Taunt Me (Rough Love 2)

“I don’t want that,” I said, horrified. “That’s the last thing I want.”

“It might be good for you.”

“No.”

He spread his arms. “Then I suppose you’ll continue to be an enigma to me. Maybe it’s for the best.”

“I think it would be for the best, Professor Cantor,” I said, to remind him that he was still a teacher in my eyes. We’d barely been out of class for half an hour. I picked up my bag. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you around.”

“I hope so. Have a good break. Oh, and Chere,” he said when I was almost to the door.

I turned back with a sense of dread, or maybe sadness. “What?”

“You’re a great designer. A great artist. Forget everything else I said, because it doesn’t matter. You do amazing work.”

*** *** ***

I tried to forget everything Cantor said, but it was difficult.

W was out of my life, gone, disappeared. He wasn’t coming back, and I was lonely. The winter break stretched out before me, three weeks of drifting angst and inactivity. By the end of the second week, I was losing my mind.

I had to go to a club. I had to be around people. So what if it was the dead time just after New Years? Someone would be out and about. I thought about making the trek uptown to Evolution City, to the big, loud, busy place, but I ended up at Studio Valiant instead. For the balconies, I told myself. Because I liked the balconies.

Cantor wasn’t there the first night I went, or the second night, but the third time I showed up, he was the first person I saw on the dungeon floor. He wore light colored jeans this time, jeans that revealed an alluring play of muscles. He oozed confidence as he flogged and teased another pretty blonde.

Him and his blondes. He would have loved me back in my Miss Kitty days. I didn’t go up to the balcony right away, but stayed on the dungeon floor, twenty feet or so from where he was playing. Near the end of the scene, he turned to look around the room and caught me staring at him. I didn’t try to duck and hide. I let him notice me, and that was when I realized I was ready to let myself be with him.

That sent me running for the balcony. Had I really come here to hook up with Cantor, the married dungeon playboy? The idea of it terrified me, because it meant I was giving up on my safety, my staunch independence from entanglement and heartbreak. I hunched behind the balcony curtains, rubbing my temples, slowly losing my nerve. I finally convinced myself to leave, but not quickly enough. I ran into him halfway down the stairs, in the dark, claustrophobic stairwell, to the strains of Mozart’s Paris Symphony.

“I was just leaving,” I said.

He slid an arm around my waist. He was shirtless, a little sweaty, but he smelled good anyway. “Why are you here?” he asked.

I shook my head. I was an idiot. “Professor Cantor—”

“I’m not your professor anymore. Call me Martin.”

I clasped my hands in front of me like I was praying. It had been so long, so long, since anyone had held me like this.

“I don’t know what I want,” I said. “But I came here, and I think I did that to see you.”

“I’m here. How can I help you? Do you want to play? We don’t have to do anything complicated.”

I shook my head. “I can’t. I don’t… I don’t know…”

“You don’t know what you want? It’s okay not to know.” He let go of my waist and took my hand. “Do you want to get out of here? Talk outside where it’s not so noisy?”

I nodded. Yes. Getting out of here was a great idea.

We went out front, to a round concrete wall that banked the entrance. He sat down and gestured me to the space beside him. Aside from the tattooed bouncers, there were a few smokers standing around, and a Dom/sub couple engaged in a heated conversation. Groups of people flounced by on their way to other nighttime destinations.

We didn’t say anything at first, just sat there next to each other. I didn’t know what to say.

“Why do you like being lonely?” he asked after a while. “It seems like you try really hard to be lonely. I never see you with anyone. You don’t hang out with the other students in class.”

“I’m older than them.”

“You never talk to anyone at the club. You hide in that balcony.” He turned to me in the light from the street, propping an elbow on his knee. “Just so you know, anyone at Studio Valiant would play with you. Man, woman, Dom, sub, switch. You could take your pick.”

“That’s not true.”