. My makeup was a wreck, the dress was askew and still not zipped properly, and the tiara was digging into my forehead and making a red mark.

A woman came in after me. “Are you in line?” she asked, clutching her woven straw handbag and pointing to the two stalls past the mirror.

“Oh no, please go ahead,” I said, edging aside so she could get past without having to step on the dress. She went into the smaller of the two stalls.

Right. I should do that. I went into the wheelchair-equipped stall, which had the high seat and room for my skirts.

When I came out, the woman was washing her hands.

“Um, if it’s not too much trouble,” I asked her, “could you zip me up?”

“Oh, darling, of course,” she said. She had frizzy, graying hair and put her glasses on so she could see the zipper. “I don’t want to make assumptions, but it looks as if you’ve had a bit of a rough night.”

“Oh, I’m all right now,” I assured her. “A, um, limo driver is taking me home.”

“Well, that’s good. Dumped the boy who messed you up, did you? Good riddance. He can find his own way home.” She patted the back of the zipper and then reached into her handbag. “Here. If you ever need it, and if you don’t, you might have a friend who does. Okay?”

It was the business card of a rape crisis hotline. “Oh.” I must have looked a little shocked.

“You might not think it’s such a big deal, or worth the trouble, but sometimes it helps to talk to someone,” she said.

“Um, thank you. Really.” I put the card into the purse with my phone.

The woman was shaking her head as she went out. “Tsk. Ruining a girl’s prom night like that,” I heard her say.

Stefan was waiting beside the car. He opened the door for me—the front passenger door this time.

“Here.” He handed me a little grocery sack after I sat down and then went around to his side of the car. In addition to a Gatorade, the bag was full of chocolate bars.

“Stefan?”

“You look dehydrated. And, you know, all those TV commercials make it look like chocolate makes women feel better. I didn’t know which kind you like, so I bought one of each.”

I teared up looking into the bag. “You are the sweetest thing.”

“Consider it a bribe, or a thank you, or whatever, for telling me about Lucinda,” he said. “So we’re even.”

I drank some of the Gatorade and then capped the bottle and stuck it in the cup holder. Halfway through the first chocolate bar, I started to feel a little more human. “Okay, so to pick up where I left off. First, we ran into Lucinda. Then he tells me she’s there tailing this creeptastic professor of mine.”

“A professor?”

“A guy who tried to solicit me for sexual favors in order to allow me to graduate.”

“Ah, creeptastic. I get it now. And he was there?”

“Yes. James told me he—” I broke off as Stefan turned to look at me so fast he nearly swerved the car.

“He told you his name!”

I nodded and pointed ahead.

Stefan put his eyes back on the road, but they were very wide. Fortunately there was barely anyone on the road at that point. We were on what seemed a fairly rural highway, two lanes on either side of a picturesque, tree-lined divider. We passed under an arched stone overpass.

“He told me his name was James Byron Lestrange.”

“Wow.” Stefan shook his head in confusion. “I wonder what made him leave.”

“I’ve been asking myself the same question. Why would he confide in me and then leave me?”

“Hang on, hang on.” Stefan drummed his fingers on the wheel. “So he told you and then left right away?”

“Yes.” I decided not to mention the mind-blowing-sex part.

“And it didn’t occur to you that he left because he told you his name?”

“What, you mean because I burst the bubble of anonymity the magic was lost?”

“No. I mean, he’s a very secretive person, Karina. You know. He…exposed a big secret to you there.”

“Oh, come on, was he any more exposed than I was?” I argued, but then I remembered something. “Oh.”

The last thing he said when we were in bed:
“It’s time you understood that you truly, truly make me naked before you.”

He’d made other little comments about his own vulnerability in the past weeks, but I’d brushed them off. I thought about how Stefan and the beautiful assistant whose name I hadn’t learned had both considered
me
the one who was dangerous to
him
, not the other way around.

“I forced him to say it,” I confessed weakly.

“You what?”

“Forced him to. Or coerced him. It didn’t feel like I was violating him at the time.” Oh God, I felt like sinking right into the seat and disappearing.

Except, wait. “Didn’t I have a right to know it? He’s known my name for weeks! Aren’t two people in love supposed to share everything? He was the one who went on and on about honesty!” Now I was getting pissed off again. “He made a rule that I had to be honest all the time, even to other people. I finally ask him for the truth and he flips out and dumps me?”

“The rules aren’t always the same for everybody…,” Stefan hedged.

“That’s bullshit, Stefan! What’s so special about his name, anyway? What’s the big deal? I’m not about to go telling the whole world that the mysterious glass artist J. B. Lester is actually that guy in the back who acts like an art dealer.”

Stefan nearly banged his head against the steering wheel. “Are you really in love with him?”

“Yes. And I know he’s in love with me even if he’s afraid to say it. I didn’t want to tell him directly because…because that always wrecks things, you know?”

“And forcing him to give up his most closely held secret wouldn’t?”

