“Abby.” His voice was cold steel.
A crash of thunder made me jump. I turned around, looking up at Jake. But I didn’t speak.
“Abby.” His voice was sharp. “Turn around and look at me.”
I did as I was instructed. I wasn’t sure what this was, if it was part of the session. I wanted to ask, but didn’t want to disobey.
“What is this?” I felt his hands on my arms. I shook my head, both because I didn’t know and I couldn’t speak.
He took me by the arm, pulling me across the room to the far side of the big cabinet. There was a mirror hanging on the side, something I’d never noticed before. He turned me so my back was to the mirror.
“Look. Tell me what these are.”
I looked in the mirror. Along the backs of both arms and along the backs of my thighs were bruises, many bruises. All of them were the size and shape of someone’s fingers. Of Chase’s fingers.
“Oh.”
“Oh? That’s it?” Jake spun me around to face him, his own fingers now digging into my arms.
“Who gave you those bruises, Abby? Are you seeing someone else? Are you someone else’s submissive?”
Anger flashed in Jake’s eyes. Seeing that in his eyes lit a corresponding spark of anger in me.
“And if I am? You said this is a no-strings-attached relationship, Jake. Your words, your arrangement.”
“Who, Abby? Who is it?” He was still holding me, almost lifting me on my toes.
I struggled in his grip. “You’re hurting me, Jake. Let me go.”
He did, stepping away from me, breathing hard, color rising in his cheeks.
“It’s Chase, isn’t it.” Not a question; a statement.
“Yes.” I brushed past Jake, grabbing my robe from the back of the door, pulling it on, tugging the sash tight.
Jake ran his hand through his hair. “Why, Abby?”
“Why? Why not?”
“Isn’t this enough for you?” He spread his hands, gesturing around the tower room. Outside the storm was intensifying, rain pelting the windows, thunder booming in the distance.
“I’m not seeing Chase as a sub, Jake. He called after our session, had my necklace…I went to see him…and it just happened. You were gone.” My voice was ragged, anger and tears competing, making me gasp. But I refused to give in to the tears. Not now, not here.
“So the minute I’m gone, you run to Chase?”
“No, not like that. I went to get my necklace…and things just spiraled out of control.” My voice dropped.
“But it got to be more…” I looked down at my bare feet.
“You’re seeing Chase, as in a relationship?” Jake sat on the edge of the bed, looking up at me. He was quiet for a long time.
“Do you love him? Is that it?”
I looked up at Jake, tears spilling down my face. I swiped at them angrily.
“I don’t know. Really, I don’t.”
I took a step toward Jake. He looked up at me, the pain in his eyes obvious.
“For what it’s worth, he hasn’t told me he loves me. He can’t…or won’t.”
He shrugged, shook his head. I knelt on the floor at his feet, my hands on his knees.
“Jake, I never meant for this to happen and I never meant for you to get hurt. I can’t explain why this happened. All I know is I have never stopped thinking about you.” Tiny white lie, Abby.
“This relationship is important to me. I cherish this, what you’ve given me. I would never have tried this, come this far, experienced what I have if it weren’t for you, Jake.” I took one hand in mine, kissing his fingers.
“You’ve shown me things I could never have known.”
“But that’s not enough, is it. Do you want a relationship? More than this, I mean?” Jake’s voice was low, still with an edge. I realized he was still very angry, holding himself so tightly controlled. He could never let go.
I was exhausted, from my time with Chase, and from Jake’s inability to let go. It sent me over the edge.
I stood abruptly. “What I want from you Jake is complete honesty.” I flung the words at him. He looked startled, before frowning at me.
“I’ve been honest. More so than you, I’d say.”
“No. I mean with whatever it is in you that keeps you from just letting go. You start…you’re so angry now you’re barely holding it back. But you don’t let it out. Why? What’s making you hold it back? Chase said things that make me think there’s a whole side of you that I don’t know. He said if we were to have any kind of relationship, I should ask you what your secrets are. I thought he was just saying things at first…for whatever reason. But now I think he’s right.”
I was breathing hard, hands on my hips. I realized I was rambling, words bubbling up from some deep well of emotion, fueled by my exhaustion and by Jake’s stubborn ability to let go.
He looked up at me, the anger back in his eyes.
“You want the truth? You want to know why I ‘don’t let go’.” He stood, striding across the room before abruptly turning around, his eyes blazing with what looked like pain and anger fused into bright blue-white.
“Her name is Jane. She was my ex-girlfriend. I have no idea where she is right now, or even if she’s still alive.”
I sank down on the bed, my legs suddenly shaky.
“We met here, in Houston, while I was in college, sometime right before I graduated. She seemed the perfect girl; we were inseparable. It was Jane who introduced me to this whole damn thing…” he waved his hand around the room.
“She was an experienced submissive, but her dominant had moved away. She wanted me to take his place, but I was in way over my head with her.”
He was pacing in front of me, the words coming out slowly at first.
“I didn’t have any idea what to do, I told her that. She threatened to leave me; I guess she manipulated me into becoming her dominant. It wasn’t that I didn’t have an interest…I did. But it was all or nothing with her. I loved her so much, and she knew it. She made it clear if I wanted her, she wanted me as her dominant.
