Bonds of Attraction (Full Length Erotic Romance Novel) (13 page)

“She was only aggressive with women she saw
as a threat. A woman brought into our sexual relationship wasn’t a threat.
There would be no replacing Marilyn with such a woman. But a woman that I would
bring out to dinner and be seen with in public, that could be a woman who would
become my new sub. And Marilyn knows that I only operate with one sub. It’s not
that I maintain one sexual partner, but that I only have this special
relationship with one woman at a time. Marilyn sought to protect her role in
our relationship. So I knew that it had to end.”

I read over my notes again and underlined a
passage.

“You said that normally you don’t have to end
things, how do things normally end in your relationship?”

“Like I said, normally, the woman leaves the
relationship once feelings develop and she realizes that I will never share
those feelings.”

“So you believe yourself incapable of
returning romantic feelings?”

“Yes, I don’t believe in love,” Leon said, a
hint of annoyance in his voice.

“Yet you maintain monogamous sexual
relationships within the context of dominant and submissive relationships?”

“No, they are hardly monogamous. I sleep with
whomever I please, whenever I please.”

“You said that you only keep one relationship
at a time?” I asked, prodding him with my questions.

“Yes,” he said curtly.

“Why is it then, if you really believe
yourself incapable of romantic feelings for a woman, that you maintain a
singular relationship with a woman? I understand you like to sleep around, but
you only explore this type of relationship that has a deeper significance to
you with one person at a time, making it somewhat of a monogamous situation,
even if you have sex with other people.”

Leon eyed me with distaste. His smile was
gone and he was holding back a frown. He picked up the folder and tossed it
over to me. Then he smiled slightly.

“You know, I bet Marilyn was very convincing.
I imagine that you had thought you had struck gold when she walked into your
office, strutting her tight little figure with all those lists of interests
that match up with mine. Did you even bother to do a background check?”

I flustered as I spoke. “Of course we do
background checks, but they take a few days and she walked in on a referral. I
wanted to at least present her file to you before—”

Leon interrupted me mid-sentence, waving his
hand as if to brush away a fly. “Well, when that background check comes back,
you’ll find that Marilyn has never been to college. I doubt she even graduated
high school, but one can always be surprised. Her interests are probably
bullshit as well, but I wouldn’t know; I never asked her about herself.”

Leon’s voice was razor sharp, cutting deep
into my efforts.

“Marilyn is as crazy as they come. The old stereotype
is true, unfortunately, that the crazier they are the better they are in bed,
but she’s unmanageable. You must not be very good at your job, Miss Facet.”

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“Well, if a person like Marilyn could fool
you so easily, then you must not be very good at your job. How many times have
you tried to set people up with violent, obsessive matches? You might want to
consider a new career. It’s never too late to start over.”

My face grew hot with rage. Leon leered at me
as he leaned back in his chair. A new fantasy arose in my mind of me slapping
him across that smug face of his. I could slip handcuffs on him and show him
just how I felt about his little accusations.

“I’ve got lots of jobs at one of my clubs. I
mean, the clubs that are under Stills’s name, of course,” Leon said, winking at
me. “You don’t look like you could bartend too well, and it does take a few
weeks to acclimate. No, I’d want you to be able to start working right away. I
could always use another server. You’d wear black leather underwear and high
top boots. You’d look absolutely fantastic walking in those boots and leather
thongs. I can just imagine—”

“Excuse me!” I interrupted angrily. I started
to rise and Leon began again.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. No, you’re much better
suited for a different job. A figure like that deserves to be admired not just
by the patrons in the sitting area, but the entire club. I could have you as a
go-go dancer in one of the cages that hang above the dance floor. You might not
make as much money at first, but I’m sure you can learn a few tricks that will
make people tip well.”

I rose from my chair and gave Leon a look of
stone. My face was all thorns and poison, scrunched up in anger directed at
this pig sitting before me.

“No, you’d want to make more money right
away, right? I mean, you probably do very well while failing at matchmaking. I
could have you on stage. You and two other girls. Would you want to be the one
with the toys, or the one who gets the toys? I promise that they start out
small and work up to the large ones. I’m sure I could find a man who might want
to perform with you as well, I can just see you—”

My temper exploded into shreds. I kicked the
chair out from behind me and stood before his desk, red-faced and enraged.

“Stop!” I yelled. “You can quit your bullshit
attempts to offend me because it’s done. You’re a fucking pig, a goddamn little
boy who likes to push the buttons of women who see past all your petty little
defenses. Oh yes, I bet you feel so happy about yourself that you can imagine
all these offensive things to say to me to try to degrade me. But you’re just a
crude, little boy whose only imagination stretches to vile porn he’s seen on
the Internet. It’s no wonder that you’re so pathetic it takes your best friend
to try to have you set up with a partner. It’s obviously because no woman in
her right mind would want to stay with you. You’re not alone because you choose
to be, you’re alone because you’re a goddamn coward.”

