Interview with a Master (19 page)

Bastard.

I thrust my hands into my pockets as though to restrain myself.

Leticia’s mouth twisted in distress. “Jonah – please,” she
pleaded. “Please talk to me. Tell me what I did wrong. Did I not kiss you well enough? I’m sorry! I’m not very experienced… and I’ve never been with a man like you. If you give me another chance…”

I shook my head
. She wrung her hands and I felt her trying to reach out to me. “Did you want more? I can give it to you, Jonah. Just give me some time to –”

I backed towards the door. I held it open. “I think you should go,” I said
coldly. “If not for your sake, then please, do it for me.”

* * *

It rained the next day. Dark sullen clouds swept in from the west and blanketed the mountains so that the sky was grey and cold and bleak. Rain swept across the ranges in grey misting curtains, and the driveway filled with puddles as downpours burst upon the roof and echoed through the empty rooms.

I sat in the study. The drapes were drawn. Flames leaped from the fireplace flickering and crackling with light and sparks, but still I was cold.
It was a cold that no warmth could reach – a cold deep in my bones.

I sat in the study, sifting through documents and paperwork that had accumulated on my desk, picking at them the way a man with no appetite picks at food.

I heard the phone ring downstairs, echoed an instant later through the extension phone on the side-table next to the big leather chair. I looked at the phone, listened to it ring – waited for it to stop, suddenly frozen as though the slightest move might somehow reveal me.

When the work was done, I went to the fireplace and threw another log onto the flames. It burst in a flare of sparks, and I drew myself to my feet like a weary old man and began to slowly pace the room.

The phone rang again an hour later. I stood in the shadows and watched it until the sound was cut off abruptly, and I was left alone in the silence.

The specter of Trigg’s warnings hung over me like a gloomy pall, seeming like a burden I had failed to carry. She knew me so well. She knew me like no other woman ever had
; my fears, my frailties. And yet she didn’t really know me at all.

Not Jonah Noble, the man.

The phone rang again and my hand reached for it, hanging in the air an inch above the receiver so that I could almost feel the urgent vibration of it. I hesitated.

Then
I picked the phone up.

“Jonah?”

It was Leticia, but then I always knew it would be. I felt the sound of her voice pierce like a blade.

“Yes.”

“Jonah, it’s me, Leticia. Please don’t hang up!”

I stayed silently on the line. I could hear the ragged sound of her breathing loud and
anguished in my ear.

“I wanted to apologize to you,” she said softly, and I could tell by the broken little crack in her voice that she had been weeping. “I’m sorry about what happened yesterday. I… I was
very unprofessional. I want you to give me another chance to finish the interview we started. I want to finish writing your story.”

I
stared vacantly into the fire, seeing nothing but flickering light for a very long time. And then the sound of her words cut through the numbed haze and my eyes came slowly back into focus. “I want that too,” I said.

* * *

It was still raining hard when Leticia arrived that evening.

She parked in front of the house. I watched the car pull up in a splash of brown muddy water and the headlights go dark. I saw the driver’s door swing open, and Leticia made a sudden rush for the front door. She came gasping and squealing into the foyer, and stood dripping water onto the tiles while she shrugged off her coat and combed her fingers through her hair.

She looked like a half-drowned kitten.

Leticia held out her hand to me like we were perfect strangers. “Thank you for seeing me again,
Mr. Noble.”

I shook her hand
stiffly. It was wet and cold. She shivered involuntarily and I led her up the winding staircase and into the study.

The room was warm – the fire still burned. I led Leticia over to the fireplace and she stood before the flames with her back to me for long moments as tiny tendrils of steam began to lift from her clothes.

She was wearing a simple white sweater and comfortable jeans. Her shoes were wet. She slipped her feet out of them and nudged them closer to the fire, then turned, barefoot and wet, and smiled at me bravely.

“You didn’t have to come tonight,” I said. “This could have waited.”

She shook her head. “No, it couldn’t. I needed to see you. I needed to apologize for what happened. It was my fault. I should have been more professional.”

I shook my head and sighed. “It wasn’t your fault, Leticia. We both know that. I made the mistake, and I regret it. My hope now is that we can forget what happened – set the whole incident aside – and continue on with the interview. Deal?”

She nodded. “Deal,” she agreed.

I went down the hallway to my bedroom and came back into the study holding one of my shirts. I handed it to Leticia.

“Take the sweater off and put this on.”

She accepted the shirt. She draped it over the back of the sofa and began to peel off her sodden top.
I turned my back and heard the rustle of fabric.

I walked a slow circuit of the room,
halting to elaborately study the brushstrokes of a painting, picking up a book from the side-table and replacing it on a shelf. Finally I paused and turned back to face the room.

Leticia had changed into the shirt. She had rolled up the sleeves almost to the point of her elbows, and buttoned it all the way up to the collar. It swamped her body, and still she looked good.

She stretched out the wet sweater before the fire to dry and then sat down on the edge of the sofa. It was dark in the room. I paced in the shadows, and Leticia’s eyes followed me, her face painted golden by the flickering firelight. She reached down to her bag to fetch her notebook.

“You told me that you had a live-in submissive for the last three years,” she began delicately, her voice brittle. “Could you tell me more?”

I nodded. “Her name was Caroline,” I said.

Silence.

“Can you tell me about her?”

