Page 92 of To Save Him

I smiled.  “We don’t have to go anywhere.”

“Oh, but we do.  We have reservations.”

I let out a slow breath, hoping Brandon couldn’t see how tense I was.  I was remembering our night at the restaurant when he’d asked me to finger myself under the table.  I prayed tonight wouldn’t be a lame repeat.  I’d already made it more than clear that I wasn’t going to do that.

No matter.  If that was the case, he’d find out soon enough.

I didn’t have much of an appetite anyway, but I wasn’t going to mention that.  My nerves had been shot for far too long.  In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten a solid meal.  Pulling me from my thoughts, Brandon handed me the sequined mask.  “Go ahead and put this on.”

“Now?”

He nodded.  “Yes.  I have one I’ll put on once we arrive.”

Ah.  He was driving, so he couldn’t wear his mask till then.  When he handed me the pretty one, I noticed the plain black one left in his hand.  I pulled it up and over my head so the mask came down over my eyes.  While I could see out of the openings, it obscured my vision somewhat.

Something about my lover tonight felt even more dangerous than he had before, because there was something he was keeping secret.  I could feel it.  It was like an electrical charge in the air.  He held out his arm, his elbow crooked so I could place my forearm inside his, and he led me out to the car.  He was quiet as he opened the car door for me and then got in, slowly driving toward town.  But when we got just outside town, he pulled the car into the Walmart parking lot.  I refrained from asking questions, because I knew answers were forthcoming.

Once the car was in park, he turned to me, handing me a black pillowcase.  The evening was getting stranger and stranger by the moment.  I simply looked at him, my expression undoubtedly showing my confusion.  “I want you to put that over your head now.”

“Why?”

He sighed and, suddenly, I felt like the one in our relationship who was younger.  I felt my lips turn into a frown as I waited for him to speak.  “You’re not comfortable doing things in public because this is your community, right?”  I must have been staring.  “Isn’t that what you’ve said?  That you have to live here, that you and the kids have it hard enough with people knowing what you do for a living.  I think those are your words, Kimberly.”  I opened my mouth to speak and stopped.  Yes, those were things I’d said.  “I don’t think you realize that every community has a dark underbelly, one you won’t find unless you’re looking for it.  And it’s there because not everyone wants to conform.  Or, more accurately, they want to appear to conform.  They want to have their cake and eat it too.  They want to enjoy the best of both worlds.

“You’ll be covering your head to protect yourself.  You won’t know where we’re going, so you can continue to look at your little city in whatever light you like.  And everyone there wears masks like the one you’re wearing, so there’s a level of deniability.  You might think you recognize somebody…but you never know for sure.”

I found my voice, but it was quiet when I spoke.  “Where are we going, Brandon?  What kind of place are you taking me to?”  No longer was I willing to simply trust.  I had the feeling the world was about to be yanked out from under my feet again.

“It’s the only underground adult club you have in your judge-y little town.”

“Adult club?”  God, I sounded naïve.  And I guess I was.

He almost smiled.  “Let’s just say it caters to varying tastes.  But not on Sundays.  That’s church day.”

Brandon didn’tsoundsarcastic, but I knew he had to be.  Still, I knew he was being quite serious about this club he was talking about.  But I had no words.  All of this was foreign to me.  I had so many questions but I didn’t know what kind of answers I wanted, so I sat there, my mouth slightly agape, as I waited for his next words.

As if talking to a child, he shook the black pillowcase once and said, “Please cover your head.”  His eyes lost their glint in the waning light when he said, “It’s for your own good, Kimberly.”

I swallowed and placed my hand on the black satiny fabric, letting out a long breath.  I knew it was more than just protecting me.  It was also a display of trust in Brandon, a man I was growing increasingly more afraid of as each day passed.  And while part of me wanted to fight, wanted to break out, yearned to push him away, the rest of me embraced his words.  He was right.  Ididn’twant to know that there was a seedy element in a town full of Puritans.  I wanted to believe that all the good God-fearing people here practiced what they preached.

I got the feeling there would be no turning back.

A tiny part of me, one I had denied up to this point, was titillated.  The sexual part of me that found Brandon’s bossy, domineering behavior in the bedroom exhilarating and arousing wanted to explore what lay ahead, wanted to discover new outlets, encounter new experiences.  With that thought in mind, I raised the pillowcase up and began to lower it over my head.  Brandon helped, because my feathery mask kept trying to snag on the fabric.

So the pillowcase was for my protection, insofar as my perception of people in my town went; the mask was for my protection regarding the way other townsfolk might perceiveme.

It was stuffy in the pillowcase, but I couldn’t hold my breath; in fact, once the car started moving again, I felt my blood begin to rush through my veins, exhilarated by the prospect of what was to come.  It was unknown, yes, but I knew now that Brandon had a larger plan—and I’d just have to wait to find out what it was.  I thought I heard him thank me, but all I could hear was my heart beating in my eardrums.

 

* * *

 

I’D TRIED TO figure out where we were headed.  Brandon had driven around quite a bit, and I didn’t know if he was going in circles so that my sense of direction was confused or if he was taking the most direct route to the place where we were going.  Whatever the case, I no longer had any idea where we could possibly be.  By the time he parked the car, I was completely discombobulated.

I heard and even felt him get out of the car, my other senses working hard at their jobs without my eyesight to assist them, and I waited as if clinging to the edge of a cliff, just one second away from dropping.  In a few seconds, he was opening my door and taking my arm to help me up and out.

It almost felt like a date.

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