A Good Student Ch. 04

The roads are pretty deserted out here in the suburbs. An occasional car slides past, but mostly I'm alone and I can think about her as I drive. One road links to another and pretty soon I'm on the expressway and headed for the city. There's a little traffic—hardly any because it's very late, and it's late because I stayed late in that motel where Emma and I made love, that motel where I tied her and whipped her and made her come and come again and then fucked her and fucked her again too. And even then after she left I laid on the bed and masturbated thinking about her—masturbated and sucked her juices off one of the vibrators I'd used on her, sucking it like it was her cock and I washer sub as I jerked off and my dick jumped and spat like it was her little puppet, filling me with a weird mixture of bliss and shame, the white cream flowing over my hand and me moaning out loud and getting off on the humiliation of playing that role as I slurped that plastic dildo like a satisfied baby.

I shift in the car seat and lean my elbow on the sill so I can feel that hot wind like water on my skin as I drive. It's an old Pontiac and all the gears and cylinders know each other so well that they just kind of glide against each other, oil dripping, pumping... Everything is sex tonight as I eye the rearview and hit the signal and drift over into the center lane where I can just cruise and not worry about passing and being passed. There's a big Ford Explorer coming up fast in the left lane and I'm about to pass a Lexus on the right and I don't want to have to concentrate on that because I just want to think.

I'm trying to be objective about this and serious but all I can think about is what it was like to be inside her and how it felt when she lifted against me when she came, the way she tried to refuse me and how she fought and how she lost and how she looked as she surrendered—surrendered utterly: her back arched, mouth open, shuddering, begging, giving herself to me—how I wanted to claw the soul from her body and just rip it from her and eat it whole and dripping like some insane Aztec sacrifice...

Something catches my eye to the left and I glance up, surprised to see that the moon's still up. It makes me smile because of course it's so big and it's so obvious and it's something we don't understand at all, even though it always looks like it understands us so well. Tonight it looks especially knowing and so I ask it something and of course I get no answer.

I'd told her I loved her and she'd said the same to me, but what did that mean? I'd been inside her, on the verge of orgasm, and at the moment I meant it with all my heart, but we still hardly knew each other. How could it be that we could be that close sexually—fused so closely that it felt like the barriers between us had totally disappeared and I held her naked soul in my hands—but then when she dressed and I lay there and smoked and she ran a brush through her hair and straightened her clothes, I felt this wall settle down between us again, this discouraging silence.

I'd gotten up and seen her to the door and turned her to me and kissed her on the forehead and she'd stopped. For just a moment she'd leaned against me as if for strength or as if there was something she'd wanted to say, and immediately my body had responded, something inside me trying to elbow myself out of the way and grab her again, something telling me not to let her go, but I knew that wouldn't be right, so I'd just kissed her and smiled and she'd smiled and I said, "I'll see you in class," and she nodded and I opened the door for her and let her out into the night.

I'd followed her out and stood on the balcony, leaning on the railing and smoking, watching as she walked across the parking lot. I thought about that part of me she carried inside her. I felt this insane, sudden surge of possessiveness, as if she belonged to me now, but I made it go away, and as I watched her, I wondered what she thought of herself.

She got into her car without looking back and as she did I couldn't help but admire it. I'd come to learn that suburbanites have a special relationship with their cars, one that city boys like me don't understand. It was a language I was trying to master, and already I knew enough to know that Emma had way overbought. She had a gleaming, brand new yellow convertible with a sharp, high ass, proud and sassy—a silly word, but totally appropriate. It was a car to turn heads, and it was a car she could only afford if she assumed David would be picking up the payments once they were married. She could never afford it on her own.

She strapped the seat belt over the tits I'd just been licking and fondling, checked her eyes in the rear-view mirror, and did something with the stereo as she pulled out, perfectly at home behind the wheel. Barely an hour ago she'd been tied in the doorway, gasping and convulsing in stomach-clenching orgasms, reveling in her shame as I whipped her naked cunt and held her hair in my hand like she was some trophy animal, begging me to strip her bare both mentally and physically and take everything a man could take from a woman, strip her down to the bone. And now here she was, insulated from the world by her yellow convertible and another man's love, safe behind tinted glass and steel and climate-controlled air-conditioning, like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She made me smile. She made me hunger.