Leon stood up abruptly. He didn’t look at me.
The muscles in his face fell slack and his eyes stared far into the distance.
It was as if he had instantly deflated. He pushed his chair back and walked
past me without acknowledging my presence in the slightest. It was as if I had
turned into a ghost, nothing more than an apparition that was mildly annoying.

“Where are you going?” I asked, still
enraged. He shut his door and walked towards the elevators. I gathered up my
things quickly, hoping to catch him. I was not about to let him leave this conversation
like this.

I must have hit some nerve or brought up a
point that his shallow wit couldn’t contend with. It was clear that at this
point I had destroyed any possibility of retaining him as a client, but I was
not about to live with the regret that I had not told Leon Christensen every
piece of my mind. I was not going to allow it to end this way.

I ran after him, but missed him as he entered
the elevator and the doors shut behind him. I pressed the button to go down and
waited impatiently. I took out the folder that was underneath my armpit and
opened it. Marilyn Benedict. I cursed her and shoved the entire folder and its
contents in the garbage, pushing it down forcefully.

“Goddamn you,” I said to the folder as I
shoved it down the chrome trash can.

An elevator opened before me and I rushed in.
I pushed the button for the main lobby and mashed the button to close the door.
The elevator descended and I waited silently, my heartbeat speeding up.

Leon was already outside by the time I
reached the lobby. I watched him hail a cab and I raced after him. A cab pulled
up beside him and he got inside just as I ran out of the building. Heavy drops
of rain fell from the sky as I hurriedly hailed another cab to follow him.

I looked up to the sky and clouds had covered
the sun that was a fixture in the normally clear sky. When a cab pulled over to
me, I ducked in quickly and turned to the cab driver, saying something that I
thought I would never have to say.

“Follow that taxi!” I said and handed the guy
a twenty dollar bill. He clicked on the meter and pulled out after the cab
before us. He assured me in his thick accent that he would only follow; he
wouldn’t speed or break the law. I told him that was fine and sat back in the
middle of the seat, still staring out after the cab in front of us.

The ride was long. I had time to calm down
from my previous anger and assess how I felt. I wondered where we were even
going and if Leon had seen me follow him, but it seemed unimportant now. I just
wanted to meet him face to face and tell him everything that I needed to before
this all ended.

It would be an anticlimactic end to this
case. Leon Christensen would not have a match and an argument would be the end
of our business relationship. Was I really ready to end it over him trying to
offend me? In all honesty, it had been more than offensive. It was downright
sexual harassment. Would I let Leon Christensen just walk away from this,
totally off the hook and feeling like he was victorious?

No, I decided immediately. I was going to
confront Leon Christensen and tell him that he wasn’t getting out of this that
easily. I wasn’t going to tolerate any more of his sexual harassment, that was
for sure, but he was going to sit through it until I ended it.

The cab with Leon in it turned left and began
to slow. A large steel fence with pointy edges and intricate designs on it
lined a huge gate that the cab slowly rolled under. It was raining much harder
now and I told the cab driver to pull in after it. When we drove under the
large gates, I realized where Leon Christensen had led me. We were at a
cemetery.

I looked around, wondering exactly what was
going on. I combed through my memory to see if there were any clues there. As
far as I knew, his parents weren’t dead, nor did he ever mention any dead
relatives. Yet here we were at a cemetery.

Leon got out of his cab, seemingly oblivious
to the cab that I was in. Rain fell down on him in droves, soaking him
throughout. His hair fell against his face as he walked right by my cab, not
paying any mind to it. He turned and walked down a pathway. I watched in
silence, the cab driver saying something that I didn’t register.

I turned to the cab driver and paid him the
meter fare plus another ten dollar tip. He was saying something again but I was
already out of the cab, following Leon. Rain soaked my hair and ran down my
face in tiny rivers. I turned back to the cab and leaned into driver’s window.
I held out another twenty to him.

“Wait for me, ok?”

The cab driver took the twenty and looked
around suspiciously. He eyed Leon walking down the path and then turned to
watch the other cab drive off.

“Ten minutes,” he said sternly. “No more. Ten
minutes.”

I nodded in agreement and turned to look for
Leon. He was still walking down the path, head held high against the torrential
rain. I pushed my hair back and followed Leon down the pathway.

He stopped before a tombstone. The rain
hammered down on us harder with each passing second, yet Leon made no move to
shield himself or even cower slightly at the onslaught of water. He stared down
at the tombstone before him and I walked up to him slowly.

Leon sat down on the wet grass. He lowered
his head slightly as he extended his hand out to the tombstone. There was
something sweet about the way he was sitting before the tombstone, not caring
how wet he was getting or how vulnerable he looked. I felt my anger melt away
as pangs of pity struck at my heart. I knelt down beside him.

Neither of us spoke. I began to read the
tombstone and paused when I saw the date. Today was the anniversary of this
person’s death. I looked up and read the name on the tombstone. Kevin Bowers.
He was sixteen years old when he died.

Leon looked up at me, his eyes bright red.
Rain flowed down his face; he was crying. His face remained stoic, yet I knew
that his tears were coming down mixed with the rain. I suppressed the urge to
wipe them away his face, knowing that there was no way to wipe away all of this
rain.