Wrecked (The Blackened Window) (16 page)

“A lesson?” Was I in trouble? Already?

“Yeah. Because this whole thing touches on consent and the community approach to avoiding consent violations.”

I had had it. I was lost. “What the fuck are you talking about right now? That guy thought you were hurting me.”

“And someday, I might. But not like he thinks and definitely not if you don’t want it. Not if you don’t feel taken care of. And it’s probably likely that you’ll get asked a question like that again. There will be people that don’t understand what we’re doing. And you’ll always be free to answer however you want. But it obviously made you uncomfortable, so I think it would be reasonable to think about how you want to answer questions like that.”

I murmured my assent, but had no response.

“Some subs might say something like ‘I appreciate your concern, but I’m very happy where I am, with him’. How would that feel for you?”

“Oh, okay. But isn’t it kind of… I don’t know, weird to have to answer these questions?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter if it’s weird. What if we were some other couple and I was abusing you and that might have been your chance out? I don’t want people to think they
shouldn’t
ask when they’re concerned. But I don’t want it to fluster you or ruin your night.”

“But aren’t you pissed? He thought you were hurting me.”

“It’s a reminder to me that no one in public consented to be part of my play. But what really matters to me is what
you
think.”

The waiter had the manager drop the check off and we had a brief conversation about how good the dessert was. We stopped at the cashier by the door to pay, but Xander turned to me with a couple of twenties in his hand.

“Why don’t you go find the waiter and give him his tip? It’ll give you a chance to clear the air if you want. I’ll wait outside. This is all you, girlie. Whatever you want to say to him.”

I took the cash and found the waiter near the back of the restaurant, folding napkins in a booth.

“Hey, thanks again.” I handed him the cash and glanced back at Xander, who nodded at me and walked out of the front door.

The waiter looked confused and started to apologize again, but I cut him off. “Look, I really appreciate that you checked with me, but it’s good. I’m happy with him. I’m safe.”

As the words crossed my lips, the bone-deep truth of them hit me. Xander was so different than anyone I had ever been with. So completely different. It was navigating something new every step of the way with him.

When I found Xander in front of the restaurant, he smiled warmly and pulled me into a hug. “How’d that go?”

I shrugged and smiled as another wave of contentedness washed through me. “It was fine. I don’t think he understood, really. But I did.”

“Good girl.”

A fucking flood in my panties.

We strolled slowly around the block. It was an upscale section of town with high end boutiques and restaurants. There were people, in couples or larger groups, coming and going from various bars and restaurants that we passed. Some had live music that spilled out of the doors, punctuating the evening. As we walked, we continued our earlier conversation about his life before medical school.

“After I left the Army and joined the FBI, I worked in a similar department. Again, I wasn’t high up in the department, but I learned a lot.”

“What kind of things?”

“The psychology of it, you know? The psychology of crime and terrorism, the psychology and physiology of interrogation.”

“Wait.” I paused on the sidewalk as a realization hit me, “You have professional, government-level training in mind-fucking people? I mean, that’s what you’re saying, right?” My stomach did some flip-flops and I felt, more than ever, like a mouse dangling from a cat’s paw, so completely overmatched that there was nothing to do but accept what was coming. And I just started giggling.

“Yeah, yeah, I guess you could say that,” he answered me, laughing back.

“Weeeellllllp, I’m fucked,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air as my giggles settled. Moving on, I asked, “So what happened? Why did you leave the FBI?” I started walking again, trying to regain my composure.

“There were a few reasons. One, I wasn’t totally satisfied. I didn’t love the work, even though I was pretty good at it. My parents had pulled strings to get me the interview and I never really knew if I got the job on my own merits. Two, I was already feeling like I wanted to learn more about medicine and do something positive with it. I would read about the physiology of sleep deprivation for an assignment or something and would just be way more interested in the science of it than whatever the actual project was. Three, I committed career suicide at one point, so it was easy to leave then.” He chuckled as he said that last part.

