“Is she going to invite your father?”
I pulled my attention away from Esteban’s message, which had included a photograph that made the ones my mother complained about look like they belonged in a hymnal. “I don’t know. I’d assume so.”
My parents had been divorced, at this point, almost as long as they’d been married. My dad had moved to Florida, which had meant the every other weekend custody thing hadn’t happened for us, something my mother loved to point out over and over. How she’d been a single mother, did it all on her own. By now it was old news, especially since whatever generous alimony arrangement they’d made had allowed her to work only at part-time retail jobs she cycled through whenever she decided she wanted the employee discount at some new place. My mom hadn’t had it all peaches and cream, I’d never say that, but she hadn’t exactly had to work in a labor camp to raise us, either.
“He’s not even close to William!”
“William spends a week with Dad in Florida every year, Mom. Just like we did when we were kids.”
“A week out of the year?” She sniffed. “That’s hardly anything.”
I shook my head in warning. “Not your party. Not your choice. If Evan and Susan want Dad there, he’ll be invited.”
My mother scowled. “The way you talk to me!”
“Someone has to,” I said, kind of hating that it had to be me, but for fuck’s sake, Jill was my mother times two, and Evan was Mr. Avoidance. I was already the perverted black sheep anyway. I might as well also bear the burden of being the ungrateful child.
Susan came back from the bathroom with suspiciously red eyes that made me feel bad that all of this had to be such a big freaking hassle. “It’s settled. I’ll replace the pasta bar with a vegetarian buffet. Will that be acceptable?”
Before my mother could answer, Susan picked up her purse. “I have to get going.”
She’d fled within ten minutes, leaving nothing but a few crumpled catering menus in her place. My mother, scrubbing the counter so hard I feared she meant to slaughter her sponge, barely said goodbye to her. She turned her face from mine when I tried to hug her goodbye.
“You want to stay over? Your room is ready. I saved some Shirley Temple movies on the DVR.” She turned off the water.
I snuck a peek at my phone, but to my disappointment, Esteban had signed off with a hurried GTG. I shoved my phone back in my pocket. “No. I have to work in the morning. I didn’t bring a bag.”
“You should’ve. I never get to see you since you moved so far away.”
We talked on the phone several times a week and texted more than that. I sighed and hugged her. My mother had gotten so much smaller over the past few years. We used to be about the same height—not that we’d seen eye to eye very often. Now it seemed almost like I could rest my chin on top of her head.
“I’ll call you.” I paused. Then, though I prayed the answer would be negative, asked, “So, you’re not coming to the gallery show on Friday night?”
My mother shook her head. “To what, see you in some more of those pictures? No, thank you!”
“I could email them to you,” I offered with a blankly innocent expression that Evan and I had both perfected as teens to totally flip my mother’s shit. “The pictures, I mean.”
“No, thank you!”
I laughed, though part of me cringed at the way she categorized what I considered art. And honestly, how she categorized what I considered one of the most significant parts of me. I hugged her again anyway, though, because she was my mother. Then I got the hell out of that house and headed for home.
12
Alex and Olivia were not coming to the gallery show. They’d planned months ago to go out of town for the weekend. Alex had, however, told me it was okay if I wanted to take off early to go home and get ready. I knew that was so he could leave early himself without feeling guilty¸ if Alex Kennedy could ever be said to feel guilt. I suspected he rarely did, which was one of the reasons we’d become friends instead of only coworkers.
“I’m not sure you’re the one who gets to decide what time I leave,” I said, putting a few last minute bits of data into a client file and glancing to where he lounged in my doorway. “I mean, I’m the one who prints the paychecks. So.”
“Yeah, well, we have direct deposit, so yeah, fuck your logic.”
I laughed. “Wow. What a great workplace environment.”
“You love it,” he said and tossed a paper plane at me that I hadn’t even noticed he held.
I caught it in midair. “Where you going for the weekend?”
“A nude beach,” Alex said.
