Chapter Four #3
what’s odd? I genuinely thought when I turned around, we would have a laugh
about the situation we find ourselves in. I thought it was one of those crazy
sitcom scenes and that bonding over it might make us friends, but you don’t
want friends.”
He didn’t want to be her friend. He wanted to be her bloody
Master. He wanted to not be a coward and do the things he’d wanted to before he
let his past and his fear consume him. He hated the fact that he had taken her
the way he did, that he hadn’t held her properly, hadn’t looked into her eyes
when she came.
Friends? No.
“Then what do we do? I need this job,” he said, hating the
fact that he sounded weak.
“I’ll talk to Damon,” she offered. “I’ll let him know I’m
not right for you and I’d like to send you to a therapist I know. He won’t have
a problem with it. He’s trying to give me experience, and that works on some of
our people, but you need some very specific therapy. Once you have the new
therapist in place, we won’t need to see each other.”
Not see her? He was perverse. Perhaps everyone in the world
was right and he was wrong and he did need therapy. It wasn’t like the booze
was fixing him. Raging at the world hadn’t helped. Bitterness was its own
reward, but how long could he go on like this?
He sank down in the chair across from her desk, weary beyond
all belief. “All right. I’ll see him and I’ll stay out of your way. I would
like to go to the club. If you would tell me what nights you play, I’ll avoid
those nights.”
She sighed, a weary sound, and she’d been so animated
before. He’d done that to her. “You are free to come and go at Dominion as much
as you like. We have some play nights here at The Garden, too, which you’ll be
welcome to. I promise I won’t bother you.”
He didn’t like the sound of that. “I wasn’t saying you would
bother me.”
“Then if I won’t bother you and you have no interest in me,
what is the problem?”
He stared at her for a long moment, taking her in. She was
beautifully dressed. Looked every inch the competent lady, but he knew what she
looked like when she was on her knees. “Believe it or not one of the reasons I
wanted this job beyond the room and board and to feel useful for once was
because it’s located in London.”
“It is a great city,” she allowed.
His next words came out carefully. “It also has Dominion.”
“Like I said, I won’t bother you,” she said, her eyes a
little tight. “I don’t play much right now.”
He knew he shouldn’t admit this, but he couldn’t stop
himself. “I wanted to be at Dominion so I could see Viv again. I wanted to tell
her I was wrong.”
Her face went a bright red. “Wrong?”
Well, in for a penny… “About not seeing her again. I was
going to find her and ask if we could have a D/s relationship.”
Her head shook and she looked slightly horrified. “No. That
is not possible.”
Well, that hurt more than it should. “I know that. We work
together.”
“It’s not impossible for that reason,” she clarified.
“Almost everyone employed here met their partner either working an op or at
that club. No one bats an eyelash. It’s impossible because you don’t actually
want me. You don’t even know me.”
He felt his fists clench. “Don’t tell me how I feel.”
There was a sickening sympathy in her eyes. “You don’t know
how you feel. I understand that a lot of women would look at you and want to
fix you, but I’ve come to firmly believe that’s a terrible way to think. No one
can save you. Not like this. You have to want it for yourself, and you don’t.”
He couldn’t decide if she was frighteningly arrogant or
na?ve. “How would you know?”
“Malcolm, I was there that night.” Her voice went soft. “I
scared you, and your reaction was to turn me around so you didn’t have to look
at me.”
He felt incredibly exposed by those words. “That wasn’t…”
She held up a hand. “You’re honest. Don’t change that now.
The problem is you’re happy to be honest with everyone but one person.”
What the hell was she talking about? She was starting to
confuse him, and he wondered if she meant to do it. “I’m not lying to you.
Maybe I did do that. I was in a bad place back then.”
“And now?”
He was in an awful place. A terrible place. “It’s probably
worse, but I’ve come to accept the fact that I have needs and there’s no reason
to not fulfill them as long as I’m careful.”
She nodded as though she expected the answer. “You mean as
long as everyone stays in their boxes.”
The urge to pound his fist against her desk was almost
overwhelming but he managed to stay calm. “You’re determined to take everything
I say in the worst possible way.”
“No, I’m being realistic,” she replied with a weary sigh. “I
try to avoid making mistakes I can see coming from a mile away. Trust me—there
are mistakes I don’t see at all, but you are one walking red flag, and I
respect and love myself too much to get put into one of your boxes. The truth
is you don’t know me, and I worry if you got to know me you wouldn’t like me
very much.”
