Claimed by Her Web Master (Web Master #3) (5 page)

S
ilence enveloped the room
.

Usually too much dead space in a conversation got the other person talking. Not so with Dr. Beckett. Clearly she was used to long stretches of quiet in the conversations that took place in her office, and she had no problem waiting me out.

I looked around, taking in the neutral furnishings that gave little away about the fair-haired, hazel-eyed woman sitting across from me. I’d never spent much time thinking about her during previous sessions, but all this quiet made me notice that behind a pair of tortoiseshell glasses hid what must at one time have been a pretty face.

The doc had small breasts and narrow hips, and I imagined her tossing those prim frames aside, stripping naked and worshipping my cock, my lash landing upon her backside.

Alas, the image brought me no pleasure, and I sighed. “I’m not sure what else to talk about. I think we’ve covered just about everything.”

“Everything?” she asked.

“Yes, everything. And I don’t see the point of this anymore.”

“Ah. But there’s one thing you’ve refused to talk about,” she said with a mildly reproachful tilt of her head. I wanted to smack the bitch.

“The death of my son,” I muttered evenly.

She nodded.

“I don’t see what it would help.”

She shrugged. “You won’t know until you do it.”

I took a deep breath. As much as I hated to pull off the bandage I knew she’d never give me peace until I did. I’d give her the abridged version and show her that it wouldn’t do a damned thing to help me. Then maybe she’d leave me the fuck alone about it.

“Fine. His name was Sam. He died when he was six.” A chill ran through me, and I could feel a cold sweat bead up from my every pore. I hadn’t spoken his name since I’d told Sophie about him. And now my beloved Sophie was carrying another child of mine. What if I somehow destroyed him too?

“What happened just now? You flinched. Tell me about that.”

“Nothing. It’s just uncomfortable to talk about.”

She nodded. “Continue.”

I took a deep breath. “It was a hot day. August. We had a boat, and I took him out fishing. His mother had a headache so she stayed home. She had migraines, and the sunlight—made them worse. So Sam and I went by ourselves. It was a nice day. He was excited because he’d caught more fish than me. Couldn’t wait to get home and brag to his mother. When it was time to come in I told him to sit still in his seat in the boat, and I went to turn the motor on.”

I paused. My heart raced in my chest, and I closed my eyes to shut out the doctor’s prying eyes before I said, “That’s when I heard him scream.”

And suddenly I was back on that boat, watching the macabre scene play out in front of me. With as much blood and terror as a horror film. Only this was real. It was my life. My son’s life. The last few moments of it.

“I saw Sam thrashing around in the water. His lucky fishing hat floated about four feet away in the water. But wait, he was supposed to be sitting on the other side of the boat. How did he …? Later I decided that his hat must have blown into the water and he’d gone in after it, but at the time I didn’t know why …

“There was all the blood. The lake looked like an eerie combination of dark red and blue combining to create a deadly dark purple. I cut the motor off, jumped in, and pulled his small body to me. His long limbs kicked. Then slowed. Then they were still.

“Somehow I dragged him out of the water, and onto the boat. Laid him on the deck, blood spurted from his mangled leg in that rhythmic way a fish’s gills gasp for air. Panicked, I pressed my hand to the wound, willing the blood to stay in his body. I tried to think. What to do? How to help him. My baby boy lay next to me, his life’s blood seeping all over the floor of my boat.

“I stood up, my own blood pounding deafeningly in my ears. I looked around for something to stop the bleeding with. I needed to make a tourniquet of some kind, so I found a beach towel and grabbed my phone.”

No service. No fucking service!

I knelt beside him.

It’s okay, buddy. Going to be okay, I lied as I tied the towel above his gaping wound, furiously trying to stop the bleeding.

It wasn’t until I’d secured it that I noticed he wasn’t breathing.

A burst of adrenaline took over, and I started CPR. Blinded by tears, I pressed my hands to his tiny chest, trying to pump life back into him. A voice in the back of my mind told me he had no more blood left to course through his small heart. Raging at the very notion, I continued my vain attempts until I collapsed onto the deck next to him hours later from exhaustion.

Lying there, bathed in his blood, I will never forget how angelic he looked. How peaceful. Like he’d just fallen asleep. As if any minute he’d open his eyes and ask me how long it would be until we’d be home, and he could tell his mom how many fish he’d caught.

I don’t know how long I lay there. Until the sun started to dip in the sky.

Covered in my son’s blood, I finally stood up to head back to shore. I don’t remember the trip back.

Suddenly I was back in the present again. In my shrink’s office. My face was damp, and Dr. Beckett was handing me a box of tissues. I took one.

“What’s the next thing you remember?” she asked.

“Telling my wife. That’s something else I’ll never forget. Calling the police. That whole scene. For a couple of days they treated me as some sort of suspect.”

“How did that go?”

I shook my head. “They ruled it an accident, but that didn’t stop them from making our lives an even worse hell than they already were.”

Dr. Beckett nodded. Her face and demeanor said, “I understand,” but she couldn’t possibly.