I swiveled again in my chair. “What?”
“Gotcha. Have you ever gone to one of those?”
“A nude beach.” I shuddered. “No. Are you really going?”
“How about one of those all-inclusive sex resorts?”
Again, I shuddered. “Um, no. Seriously, is that where you’re going?”
“No. Just to Miami.”
“Close enough,” I told him. “Are you gonna get a little nipped and tucked while you’re there?”
“Nah. Just lie out on the beach in my man thong.” Alex grinned and turned around to show me his butt, clad in tailored trousers I was sure had cost as much as one of my car payments. Man knew how to dress, I’d give him that.
“Don’t send me any selfies, please.”
Alex looked deadpan. “Oh, I’ll tag you in every one of them.”
“Sicko.” I shook my head with a sigh. “Are you coming in on Monday?”
“Why? Are you planning on being late?”
“No. Just wondered.”
“You don’t have some big weekend planned?” Alex asked.
I shook my head again. “Nope. The gallery show. That’s it. Nothing much else going on. Oh, I might head over to the sex dungeon for some hardcore pony play, maybe look for a new vinyl suction bed—” I stopped at the look on his face. “Gotcha.”
“What the hell is a vinyl suction bed?”
“It’s this bed you get in and they put a little breathing tube in your mouth, and then they suck out all the air,” I told him. “Like vacuum packed. Like those bags you use to store sweaters, only for sex.”
Alex winced. “Shit. I thought I’d seen some stuff, but that is really...”
“I am not looking for a vinyl suction bed,” I told him. “As if I’d tell you, if I were.”
“That’s maybe a little too kinky, huh?”
“It’s only too kinky if you’re not into it,” I said with a laugh.
“But the pony play,” he said. “That’s real?”
We both burst into laughter. Pony play is totally a real thing, but I’d never done anything like that. I hadn’t even seen it done. Nobody I’d ever met had really done it.
“I think that’s some serious kind of Anne Rice Sleeping Beauty series stuff,” I told him. “I mean, yeah, I guess it’s real, but no, I’m not planning on harnessing my lover up to a carriage with a horsetail up his ass and having him pull me around this weekend.”
“Why not? It sounds like fun,” Alex said, and paused for a beat before adding, “so you do have a lover!”
“Oh, my God,” I cried. “You’re obsessed with sex! Get out of here, you perv! Go take your wife to Miami and lie around on a beach getting drunk.”
“Don’t forget about the man thong,” Alex added and ducked out of the office before I could throw something at him.
He had got me to thinking, though. Alicia had moved to Texas a little over two years ago, but you couldn’t replace a best friend the way you could a fuck buddy or even a boyfriend. I’d left my old job and discovered that work friendships didn’t necessarily last without the bond of hating your boss. I’d met up with that crowd for drinks a couple times, but not being able to keep up on the office gossip meant I was usually left out of the conversation. When I’d first started getting online to really explore finding a play partner, I had met a bunch of like-minded peopl
e and become friendly with them, but there’d been few with whom I’d had anything in common other than kink. I’d met Esteban and distanced myself from that crowd, unconsciously, I supposed.
I hadn’t been to a munch in forever, but a quick search of OnHisKnees.com showed me there was one scheduled for tonight. I could go to the gallery show and then the meet up afterward, if I still felt like it. I typed a couple quick messages to a few familiar online friends, several of whom were planning to be there. We chatted for a few minutes before I logged off to finish my work so I really could leave early.
I’d teased Alex that he was obsessed with sex, and it was true that on the surface that’s what stuff like fetish play was all about. But there was more to it than that, at least for me and anyone I’d ever met who was seriously into things that strayed outside the vanilla norm. Dominance and submission was about power exchange, sure. Getting off. But it was also about an emotional connection. Finding that person who fit you.
And that made me think of him.
But instead of messaging George, which I only did at stupid o’clock or drunk-thirty, I messaged Esteban. Call me.
He did about twenty minutes later as I was packing up to get out the door. “Hi.”