“Why would you say that?”
She studied him for a moment as though trying to figure out
how to handle him. “Tell me what your dream sub is like.”
He could only answer honestly. “I don’t know. For a year and
a half she’s been you.”
“I was extremely submissive that night,” she admitted. “I
was playing. I’m not like that in real life. Submission is not some calling for
me. I enjoy it. I like to sink into it with the right person, but I don’t
follow orders outside of the club, and I feel like you need a truly submissive
partner. Don’t worry. Oliver is surprisingly good at putting Doms and subs together. But if you want to be ready when
you find someone, you need to do the work.”
She wasn’t saying anything he hadn’t heard a million times
before. She was telling him he wasn’t good enough. He needed to be done here.
He was getting out of this with the only thing he truly needed. His job.
“We’ll have to agree to disagree,” he replied and stood.
“Send me the name of the therapist and I’ll take it from there. I’m required to
do one session a week, correct?”
She hesitated. “It won’t work if you’re only doing it to
fulfill a requirement.”
“That’s not your problem.” And it never would have been.
Even if she’d been nothing but a woman at the club and not a coworker, he still
wouldn’t have talked to her about this. He wouldn’t have burdened her with his
problems. “I appreciate your discretion and promise to be polite when we meet.”
She bit her bottom lip like she wanted to say something else
but she simply nodded. “Good day, Malcolm. I hope you enjoy it here. I know I
do.”
He stood. It was time to go. He took the note she wrote out
and stuffed it in his pocket without looking at it.
The truth was it didn’t matter. He would go to the sessions,
but they wouldn’t change anything.
Nothing ever changed. He’d thought for a moment that she
could be change for him. A place where he didn’t have to be himself.
“Good day,” he said and turned around and walked out of her
office.
* * * *
The door came open two minutes after Malcolm walked
out, leaving her feeling devastated.
Polite. The man wasn’t polite. He was hungry and needy and
looked at her like she was the last drop of water in the desert.
He was also cold and shut down and unaware of his ability to
burn the world around him down to nothing with a few careless words. That was
what she needed to remember. It was one thing to feel sympathy for what the man
had gone through. It was another to throw herself headlong into a relationship
that could only hurt her.
D/s only. Even though she’d thought about it, the minute it
was offered she knew it wasn’t something she could accept. What would her
parents think if she told them “Hey, I like this guy and I have sex with him
and obey him in the club but I don’t talk to him outside of it.” They would be
so unhappy with her.
Sophy walked through, turning to look behind her. “That dude
looks familiar. Are you ready for lunch? I have so much to complain about since
I spent the entire morning trying to navigate the British aristocracy. Whoa,
are you okay?”
She took a long breath. Sophy was the one person she would
talk to about this. Well, she would likely talk to Ariel if she hadn’t promised
discretion. Sophy was the very soul of discretion. She knew royal secrets and
stuff. “That was Malcolm Mays, the new hire.”
“Why does he look familiar?” Sophy glanced back at the door
like she could still see him.
Vivian sighed and sat back. “Because he’s the man I
mistakenly spent the night with a year and a half ago.”
Sophy’s eyes widened, and she sank into the chair in front
of Vivian’s desk. “No.”
“Yes.” She had fallen into the worst trope. The I slept
with someone I shouldn’t have and now it’s coming back to haunt me trope.
She would make sure anywhere she traveled with the man had more than one bed.
“Holy crap. I can’t believe he’s here. I mean I knew he was
a friend of Oliver’s, but I didn’t think he was looking for a job. Are you
okay?” Sophy asked, all her former amusement gone, replaced with sympathy. “Was
it weird?”
Weird didn’t begin to describe it. For a few weeks after
their initial encounter, she’d thought about him, thought about reaching out.
Then she’d met a nice man and started a pleasant, if a bit dull, relationship.
The same man whose name she’d written on a note and handed to Mal. They were
still friends. Then a fairly passionate relationship with a massive ass. They
were not friends. She slowly stopped thinking about the Dom who made her feel
so much, but now it all came rushing back in. “Well, I just rejected a man I’ve
thought about every time I walk in a club now, so I’m not sure.”
Sophy leaned forward. She was in fairly casual clothes which
told Vivian she had probably spent the day working on accounts and records.
“Rejected? He made a move on you?”
“I don’t know that I would call it a move.” Her head was
still reeling. She had that moment when she thought they would laugh about the
whole thing and then properly introduce themselves and start over. “I think by