Odalisque

“You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Kai handed Satya a leather bag, and she slung it over her shoulder. He walked her to the door, their faces turned away from Constance, so anything else they said was lost. Constance wandered into the kitchen, where Mason was indeed cooking eggs in tight blue boxer shorts and nothing else. She watched him for a while before he even realized she was there.

When he finally turned to her, he waved a spatula to get her attention. “Hey you. I had fun last night. Thanks.”

Any irritation Constance felt at being called “Hey you” was softened by the fondness in his gaze. There really was something irrepressible and boyishly appealing about Mason Cooke. Constance saw it in Kai too sometimes. Constance smiled back at the blue-eyed megastar. She flipped open a notebook on the counter.

I had fun too. Do you want to see the bruises?

Mason blinked at her. “Bruises? Are they bad?”

Not too bad. And I like them. They’re like souvenirs. With Satya gone, Constance shed her robe and showed Mason her backside. He looked partly horrified and partly excited. He reached out to trace over one of the welts, which had faded overnight from bright red to dull lavender.

“Jesus Christ, that’s hot. You’re going to make me burn the fucking toast.”

He turned away from her, yanking charred bread out of the toaster. There was a definite bulge growing against the front of the boxers. Being small on him already, they were quickly approaching critical mass. Constance imagined him busting out of them completely like some comic book hero, the sagging seams torn and ragged. He waved the spatula at her again.

“Go. Stop tempting me. Go see where Kai is.”

Constance expected to find him in the living room. She looked down the main hallway and didn’t find him there either. The only place he could be, unless he’d gone outside, was--

She ran up the stairs to the odella and pushed the door open. Kai looked up with her notebook in his hands.

“How dare you?” she signed through a red haze of anger.

“What?” Kai protested as she crossed the room and ripped the notebook from his fingers. She threw it on the desk beside the others, filled with her most private writing and thoughts.

“You’re eavesdropping!” She spelled the word out in furious staccato. E-a-v-e-s-d-r-o-p-p-

“Yes, I got it,” said Kai. “I was eavesdropping. I’m sorry. I was curious--”

“I don’t care how curious you were. How dare you read my private notebooks!”

“Private notebooks? We write in these all the time to talk together.”

“We write in one notebook, with a purple cover, which is downstairs. You knew that notebook wasn’t the same one. You were eavesdropping. Spying on me.”

She couldn’t tell if he was catching all her angry signing, but he got the general message. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was just curious what you and Sats talked about.”

“I don’t want your excuses, I want your apology.”

Kai was staring at her. Okay, so she was acting like a raving bitch. But it was the first time since she’d arrived that Kai had disappointed her, the first time he’d done something that made her uneasy. Insecure.

He held up his hands. “I said I was sorry. I have a trust problem, okay? You would understand if--if you knew.”

“Knew what?” Constance signed impatiently.

One side of his mouth turned down in a frown. His eyes were dark, growing blacker. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Oh, why? Is it private? So you’re entitled to privacy, but not me?”

She could see him draw in a deep breath. She moved closer, looked up in his eyes. “I didn’t say anything to your sister that I wouldn’t have said to your face.”

“I know. I don’t know why I even looked.” His lips twisted in a bitter smile that hurt Constance’s heart. “I was betrayed by my ex, Constance. Maliciously. Thoroughly. When I found out...” He stopped, looking down at the floor. “Well.” He kicked at the rug. “I have issues with trust.”

“Because she betrayed your trust, that means you get to betray mine?” Constance swallowed hard. Kai looked so bereft. She ran her fingers over the notebooks on the table, then signed, “You want to see what I’ve written about you? Then ask me. I have no reason to hide the way I feel about you, positive or negative. I just have to submit to you sexually. Right?”

He recoiled as if she’d slapped him. “Jesus! I just wanted to know what you said to my sister.”

“Then ask me what I said to your sister. Don’t go poking around in my notebooks!”

