Knowing the Ropes (13 page)

What happened instead was that the coding solution came to him.

Well, his boss would be happy, anyway.

It wasn’t until evening that he finally worked up the nerve to call Mrs. Sherman. Some large part of him was praying that she wouldn’t answer the phone, that the number he had for her was wrong.

Maybe he’d get lucky and a great crater would swallow Jamaica Plain whole and spare him the awkwardness of a heart-to-heart with his ex-lover’s mother.

He wasn’t that lucky. Mrs. Sherman answered the phone on the second ring, with an almost breathless, eager quality that vanished as soon as she realized it was Nick.

After far more pondering than he’d really needed to do, Nick had just decided to go for the easy, straightforward, non-alarmist method. “Hey, it’s Nick. I’ve lost Natalie’s new number. I was hoping I could get it from you. I found some of her stuff in the back of the closet and need to know what to do with it.”

Mrs. Sherman snorted, and somehow the snort sounded bitter, even though it was brief and essentially toneless. “I hope you have better luck reaching her than I have. I never seem to catch her when she actually has time to talk, and it always takes forever for her to call back. I haven’t heard from her in a few weeks myself.”

“She must be busy. New job, new home, new boyfriend.” Nick hadn’t meant to ask, but he couldn’t resist. “What’s he like? I know it’s none of my business, but…” He wanted to come up with some lighthearted, teasing way to say it, but what came out was, “I may not be involved with her any more, but she’s still my friend, and none of us have heard much about him.”

Other than a few things that made him and everyone else wary, but again, not something Mrs. S needed to know.

A long silence, a silence of the kind that Nick didn’t like to hear from anyone female, especially not someone his mother’s age—a considering-whether-or-not-to-cry kind of silence, the kind where someone’s holding her breath, thinking so hard he can almost hear it.

Finally Mrs. Sherman spoke, her voice iron gray and distant. Hurt, definitely. Angry too, but mostly hurt. “I haven’t met him,” she said. “Natalie never brought him home, and she hasn’t invited me up to visit. I even asked, because some of us girls were going up to the outlets in North Conway, and I thought I could take a side trip and see her, not that it’s all that close. She’s in some tiny little place that doesn’t even have its own post office. Her PO box is in another town. I offered to take her out to lunch, if her house isn’t ready for entertaining. I know how long it can take after you move into a new place, and how fussy she is. She said no.”

With that, whatever steps she’d taken to control herself slipped, and Nick heard her voice catch. “It’s just not like her, Nick. Maybe you can figure out what’s going on. It seemed like she always listened to you, even after you guys broke up.”

If only you knew, Nick thought sadly as he ended the call.

After that conversation, he didn’t expect an answer when he called Natalie, so he wasn’t surprised when he didn’t get one.

He was surprised when he heard a man on her voice mail, not a phone-company prerecording, but just a guy. Pleasant-enough voice, slightly self-conscious, like most people sounded doing their voice mails: “Natalie can’t answer the phone right now. Leave a message, please, and we’ll get back to you.”

Innocuous enough, but Nick was primed to hear anything out of the ordinary as suspicious. Why would the guy need to record her phone message for her?

It was one more small way someone could take control. Natalie had a phone, but he suspected her dom kept it, let her make calls only occasionally, maybe screened the calls and told her whom she could contact.

Kind of creepy. Nick was pretty sure that Selene’s domestic-violence-counselor side would be all over it as a danger sign, even if her kinky-submissive-chick side understood the appeal on some level. Hell, Nick understood the appeal. Controlling someone who wanted to be controlled could be fun. But the way this guy was doing it seemed over the top.

Natalie probably loved it, at least in theory. She’d always craved the kind of micromanaging that some people in the scene found hot and Nick found at best annoying and at worst unhealthy. How she liked it in practice, when she realized she was losing touch with her friends and even her mom, might be another story.

One he was determined to find out.

Nick left her a message. “Hi, got this number from your mom. Everyone misses you. Give me a call sometime when you get a chance.” Like that. Simple, basic, innocuous, nothing that would scream to her new dom that he was the old one, if the guy didn’t already know.

And now he’d wait to see if she called, and if she did, what she had to say.

If she were happy—well, he’d have a drink in her honor and hope for the best. Let her go, let her be happy in her own way with someone closer to her ideal. It didn’t need to make sense to him as long as it did to Natalie and her master.

If she wasn’t happy… Not sure what he could do there. God knew he couldn’t be what she wanted. Just like she’d said at the end, he wasn’t a hardcore master. He was a bedroom dom who wanted a sub between the sheets but an equal partner in the streets.

A kinky boyfriend, she’d put it, withering scorn in her voice but something wistful underlying it as if she’d wished one of them could be different.

Unfortunately, neither of them could.

He’d been asking himself ever since Natalie left if they could have found some compromise between her needs and his. If he could have loved her enough to give her the kind of structure and restrictions, tasks and punishments she seemed to need.

If he could have loved her enough to treat her without tenderness except on special occasions, as a reward.

Or if they could work out something more like Garth and Alison’s master/slave relationship, stricter than what he wanted, looser than what she craved, but with a mix of love and discipline that perhaps they could both live with.

He’d managed, in a bored single man’s active fantasy life, before he’d met Selene, to convince himself it could work if he could see Natalie again under the right circumstances. Basically grab her by the hair, say he was going to punish her for leaving, see if she melted, and if she did—which, in the fantasies, of course she did, in exquisite, wet, moaning detail—set about proving he was boss, and that meant she had to accept his kindness as well as his harshness, compliments as well as criticisms, kisses as well as pain. A wedding ring as well as a collar. Because he said so.

Not exactly romantic by most people’s standards, but he and Natalie weren’t most people.

