It’s an acquired taste…he just has to acquire it

Elise knows what she wants in the bedroom, and she makes sure she gets it. Her thirst for domination has long been quenched by a stable of men only too happy to bow down before her.

But sexual satisfaction isn’t the same as love, and she’s been burned in the past by giving her heart too freely.

Niall is handsome, smart, successful and sweet—sweet as vanilla. When they meet, their romantic connection is electric, even though he’s way on the opposite end of the kink spectrum. Despite how she fights it, Elise falls for him—but how can a relationship work when both lovers want to be on top?

“Hart wields her pen like a scalpel…in this soul-searching, emotionally sensitive story. Strong characterization and smooth, yet forceful, writing captures your attention and holds you hostage.”—RT Book Reviews on The Space Between Us

Praise for the novels of New York Times bestselling author Megan Hart

“Meticulously sensual details and steamy interludes make this an achingly erotic read.”

—RT Book Reviews on Flying

“Hart’s beautiful use of language and discerning eye toward human experience elevate the book to a poignant reflection on the deepest yearnings of the human heart and the seductive temptation of passion in its many forms.”

—Kirkus Reviews on Tear You Apart

“[Hart] writes erotica for grown-ups… [The Space Between Us] is a quiet book, but it packed a major punch for me.… She’s a stunning writer, and this is a stunning book.”

—Super Librarian

“Naked is a great story, steeped in emotion. Hart has a wonderful way with her characters…. She conveys their thoughts and actions in a manner that brings them to life. And the erotic scenes provide a sizzling read.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Deeper is absolutely, positively, the best book that I have read in ages…the writing is fabulous, the characters’ chemistry is combustible, and the story line brought tears to my eyes more than once…. Beautiful, poignant and bittersweet…Megan Hart never disappoints.”

—Romance Reader at Heart, Top Pick

“Stranger, like Megan Hart’s previous novels, is an action-packed, sexy, emotional romance that tears up the pages with heat while also telling a touching love story…. Stranger has a unique, hot premise that Hart delivers on fully.”

—Bestselling author Rachel Kramer Bussel

“[Broken] is not a traditional romance but the story of a real and complex woman caught in a difficult situation with no easy answers. Well-developed secondary characters and a compelling plot add depth to this absorbing and enticing novel.”

—Library Journal

“An exceptional story and honest characters make Dirty a must-read.”

—Romance Reviews Today

Vanilla
Megan Hart

www.spice-books.co.uk

This is for you

You know who you are

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

Author Song List

Extract

Copyright

prologue

The hum and the sting.

The artist bent over my wrist, tracing the outline of the simple design with the needle, the gun. Filling in the lines with ebony and shadows. My skin soaked up the ink in a way that made the girl murmur appreciatively.

“This is going to look great,” she told me. “Super fucking cool.”

It hurt. Of course it did. Tattoos always do—it’s not like they’re licked on by baby unicorns with tongues made of kittens for fuck’s sake. I had two others, a small Jewish star on my right hip and a somewhat-but-not-entirely regretted tramp stamp of a flaming sun on my lower back. This one on my wrist burned worse than the others had. Ink always hurts, but it’s a clean sort of pain. An on-purpose ache that lingers when the tattoo is finished and healing, and sometimes even long after, like your skin forever wants to remember how it felt to be so marked.

“What do you think?” She sat back and wiped my skin again of any excess color.

I didn’t need a mirror to see the inside of my left wrist. I’d picked that place because I would always be able to see it, whether I wanted to or not. The design there, no bigger than a fifty-cent piece, was simple. Black and gray. Stylized lines and curves that nevertheless clearly made a picture. The skin around the edges of the design was still a little raised and red the first time I saw it. Still stinging. Looking at it would always sting.

“Why a rabbit?” she asked with a tilt of her head. “I don’t usually ask, to be honest. I mean, it’s personal, yeah?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“And far be it from me to judge,” she continued. “I mean if you’d wanted a butterfly or a fairy or a flower, I wouldn’t even ask. But a rabbit’s cool. What’s the significance?”

“It’s so I don’t forget,” I told her.

She grinned and didn’t ask me what I needed to remember. “Fair enough. You’re satisfied, then?”

Satisfaction wasn’t exactly what I’d been going for. Pain and permanence, yes. An eternal reminder. But since I’d been given those things, and the design we’d worked up together was exactly as she’d drawn it, I had to nod.

“Yes,” I told her. “It’s perfect.”

1

There’s something so lovely in the curve of a man’s spine when he is on his knees, head bowed, hands behind his back. The back of his neck, vulnerable and exposed. The splay of his toes pressed to the hotel carpet that rubbed at his knees and would scrub them briefly red. I would leave my own marks on him, careful to be sure they’d fade as fast as the rug burns. I couldn’t leave anything permanent on him. We’d agreed on that from the first.

I didn’t want to hurt him much anyway. That had never been my game. A little sting, here or there. The slap of leather on his bare skin. The press of my teeth or scrape of my fingernails—those were things to make him shudder and moan. I would always rather get what I wanted by promising pleasure instead of pain. That was what worked for us.

Esteban had been waiting for me in that position when I came into the hotel room. The lamps off, late-evening sunshine glimmering through the mostly drawn curtain providing the only illumination. He would’ve been willing to do the things we did with the curtains open wide, every piece of both of us exposed and nothing soft about it. I was the one who liked the lighting to be dim, unfocused. Dreamy. I found myself more easily that way.

“I brought you a present,” I said as I shrugged my shoulder bag onto the desk. It clinked heavily, as I’d meant it to, so that he’d wonder what on earth I had for him inside it—and maybe be a little nervous.

Esteban was not facing me, and he didn’t turn while I unpacked my bag, even though I could tell by the strain of his muscles that he wanted to. Desperately. I laid out all the presents I’d brought. Sometimes I had a plan for how things were going to go on our monthly dates. Carefully constructed scenes I worked out thoroughly in my head so I could be sure to get it all right. Not today, though. Today I felt ripe with possibilities I’d not yet even considered.

With a hand behind my back to hide what I held, I took a seat in the chair in front of him. I let my skirt ride up a tiny bit to tease him with the glimpse of stockings beneath. I put one high heel between his knees, my shin grazing his inner thigh.

He smiled, but didn’t move. His mouth was a little wet from where he’d licked his lips. I leaned and cupped his cheek, and he nuzzled into my palm.

“My good boy,” I murmured. I held out the small box that had once held a bracelet. “Open.”

He took the box from me and sat back on his heels to pull off the lid. Inside, a coiled black ribbon. He shivered a little when he took the satin from the box, letting it trail over his hands and wrists. He looked at me, and I tugged the end of the ribbon to wrap it around his wrists, now crossed in front of him, not too snug. There was enough ribbon to go loosely around his neck, too, and to loop down around his already hard cock.

“I thought it would be something...tighter,” he said in that delightful accent that never failed to trigger a shiver of my own. “So I couldn’t get away.”

“If I need more than this to bind you, then I might as well go home right now,” I said.

Esteban shuddered, his eyes fluttering closed for a moment. When he opened them, his gaze had gone dreamy and dark. Several beads of sweat had gathered on his upper lip, and his tongue dipped out to taste them.

I loved seeing how my simple words affected him. I leaned to nuzzle the corner of his mouth, close enough for intimacy, though we never kissed each other on the lips. It was another of our rules, this one unspoken but never broken. I stroked a hand over his dark hair and let it linger on the back of his neck, feeling the muscles bunch and pull at my touch. I let my mouth travel along his jaw to his ear.

“Open,” I said again, not meaning a box this time.

Esteban opened his mouth at once. Obedient. Willing. Delicious and beautiful and, for the moment, mine.

I slipped my first finger into his mouth. He bit playfully; I took him hard by the chin to make him go still. He gave a soft sigh-moan, so I gripped him a little harder. I pulled his face toward me, teasing him with the promise of a kiss we both knew would never come—but that was part of what worked for us. That promise, that denial.

I ran my wet finger down his chest and circled the head of his erection, which was tapping his belly. When he strained toward me with a small growl, I gripped him tight and said into his ear, “Hush.”

He did at once, my good boy, his cock throbbing in my hand. I put my fingers in his mouth again, and this time he didn’t bite but instead wet them eagerly for me. I stroked his ribbon-bound cock again with slick fingers, slowly, then moved my hand down to cup his balls.

“Tell me what you want.” Sometimes I made him send me a list of things he fantasized about beforehand, though I hadn’t this time. And I asked without any intention of giving him what he wanted, which we both knew. Yet today, without a plan, restless and feeling caged by work and family and life, I was curious to see if what he asked me for was something I would give.

“I want to kiss you,” he told me, “there.”

“Here,” I replied, easing up my skirt to show him a hint of lace panties. I pressed my fingertips between my legs and raised an eyebrow.

“Please,” he added.

“Maybe.” I laughed at his frustrated expression. I leaned to take his face in my hands, looking into his eyes. “You are adorable.”

He tilted his head, his eyes half closing for a moment. “I want to please you.”

“I know you do. And I want your mouth on me—” I laughed softly again at his shudder. “But not just yet. Get on the bed.”

Esteban blinked a few times, not responding immediately. I was ready for that, my hand already grabbing the ribbon tangled around his cock and tugging in sharp command. The tug wouldn’t hurt him as much as my disapproval at how long it took him to get to his feet.

If you’ve ever tried to get up from your knees with your hands bound without pushing off from anything, you know how awkward and graceless it can be. Far from impossible, especially when the binding was mostly decorative. But still, he hated to be clumsy, which was part of the reason I yanked again, urging him to get up faster without taking the time to balance himself. We ended up standing face-to-face, my fingers still curled in the ribbon. In my heels I was an inch or so taller than he was, the perfect height to look down instead of straight on. I’d done that on purpose, too.

“Do you need me to repeat myself, Esteban?”

“No, miss.”

“Tell me again what you want,” I said.

“I want to please you.”

Fuck, how I loved the shiver in his voice. Later, I would make him say it to me in Spanish. I would make him teach me how to reply, and we would both laugh at how I butchered the words. In this moment, though, there was no laughter.

Only anticipation.

I stepped away from him, and his body rocked forward as I pulled the ribbon free and let it fall to the floor. It had been a whim, something pretty to start off with. I’d seen it on sale at the craft supply store while on an errand for my mother and had thought of Esteban immediately. I’d caught myself thinking of him more and more often in the times between our dates. I didn’t want to consider the reasons why.

“I want you on your back,” I told him.

He took a step backward, then another, before turning to crawl up onto the bed. He’d stripped the comforter off before I arrived, and I took a moment to enjoy the view of a beautiful, obedient male sprawled out on crisp white sheets before going to the array of things I’d already set out on the desk.

I’d picked up the ribbon because it had been a little playful, and the thought of making a gift of him to myself had pleased me. The sleek, smooth object I had in my hand, however, had not been an impulse purchase. I’d taken a long time to research it, making sure I picked the right one. Molded of heavy tempered glass, the heft of it was enough to cause serious damage if you dropped it on your foot...or your balls. It didn’t look like a sex toy as much as some sort of avant-garde sculpture, clear glass swirled with blue, red and orange. Cool to the touch, it would warm nicely to body temperature. You could wash it in the dishwasher, according to the product description, though the idea of that made me shake my head. I had a similar toy at home, longer and a little thicker, but the curve of this one had been designed to perfectly caress the prostate. This toy was not for me.

With the glass plug in one hand and a bottle of lube in the other, I knelt on the bed between Esteban’s legs. “I brought you another present.”

He pushed up on his elbows to look and grinned. “What is this?”

“You know what this is.” I put the lube on the bed and ran my hand up the inside of his thigh. He shaved his chest and his balls, but here the fine black hairs tickled my knuckles. I stroked my fingertip along his cock, then lower.

His knees fell open at once, giving me access to his body. When I cupped his balls, Esteban gave another of those delicious, low gasps. His hips rolled.

“Look at your pretty cock, already leaking for me.” I circled a finger around the head of it, drawing the slick precome onto my fingertip and holding it up. Locking his gaze to mine, I licked it away. It was a bit of a show for him, to trigger another of those noises, but no lie, the fact that he was so hard, so aroused that he dripped for me before I’d barely touched him, never failed to set me on fire.

“Tell me what you want,” I demanded again, but soft and low, my voice a caress and not a slap.

Esteban shifted on the bed, his feet going flat on it as the space between his knees widened. His fists gripped the sheets, but he knew better than to reach for me. For a second I wished he’d try—I would never truly hurt him, but discipline him? Oh, yes. We could do that.

“I want to see you,” he said.

I pretended to consider it, holding up the glass plug while I used the other hand to play with the buttons on my blouse. One, two, exposing a hint of nipple. The beauty of small breasts is being able to go without a bra, something which Esteban had once admitted to me drove him wild with lust. I stopped. He groaned. I laughed, and so did he. I put my free hand on his belly and the one holding the plug on the bed to support myself as I leaned over him, letting my mouth brush his chin before I nipped him.

“No,” I told him. “You haven’t earned it yet today.”

He did reach for me then. His hands moved over my thighs and hips, bunching my skirt. He kissed my cheek then my jaw, and found my throat where he nibbled and sucked the way I loved it.

“I can convince you?” he asked into my ear, stroking his hand upward to cup my breasts. Thumbing my nipples through the thin fabric of my blouse, he moaned softly when they hardened at his caress. “So much easier to touch you...”

I slapped his face lightly and gripped his chin, digging the blunt tips of my nails into his flesh. Esteban’s eyes closed immediately. His body tensed. His arms went over his head, fingers linking his hands.

I almost came, then and there, his reaction a better aphrodisiac than anything in the world.