“What do you mean—career suicide? What did you do?” His story was fascinating.

He cleared his throat and looked kind of bashful, which seemed so out of character for him that I was even more intrigued.

“I fucked the boss’s daughter. And we got caught.”

My mind flashed back to his conversation with his mom that I had overheard, something about someone still being pissed and it made sense. Xander kept going, “I got caught with the boss’s daughter, who was younger than me. And I was fucking her the way I like as she was bound over a desk. Oh God!” He half yelled it at the sky, laughter in his voice. “I can’t believe the shit I get myself into!” He seemed so relaxed suddenly, like the tension had drained out of him at his admission.

But I was kind of horrified. “Did your parents hear the details?” The thought of my parents ever hearing anything about me being tied up and fucked like that was horrifying.

“Not the details, thank God. He had the grace to be discrete, but then again, it was his daughter’s reputation as well. She was adamant that he keep it quiet too. And anyway, it’s Washington DC. There’s more fucked up shit going on there sexually than anywhere else in the country. It seems like everyone is a complete freak. Most of them are very,
very
closeted about it, but a few of them are a little less so. My kink was nothing to some of those guys, but it’s all about image, you know.”

By this time, we were back to my car and it was about midnight. We got in the car, Xander in the driver’s seat again, but he didn’t start it.

“I don’t want to say goodnight yet.” I blurted it out before he could say anything.

“I’ve got just the place.”

He drove to the edge of town and turned into a wooded lot with a long, winding dirt and gravel driveway. At the end there was a turn around, but no house, just a drop-off from right beside the road. There were no other cars and he parked in the middle of the round-about. We got out and he led me down the drop-off embankment, steadying me and ultimately lifting me and carrying me down to level ground.

We were on the edge of a small, still lake. The moon and stars gave enough light to see decently well once my eyes adjusted to the dark. We started walking around the edge of the water. The ground was soft but not muddy. My shoes weren’t great for the terrain so I took them off anyway. About a quarter of the way around, there was a small row boat on the shore and we got in, but didn’t push out into the water—there were no oars and it didn’t look particularly sea-worthy. It was just a nice place to sit together. I sat in the bottom of the boat leaning back into his legs and we kept talking. I asked him what made him want the things that he does.

“I don’t know. I’ve just always felt like this. I think lots of people think something must have gone wrong in someone’s childhood if they get into BDSM. I just know that when I was in high school and at the Academy, I always felt like something was missing in my sex life. I met plenty of girls and had plenty of sex.”

Sidebar—don’t tell me that shit.

“But there was something flat about it. You know, it was still good, but it never totally satisfied me. I was always hungry for more. It was actually when I got back to DC, one of the guys I worked with at the Pentagon took me to a club where people were doing things I had only read about or seen in porn. I remember feeling like this was a whole new alien world that I couldn’t believe existed. My friend was into being tied up and stuff with a dominatrix, and while that was hot and he definitely loved it, it was not for me.”

“Wait, I can’t imagine you ever being dominated by someone else. It just seems…unnatural.” I kind of screwed up my face in a grossed out expression and laughed, glancing at him over my shoulder.

“One time, early on when I was going there, there was a couple playing in a public room. They had a little audience crowded around them and I wanted to see too, and that was it—it was like the world stopped for a beat, and I knew. There was a girl—I mean she was legal, just young—standing in a clearing in the room, with her arms tied and hooked to something coming out of the ceiling. Her man was walking around her, pinching her skin in all different places, whispering in her ears, licking her—and she was in the sweetest, hottest agony—and that was it. I knew what I wanted, I wanted to make a woman squirm in agony because I made her feel something that was overwhelming, and I wanted to know that she was doing it voluntarily, that she wanted it as much as me. There’s something about controlling a woman’s body that triggers something in me that makes me feel like an animal, something less than and more than human, all at once. I feel my heart beating in my chest and it just inflates me. Do you know what I mean, Leda?”

