The Dom Project (15 page)

This was
nothing
like that.

The stance John took was iconic. A man standing firmly planted, fist wrapped around erect cock, outer length jutting free, bending it at the right angle to...to... Oh God, the sight
did
something to her, she couldn’t just kneel here and fucking
analyze
it like art.

He was more than himself. And she was—she didn’t even know what she was doing here.

She understood the nameless man’s submission on a visceral level, even if the kind of humiliation he wanted was alien to her desire. She didn’t just understand him, she wanted to
be
him. To be bound there at the center, serving as John’s...vessel. Something pretty for him to stick his spectacular cock into—not that he was freakishly large, but he was a big man and proportionate in every way and more than that,
beautiful.
Oh how she wanted to be good for him, take every inch even through the tears and thank him afterward.

She didn’t move. She barely even breathed.

John shifted forward. His submissive, who was visible to her in profile, his metal-bound genitals hidden between his spread thighs, opened his mouth. The heat below her waist flared and grew almost unbearable. She thought she’d put aside her shame when she put the necklace on, but her body’s arousal triggered nausea, drew her into herself, made her feel small.

And alone.

I
don’t want to do this anymore
. The here-and-not-here dynamic wasn’t intriguing. It didn’t feel distant in a safe way, like she’d hoped. It was alienating and confusing and verging on panic, a kind of horrifying mental bout of hyperventilating. Robin wasn’t jealous—wasn’t the jealous type, didn’t have the right or the claim to even be jealous in the first place—but she still felt out of place, like a piece of furniture. This wasn’t voyeurism, it was being set aside. Like a doll too precious to play with, and she hated it. What was the point of her? What was the point of anything?

It wouldn’t be fair to use her safe word, not when John and his sub were clearly enjoying themselves, filling the room with loud wet sounds and John’s growling moans, sounds he’d never made and never would make for Robin.

“I should go,” she murmured, far too low to be heard, stood up on wobbly half-asleep legs and fled.

The night air outside felt like freedom. She could breathe again, but she was so alone—alone in the middle of this vast city—and it hurt worse than leather or metal, worse than anything she could imagine.

* * *

“Hey, is your friend going to be okay?” Andy asked from underneath the towel he was rubbing his scalp with. The marks on his small wrists had already faded.

“Um,” John said, wrapping his own towel around his waist. “To be honest I have no idea what’s up with her. She’s a grown woman, though, so I’m not too worried. I’ll text her tonight and make sure she got home okay and then tomorrow afternoon I’ll stop by her place and see how she’s feeling, talk it out. Maybe bring her a latte and a cupcake in case I need to apologize for something.”
I
didn’t do anything to her.
No one did anything to her.
I
specifically arranged the scene so nobody would do anything to her.
Maybe it had been the language he’d used, the stuff that a gay man like Andy was accustomed to but someone more sheltered like Robin—
Robin
,
sheltered?
Come on.
What was he even thinking? She was probably embarrassed about overreacting by now. She’d shocked the hell out of him walking out, but it wasn’t his goddamn fault.

“Do you want me to call her? Maybe we were playing too hard for her. If she didn’t know what to expect...” Andy didn’t look ashamed. He never did, after, but he did look concerned. Thoughtful.

“She
did
know. About you, about the voyeurism dynamic. I didn’t go over every detail though. You know I like to improvise.” John wondered at the defensive note that he heard in his own voice. “Huh, maybe you’re right.”

“You should go see her tonight. You know I’m fine.”

“No. Out of the question, Andy. Come to bed with me, I’ll make you some coffee tomorrow morning, then I can sort things out with her after you go. She was just watching, after all. You got the hard play. You’re the priority tonight.” He started to turn, desperate to get out of the too-small bathroom with its harsh overhead lighting that exposed every flaw, but Andy caught him by the shoulder.

“Did she know that about tonight?” he asked, seriously.