“You will touch me when I say you may touch me.” My voice low. Dangerous. Stern.

“Yes, my goddess.”

“Fuck, I love it when you say that.” My fingers loosed their grip, leaving a few marks I soothed quickly with my tongue. I sat back. “Look at me.”

He did.

I shifted between his legs then straddled one of his thighs to press my pussy against him. I was wet through the lace. I held up the lube and the glass toy.

His cock jumped. So did the muscles on his inner thighs. And, a moment later when I pressed a slick finger against his tight hole, so did the muscles there.

It wasn’t the first time I’d ever played with his ass. One of the first things we’d talked about when we started this relationship was turn-ons and -offs. Limits, hard and soft. Expectations. Safe words. We’d been practical about it, making lists. Our agreement wasn’t anything that would stand up in court, but it was one we’d worked on carefully to be sure it suited us both. Realistic, maybe to a fault.

This was not a love affair.

It was, however, the first time I’d ever used an object on him instead of only fingers or tongue. Esteban had told me his fantasies about being taken that way, and though on the surface what we had together might appear to be all about what I wanted, it was truly about satisfaction for both of us. He wanted to please me; I got off on being pleased. But more than that, I reveled in the way the smallest things I did to him got him hard. Made him ache. I loved making him come for me, his orgasms like a tribute. Something he owed me and I deserved.

I warmed the toy’s chilly glass against my hot flesh while I ran my nails, scratching, up the insides of his thighs. Tickling over his balls and the shaft of his cock. I dripped lube on his prick and stroked him, though when he began to move into my closed fist, I laughed and stopped.

Esteban’s laugh broke with a gasp. “Please.”

“Not please.” I pinched his nipple, not hard enough to hurt but definitely hard enough. “You know I shamelessly fetishize you speaking Spanish to me.”

His hips had bucked when I pinched him, and he gasped again. “Compláceme, por favor.”

Spread open for me, unbound but not moving because I hadn’t given him permission, Esteban nevertheless gave me a wicked grin. He fucked upward, getting a few thrusts in before I gripped his cock tight at the base to keep him still. His eyes twinkled as he ran his tongue along his bottom lip and said something else in Spanish. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t really have to. He could be reciting his grocery list or a poem. My Spanish was limited to ordering off the menu at a Mexican restaurant. It was the sound of him speaking his native language that worked me up, and he knew it.

In response to his naughty teasing, I pressed a slick finger to his asshole, making him gasp. “You want this?”

“Oh...yes. Please, please, please... Por favor!”

I tested the glass by pressing it to my lips. Still cool but not shockingly so. I held it up. “You want this?”

He tried to answer and only a soft and desperate noise came out. I grinned, running it along his leg, and let it rest on his belly for a moment so he could feel the weight of it. His smile grew lax, gaze distant.

I’d known women who prided themselves on making their pets cry or wail, but even as a little girl I’d never liked breaking my toys. I liked it so much better when the man beneath me writhed and begged for release not because I was hurting him, but because I was making him feel too impossibly good. Creating desire fed something inside me I’d never been able to fully explain or understand. All I knew was that I craved it and loved it, and Esteban gave it to me. Another few strokes of his cock and he would explode for me...but not until I let him.

That was power. That was control. In that moment, I owned him.

And really, what woman would not love being made a goddess?

Again the throb of desire pulsed between my legs, easing as I coated the toy in lube and pressed it slowly against him. He hissed in a breath, tensing, and I soothed a hand along his cock.

“Open,” I whispered.

The plug was so perfectly designed that it practically seated itself, the curve pointing upward toward his belly so that it could press on his prostate. The flared base had a ring to keep it from slipping too deep inside, and also for gripping, so I could rock it back and forth. Esteban cried out when I did that, a low and guttural noise that mimicked pain. I knew him and all his sounds well enough, though. It might be a little uncomfortable, but he liked it more than he didn’t.

I let go of the toy and ran my hands once more up the insides of his thighs. I didn’t touch his cock, but I did draw a finger through the thick clear liquid that had puddled on his belly. I moved up his body to drag my fingertip over his lower lip then tucked it again into my own mouth and relished the taste of him.

“Tell me what you want,” I murmured in his ear.

He turned his face toward me, his breath hot. “To please you.”

I was already working my panties over my hips and thighs to kick them off. I inched my skirt up to show him my bareness and the stockings and garters framing it. His cock leaped, tapping his belly—if you’d told me even a few years before that erections did move on their own, that it wasn’t something made up for sexy novels, I’d have laughed. But I knew very well now how a man’s cock, aroused to the point of spilling without so much as another stroke, could throb and jerk.

“I want your mouth on me, Esteban.”

He moaned, his hips rocking so that his cock thrust upward into empty air. His ass would be clenching on that toy, too, I knew. A long string of precome clung to his prick, and I paused again to admire it. Then, facing his cock, I straddled his face so he could get his talented tongue and lips on my hard clit.

It was my turn to gasp and moan when Esteban’s mouth moved on me. I ground onto his tongue, my hands braced on his hips as I leaned forward. I let my tongue swipe the head of his cock, but didn’t take it in my mouth. I wanted to tease him, but also myself, and I knew the second I let myself take him inside my mouth, I’d be lost and out of control.

He put his hands on my hips, and I didn’t deny him. I liked them there, gripping. He might leave a mark or two of his own.

Lower, I reached to curl a finger in the plug’s handle. As I moved on his face, letting his lips and tongue urge me toward climax, I steadily rocked the plug—not thrusting in and out, like I was fucking him, but instead a gentle, steady pressure, on and off that internal pleasure spot. He pushed his cock upward, and I nuzzled the tip for a moment until he gave a muffled cry against me. Then I stopped. I slowed. I rolled my hips to push my clit against him in time to the steady pressure I was giving his prostate.

“Feel it,” I said with a hitch in my breath. Words were hard to form, my voice nothing close to steady or stern. But I wanted him to hear me that way, breaking, so he knew how much he was pleasing me. “Do you feel it?”

“Yes,” he said. “Oh...”

I pushed up with a hand on his hip, the bone hard beneath my palm. His dear cock was thick, straining for release, the color shading darker the harder it got. He was uncut, something that had been new to me with him, and I let my fingers tease the velvety foreskin that had retracted from his erection.

“I love your cock,” I told him matter-of-factly. I raised myself just far enough that he’d have to strain to reach my flesh, but my body was clenching and pulsing, so close to the edge that I wanted to hold off for a moment longer. “This thick, beautiful cock.”

“It’s yours,” he told me, and I let him lie to me because we both wanted to pretend that was true. “I’m yours. I belong... Oh...”

Another string of muttered Spanish, a few words I did recognize, eased out of him on a desperate, gasping sigh. The sound of it, his words, the edge of hungry, mindless pleasure in his voice, was at last enough. I gave him my pussy again and let him feast on me as I sat up, hands on his chest, to ride his mouth until I came.

My body shook with it, hard spasms of pleasure. Esteban’s hands gripped me hard, fingers digging. His cock leaped. He cried out against me, and as my vision went blurry from the pleasure, I watched thick come jet out of him to splatter his belly. He came without me even touching his cock, and I went mindless myself at the sight. I came again, hard enough to feel faint, and as the surge of orgasm eased away, I rolled onto my back next to him and splayed, boneless and content, on the king-size bed.

We both lay still for a moment or so, the sound of our breathing the only noise—though the pounding of my heart had been loud in my ears, it was fading. His hand had moved to rest on my shin. My head was close enough to his leg that I could turn my face to kiss the side of his knee. I sat up, moving on numb legs to grab one of the hand towels he’d taken earlier from the bathroom and put on the bed.

“Slow,” I said quietly as I eased the plug out of him and wrapped it in the towel to take care of in a bit. I used the edge of the other towel to gently clean him off, and when I was done, him naked and me still fully clothed except for my panties, I curled up next to him with my head on his shoulder to cuddle him.

We breathed together. I laid my hand on his belly, the skin still warm and a little sticky. He’d gone flaccid, but something in the intimacy of this moved me more than I expected, and I cupped him for a moment before pressing a kiss to his shoulder. My eyes closed. I took in his scent, knowing I would leave with it infused into my clothes. I would carry it with me for the rest of the night, until later when I would shower him away. But for now, I felt and smelled Esteban all over me, and for now, I didn’t want to move.

He would shower before he left. He always did. Always careful to leave without any evidence that we’d been together, unlike the way I let myself stay covered in him for hours. I never asked him why. I didn’t want him to tell me, because then I would know.

His phone buzzed from the nightstand. Neither of us looked at it. His hand came up to stroke my hair and pull me a little closer, something I noticed. Believe me, I did. He chose to cuddle me closer rather than to answer his call, and that might have meant nothing or everything.

A few seconds after the phone stopped buzzing, the trill of a voice mail tone sounded. He sighed. He kissed my temple.

“I need to go,” he said.

I nuzzled against him, considering being stern again, but the truth was that I could order and command and demand, but in the end, he would only do for me what he wanted to do. I kissed his shoulder and gave it a small press of my teeth to make him hiss in a breath, then sat to let him get up. When he came out of the shower, his hair rubbed briskly dry and a towel wrapped around his lean hips, I held out the final gift to him in the palm of my hand. Esteban sat on the edge of the bed next to me and charmed me with the pink tinge on his cheeks and the tips of his ears, endearingly exposed by his short haircut.

He took the sleek silicone plug, similar to the one I’d used earlier but smaller and more lightweight, into his hand and curved his fingers over it. He didn’t look at me at first, though he leaned into me. I put an arm around him as he pressed his face into the curve of my neck.

“You’re so good to me,” he said.

“I want you to think of me during the days when we aren’t together.”

He paused. “I think of you every night before I go to sleep.”

“You do?” Pleased, I nuzzled his cheek. When I tried to pull away, Esteban held me close for a few seconds longer. I stroked his hair, petting him.

“I don’t want to leave,” he whispered.

So don’t was the answer that rose to my lips, but I didn’t say the words aloud. Briskly, I pushed away from him and cupped my hands around his. It wasn’t the first time I’d given him a task to complete while we were apart, but it was the first time I’d added a prop.

“I want you to wear it for me.” I squeezed his fingers around it. “At work. Not every day. But when I ask.”

And then, as I’d known he would, Esteban nodded and gave me what I asked for.

He said yes.

2

My partner didn’t want to work. I wanted to get paid. It was kind of an old argument.

“One of us is not independently wealthy,” I told him sharply as I pushed his feet off my desk. “Unless you intend to fully support me in my old age, you’d better get working on that long, long list of things I told you needed to be signed off on before the weekend.”

Alex Kennedy could’ve made a career out of being charming, and he knew it. “C’mon, Elise. It’s Wednesday. Hump Day!”

“So hump yourself over to your desk and sign these files!”

“Yes, ma’am,” Alex told me with a cheeky grin.

I rolled my eyes, refusing to give in to his relentless charisma. “Doesn’t work on me.”

“Sure it does.”

“Not from you, it doesn’t,” I said and pushed a folder toward him.

“Damn it. It works on everyone else.”

I lifted a brow. “I’m not everyone else.”

Alex got up to pace in front of my desk. “Work is boring and annoying, and we’ve been doing it all day. Let’s go out for a late lunch. My treat.”

“Far be it from me to turn down free lunch, but we have to get all of those clients squared away first. Paperwork.” I held up a hand at his groan. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Bane of your existence. I get it. But you’re the one who has to sign off on this stuff, or else none of it will go through.”

Alex sighed. “Fuck my life. I thought starting my own business meant I got more time off.”

“Sign this shit!” I waved the folder at him. “Then take all the time off you want! Buy me lunch, too, that’s all good. But get this stuff done, so I don’t have to deal with a bunch of pissy voice mails about transactions that didn’t go through because you were too busy dancing around to sign anything.”

He did dance then, wiggling his ass and giving me another grin. “Dance, dance, dance...”

A short rap at the door turned us both. Olivia, Alex’s wife, poked her head around the door. She laughed at my expression.

“Is he giving you a hard time again?” she asked.

“Baby.” Alex went to kiss her. “I’m trying to take her out to lunch. I’m trying to be nice.”

“Lunch?” she asked. “At this hour?”

“We’ve been hard at work all day,” he said.

“Well, one of us has. He’s being lazy,” I told her.

She gave me a face that told me she knew exactly what dealing with that was like. When Alex tried to dance over to her, she held him off with a hand on his chest, though when he dove in to kiss her neck, she giggled and gave in for a minute before pushing him away. Over his shoulder, she said, “I sent you a link to your album with the shots I worked on for the calendar project. I marked the ones I thought came out the best, but you let me know if there are any others you’d like me to work on.”

I’d started modeling in college when a friend taking a photography class had needed someone to pose for a final project. The pictures hadn’t been very good—my friend was no artist. But as it turned out, I was a very good model. Other people in the class asked for help with their projects, one thing led to another and before I knew it, I’d collected quite a portfolio. And, because I was up for anything, most of the pictures were what my mother considered “filthy.” I’ve never considered being naked on camera porn, but I guess that’s in the eye of the beholder.

A few years ago I’d been new to the D/S scene, just getting my feet wet, so to speak, when I’d attended a munch, a purely social meeting sponsored by a group of women and the men who liked to serve them. The munch had been held in a local art gallery, hung with Scott Church’s work. He was looking for people willing to pose for a series of BDSM-themed portraits. I agreed. We’d done lots of shoots together since then, from sweetly provocative lingerie cheesecake to hardcore portraits. I liked working with Scott, never for the money even if sometimes there was some, but because I liked having my picture taken. In some ways, modeling, like the things I did with Esteban, was all about control, except that when I posed for pictures, I wasn’t the one in charge. And there’s power in that, too, sometimes, giving someone else what they want to take from you and make their own.