“So, for all this time, you’ve been blaming yourself for your son’s death?”

I nodded. “When I turned on that engine and started that propeller it sliced into my son’s leg, I killed him.”

“But Quentin, it was an accident. You didn’t mean to, and you did your best to save him.”

I shook my head, grief as familiar as a well-worn pair of old shoes welled up inside me. “Don’t you see? The result is the same. He’s gone. I will never see him again. My son will never grow a day older than he was that day. He will never go to middle school or high school or college. He’ll never get married or have a family.

And I will never hold him again, nor will his mother.”

Though I felt her sympathy permeate the room, it was now Dr. Beckett’s turn to be silent.

Burying my face in my hands, I repeated the words that had become a mantra to me, “My son is dead, and it’s my fault.”

D
uring the next week
, I gave Kate some instructions that would be pivotal in my plan to get Sophie back.

“She said she’s not interested, boss. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“This is not for you to question. If you want to get paid just do what I say.”

“I still think you should have pulled out the ring …” Damn, but she was impertinent. Why did everyone have an opinion these days?

“Again—didn’t ask you.”

“Fine. What do you want me to do again?”

“I need you to become friends with Sophie on Facebook.”

“With my real name?”

“No. Make something up. Swipe some photos of somebody you know. Someone who’s married with kids who looks like they’d be friends with a kindergarten teacher and create a fake account. Friend a bunch of people she’s friends with. The ones who like to keep score will accept your request and then when you send one to her it will say “five mutual friends” or something and she will think that she should know you. Or maybe that she does know you. She just forgot, and then she’ll accept your request because A) She thinks she’s supposed to know you, and B) She doesn’t want to come across as rude.”

God, it was so easy getting in with someone through social media. Between our social conventions surrounding politeness and the new narcissism that has more people dying from taking selfies than from car accidents, it was a cinch to penetrate the walls of a person’s life.

Ever since I came back from Fort Worth I’d been trying to come up with a plan for how to get Sophie alone for a few hours. Then I realized I was going to need Kate’s help. There were certain things a woman would have access to that I wouldn’t. Like all the personal crap women threw up on their Facebook pages. Everything from pictures of their dogs to travel plans.

I scrolled down my own Facebook feed and saw this status along with a picture of some twat in a bikini.

Oh look at my brand new bathing suit—I’m going to the Bahamas this weekend. Bottoms up!

Just when I didn’t think people could get more stupid … That was the sort of crap in a way I hoped Sophie would post.

If Sophie posted a status telling the world she was leaving town I would seriously spank her. Hard. She could be robbed or some creepy stalker could break into her house and lie in wait for her upon her return.

“Then what?” Kate was saying.

“Then I want you to give me the login information.”

“So you can spy on her?”

“What I’m going to do with it is none of your business Kate,” I snapped.

“Sorry, boss.”

I needed to know as much about what was going on with Sophie as possible. Hopefully she would talk about the baby on her Facebook page, and I could get information that way. She might not be ready to share news of our little bundle of joy with the world quite yet, but eventually she would. And even if not, at least I’ll know something. More than she was currently giving me.

After my talk with Kate I thought more about my plan to spy on Sophie’s Facebook page. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that if Sophie found out, she’d be upset with me. My deceiving her was the main reason we weren’t together. I could still follow her Facebook page, I just needed to “friend” her myself so everything was above board.

I called Kate and told her to abort operation stalk Sophie on the Internet.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Kate said. “If she found out she’d be really pissed.”

“I realize that. Oh and Kate, there’s one more thing.”

“Yes, boss?”

“How would you like to go to Hawaii?”

T
he next week
I considered canceling my appointment with Dr. Beckett. I’d decided I had no real need for interpersonal relationships, so why bother attending therapy? I could learn to jack off to porn like a “normal” guy without a submissive, and my work would keep me busy. My music was fulfilling, and now that I could add the words “Oscar winner” before my name, I’d have all the work I could handle in the foreseeable future.

But every time I picked up the phone to cancel my appointment, something stopped me.

So when my usual time rolled around on Tuesday I found myself sitting in my regular chair looking around her office. Each week, I searched for discernible clues as to Dr. Beckett’s personal life, but I never uncovered any. Her office furniture was neutral in both color and design. It bothered me that the only things adorning her walls were her doctorate degree and a triptych of modern art paintings. A regular Rorschach inkblot test used for decoration. I imagined her asking me what I saw in them, and my temper started to rise.

“You look agitated,” she observed.

I exhaled, but said nothing.

“You seem upset. What were you just thinking about?”

Rolling my eyes, I answered, “I was just thinking about those pictures and how pissed off I’m going to be if you ask me what I see in them. They look like a fucking inkblot test.”

She considered this. “I’m not going to do that. The inkblot test uses very specific cards that have been tested and researched for almost a hundred years. Those pictures are simply meant to accent the wall. I find the colors soothing.”

Great, so now she thought I was paranoid? A weirdo for expecting her to grill me about her wall art?

“Why don’t you have any personal pictures, even on your desk?”