“Hi. Do you want to go with me to a gallery show tonight? And a meet up, later?” I had never asked him to go out with me on anything resembling a real, official date before.
He didn’t say anything at first, and knew right away his answer would be no. “I want to, yes. But...”
“Never mind.” I tried to keep my voice light, not clipped or angry. I didn’t have a right to be upset if I was breaking the rules I’d helped set in the beginning. Esteban and I were lovers with parameters. I’d been very clear about that from the start. I hadn’t wanted to get into anything emotional. But that’s the funny and terrible thing about fucking someone. If you do it right, the more you do it, the easier it is to like them. Something had changed since our reconciliation, but maybe only inside me.
“Querida...”
“It’s fine.” My voice softened. “You’ll have to make it up to me.”
“Gladly.” His voice dropped low to match mine. “Name your price.”
“Go into the bathroom,” I told him, already closing my office door and locking it, though Alex should’ve been long gone already.
“I have a meeting in twenty minutes—”
“Then you’ll have to be fast.” My tone was as hard as his dick was going to be, if I knew him at all. “I want to hear you come for me.”
He made a muffled, choking noise. I grinned and leaned back in my chair, already inching up my skirt. I ran a thumb over my panties, letting the pressure of my touch turn me on.
“Oh, I want to be touching you,” Esteban said five minutes later, after he’d told me he’d gone into the private, single-stall bathroom on the third floor of his building. “My cock aches for you.”
“Show me.” I wet my fingers and slipped them beneath the lace to circle my clit.
A picture came through a moment later that took my breath away. That hard, thick cock, already turning red with arousal. His fist around it, the foreskin just barely covering the head.
“Beautiful,” I breathed into the phone. “Fuck your fist for me. Imagine my mouth.”
“I am.”
It wasn’t going to take me more than another minute to come, but I teased myself, listening to the sound of his breathing get faster. Sharper. I couldn’t hear the slick noises of him stroking himself, but I could imagine them. I edged myself, teasing, and when he muttered my name, I let myself go over. Orgasm blasted through me, fierce and hot and wonderful.
With my pussy still pulsing, I sat up in the chair. “Are you close?”
“Yes, so close. I’m so hard for you. So close...”
“Stop, now.” I smiled, leaning on the desk with my elbow, my other hand cupping myself through my panties. I could come again, if I wanted to, but I held off.
Esteban stuttered his reply. “S-st-top?”
“Yes,” I said sternly. “Take your hand off your cock. Now.”
He groaned. “Please...”
“No. Anyone can make you come, but I want to know that you’ll stop yourself for me.”
Esteban let out a heavy sigh. “You kill me.”
I laughed. “Show me, baby.”
Another picture came through of his deliciously hard cock. The glisten of precome made my mouth go dry. For a second or two I almost changed my mind, wanting to hear him get off, knowing it was for me.
Instead, I said quietly, “The next time you come, it had better be all over my tits.”
He muttered something in Spanish, a curse or a prayer. Maybe both. I smiled.
“I mean it,” I told him, warming to this new game. “Your orgasm is mine. Do you understand me, Esteban? You will not come until I tell you that you may.”
“For how long?” He sounded agonized and also grateful.
“Weeks,” I whispered, teasing. Not meaning it. “Maybe months.”
Silence. “Yes, miss.”
“Say it,” I whispered, an eye on the clock. I didn’t want him to be late for his meeting or to get in trouble at work. I was responsible for him, after all.
“My orgasm is yours. My cock is yours,” he added, though I hadn’t asked him for that. “I want to only come for you.”
“Oh, sweetheart, that makes me feel so...” I sighed, calculating how close I was to another orgasm of my own. “So good.”
“Are you going to come for me?” he asked.
“Yes. Again. Oh...yeah. Tell me again.”
“I am yours,” Esteban said. “Your toy. I do what you want, everything to please you, my queen, my goddess.”