I’d met Olivia at one of Scott’s photography seminars, where I’d been one of the models. Shortly after that, she’d been asked to participate in a local annual calendar project for a Harrisburg charity, and though it wasn’t exactly the type of shoot I’d been doing before that, it was for a good cause. The pictures Olivia had taken had turned out to be so much fun and so well received that we were back for a third year.

“Hey, pictures. Can I see?” Alex came around my desk to look over my shoulder, though I hadn’t even opened the email from his wife, much less the online album.

“Since apparently you’re not going to bother doing any real work,” I told him as I found the link and clicked through, “I guess so.”

Alex leaned closer as the screen populated with thumbnails of the shots Olivia had taken. He pointed. “I like that one.”

I enlarged it. “Me, too.”

Olivia grinned as she looked to see which we’d both picked. “I figured.”

Together, we’d done a re-creation of a famous Vargas portrait, the artist known for his pinup paintings of women in various situations showing off their garters and stockings. This one was me in front of an apple-bobbing barrel, my hands tied behind me as I captured an apple in my teeth. Pretty vintage skirt, stockings, a lady with her hands tied. No innuendo about it, this picture was meant to be sexy.

“It’s a little too bondagey for a charity calendar,” I said. “But it’s fun.”

Alex looked at me. “It’s sexy as all hell, that’s what it is.”

“You’re right, my darling perv,” Olivia said, scrutinizing it. “But so is Elise. It’s too sexy for the project. The ones I marked would work better. Elise, let me know. I have to run now. I have a shoot scheduled with a set of newborn twins, and their mother tells me if we don’t catch them at nap time, it will be impossible to get any good shots. I tried to tell her I could work with kids, but hey, she’s the client.”

She kissed her husband and gave me a wave before heading out. Alex was now clicking through the rest of the pictures she’d taken. All variations of some kind of pinup imagery, though all far tamer than the first he’d picked. He paused on one of me with my head tipped back and eyes squinted closed, laughing. It had been a good day in Olivia’s studio.

“You could do this full-time, you know. Why are you crunching numbers and doing data analysis for me?”

“Because I’m more than just a pretty face?” I posed it as a question, adding an innocent blink and making dead doll eyes. “Because I like to pay my bills and do things like eat and buy stuff?”

“Bills, schmills,” Alex said.

I rolled my eyes. “Says the bazillionaire.”

“Pfft.” Alex leaned over my shoulder again to scroll through the pictures then nudged me. “Seriously, I know my wife’s a bloody genius with the camera, but you...look at you.”

I looked over the photo he’d pulled up. Critically, I could see what he meant. False modesty is a worse sin than vanity, I’ve always thought. I was pretty. I’d been pretty my whole life.

“There’s more to me than eyes and mouth and tits, Alex.”

He stepped away as I swiveled in my chair, and though Alex could be counted on to make light of nearly anything, this time he looked solemn. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to be sorry.” I shrugged, looking again at the pictures. “I like having my picture taken. I like working with Olivia. I like the idea that something we’ve done together goes to raising money for something useful. It seems to make it worthwhile.”

“And if you hadn’t met Olivia in Scott’s workshop, you’d never have met me, and I’d never have been able to convince you my life would not be complete without you by my side.” Alex put his fists under his chin and fluttered his eyelashes at me. “So, lucky me.”

I was the lucky one. Alex had started his own investment-planning business a few years back, consulting mostly. He had the contacts and the skills to make people a lot of money if they let him. He’d brought me on as a partner, my job to take care of all the bits of the business he found boring, which was just about everything other than figuring out the best places to make money grow. I handled client accounts, paperwork, office filing, billing...and though there were days when working with him felt more like trying to wrestle a bag of kittens into a top hat worn by an eleven-armed octopus that hated cats, I wouldn’t have given it up for any other job. Before agreeing to take on the responsibility of keeping this joker in line, I’d been drowning in the corporate world of human resources for Smith, Brown and Kavanagh, where going to work every day had been like feeling another small piece of my soul shrivel and die.

“Serendipity. If I’d never met Scott, I’d never have met Olivia, and then I’d never have met you while you were throwing a pity party about how starting your own business was so much more work than you wanted to do...”

“It wasn’t a pity party,” Alex interrupted. “I was just, you know.”

“Whining,” I told him with a grin and ducked his attempt to poke my upper arm. The truth was, he might like to slack off in the office during the boring bits of paperwork and filing stuff, but he was a genius with the clients. And he knew how to make money grow, no question about that.

He leaned over my shoulder again to look at the picture of me in front of the apple-bobbing barrel. “That picture is hot as fuck, Elise.”

From another guy, in another office, this might’ve been grounds for sexual harassment. Instead I eyed it, then him, with another lift of my eyebrow. “You like the whole woman tied up on her knees with something in her mouth, huh?”

“Who doesn’t?” Alex laughed.

It wasn’t like Alex and I talked in detail about our sex lives. We’d become friends, but there are some things you don’t talk about with the people you work with. Especially when he’s a married man, and you’re basically the only two people in the office. I had no idea if Alex had seen any of my other photos, the ones I did with Scott. Alex and I were linked on Connex, of course, because these days everybody collected connexions like kids used to collect baseball cards. I’d posted a few shots on there a long time ago, but I now avoided putting anything too private on that social networking site because I’d connexed with family members. My mother had a hard enough time accepting the fact I posed in my bra and panties. If she saw me in a black vinyl catsuit with a whip in my hand and a man at my feet, she’d have plotzed. I wasn’t embarrassed or ashamed about any of it; it wasn’t a secret, but it wasn’t as if I went around introducing myself like “Hi, I’m Elise, and sometimes I like to dominate men.”

I laughed, too. “Lots of people like it the other way around, believe me.”

“Both work,” he said with a flash of a grin I suspected had wooed him into the pants of many a woman in his day. Alex Kennedy was just one of those guys who turned heads and made lashes flutter. It wasn’t just his face, which was gorgeous. It was the way he looked at you, like what you said mattered, like in that moment, nobody else existed but you.

“You could be a model yourself, you know,” I told him somewhat abruptly. “I’m surprised Olivia doesn’t use you more often.”

Something flashed in his eyes, and a secret sort of smile slipped across his mouth before he focused again on me. “I’ve let Olivia take pictures of me.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, but didn’t ask. The look on his face told me everything I needed to know about that. “Tell you what, rock star, how about you sign off on all this stuff, you take me to lunch and then you can get home early to your gorgeous wife and make some more pictures together.”

Alex grinned. “You got it. I’ll even take you out for sushi, how’s that?”

“Awesome.” I pushed the folder toward him. “Sign.”

Fifteen minutes later, I was teasing him about how painless it had been to actually finish some work, and we were walking to the closest sushi restaurant. Tucked in a small storefront on Front Street and directly across from the parking garage, it was a favorite lunch spot for a lot of the people who worked downtown. Fortunately for us, Alex’s procrastination meant the lunch rush was over, and the dinner crowd hadn’t yet arrived. We had our choice of tables in the restaurant’s cozy back section, and we took a seat in the corner. The server brought us hot tea and bowls of miso soup. I dipped my porcelain spoon into the golden broth, stirring up the bits of scallion, then blew on it to cool it. I was suddenly starving.

We talked for a while about our favorite TV program. Alex had turned me on to the show about two monster-hunting brothers who drove around in a black Impala—sometimes in the office, we’d toss quotes from the show back and forth to each other, trying to stump the other. Because Alex was way more into the show and had been watching it for a lot longer, he was usually able to beat me at the game. Now, asking me which of the brothers I’d be if I could choose, he claimed he would always be Dean, the older brother, and I was stuck being the younger brother, Sam.

“Except shorter,” he said.

I made a face. “And without a penis, don’t forget that part. That’s kind of important. Anyway, I’m totally Dean. Dean’s way cooler.”

“We can’t both be Dean,” Alex pointed out.

“You have Sam hair.” I gestured at the raggedy mop of dark hair that spilled over his forehead.

“But you’re the smart one, and you do all the computer stuff,” Alex said. “You have to be Sam.”

We both laughed at that. He pushed the platter of spicy salmon toward me then took some for himself. Alex waved his chopsticks at me.

“So...how was your...meeting...last Friday?”

I paused. My once-a-month dates with Esteban weren’t a secret, exactly. Alex had no problem with me rearranging my schedule to accommodate appointments. Well, once a month, always on the second Friday, I had a “meeting.” I’d never told Alex what it was for, nor had he asked, until just now, though I could tell by his tone he suspected I hadn’t been seeing a chiropractor.

“It was very productive,” I told him.

He waited. I smiled. He shook his head.

“What’s your story, Elise?”

I gave him a falsely innocent look. “I don’t have a story.”

“Everyone has a story,” Alex said. “We all have secrets. What’s yours?”

“If I tell you, it would hardly be a secret, would it?”

Alex grinned. “C’mon. You know you wanna.”

All at once I did want to tell him, the sudden urge to share swelling up inside me with unexpected fervor. Why? I didn’t know, other than I hadn’t told anyone about the lover I’d been seeing once a month or so for the past year and a half, not even my best friend, Alicia. She’d moved to Texas two years ago, which had made it easier to keep Esteban a secret. If I hadn’t shared our relationship with the girl I’d known since elementary school, it certainly wasn’t something I should share with Alex.

My phone booped with my nephew William’s ringtone and saved me. I swiped the screen to take the call. “Hey, kiddo. What’s up?”

“Can you come get me from my lesson?”

I paused, dragging a piece of sushi through a puddle of wasabi-smeared soy sauce. “When are you finished?”

“I’m supposed to go until six-thirty but the rabbi had another meeting so he let me go now. I texted my mom a couple times, but she didn’t answer me.” William hesitated. “I texted my dad but he said he’s in a meeting and asked if you could get me.”

“Maybe she’s stuck in traffic,” I offered around a mouthful of rice and fish. “Can you give her a few more minutes?”

Another short pause came, then William said quietly, “Can you please come and get me, Auntie?”

He hadn’t called me that in a while. Heading toward thirteen, William had taken to calling me Elise without even an aunt in front of it, a habit that made me sad but one I didn’t denounce. Kids grew up. It’s what happened.

“Sure, kid. Let me finish up my lunch, and I’ll be right there. Another fifteen minutes or so, okay? If your mom gets there first, text me.” I disconnected and gave Alex an apologetic look. “My nephew needs to be picked up from his Bar Mitzvah tutoring. I guess his mom’s late. I’m only a few minutes from the synagogue. Mind if I run to get him?”

Alex shrugged. “Sure. Are we all done in the office?”

“I am.” I gave him a significant look that he returned with a grin. “I guess you are, too. Thanks for the sushi. See you tomorrow.”

It took me about ten minutes to get back to the parking lot in front of the office. Another ten to get to the synagogue, and only because I hit every red light on Second Street. I spotted William sitting on one of the benches at the shul’s front doors. He was tapping away on his phone, head bent, still wearing his kippah as was required by the synagogue for males while in the building, though he didn’t usually wear one outside it. He looked up when I pulled into the half-circle drive, his expression wary. I hated to see that on the kiddo’s face, not sure why he looked like that.

“Hey,” I said through the passenger-side window. “Is your mom on the way or do you still need a ride?”

“Yeah, I need one.” William slid into the passenger seat, backpack at his feet, and put on his seat belt without being reminded.

God, I loved that kid. I had a strange and winsome flashback to the smell of his head when he was a baby. My brother and Susan had gotten pregnant and married at age twenty, one year before we all graduated from college. I’d lived with them for the last four months of her pregnancy and the entire first year of William’s life, both so we could all save money and to help them out with the baby so they could finish their degrees. I’d changed diapers and done midnight feedings, the whole bit. William would kill me if I leaned over to sniff him now, though, not to mention that I was sure the experience would not be the same as it had been when he weighed ten pounds and fit in my arms like a doll. Instead, I waited until he’d settled before pulling out of the synagogue driveway and onto Front Street.

“Your mom didn’t get back to you?”

“She said it was okay if you took me home.” William’s phone hummed, and he looked at it. “She says she was running late at yoga and to tell you thanks for picking me up.”

“No problem, kid. My pleasure.” Traffic was still fairly light, though in another half an hour it might start to get heavier with rush hour commuters all trying to merge onto the highway. It was only late April, but one of the first days that promised summer after a bitter and seemingly endless winter. “Hey, you wanna go get some ice cream?”

William shifted to look at me. “Right now? Before dinner?”

“Yeah, of course, before dinner. That’s the best time to eat ice cream.” I shot him a grin that he returned.

Instead of turning right to head over the bridge to get him home, I kept going a little ways so I could head across town to our favorite ice cream shack. Every year I figured would be its last, that competition from chain frozen ice places would put it out of business, but so far the Lucky Rabbit was still around. My twin brother, Evan, and I had both worked in the Lancaster location during the summers in our long-ago teenage years, flipping burgers and scooping the homemade churned ice cream into waffle cones. Time had weathered the Lucky Rabbit sign and left huge potholes in the parking lot, but that was what Pennsylvania winters did to all the roads, left them pitted and rough.

I pulled into the gravel lot and avoided the ditches as best I could and found a spot near a splintery picnic table. We ordered not only sundaes but also onion rings. Not even a bare nod to providing a reasonable dinner, because aunties don’t need to do that.

“So, how’s it going?” I asked around a mouthful of hot fried onion dipped in chocolate ice cream.

William shrugged. He’d ordered mint chocolate chip with caramel sauce, a combination that made me shudder. “Okay, I guess. My Torah portion is really long.”

“You have time. Another three months or so, right?” His Bar Mitzvah was scheduled for his birthday weekend in late July, which meant a sucky early summer of tutoring and attending services.

