In the Middle (3 page)

He wondered if meeting her was a good idea. They seemed to sync up so well online, but people could be very different in person. He didn’t want to be in a relationship that was built entirely on fantasy, however, even though he was willing to settle for an online relationship. He wanted to know everything there was about Lulu—he still hadn’t gotten used to thinking of her as Louise—and this was the best way to do it. If she’d said no, maybe he wouldn’t have pushed. But she’d kept him wondering, and then, on the last day before he boarded the train, she’d said yes.

He wished they’d had more time to plan and to talk about their expectations. He was there to attend a convention for inventors, and he couldn’t neglect it to spend as much time with her as he’d like. He was hoping to find someone at the convention to hook up with, not in a sexual sense but in a business one. Physical presence in different locations still mattered, no matter how much the Internet had internationalized his business.

Would their online relationship as Master and slave carry over to real life? Or would it be like starting all over with getting to know each other? If she hadn’t waited until they were almost ready to sign off for the evening to tell him she was going to meet him, he would have told her what to expect and what he expected. As it was, he’d have to follow his instincts. He grinned. He might have preferred to plan, but he was confident he’d know what they both needed once he spent time with her.

The train slowed down with the low screeching sound of brakes against the iron track. He’d loved trains, ever since he was a kid. Now he took them to avoid wasting his time in security lines at the airport when he could be catching up on office tasks with his computer, but he still enjoyed the sensation of arriving someplace much as people had a hundred years ago, in the heyday of the iron horse. He loved his gadgets, and what was a train but the ultimate gadget? Especially the old ones with their exposed coupling rods and wheels. Since the steam engine, how many lovers had reunited in Union Station? The mixture of his old-fashioned penchant for trains and an Internet romance certainly didn’t fit into any of the familiar norms.

He was eager to meet Louise, but he let the other people in a rush clear the way. An older woman asked for help getting her suitcase down from the overhead compartment, so that delayed him further as he helped her. He offered to carry it, but she was happier dragging the heavy luggage behind her on its little wheels. He chuckled. He’d waited a while for this meeting. He could wait a while longer.

When he finally got off the platform and into the station, he spotted her immediately. She wore a white blouse and a dark blue skirt, as she told him she would. The blouse was loose but couldn’t completely conceal the lushness of her soft body or the black bra she wore beneath it. Damn she looked sexy. Her face was just like her picture, with a few extra laugh lines around the eyes. She didn’t notice him right away but kept scanning the throng ahead of him. He didn’t want to wait, so he took the quickest path. He broke from the line, crossed through a row of seats for those waiting for a train, and then stepped over the rail that enclosed the waiting area. He wasn’t trying to sneak up on her, but it nearly had that effect.

She whirled at the last moment. “Rob Randall?”

He grinned. “Louise.” His casual willingness to start from scratch with her if need be had melted away upon seeing her. He wanted to hold her and taste her soft red lips, and he didn’t want to wait. “Give me a kiss, slave girl.”

She hesitated a split second, which gave him time to put his suitcase down and wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her to him. She was over half a foot shorter than him, and when she tilted her head up and he bent his down, their lips met perfectly. He’d intended something short, but her lips parted against his, and he couldn’t resist sliding his tongue in to taste her better. She kissed him back with a ferociousness that more than made up for her earlier hesitation. She smelled good, like roses and vanilla. Her body felt warm and soft and womanly. If she’d put on weight, it had done her some good. He’d much rather hold someone cuddly than some skinny model.

“MASTER.” LOUISE HADN’T been sure whether she’d be willing to say those words or not. There was an element of role-playing in their online existences, even though she always tried to be true to herself. In some ways, she felt like her avatar was more her true self than the accountant she “played” in real life, but in other ways, she wasn’t. Long hair, thin waist, breasts that stood perkily in place as if weightless, none of the concerns of someone who had to take out the trash and do the dishes and all the other myriad things one never had to do online. But after Randall’s kiss took her breath away, “Master” was the only thing that seemed appropriate to say.

