We were both still breathing heavily when he finally softened and pulled out of me. I stared at the ceiling and let myself bask in the floaty feeling of post-orgasm while he reached up for the rope at my wrists.
He rubbed where they had chafed and reddened the skin and brought them to his lips briefly.
"You took your pill this morning?"
"Yes." I hadn't exactly sworn off sex. Well, not on purpose at least. I hadn't given up on the idea of sex and my eventually becoming a regular non fear-driven member of the great societal machine people who are not claimed as slaves generally perpetuate.
"Good. I have them." I turned away from him on my side. Now he would take over my healthcare like he had everything else, I thought with annoyance.
He slipped in behind me, drawing me hard against the length of him. His powerful body dwarfed mine on the motel queen and I slowly started to climb back out of my disconcerting reverie. I wasn't even sure how I'd let him take me that far.
My only defense was that I hadn't gotten laid in a very, very long time.
There had been a few men, boys really, who had made it past the threshold over the years. But then they would bend down to kiss me or fumble for my bra or push up my skirt and I would be overcome by the feeling that I was betraying him, that I had no right to let them touch me. It was absolutely absurd so I would push the thought aside but then they would speak or brush back my hair and I would find myself inexplicably showing them back to the door.
His chin was pressing against the top of my head and I said, "How long?"
"You know how long."
Always.
His hand was sprawled across my naked stomach and his thumb was slowly stroking back and forth.
Now that the fear was gone, I could give into the entirety of it. Of this claim he pressed on me. Of my obvious inability to control myself around him. Of his arms. Around me. I could feel myself slipping back into a kind of hopeless despair.
"I can't do it. I can't do it again Jack. It's not fair," but it came out more strained than angry through my tears.
He held me tighter and I felt his jaw press against my scalp, "yes, you can baby. I know you can. You just have to let go and let yourself be mine."
Never, I thought.
"Can't you just-?"
"No."
"Why not? You know I won't tell. It's been five years!"
He turned me around abruptly, pulled my head back by the hair and growled as he took my mouth in a deep, bruising kiss.
He pulled back to look into my eyes, his hand still fisted around the auburn strands of my hair.
"You're mine."
"That's not an answer!" I started audibly crying and his fist at my scalp turned into a calming stroke. He didn't speak for a while and I just cried into his shoulder while his fingers trailed lightly up and down my back.
"It'll be different this time, Emma," he soothed.
"How?" I choked out. "How could it be different if I am still-?" I still wasn't saying it.
He kept stroking, speaking softly, "It will only be me. Just me."
It was rare but sometimes in the years before I had had to cater to any high ranking business associates of his that demanded it. I hated this more than any other part of belonging to him but it had always seemed like something that was just done. I wondered how he would manage to keep me to himself.
"How?"
"I have fewer to answer to." He tightened his hand in my hair again, "I never liked having to share you." Yeah, it must have been really hard on him.
"And Leon?"
"He'll respect what is mine."
"What about Marshall?"
He didn't answer for a minute. I think sometimes he thinks of Marshall as an extension of himself.
Finally he said, "we'll see. But I think, only if you want to."
I stilled in shock. Only if I wanted to? I never in a million years thought I'd hear that from him.
He laughed, "Get some sleep, little bird. We're on the road again tomorrow."
I muttered quietly against his chest, "I am neither little nor a bird."
But I was already drifting off in his arms.
________________
When I woke up, the other side of the bed was cold and I was struck by a momentary sense of loss.
It surprised me. I had spent the last five years waking up alone in strange places. This was no different. I brushed the unwelcome emotion aside and swung my feet over the side of the bed.
I pulled on my jeans and glanced down at the irreparable state of my t-shirt on the floor, wondering if he was going to make me ride back to Boston topless. I wouldn't put it past him.
Luckily after a quick sweep of the room and bathroom I found a t-shirt laid out next to a note on the bureau scrawled by an all too familiar hand:
"Went to get food. Stay."
Stay? I crumpled up the note and threw it vehemently across the room with a satisfying curse.
Now that I knew I was alone I allowed last night to brush across my memory in sharp, stinging, blush-inducing pangs of shame. I couldn't even ingest it fully. It was flashing by in bright, little scenes flooding with emotion and then fading away. The kind that amnesia patients experience in movies. The next one ever more revealing than the one before it until my face felt like it was on fire. Had I really asked for his cock? Fuck.
