Lessons From the Professor

“Partially, but more so because they understand themselves, what they like, where their limitations lie, and what direction they want to travel in. It makes my job as a Dom easier to perform. ”

“You seem like the type of man who likes a challenge.”

“Sometimes,” he said. “Certainly, that was the case when it came to you.”

“Why?”

“Because your responses were the most raw and natural I had ever seen.”

“How can you say that? Isn’t that why you were with this girl?”

“Her name was Christine, and what I have yet to mention is, she was an actress. After our session at the party she pursued me. It was flattering, of course, but I resisted for months.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s nothing worse than an old man whose been made out to be fool by a younger woman. Also, what she said she was looking for didn’t match what I believed I had in me to give.”

Sidney’s gut twisted into knots as he took the leap and opened up to Sutton for the first time. “After a few failed attempts at a relationship as a youth, I figured they weren’t for me. BDSM offered me an alternative. I was providing someone with what they wanted, but there was no deep emotional connection. I didn’t have to meet parents, or go to dinners with friends.” He could see the confusion in her face as she frowned.

“We’re nothing like that.”

“Not all BDSM relationships are like the one we have now, and I was always careful to seek out like-minded partners. We were friends who fulfilled a need for one another, and that was as far as it went.”

“Why would you want to live like that, Sidney?”

This was the moment he’d been dreading. When he laid everything out on the line and waited for her response.

“I had a horrible example of relationships growing up. My father was an alcoholic who liked to beat my mother and terrorized my sisters and me. From the moment I hit my growth spurt at eleven, it became my duty to protect them. I think the experience fostered my need to be in control of things, as well as my interest in the study of human behavior.”

“Oh my God, Sidney, I’m so sorry.” Her eyes were warm and filled with sympathy, but no pity. That he could handle.

“It’s the past now, and I’m honest enough to admit, my mother should have left, but it’s just not what you do where we come from.”

“What made Christine so different from everyone before her?”

“Looking back on it now I think it was just time to take a chance combined with the fact that she wore me down. After six months of saying no, my mind began to wonder what if. I’m not a man who lives his life with regrets, so I agreed to a trial period. Thirty days to see if we were could meet in the middle and find common ground.”

“It’s obvious you must have,” Sutton said.

“We did. She brought out a protective instinct in me that allowed her to work her way under my skin. She had some issues being bratty, but I saw it as a challenge that would push me to become a better Dom.”

“Bratty how?”

“Christine purposely disobeyed my orders, and did what she could to test my boundaries, and get a rise out of me, or in her words when she left, attempt to.” Bitterness rose inside of him as he scowled. “For three years things were great. I thought she was t

he one, and I bought a ring.” Sidney rushed ahead when Sutton gasped. If he stopped now he would never get all the words out. It still burned him that he had been played so easily. “I came home early from work, ready to propose, and found her moving her things out of the house.”

“Oh my God! Sidney!”

He glanced up to see her cover her mouth with her hand. Her brown eyes were wide and filled with horror. It was an unexpected comfort. She didn’t seem to see him as less of a man. A man was supposed to be strong, and not show weakness, and being taken for a ride was a huge oversight, especially for me. I study the behavior of others for a living, for Christ’s sake. That’s your father talking. Sidney had moved on from the past for the most part, but occasionally it snuck back in to haunt him. “As she packed she told me I was cold, emotionless, and would be alone for the rest of my life if I didn’t change. She said the BDSM was an experimental stage for her that was coming to an end, and she’d found someone better suited to her needs.”

“What a bitch!”

Her anger on his behalf made him smile. She and Christine were like night and day. It was a shame he’d let his insecurity blind him to that fact for so long. He owed Jackson really. Without his unwanted appearance he’d have to eat a lot more crow to get her back.

“Her cool dismissal made me snap. I broke her figurines, tossed her suitcases out into the hallway and ranted and raved like a lunatic. I had never been that out of control in my life. It scared the shit out of me. After years of watching my father terrify the women in my life, the look of horror and fear on her face made me sick to my stomach. I think that’s why I took the break-up so hard. It made me re-evaluate what I thought I knew to be a fact.”

“What do you mean?”