Struck By Lightning: Slow Satisfaction Part 12

"Do you think that's a good idea?" my mother asked. "I mean, if you're not getting along, to be stuck in a car together for ten or twelve hours?"

Tera snorted. "Sounds like the perfect arrangement to me. He can't weasel away."

"But will you be safe with him?" My mother was suddenly an expert on domestic violence. For once I didn't mind that she decided she had all the answers, even if it meant I had to listen to a lecture on the warning signs.

Maybe it was good to hear them, actually. I could truthfully say I felt safe with James, physically anyway. Emotionally there was still the fear that he could disappear again.

That's why he wants you to dance in this show, I thought. He's trying to prove to you there's more to him than s.e.x in the back of a limo.

"Yes, Mom, I'm sure I'm safe with him. Besides, we won't be alone. His chauffeur does the driving."

Tera's eyebrows went up at that, and she looked back and forth between us for an explanation.

"Karina has a rich art dealer from the city at her beck and call," my mother said.

"Sounds like you have him by the b.a.l.l.s!" Tera laughed.

"It's not like that," I said, but I couldn't really explain.

"Well, am I going to get to meet him?" my mother asked.

"Why don't we wait until I'm sure I'm keeping him? I don't want another Brad situation where you end up liking him better than I do."

My mother sighed. "Very well."

It had been so long since I'd felt like she approved of anything I'd done that it was a little disorienting to hear her agree so readily. But a relief, too. Not feeling like I had to argue with every sentence out of her mouth was incredibly liberating. For once, the only reason I was eager to leave home had nothing to do with her at all.

To rea.s.sure myself it really was all right to leave, I went with my mother to her doctor's appointment in the morning. She remembered everything now, it seemed, except the accident itself. That was fairly common, they said. Her wrist was healing quickly and so was her ankle. She pressed Dr. Mukherjee on when she could return to the gym.

Tera and I spent the afternoon mowing the lawn and neatening up the flowerbeds, and after dinner it was time for me to hit the road. To keep the drama to a minimum, just in case, I had Stefan come and pick me up without James.

My mother was very rea.s.sured by Stefan. As usual, he exuded an air of friendly competence, and he gracefully accepted a case of bottled water and box of granola bars from my mother when she insisted we take them as necessities on a long drive.

James had some work to finish up at the hotel and by the time we got on the road it was nearly ten at night. He looked quizzically at the case of bottled water as Stefan hurriedly moved it to the trunk, putting a few bottles into the cup holders throughout the car.

"A gift from my mother," I explained as we settled into the backseat. "She's definitely getting back to normal: driving me crazy about that sort of thing. Does she think we can't just buy water if we need it? She didn't need to spend the money."

James cracked open a bottle and took a sip as the car began to move. "Did you ever consider that maybe it's not about that?"

"What do you mean?"

"Maybe it's just a way to show she loves you. It isn't that she doesn't think you can take care of yourself. It could be her way of caring about you."

"Hmm. I never really thought about it that way. Does your mother give you things you don't need?"

"Every time I see her! I try not to be guilty of the same thing."

"You try?"

He held out his arm, beckoning me to sit closer to him. "I try to say what I mean instead of using gifts in place of what I'm unable to express. But I don't always succeed. There's also the case that with my mother, she doesn't listen to me. So I give her things. To cover all the bases, you know."

I accepted his invitation, settling against him. There it was again, that feeling that this was right, that I belonged there at his side. Rather than fight it, I relaxed against him to enjoy the ride. There was no traffic, one of the reasons Stefan liked driving at night. Our plan was to go for a few hours and then stop for the night to break up the trip. "You know, sometimes you let your actions speak instead of words."

"That's true. But I try not to make too many a.s.sumptions. Especially with you." He rubbed my arm. "I let my a.s.sumptions get the best of me once. Not again."

I basked a little in the warm feeling that came with his apologies, though I wondered a little, as I sat there thinking it over, why he'd never called me on the fact that I'd basically coerced him to tell me his name. That wasn't exactly the loving, trusting thing to do. Yet he'd never come out and blamed me for it. "James?"