She drove to the edge of the parking lot and stopped. Her taillights flashed once, the equivalent of a female flouncing her skirts—a kind of automotive kiss-off—then pulled onto the highway and was gone.

I turned back and watched the runway approach lights at the airport strobing in the dark in a kind of silent, insistent come-on, listening to the sounds of the crickets in the weeds beyond the motel, then I turned and went back into the room.

It was still thick with the smell of our passion. The stain of our mixed secretions was there on the sheets. The spreader bar lay on the floor, the leather cuffs that held her ankles apart were still affixed to it. The ropes hung over the door, the toys were still spread on the towel on the dresser.

Supposedly I'd been domming her. Supposedly I'd tied her up and forced her to do shameful and degrading things. And yet now she was driving home in her yellow convertible, body lax and satisfied, sated with pleasure. I went around the room and started straightening up, picking up the toys and dropping them into my bag, cutting down the rope and throwing it away, wrapping the toys up in the towel.

The whip smelled of her. The vibrators were sticky with her lubrication.

I start seeing more cars now but it's still late enough (or actually early enough) that the expressway's all but deserted and it's like a special privilege to be out driving now, seeing a different world, the world of cops, ambulance drivers, drunks, dreamers, cabbies, and it's sweet to be able to lie back and just cruise—like dreaming—winding through the sinuous turns as if the car's on rails. The old sights and landmarks roll by, the expressway lights sweep over the cars. The buildings look half asleep and adream, stark-lit and shadowed and naked and exposed, and I hit the radio looking for a human voice.

This is my city and it's been a long time since I've felt it this way, alive and aglow like this, rich with menace and promise. Every car looks like it knows me and knows where I've been and wants to get next to me like a dog and smell my ass. Yes, menace. Danger. That's what passion is: dangerous love. Love that puts you in danger, that gets a hold of you and makes you do things you wouldn't normally do. It's the only love worth having and it's the kind of love that's been missing from my life.

I'd forgotten the danger of this place. In the last few years and the hell I'd been through, I'd decided to play it safe and I'd forgotten the excitement and the potential, all the doorways and the windows and the places they led, the curious streets and the way they lay and the sound of voices as you walked past the alleys. I'd forgotten all of it. Like I'd forgotten the thrill of having a woman like Emma, of having her tied to a chair waiting for you, knowing she wants you to take her, knowing she expects it and she's waiting for it, and knowing where taking her takes you as well.

The big green highway signs pass overhead like guillotines and I don't even read them any more, don't even notice. I check the rearview and hit the signal and drift over to the cutoff for 294, where the lanes swing out to the west and dip down, and at the bottom of the little spur where the dome of that funny Polish church is on my right, "Wild Nights" comes on the radio and I twist the volume way up, push my back against the seat and punch the gas, send the car swooping down and up onto the great broad merge where it joins like an artery with 294 to form one vast broad vista, ten lanes of mercury-lit concrete gazing straight down toward the buildings and towers of downtown, hovering like a crown in the night

And as Van Morrison wails away about his jukebox thunder I slam the dashboard and cover my mouth with my hand so no one else will see. I laugh in sweetness and in real pain, frightened and amazed.

"Oh Jesus fuck! You poor bastard! You sorry son of a bitch! You're in love!"

*****

But how could I talk about being in love? I was twice her age, burned out, bitter, from a different world. What did I know of her? Sexually we were fantastically compatible. There was no doubt about it—it was almost uncanny the way we got along, the way we seemed able to read each others minds and hearts and feed on each other's passions. But otherwise we seemed to be about as different as two people could be.

And that was the problem. I wanted more now. I wanted more than just the sex. I wanted all of her, or at least I thought I did. I didn't even know what I wanted. I didn't even know how to find out.

The way I thought of it was like this: the sexual roles we played of dom and sub were like masks that we hid behind. And because we could hide behind them, they freed us.