He shrugged again. We ate mostly in silence after that—William devouring most of the onion rings, all of his ice cream and the rest of mine that the late sushi lunch had left me incapable of finishing. We talked a little bit about the school year that was coming to a close. His new video game. His best friend, Nhat, who might be moving to another school district. William lingered over the last few bites, drawing it out until I finally asked him what was wrong.

“I don’t want to go home,” he said.

“How come?” I gathered the trash and watched him from the corner of my eye as I got up to toss it.

William shrugged again. It was becoming his favorite response. “Just don’t.”

“Is something going on at home?” I sat again on the picnic table bench, wincing at the scrape of the rough wood on the back of my thigh below my hem. I’d be lucky to get out of here without a bunch of splinters in my butt.

“No.”

I knew he was lying, but I wasn’t going to prod him. William looked like his mother, but he was his father’s boy in personality. My brother had always held things close to the chest, and poking him to get him to talk never worked.

“You have to go home, kid. It’s a school night. Your dad will be home soon, and I’m sure your mom is wondering where you are.”

“I bet she’s not.”

I paused at this, but decided not to push. “C’mon, let’s go. Hey, maybe you can come and spend the weekend with me. You haven’t done that for a while.”

“Can’t,” William said sourly. “I have to go to services.”

I loved that kid, but there was no way I was going to volunteer to take him to the three-hour Saturday Sabbath service. I’d fallen off the religion wagon long ago, a fact that killed my mother on a daily basis. Her angst about it had probably contributed a lot to my lack of observance. Sometimes you twist a knife because you can’t help it, even if you’re ashamed to admit it.

“How about Saturday night? I could pick you up after services. We could go to the movies.”

“I’ll have to ask my mom,” William said doubtfully.

“Like she’ll say no?” I scoffed, but stopped myself from reaching to ruffle his hair. “I’ll talk to her. But it’s a plan. Okay?”

That earned a ghost of a smile from him, which relieved me. In the car, just before we pulled into his driveway, I said casually, “You know, you don’t have to be perfect at this Bar Mitzvah thing. Nobody’s going to be expecting you to nail it without any mistakes, the rabbi and the gabbaim are there to help you if you need it. You’re not performing a play that you have to memorize. It’s okay if you’re not exactly perfect.”

He shook his head. “Mom says she expects me to do my best.”

“Your best,” I said as I turned off the ignition. “Not perfection.”

I went into the house with him, both to make sure there was someone home before I dumped him off and to talk to my brother if he was there. Evan wasn’t, but Susan must’ve made it home right before we got there because when we came into the living room from the front door, she was coming down the stairs with her hair in a towel. Without missing a beat, she told William to put his stuff away and set the table for dinner. She barely looked at me.

“Thanks for getting him,” she said, clearly distracted. “I ran late at yoga. It’s this new class...”

“No problem.” I waited a second or so, but my sister-in-law wasn’t going to give me the time of day. I was used to that. We’d never been close, and I’d never been sure why, but it had stopped bothering me years ago. I took in her wet hair and the smudges of mascara under her eyes. The traces of lipstick in the corners of her mouth. She wore a pair of yoga pants and a loose T-shirt, but also a pair of pretty dangling silver earrings, along with a matching bracelet of hammered links. Not exactly the sort of accessories I’d have picked to exercise in, if I ever did such a thing.

“I was happy to do it,” I added when she didn’t answer me. “You know, the shul is only a few blocks from my office. I’d be happy to pick him up anytime if you need me to. Or he can walk down and hang out with me—”

That got her attention. Frowning, Susan shook her head. “Walk to your office? In downtown Harrisburg? He’s not even thirteen yet, you want him to get mugged?”

I didn’t point out that it was literally less than a mile walk along public streets in the middle of the afternoon, not a saunter through back alleys at two in the morning. “If you need me to, that’s all.”

“Thanks.” Her chin went up, and she finally looked at me, though her gaze skated away from mine without holding it. “Yeah, that might be great. It’s this new class. It runs—”

“Late, got it.” Awkward silence hung between us, and I could’ve eased it but frankly, I’d long ago decided that whatever problems my brother’s wife had with me were of her own making. However, since Evan wasn’t home, she was the one I had to talk to about William. “I invited the kiddo to stay with me this weekend. I can pick him up from services on Saturday, if you want. I’ll bring him back Sunday.”

“He has religious school Sunday morning.”

“So I’ll take him to religious school,” I told her easily. “I’ll make sure he gets there on time. Anyway, it’ll give you and Evan a date night. You can even sleep in.”

A short, harsh bark of laughter rasped out of her before she swallowed it. She did meet my gaze then, for a second or so. “Sure. That sounds great. Thanks. I’ll make sure he has a bag with him. Thanks, Elise.”

“No problem,” I said again. “I love having him.”

Another few beats of awkward silence moved me toward the door. I shouted out a goodbye to William as I left, but he didn’t answer. Susan shut the door so firmly behind me there was no question about how happy she was to see me go.

Some people love you. Some hate you. Some tolerate you for the sake of keeping the peace, and if everyone in the world managed to do even just that, we’d have a lot less woe in the world.

3

I want to see you tonight.

Not may I, or I wish, but I want. I hadn’t been expecting the message, though as far as surprises went, it was definitely a pleasant one. With my phone tucked into the front pocket of my purse while I shopped for a quick cart of junk food for my nephew’s sleepover, I’d missed the message when it came in twenty minutes before. I thumbed a reply as I waited in line to check out.

I can’t tonight.

To my additional surprise, JohnSmith is Typing appeared at the top of the app. That meant Esteban had read and was replying immediately, which wasn’t usual for a weekend. In the beginning, we had connected late at night in those dark hours between midnight and three, when smart people were asleep. Most of our conversations now happened during the workweek between two and four in the afternoon.

I really want to see you.

Before I could type an answer, my phone rang. Even more surprised now, because Esteban never called me without asking me first for permission, I thumbed the screen to answer. “What’s wrong?”

The woman in front of me gave me a curious glance. I lowered my voice. “Are you okay?”

“I want to see you,” he told me, which was not the answer to my question. “Can we meet tonight?”

“I have...” I hesitated. Esteban and I didn’t talk about our lives, not in great detail. We talked about our jobs. We talked about sex. The rest of it, by unspoken agreement, was covered in vagueness and clouds. I had my reasons for keeping it that way and had always assumed Esteban did, too. “Plans. I can’t change them. I’m sorry. If I’d known sooner—”

“I didn’t know I would be able to see you tonight.” He sounded disappointed.

We’d never had a last-minute sort of relationship, even before we’d settled into our regular monthly dates. This sudden urgency from him made me wary. “Sorry. I didn’t know you’d want to.”

“I miss you.”

I glanced at the woman in front of me in line, who was clearly eavesdropping. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. You just feel very far away.” His voice deepened for a moment, his impeccable English overlaid by that delicious accent that was as much about the spaces between his words as it was the way he pronounced them. Esteban sighed. “I need to see you.”

Before Esteban, there’d been other men. More than I wanted to think about, not because I was ashamed but because most of them had not been worth the effort. When you lose something you love before you’re ready to give it up, you look for it wherever else you can find it, and I’d looked for what I wanted in a lot of places before Esteban’s sweetly respectful message had showed up in my inbox at OnHisKnees.com.

I’m starving, he’d told me when we’d been talking for a few weeks. I’d asked him what he was looking for, why he was on the site. What he wanted. I’m hungry all the time for something I can’t seem to find.

I understood what he meant. About hunger. About how you could glut yourself on something and yet still be empty.

I couldn’t stop myself from liking Esteban. He was sweet and smart and funny; he made me laugh and challenged me mentally as well as gave me delicious orgasms. It wasn’t something we talked about, the tenuous emotional connection between us that wasn’t supposed to be there because what we had was meant to be only physical.

“I’m right here.” I cradled the phone against my shoulder as I put my items on the conveyer belt. I’d kept my voice low, cautious of giving the people around me a free show. “I’m at the store now, though. I have to go. Can you call me in about an hour? I’ll have some time to talk to you then.”

He sighed. “An hour until I get to bathe in the melody of your voice? Okay.”

I disconnected, bemused at his urgency. Flattered, a little. The melody of my voice? It was over the top and silly, but warmed me anyway.

I dropped off my groceries at home and got back in my car to head for the synagogue just as my phone rang again. I let the call ring through to my car speakers so I could drive while we talked.

“Are you driving?” Esteban asked. “I hear noise.”

“Yep, I’m in the car.”

“Drive to me,” he said. “Meet me!”

I didn’t answer immediately. It wasn’t like him to be so demanding, and though desire is an aphrodisiac, this game had never been about Esteban telling me what to do. I wasn’t about to start playing it that way now.

“Hush,” I said sharply. “I told you, I can’t. I have plans.”

I’d heard that same soft intake of breath often enough to know his reaction. It was my tone of voice. The idea of my disapproval and of facing the consequences of it. He’d be hard as a rock right about now.

Damn, I loved that.

“I’m sorry,” Esteban said, instantly apologetic.

I softened. “Hush, I said. I’m happy you want to see me. And normally, I’d love to see you tonight. But I can’t, as I said.”

“You have a date?”

“It’s not your concern,” I said, harsher than I wanted to be, but proving a point. “I told you I have plans. That’s enough for you to know.”

“Would he do for you the things I will?”

I didn’t answer right away, turning over my own reaction in my head before letting it take control. Other men had tried to bully me into giving them what they wanted, whether it was a blow job or an endearment. I had to remind myself that Esteban was not other men and had proven it time and again.

When I tied him up, I was responsible for making sure he didn’t get hurt beyond his limits. I was in charge of his body. I was also in charge, in some ways, of his heart.

“It’s not a date, Esteban.” His laugh sounded relieved, and I cut him off before he could speak. I believed I understood why he was acting this way, but that didn’t change our dynamic. “But if it were, it would not be your business.”

“I’m sorry. I should not have asked,” he said after a moment. Did I hear a tremble in his voice?

“What’s wrong, honey?” I relented. I was alone in the car, but my voice still dipped low. I imagined him, eyes closed, on his knees, leaning to press his cheek into my palm. Esteban’s hair is soft and light as dandelion fluff, and his golden skin is always warm. “What’s going on? Talk to me.”

Another soft huff of indrawn breath. “I miss you, that’s all. Wanted to see you. I know it’s not our time, but I could make it work.”

I looked up to see the synagogue doors opening, people coming into the parking lot. William would be out in a few minutes. I made an offer assuming Esteban would say no. “I have to go. I can’t see you tonight, but I could meet you for coffee tomorrow morning...”

“Yes. Yes, I would like that very much. I just want to see you.”

Something was going on with him, for sure. “Nine-thirty, Morningstar Mocha. You know it?”

“Yes. Thank you, miss.”

It was odd to hear him call me that outside of a hotel room, but it still sent a shiver all through me. “I have to keep my boy happy, don’t I?”

The instant the words were out of my mouth, a chill swept over me. Then heat, creeping up my throat and into my face. Have to keep my girl happy, don’t I? George had often said that, and in the end he’d done anything but.

Not noticing my sudden silence, Esteban laughed and sounded more like his usual self when he replied. “Your boy is desperate for your touch, that’s all.”

“There won’t be much touching in the coffee shop.”

“It will be enough,” he said.

I spotted another small surge of people exiting the synagogue, but my nephew was not among them. “I have to go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

I disconnected, searching for signs of William. When the doors closed and he still hadn’t appeared, I got out of the car to go in and find him. I’d forgotten about the Saturday kiddush luncheon in the rec hall. Following the murmur of voices and the smell of toasted bagels, I spotted William talking to the rabbi at a table with plates of egg salad and tuna in front of them. William was nodding. The rabbi looked serious but then laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

“Hey,” I said, too aware of my jeans and tank top and the fact I hadn’t covered my head, though in this Conservative synagogue women weren’t required to unless reading the Torah. I was glad I’d shrugged into a cardigan so at least my arms weren’t bare. “Hi, Rabbi.”

“I forgot you were coming,” William said.

“Sit. Have some lunch.” The rabbi gestured toward the buffet table still set with platters of food, though the custodian was starting to put it away. “We have plenty.”

I’d only grabbed an apple on my way out the door this morning, so the thought of a bagel smeared with cream cheese and lox was tempting. Still, I didn’t want to linger. I hadn’t been to services in forever, so scarfing down a free lunch seemed inappropriate. And I didn’t want to fend off any awkward questions about when I would be attending.

I shook my head. “I’m good, thanks.”

“William tells me you’re going to be reading Torah at his Bar Mitzvah,” the rabbi said as William scraped his plate clean of the last bites of egg salad.

I nodded and tried to look excited. “Yep.”

“That’s great,” the rabbi said enthusiastically. “We always need more people who can read Torah.”

That was my cue to beat it out of there before he started hinting around about minyans or Friday night services or anything else. “Nice to see you, Rabbi. William, we have to get going.”

In the car, William snorted soft laughter until I asked him what was so funny. “You acted like he was gonna chase you around with a tallith until you read Torah for him.”

I laughed, too. “Shut up.”

“I wish I didn’t have to go to services,” he said after another minute. “It’s so boring.”

I couldn’t really argue with him about that, not without being a total hypocrite. “A few more months, kiddo, and you’ll be all done.”

“Mom says she expects me to go to Hebrew High and get confirmed, that the Bar Mitzvah isn’t the end of my Jewish education.” William scowled.

“Your mom might change her mind, you never know. What does your dad say?”

William rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t say anything.”

Evan hadn’t gone on to any further kind of Jewish education after his Bar Mitzvah, and he’d muddled through that, leaving me to take charge of most of the service we’d shared. If he went to services at all now, it was only because of William. Susan, however, had always been a little more observant.

