Six months later she was still pissed. No one had ever blown her off without so much as a "fuck you." What was worse, she'd trotted out most of what she'd thought was a rather impressive resume for this one. To no avail. Oh, sure, they'd gotten drunk, fucked liked minks, come all over themselves half the night. And no wonder. They'd built up enough tension it would've happened no matter how she came on. She'd played very cool, then submissive, very "Tell-me-how-you-like-it-daddy." Somehow, it was wrong. In the realm of brain-sex anyway, it hadn't stuck.
Retrospectively, she felt like a tongue-tied idiot bumpkin with a hard-on and an attitude problem.
She was going back, all or nothing, balls to the wall, for one last-ditch lurch into his life. Although not totally sure, she thought she knew what she had to do to prove herself. The idea of having to prove anything to anyone went totally against her grain, plus she didn't know if she could convincingly pull off the role. As a small modicum of salve to her bruised self-esteem, she told no one, not her poor beleagured therapist, who'd heard a ridiculous amount of speculations in the month following their little rendezvous, and only stubborn silence on the subject since. Not her best friend, her favorite sister, or the online sexual advice columnist to whom she'd been posing queries to for ten dollars a pop. The only incriminating evidence was a mold of her teeth, and her last credit card bill, which included $63.55 at The O-Zone.
She knew she wasted too goddamn much time online these days. It was so easy to dive in and just get lost out there; could have just as easily been outer space, but full of information and gossip and words, pictures, links--a million trillion different mazes to whatever. That was not even counting the chat rooms or any kind of pornography. It wasn't too surprising that she'd first tracked him down out in the digital wasteland. It had ended abruptly in an all-too-real blow-off. Her emails went unanswered. Her pride made her stop writing. There were only two things remaining as options and she wasn't forgetting one minute of it. She couldn't.
Several hundred miles removed, she showed up late one night at his work, biding her time till closing. When she walked into his line of sight, smiled thinly and said, "Well, can we at least talk? Once isn't going to hurt, is it?" he didn't look surprised in the least, simply resigned, as though this kind of thing happened all the time. Although loathe to admit it, the very idea sparked jealousy in her, which in turn blew on the hot coals of anger she was concealing. So as not to back down at the last second, her focus remained on these two concepts while he deliberated.
"OK, fine." Irritated, but trying to hide it. Still that same nicey, nicey. "Just let me finish up here..."
She had to get clear of this crowd, somehow. Though wearing the same type of attire - all black, short skirt, long baggy velvet shirt - she felt like she was glowing in the dark. Through another endless ten minutes she stood in the corner, watching the fans clear out. She toyed with the butt end of the braided leather riding crop up her sleeve, trying not to be discovered, but almost wanting to be. By now, her nerves had kicked into high gear. The buzzing in her ears turned her hearing inward, to her heart that was pounding unevenly in her ears and throat, nearly choking her.
Finally they walked out. The crowd had thinned considerably; her chances of pulling this off uninterrupted were improving. He said nothing, not giving anything away. He never did, even when he was chatty. She was going to have to bust that wide open.
Nervously, she coughed around the lump in her throat and managed, "Well, good show as always. I liked it better than--"
He ignored the small talk and cut her off, "Can I ask you something?"
He plunged on, not seeming to care if he got an answer. "Why did you come back? I was playing; it shouldn't have gone that far. I thought you realized that, after...We're worlds apart, different socialization...just too weird, etc etc...blah, blah, blah..."
She was silent, waiting for his cutting logic and rambling to die, till every last denial could be voiced. It fueled her fire of revenge, lust, and spurn. More than that, more, she waited for the dormant counterpart to awaken. He fell back to silence, apparently running out of rebuffs.
She detoured into a service corridor, remembering, pleasingly, from the the details of the map she'd memorized earlier, to turn right after the shoe store. Naturally, he held back. Opening the door, going halfway through, she was forced to touch him the first time of her own volition. 'Now or never,' she told herself, looking anywhere but into his face. She snatched the front of his shirt, yanked him into the hallway, and shoved him before her.