But who was she behind the mask? And who would I be for her behind mine? Would she still want me and would I want her? Would it matter?

In the face of this fantastic sexual richness we had to play with, did anything else matter at all?

*****

I called her the next night:

"Hello?" Her voice was flat and non-committal.

"Emma? It's Conner. How are you?"

A pause. The longest one-second pause in the world as I waited for her reaction.

"Conner? Oh! Hi! I'm fine. How are you?" A bit of sudden breathiness. I didn't know if it was for real or if it was affected, but either way was all right.

"I'm fine," I said. "Or no. Really I'm not. I'm not, Emma."

I held the phone like it was her and I spoke to her ear, not to her: "I can't stop thinking about last night. I can't get it out of my mind. It's like it haunts me, like it did something to me. You were incredible, Emma, do you know that? Do you understand?"

Silence for a moment. Then, whispered: "Oh, Conner..."

"I have to see you tomorrow night."

"After class?"

"Yes. I have to see you."

"Yes. Yes, all right."

"But listen, I want to do something. Can you talk?"

"A little. I'm alone right now, but they're coming home pretty soon. Any minute. What is it?"

She was talking about her roommates. As far as I knew, they still didn't know about us.

"I want to bring you into my place in the city. Now wait—before you say anything, just listen to me. I'll drive you in and I'll drive you back the same night so you don't have to worry about your roommates. We'll leave your car out at school so you don't have to worry about driving into the city and parking and all that. I'll give you my keycard and you'll leave it in the faculty garage so it'll be safe and no one will see it. Okay."

"The faculty garage? You can do that?"

"Yes. It's no problem at all. And then—I'm going to kidnap you," I said.

A silence—"What?"

"I said, I'm going to kidnap you. From Crane. Abduct you."

"What are you talking about?"

I laughed. "Shhh! This is a fantasy I've had forever, something I've always wanted to do. I want to pretend to kidnap you from campus. Throw you into a van and tie you up and drive you off. Abduct you. I'm going to rent a van, and tomorrow night after class is out, you'll move your car into the faculty lot, then you'll start walking across the lot between D and G buildings, across from the duck pond? You know where that is? By the construction?"

"Yes?"

"I'm going to be parked there. As you walk by I'm going to drive by and grab you, throw you into the van and tie you up. You're going to be my victim."

"Conner, you're crazy! What if someone sees us?"

"No one will see us! And if they do, then we're just screwing around. What can they do? We're just goofing off—a prank. No victims, no one to complain. Just do it, okay?"

"Conner, I don't know! This sounds crazy."

"Emma, think about it! You in the back of a van with a desperate maniac, running his hands all over you, all tied up and helpless, making you do all sorts of lewd and perverse things, slowly undressing you ..."

"Oh God, Conner! You're insane!"

"Tell me you've never had fantasies like that yourself!"

"But I never really thought of doing them."

"Well you should. Don't you see what we've got here, Emma? A chance to make all these fantasies come true. How many people ever get that?"

She made a low sound of disapproval into the phone. "You're really serious?"

"Yes."

"You really want me to see your place?"

I laughed. "Yes."

"What do I have to bring? What are we going to do?"

"Do you really have to ask me that? You don't have to bring anything. Believe me."

I could hear her smile.

"Oh, all right."

"Good. Tomorrow then."

I hung up and started trying to clean up the place. Luckily I don't own enough stuff to make a mess anymore, but still—a bachelor in the city...

Two hours later the mood had changed. She called me back, sounding thoughtful. "Conner? Conner, it's Emma."

My stomach knotted. "Yes?"

"Conner, I just want to make sure of something, because of what we said the other night. Because of what I said."

I braced myself. "Yes?"

"I said something I shouldn't have, the other night when we were making love. You know what it was. I shouldn't have said it. It was something you said we shouldn't talk about. You know what I mean?"

"Yes. I know," I said. What she was talking about was when we said we'd loved each other in the midst of making love. It was true enough at the time. Now, who knew? "Don't worry about it. Passions were running high. I understand."