“What? Wh—” John broke out of Andy’s grip, squirming under the intensity of his gaze, but he stayed rooted in the one spot. He could see why Andy was such a good teacher. That look made even John, with his buckets of self-confidence, feel like a chastened teenager.

“Did
she
know I was the priority?”

Oh.
Shit.

Chapter Nine

Her hair was still wet from the shower and the kettle had just begun to whistle when the phone rang.

John Sun
.

It might as well have been a scorpion lying there on the counter. She wanted to toss her towel over it, retreat to the couch, curl up into a ball and watch mind-numbing comedy or horror until sleep finally dragged her under. But after slipping out tonight without really saying anything, it would only compound her embarrassment at reacting the way she had. And it would probably make John come over uninvited to make sure she was okay.

Which she was.

Okay.

And not answering the phone was the action of a not-okay person, so she picked it up and answered the call. “Hi,” she said, keeping her voice chipper.

“Oh good, you’re still up. I’m on my way over.”

Hmm. That seemed to have backfired.

“What? No! No, John. No. I’m not dressed and my apartment is a mess. Come by tomorrow or something.”

“There is no way
your
apartment is a mess.” Okay, he had her there. Other than the mug on the counter for her tea, the place was pristine. “You little liar.”

“Don’t fucking talk to me that way.” He didn’t get to call her his “little” anything. Or his sweetheart, either, while they were fucking at it. The jokes they’d shared all seemed to sour in her memory. Her eyes began to hurt and sting
again
, dammit, and she couldn’t afford to cry, and over something so...so...

“Okay,” he answered, his voice neutral, controlled. “We’d better talk though.”

“Sure. We’ll talk.” She hung up, banged the phone back down on the counter, then groaned and checked to make sure she hadn’t cracked it. Her sudden anger was as formless as the grief.
You’ve got to get a grip on yourself.
This isn’t you.

She belted her robe tighter and went to make herself some tea.

* * *

Something was definitely wrong. As he came to the door of Robin’s apartment, John made a mental note to bring Andy some kind of thank-you gift for telling him to go over.

Don’t you fucking talk to me that way.

He stabbed the doorbell. Waited there, reminding himself not clench his fists, because if she was angry, so was he. After everything he’d done for her, everything he’d put himself through emotionally, to turn around and walk out on him...

He’d stay in control. He’d find the right voice to use.

She opened the door, then immediately wheeled around and paced to the center of the living room, her red terry cloth bathrobe flowing around her calves. Walking away again. When she crossed her arms and faced him, her face was like a mask, inhumanly beautiful and frozen.

But the rims of her eyes were raw red. Something inside him broke down, noticing that, like a rib silently cracking.
Talk
. “Look, something went wrong back there. Part of it’s my fault. I should have gone slower, given you an easier out beforehand. What happened?”

“I just figured you didn’t need me there anymore,” Robin replied, sullen. There was no mistaking the hurt in her voice, no matter how hard she was trying to act nonchalant.

I
always needed you.
I
need you now.
“Oh no, you can’t shut me down like that.
Just figured
?” His forearms twisted, muscles twitching—goddammit, he’d never had to fight so hard to keep his body language under control. “This is complicated stuff, sure, and I thought you were ready, but I was wrong.”

“Don’t fucking patronize me,
John
. I’m ready for whatever complicated shit you can dish out, just so long as you’re dishing it out on
me
.”

“Wh—”

“I felt like a fucking prop, John. No more a part of that scene than the cuffs you put on him. When you said you were going to invite another person I thought—Well, I thought—” A tremor passed over her eyelids. The mask, dissolving, leaving her bare and no less beautiful.
Why can’t I touch you.
Why can’t I say I’m sorry.

“What, that you’d be the center of fucking attention?” He took two steps toward her, stopped abruptly when he saw her narrow shoulders flinch. She looked like a bird on a wire, ready to fly away from him.