"Walk," she commanded.
Her resolve to get through this without making him hate her was what she reached for next. That would be the end result if she was wrong about his deep-seated tendencies. She was going to have to trust her instincts, which even now were manifesting in her stern tone and latent bitchy bossiness.
"Hey, what do you think you're..."
"Shut the hell up, you bastard."
Stiff, silent. Compliant.
The hallway stretched on forever, rubber room white walls, snot-green carpeting, sickly yellow fluorescent lighting. Hang a left. Another crossroads. Right. She remembered this particular passageway dead-ended in a backing bank of stores; doors, some alcoved, to both sides. He started to throw a backward glance, eyebrow lowered in an irked way.
"Don't you look at me!"
His head snapped to the front and his spine straightened as though affronted. She gave them to the count of three, and then pushed him face-first into one particularly deep-set doorway. He spread his hands against the door, chest-height, to stop himself from mashing his face on it. She removed the first item of arsenal from a coat pocket, a handcuff. Moving as speedily as possible, she caught his left wrist and chained it to the door-knob. He gave it a couple half-hearted tugs, probably thinking it was plastic, paused, and yanked harder. In the meantime she'd whipped out another, clicked half of it around his other wrist before he could think about what she was doing. The free end she clasped around the railing that lined all of the halls. His eyes, his head, did come around this time, flashing ire, a little fear, and as she'd expected, excitement of some sort. He took a breath but she was ready and cut in.
"All right, ___, just shut up. Nobody has ever pulled your kind of shit on me, and you're not getting away with it. I'm taking it out of your ass; you're getting what's coming to you. Tonight."
He tried again, "Let me out of these right NOW. What the fuck is this? Are you out of your mind? I'll--"
Voice lowered to barely above a whisper, she drawled, "You don't want to threaten me, boy." She was starting to get off on ordering him around. It was part payback, and part turn-on. "Shut the hell up, or I'll shut you up."
"I'm gonna yell--"
She was too quick for him again. As soon as he started to draw in his breath she dropped a specially folded length of black silk over his head, into his open mouth. Adrenaline singing in her veins, she knotted it behind his head. This was not the easiest. It caught in his hair. She could tell he was starting to panic and he fought. He even tried head-butting her backwards, which she narrowly evaded.
The moment of truth. She had to balance force with restraint, to make him want what he wanted. The direct approach seemed to have worked so far.
"OK, ___, you little punk. You are now my toy, to play with as I see fit, and I'm in the mood to hurt you. You can't get away; you can't scream. So just fucking enjoy the ride. Just like I did, and you know I did. If me letting you take the lead doesn't do it for you, then fine, I hereby take charge; but it's gonna be rough, at least this time. Surrender, ___. I am the ruler of your little world, for now. I'm gonna whip your ass either way; it may as well be pleasurable."
Inflection gave the word its its full double or triple meaning. He still looked furious, but she also noted how comparatively little he had fought, and how he was trembling just slightly.
"If you can't handle this, or any of it, give me a peace sign on your left hand and I'll stop. Otherwise..."
The terms she presented to him were just as they'd been presented to her once. She knew what it was like to wait for what came next. She wondered about the strength of his nerve; her own was sufficiently worked up now that she felt drunk on the power rush. Being intoxicated on something always helped.
When she flicked her forearm, the braided butt of her crop dropped out of her right sleeve into it's waiting opposite hand. It hissed very close to his head as she freed it entirely and took a couple practice swings. Before he could even flinch she pressed herself up against the back of him letting her free hand wander over his clenched arm, shoulder, and back muscles.
"If this is how it's gotta be, then that's how it's gotta be. It's worth it to me. You decide."
She backed up, took aim, bought the crop down smartly on his backside. And again, higher. He rose up on his toes and pulled away, body flattening on the door in front of him.
"So, you're a little wussy boy. Me-thinks I better toughen you up."