The kiss wasn’t all that startled her out of most of her vocabulary. He’d given her a rough description, but it hadn’t done him justice. She figured people online generally gave themselves rave reviews, and he’d stuck to height and hair color. He’d been accurate as far as it went—he was tall and his hair was short and blond, a buzz cut really—but he hadn’t mentioned that he was lean and fit. He moved with an easy grace. She’d seen him step over the rail casually, out of the corner of her eye, before it had registered that he was the person she was waiting for. Flexible. And from the feel of his arms around her, strong too.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Louise.”

She didn’t find herself using his name very often online. He was almost always simply Master. He’d never insisted on that, but that had been what she wanted, in her desire to immerse herself more fully in the fantasy of their existence there. She didn’t know where to go from here. Did she call him Rob or Randall? Rob seemed too casual, but addressing him by his last name was awkward too. For a moment, it panicked her, and she was afraid, as she had been a dozen times on the drive to Union Station, that she would somehow screw it up. She’d come up with two answers.
Let him lead
. It was simple, really. She trusted him. Not completely—one couldn’t completely trust anyone, and especially someone one only knew online—but until proven otherwise, she trusted him. Then there was the other answer.
Relax, be yourself
. “It’s nice to meet you too, Randall. Rob? You’re a good kisser. Even if that did create something of a scene.”

“Rob will do. You’ve a lovely blush,” he told her, grinning.

The thought that she was blushing made her cheeks warm up even more. “Well. Um. Thanks, I think.”

“Thank you for picking me up. So much better than getting a taxi. So much prettier than a taxi driver. You’re gorgeous!”

No, I’m not
. But she didn’t say it. One of Randall X’s greatest peeves was bad self-talk. And while getting a spanking online wasn’t too bad, she wasn’t about to risk what he’d do in the train station. “You sound surprised.”

“Do I? I guess I hadn’t thought about it too much. I’ve known you’re a gorgeous person on the inside for a while, and I wasn’t going to worry about the rest. Anyway, I’m glad you agree.”

She wasn’t going to argue. “You’re pretty good-looking yourself. And yes, I’m surprised. But I won’t complain.”

Her heart was racing, and she felt out of breath. She was positively giddy that he was pleased with her. Being quite so eager was uncomfortable. But here he was, the man she’d been fantasizing about, in the flesh. Whenever she logged in to meet him, she felt a sense of submission wash over her, and it made all the muscles in her shoulders and neck relax to simply let him take charge. Now it was real, and she wanted him badly. And yet here in the crowded train station, she was too tense, and she didn’t know if she’d be able to let herself go quite the same way as she was online, with someone she barely knew.

He reached out and took her hand. “It’s all right, Louise. It’s strange for me too, you know. We’ll take it one step at a time.”

She felt some of the tension go out of her.
Relax, be yourself
. She realized the two answers she had given herself weren’t as contrary as she thought they might be. Being herself went well with letting him lead, actually. “What’s the next step?”

“The next step is to get to your car.” He picked up his suitcase with his other hand. “But I’m afraid you’re going to have to show me where that is. Lead on, slave girl.”

She grinned. He’d kept his voice low, and she felt comfortable that among the bustle no one else heard him. She had to take charge some. This was her city, and it was her car. But he’d found the right words to let her know even leading would be seen as service. She charged forward through the throng, weaving her way to the elevator that led to the parking lot.

There was a silence after they left the parking garage that Louise found uncomfortable until she realized that, like any first-time visitor to Washington, he was looking around for sights of the Capitol building and the Washington Monument. By the time she figured out that was the reason, she had already headed northwest on Massachusetts Avenue.

“Did you want me to go down to the Mall? I’m afraid I’m not really taking the scenic route.”

He relaxed in his seat. “It might be nice to take a walk there later, if we’ve time? But no, I’m happy to head to the hotel.”