"I mean, I know this sounds stupid but I don't want anyone to get hurt. I know I shouldn't be doing this, but I'm not really engaged, I mean, not really, and I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to do this again in my life. You said it was just about sex anyway, and it is, right?"

It was a good thing she couldn't see the look on my face as I answered, the gall I was biting back. "Yeah. That's what I said."

"So as long as we keep it on those terms, it's just like a game, right?"

I turned to the window and there was the moon again, seeing everything, judging everything, suffering so. "Right. It's just like a game."

"Good. Good. I just wanted to make sure we understand each other, because I really don't want anyone to get hurt."

"No. No one's going to get hurt."

I pushed it all back down inside. We still had the summer and part of the fall and there was no telling what might happen by then. Certainly by then the novelty would have worn off and we'd be sick of each other—probably way before then—and until then he really didn't have to exist for me. I could fix it so he wouldn't exist for me. I could probably fix it so he wouldn't exist for her too, if she'd just give me the chance.

In any case, there were more important matters at hand. There was tomorrow night for one thing.

"So we're on for tomorrow after class?" I asked her.

I heard her smile. "Do you want me?"

*****

It was fascinating to see how Emma had changed in the few short weeks we'd been together. She knew how I wanted her and she suspected I wanted her as a sub, which was partially true but not entirely, because the truth was, I never wanted her as a slave. I never wanted her to grovel or be less than me. In fact, as that incident in the motel parking lot had shown, my urge to dominate her wasn't without its masochistic side, a certain sick liking for the feel of a stiletto heel sliding against my dick, and she'd always had a stubborn streak of arrogance and pride from the first day met her. She used it defensively, as a kind of barbed-wire fence. But she also had a way of crossing her legs just so, of casually stretching so that her shirt pulled across her breasts with just the right amount of tension, of turning her head so as to display the sculpted column of her neck to the best advantage, that showed she could use it offensively as well.

She played with her beauty like it was an edged weapon, and she wielded her submission the same way—using it to cut both ways, offensive as well as defensive. I was aware of that and that's why I'd decided on this little kidnapping game. It would give her a chance to participate, and I wanted to see how far she'd go, whether she'd just be entirely passive or whether she'd really get involved. I wanted to see how much—if anything—she had invested in this relationship, or whether I were the only crazy one.

I was worried at first. Her second phone call with her caveat about her boyfriend stuck in my mind like a drowning fly at a picnic and wouldn't go away. It had the potential to contaminate the whole thing. Late afternoon turned gray and blowy with a strong wind sending grit and papers swirling in the parking lot, threatening rain and worse. There were thunderstorm warnings on the radio, and it looked like that long-expected front was coming through, finally bringing relief from the heat that had settled upon the upper Midwest like a pot lid for the last ten days. It didn't bode well for a night of outdoor abduction games.

Emma avoided my eyes as she took her seat, wearing one of the most unattractive pantsuits I've ever seen on this side of a fast food counter, so unflattering that I half-expected her to tell me that not only was our little game off for tonight, but that she'd thought things over further after her phone call and decided to end the whole sordid affair.

But Emma was too good an actress and I soon saw that what she was up to was playing the part of the little night school ingénue for our upcoming drama, even down to simulating a job at an eat-it-&-beat-it joint. All evening she did a wonderful job of looking normal and wholesome—even helping the hateful Mrs. Gonzales write down the reading assignment and bustling about like some Future Teacher of America candidate. I caught her glancing up at me to see if I was enjoying the act and I couldn't repress a smile. She was good. As the class emptied out she picked up her books and approached the lectern.

"You have something for me, Professor Devlin? A parking permit?"

Even in that pantsuit her barely repressed excitement made her radiant and she got to me. I felt something stir inside, like a sleeping beast just starting to wake, and I thought, this must be what a hound feels like when he first catches scent of a fox. She moved closer and I felt the last extraneous minutiae of the class fall away as the beast stretched and took notice, felt my body begin to tighten in anticipation, prepare itself for its one true function, the animal reason for which it was placed on earth.

I gave her the pass and glanced around but no one was watching. They were all shuffling out.