“The flowers-”
“Are beautiful. Why are they white?”
“Because we can color them, and us, any way we choose.”
I sucked in air, and breathed out my reply. “What does this mean?”
“It means I don’t know if I know how to be what you need me to be.”
“I don’t want you to be what I want you to be. I want you to be you. The real you.”
“You’ve seen more of me than anyone else ever has.”
“I know.”
“And yet it’s not enough.”
“It is, as long as that isn’t all I ever get.”
“I’m not ready for more, Rebecca, but it’s not about you.”
My chest had tightened. “Then why even send me the flowers?”
“Because I miss you.”
“You do?”
“Yes. I do. I haven’t touched another woman since you shut me out.”
I am stunned. “Not even at the club?”
“No other woman. I want you. Just you. I just need more time to figure out what that means, but not without you. With you.”
“Because of something in your past.”
He is silent for heavy seconds. “Yes.”
“Will you ever tell me about it?”
“I don’t talk about it.”
I don’t push. This is more than he has ever given me. “I can’t be your submissive again.”
“Go to dinner with me tonight. On a date.”
“A real date?”
“Yes. A real date, but I can’t promise what that means. Say yes, Rebecca.”
It’s enough. It’s a start and so I’d said what he’d ordered me to say, but not because he’d ordered it. Because I’d wanted to. I’d said yes.
And so, I’m going on a date with him tonight and I will be Rebecca. Just Rebecca. If he can’t handle that, it will be our real goodbye. If he can, perhaps it will be our first real hello.
June 2011
Friday, six am
I woke from another nightmare this morning. My mother was there. I wish I could say that was a dream, rather than a nightmare, and that I’d relived some fond memory with her. And I thought that was the case. But I always do. Everything was perfect at first. She was alive and not sick anymore. We were on the trolley with coffee in our hands and nibbling on pastries. It was sunny and warm even in the wind. We were laughing and smiling. I was telling her about my date tonight. She wanted to know all about the man romancing her daughter and I actually told her. I told someone about him. Not the Master he was to be, but the man he is to me. Suddenly though the sunny day became stormy. It was cold and rain pummeled us. My mother and I huddled together, and then what always happens in these nightmares, happens. The trolley starts to speed, the car bumping and jolting. The people around me fade, even my mother. I call out to her. She reaches for me. Of course, the inevitable happens, the trolley jumps the tracks and dives into the icy water of the bay. I feel the cold to my bones, and it hurts. The pain is so intense. I manage to push out of the trolley, but then I’m sinking. I start swimming and swimming but I can’t reach the top. My mother appears, and I reach for her, but she doesn’t offer me a hand. She just stares at me. She lets me die.
I woke up gasping for air and with tears streaming down my cheeks. My mother. I felt as if she’d betrayed me but that is kind of easy to understand. She kept on smoking and smoking, knowing it was killing her. She left me alone. I think it’s strange though that I have this nightmare when tonight is my date night with him. It’s almost as if my mind is telling me this isn’t going to go anywhere. I’m headed for heartache. I’m not sure why I’m interpreting it like this, but I am. He’s going to hurt me. I’m almost certain of this but I’m going into this experience with open eyes. He is a wounded man and the truth is, I am wounded in my own ways, too. I think we need each other and maybe its not forever. But I believe, in my heart, that people cross our path for a reason. They help us grow or survive. That’s it.
I think we are both helping each other survive.
Friday, seven pm
Almost date time!
Tonight is the night and while my nightmare this morning had me concerned it was a sign it would go poorly, I’ve changed my mind. I sold a ridiculously expensive Ricco Alvarez painting at the gallery today and when I called to tell him, he was elated, and agreed to show more of his work with us. Ricco Alvarez. He’s incredible and I am the reason he is showing with us. When I told my boss, he was pleased, too. It really set the tone for this night.
Tonight.
Tonight is the night.
Date night with a man I’ve called Master who is no longer my Master. A real date, where he will not be my Master. I might need to write that like ten more times to believe it’s true. I’m not sure what to expect but my nerves are eased by the idea that he doesn’t know either. This is new territory for me. This is new territory for him, and he told me that, which is big for him. He doesn’t share pieces of himself and I don’t know if he realizes he did by telling me this but he did. He shuts himself off. He uses sex and master and submissive to keep anyone from seeing the real him. But I have seen the real him. In those intimate moments, where I was his submissive, where he had full control and we were alone, there were times, when he looked at me, and let the walls down. He let me see the heartache, the fear, the pain. He let me see the brutality of a secret, I may not know by detail, but I know through him. I also know, as much as it gutted me when he invited others into our play, that it always happened after I’d seen a piece of him. It was his way of shutting me out before I saw too much.
I’m done with that. He’s done with that. We’re done with that.
No more hiding.
I get all of him or it’s time to say goodbye.
I just hope this is a new hello.
Maybe I won’t even have sex with him. That would truly be a fresh start.