“Caroline was a woman who initially applied for the job as my secretary.” I said. I heard my own words sounding stilted and forced. “I have a secretary who works from a downtown office, and one day a week she comes here to the house so I can dictate letters and attend to business. She brings the correspondence to me and we deal with it all on one day. That was the job Caroline had applied for.”

“So she was your secretary initially?”

“No,” I said. “She applied for the position. Frankly, she wasn’t suitable. There were better applicants.” There was a hollow distant tone to my voice.

Leticia wrote a brief note and then looked back up at me. Her legs were crossed. Absently, I noticed her toenails were painted bright red.

“So how did she become your submissive?” Leticia asked with patient politeness.

I shrugged. “A week later I saw her at a gathering.”

“A BDSM gathering?”

“No. Not officially. It was a party at a friend’s home. A lot of those friends were involved or interested in the lifestyle.”

“Do you attend BDSM functions, or visit BDSM clubs?”

“No,” I shook my head. “I like the lifestyle. It suits me, but I’ve never been part of the scene socially. BDSM clubs never made a lot of sense to me. I always saw it as like having too many roosters together in the same hen-house. Every man who considers himself a dom just tries to out alpha-male everyone else. It becomes a pissing competition.”

Leticia bowed her head over her notebook and jotted another note. Her hair was still wet, and it was curling down around her ears in random swirling tendrils.

“So have you always been private about your lifestyle?”

“Yes. Up until the moment I began this interview with you.”

Leticia flipped back a couple of pages into her notebook and then looked up thoughtfully through the tense strain. “So you saw Caroline at a party with a group of friends who were in the lifestyle.”

“Yes. I’ve already told you that.”

Leticia looked up sharply and I saw a flicker of anguish drift across her eyes. She took a breath and pressed on.

“So what happened between you and Caroline at the party?”

I started to pace, but somehow I just seemed to run out of steam. I stood, like I was suddenly broken, in the middle of the floor for a moment. I tried again. I got as far as the door, but I could feel my anger and frustration rising. I felt a burning lump in my throat – and then impulse took over.

I turned on Leticia and she must have sensed the tension in my body. “This isn’t working,” I clenched my jaw.

Leticia lowered her head, tucked the notebook into her bag and stood meekly. “You want me to go again, don’t you.”

I crossed the room in t
hree strides. Leticia’s eyes became enormous with uncertainty. She stood, frozen, anxious as I hunted towards her.

I took her arm
and she stood rigid. I leaned towards her. Her arms hung by her sides like those of a rag doll. I drew her closer to me and she was unresisting. “No,” I said. “I don’t want you to leave, dammit. I want you back. I want what we had back. I want to talk to you like I did before – not like this. Not like there is something between us.”

She stared
at me, huge startled eyes in her young innocent face. She looked like she might suffocate. I felt her trembling.

“Let’s get this straight,” I said. “Let me explain
what happened when I kissed you – and what happened afterwards.”

Leticia didn’t say anything. She nodded her head and waited.

I stepped away, paced the room, hands thrust deep into my pockets, my head bowed, like a shark circling prey.

For a long time the only sound was the echo of my footsteps as I assembled the words in my head.

I’m an impulsive man. I don’t think everything to death before I say or do something. That doesn’t mean I’m not thoughtful and deliberate – it just means that I always speak my mind. It’s how I get to sleep at night.

Only
one thing needed to remain unsaid…

I took a deep breath, and the words spilled out – words from the heart –
the raw truth, delivered in Jonah Noble style.

“
I want you to know this – because it’s the truth. When I kissed you, I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to keep kissing you. I backed away to protect you – not because of anything you did wrong. I wanted to keep you safe from me.”

I looked to Leticia. She opened her mouth to say something, but I shook my head curtly and she
sat back down on the sofa. “I need you to write my story. Hell, I need you in my life. I like the way you smile. I like your sweet beautiful innocence. And I want you around me. I feel happy when we’re together. But I’ll never love you, Leticia,” I shook my head sorrowfully. “I’ll never love you.”

Leticia looked pale and timid. Her eyes were fixed on mine, following my every move.

“I’ve never loved any woman,” I said. “I’ve cared for them, protected them, been a Master to them, and lusted after them – but not once have I allowed myself to fall in love. And maybe I never will. I can accept that – but I know you can’t. I know you – maybe better than you know yourself. You’re young, and you can do better than to give your heart to someone like me who will never love you back. I want you – and I need you, but I don’t want you to fall in love with me.”

“What makes you so sure that I will?”

I smiled, but there was no humor. “Because I’m fighting with all my strength to stop falling in love with you.”

Leticia cleared her throat.
“Maybe with time…”

I shook my head again. “We can talk all night, but it’s not going to change the way I need this relationship to be. It can’t be sexual, because
, for a woman, with sex comes emotion. It cannot be a BDSM relationship, because you don’t even know what you want from life yet, and I don’t want to be responsible for your safety and welfare. And it can’t be love, Leticia, because I can’t handle that.”

“Then what – what do you want from me, Jonah? Do you just want me to write your story and have you look at me
with dead vacant eyes like I’m just some kind of associate that you know for a few weeks and then forget?”

“I want your friendship,” I said. “It’s all I am asking for. Anything more is unsafe for you – if it becomes more than that it w
ill end in tears and heartbreak, and I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have.”

Leticia sat silently for a long time, her gaze far away and remote. She looked lost and alone and tragic. Finally she nodded
. “Okay, Jonah,” she said softly. “If the only way it can be between us is the way that it was, then we’ll make it that way again.”