Chapter 4
The first fall lands. Barely anything. Another on the other side. He’s tracing the figure-eight he used on the woman before me, but much, much slower. I can feel the shape of it—left shoulder blade, right, the loop crossing on either side.
His hand settles on my shoulder. “How are we doing?”
“Fine. Good.” My voice comes out steady.
The falls come back, a little heavier. Sting now, small and bright, each impact its own point on the map of my back. I catalog them the way I catalog anything—distance, force, interval. Leather, multiple tails, the sound arrives a half-beat before the sensation.
Hand on my shoulder again. “Still good?”
“Yes. Really.”
Heavier. The points stop being points. Warmth spreads out from each landing and pools with the warmth from the last one, and somewhere in there the sting stops mattering.
It’s just the leading edge of the heat, the knock on the door before the heat walks in.
My back is one continuous surface, and all of it is warm and waiting for the next fall.
I moan.
I hear it after it’s already out, this low, open sound. I have a moment of pure astonishment because I didn’t build that. Nobody blocked it. It just left my body on its own.
The falls keep coming. I stop counting them. I couldn’t say if it’s been two minutes or ten.
His hand lands on my shoulder, and instead of answering, I lean back into it, press my shoulder up into his palm.
The rhythm pauses. He steps around the edge of the cross, ducks his head to find my face. “You okay?”
I am more than okay. My whole back is glowing, and I want the falls back already.
“Can I take my bra off?”
That warm chuckle. “Be my guest.”
I peel my hands off the cross. My fingers are clumsy on the clasp, which is funny—I’ve done this ten thousand times, in quick changes, in the dark, in ten seconds flat.
It drops somewhere near my feet, and I leave it there and set my hands back on the metal.
Now the wood of the crossbeam is against my bare chest, cool at first, and my nipples are hard against it.
I press into it before he’s thrown a single fall.
They resume. Fuller now, landing across the whole span of me.
There’s music—there’s been music this entire time.
Techno pulsing from speakers somewhere overhead, and he’s on the beat.
Every fall on the beat. He’s been on the beat since the start.
I’m only hearing it now. The whole room has a pulse, and I’m inside it.
I’m wet. Just a fact of the body reporting in. And underneath it, around it, I’m relaxed the way I am after a massage, after a hot bath, loose in every joint. Both things at once. I reach for the word for that. There isn’t one, or I can’t find it. Then I stop reaching.
Heat. The beat. The tails trailing over my back, grazing my ribs from time to time.
The wood against my breasts when I press forward.
Fall, fall, the loop crossing low, my hips tilting.
Somewhere behind me, Anjali is holding my purse. Somewhere behind me, people are watching.
The falls keep coming, and I lean into every one.
He speeds up. The falls stack, one on top of the next, the heat climbing my back in layers. I stop being able to tell where one ends and the next begins.
His hand on my shoulder. “How’s Viv?”
I have no idea. “Viv isn’t here right now,” I gurgle and laugh at my own joke, laugh into the crossbeam.
I turn my head to find him. He’s smiling wide. All of his teeth.
“More?” I giggle.
He gives me more.
There’s no audience to me anymore. There’s the beat, the heat, and the wood under my breasts. I hang off the cross by my hands and take it and take it and—
The music cuts.
Brighter lights come up along the crane track, flat and white, and the room turns back into a room.
The falls have stopped. I don’t know when they stopped.
Gabriel’s hand is at my shoulder. “The Foundry closes in fifteen minutes. Sorry. I should have pulled you out earlier. I guess I got lost in you a bit.”
“You got lost in me.” The words come out slow, like I’m reading them off a page held too far away.
I peel one hand off the cross, then the other, and start to step back. My knees are not steady.
Gabriel catches me. One arm around my ribs, quick, and his hand grazes my breast on the way to a grip.
That isn’t enough for me.
“Thanks,” I say.
He guides me down to sit on the floor, easing me the whole way like I’m made of something breakable. The concrete is cold through my jeans. It’s wonderful. Everything is wonderful. The cold is the exact right counterweight to my back, which is one enormous glow from neck to waist.
Anjali walks over, my purse on her shoulder, my shirt over her arm. She crouches to my eye level and studies my face for a second, the same read she does on actors coming off stage.
“How are you, Viv?”
“I’m fantastic.”
I sit there. Anjali is holding my bra. I realize my breasts are on display for the room. Gabriel is still looking at my face, though.
“I’ll get you some water,” Gabriel says and goes.
The room drains around me. People fold their gear into bags, zip duffels, pull street clothes over marks.
Near the far station, I spot the woman from earlier, the one who nodded around two men to say she was fine.
She’s wearing a Powerpuff Girls T-shirt now, hair in a loose knot, holding hands with one of the men who was in her mouth.
She sways a little on her feet, and he steadies her without looking, like they’ve done it a hundred times.
Her face is doing something I recognize.
Loose. Lit from somewhere behind the eyes.
Whatever’s on my face right now, it’s similar.
Gabriel comes back with Mona beside him. He crouches and hands me a plastic cup of water. I drink half of it in one go.
Mona plants her hands on her hips. “Gabriel tells me you went pretty deep and might need a few more minutes. If it was anyone else, I’d say no, we lock up—that’s the rule. But I trust Gabriel with my keys.”
She tosses them. Gabriel catches the ring one-handed.
Gabriel lowers himself to the concrete beside me and puts his arm around my shoulders. His forearm lies across the glow on my back, and I lean into it.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I understand it.”
“Hmm.”
“I’m in a play.” The whole thing spills out of me, out of order, corset first. “I’m playing a dominatrix.
I have this submissive, Jonas. He’s on his knees all the time, and I whip him and do other stuff.
I could not, for the life of me, figure out why he’d want any of it.
Why anyone would. My director sent me here to look.
Just look.” I finish the water. “And whatever just happened, it let me exist without responsibility. It let me just be and feel. Nothing to run, nothing to decide. That’s the gift. That’s what subs are grateful for.”
Anjali smiles. “I’ll have what she’s having next time.”
“That sounds right, for a lot of people,” Gabriel says. “Some people just really like pain. For most, it’s about handing over control somewhere safe.”
“In the play, I tell my submissive he should be grateful. And he always is. He says the line like he means it.” I turn the empty cup in my hands. “Now I know why.”
I look up at Gabriel. At the calm, the hands that did that to me.
“I’m very grateful.”
I look over at Anjali and make a face.
She reads it in about half a second. “Really?”
I look back at Gabriel. “I would really like to show you how grateful.”
Gabriel’s eyebrows go up, and the smile that follows is slow and takes its time getting to full width.
Anjali looks from me to him and back to me. She stands, puts the purse down, and drops my shirt and bra into my lap.
“Text me in an hour so I know you’re okay.”
She points two fingers at her own eyes, then at Gabriel, holds it a beat, then turns and walks toward the foyer, heels loud in the emptied room.
“I still respond to no, stop, and fuck off, asshole,” Gabriel says.
“I suppose I do, too.” I smile back at him.