I shrugged. “Well, kid, it’s been my experience that moms are the ones who get to decide stuff like that. So I’d say talk to your mom about it. You never know. She might listen.”

“Did yours listen to you?”

It sounded like a legitimate question, especially since I had to remind myself that to William, my mother was “grandma” and therefore, an entirely different entity. “Not usually.”

He laughed. I did, too. I turned on the radio, and we both started rocking out to the Metallica song that came on.

It was a good day, but most of the ones I’d ever spent with that kid were.

4

Batting cages, junk food for dinner, an inappropriate movie I knew his mother would not have let him watch. That’s how Auntie rolled. William had tried to convince me to let him stay up late watching old episodes of The X-Files from my DVD set—we were up to season four, and the kid was justifiably hooked. I made him go to bed, instead. Eight in the morning would come early, and I’d promised to get him to religious school on time. I wasn’t totally irresponsible.

I didn’t really need a three-bedroom town house since it was just me, but I’d bought it as an investment with an eye to having a room for William’s visits. My nephew was likely the only child I would ever have. I liked that he felt as at home in my house as he did in his own. I checked on him about midnight and found him with the bed lamp still on, highlighting the paperback novel he’d been reading. He was sprawled on top of the sheets the way he’d always slept. When he was little I’d tuck him back under the covers and kiss his forehead, but now that he’d outgrown me by a few inches, he was too big for me to move around. I marked his spot in the book and put it on the nightstand and turned off the light then closed the bedroom door behind me.

Eight in the morning was still going to come early for me, too, but sleep ran away from me as fast as that annoying little fuck the Gingerbread Man from the story William had loved so much when he was a toddler. In my bed, I tried to read, but I’d finished the book I’d been working on for the past week so I stared up at the ceiling, instead.

I counted backward from one hundred, but that didn’t work. I did it again. Still nothing.

I could’ve been with Esteban tonight, I thought unwillingly. Not resentfully—I loved spending time with William. But now, here, the idea of an unexpected night with my lover was definitely something I regretted not being able to take advantage of.

Idly, I pulled my phone from the charging dock and brought up my email account. I scrolled through a bunch of junk, deleting offers for “Hot! Live! Girls!” and penis enlargement and weight-loss pills. I also deleted a bunch of auto messages from Connex telling me I had notifications without bothering to open the Connex app. I did read several messages from OnHisKnees.com, though I didn’t answer them. All of them were from men offering me homage, calling me Mistress or My Lady though I’d never met them, promising to worship and serve me in whatever way I wanted to use them. I hadn’t updated my profile in a year other than to add that I was no longer looking for a boy to play with, but the messages still came in on a regular basis. Invariably, they curled my lip. All those promises stunk of desperation, not submission. Those men might claim they wanted to serve, but it almost always meant they wanted someone to fulfill their fantasies of a vinyl-clad woman—always beautiful, always a little cruel—who would never actually demand something of them they didn’t want to give. She would maybe tie them up or tease and deny them for a while, but would always still let them come. Probably all over her tits or face. Whatever humiliations she offered would be really, when you got right down to it, orchestrated by him. For him. They had no idea who I was, what I wanted or even how to give it to me.

To me, that was not submission.

The question could sometimes be what was submission, but I guess like the old quote about pornography, I knew it when I saw it. Or felt it, rather. It was never something as simple as a guy getting on his knees, it was always far more complex than that. What had worked for me with one guy didn’t with another, and I couldn’t ever be certain why. Only that some men gave it to me and other men didn’t, and sometimes their compliance was a deal breaker...but sometimes it wasn’t.

And I didn’t see a damn thing wrong with that.

The longer I’d been a part of the kink scene, the more people I’d met who seemed to think that somehow being kinky meant being rigid and strict and incapable of flexibility. Well, just because I loved steak didn’t mean I also didn’t want a salad now and again. Hell, I liked a steak salad with fries on top of it, and I liked my sex the same way. Sweetly variable and sometimes surprising. If I preferred to be in charge that didn’t have to mean I’d been scorned as a kid and was bent on destroying all men or that I couldn’t appreciate being bent over a chair now and again, either.

I liked what I liked and didn’t need to explain it to anyone, even myself.

I’d never been a big fan of dating sites, but OnHisKnees.com was technically more like a Connex site than Match.com. You could join forums and have discussions and discover local munches, post pictures and blog-type entries and private message the other members. Still, it was also a place to meet partners, even if you had to wade through an ocean of crap to find a few decent prospects.

I had met Esteban on that site, so it was possible to find someone. From the start, he’d been properly respectful without being obsequious. Clever. Funny. Responsive. We’d had an online relationship for four months before he’d even approached the idea of meeting in person, and I’d been incredibly attracted to the idea that for him, this was more than casual play. That he’d been taking his time to make sure I was who he wanted to give himself to, that I was not some random woman starring in a recurring mental loop of porn clips.

That I was different.

That I was special.

I hadn’t kept all of his early messages, but there were a few I’d saved. Nostalgic, I opened the email folder to look at some of our first conversations. I opened the first picture he’d sent me of his dear face. He was nothing like anything I ever would have said I wanted. Slight. Dark haired, big brown eyes. Physically, not at all my type. Yet willing to give up to me, to be my toy. His worship was sincere, and he got off on it as much as I did, which was more important to me than the lines and curves of his face.

Esteban had wanted to see me tonight because he missed me.

I didn’t want to think too much about this. We’d never discussed turning our monthly dates into something more serious. His profile had, in fact, indicated he was only interested in a cyber connection, nothing in real time, while mine had stated specifically that I was into multiple partners and short-term arrangements. Both of us had changed our minds about what we wanted, I guess.

Esteban missed me, and I had to admit that the times between our dates had been getting longer and longer in feeling, if not the actual passing of hours. My sweet, submissive boy had settled into a place somewhere close to my heart. I wasn’t sure I liked that. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure I didn’t.

Restless, bored, unable to sleep, I clicked through a few games on my phone I hadn’t played in forever. I lost one round of Bubble Burst and quit. I sent a small poking “hi” Esteban’s way, but as I’d expected, the small S next to my message meant he wasn’t logged in to the texting app we favored.

It had been months since I’d logged in to my old instant message app, but insomnia breeds desperation. Seeing the list of screen names made me glad I’d logged on as invisible. I’d used this account a lot before meeting Esteban. Some of those people had been relentless in their pursuit of a mistress, and I’d been occasionally foolish enough to engage even when I knew I had no interest in continuing anything serious with them.

And then. There. Halfway down the list, another name stood out to me. Not a name, actually; I’d changed it a while back to a small picture of a bunny because looking at his name had made me feel sick to my stomach.

There it was now, standing out in the list of words, that one single emoticon. Seeing it forced my heart into my throat, and my fingers twitched so fiercely that I dropped my phone. It hit me in the face hard enough to send sparks flying in my vision, and that pain was enhanced by the fact I’d stupidly and reflexively also bitten my tongue.

“Fuck, shit, dammit,” I cursed, struggling to sit up in the tangle of my sheets. I tasted blood. My phone had fallen into the mess of my blankets, the lighted screen dimming and going out before I could grab it. I swept the bed, but found only more soft fabric.

By the time I found the phone and sat up, opening my IM app again, the bunny had hopped away.

I clutched the phone to my heart, hating that I still cared enough to cry over simply seeing him online. I pressed my fingers to my eyelids, willing away the burning slide of tears, but all I managed to do was gasp out a strangled sob. No, I told myself. Do not. Don’t open that app, don’t look for his profile, don’t send him a message.

Don’t do it, Elise.

You’ll be sorry.

And I was sorry, but I did it anyway.

* * *

Once you told me I was strong, but lately, the strongest thing I seem to do is not message you at three in morning when I can’t catch my breath because of the weight crushing my chest that comes from missing you. And oh, shit, look, here I go, sending you this message when I know you will read it and not answer me. So I guess I’m not so strong, after all.

Not when it comes to you.

5

The Morningstar Mocha was super busy. I dropped off William and circled the block twice before I found a spot a block up the street. The extra time I took parking meant I was a few minutes late, but I still paused to look through the front window before going in. I saw Esteban at a table in the corner, a mug in front of him. He wasn’t looking my way, so I studied him for half a minute.

We had met once or twice for lunch. Every time had been before we’d ever met in a hotel room, when we were still deciding if we wanted to go to that next step. Since we’d begun that, we’d never met again in public.

He looked so different with his clothes on.

This wasn’t what we were supposed to be. Coffee shop pals who chatted about muffins and maybe played footsie under the table or held hands? No. We were dim hotel rooms and commands and fantasies, not reality. Weren’t we? I was on the verge of walking away when a man in a long black coat came up behind me wanting to go inside, and I let myself be swept up along with him as though I had no other choice.

Esteban stood up when I walked in.

Being greeted with a smile and a look almost of relief, as though you are, in that moment, the most important sight in the world to the person who’s been waiting for you...it’s heady stuff. I wove through the crowded tables to him and slung my bag over the back of the empty chair. I wondered if he would embrace me, and if I would allow it. He didn’t, though he ran a hand down from my shoulder to my wrist, squeezing gently before moving away.

“I was thinking you would not come,” he said.

“I would’ve messaged you, honey. I wouldn’t just stand you up.” I had considered doing just that, but Esteban would never know it. I sat. “What are you drinking?”

“Coffee. Would you like?”

I twisted to look at the menu board. “I’ll take a mocha latte. Oh, and a blueberry muffin.”

He gave me another tiny, discreet squeeze as he passed me. It both amused and touched me emotionally. He touched me physically all the time, of course, but this had been different. Brief, but not hesitant. He was different outside the hotel room, but then, I guess so was I.

Esteban returned in a few minutes with my drink and food and took the seat across from me. He grinned, his gaze searching my face, though I wasn’t sure what he was looking to find. He leaned forward.

“You look beautiful.”

I didn’t laugh. I had made an effort, of course, because who ever goes to meet a lover without looking their best? But unlike most of our meetings, which featured me in full makeup with carefully chosen outfits, this morning I’d pulled my dark curly hair into a messy bun and wore jeans with a tunic blouse suitable for taking my nephew to religious school. Put together? Sure. But beautiful?

“You do,” he said, though I hadn’t protested.

I leaned forward a little too, echoing his posture. “It’s good to see you.”

He beamed, eyes not leaving mine. “It’s better to see you!”

“You’re so good for my ego.” I did laugh then, and broke off a piece of my muffin. I pushed the plate toward him. “Have some.”

He broke off a piece. Together, we ate the muffin and drank our coffee while tables emptied and filled again. We didn’t talk about anything that seemed important, which was the perfect sort of conversation to have on a bright, late-spring Sunday morning.

“This was nice,” I told him when we’d stayed as long as we could before it would be time to order lunch.

Esteban nodded. “Yes. Very nice.”

I thought for a second or so that he was going to ask me if we could do it again, but he only looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Not quite sad. Reluctant. Resigned, maybe.

“Walk me to my car,” I said. “I’m not ready to say goodbye just yet.”

I could read that expression, at least. I’d made him happy. We didn’t hold hands while we walked, and the distance between us was enough that nobody would ever have guessed how many times his mouth had been between my legs. I watched him from the corner of my eye as we navigated the buckled sidewalk.

At my car, I faced him. “What’s going on?”

He might’ve been able to put me off on the phone, but not in person where I could see his face. He tried to cut his gaze, but I took his chin gently in my palm and turned him until he had no choice but to look at me. Still, he didn’t answer me right away.

“Esteban,” I said sternly.

His shoulders sagged. To my immense surprise, he hugged me. Hard. His face pressed to the side of my neck, his skin hot. His breath tickled me.

I hugged him back for a moment, before saying, “Get in the car.”

Obediently, he went around to the passenger side. I got in my seat and twisted to face him. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m wearing it,” he said, which was not the answer to my question.

Despite this unusual disobedience, a shiver tiptoed up and down my spine at the thought. “My gift?”

He nodded. I swallowed, my gaze dropping to his lap for a moment before meeting his. He licked his mouth. Tension wove between us, fine and strong as a spider’s filament. All I had to do was run a fingertip across the back of his hand, placed on his thigh, to make him shudder. His soft moan made me clench my jaw to keep my own inside.

“How does it feel?”

“I feel...full. Of wanting. It makes me think of you.” His voice rasped, low.

“Good. I like you to think of me when we aren’t together.” I circled my fingertips on his skin, my eyes never leaving his. “But what? It makes you uncomfortable? You’re worried about something? I want you to use my present to please me, but if it doesn’t make you happy, too—”

He shook his head sharply. “No. No, it does. So much. Too much, maybe.”

I thought I understood that, at least. How something could make you too happy. I leaned a little closer and let my hand slip down the inside of his thigh to press against the rising bulge of his cock. “Tell me how it feels, deep inside you.”

“I thought it would be too much. A little too big,” he whispered. “It hurt a little, at first.”

“And now?”

He shook his head. “Not now. Now I feel it when I move. It hits the spot just right. And if I shift just right, if I clench...”

I smiled.

He shuddered. I didn’t stroke his cock, though by now I could feel it was thick and hard, compressed against the front of his jeans. Esteban moaned again, a little brokenly.

“You want me to touch you,” I said in a low voice.

His eyes, which had gone heavy-lidded, opened wider. “Oh, yes...please...”

“It makes me very happy to know that you’re using my present,” I told him as my hand pressed against him. Withdrew. Pressed again. To anyone looking at us, we’d appear to be having a conversation, nothing more. Leaning a little closer, maybe, but not even kissing. Nothing outrageous...except that my sweet boy was pushing his cock against my palm. I imagined the press and tug of the plug in his ass, hitting him in the perfect spot. “I want you to feel it inside you. Do you?”

