"I think I should kiss you now," he said.
"I think you should, too." My breath started to quicken.
"Good," he murmured, his hand stroking the side of my face. He leaned in and kissed me, gently at first, and then I felt the tip of his tongue nudging against my lips. Asking for permission. They parted, without any conscious decision on my part, welcoming him in. Warm and soft, but demanding, he utterly possessed me in less than a moment. His hand curled around the back of my neck, gentling me. Steadying me. Instinctively, I pressed my body tighter against his, letting us melt together in the midst of the crowd.
I swayed against him, but he held me steady.
When he finally broke away, his eyes looked dark and heavy. His body's reaction to the kiss was unmistakable. I wondered if I said the right thing, would he take me into one of those back rooms and teach me exactly how much fun this could be.
He gave me one last look of pure longing, and then broke away. He adjusted his jacket and took a deep breath.
I asked a question to break the silence. "What does that mean? Being under your protection?"
He made a slight face. "I only said 'yes' because I thought it would make him go away. Some people take it seriously, or basically just use it to mean mentoring, but I've never liked it. Just because someone's entering the space as a woman, or as a potential submissive, doesn't mean they should need a Dom's protection."
The words made sense, but the idea of him...protecting me, whatever that actually meant, made me shiver a little. In a good way.
"It does sound a little medieval," I admitted. "But if it keeps people like Master Jordan at bay, you can tell anybody anything you want."
I wondered if I'd live to regret saying that.
The irony didn't escape me, either - the guy who was basically into 1950s roleplay thinking that something was condescending towards women. Ben was a lot more complicated than he seemed at first glance.
Then again, so was Maddy. So was Daniel. So was all of this.
If I managed to get through the next few years with my sanity intact, it would be a miracle.
Chapter Nineteen
Jenna
I just couldn't forget that kiss.
Ben was haunting my dreams even more than usual, now. And even though I'd fulfilled at least part of my end of the bargain, I hadn't even started thinking about how to get my reel ready for him to give to Spencer Holloway. I knew it was something I needed to put together, sooner rather than later, but I'd been so caught up in everything that I barely had time to think about it.
The next morning, I didn't have anything on my schedule, so I started by searching for demo reel production companies and briefly snorting coffee out of my nose when I saw the cost. I could afford it, but not comfortably - I didn't like relying on Ben for anything, just in case something imploded, so I wanted to have plenty of savings stocked up. I had to be free to walk away at any time. Even with my generous nanny's salary, a professional demo reel from a well-reviewed company was going to take a chunk. And after I was done with my ridiculous New York City rent, utilities, and meager grocery bill, I just wasn't comfortable with the projected result.
I decided to give research a break.
A little while later, I found myself absorbed in a completely different kind of research.
Still, my brain was struggling to accept everything that Ben was. Everything that he wanted. As much as the newness excited me, my dreams taking on a darker edge with every passing night, I still couldn't quite accept that this was just another version of normal. How could it be? People were supposed to treat each other as equals. If someone truly wanted to be inferior, there had to be something a little bit warped in their brain. Didn't there?
All the words, all the complicated explanations and philosophizing, were starting to hurt my brain. So I did something I hadn't really done before - not on purpose, anyway.
I started looking at the pictures.
At first, I found a lot that made me cringe. Women who looked sad and downtrodden, with strange implements on their bodies and ugly words written on their skin. There was lots of overexposed amateur photography, and plenty of hardcore porn with ball gags and tears.
I could never be that person. No matter how open-minded I became, I could never quite look at this and see the beauty in it. Whatever it was Ben saw, I was sure it would always elude me.
Suddenly, I saw something different.
There were other pictures out there, more artistic, more carefully done. I clicked through one of the image search results and found a whole blog devoted to "the art of BDSM."
Of course there were professional photographers who did this sort of thing. I knew about Mapplethorpe. But I hadn't realized how popular it was, how many hundreds of thousands of pictures were out there that evoked something the blunter stuff completely missed.
I scrolled and scrolled, until I saw something that made me stop dead in my tracks.
There was a man in a suit, fully dressed, but barefoot, sitting in a comfortable armchair with his feet planted in a wide, authoritative stance. But the focal point of the image was the naked woman curled up in his lap. His arms surrounded her, just holding her in this quiet moment. Whatever had happened to get them here, it didn't really matter. This moment was just for them. So calm. So peaceful.
My breath caught in my throat, my heart beating faster as I stared at the picture. Despite her nakedness, it wasn't blatantly sexual; strictly speaking, the staging was almost platonic, but it was still the most erotic thing I'd ever seen in my life. It was like I could feel his care, his devotion, radiating from the image. His confidence. How much she'd pleased him, just by being there. Submitting to him. It was achingly beautiful.
All the reading I had done, all the frowning, confused research, and I'd somehow missed the most important thing. The crucial truth at the heart of it. The reason why.
Like a lot of people, I'd assumed all the roleplay and the posturing and the implements were ways of keeping distance. I'd seen that theory put forward plenty of times, and I'd never had a reason to disagree with it. But the intimacy of the moment captured in this picture told a very different story.
Finally, I managed to tear my eyes away. Some of the pictures had little stories underneath them, and I started to read, letting the words sink in deeper than before.
There was a common thread in all of them. The Dom was so attentive, so focused - but never on his own pleasure. Only on hers. I'd been told, I'd tried to understand, but until now, I didn't. I couldn't have, until I was ready.
I couldn't remember anyone ever trying to arouse me. Anyone ever deliberately touching me, in a way that was anything other than grasping and taking. I sat there curled up in my chair and I remembered the first time a boy touched me inside. I was a junior in high school. His fingers were rough and bruising, inelegantly demanding. He said he was trying to "get me ready" and I didn't understand what that meant. Was I supposed to be enjoying it? What was wrong with me? Was I broken somehow?