“Frankly, yes! Even if it was a ‘voyeurism dynamic’, as you called it, I was expecting you to be performing for
me
. This is supposed to be about me. Exploring
my
needs, helping me learn about myself. And I’m sorry if that seems selfish, but that was the agreement. That was the contract
you
signed. So if it wasn’t working for you then it was your own damn—Look, we could have talked about it. You didn’t have to spring it on me like that.” She looked away now, somewhere over his shoulder, and he couldn’t help moving closer, urgently wanting her to look in his eyes again.

And she wouldn’t.

Rage rose inside him, not at Robin, but at this distance between them that kept widening. He opened his mouth to let her know that he was mad, but not at
her
. “Well sorry! Jesus! I’d love to make you the princess of the world and give you a fucking flying pony!”

Wait
,
that wasn’t what I
—

“If this is your idea of talking it out, John, then you can just leave.”

“So what, it’s over?”

“I guess it is.”

He sighed, shoulders heaving. All their years together, and this—this was
not
what he’d come here to say. These weren’t the results he was looking for. He had to at least try.

“Look, Robin, I’m sorry. I could have invited a third and had it be all about you, all about your needs, but I couldn’t figure out a way to do that and still respect your boundaries. It was either invite another dom and have the both of us team up to make you do nonsexual service stuff, which at the time seemed frankly fucking pointless since then nobody would be getting off and you’d feel pressured and I’d feel like there were too many cooks in the kitchen...” Realizing in hindsight how flimsy those excuses suddenly seemed, John finished haltingly, “or have another sub and you be a voyeur. So I went with the second option.”

“That wasn’t voyeurism though, John. That was—I don’t even know what to call whatever that was. You called me sweetheart. You’ve
never
used a pet name with me since we started all this, and then you do, and it’s just to humiliate someone else? How’s that supposed to get me off? How’s that supposed to make me feel like—like you want me, and my submission?”

He didn’t recognize his own voice anymore, as cracked as it came out. “I don’t know, Robin.”
I
do want you.
I
want you so badly I can’t even stand myself.
You’re all I think about.
When you take off that fucking necklace I only want to beg you to stay and be mine for real but I can’t say any of that because if I do
,
I’ll lose what little of you I have.
And if I lost you to a dom
I
introduced you to
...
Oh
,
shit.
Oh
,
shit.
There went his so-called scientific objectivity. He’d rigged his own experiment to fail.

“You don’t...you don’t...” She was close enough to touch, close enough that he could smooth his palms over her trembling shoulders, gather her in,
prove
how much he wanted her, not just her submission, God, but all of her, every single fragment and facet.

He cleared his throat and wrestled his voice into something that might have sounded even. “Maybe we should put a stop to this. It was fun while it lasted, and I—I really do hope that up until tonight I gave you what you needed. But I think, within the boundaries of the contract, we’ve taken things as far as they can go.”

“So tear up the contract.”

Ice-cold. He tried to match her pragmatic tone. “Tomorrow. We can meet up for lunch and change it. Or dissolve it. No harm, no foul, right?” He tried to move for the door again. He needed to be away from her
now
, before he said or did something he couldn’t take back. If he hadn’t done all that already.

“No. I mean, tear up the contract. If the contract’s what’s holding you back, making you act this way, then—then I don’t want to go by what it says anymore. So fuck it. Tear it up.”

“It’s a symbol. It can’t turn back time.” So close. She raised her chin, looked up at him, the light above dancing in her eyes, reflected back at him like the catchlight he’d used to make her come alive in those photos, oh God, all those photos...

“Who said I wanted to turn back time? Tear it up so we can move
forward
. I’m standing here asking you—no, begging you, and you’re just—” Her face tightened. “Don’t you even want me?” The pain written there was so powerful, and he saw it in her, how very small her body made her feel sometimes. She was so close, he breathed it in, choking on it, feeling like he’d die if he couldn’t make it stop. But he couldn’t stop her pain, not like this. It would be easy but it would be wrong, and what would happen to them? What would be left of them?