He shuddered again. “Yes. It’s so good.”

“Fuck, I want your fingers inside me,” I muttered, which sent another spasm through him. Urged another moan. My nipples had gone tight and hard. So had my clit. I clenched my own internal muscles, rocking a little, though I had no toy to help me out. “Look at me.”

He did, though it took him an understandable few seconds to focus. A faint blush had painted his cheeks, and his brown eyes had gone darker from his dilated pupils. He licked his mouth again, and I thought of how good his tongue felt on my pussy, and I could not stop myself this time from moaning, too.

“You are so beautiful...” Esteban’s words trailed off into a groan as he moved so slowly against me that he hardly seemed to move at all. Then he said other words I couldn’t understand in Spanish, a language so fluid and sexy that every word sounded like part of a poem.

“How does it feel,” I demanded in a broken voice.

Esteban looked at me again. “It fills me up the way I want you to...”

“Oh...”

I’d tied men up. Blindfolded them. Spanked some, beaten a few with floggers, dressed more than one in frilly panties. But I’d never yet fucked one in the ass with a strap-on. The thought of that sent another thrill of pleasure through me.

And why? Because Esteban wanted it so much. Because he’d approached me on the subject of pegging so casually hopeful, so obviously afraid I would recoil in horror, or maybe mock him, that I couldn’t think about taking him that way without remembering how hard it had been for him to even ask me, and how beautifully grateful he’d been when my answer had been, “I would love to.”

It could’ve been about the domination—what makes a man more submissive than being the one getting fucked instead of the one doing the fucking? It could’ve been about control and power, because those were things that turned me on. But really, it was because my sweet boy wanted it, craved it, yearned and ached and burned for it, and I was the only one who would give it to him.

Because it made me something to him that nobody else had ever been.

I wasn’t touching myself, but it wouldn’t take more than a stroke or two to send me toppling toward orgasm. I almost slipped a hand between my legs, but a couple walking a dog was due to pass us in about a minute and a half, so I took my hand off his crotch. They’d see only two people in conversation. Nothing more.

“I want that,” I told him. “I want to be inside you. Fucking you. Taking you to the edge, over and over, until you beg me to let you come.”

“Please,” he breathed at once. His fingers had curled tight in the fabric of his pants, digging. He rocked his hips again, the tiniest amount. “Please, will you...?”

The dog-walking couple had just passed by, so I leaned close to nuzzle his neck and breathe into his ear as I pressed my hand to his cock again. “Yes, baby. I will. And I will love it.”

Esteban let out a low, gruff gasp. Under my touch, his cock throbbed. Heat spread against my palm. His entire body quaked as he turned his face toward me to press his cheek against mine. We were both breathing hard. My nipples ached; my clit throbbed. I wanted to rub myself all over him.

I sat back, instead. He blinked rapidly before he could focus on me. I wanted to touch his face. I wanted to kiss his mouth. Instead, I pulled a package of tissues from my center console and handed them to him without a word.

He laughed, embarrassed. “I am like a boy.”

“You’re my boy,” I told him. “And that was very sexy.”

“But you didn’t—”

“Next time,” I told him.

That’s when I finally understood why he was acting so strange. It took only a second or so to see the look on his face. To figure it out.

I should have known that his urgent desire to see me outside of our routine had to mean something bad. I should’ve guessed it, no matter how loving he’d been. I should’ve known better.

“Oh.” I sat back, surprised. Stunned, actually. And stung. “There is no next time?”

“Querida...”

I knew that word, at least. “Darling.” He’d called me that a couple times before. I’d always liked it, but this time it felt too much like an apology and not an endearment. I sat back.

“Don’t call me that,” I said in a cold, distant voice. I turned to face the windshield, my hands on the wheel.

Neither of us moved. I could hear his breathing quicken, but I didn’t look at him. I caught sight of his hand, reaching as though he meant to touch me, but in the end he must’ve decided against it because he let it settle again on his thigh. After another few moments, I heard him unzip, the crinkle of the tissue package, some shuffling. He cleared his throat.

I knew he was waiting for me to say something, but I didn’t know what. In the past, even before I’d learned him so well, I’d still never doubted what I wanted to say. How I wanted our scenes to go, the reactions I wanted to elicit. I’d been wrong a few times and missed the mark, but I’d adjusted. This time, I had no idea what Esteban needed from me.

“Please don’t hate me,” he said.

I swallowed a rush of emotion. “I don’t hate you. But you should get out of my car now.”

He didn’t, not at first. I thought I would have to face him, and I didn’t want to, not with my emotions printed all over my face the way I was sure they were. He was breaking up with me. I didn’t need to know why. I didn’t want to know. At the sound of him starting to speak, I cut him off.

“Out.”

And, as he always had, Esteban gave me what I wanted.

6

“Put your hand on her hip. Lower.” The camera whirred and clicked. Scott paused to shake his blond hair out of his face and look at the picture he’d taken. He frowned. “Jack, I want you on your knees.”

Jack and I both laughed, and I said, “Woo!”

Scott, serious, smiled but put the camera back to his eye. “Head bent...okay, tell you what. Elise, you do whatever you’d...do.”

I put my hand on Jack’s dark hair. Thick and glossy, he wore it a bit longer in the front so it had a habit of falling over his eyes. I threaded my fingers through it from his forehead back, getting a good grip and tugging his face up to mine. The camera whirred.

I said in a low voice, “I won’t hurt you, but I’ll still need to know if you’re uncomfortable, okay?”

“Go ahead and hurt him,” Scott said.

My fingers tightened a little more, and Jack laughed. I glanced at Scott. “This is just for the pictures. I don’t really think we need to get a safe word or anything for the sake of art, do we?”

“If you don’t need a safe word for art,” Scott said, “it ain’t very good art.”

I looked back to Jack, and I let my smile fade. My fingers tugged the tiniest bit. “I’m still not going to hurt you on purpose. You tell me if I do.”

Jack grinned. “I’m good.”

I tipped his head back harder, watching to see if he winced. I really didn’t want to hurt him—even if this had been a real scene between us, I wasn’t particularly into causing pain. I liked the reactions to it more than giving the pain itself. For the sake of a picture I could make it look like I was being totally sadistic, though, if that was what the photographer wanted to see. With Scott’s murmured words of approval, I looked down at the man in front of me on his knees and waited to feel something. Anything. He was gorgeous, thick, dark hair, a killer smile, a lean athletic build and a very, very pretty half-hard cock that I wasn’t going to stare at, because that just wouldn’t be polite. I appreciated the package, but that was it. No spark of attraction.

Modeling is sometimes about acting as much as it is posing, so I put on my best resting bitch face and worked it. And I worked Jack, who was a good sport and an excellent partner. We didn’t fuck or anything like that, not even simulated. There was lots of skin to skin, though. He was totally naked, and I wore lingerie that was too small, a fact I’d pointed out when I put it on and had been told by a grinning Scott that the size was perfect. When we paused for a break, Jack did apologize for getting hard.

“Honey, I’d be insulted if you didn’t,” I told him. I shrugged into the silk robe I’d brought along. Jack had wrapped a towel around his lean hips. We were both drinking sodas that Scott’s assistant had brought up from the shop downstairs while the photographer himself pulled up the first set of shots onto his laptop to preview for editing.

Jack stretched out long legs on the chaise in one corner while I took a spot in a comfy armchair. We’d spent the past hour mostly naked and entangled. I’d met him only two hours ago. He felt like one of my oldest friends at this point.

“You work with Alex, right? Olivia’s husband,” Jack asked.

I sipped soda and rolled my head on my neck to crack it. “Yep.”

“Yeah, my girlfriend is like, her best friend.”

“Sarah?” I laughed. “Wow, small world.”

“Yeah, tiny.” Jack nodded.

“I don’t know her,” I added. “I mean, I’ve heard Olivia talking about her, but we haven’t met.”

Jack nodded. “You have a boyfriend? Or a girlfriend? I guess I should’ve asked that, sorry. Didn’t mean to be whatever you call it, genderist.”

“I don’t. Never had a girlfriend, thought about trying it once or twice but I’m kind of hardwired for cock. The last boyfriend I had was a long time ago.” I leaned back in the soft chair and forced away thoughts of Esteban. He’d never been a boyfriend.

“How come?” Jack leaned forward, elbows on his knees.

I shrugged. “It ended badly. Haven’t really wanted to have another since.”

“How long is a long time ago?”

I paused, sort of embarrassed to say it aloud. “Something like four years.”

“Whoa.” Jack shook his head. “That’s too bad.”

I laughed. “It’s okay. Really. I haven’t suffered for lack of a boyfriend, trust me.”

“Come look at these,” Scott said from the desk.

Jack and I got up to see what Scott had done. He’d pulled up a black-and-white shot from earlier in the day. Jack on his knees, my fingers in his hair. Scott had captured a small, assessing smile on my face. Jack’s eyes closed, his mouth slightly parted. His cock not yet erect but clearly getting there.

“Beautiful,” I said, meaning Jack.

Jack snorted soft laughter. “Pretty hot, man.”

Scott didn’t look at either one of us. His fingers continued smoothing and shifting the image in tiny increments. Enhancing, not changing. I loved the way he made me look. I’d worked with a few other photographers who always tried to make my tits bigger, my belly flatter, my ass rounder. Scott always made me look just like I do, only a little...better.

He looked over his shoulder at us with a grin. “Pretty, huh?”

I hugged him from behind and pressed my cheek to his. “Gorgeous. And I look okay, too.”

“Are you kidding?” Jack said. “You look fucking amazing.”

I gave him a small smile. “Thanks.”

“You guys need more of a break? I have a few more things I want to try.” Scott twisted in his chair. “You up for it? I want to take you outside.”

We were both up for it. And let me tell you, I’ve never really been an exhibitionist, but there is something awfully exhilarating about stripping down to bare skin out in the middle of the woods with a totally attractive guy wrapped all around you. We had fun, too. Splashing in a small waterfall, both of us with teeth chattering and goose bumps. Lying out in the sun to dry, our fingers linked companionably while we chatted, and Scott took picture after picture.

“Good,” he said finally with another look at his camera. “That’s it. We’re done.”

Back at the studio, Jack and I hugged goodbye. We exchanged numbers and promised to keep in touch. Scott made sure we both took postcards for his upcoming gallery show, which would, he promised, feature some of the pictures he’d taken today.

“I’ll be there,” I promised.

“You’d better,” Scott said and kissed me firmly on the mouth, then the cheek, and hugged me close to whisper in my ear, “I don’t see you often enough. You okay? What’s going on?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

He gave me a suspicious look. “Uh-huh.”

I wasn’t going to tell him about Esteban, especially now that I’d been so unceremoniously dumped. “Really. I promise. I’ll see you at the gallery show.”

“You’d better see me before that,” he told me, and I said I would, though I think we both knew it wasn’t likely.

He gestured to me just before I left. “Look at this before you go.”

He showed me the rest of the shots he’d taken. Even without editing, they were stunning. Anyone who didn’t know that Jack and I had been strangers at the start of the day would’ve thought we’d been lovers forever.

“You’re beautiful,” Scott said, slow-clicking through a series of images. “Look at you.”

I looked.

I saw what he meant. Lines and curves and shadow. Tits and ass and lips and hair. There was beauty there, all right. But it was like looking at a picture of someone else. I was a stranger to myself. That woman in the photos was someone adored and cherished and worshipped, and that was no longer me.

7

Funny how best friends just know when something’s wrong. I hadn’t talked to Alicia in weeks beyond a few texts, but that didn’t matter. The second I saw her number on my screen I answered, and within minutes we were laughing as much as we always had.

“So, what’s new, what’s going on with you? Feels like I haven’t talked to you forever,” she said finally. “I got a Connex invite to Scott’s gallery show. I guess you’re going to be in it? Sexy pictures. Woo woo.”

“If you’re into that sort of thing,” I said archly, as though Alicia hadn’t been my best friend forever and hadn’t gone with me on a late-night run to the hardware store to pick up laundry rope and carabiner clips for a booty call. “Weird he invited you, though.”

“He probably invited everyone in the area, one of those blanket invitations. I can’t be there, unfortunately. I thought about it,” Alicia said. “My mom would love it if I came home. Can’t get the time off. Bummer.”

“Well, shit,” I said. “That sucks.”

“I know, I miss youuuuu,” she cooed. “When are you coming to Texas?”

“It’s hot in Texas,” I told her.

“The men are hot in Texas,” Alicia said. “You totally need to move out here with me. We can be roomies!”

I’d lived with her already for a few months just after college. That our friendship had survived it was more a testimony to how nice and patient and forgiving Alicia is than anything else. Some people are not meant to live full-time with other human beings, and I’m one of them.

“You know I can’t do that,” I said. “Where would I find a job as good as the one I have?”

She sighed. “True. Lucky bitch. But you could come visit me, Elise. It would be fun. And I miss the hell out of your face. You get vacation time, don’t you?”

“Sure. Oodles of it. Alex is a big fan of vacation.”

We chatted a bit longer about when would be the best time for me to come out—not in the summer, I told her. Not until after William’s Bar Mitzvah, anyway, and in the fall, the days in Texas wouldn’t be so brutal. “I’m a wilting flower, you know.”

“Oh, you,” she said with a laugh. “It’s not so bad. You stay inside, that’s all. Yay! I can’t wait! And neither can Jimmy.”

I paused. “Who’s Jimmy?”

“Guy I want you to meet.” I pictured her blinking innocently. “You’ll like him.”