Saturday, seven am
I haven’t slept. I’ve been with him. And I have to work today so I can’t write much now but I need to get at least some of my thoughts down. Remember when I said I wouldn’t have sex with him? I did. Of course, I did. I mean that’s how he hides his emotions so maybe I shouldn’t have, but how could I completely remove his shield? How could I completely strip him bare? It’s a decision I made almost the first moment our eyes locked last night.
He came to the door. Normally, he commands me to a car with a driver who delivers me to him. But no. He came to me. He knocked and I stood at the door, adjusting my little black dress, wondering if the shade of pink lipstick I’d chosen said “do me” or “love me.” I think maybe it said both. I’d taken a deep breath and opened the door. He stood there, in a gray, custom suit, looking like every woman’s fantasy, his eyes steel heat when they met mine.
“Rebecca,” he said softly, his voice a rasp of emotion, and in that moment, I flashed back to intimate moments where I’d been naked and in his arms. When I’d given myself to him as I have no one before him and I doubt anyone after. I could taste him on my lips. Feel his hands. And yet he hadn’t moved and neither had I.
I knew then, that we would be intimate that night, but I knew, too, that it would be different. And it was. It was different. It was…so very different. I need to think about exactly what that means. I need to write out every moment and I will. Just not yet and not just because I have to go to work. I need to think. I need to process every touch, taste, and caress I experienced last night in my mind again before I put it on the page.
More soon.
June 2011
Saturday, six pm
I’m supposed to write about my date last night but right now I’m riding this high that I can’t let go. Maybe I don’t want to write about that date. Maybe some part of me knows I handled the night wrong. Maybe I know I sealed the deal that means THE END. Or maybe I really am just excited about today. I sold a hundred thousand dollar painting today. I almost thought I saw Mark Compton smile, but Bossman, doesn’t do smiles. He does d
isapproval or approval. I pleased him today but more than anything I pleased me. I’m good at this job. I know art. I love art. This is my world. And that is the entire point in taking control of my personal life. Since I lost my mother, really since she got sick, I didn’t own my life. I think for a while I had a man at work and in my bed, that were such control freaks, I let myself lose touch with me. As I mentioned several entries ago, I’ve thought a lot about why such a strong independent person like myself dived into the role of submissive. What got me to a place with him that I had to say no more.
It hit me when I was with him last night, why I said yes, and it comes back to how it all started. What he’d promised me, what he’d made me feel. It came back to safety. I still remember the moment when things between us had changed. I’d been sitting at a little bakery coffee shop a few blocks from work. Not the one next door. That one is owned by Ava. She’s in love with Mark Compton, Bossman himself, and from the moment I started working at the Gallery, she was snotty. I stay away for her. How I know she loves him is another story for another entry. Bottom line. I don’t like visiting her coffee shop.
Anyway, this is about him and me. About the way things between us had changed from casual acquaintances to submissive and master. And actually maybe I have Ava to thank for that otherwise I might not have been avoiding her, thus being at the right place at the right to run into him. So…I’d been at the bakery, sitting at a back, corner table when he’d walked in. I remember knowing the very moment he entered, the way the energy in the room had shifted and changed. The way I’d looked up, my gaze lifting to land on him to find his attention on me. Almost as if he’d come for me.
He’d crossed the bakery, and ignored the pastries and sweets, making a beeline my direction, stopping at my table to stand above me, his attention landing first on the books I’d been studying and then at me. That man’s good looks and intensity had overwhelmed me. Intensely consumed me. We’d known each other before that encounter, but when he’d sat down across from me, there had been this shift in the air, a shift between us. “There’s a place I know that I’d like you to know,” he’d said.
“What place?” I’d ask, and believe you me, my heart had been thundering in my ears.
“Say yes, and I’ll take you there, and show you.”
I remember knowing in the moments that followed, that if I did, everything would change for me. I don’t know how or why. But I knew. I think that is why seconds ticked by without my reply but I remember that he sat there patiently, waiting, almost in need of my approval. He wouldn’t pressure me. He didn’t pressure me. And that’s the thing. He never did. Every choice I made was mine. Every choice was absolutely mine. He said that was my control. He said I was always in control.
Needless to say, I said, “Yes.”
He always insisted that I say “yes.” He always insisted that I make the choices. That’s part of why I was able to be submissive. But there was more. He promised me, that for those windows of time I was with him, none of the hell that was my life at that point in time, would exist. And that’s what became addictive. I could go to him and for the time I was with him, there was room for nothing but him. No fear. No loss. No worry. Just him.
And yes, sometimes driving everything else away came my way of him pushing my limits, most of the time it did. But it worked. He worked for me. I trusted him. Would I have been able to be submissive with someone else? No. I do not believe it could have been someone else.
Just him.
But that relationship was not a whole relationship. We were not whole. And so the question remains, can he be the whole package, my dream man, or is he only capable of being my Master?
Monday, eight pm
I’d barely gotten to work today when our receptionist, Amanda, appears in my doorway, looking as excited as a school girl and holding a box with a red ribbon. She sets it on my desk and then stands there. “Who’s it from?”
“I don’t know,” I’d told her.
“Open it and see.”
“Later,” I’d said, setting it aside, though it was killing me. I wanted to know what was inside. What I didn’t want was for anyone else to know. I’m private that way. And so is he.
