Page 32 of For Real

“I—”

“Don’t answer. Think about it first.”

In spite of myself, I swallowed. “And if…if I…”

“Then you come to me, and we’ll talk about it. And then you’ll get on your knees, and you’ll let me give you what you need. Because I don’t think I’ve even come close to your limits, have I?”

I shook my head, exposed in my truths, my loss, and all my lies. For a moment, I genuinely resented him for seeing me and for forcing me to see him. In some way, it made it worse that we had no greater connection than his needs, and my needs, and the barely there boundary where we could force them, inadequately, to meet.

Something must have shown on my face, because he patted my shoulder. “It’s all right. Trust is earned, and you’ve been too long without a master.”

Too long without something, certainly. “I should go.”

He stepped past me to open the door. Then paused. “I play the alto sax.”2

“Uh?”

He smiled unexpectedly. “I just wanted to remind you that I may be a dom, but I’m a person too.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to this information, so I kept my expression carefully blank. “And you thought alto sax would be the clincher?”

“You’ve got to admit, it’s pretty hot.”

“You should have said earlier.” I tried to smile back. It seemed the least I could do. “I’d be on my knees by now.”

Clearly it was the wrong thing to joke about because he grew serious again. “Think about it, D. I want you, and I’d be good for you.”

I pulled on my coat, fastened it so nobody could see I was dressed as a complete prick, and hurried into the night. I could have called a taxi, but even though I was tired and my body hurt, I felt like walking.

It made the pain sing a little. It made it mine.

I took the Tube back to Holland Park, standing somewhat gingerly and watching my own reflection ripple like the moon in the windows of the nearly empty carriage. It took a while before I saw a man I recognised beneath the smudges of someone else’s perception.

It would have been easier if he had not, to some extent, been right about me. I obeyed. I did not submit. But how could I, to shadows and charades and strangers? He had understood better than most, and still he had thought what I needed was a firm hand, the right master, discipline.

God. Maybe he was right. Maybe it was all that was left for me to have.

But how could I like myself through his eyes? He had made me weak, as though my needs were not also my choices. The things Robert and I had done had never made me weak. Even as I had wept and screamed and bled and begged for him.

In truth, they had made me strong. Proud, too. And I’d never really separated the drive to submit, to be hurt, and sometimes to be forced, from what seemed to me the most natural impulses of love: to be touched, to be known, to be naked, to be safe.

That came After Robert.

And, suddenly, I found myself thinking of Toby again. He had not made me feel weak either. He had made me feel…beautiful, powerful.

Free.

* * *

When I got home, I found Master Whoever’s business card in my pocket, and I threw it away. I tried not to think about what he had said to me. For a while, I even stopped seeking out strangers to hurt me and forget me, and be forgotten in their turn.

I’d made such commitments in the past and never held to them. But I felt the inadequacy of what I would likely find more keenly in the wake of Toby, and it seemed almost like a betrayal of him. Tarnishing the memory of his passion, his sincerity, and his fearlessness with meaningless games and empty pleasure.

So I simply worked, and slept when I could, and gave myself to the familiar routines of my job, the day-to-day hospital business of life, death, and paperwork. Christmas came and went. I spent it with my parents. New Year’s with my friends.

Then came my air ambulance shift.

A multiple-car collision. A cardiac arrest. A motorcycle accident. A stabbing, most likely drug-related. A child who had run into a glass door and severed an artery.

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