Risk Your Heart

He looked so magnificent. Like a stunning animal, a thin sheen of sweat making his muscles glisten.

Drew took off his pants. I started to say again that he didn't have to worry about me, that even a short time having sex was fine, but he picked me up and put me down on my back.

Drew got a positively evil look on his face. He pulled the spreader bar up until he was holding it over my hips, and pushed my knees to the side.

"Ready, little sub?"

"You don't have to ask," I said.

I thought it was going to be fast and furious again, and I prepared myself for an invasive strike.

Not so.

Drew completely surprised me by wiggling under the bar, until it was around his mid- back. Ah...the springs on each side of the cuffs gave him some leeway.

He planted gentle kisses on the tops of my breasts.

Drew dragged the end of the rope over my shoulder and up to where my elbows were tied together, making the course texture into a soft caress.

"I've got you, baby. You belong to me." He gave a gentle tug on the rope. "But you've got me too." Drew moved my ankle a little so the spreader bar pulled taut against his back. "I belong to you just as much. You have me, as well."

He flicked his tongue into the top of my corset, right above my nipple, gently, just for a second.

Drew wiggled up higher, and entered me very slowly. He pulled out a little bit and sank in again, barely a movement at all.

"I'm here for you. You've captured all of me, Lee."

I turned my head away from him. One tear, heavy as lead and as big as the sea, spilled over and rolled onto my cheek. Drew kissed it away, seeming to lap it up.

"It's okay, sweetheart."

Drew started moving in and out, very slowly. The spreader bar slipped down to his lower back, and then lower, to his ass.

"You've got me trapped against you," he said quietly. "Be brave. Make a birthday wish. Know that I love you. Stay with me in this moment, honey. Just this one moment. Just us. You have me, all of me. Locked against you."

I just shook my head. "I can't do it," I said.

"Okay," he said.

That's it? Okay?

Drew stared into my eyes. He continued with the slow strokes. I wanted to close my eyes, slip into a fantasy, enjoy the feel of his hard cock without having to see the complete giving on his face with no thought of return. Be brave. I forced myself to meet his gaze.

After a minute, it seemed like he was glowing.

Then, the same mumbling I heard before.

I strained to make it out.

"I love you, Leah. I love you, Leah. I love you, Leah."

Then I did close my eyes.

I had been so careful. Yet perhaps I had left one little chink unguarded, and feelings for him slipped in, because I felt like my heart was breaking.

"I love you, Leah. I love you, Leah. I love you, Leah."

"Ssssshhhhh..." I said.

"Come for me, baby," Drew said.

"I can't."

Except those blue lights came again, this time expanding into ribbons, and then into an egg around me.

Drew pumped harder, and screamed, "I love you!" as he came.

His coming sent me over the edge.

Drew collapsed on top of me, and I wept.

Just a few silent tears, leaking down my face.

Drew extricated himself from our slightly pretzel-like contortion.

"I'm going to take a shower," I said.

He nodded. Unlocked the spreader bar. Helped me out of the rope, the cuffs, the corset. Didn't follow me into the shower. A good guy, sensing my mood, giving me space.

Damn.

Like everything else in the hotel, the shower was superb. The water pressure was excellent, and I resisted the urge to turn the water to freezing to punish myself.

I read once, a long time ago, that relationships move in three-month stages. Like the trimesters of pregnancy, or the quarters of the year, at the end of each period the relationship should deepen, and if it couldn't then it should change.

I couldn't get in any deeper.

Right?

I remembered what Drew said about the fall equinox. I had the feeling the last day of summer would be pivotal. I couldn't break up with him. I just wasn't that selfless. Maybe I would tell him that we should cool it a little. Cool it with the fall weather, maybe see each other only once a week.

I picked up the shampoo. It smelled like...maple syrup.

Cue more tears.

The once a week suggestion didn't feel right, but I didn't know what else to do.

For tonight I would get to sleep tucked in my lover's arms. Perhaps everything would look better in the morning.

When we were checking out, Drew wanted to buy me a whole bunch of stuff in the hotel gift shop, but I didn't let him. Our flight back was as uneventful as our flight into Canada had been. I instinctually knew I would never be back.

If I had been melancholy before, I was practically doing a funeral march on the way back to my apartment.

"Baby doll," Drew said. "I'm going to have to work a few doubles these next few days."

"I have to make up for all the time I've been slacking off. I checked my email on my phone this morning; I've got serious deadlines to meet."

I knew that he had to work. Secretly I thought he was also trying to give me space. A Dom and a nice guy. It just seemed like such an oxymoron. I would never get over it.