"Yes, sweetness?"

"I really am sorry I pushed you into telling me."

"I understand completely why my behavior led you to think you needed to go to such extremes," he said.

"Hey, don't make excuses for me when I'm apologizing!" I teased. "Seriously, I didn't realize at the time how out of line that was. I should have, I don't know, talked to you more seriously about it instead."

He kissed me on the hair. "Is it out of line when a man drops to his knee and proposes to his unsuspecting girlfriend in a public place?"

"Oooh, that's a trick question!"

"Is it? People think it's romantic..."

"What if he does it when he suspects she wants to break up, and he thinks he'll shame her or guilt her into staying with him?"

"Then he likely gets the miserable relationship he deserves for doing something so jacka.s.sed. On the other hand, if he knows she's likely to say yes, or he feels she's really waiting for him to pop the question?"

"That's different."

"Indeed. In many circ.u.mstances I would agree that coercing someone to tell a secret is not right. But you were quite right, Karina. You had every right to know before you let me take you. You had every right to demand it, and you knew me well enough to know it was the one way to ask that I wouldn't refuse. Had you merely asked me in the car on the way there...? I don't know that we'd have gone any further."

"What do you mean? Would you have lied to me?"

"I might have ended things rather than lying to you. Think of it this way. We were playing a game. All the time that you interacted only with my mystery ident.i.ty was a game. You basically declared it was time to move from the realm of fantasy to reality or you weren't going to play anymore."

"Yeah. That's pretty much what I was demanding, I guess."

"I was already trying to figure out how to move us into the realm of reality. But I wasn't quite ready yet. You beat me to it."

"And you're saying that might have worked out fine... if you hadn't been paranoid about Ferrara being after you?"

"Exactly. Although now, Karina, I truly hope we've reached the point where we can talk to each other if we have any issue?"

I paid no attention to the highway speeding by outside. My focus was completely on James. "Me, too. Although I have to ask, does that mean we're starting over?"

"Or maybe it feels like we're actually starting, for real, for the first time. Because I think perhaps we are."

"Hmm. It certainly feels like since you arrived in Ohio, I've been talking with the real James for the first time." I lay my hand on his chest, listening to his heartbeat with one ear against him. "It feels so right to be here with you, to touch you this way. How can I be this comfortable with you when in the back of my mind I'm still telling myself you might do something crazy again? I thought it was your dom aura, but now I'm not so sure."

"Dom aura? You mean like a spell that magically seduces submissive women?"

"Yeah. Or, you know, you've trained me to feel this way."

"Karina, I don't think it's possible for me to train your emotions. I can train your body, your physical responses, with pain and pleasure, but I can't control how you feel about what I do, or about me."

"Good to know."

"Many doms' hearts are broken when they learn the hard way they can't make their subs fall in love. Spankings and bondage don't make a person fall in love any more than candlelight and roses do."

"Good point."

"Trust, on the other hand? Spanking and bondage definitely increase those feelings. That's not training exactly. That's something we built up gradually over time by pushing the envelope, by taking risks and having adventures together."

"I guess we built it up strong enough that a few big blows didn't knock it all the way down-only partway."

He nodded. "I want more than anything to regain your trust."

"How do you plan to do that?"

"By keeping my promises. By telling you everything you want to know. By doing exactly what we did before, only not as a game."

"What do you mean what we did before?"

"As I said, by pushing the envelope. You enjoy being challenged, and every time you met a challenge, your trust in me grew. So did your confidence in yourself. In fact, you grew so confident you walked into that lion's den with Damon George without hesitation."

He was right. I no longer had fear of being desired, by him or any other man. I wondered if thinking about me and Damon was making him jealous and h.o.r.n.y now. It seemed likely, even if he said nothing.

And so what if he was contemplating taking me right now in the car? So what? If he wanted s.e.x, I realized, I had no reason to fear that, no reason to fight it. The reflex to automatically resist must have been something left over from the c.r.a.ppy relationships in my past. I had no wish to resist James's desire.

It made me wonder, though, what would happen if I did.

"I can always say no, right?" I asked aloud.