Alicia knew what I liked, so it was a good bet she was right. Still, the thought of it, of meeting some random dude she was trying to set me up with...hot cowboy or not, I wasn’t into it. “Alicia...”

“It’s been ages,” she said immediately. That was the good and bad thing about besties. They always know what you’re trying to say even when you don’t say it. “Forget about him.”

“I can’t.” I owned it at once. No sense in pretending otherwise, not with her. This girl had held my hair after too many shots of tequila. She’d given me her last tampon. She’d been there all through that delirious agony that had been my last real relationship, and she’d been there after, too.

“Then get over him,” she said without hesitating. “He’s not worth it, Elise.”

“I know he’s not.”

“And you can’t help it anyway.” She sighed, sounding disgusted, but not with me. “Yeah, I know.”

“I know you know.”

Alicia’d had her own doomed love affair. She referred to him as Mr. Darcy the way I called mine George. Not their real names. Literary references, a code of sorts we’d invented in college to refer to boyfriends. Hers to Pride and Prejudice. Mine to Of Mice and Men.

“Have you heard from Darcy?” I asked.

Alicia snorted. “Yes. Of course. Every few months, like a herpes outbreak.”

“Oh, gross.”

She laughed. “We had a real go-around the last time, a couple weeks ago. He had the nerve to ask me if I wanted to Facetime with him—”

“No,” I interrupted. “Seriously? What the fuck?”

“Right? He said he was, and I quote, ‘curious,’ about my life.” Alicia was silent for a second then sounded both angry and sad. “I told him I had no desire to have any kind of conversation with him anymore. I said it hurt too much to talk to him like we were casual acquaintances who’d barely meant anything to each other. He told me he didn’t mean to hurt me, but it wasn’t fair of me to get angry with him for making, and I quote again, a ‘good faith effort at reaching out.’”

I groaned. “Clueless.”

“Moron,” she agreed, sounding more sad than angry this time. “I told him that I was sure he didn’t mean to hurt me, but neither does a door when it slams my fingers. And I don’t put my fingers in a door on purpose.”

“No kidding.”

“Then I deleted and blocked him,” Alicia said.

“You didn’t! Oh, girl.” I was impressed. Mr. Darcy had been in and out of Alicia’s life for a long damn time.

She sighed. “I had to. I was just...done, you know? Finally done. I wish you could get there with George, Elise.”

I did, too, but I suspected it wasn’t going to happen. I’d let him slam that door on my fingers over and over again, if only he’d talk to me one more time. If only.

We changed the subject after that. We talked about her job, not so new anymore, but still worth the move. We caught up on some gossip about people we’d gone to school with. I filled her in on the increasing family drama surrounding William’s Bar Mitzvah.

“Oh, your mom.” Alicia sighed. She’d known me since the third grade. That was all she had to say.

I laughed and groaned at the same time. “Yeah. I know. I’m just waiting for the shit to hit the fan. So far it’s been okay, other than the hissy fit she threw about the date.”

“Oh, God, what was that?”

I told Alicia how Evan and Susan had tried to set the date for William’s Bar Mitzvah a week later than it was now going to be for some reason I didn’t know and didn’t care about—a Bar Mitzvah could be held anytime after the kid’s thirteenth birthday, so if they wanted to give him an extra week to study or so it didn’t compete with something else, it was nothing to me. But apparently, my sister, Jill, had a schedule conflict, my mother threw a hissy and the date had been moved to accommodate it.

“You’d think that would be enough, right, one huge fucking showdown at the start.” I shook my head. “But there’s more coming, you’d better believe it.”

“Come to Texas,” Alicia teased. “Avoid it all.”

“I can’t do that to the kid. Or my brother. Someone here has to be sort of sane,” I told her. “But after it’s all over, I promise I’ll visit. Not setting me up on any dates, though, you have to promise me that.”

Alicia sighed. “You’re no fun.”

“How fun would it be for me to visit you and go out on some lame blind date?” I demanded.

She paused. “It could be a double date.”

“Oh.” That was a game changer. “You’re seeing someone?”

“Yeah.” She paused then said nothing though I waited.

“I would’ve thought you’d have told me that right away.” I wasn’t hurt, exactly, but I did wonder about the hesitation. It was true we didn’t talk as often as we had in the past, but every time we did it was like no time had passed. Now her finally kicking Darcy to the curb made total sense.

“If you ever bothered to log in to Connex,” she said lightly, “you’d have seen it.”

“Wow. Wow,” I repeated. “He’s Connex relationship worthy?”

Alicia laughed. “Yeah. He is. His name’s Jay.”

We talked for the next forty minutes about Jay, until she had to go. She made me promise again to visit, and I agreed. I meant it, too.

“You could’ve just told me, you know,” I said. “I’m happy for you.”

“It felt weird, that’s all. We were both kind of united in our despair for a while, you know? Shit. I’m sorry, that sounded terrible.”

I laughed. “No. I get it. Misery loves company.”

“I didn’t think I’d meet someone I could really...you know.” Alicia sounded shy. “Love. Again. I didn’t want to. And I know you don’t want to, either, Elise, but...”

“Hey, look. It’s good. I’m glad for you. I’m okay, really. I’m not a celibate old maid or anything, Alicia. I date. I’ve been dating someone, on and off.” The words tripped off my tongue before I could call them back. More of a lie than I’d meant to tell her, but hell. If I exaggerated the type of relationship we’d had, it was out of pride, not deceit. “It’s not serious, or it wasn’t, but his name is Esteban.”

“Ooh, Esteban?”

“He’s Spanish. I mean he comes from Spain.” Before she could get too excited, though, I added casually, “But we broke up recently. And it wasn’t bad or anything, just didn’t work out. So really, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m back on the horse.”

“It’ll happen for you, too. I know it,” Alicia said with the optimism only the newly in love can manage to muster.

I didn’t try to dissuade her. We said our goodbyes and hung up, promising to keep in better touch. She had a new boyfriend, so I figured it was a promise meant to be broken. And that would be okay.

Showered, tucked into bed, I tried not to look at the clock. The later it got, the harder it would be for me to fall asleep. Not for the first time, I thought about taking pills, but if there was something I hated worse than insomnia it was the idea of being dependent on something to guide me into dreamland. A couple shots of Fireball whiskey would’ve done the trick, but I wasn’t going to rely on booze, either.

I counted backward to no avail. I slipped a hand between my thighs, hoping an orgasm would ease me into sleep, but though I came within a few minutes, the climax left me melancholy and gasping against annoying tears rather than passion. I rolled onto my stomach and punched my pillow then buried my face in it to breathe in the scent of the lavender oil I’d sprinkled on it before I went to bed.

Who was I to fault Alicia for not telling me about Jay sooner? I should’ve told her months ago about Esteban. We could’ve giggled over him, swooned a little, even. She’d have been happy for me, even if my relationship with him had been solely based on sex and not emotion. Even if he hadn’t been a boyfriend, I could’ve shared him with her, so that maybe now that it was over, we could’ve at least talked about him. Now, all I had was my own discontent to keep me awake.

Anyone who’s had chronic trouble sleeping collects tricks to help them get to dreamland. I’d already tried my standbys, counting backward and orgasm. My mother would’ve advocated warm milk. Gross.

Led by my heart, my hands found my phone before my head could stop them. I opened the message app. My fingers typed. Erased. Typed again.

I told George about Esteban. Everything—how we’d met online. How we fucked, the things we’d done, the places he’d let me take him and where he’d taken me. How I’d found myself thinking of him in the odd moments of quiet when my mind turned to whatever it would, without my conscious effort. I told him how we broke up...and that I’d never loved Esteban. That I would never love anyone the way I loved him.

I hit Send.

He didn’t answer.

8

Three days had passed since my conversation with Esteban in the front seat of my car. I hadn’t blocked or deleted him from my contacts, but I was still surprised when my phone chirped at me as I was changing out of work clothes and into something more suitable for a pint of ice cream and some streaming episodes of Queer as Folk on Interflix. Five minutes later and I wouldn’t even have noticed, because I’d already put my phone on the charger and hadn’t planned on taking it downstairs with me.

I held it, looking at the notification but not reading the message just yet. I let my thumb hover over the screen. One swipe and I could delete the message, unread. But then I’d have no idea what he said, and while curiosity might’ve killed the cat, not giving in to it was more likely to haunt me forever.

I miss you.

Well. That was nice. No lie, it lifted my heart a little. Made it go thump-thump. It also set my jaw and narrowed my eyes.

I didn’t answer him. Not at first. I let half an hour go by, though I knew he would see that I got his message and read it. I got myself some ice cream and settled on the couch, my phone with its unanswered message weighting my pocket. I turned on the TV. Chose my show. And finally, because I hated when my messages went unanswered, I took out my phone and typed in an answer.

Don’t.

The fact the little D became an R immediately told me he’d been waiting for my answer, phone in hand. JohnSmith is Typing appeared at once, and that set my heart to thumping harder again. My throat closed a little, but I forced away any kind of emotion. No relief. Especially nothing so disgusting as gratitude.

I’m sorry. I want to see you. Tonight? At our place.

Our place. As if we’d ever had one, or anything, really, that could truly be called “ours.” I was cranky about it, all at once, when I knew I should not be. My relationship with Esteban had come with rules right from the start, most of which I had written and none I hadn’t negotiated or agreed upon. I was hurt and stung by his sudden ending of it, but that had been one of the rules—that either one of us, at any time, could decide to break it off. I’d simply assumed I would be the one to do it. I deserved the slap to my ego. A reminder that no matter how special you think someone thinks you are, it’s never really true.

I’m busy, I typed.

A minute passed. Then another. He’d read my message, I could see that, but he wasn’t typing a reply. I put my phone to the side, wishing I could feel justified in being a dick about all of this, but finding very little satisfaction. I tried to get lost in the TV show, one of my favorites and usually a guaranteed pleasure, but watching Brian refuse to admit he loved Justin, even though it was obvious throughout five seasons of hot sex and angst, only made me think about Esteban.

I was lifting the phone to answer him when his message came through. One phrase, written in Spanish. Again, one of the few I knew without having to use a translator.

Por favor.

9

I did not dress for him.

I brushed my hair and my teeth and changed out of my pajama pants and into a pair of formfitting skinny jeans, paired with a slim-fit T-shirt. No bra, because I didn’t really need one. No garters, no stockings, no lace or satin. Plain cotton panties, bikini and not granny-sized but certainly not sexy. I slipped on a pair of rubber flip-flops that had seen better days, forgoing even sexy shoes.

When Esteban opened the hotel room door, the sight of his face made me want to cry. His eyes were a little red, as if maybe he’d been fighting his own tears, and at the sight of me his entire expression showed his relief. I wanted to hug him close to me and stroke his hair and shh, shh him. To make him understand it was all going to be all right.

Instead, I waited until he’d moved aside so I could go through the doorway without touching him. My heart again did that stupid thump-thump when I caught a whiff of him—soap and water, like he’d just finished a shower. I had to swallow hard. My fingers curled, fingernails pressing my palms. Facing away from him as I headed for the armchair, I closed my eyes for a moment to compose myself. Smooth my expression. This was all a game, but a serious game nonetheless, and I had to keep it that way or I would end up losing.

I’d brought the book I’d been reading, a spooky gothic tale called Those Across the River. I was only a chapter or two into it, and truthfully I didn’t expect to get much farther into it tonight. I hadn’t brought any cuffs or rope or even a ribbon, no whip or flogger. But I had brought a prop.

I settled into the chair and kicked off my flip-flops to tuck one foot beneath me. I opened my book and bent to read it, or at least to pretend I was. I said nothing to Esteban. I didn’t look at him. I knew he was looking at me, though. The weight of his gaze sent a shiver down my spine that I kept hidden. Tightened my nipples, though, and I couldn’t hide that. I ought to have worn a bra.

He made a small noise as though he meant to speak, and without looking up at him, I flicked a hand. “At my feet.”

He didn’t move at first. He made another low noise, this time more like a groan. I kept my eyes on my book, though the words were swimming. My breath came a little faster as I waited for him to obey me. I didn’t really doubt that he would—but that was always the delicious bit, the anticipation. When he could refuse me, but would not.

After a few seconds, Esteban folded himself onto his knees in front of me. Many times I’d had him assume that position, usually with his arms crossed at the wrist behind him, but today I could see from the corner of my eye that he’d settled his hands on his thighs. He bent his head, shoulders rising and falling with a deep sigh.

We sat like that for a long time.

I turned the pages of my book, though later I would not remember a single word I’d looked at. I was too aware of the soft huff of his breathing and the heat of him against my bare foot, so close but not touching him. My hands began to tremble, and at last, I put the book aside and looked at him. I didn’t say anything. I simply gestured.

Esteban leaned, his arms going around my hips. He pressed his face to my belly. He started to say something.

“Hush,” I said, and he quieted. My hand stroked over his hair. Then again. I found the back of his neck, the strong muscles there, and let my hand rest against his bare skin. He heaved another sigh and settled against me.

We sat in more silence, more content this time. Every so often he would nudge against me as I petted his hair. The motion of it became hypnotic, and after a bit, we both fell asleep.

I woke with a start to find him gone from me. The foot tucked beneath me had fallen asleep, too, pins and needles making me wince. The toilet flushed, and a moment later Esteban came out of the bathroom. When he saw me rubbing at my foot, he came to me at once to again kneel and take it in his hands. His strong fingers worked my bare toes, helping the blood flow until I was wriggling not because of the sting, but from his tickling.

“Stop,” I said with a gasping laugh. “Enough!”

He pressed my bare sole to his lips and kissed it then set it down gently. He pushed up on his knees to take my hands, and I let him. He looked into my eyes. “Thank you for coming to see me. I was sure you would not.”

