The Art of Domination (29 page)

After about an hour,
I decide now’s a good a time as any for Isa and I to disappear for a few days. While she continues to sleep, I call Sawyer and tell him my plans. Next, I call Carson and ask if the weather conditions are good enough to fly us to Beaver Creek. He calls back a few minutes later and confirms that it is, but with only a small window of opportunity.

I quickly get a bag
packed for Isa and I, dress her, and call Raul to pick us up. Isa is still out cold and doesn’t even stir when I carry her out to the Rover. I lay her in the back seat and sit next to her. Raul looks over the seat at us and looks concerned as well.

“Is she okay, Sir?”

“Yes, she’ll be fine,” I reassure him.

Once at the airfield, Carson helps Raul get the bags on the plane and I carry
Isa up the stairs and into Mustang Sally. I get her buckled in, recline her back and she stirs only slightly and mumbles something that I can’t make out.

The flight is quick, less than an hour. There’s a rental
car waiting for us compliments of Sawyer’s preplanning. I give Carson a corporate card and tell him to get a hotel room nearby and enjoy himself for the next few days. I point out some places to eat and tell him to take in some skiing as well. He seems excited at the prospect of an impromptu vacation and the possibility of getting laid by some local snow bunny. I’m sure bragging about being my private pilot won’t hurt his chances at all.

We get Isa loaded into the rental and I leave for the cabin. On the drive, I keep my hand on Isa’s chest so I can keep track of her breathing. She’s been asleep a good four hours now and I’m hoping she’s ready to wake up. I miss her. I hear myself say it and I feel ridiculous.
She’s only sleeping, but still, I want to talk to her.

The drive to the cabin is about 30 minutes from the airfield and I have time to think about everything
that’s transpired the last week. It’s been hectic and completely full of bullshit drama.  I’m a married man now and I haven’t even had a chance to enjoy it. We end up on a dirt road that’s rough and Isa starts to stir, but she’s still very groggy and falls right back to sleep.

What did Erika tell me?
The woman looks just like all the rest of the women I’ve dated. Jesus. Was I that predictable in my selection of women? Tall, long brown hair and thin? I look over at Isa and I can’t even remember why I ever liked those women.

Isa is
so damned beautiful. Her hair is in her face and she’s bundled in a large coat, and my heart aches for her. I feel so shitty that she had to find out about her mother the way she did. But the way she completely lost it and the way she was crying…
fuck.
She’d rather die than be without me? Did she really mean that? She sounded completely earnest. The way she said it tore at my heart.

Whoever has brought on all of this
is seriously going to suffer my wrath. Isa never would’ve had to worry about any of this if that crazy woman hadn’t decided to exact her revenge on me.
Who the fuck is it
? I try and recall all of my past relationships that lasted more than a few weeks. Other than my submissives, there were very few. I pushed her aside like trash?
Who the fuck is it?
I can’t remember treating any woman cruelly. Well, not intentionally, anyway. Perhaps it’s someone who has a vendetta against Isabel. I never thought of that. Maybe Greer put some woman up to his dirty work.  It’s seems like a long shot, but it’s worth looking into.

Finally at the cabin, I unload Isa first, then t
he bags. The cabin needs a light cleaning, but overall, it’s not bad. I have someone pop by once a month to do routine maintenance and clean up when needed, so it’s fine.

I undress Isa down to her bra and panties and put her in bed.

I light the fireplace and make some coffee and dig out my laptop. There’s no wifi signal up here and the phone signal is iffy at best. I suddenly feel nervous about being out here with no way to get any real help. Sawyer was adamant about Murphy and Alex coming with me, but I blew it off. Now I’m regretting my decision. I open the safe in the loft and find my Sig pistol that I keep here. I load it and set it out on the kitchen counter, just in case.

I hear Isa’s voice in the loft calling my name so I grab some water and go to her. She’s sitting up in bed, rubbing her eyes and looking around.

“Where are we, sugar?”

“At the cabin in Beaver Creek. Here, drink all o
f this. You need it,” I tell her, handing her the water.

She doesn’t argue and chugs it down quickly.

“I feel disgusting,” she says.

“It must be the medicine. You must be starving, too.”

“Yes, I am. I think my stomach has started to eat itself,” she replies and I laugh.

“Wait here and I’ll grab some crackers for you to snack on.”

I run downstairs and find some dry goods and bring them back to Isa. She eats like a ravenous animal and then sheepishly looks up at me with crumbs all down the front of her and on the corners of her mouth.

“Sorry,” s
he says, trying to clean her mouth and wipe the crumbs off her chest.

“Hungry
much?” I ask.

“Yeah, just a little.”

“Dylan… I… I…” She starts to say something and I know where this is going.

“Don’t, Isa. Let’s not talk about that. Are you feeling at all better?”

“Better?” she says incredulously.

“I mean, considering what you found out. Do you feel okay otherwise?”

“I suppose,” she answers weakly, but tears well up in her eyes and they start to stream down her face.

“Okay. I’m getting more medicine,” I say, standing up and walking towards the stairs.

“No! I don’t want any more of that crap. Please, Dylan. I don’t want another shot,” she insists.

I momentarily stop and stare at her,
deciding whether or not to give it to her.

“Come sit with me and t
alk to me.” Her eyes are needy and she looks gloomy.

I walk back to the bed and spoon up next to her and hug her to my chest.

