Thoroughly Whipped

“Thank God!” I cried and jumped to my feet. Harry slowly got up too, taking his jacket off the floor and tossing it over his shoulder like a Burberry catwalk model. When the doors opened, a man in a boiler suit was waiting for us.

“All fixed,” he said.

“I could fucking kiss you!” I said, patting him on the arm; then I raced toward the entrance.

“Then why didn’t you?” he shouted after me.

Rain thrashed against the glass windows. Screw the subway tonight; I’d be splurging on a cab. Just as I burst through the doors, a sheet of rain slapped me in my face. “Shit!” I shouted, running toward the road in the freak tsunami that seemed to have hit New York in the last few hours.

Trying to keep my list dry, I tucked it in my jacket pocket, and I threw my other arm into the air to hail a cab. Ten minutes and a thousand full cabs later, I felt like crying. No one would see me in the rain anyway, and if someone did see me and ask me what was wrong (which they wouldn’t, of course—we were in New York), I would simply tell them that I was a voluntary sexual submissive in training and was about to miss my chance with a French master because I got stuck in an elevator with my boss, who I was pretty sure hated me.

A car suddenly stopped and I exhaled in relief. When the window wound down, I saw it was Harry Sinclair. “Why are you standing in the rain?”

“Water is out at home.” I pointed to the sky. “Thought I’d use nature’s own source as my shower tonight.”

“Are you joking?” he asked, eyebrows pulled down.

“Of course I’m joking!” I shouted back, water soaking through my pale-pink shirt, likely giving everyone in New York a peep show. “I’m trying to hail a cab, but seemingly every taxi in Manhattan is being used tonight.”

“Get in the car, Miss Parisi.”

“No. It’s okay,” I snapped, done with every part of today, especially taking orders from an Englishman with a strong sense of his own superiority.

I moved away from Harry’s car to finally flag a damn cab. But life, wanting to keep me firmly locked into the disastrous theme for the day, saw to it that my heel slipped into a crack in the pavement and I swiftly tumbled on my ass. My jacket, purse, and list went sprawling on the sidewalk.

“Why!” I screamed at the sky, only to be rewarded with a mouthful of rainwater, which I swiftly deep throated, choking and spluttering within an inch of my life. As I coughed like a Dickensian street orphan with tuberculosis, a large hand wrapped around my upper arm and lifted me to my feet.

“I said get in the bloody car, Faith, before we both catch our deaths.” Harry’s familiar voice cut through the car horn-filled symphony of Eighth Avenue, and his impressive strength deposited me onto a warm leather seat. The passenger-side door to whatever stupidly expensive designer car this was slammed shut.

Harry rushed around the hood and slipped into the driver’s side, holding my things. “Are you forever this stubborn?” he bit out, and his usual shitty and cold attitude erased any glimmer of warmth I had felt in the elevator. “Just when I think…” He shook his head, cutting himself off. I was glad. I couldn’t be bothered to hear what his highness wanted to say.

Harry placed my sodden jacket and purse in the back seat. Just as he started his ignition to get us the hell out of here, the list fell out of my jacket pocket and landed straight into his lap.

I prayed to whoever might be listening that the rain had ruined it, smudged the ink at least. But when the car plunged into a heavy silence and I looked over to see Harry reading the list on his lap, I knew it was bone dry and I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me whole.

Harry’s long, dark eyelashes glistened with raindrops as he scanned the list. His nostrils flared and he raised his head. Handing me the list, he quickly pulled the car out into traffic.

“Brooklyn, you said? That’s where you live? Whereabouts?”

I begrudgingly reeled off the address, and Harry punched it into his GPS. The air between us crackled with tension. What had he read? More than that, what the hell must he think? Why hadn’t he said something? Did he think me a freak? And why the fuck did I care? I hated him. Okay, not hated, but severely disliked him. I didn’t care to be in his good graces.

Thought after thought raced through my head at such an overwhelming speed I became dizzy. When it all became too much to stand, I blurted, “I don’t want to be pissed on!”