His expression deepened as he looked at me. “You have no idea how those words make me feel. Because I believe you, little girl.”
Little girl. He had no idea how those words made me feel, the tingle that raced across my skin. I desperately wanted to be his little girl, his lover, his toy, whatever he wanted me to be. But he’d warned me I couldn’t be his girlfriend. Would everything else be enough?
“What do you think?” he asked.
“You drive a hard bargain.”
He laughed, an exhalation of nervous energy. “I’m trying. I really am. I suppose this isn’t what you expected.”
“You planned all along to ask me this when you invited me here?”
“I started putting words together the very second I laid eyes on you.”
That made me shiver a little. All that time, he’d been thinking of doing these things to me. “When was that? When you first laid eyes on me?”
He rubbed his forehead and sighed. “It was a while ago.”
I just stared into my coffee, overwhelmed by the moment, by the decision. It seemed to me that the next words I chose to say would alter my life in a significant way, whether they were yes or no.
“I know that I’ve shocked you,” he said. “Why don’t you take some time to think it over? Really think about what I’ve said, think about what you want to do. Next Saturday night I’ll be sitting right here. If you want to give it a try, take a cab here and meet me. If you don’t, then stay away and I promise I’ll leave you alone.”
I nodded. Yes. I needed time to think. Time to come to terms with the decision I knew I’d eventually make, but wasn’t quite ready to make yet, not out loud.
“But Lucy,” he warned, “if you show up here, I’ll take it to mean that you’re ready to begin. You’ll need to bring your overnight bag. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Answer me out loud.”
“Yes, I understand,” I said, blushing hot. “But I can’t get here before 10:45, after the show.”
“Okay then,” he said, nodding. “I’ll meet you here at 10:45. At eleven o’clock, if you haven’t shown up, we’ll understand each other.”
He reached out to me and cradled my face in one of his hands. His fingers felt cool and firm against my flushed skin. He looked right into my eyes. I felt a strange feeling of closeness to him, I suppose because he understood me so well. “Either way, I’ve really enjoyed this hour with you. Tears and all. I think you’re ridiculously beautiful and sweet. Well, maybe not sweet,” he said with a wry smile. “But honest. I appreciate your truthfulness. You have no idea how much.”
He released me and I held his gaze, awed and confused. “I’ve never been so truthful to anyone in my life.”
“Neither have I, in quite some time.” He turned away, looking out at the crowd around us. “I hate to ask it, but in these matters discretion is very important. I’d appreciate very much if you wouldn’t share our...truth telling with anyone who doesn’t need to know.”
“I won’t. I wouldn’t,” I promised. “Although my mother told me never to keep secrets for strangers.”
He looked at me very directly. “We aren’t strangers anymore.”
He drove me home then, and watched from his car until he saw my light come on. I looked from the window but I didn’t wave. I watched him pull back into traffic and wondered what he was thinking at that moment, because my own thoughts were wild. It was 3:45 when I finally laid down, but sleep wouldn’t come. I fantasized instead of his hands on me doing vulgar things. My fantasies were vague and salacious, because I had no idea what he would actually do to me.
And yes, I was quite certain that he was going to do something to me. Before we’d even left the coffee house, when he’d helped me from my chair and guided me to the door with his hand pressed to the small of my back, I had known. I had made up my mind. The words were right on the tip of my tongue, the words to plead with him to take me, that I wanted to be his, that I wanted him to use me, that I wanted him to take me right home. That I wanted him to hurt me with his big, strong hands, that I knew I would enjoy it, that I wanted to try. I didn’t tell him though because he’d told me to think it over, and already I was anxious to obey. So I would think it over until Saturday, as he’d asked me to do, and then I’d go to him at the coffee house, and then...
Then what? What would go on between us? How would it feel? Would he hurt me? How much? Would I enjoy it? Would I feel, as he had suggested, joy? Finally, too tired to keep my eyes open, I started to drift into dreams. The strange fantasies subsided, replaced by one single word. Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. Matthew. I was already gone for him, totally gone. I was naively, desperately crushed on Matthew Norris even though he’d told me very bluntly he didn’t want a girlfriend. And I believed he meant it when he said that to me, but I thought that would change. I was sure if I was good enough, I could change his mind.
* * *
Oh, my fucking back. It was just ridiculous. I looked up at Pietro toiling away at his canvas and I could tell he was in that zone, that place that he went to sometimes. There was no way I could stop him now, although my muscles ached for relief. What kind of art model would I be, to interrupt him in his moments of genius? A less sore art model, I thought dismally.
I’d sat for him all day Sunday, then on Monday for a few more hours. Now it was Friday night and he’d called me, his voice filled with urgency. “I’m so close to finished,” he’d begged. “Lucy, please, you must come!”
So here I lay at nearly midnight, aching and twitchy. I let my mind wander, a trick I’d learned from dance. When something was torturous and took excruciating effort, you just let your mind wander away from the pain. You can probably guess the place to which my mind wandered. It wandered to Matthew, who I planned to see the next night.
I was impatient, yes, but a little scared too. Would he be happy with me once he had me in his arms? Would he realize he’d made a big mistake and end things? I had no doubt he would end things abruptly if he wasn’t pleased with me. I would do everything I could to prevent that from happening, but there was only so much I could give, only myself as I was. If he decided I wasn’t good enough...
I daydreamed there on the cold hard floor of a painter’s studio and pictured Matthew sitting somewhere more comfortable thinking about me. Maybe his mind strayed to me during some important developer business meeting, or as he sat in the backseat of his car on the phone while his beefy driver drove him around. That driver, I wondered what was up with him. Maybe he procured drugs for Matthew. Or women. Hookers. I couldn’t imagine someone like him staying continent for long. If he’d broken up with his girlfriend, what had he been doing in the meantime? I would make him wear condoms, wouldn’t let him near me without them, that was certain. There was no way I’d give in on that. Everything else, well...how far would I go for him? How far would he try to make me go, and what would he do? How much time had he spent since he’d met me, thinking about how he was going to use me, as he’d said? Did he already know what would go on? Had he long ago planned exactly what would occur? Or would he make it up as he went along, based on my reactions?
My reactions. What might those be? I had no idea, because I still had no idea what he would do to me. I’d read books about BDSM. I had a general idea of what people did in the world of dominance and submission, but he’d scoffed and claimed that most of those things didn’t interest him. That all he cared about was using me, making me his own. His own thing. I smiled, remembering when he’d called me a thing of beauty. I’d told him peevishly that I wasn’t a thing. He was probably thinking even then that he would have the last laugh. He had probably thought to himself, well, Lucy, we’ll see.