“Stefan, come on! He had to start acting like a normal human being sometime!”

Stefan looked at me sideways. “Conformity is not his strong suit.”

I put my face in my hands. “Did I actually just say that? You’re right. That was completely stupid. Of course I don’t expect him to suddenly become someone he’s not.” Hadn’t I told James how miserable my mother’s attempts to make me conform had made me? “I meant the game had to end so a real relationship could begin.”

It looked like we were going through a more thickly settled area. Yonkers. “Are you sure?”

“Okay, you’re right. No either/or. We could have the game and still begin a real relationship. I was so sure we had something special. I’m sure he’s in love with me.”

“Or was.”

“Shit.” I started to get teary again, and Stefan opened the glove box and apologetically handed me a pristine, white handkerchief. “Well, I’m completely sure I’m in love with him. It makes no sense, to be in love with someone whose real name I didn’t even know.”

“I’m not under the impression that love always quote ‘makes sense’ unquote,” Stefan hazarded.

“Oh fuck you for being right.” I wiped my eyes with the handkerchief and it came away a little smeared. “What am I going to do, Stefan? Does he hate me now?”

“I don’t know, Karina.” He swallowed and took a deep breath. “That’s the first time he’s ever summoned me up to the house half dressed, standing in the front drive. He looked…crazy. Like pulling-his-hair-out crazy. The doorman put his own overcoat around him, out of embarrassment I think, or taking pity on the insane. When I pulled up, he threw the phone at me and said if you called to tell you I was taking you home. When I asked if I would be returning for him, he said no. And then he stalked back into the house.”

“Did he seem angry?”

“Yes! And hurt and out of his mind. I haven’t seen him like that since, well, since Lucinda.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Five or six years.” He shrugged. “Right at the beginning of…” He trailed off then and shook his head.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He blew out a long breath. “Listen, Karina, his name is a very big deal. I worked for him two years before I learned it.”

“Did Lucinda know it?”

“I doubt it, and she got under his skin in the worst ways.” He pressed his lips together as if he were trying to stop himself from saying more. “Just telling you his first name was a huge step for him.”

“He told me his name was James a long time ago.”

“He was very captivated by you, Karina. Right from the beginning. Right from that first night.”

Hearing him say that gave me a flicker of hope. “Do you think he’ll come around?”

“If he really loves you? Maybe. I don’t know, Karina. He’s very stubborn.”

I sighed and broke into another of the chocolate bars. This one had caramel in it. I chewed for a moment in dejected silence. “It occurs to me if he really loved me, he would have told me his name without me having to insist.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said. “I told you, that was a big deal. He lives life differently from other people.”

“And that makes him happy?”

“That keeps him safe,” Stefan said.

We were mostly quiet the rest of the way, passing the George Washington Bridge, majestically lit in the night sky, and then down the West Side Highway.

Eventually we were turning onto the block where my apartment building was. Stefan pulled the car to a stop at the fire hydrant. I sat there a moment.

“Thanks for everything, Stefan,” I said. “I…I hope I see you again.”

“I hope so, too, Karina. But if not, take good care of yourself, all right?”

“All right.” I climbed tiredly from the car, clutching the grocery sack, the handkerchief, my small purse, and the lace jacket to my chest.

“Wait,” Stefan called. “This is yours, too.” He fetched the velvet-lined case. He gestured to the door and carried it over with me. Once I got the vestibule door open, he handed the case to me without a word.

Upstairs, Becky was waiting, watching a movie on the Internet.

She took one look at me and I burst into tears in her arms.

That night, I told her the whole story, every detail, every little thing he’d ever said to me, teaching me to read minds, teaching me not to lie, telling me to report Renault, the glass art, the performance art, everything. I felt like I had to tell the entire story, like leaving anything out was going to prove it was all a dream, completely fake, while telling it all I could prove it had really happened. No, no, it really happened! The only thing I left out was his name. Because, well, that name had been trouble enough, and she understood.

Becks was rapt. She didn’t interrupt except to ask a question here or there or to exclaim “Oh my goodness!” She teared up when I did, and she hugged me when I finally got to the end.

Then she said, “I just have one question, Rina.”

“What’s that?”

“Where did you get one of Lord Lightning’s handkerchiefs?”

I stared at the white cloth in my hand. Embroidered white on white in one corner was the letter
L
and a lightning bolt. “You’re sure this isn’t yours?” I asked, in case we had gotten mixed up.

She shook her head. “Mine’s framed on my bedroom wall.”

“Stefan gave it to me. Tonight. It’s brand-new.”

It all started to make sense. Stefan playing the music and then quickly turning it off when he realized it was still on. All the comments James had made about performers and masks. The money. The secretive ways. Him being in the bar that night, alone, a few blocks from the Garden. No wonder they thought I was dangerous. I remembered how scared he seemed that night, when Stefan turned the car toward the crowds blocking the streets.