OK, I conceded, obviously, the asshole could still get to me. But that had to be because of the anxiety-induced, involuntary abstinence right? Next time I'd be better prepared. I took a deep breath. Yes, that was it. I had just needed to let go of some pent up stress. I tried to console myself with this but the memory of his cock inside me, of my blinding orgasm, of his hands....It was like a gaping wound in my mind and I couldn't stop brushing up against it just to see if it had closed yet.
I looked at the door.
If we were any other couple. If this were any other day. If I was any other place. I would just get up. I would think I am hungry. Or I would like some ice. And I would get up and I would go to the door. And I would open it. And I would go outside. And I would think what a nice day. Maybe there would be someone on the other side and we would smile to each other. Maybe they would say isn't it a nice day? Maybe I would say why yes it is. And then I would go for food or ice or I would walk. I would walk and I wouldn't even count the steps. I would just walk. Somewhere else.
But instead I am just sitting here like the goddamn note ordered me to do, I thought angrily.
So then I did get up and I did walk to the door and I did touch the doorknob and pull it down sharply. It will be locked, I thought. Of course it will be locked. But it wan't locked and the door pushed out and into the world outside. I had briefly forgotten there was a world outside and I wondered if it would still remain unchanged after last night. Last night. And there it was again, flashing by in technicolored sensation.
I looked around anxiously at the parking lot. There was no one around. How long had he been gone? What time was it? I fingered the collar at my neck and pondered the possibility of making a clean break. I'd have to get it off first. Maybe I could find a friendly locksmith in town. As long as town wasn't too far off. We had passed one not too long before we got here, I thought. Could I get there before he got back and realized I was gone?
I had to try, I told myself. If he got me back to Boston, back within that little insular community and deep inside that locked house my chances would become infinitely less promising.
I breathed in fresh air and confidence and stepped outside onto the black tar of the parking lot. I was already galvanizing as I took another step and then another. My heart was pounding as I rounded a corner and slipped into the cramped alleyway between the rooms and the main office.
I felt a rush of possibility. I could already see myself getting away. Finding a little bungalow, somewhere by the ocean maybe. Yes, it would have green window boxes and at night I would fall asleep watching the masts of faraway ships blinking against the blue black of the tossing horizon.
Someday, years from now, I would be pruning flowers in my little garden or I would be standing in line at the grocery store or someone would be driving very fast and I would think of that night we spent together in a motel room on the edge of Ohio. What a strange night, I would think. So long ago. What a silly girl I was then. And I would shake my head and inhale the scent of the sea salt air.
"Where are you going?"
I spun around and caught him standing calmly at the entrance to the alley. Suddenly my dream of the kindly old locksmith, my small bungalow and growing old against the sea seemed utterly ludicrous. It was such a silly romantic notion that I could almost feel the splintered shards of it scraping against me as they scattered and crumbled under his calm stare.
"Out," I said. It was all I could think to say.
He looked slightly amused, "Really? Where to?"
"I don't know," I said, looking at him steadily. "The ocean maybe."
"Hmm, that's a bit of a walk from here, isn't it? "
I didn't move as I stood there and for the first time since I'd been forced back into his company I noticed the difference in him. There were small creases around his eyes that hadn't been there before, a tiny sliver of a scar skated across his forehead and I wondered that we could have been apart so long that he had been injured and already healed so thoroughly. Last night it had felt like nothing, the time between us felled by desire and fear.
But now, in the light of day, I could see the tiny deviations that mark the passage from twenty-six to thirty-one. Before, his eyes had held a certain bright, almost frantic light that now I saw had been rubbed away slightly into a sharper, steadier knowingness that was, if I allowed myself to admit it, extremely disconcerting.
He didn't say anything more. Didn't order me back inside. He just waited patiently, hard eyes penetrating mine, until I sighed and let my feet begin to rise and move slowly in his direction. When I passed him he followed me across the parking lot and back into the small room I had so recently and euphorically liberated myself from.
When he had closed the door I turned around and looked at him, "I had to do it."
"I know." He was setting the bag of food down on the lone table in the room, rolling up his sleeves, "That's why I left the door unlocked."
So it had never been real. My little ridiculous vision had never been anything more than a shimmering mirage. I should have known really.