“What exactly are we doing?”
At the sound of the boss, or Bossman, as we call him, Amanda jolted and turned around, and while I couldn’t see her face or his, I could hear the exchange.
“I was just passing a delivery on to Rebecca.”
Bossman says nothing, which means he’s giving her one of those steeling gray-eyed stares of his that intimidate even the most confident a person, which Amanda is not. She’s too young and sweet, as well as without experience, for the likes of that man.
“I’ll just go watch the front desk.”
“See that you do,” he says.
She scrambles away and he appears in my doorway, and what can I say. He’s tall. He’s blonde. His gray eyes striking, hard. And he wears a custom suit better than any man who’s ever graced the pages of GQ. The problem is that he knows it. He owns it. And he owns everyone around him. He’s wanted to own me from the moment I came to work for the Gallery. A part of me wanted him too, as well. But after my recent submissive experience, I’ve learned that being owned, isn’t right for me. Oddly though I can say that the more I was owned outside my work, the harder “Bossman” Mark Compton found it to intimidate me as he does everyone else in the office.
And he knows that, too. I thought this would displease him, but another oddity. It doesn’t. He seems to in fact, be pleased by this new side of me. If that is even possible. Maybe I’m wrong. Whatever the case, Bossman stood there in my doorway, staring at me. Never once did he look at the package. Never once did he speak. He just stared at me and I stared at him, and tried, like I always try, to read his thoughts. To feel what he was feeling, but that isn’t something that happens, unless he allows it to happen. And I suspect, that in his workplace, that would never, ever happen. But still I try. Still I want to peel away some layer of this powerful man’s shell, to see inside his mind.
“What are we doing Ms. Mason?”
“Amanda brought me a package that I intend to open alone and at an appropriate time.”
“As it should be,” he approves, and with that, he’d disappeared back into the hallway.
I’d wanted that private moment to be then, right after he’d left, but when I’d stood to shut my door, to open the package, I’d changed my mind. I’d waited until I arrived home. And now it’s sitting here, beside me and I can’t seem to open it. For some reason, I just…can’t. I haven’t even written about what happened last night. But I know that this package is about just that. What happened. What I didn’t think could happen. What he didn’t think could happen and yet, it did.
And it changed us. I’m not sure he can handle that. Maybe I can’t either. Maybe we don’t know how to be anything but what we once were and that I can’t be that anymore. Maybe I’ve already lost him and he’s lost me. That scares me. Outright terrifies me. So the package. I think I’ll wait to open it.
June 2011
Monday, eleven pm
The gift he gave me is still sitting on the kitchen table unopened while I’m alone in my bed, writing this. I suppose most people would be going crazy, wanting to know what is inside the package. I suppose too that I’m really not different than most people. I do want to know what’s inside it. I simply dread what it might be more. Besides, I’ve never been big on gifts, but then, I’ve never had anyone to give me gifts, at least, not before him. My mother wanted to give me gifts. She wanted a lot of things that she never found, and I think her cigarettes became her drug of choice and as we all know, drugs kill, and her drug killed her. But they were the one joy she had in life. He’s my drug.
The problem though is that the first gift he ever gave me was a beautiful ring with a stunning rose on top of it. A ring I was to put on only if I signed the agreement to be his submissive. A ring I wore for two months and gave back to
him when that role no longer suited me. Every gift he gave me since then was during that submissive period, and tied directly to something we’d shared when I was in that role. But I wasn’t his submissive Friday night. And he wasn’t the master he’d once been to me. Oh don’t get me wrong. He was sin, sex, and powerful, as I always expect from him, but the man beneath the master, I’d seen glimpses of in the past was there with me. And as I wrote before, I’d sworn not to have sex with him, but that didn’t work out.
Really though, considering how it happened. I don’t regret it. I regret nothing about that night. I’d opened the door and I’d been overwhelmed by not just the force of his presence but the way he’d looked at me, emotion he doesn’t allow anyone to see in his eyes. “Torment” is the word that had come to my mind. Wordless, I’d stepped into the hallway outside my apartment and before I could shut the door, he’d done the unthinkable. After he’d breathed out my name, he’d pulled me to him and kissed me, deeply, passionately, intensely. This is not a man who does such a thing. He builds tension. He makes you crave him and the kiss that might not ever come, even if his mouth finds it’s way to intimate parts of your body, which most assuredly it always did mine. But no. That night he just kissed me. And then there was this explosion of uncontrolled passion between us, that he has never allowed.
One minute we were in the hallway, and the next we are ripping off each others’ clothes – yes, he let me help him undress, which he never allows. He lets me touch him. And then we’re on my couch. I’m on top of him, and we are just crazy wild making love. Or having sex. I don’t know what it was. It was nothing I’d ever experienced in my life. I just know that there was this moment, where he twined fingers in my hair, and said, “I missed you,” that stole every breath I’ve ever owned. I know that sounds small, but it is not with him. Wild, crazy sex, and admissions of missing someone, missing me, does not fit the master I know. Nor does the desperation I’d tasted in his kisses.