“She knew about Chase’s club so she took me there a few times, to ‘learn the ropes’ as she said…” His smile was bitter and it scared me. I pulled my knees up, wrapping my arms around them. I was suddenly cold, as if the temperature of the room had dropped ten degrees.
“It wasn’t until we’d had a few serious sessions together that things started going badly. Our sessions were always very intense, exhausting for both of us, right from the beginning. She wanted me to be…forceful, aggressive. And I was. I held nothing back, not emotionally, not physically, even verbally. But she started ending the sessions abruptly and then leaving, with no reason. Not that she needed one, but she would leave with no aftercare, no explanation. I didn’t know what to do, but then I’d see her the next day and she’d be fine. Or she’d be back, asking for another session. I should have asked someone, anyone, for advice. But I believed her when she said she was fine. And I loved her; I didn’t want to lose her.”
Jake had stopped pacing. He lowered himself to the floor, sitting down a few feet from the edge of the bed. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, staring somewhere over my left shoulder.
“One night she showed up for a session and it was clear that she was high. I told her I didn’t want a session if she was drunk. But she insisted, threatened—again—to leave me. So out of desperation I agreed. We started, I don’t remember what we’d planned…I don’t think we even got past getting her on the bed. She disobeyed me purposely. So I told her she needed to be punished.”
Jake took a ragged breath. “She’d never disobeyed me before. She was always in her submissive role, no matter what. I told her she would be spanked, like we agreed on. So I undid the handcuffs, took her down there…” Jake pointed to the table where he’d spanked me. I was shivering, but too afraid to move, not wanting to interrupt his story.
Jake’s voice dropped even lower, his eyes fixed on the far end of the room, as if whatever he had experienced was playing out in the shadows. “I spanked her once, maybe twice, before she started to scream…kicking, hissing, just totally out of control. I thought I’d hurt her, hit her too hard maybe, so I stopped. But she kept screaming. Then seething with anger she pulled away from me and slapped me across the face. She tried to hit me again but I caught her wrists to try and calm her. She wouldn’t listen, she kept fighting against me, hitting me so hard it felt as though she were someone else entirely.”
He looked down, rubbing his wrist. “I slapped her. She looked at me, but this time it wasn’t Jane. She started screaming again but as though she was speaking to someone else. She just kept saying ‘You’re not going to hurt me anymore Jim.’ She twisted out of my arms, ran out the door and was gone before I could get down the stairs. That was the last time I saw her.”
Jake finally looked up at me, his eyes haunted, distant. “Jim was her step-father. I found out later, from her sister, that he had abused both girls from the time they were young until their mother divorced him, sometime in their teenage years. Her sister said Jane refused any kind of counseling. She’d left home as soon as she graduated high school, went to college for a few semesters, but ended up dropping out. She said the abuse always happened after a spanking for some imagined infraction of a ‘house’ rule.”
Jake dropped his head into his hands. I slid off the bed, crawling across the floor to him, pulling him against me, rocking him gently. His shoulders shook silently for a moment but he remained strong, unshaken.
When he spoke his voice was muffled against my shoulder. “Her family never heard from her again. Her cell phone only went to voice mail before it was disconnected. She moved, left no forwarding address. She’d been working at a club downtown, some sleazy dance club. They had her last paycheck, held it for her for months, but she never came to get it. To this day, I don’t know what happened to her Abby. I don’t know where she went.”
The tears I’d been trying to hold back spilled down my cheeks. Jake sat up, looking into my eyes.
“I’m so sorry Jake,” I replied unsure as to what I should say. My heart ached for him and I could feel the incredible guilt that weighed down on him like heavy chains with every word that spilled from his trembling lips.
“The first time you disobeyed me, it reminded me so much of Jane that I couldn’t bring myself to punish you. The second time, when I did, it was the hardest thing I’d ever done.” He tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers absently wiping away my tears.
“I was so afraid I’d break you somehow. That I’d change you in ways you just weren’t ready for. Just like I did to Jane. I was convinced for the longest time it was my fault, I’d pushed her too hard. I couldn’t control myself and it sent her over the edge.”
“No, Jake. It wasn’t your fault.” I meant it; even as I felt the sadness invade my mind at just how much pain Jane must have been in. Jake had likely triggered memories of her abuse that she couldn’t handle. Like him I wondered where she was, what had become of her. Watching Jake hurt so badly, his fingers weaved tightly against his scalp, cradling his head in his hands, I could see the torment that swirled in his eyes. He hadn’t known of Jane’s darkness and because of that he had taken her into the shadows of her own pain, brought her nightmares to life. It wasn’t his fault. Jane shouldn’t have played with the ghosts of her past, and I wondered why she would have ever become a submissive in the first place other than to torture herself. Perhaps it was her way of coping with what had happened. Her way of taking control of the pain and living through it once more but where she would determine how it ended. Only it ended at a loss. If she could only see Jake now she would know that it wasn’t just a loss for her. She had changed a man forever, and I wondered if he would ever be the same again.