I could’ve kept playing at being stern and cruel, but it’s more exhausting to fake emotion sometimes than to simply feel it. I tugged his hands until he leaned close enough to me that I could hug him. I kissed his cheek and then pressed mine to his for a few seconds, feeling his breath on me.

“I thought I would never see you again,” he said into my ear. “And I could not do it.”

I didn’t ask him why he’d felt he had to. He would’ve answered me with honesty, and I simply did not want to hear it. Instead, I squeezed him and sat back.

“No more about it,” I told him.

Esteban’s expression turned a little sly. “You will punish me for disappointing you?”

I blinked for a second before sitting back harder, letting go of his hands. Disappointment was not what I’d felt. Rejection, yes. Surprise. And now, thinking that perhaps he’d done all of this for the sake of getting a spanking or something stupid like that, angry.

I pushed him away and stepped around him. I grabbed my book. By the time I turned around, Esteban was on his feet and blocking my way to the door.

He took me by the upper arms. “Wait. I’m sorry. I said something wrong.”

“Did you do this on purpose? Break it off so I would be angry with you? So I’d punish you?” I tried to yank myself out of his grasp, but I’d forgotten that although Esteban had willingly allowed me all this time to be in charge, he was still physically stronger than I was.

He held me tight enough to hurt, though I knew he didn’t mean to. I didn’t struggle. I gave him a hard look, but he surprised me again. His grip softened, but he didn’t let go.

“Querida,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. I was doing what I felt I had to do, until I realized I couldn’t do it.”

I’d deliberately kept my gaze from him earlier as a way to punish him, but now I found I could not look at his face. This wasn’t love, but it was all we had. “We agreed. Either of us could end this at any time.”

“But I hurt you in the way I did it, and I’m sorry.” He pulled me closer, step by reluctant step, until we were embracing.

No man that I’d ever been with had apologized to me that way, and there’d been one who’d hurt me a lot worse than Esteban had. Repeatedly, and on purpose. I breathed in the soap-and-water scent of him as I tried to think of how to answer. Finally, there was really only one answer. I pulled away to look at him.

“Don’t do it again.”

10

I was never afraid to love you. No matter how deep I fell, how hard I loved, there was no question in my mind that when we were together, everything felt right. When I held out my hand, you took it.

I wish you hadn’t let it go.

* * *

Three in the morning, another message I sent knowing I’d get no reply. I chose instead to bang myself against that wall again. To slam my fingers in the door, as Alicia said. And why? I could’ve spent a lifetime and a million dollars in therapy trying to figure out why I held on so tight to what no longer gave me anything but constant heartache. It was stupid; it was pointless; it was worthless.

I did it anyway.

11

“I can’t believe you’re still doing this.” My mother’s lip curled. “Pictures like that? And I had to find out from Connex of all places. Some stranger inviting me to a show that’s got you hanging up there on the wall with your tuchus out for the entire world to see? What an embarrassment!”

“I didn’t know he tagged me in the pictures. But I’m not embarrassed.” I leaned to drag a pita chip through the bowl of hummus. I didn’t love that Scott’s invitation had sent my mother into a tizzy, but hell, I was an adult.

My mother’s twisted mouth thinned. Her chin went up. “I don’t understand you, Elise. I raised you so much better. I didn’t think you were still doing all that...stuff. With all those men.”

“Ma,” I said with a sigh, pretending she was talking about the pictures and not anything else, “it’s an art show. They’re pictures, that’s all. I could be doing a lot of worse things, couldn’t I?”

She crossed her arms. “Why can’t you just find a nice guy and settle down?”

“Don’t come if you don’t want to see them. Nobody’s going to force you to look.” I ignored her question, which had been asked many times and never had an answer.

“They’re all over your whatdoyoucallit. Your Connex page.”

My brows went up. Those pictures were ancient. “So unfriend me.”

“All my friends can see. Joan Simon told me she was invited, too. What’s he doing, soliciting everyone to come see your naked pictures?”

I gave her a sideways look. I could not, off the top of my head, name any of her friends who’d been granted access to my Connex page, but that didn’t mean anything. I’d accepted everyone who wanted to be my “friend” early on. Now I didn’t friend anyone.

“Not just me. There are lots of naked pictures of lots of people.”

My mother rolled her eyes. “Wonderful. Perfect.”

“It’s art.”

“It’s unnatural,” she said finally and waited for me to reply. Probably for me to reassure her that they were only photos. That I didn’t actually do “those things.”

I couldn’t. I’d never told my mother I was kinky, but I’d never denied it, either. I don’t think there are many people who enjoy discussing their sex lives with their parents, and people who get off on things not considered “normal” probably have an even harder time. I’d gone to my mother when I was about fourteen with some questions about sex, positions in particular, that I’d read about in one of the books she tried to keep hidden in the back of the bookcase. The woman on top position had intrigued me, but I’d been unable to figure out how, exactly, that worked. At fourteen I’d seen a penis—my brother’s, which hardly counted, but at least I was a little bit more informed than most of my friends about what one looked like. Alicia had shown me some pictures in her dad’s nudie mags of people fucking, but they’d all been doing it with the guy on top. I wanted to know how it worked the other way around.

My mother had told me then what she’d just told me now. It’s unnatural for a woman to want to be on top. She’d said it when I was fourteen and again at twenty-two, the first time she’d seen my “filthy” pictures, and several other times since. Yet, that was how I liked it, how I’d always liked it since I’d first discovered it was possible. It was how I would always like it.

“I’m just saying,” my mother continued, because of course she had to get in the last word.

“It’s also a little creepy that you keep harping on it,” I said sharply and got up to get another glass of water. “I thought we were here to help Susan with some Bar Mitzvah stuff, not talk about my private life. Where’s Jill anyway?”

This was way more my sister’s type of gig than mine. I didn’t care about the color scheme or types of napkins or any of that stuff, but I figured I’d better be there as a buffer. If Susan and I had a neutrally pleasant relationship, she and my mom had what I’d consider a “temporary cease-fire” sort. My sister, Jill, seemed to have no idea that Susan actively loathed her, but then Jill assumed the world revolved around her, and the idea that someone could actually not like her never entered her mind.

“Jill had a school board meeting, and Susan is late,” my mother said.

I looked at the clock. It was already close to eight. I didn’t really want to hang out here all night, not with a forty-five-minute drive back home. My mom would try to insist I stay over. I’d have to not-so-politely decline. She would pout. I would snap. Susan would roll her eyes.

“What time was she supposed—”

“I’m here. Sorry, sorry.” Susan, eyes bright, cheeks a little flushed, bustled into my mother’s kitchen with a brimming accordion folder.

They squared off like cowboys in an old Western, but neither of them drew. After a moment, my mother grudgingly offered coffee, which Susan politely declined. The pair of them looked at me like I had anything to say about it, but I only shrugged, and they both went into the dining room to lay out menus and brochures from different locations.

The first disagreement happened over kosher catering. Never mind I’d gone out to dinner with my mother plenty of times and watched her devour a Cobb salad like it wasn’t riddled with pig, but Susan would send her order back if it arrived with unexpected bacon. Or that neither of them actually kept a kosher kitchen with separate pots and pans and the like. My mother wanted to be able to invite and impress her friends. My sister-in-law wanted a nice place to have a party and have some good food. We didn’t live in an area where kosher catering was a common thing.

Under other circumstances I’d have popped some corn and settled back to watch the show, but tonight I was already tired because I’d been up at three in the morning being a dumbass and messaging a man who always read my messages but never answered me. I didn’t have the patience to listen to them quibble over hors d’oeuvres. It wasn’t my event, nor my money. My phone hummed from my pocket, and I drew it out, surprised to find a message from Esteban. I was also pleased, though. More than I wanted to admit.

“I won’t be serving shrimp cocktail,” Susan said stiffly. “There will be a pasta station and a mashed potato bar, which William requested. We’ll have grilled chicken skewers, too. I don’t see why this has to be an issue.”

“I simply think that you should serve food your guests will be able to eat,” my mother said with a sniff.

Susan’s eyes narrowed. “Anyone I invite will be fine with the food.”

“You’re having it at William Penn Inn, right?” I asked absently, reading Esteban’s short but descriptive list of things he wanted to do for and to me. He’d started off with “I humbly request the honor” and ended it with “If it pleases you,” and though the wording was campy and silly, I had no doubts he was sincere in his offerings.

Both of them shut up and turned to me.

“There were so many other choices,” my mother muttered.

Susan made a contemplative noise. “That’s where Evan and I had our wedding reception. We discussed this already.”

“I know,” I said, looking up with a grin at what my lover had sent me, not for either of them. “I was there, remember? Bright yellow dress, puffy sleeves? Groomsman stepped on the hem and ripped it straight off the waist seam just before we walked down the aisle?”

I’d been trying to make light. Susan didn’t laugh. My mother’s mouth twisted again.

“It’s a great location,” I told them. “I just went to a thing there a few months ago. They had a huge vegetarian buffet with hummus and grilled portobellos and stuff. You can do vegetarian meals for people who really care about it being kosher, which honestly, won’t be that many. Nobody has to eat the grilled chicken if they don’t want to. Just make it at a different station.”

“Well, maybe you don’t care what people think of this family,” my mother said, “but I do!”

Susan scribbled something on her notepad, then excused herself to use the bathroom. My mother glared at me. I dragged myself away from my increasingly dirty messages to shrug at her.

“What? It’s not your event, Ma.”

“I want to be able to invite my friends and not be embarrassed!”

“You can want what you want,” I told her, repeating one of her most-often-used phrases from my childhood, “but you get what you get.”

My phone tickled me through the pocket of my jeans again, and I bent back to it while my mother got up to putter around the kitchen.

“Is she going to invite your father?”

I pulled my attention away from Esteban’s message, which had included a photograph that made the ones my mother complained about look like they belonged in a hymnal. “I don’t know. I’d assume so.”

My parents had been divorced, at this point, almost as long as they’d been married. My dad had moved to Florida, which had meant the every other weekend custody thing hadn’t happened for us, something my mother loved to point out over and over. How she’d been a single mother, did it all on her own. By now it was old news, especially since whatever generous alimony arrangement they’d made had allowed her to work only at part-time retail jobs she cycled through whenever she decided she wanted the employee discount at some new place. My mom hadn’t had it all peaches and cream, I’d never say that, but she hadn’t exactly had to work in a labor camp to raise us, either.

“He’s not even close to William!”

“William spends a week with Dad in Florida every year, Mom. Just like we did when we were kids.”

“A week out of the year?” She sniffed. “That’s hardly anything.”

I shook my head in warning. “Not your party. Not your choice. If Evan and Susan want Dad there, he’ll be invited.”

My mother scowled. “The way you talk to me!”

“Someone has to,” I said, kind of hating that it had to be me, but for fuck’s sake, Jill was my mother times two, and Evan was Mr. Avoidance. I was already the perverted black sheep anyway. I might as well also bear the burden of being the ungrateful child.

Susan came back from the bathroom with suspiciously red eyes that made me feel bad that all of this had to be such a big freaking hassle. “It’s settled. I’ll replace the pasta bar with a vegetarian buffet. Will that be acceptable?”

Before my mother could answer, Susan picked up her purse. “I have to get going.”

She’d fled within ten minutes, leaving nothing but a few crumpled catering menus in her place. My mother, scrubbing the counter so hard I feared she meant to slaughter her sponge, barely said goodbye to her. She turned her face from mine when I tried to hug her goodbye.

“You want to stay over? Your room is ready. I saved some Shirley Temple movies on the DVR.” She turned off the water.

I snuck a peek at my phone, but to my disappointment, Esteban had signed off with a hurried GTG. I shoved my phone back in my pocket. “No. I have to work in the morning. I didn’t bring a bag.”

“You should’ve. I never get to see you since you moved so far away.”

We talked on the phone several times a week and texted more than that. I sighed and hugged her. My mother had gotten so much smaller over the past few years. We used to be about the same height—not that we’d seen eye to eye very often. Now it seemed almost like I could rest my chin on top of her head.

“I’ll call you.” I paused. Then, though I prayed the answer would be negative, asked, “So, you’re not coming to the gallery show on Friday night?”

My mother shook her head. “To what, see you in some more of those pictures? No, thank you!”

“I could email them to you,” I offered with a blankly innocent expression that Evan and I had both perfected as teens to totally flip my mother’s shit. “The pictures, I mean.”

“No, thank you!”

I laughed, though part of me cringed at the way she categorized what I considered art. And honestly, how she categorized what I considered one of the most significant parts of me. I hugged her again anyway, though, because she was my mother. Then I got the hell out of that house and headed for home.

12

Alex and Olivia were not coming to the gallery show. They’d planned months ago to go out of town for the weekend. Alex had, however, told me it was okay if I wanted to take off early to go home and get ready. I knew that was so he could leave early himself without feeling guilty, if Alex Kennedy could ever be said to feel guilt. I suspected he rarely did, which was one of the reasons we’d become friends instead of only coworkers.

“I’m not sure you’re the one who gets to decide what time I leave,” I said, putting a few last minute bits of data into a client file and glancing to where he lounged in my doorway. “I mean, I’m the one who prints the paychecks. So.”

“Yeah, well, we have direct deposit, so yeah, fuck your logic.”

I laughed. “Wow. What a great workplace environment.”

“You love it,” he said and tossed a paper plane at me that I hadn’t even noticed he held.

I caught it in midair. “Where you going for the weekend?”

“A nude beach,” Alex said.

I swiveled again in my chair. “What?”

“Gotcha. Have you ever gone to one of those?”

“A nude beach.” I shuddered. “No. Are you really going?”

“How about one of those all-inclusive sex resorts?”

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