I came, less fiercely this time but no less enjoyably. My breath shuddered out of me, and I made sure to let him hear it. I laughed a little through the pleasure at the sound of his groan.
Still easing down from my orgasm, I said, “Go to your meeting now. Don’t be late.”
“I want to talk more to you. I want to hear you come again.”
“I won’t, not a third time, and you need to be someplace,” I said. “Go.”
Esteban chuckled. “I do love it when you are stern with me.”
“I know you do.” I laughed along with him and closed my eyes to picture his face. “I like it, too.”
13
I’m not sure there’s a woman in the universe who could look at her own face and body blown up to poster size without being critical of it. It’s hard enough to look at snapshots without judging a double chin, an unevenly plucked brow. Pores that are too big, breasts that are too small. Yet when I looked at myself in the portraits hung on the wall in this gallery, I didn’t let myself dwell on the imperfections. I focused on the beauty of each piece, and not just the physical loveliness of the people in the photos, nor the setting or the subject, but that unnameable quality that Scott had managed to find and bring out in every scene.
“You take pretty pictures,” I told him as he came up behind me to put an arm around my waist. I lifted my glass of wine toward the biggest portrait, framed simply in black. It wasn’t a new one; we’d done it a few years ago, but I hadn’t seen it in a while. “That’s still my favorite.”
Scott gave me a familiar grin. “That’s the one where you can’t see your face.”
“That’s not the reason.” I studied it. The shot was slightly out of focus, the edges of everything blurred. I’d never actually made love to the man in the picture with me, yet Scott had still found a way to capture that moment between two people when passion had exhausted them, and all that remained was tenderness. In the picture, my face half-turned, my hand on my partner’s cheek as he knelt in front of me.
“It’s beauty,” I said. “It’s art. It’s real and lovely and honest. And not a whip or a chain in sight.”
He laughed and squeezed me, pulling me closer to kiss my cheek. “Plenty of whips and chains in those other pictures.”
&
nbsp; “Those are the ones people will comment on. But this one,” I said, still studying it. “This one is...”
Real, I meant to say. It wasn’t quite what I meant. Of all the pictures on display, this was one of the few that had been totally staged, which should’ve made it somehow less real than the ones he’d taken in an actual BDSM dungeon or during a play party. Yet somehow, it was more real, because while I’d been to a dungeon twice and participated in a play party maybe a few more times than that, most of the time for me it wasn’t about the toys or the scene but the emotions. Not so much what I did as how I felt doing it. That picture, staged or not, showed the truth.
“It’s gorgeous. You’re gorgeous,” he told me and kissed me again before being tugged away by a girl in a full-length black vinyl ball gown who wanted to talk to him about...something that I didn’t care about.
I turned back to the photo and sipped my wine. Behind me in the gallery, the DJ had started spinning dance music. The free wine was flowing. People might not actually dance, but they were certainly getting drunk.
A flash of blue caught my eye, and I turned. The woman next to me looking at the photo had gorgeous turquoise, blue and pale green hair twisted into a pretty updo ornamented with a pinup flower that matched her sleek, vintage-style dress. She pointed at the wall to the portrait next to the one I’d been studying.
“I’m Sarah. That’s my boyfriend in the picture with you.” She grinned.
I held out my hand. “Elise. So you’re the infamous Sarah. I heard a lot about you.”
“All bad, I’m sure.” She laughed and stood on her tiptoes to see around me, scanning the crowd before settling back to look at me. “He’s around here, somewhere. But I wanted to come over and say hi. Jack said this shoot was one of his favorites.”
“Did he? I had a good time, too. We got some really great pictures. Well, Scott did. But doesn’t he always?”
Sarah’s smile widened. “Yeah, he’s amazing. I’ve used a lot of his pieces for clients.”
Olivia had told me that Sarah did interior design and decorating. I wasn’t sure what sorts of people would hang pictures like the ones in this gallery tonight in their houses—Scott’s work was art, yes, but not of the seascape or fruit basket variety.