“Tell me about your childhood, Dylan. Tell me what it was like to live in a happy home with loving parents. Tell me, sugar.”

I run my fingers through her hair and try and think of some good memories to tell her about.

“My childhood was very uneventful, Isa. Bland, really.”

“I doubt that. You didn’t turn out to be as dangerous and sexy as you are without having lived some kind of fantastic childhood.”

I look down at her and she’s watching me with heated honey eyes.

“Dangerous and sexy, huh?”

“Don’t giv
e me that look. I want stories not sex right now.”

“Fine,
” I say pouting.

“What did your parents do
for a living?”

“My father was a
private contract engineer. My mother was a veterinarian.”

“Really?
A vet? Did you have lots of pets?” she asks excitedly.

“No, not really.
She often times brought home abandoned animals that we would keep for a short time until she nursed them back to health and adopted them out. Did you have any pets?”

She pauses and
runs her fingers along my chest and pinches my nipples through my shirt.

“No. My father would never allow one. It’s a good thing
, too. He probably would’ve killed it in one of his rages,” she says sadly. When she realizes what she’s said, her eyes well up again.

“If you could’ve had a pet, what would it have been?”
I ask, trying to keep her talking.

“A cat.”

“A cat? Seriously? You’re one of
those
people?”

“
Like you don’t like pussy?” she asks wryly.

“I love pussy.”

“Mmm-hmm, I know you do. I always imagined myself being single and growing old, surrounded by 15 cats and my artwork.  How super eccentric would that be? Then I’d die and no one would find me for weeks and I’d be half eaten by my cats.”

“Jesus, Isa, h
ow morbid.”

“I
know, right? Now tell me more. What was your first girlfriend like?”

I pause, not wanting to talk about that.

“Tell me. Don’t be coy. Was she older? Younger? Tell me, Dylan.”

Ah, hell
.
Fine.
“She was my age.”

“Which was?”

“Fifteen.”

“Don’t tell me, she was tall, thin and had bro
wn hair?” Isa asks sardonically.

“Gee, how did you know?
”

“Oh, brother,” s
he replies as she rolls her eyes. “Did you love her?”

“
I was 15. I didn’t even know what love was.”

“So? You can love at 15. Did you have sex with her?”

“Yes.”

“Were you
über dominant then, too?”

I laugh
out loud at her question. “No, I wasn’t dominant then. I was 15. I could barely carry on a conversation with a girl at that point, let alone tie her down and whip her.”

“But did you think about doing that
then?”

“Yes, but not really in those te
rms. I mean, I knew I was an alpha and I knew what I wanted to try, even at that age. I just didn’t know about the lifestyle and that it had a name.”

“Like me. I knew what I wanted
to try, but I just didn’t know the things I fantasized about had a fancy acronym and pretty equipment to go along with it.”

“Pretty?”

“Yes. You can’t deny that the cross is pretty, Dylan. And the rig, well, that’s just a piece of artwork in and of itself. The spanking bench… mmm; that’s delightful and inspirational…”

“
Only you would think that. When did you start fantasizing about bondage anyway?”

Isa looks up at me and furrows her eyebrows. “I don’t really remember exactly when, but it was a few years after I moved away from my father. I always thought sex would be more exciting and
after a few partners, it was just proving to be… boring. I used to lie in bed at night and dream about someone tying me down and doing dirty things to me. Those fantasies were far more interesting and exciting than anything I had experienced in real life. I started painting because it was the only way to get the images out of my head.”

Her cheeks pink up and she twirls her ring. This is a revelation. I start to ask more about that but she quickly changes the subject.

“Did you love your parents?”

Her question comes out of nowhere. “Of course I did.”

“I don’t mean because they were your parents, but because they were good people. That’s what I mean.”

“Yes,
I loved them very much. They were good people. They were very good to me. My mother was very kind and loving. She had a great sense of humor, too. Like you. I didn’t know my father very well because he worked so much. He was stern, but also very generous.” I feel shy and awkward answering her questions.

“
So you’re like your father – stern and generous.”

“
I never thought about it, but I guess you’re right - I take after my father.” A memory flashes in my mind to when I was a preteen. “My father was very much an alpha male and we would often times butt heads because of it. Of course, I know now it was because we were so much alike – two alpha males fighting for control. My mother was always there to referee our arguments, though, and she balanced us out well. She was firm believer in not going to bed angry and would insist that we resolve our issues before calling it a night. Both of us being stubborn, would sit up until the wee hours of the morning until my mother would finally lose her temper and make us both apologize.”

I’ve never talked about my parents so personally before. Isa is watching me intently and smiling, taking some of my anxiety about discussing them away.

“You, stubborn? Nooo,” Isa replies playfully. “Do you miss them?” she continues.

“Very much.”
Now would be the perfect time to tell her what happened to them.
Now
.
Tell her, Young
. Tell her how your dumb ass contributed to the death of the two people who meant the most in your life.

“Isa… what was your first boyfriend like?”
I’m such a chicken shit.

“
Well, he wasn’t really a boyfriend. He was more like…” she blushes and starts twirling her wedding ring again.

“What? Tell me.”

“He just wanted me for sex.”

Fuck. Why did I ask?
I hear myself sigh loudly and she looks up at me fearful. “Tell me more, love. I want to know what kind of jackass wouldn’t want you for more,” I tell her.

Her smile returns and she
opens up a bit more. “I was very young. I had just graduated high school and moved to Denver. He was the first person who actually talked to me like a human being.”