“Why? What are you writing in there that’s so top secret?”

“My thoughts. My private thoughts. You bought my body. You own my sex. My ass, my pussy. Not this! Not my mind.”

They stood, facing off like pugilists. Constance felt blindsided by his betrayal, but also cowed by his pain. She wanted to comfort him but she was too upset. So he had a shitty ex-wife. Who didn’t? That didn’t give him the right to read through her notebooks while she wasn’t around.

While she was trying to think of something to say to diffuse the rancor between them, Kai turned to the door. Mason was standing there, looking from one of them to the other.

“Hey guys, what’s up? Everything okay? Breakfast is ready.”

Kai looked back at Constance. “We’ll be down in a second.” Mason left and Kai came closer to her. “I’m sorry, Constance. I won’t do it again.”

Constance reached out for his hand and squeezed it in truce. She let go and signed, “I’m sorry I flipped out.”

Kai leaned to kiss her forehead, then brushed back a lock of her hair. “I don’t want to fight with you. I prefer you horny, not angry.”

She gave him a flirtatious smile. “Well, you know how to get me that way.”

“I think maybe a nice long session tied to the bed with a rope knot against your clit and a plug in your ass.” Constance could feel herself flush, feel the arousal dampen the cleft between her legs. “And then...after...” He leaned closer as she watched his lips. “Hours and hours of lurid, debauched sex.”

Constance was caught in his gaze and the wicked pleasure it promised, but Kai glanced away, sniffing the air.

“But first, how about some burnt toast and overcooked eggs for breakfast?”

Constance burst into laughter at Kai’s long-suffering expression. “You’ve eaten Mason’s breakfasts before?” she signed.

“Many times,” Kai admitted. “You just have to power through it. It’s the only way to get him to go away.”

Chapter Thirteen: Secrets

Summer went by in a blur. Constance spent many hours in Kai’s designer pool, floating on her back and reminding herself that she wasn’t here to get lost in the sex, or to fall in love with her owner. She spent the rest of the hours in his arms, or tied to the bed in the saray, or writhing beneath his bronzed Indian-god body, being urged to greater and greater orgasmic heights.

They had no more arguments after the eavesdropping incident. Ms. Dresden’s visits continued out of routine more than any real purpose. And Kai continued to respond to Constance with avid arousal and enduring kindness, which made it that much harder to think about the inevitable end.

Constance also gained a new and unexpected friend in Kai’s sister. Satya visited every couple weeks, and Constance would dress in clothes and sit across from the animated woman at Kai’s kitchen table, eating nankhatai cookies and drinking tea. Satya would talk about her humanitarian work and the many causes she supported. She also talked about her boyfriend, who worked with her at Amnesty International. Constance admired Satya’s sense of purpose and her strong ideals.

Kai only tolerated these visits. It didn’t help that Satya wouldn’t let him hang around while they talked. His sister said Kai dampened their ability to “girl talk.” Kai believed, rightly, that Satya was using the visits as an excuse to check on her. Constance gained another overmistress, in a sense.

/> However, there were very few attempts on Satya’s part at trying to talk her out of being an odalisque, and no attempts to make Constance feel she was doing something wrong. It didn’t take long for Constance to realize that Satya believed, above all, in choices for women. As long as those choices were not forced or made out of desperation, Satya kept her peace even if she disagreed with them. Or couldn’t quite understand, as in Constance’s case.

Soon the pool grew a little chilly, the breezes a little cooler. September arrived and they set off on Kai’s New York trip. He worked on his laptop during the flight, sipping occasionally at sparkling water and lime. Constance shifted, sighed, and stared out the window. She had to stop obsessing about him. She had met just that morning with Ms. Dresden, and spent the whole interview carefully choosing her words and avoiding the overmistress’s gaze. Kai confessed to Constance that to him, Ms. Dresden’s visits felt like job evaluations. For Constance, the visits were an unwelcome reminder that her sojourn with Kai Chandler was another month gone.