As he spoke, he was rubbing my shoulders and his hands started to stray into my hair, pulling it. They migrated around to trace the line of my jaw and throat. I sat still, absorbing his words and his touch. The words washed over me, hypnotic, and my heart sped up, my breath came shallow and fast. Slowly, I understood that I was absorbing what he gave me and that was what I wanted to do, that I wanted to give him all of me, to let him do whatever he wanted to do to me. He slipped his fingers into my mouth and I started licking and sucking them. He licked up the back of my neck, but then he paused. My body screamed silently for him to keep going. He left his fingers in my mouth and kept talking, telling me his story.

“I ran into Jason one night when I was out and he started taking me to some private parties—swinger parties, BDSM parties. It’s hard to get into those as a single
guy
—a unicock, versus a single girl—a unicorn. But I was lucky and got into a few and eventually started a polyamorous relationship with a couple. The three of us started fucking all the time and I might have fallen in love, but they were older than me and I was never really going to be in control the way I wanted. When I started to feel possessive of her and jealous of him, I knew I had to leave. By that time, Jason had moved down here and had started his promoting. I came to visit him a lot then we opened the Window. Then I was down here every chance I got.” He paused and took a breath that I felt brushing against my neck.

“It’s just one more criterion to consider when picking a partner, which makes finding the right fit even harder. Sometimes I wonder if one person can really fulfill all of my needs.”

My ears perked up at this and jealousy wound up again.

“But then I see Christy and Jason, and it’s clear to me that it’s possible.”

Jealousy abated.

“What about you, baby girl? What do you think of all this?”

He took his fingers out of my mouth and I was surprised by the twinge of regret at losing that bit of him in me, and a more disturbing feeling—I was disappointed that he dried his fingers on his pants because I wished he had wiped them off on my face or in my hair.
What the fuck is this?

“I’m still working it out, Xander. I think you’re super-intense and intimidating, and enthralling and scary. I feel like I’m constantly surprised at myself and what I feel myself wanting from you—wanting you to do to me—but then other things bother me too.”

“Like?” He had started rubbing my shoulders again, but then he worked his hands down my arm as I spoke and he started massaging my hand.

“I like the teasing, but I can’t actually give you control of my whole life—where I go, what I do. And I’m afraid that’s what you want from me. And every once in a while, I just feel like this is ridiculous because we barely know each other and we are talking about this stuff, but…it feels so good when you touch me. I like being near you.” His hands were back in my hair and he was kissing the back of my neck, murmuring in response to what I was saying, but he paused to respond to me.

“I hadn’t expected to have a relationship in med school. But the reality is that we met and on some primal level, I’m drawn to you and you’re drawn to me. You are what I need and I am what you need. I think you’re handling me pretty fucking well, Leda. I’m almost always too much for someone sane. You impress the hell out of me with your willingness to explore this. Girls usually kind of freak when I get into this with them. That’s why I had to be so up front with you. But I agree, it’s happening quickly between us, but it feels so right and normal to me. Natural.”

I turned to face him, excitement in my stomach because that was just it. “Exactly! It feels so fast, but so right when we’re together. It’s just when my brain gets involved that I start to get anxious. When we’re together, I forget all that.” I was kneeling between his knees and leaned into him, kissing him then, licking at the inside of his mouth, my arms around him. He was momentarily stunned but then kissed me back with the same heat. “God, I want you Xander.”

“Mmmm, little girl.”

He groaned into my mouth and I thought
, I’m
little girl
again
. A flush of pleasure washed over me.

“I want you too, but not here and not like this. I want you to vibrate with how much you want my cock before I put it in you. I want you near tears with wanting. Fuck, that sounds so good.”

Je-sus!
It seemed like I was pretty much already there and I didn’t want to wait. My body was driving me, not my brain, and my body wanted all kinds of dirtiness.

“I don’t want to wait,” I whispered with my lips against his earlobe.