Would rescuing her from an out-of-hand relationship be the right circumstances, the catalyst that could pull them back together?

And if it was, would he still want to try?

He remembered how amazingly sexy Natalie looked, tied in some seemingly impossible yogic position, her skin oiled and glistening by candlelight, weights hanging from the rings in her nipples, her sex wet, held open with ropes for his pleasure, and, while she had a hard time admitting it, hers. Remembered how she responded to being spanked or flogged, how she’d beg for more, then half the time apologize for the “greed” and “selfishness” he so enjoyed. How she sucked his cock as if she needed no greater reward than to taste his hot sperm, to feel him shoot down her throat.

But she’d never come from sucking him like Selene did.

And in the two years they’d been together, she’d never offered her assistance with a real problem. Oh, she took good care of him in all the small ways, Donna Reed in black leather, cooking for him, refilling his drinks, rubbing his feet, cleaning his condo whether he asked her to or not, and sometimes it got to the point of freaking him out. Being waited on was nice, but she’d look hurt if he got his own drink, and downright confused if he got her one while he was up.

But the times when something potentially big came up—thankfully those occasions had been rare—she’d sat back, glad to do whatever he suggested in the crisis, but not offering any ideas of her own.

Selene, on the other hand, had jumped right in when she heard Natalie might be in trouble. Offered to help. Offered concrete suggestions. Hell, offered to hide bodies and, if necessary, to create them.

That might be the kind of thing that would lose her the Perfect Sub Seal of Approval from the Craigs of the world, but it was reassuring in a lover.

A playmate, he corrected himself. They’d agreed to keep it strictly friendly and playful—and for all he knew, she’d respond as poorly to a hint of romance as Natalie had, for her own reasons.

But even if you were saying playmate, that implied friend—and he was all for a friend who could react like a grown-up in a crisis.

Especially if she also had a gorgeous ass, a very dirty mind and a kinky streak a mile wide.

He let himself drift from his worries to the more pleasant topic of Selene naked, red-bottomed and smiling, either awaiting his next command or…hell, it was Selene, and she wasn’t that passive… suggesting something hot to try next.

That his cell phone buzzed just then was a pleasant coincidence.

A text message from Selene:
Thinking of you. V. wet & hot. Thx for great weekend, sir (or shd that B Nick?)

Grinning like a Cheshire cat, or maybe like an idiot—he preferred Cheshire cat, but idiot applied equally well—Nick texted her back:
Busy 2night?

He could practically hear the pout in her response.
Must do wash. Have no clothes.

Naked is good. Not 4 class, tho. Call when yr home alone. B naked. We’ll take care of wet&hot problem.

Not quite an hour later—not like he was timing it or anything—Selene called.

Chapter Thirteen

Nick would so laugh at her if he had any idea how crazy this phone-sex date was making her. Good crazy, as in wet pussy, rock-hard nipples and a brain full of lusty ideas, but also crazy with nerves and more anxiety than the more rational bits of Selene’s brain figured the situation merited. It was humiliating to realize her hands literally shook as she stared at the phone, contemplating what she’d say when Nick answered.

She couldn’t believe she was doing this.

Couldn’t believe she’d actually texted a new lover to tell him how turned-on she’d gotten thinking about him.

Couldn’t believe she was calling him now for what was obviously going to be phone sex, and, while it was his suggestion, she’d certainly instigated it with that text message. She’d never even thought of such an outrageous—

Okay, that was a lie. She’d
thought
of things along these lines plenty of times: naughty e-mails, text messages that would brighten a guy’s day in a very below-the-belt sort of way, phone sex to while away some of the time she couldn’t spend in a lover’s company, in a lover’s bed. But she’d never done anything hotter than slightly suggestive e-mails or texts, flirting over the phone but nothing explicit. She was afraid of making a fool of herself, of sounding slutty or too eager in new relationships, and once you really got with a guy, that almost desperate sexual edge faded.

At least it always had. She had a feeling that with Nick, it wouldn’t. This was going to be all about the fun, the sex, the kink, not the mundane stuff that, while necessarily part of a serious adult relationship, tended to drag said adult relationship down with its weight.

Maybe knowing that was why she felt free to be more outrageous than usual.

It was embarrassing to realize at this late date how conventional some parts of her character really were.

But that was going to change, damn it. She wanted to be the daring, sensual creature she felt like on the inside, and Nick was going to help. Had already helped. She’d spent all day distracted by erotic reveries, her breasts aching to be touched, bitten, maybe bound with ropes, her panties intermittently damp as the memory of Nick’s cock intruded on whatever professional, workplace- or classroom-appropriate things were supposed to be ruling her mind.

Those thoughts had led to the text message, even though she hadn’t dared to send it from work. And the text message had led to her staring at her phone as if it were a wild animal that might turn on her.

What if she made the call and then couldn’t do it? Clammed up in embarrassment or started laughing or got a complete brain freeze and couldn’t think of a thing to say? Or what if her roommate came home early from waitressing? Nick had left it in her hands. She could just not call, or call to say something had come up and she couldn’t talk long, if it scared her that much.

If what she was discovering about herself scared her that much.

That was what it really came down to, didn’t it? She both loved and feared the sexual being Nick was helping her unearth from layers of convention. Backing out of this small thing would mean defeat on some level. A step back into the ordinary, vanilla world, the one where she knew she was safe enough but also didn’t want to live full-time.

Damn it. Damn her introspection. This wasn’t her whole life on the line here. It was just talking. Sexy talking, but just talking.

If she was attaching so much importance to something so noncritical, she needed to lighten up.

A little phone sex that would probably lead to laughs and lust in equal measure sounded like a good way to do it.