“I prefer to leave my personal life outside this room. After all, you’re paying me for my time, to focus on you. It would be inappropriate for us to spend that time on my life.”

“That’s bullshit. It’s your office. You can have whatever pictures you want on your desk. I want to know why I should bring my personal stuff into this room if you’re going to hold yours back?”

Dr. Beckett pursed her lips before she spoke again. “There is another part to it. Do you know what projection is?”

“I think so.”

“In psychodynamic therapy, the therapist acts as a blank slate. That way the patient can project his own issues onto the therapist or into the therapeutic relationship.”

“Sounds like more mumbo jumbo.”

A smile played around her lips, but she didn’t respond.

“I don’t have anything to talk about this week. I’m working on getting my life back to normal. Starting to see what the future may be like. I intend to make music my focus.

Dr. Beckett nodded. “I understand. Well, if you don’t know what to talk about, and we have about forty-five minutes left … I’d like you to tell me about something.”

“What’s that?”

“You told me that you lied to your girlfriend for several months by asking her to go along with you sharing her as a submissive with another Dom, and when she did, you yourself were pretending to be that other Dom.”

I shifted in my chair.

“So, essentially you catfished her.”

I nodded.

“I want to know what that was like for you.”

“Complicated.”

“I’ll bet. I’d like you to talk about what it was like to be BA.” Dr. Beckett sat across from me—judging me. Or at least that’s how it felt.

For a brief moment I considered being difficult and asking her why, but that would only prolong this torture.

“It was easy.”

“What was easy about it?”

“There were no expectations. No worries about the future, or where things were heading. I could just be there, in the moment, enjoying the session.”

“Tell me about ‘BA.’ How does he compare to your other persona, ‘MC’?”

Oh God, now she was making me sound crazy, like I had multiple personalities or something. Maybe that was the nature of the beast. They say if you go see a surgeon he’s going to want to cut, because that’s what they do. Go to a shrink, she’ll see you as
The United States of Tara
or
Sybil
.

“I guess BA was a little younger, a bit more carefree. I even made him immature at times.”

Dr. Beckett stroked her chin. “I wonder why.”

“I think I wanted to test Sophie. See if she would actually do some of the ridiculous things BA asked her to do.”

“And did she?”

I nodded. “Yes, she was compliant with everything.”

I remembered back to the sessions she and I had as BA.

The first task I’d sent her had been rather clinical, and she hadn’t liked it. In fact, she disliked it so much that she told me, Quentin, how bad it was. As Quentin I’d tried to reassure her, encourage her it would get better. It had felt dishonest at first, lying to her, but I quickly got used to it.

When, as BA, I asked her to do that phone task where she was supposed to fuck herself and then call different businesses on the phone and ask them if they had any “bearded alpha” (which was what I told her BA stood for.) I was shocked that she actually carried out the task. There had been a time requirement so she was supposed to keep the person on the phone for a certain number of minutes. The whole thing was juvenile, like a prank call with a dildo. Immature as hell. But she didn’t question it.

“How did that make you feel that she went along with all his tasks?”

“I guess I had mixed feelings. On one hand I was impressed that she did the things he asked, but at the same time a part of me wanted her to question him.”

“Question him how?”

“I guess I wanted her to realize that those things were stupid and ask more questions. Delve into him and his motives more.”

“I see. Were you frustrated after her training with you she wasn’t more sophisticated? Maybe you thought you should have taught her better?”

“No.”

“Were you worried that if she was such an easy mark for an immature or inexperienced Dom that she would do that offline and find herself in a bad situation?”

“No …”

Dr. Beckett sat silently, waiting.

When I didn’t say anything for several minutes, she said, “What do you think was behind those mixed feelings?”

“I really don’t know.”

“I’m wondering if jealousy could be a part of the equation.”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Okay.”

She resumed her quiet observation of me.

My mind searched, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what had troubled me about the way Sophie had so readily acquiesced to BA’s requests. I could feel myself about to uncover it. It was that same feeling you get when you can’t remember the name of a song, and then in a rush it finally comes to you.

“I know why it bothered me.”

Dr. Beckett regarded me with interest.

“I wanted her to ask more questions. I wanted her to figure out it was me. In fact, I was somewhat peeved with her that she didn’t.”

“Fascinating.”

“Yeah. I wanted her to see through me.”

“You wanted her to see through your facade and discover the real you.”

Scrunching up my face, I answered, “I guess so.”

“I want you to think about that this week, Quentin. I believe that’s a real breakthrough for you.”

“Oh really? Why is that?”

“Because it’s the first time you’ve admitted to wanting to let anyone in. To allow them to see the real you.”

Uncrossing my arms, I allowed her words to sink in. She was right that I didn’t like to let anyone get close to me. I feared something bad would happen to them, and I couldn’t bear the pain again. No, I couldn’t let that happen again. But with Sophie, there was something deep inside me that cried out for her to see the real me. And it scared the hell out of me.

“You really love this woman.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

That fact didn’t seem to make a difference to Sophie, but God help me it was true.