Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
The next few months were the best of Romily’s life.
Zachary was very serious about testing. He insisted that her IUD was checked out by his doctor, which Romily was fine with as she’d had to have it inserted at a questionable clinic in the first place.
She’d done it right after she’d left Joseph, because she never intended to leave her fertility in anyone else’s hands again.
Besides, she certainly didn’t have any extra money to be paying for doctors herself.
“What you and I are going to do,” he told her the second night, because that was how quickly his doctor got results—Romily thought said doctor might be a client of the gym, “is fuck only each other for a while. Unless you have some objection to that.”
They were sitting in a dive bar not far from the marina.
And they’d walked there, even though it was dusk, because Zachary like to walk around the neighborhood.
He wasn’t afraid of anything, as far as Romily could tell.
He hardly seemed to notice the dangers that lurked in the shadows.
But then again, the shadows were probably afraid of him.
It wasn’t that he was oblivious to the truths of their neighborhood or the potential for unfortunate situations. There was nothing reckless about him. Rather, he was confident that whatever arose, he could handle it.
If there was something sexier, Romily couldn’t really imagine it.
His confidence made her feel confident. Like she was finally the version of herself she’d never really believed she could be.
The version of herself she’d almost been able to glimpse in those long ago days in San Francisco, when she’d thought she had a bright and happy future ahead of her.
Instead she’d met Joseph.
But when she was with Zachary, Joseph was insignificant.
That was pretty damned sexy too.
They sat together on the banquette side of a small table in the dive bar, his thigh pressed to hers.
Rock music played sullenly. The bartender looked surly and looked ready to vault over the bar at the slightest provocation.
Not the sort of place Romily would frequent, but the whole world was different when she was with Zachary.
When she’d tried to order a side salad for her dinner, he’d given her that stern look and had told the waitress that Romily would have a burger with everything, the same as him.
What if I’m a vegetarian? she’d asked once the waitress had retreated—though not without eyeing Zachary’s impressive arms. Romily couldn’t blame her. They were literally perfect.
Are you? he’d asked.
I’m not. But I could be. You didn’t ask.
I think you’ll eat the burger, he’d replied. He’d leaned into her, that powerful body of his pressing against her side and reminding her of all the things they’d done the night before. In detail. Not that she imagined she would ever forget. If only because it will make me happy.
And he was right. She did.
“No,” she told him now, and found herself reaching for fries when she was normally never that hungry. “I have no objections.”
“My goals for this period of exclusivity are not only to teach you how to fuck me perfectly,” he told her with that same serious look on his face, as if he was discussing business, not sex.
She didn’t understand how he could get to her the way he did.
So easily. As if he’d been put on this earth to slip under her skin like this.
If there was a way to stop the way the things he said made her wet and needy, she didn’t want to know it.
“I’ve seen you these past six months. Afraid of your own shadow. ”
“Not my own shadow, actually,” she replied.
He studied her for a moment, taking that in. Probably taking in more than she thought he was. Probably seeing everything there is to see, she thought.
But that just made her want to melt into him.
“I want you strong, Romily.” He said that as if that should have been obvious to her, but not in a way that embarrassed her. He didn’t say it as if she was dumb for not knowing where he was going with this. “I’m going to train you.”
“Like… in your gym?” She frowned. “Your scary gym?”
He laughed at that, actually throwing his head back, and it made something inside of her that she wouldn’t have said was unsettled, exactly, seem to soothe itself. He could be stern, so very stern, but he wasn’t afraid to laugh. That mattered.
She knew how much that mattered.
“How is my gym scary?” He was still laughing, his face lit up still, and it made her heart skip a beat.
Romily focused on the conversation at hand, not her heart.
“All the heaving around of heavy things and crashing them into the ground. Always that music that sounds like shouting and large things dying. All the big men. Grunting and shouting and sounding like they’re being attacked.
Did you think all of that was inviting? ”
Zachary laughed again, even harder this time.
“That’s why it’s fun,” he told her. He watched her take another big bite of her burger. “You must have worked out before.”