She shifted her hands awkwardly on the wheel.
I better focus on my driving. Does “hotel” mean sex, bondage, and all the rest?
The pep talk she gave herself about going for it, about how Daniel had given her permission, about how modern women didn’t get so hung up before making love, hadn’t entirely worked. She’d even bought a pack of condoms to put in her purse in case he forgot or hadn’t bothered. He didn’t strike her as the type to do either, but again she was struck by how little she really knew him. They’d discussed her most intimate fantasies and acted some of them out online. He knew things about her no one else knew, not even Daniel. She knew some of the same about him, although it seemed they spent more time exploring her fantasies than talking about his. Was he considerate or holding back? It hadn’t mattered too much online. Now it did.

“Relax, Louise. Nothing is going to happen between us, in the hotel room or anywhere else, that you don’t consent to. You remember your safe word?”

He’d given her one, months ago. She’d never used it, nor had she expected to. Online, you could always log off or even say someone was at the door or that you had an important phone call to take. She’d never had to use either of those dodges with Rob, although she’d done quite a lot of that in the weeks before she met him to ward off unwanted attention. Now he expected her to remember her safe word. At any other moment, she probably would have, but right now it seemed impossibly difficult. “No. No, I don’t.” She tried to keep the panic out of her voice.

“It’s Colorado.”

She took a breath. He was perfectly casual about it. When she’d been small, she’d had a Labrador puppy named Colorado. They’d had to give the dog away when they moved, so she had never seen it grow up, but holding that little puppy had been a fond memory that would never go away. No other dog could ever replace him. He’d asked her for a word that had good memories for her, and she’d volunteered Colorado’s name. From that one conversation, he remembered.

“All you have to do is say your puppy’s name, and you’ll be freed if you’re tied up, let go if I’m restraining you, and I will do everything I possibly can to make sure that you are all right. Your safety is my first priority, and that means physical safety and emotional safety. You have the final say, and I’m only in charge as long as you want me to be. There’s nothing to fear.”

The submissive is the one with the real control
. It was something she’d read when she first started learning about BDSM three years ago before she ventured online.
But I don’t want to be the one with the control. I just want it to be safe to give it up
. She felt some of her shoulder tension go away with his words, though. She wasn’t so relaxed that navigating DC’s traffic circles didn’t stress her, but at least she could worry about that rather than what would happen once they reached the hotel.

She steered the conversation to a safer direction. “So what do you do exactly, anyway?”

“Ah. I make electronic widgets, custom stuff, made-to-order. Sometimes it involves modifying something the customer already has. Someone wants their security system to incorporate a new feature without buying a whole new system, I can do that. Or maybe someone wants a door in their house to unlock when they use the garage door opener. Or they want their smoke alarm to play ‘Light My Fire.’”

“Is that a real example?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“And what brings you to Washington?”

“There’s a convention here, and there are some business opportunities I’m looking into. Government contracting and subcontracting is big, potentially. I can invent something, and then a contractor can produce as many as the government needs.”

She had to ask the question, in spite of her desire to keep the conversation neutral. “Do you ever make anything kinky?”

He grinned. “Now would I do a thing like that?”

He might be a stranger in some ways, but she knew him well enough from their online interactions to know the answer to that was yes. She kept her mouth closed and her eyes on the road. The idea of electronic sex toys intrigued her. Maybe something remote control. She shivered. They were almost to the hotel anyway. A few moments of silence wouldn’t kill her.

“Do you feel comfortable coming up with me?” he asked when they were in the lobby.

She blinked. “I have a choice?”

“Of course you have a choice. There’s an element of risk in going into a room with a man you’ve just met. I feel I know you quite well, but I don’t think the risk is quite the same for me as it is for you. If you like, you could call a friend. Daniel, maybe? And let him or her know where you are.”

The thought of Daniel coming to rescue her made her smile. She didn’t doubt he would, if need be, not at all. She wondered, though, if he might have second thoughts and burst in on them when she didn’t need rescuing. Rob must have sensed her indecision because he took her hand and led her to the check-in desk. He could have done that by himself, she thought, and then she understood when she overheard the clerk give him his room number: 859. Now she knew it too and could let anyone know.