"Hmm? Of course. That hasn't changed. Your right to refuse is the bedrock on which everything is founded. I will never force you."

"But everything's not a simple yes-or-no situation, is it?"

"Power dynamics can be complex. A safe word, even one as simple as 'no,' always bears with it the possibility of creating a rift. It's your responsibility to tell me what I can't know or might have missed, which is that you need to or truly want to stop, and it's my responsibility to never push you to the point that our trust breaks." He nuzzled my hair. "That night when you asked for my name, you took that risk because you knew you couldn't keep trusting me without it. It was my mistake thinking that you broke our trust when in truth you were cementing it."

"I guess when you put it that way, I'm not sorry I did it. But I really will just try to talk to you from now on."

"And from now on we'll have the basis to do so, if you'll be a real part of my life, and I'll be a real part of yours."

"You really think it's a good idea for me to dance with you?"

"I do." He nuzzled me. "You know, I got my first hint that I was wrong the night of the party when Stefan gave me an earful."

"Did he? When he went back to pick you up?"

"He waited two days. I'm not sure if he was waiting for me to calm down or if that was the point at which he couldn't stand it any longer. He wagered his position on it."

I lifted my head, glancing at the gla.s.s that separated Stefan from us. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean, he said 'I'm about to tell you something you don't want to hear, but I feel so strongly about it I'm going to say it even if it gets me fired.' Well, that got my attention, I a.s.sure you. And after he told me, and we argued, he took it one step further and said he would bet on it. If I was right, I should fire him."

"But he was right. So what did he win? Besides keeping his job. That's hardly a fair wager then."

"True. I bought his mother a new house."

"Oh?"

"Yes. In France."

"That seems... like a lot."

"Sometimes one resorts to giving gifts to express how much one cares," he murmured softly.

"Mmm-hmm." I settled against him again. "So the whole thing with Damon was you trying to prove yourself right."

"To my shame, yes. You saw far more clearly than I did what was important to me, and maintained more faith in me than I deserved. I am still trying to live up to that." He stroked my hair. "Still trying to believe that I am so blessed. There will always be doubts haunting the back of my mind. But I try to use them as perspective, rather than letting them cloud my vision entirely."

"Doubts? About our ability to get along? To understand each other?"

"No, those doubts are being quelled day after day. I do... have doubts about your ability to actually withstand the full force of my desire."

I sat back, my hands on his chest. "You're kidding, right? After how hard you f.u.c.ked me at that party? Or what about the time you f.u.c.ked me with a string of pearls so hard they broke?"

His gaze locked with mine. "I'm not talking about how many pounds per square inch of force my c.o.c.k exerts. This isn't only on you. I have doubts about my ability to hold back."

"You didn't feel like you were holding back either of those times."

He said nothing for a few seconds. Then, "That sculpture of mine you saw in England. You saw what it represents. You saw the s.p.a.ce in it for you."

I could picture the huge gla.s.s creation in my mind's eye, shiny and red and jagged. "I told you. I thought it was a representation of male desire, your desire, like an unstoppable wave, a force of nature. James, seriously, if you need to f.u.c.k me very, very hard, I'm willing."

His eyes softened. "I don't doubt your willingness. My doubts are about the possibility that someday I could break you. Someday I may shatter the bond of trust between us when I go too far."

"You just said you wanted to push the envelope so that we could rebuild our trust, though."

"I know. That's the catch-22. So I'm going to push... but I'm going to try not to push too far, too fast. There's always the possibility, though, of me getting it wrong. That sculpture, look at it again. It's also the virgin sacrifice being taken into the mouth of the dragon."

"I'm not afraid of dragons," I said.

He smiled wanly. "I know you're not. You don't need Perseus coming to your rescue. You will ride the serpent all on your own."

As he said that I slipped my hand into his lap, where the erection I expected to find was indeed tenting his slacks.

"Karina," he said, seriously, "the serpent isn't just my c.o.c.k. It's my sadism. It's my need to see you submit to me, my need to see you screaming in pleasure and pain at my hand."

I nodded. "Tell me something I don't know, mister."