“Just finished up.”
“I have a surprise for you when you get home.”
Home. A house in the hills that already had too many painful memories. Medications. Falls. Fights. He’d been sick and pissed. I loved him. I’d never leave him. But some days, I felt like we were coming apart at the seams.
“The guys were going to dinner. I’m a little hungry.”
He paused. The silence seemed eternal, and though I imagined him staring into space with the phone at his ear, when I heard a car door slam, I knew he hadn’t been inactive.
“Jonathan, it’s—“
“Stay there.”
“Not tonight, I—“
“This sounds to me like you’re telling me no.” The calm, arrogant dominance in his voice was like a slap in the ass because I hadn’t heard it in six months. “For the sake of clarity, goddess, when it comes to me, that’s not in your vocabulary. I don’t hear it.”
I said yes sir with all the sarcasm of a spoiled adolescent, and immediately regretted it. Luckily, my husband had already hung up the phone.
JONATHAN
This shit stopped tonight.
I parked in the back and went into the building. There were a couple of doors ajar, behind which I could hear the laughter and mumblings of men. I heard her three down, her voice humming, piano strings getting hammered one by one, slowly.
I slipped into the engineering room and looked at her through the window.
She sat at the keyboard, scribbling something onto a notebook, then considering the keys again, back straight, neck as long and white as a swan’s, ebony hair braised and twisted to the top of her head. A goddess. She’d waited. I don’t know what would have happened with us if she hadn’t.
The engineering booth was empty and dark, and I watched her like a movie. I saw her bite a fingernail. Close her eyes. Tap a finger, then suddenly burst out with a word in one long note. It was you. She hit three keys, then three different keys, sang the word again, in a different register, and wrote it down.
It was as if I hadn’t seen the length of her neck in months, nor the delicacy of her wrists. I knew every inch of her skin, every curve of her body, yet, that day, when she’d said no to me, I anticipated the prospect of showing her why that wasn’t going to wash any longer with no little delight.
I went back into the hall, closing the engineering room door behind me.
MONICA
His scent cut through the dank musk of the studio before the sound of the door closing reached my ears.
“Hi,” I said without looking up from my notes. “Can we meet with those guys? Jerry wants to lay out a plan for Wednesday.”
His fingertips grazed the back of my neck, and I shuddered, closing my eyes halfway.
“No,” he whispered.
“I’ll meet you at home later, if you want.”
“Stand up.”
I looked up. He stood over me, hand at the back of my neck, face broaching no arguments. I don’t know what my expression said, but my mind went utterly dark for a second.
I stood, reaching for my bag.
He gently took it from me and laid it back down. I started to object but didn’t get past the first syllable before he had his fingers to my lips.
“Unbutton your shirt,” he said. We gazed deeply at each other for longer than usual, and I knew even before my fingers touched my shirt, that he wasn’t interested in a standard, sweet, encounter.
He brushed his thumb over my lips, across my jaw, and lodged it under my chin, forcing me to look at the dusty fluorescent lights.
I undid my buttons in a businesslike fashion while he spoke.
“I haven’t told you this in a long time, so I want to remind you. You are mine. Any time. Any place. Without questions. You get on your knees when I say. You spread your legs when I say. You open your mouth and take whatever I put in it. Do you understand?”
He must have felt me swallow against the heel of his hand. He was back. I didn’t know when or how, but this wasn’t sick Jonathan getting pissed at his handful of pills. This wasn’t the guy who let me top him, or the man who made love to me fearfully and gently. That man was a good husband. Difficult, because he felt like his body wasn’t his own, but a good life mate by any standard.
For as long as I’d been married, I hadn’t felt safe.
Until then, staring at the ceiling, unprepared to hear the voice of my king again. Then, my insides vibrated like a piano string and I shut my eyes tight against tears.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Pull your pants down.”
I worried about the door. Was it open? And the door to the engineering room. Anyone could walk in.
This was a simple matter of trust, which I’d forgotten how to do. Trust him. You’re safe with him.