“I always liked yoga,” she said. But she shook her head. “But I didn’t have time to do it much.”
The way he studied her face, she could have sworn that he could simply see inside her head and flip through her memories as he liked.
She kind of hoped he could. So he could know without her having to tell him that Joseph had never actually forbidden her from going to the various classes that she’d liked to drop in on.
But as time went on, there’d been darker and ever more intense consequences when she came home.
Because, clearly, she was flaunting herself in a pair of yoga pants.
She didn’t really want talk about it. Zachary didn’t ask.
“We’ll start with some basic training and see where we end up,” he told her.
And it took her a couple of weeks to realize that when he said training, he meant all kinds of training. He trained her in the gym, yes. But he also trained her — just as he’d promised— in exactly how to fuck him.
He sat with her she joined the Club, though she kept her profile in private mode. He still made her fill out the extensive questionnaire, filled with a great number of sexual acts or interests that Romily had never heard of. She filled in her lists and then she got to see his.
That initial question and answer period still made her shiver—happily—to recall, as Zachary had taken the time to explain the things she didn’t know. Then demonstrate some of the things he thought she might like, though not at the intensity he would if they were actually doing it.
By the end, she’d been so turned on she couldn’t see straight.
He’d taken care of that, too.
Zachary trained her to take his cock, in her mouth and in her ass.
Every day, he gave her a little bit more.
He liked to work on her cocksucking capacity while using ever larger butt plugs to warm up her ass, and Romily sometimes wondered what a previous version of her would say if this version of her went back in time and told her how unbelievably hot it all was.
It turned out that she loved the things Zachary liked to do. She liked it when it was uncomfortable, or even hurt a bit, because she knew that whatever happened, it would end in another one of the impossibly intense orgasms he handed out like candy.
The man was a twisted, dirty purveyor of happy ever afters. Romily couldn’t get enough of him, or the way he touched her like he owned her—but, crucially, thought she was precious. Not a possession to be kicked around, but to be cherished, cared for, even fussed over.
It took her a solid month to manage to take the whole of his cock in her mouth and then halfway down her throat. When he finally came like that, she felt as if she’d won a prize.
Even more so when he rewarded her by burying his head between her thighs and licking her into one orgasm, complimenting her on getting that wet simply because he’d come down her throat. Then he’d fucked her hard, from behind.
It took longer to fully take him in her ass, though he had a lot of tricks to help her along, from fingers to the butt plugs he seemed to have in a never-ending supply until finally, one day, he finished there, too.
When he flooded her ass at last, she came as hard as if he been buried deep in her pussy.
“You are a wonder,” he growled at her as he carried into the bathroom for the ritual washing he insisted upon.
Because you think this is all dirty? she’d asked once, slightly afraid that it would make him angry.
If he was angry, he didn’t show it. Because I like to take care of you, little bird, he’d said. That’s the whole point. He’d tipped her chin up so he could look at her intently. You need to surrender. You feel free there.
It wasn’t a question but she’d nodded anyway, feeling vulnerable and cut wide open?—
But Zachary didn’t see vulnerability as weakness. He treated it like strength. Like beauty.
That’s how taking care of you, in all the ways I take care of you—some of them more painful than others—makes me feel, he’d said.
Romily turned that over and over inside her head for days. It had never occurred to her that they could… match like that. That he could need this thing they did as much as she did.
It made everything seem… luminous.
Even this gritty neighborhood in the damage of Oakland.
He liked that she had her therapy sessions, but he didn’t like that she otherwise hid on her boat because she had only so much money. And for other reasons.
It turned out that Romily didn’t much like it when Zachary didn’t like something, so when he announced to her that she could take over reception for the gym, she accepted it.
“You don’t really need a receptionist, though,” she said.
He gazed at her, standing in the middle of the gym floor late one night, because he’d decided they needed to lift a little. There were weights scattered all around, but she knew how to use them now. The paraphernalia of stripped-down gyms like his didn’t scare her anymore.