I threw myself into my work. I worked ten, twelve, fourteen-hour days. My ass hurt from sitting so long. I did some bicep curls to keep from turning to mush. Only a few because every time I did them I remembered Drew saying, 'You're being so good. Such a good girl. Are you going to be a bad girl for me later?'

Orange is the New Black. Game of Thrones. House of Cards. When I couldn't work anymore, at the end of the day, I Netflix binged. I avoided the stuff filmed in Canada.

We texted every day, multiple times a day. In a way, it reminded me of when we first met, how I was excited with every phone call.

Drew asked me to go to dinner with him on Friday. That would make, let's see, eight days since I saw him until I would see him. An eternity.

Yes, of course. Friday would be lovely.

He called Friday afternoon to cancel.

As it happened, the one time every six months I'm on a conference call with my job is when he called. He sounded upset and distracted. Sorry, make it later, blah, blah, blah.

Not like I care.

Not like I've left the house in more than a week.

At least now I don't have to shave my legs.

How many more episodes of Criminal Minds are there?

I skipped lunch, and I hadn't really worried about that because I was planning on a nice dinner with Drew. I hadn't gone grocery shopping. I stared at the takeout menu, and my eyes teared up. Damn it. I don't think I cried since I was in grade school until I met Drew. Damn Dom turned me into a spigot.

Fine. Maybe a walk would do me good.

At the last minute I decided to go out to dinner myself. I don't need a guy to take me out to dinner. Restaurants have tables for one, damn it.

I got into my car and just drove. Eventually I ended up at the church. Idly I noticed the steeple had never been repaired.

"It all started here, didn't it?" I said to myself. I looked up at the heavens. "Were you guiding me?"

Of course, I didn't get an answer.

I pulled out of the parking lot.

I had some good memories of that parking lot.

"How about guiding me to some good Chinese food? I'm in the mood for stir fry."

I drove around some more, letting the hand of the invisible (or the growling in my stomach) guide me. Eventually I came to a restaurant called...wait for it...Chinese Love Mahjong.

You have got to be kidding me.

Fine.

I got out of my car and walked in. With a name like that I expected it to be a tacky place where the menus were photos of Chinese food dishes up on the wall above an order counter, but no. It was a nice sit-down restaurant done in classic reds and golds.

Right in the middle of the restaurant was Drew, holding both hands of a pretty blonde. Their heads were close together, locked in intimate conversation.

I made a strangled noise in my throat, but they were so intense in their concentration of each other, they didn't even look up.

"Table for one?"

I turned around to see the hostess, a beautiful Chinese woman with tasteful make-up holding a large menu.

"I changed my mind," I said. "Suddenly I'm feeling nauseous."

I sleepwalked to my car. Sleep-drove to my apartment. Sleep-designed through my assignment. Sleep-watched through episodes of I don't know what.

I thought about Drew, on my birthday, a spreader bar across his back. How he said, "I got you." How he screamed, "I love you," when he came.

Surely I was mistaken about the restaurant.

But I know what I saw.

Could he be doing that identical thing with TWO women?

I shook my head. No. No way. There was some other explanation. There had to be.

Bed was my haven. I was never leaving.

Drew called. He texted. He emailed. I didn't answer.

I was moving to Brazil. As soon as I could get dressed.

It was a few days later when I heard the pounding on the door. No fooling me this time. I was sure that was Drew. No fucking way I'm going to answer.

"LEAH! Are you in there?"

Still not answering. Nanny, nanny, pooh-pooh.

The knocking was insistent and seemed to go on forever. I didn't answer.

That night, the nightmares came back.

In this dream I was flying, then falling. Drew caught me. He had a parachute, and he caught me as I fell past him. I sighed with relief. Then he passed me over to the men with the ski masks, the men who had been haunting me for the past year.

I tried to scream but no noise came out.

Drew just shrugged.

One of the men in the masks took a huge pair of pliers and began yanking out my teeth.

I woke up in a cold sweat.

The air conditioning was blowing on me. My teeth chattered.

Not good.

I had kicked off my sheets and blankets. They reminded me of a parachute.

When was the last time I saw Dr. Jeff?

Argh.

I tried to go back to sleep. No go. I didn't sleep the next night, or the next. I catnapped at my computer. I began walking around like I could be an extra on the Walking Dead.

Healthy.

I had never unpacked my suitcase from Vancouver. I finally opened it and found that Drew had managed to buy me two nightshirts and stick them in my suitcase—sneaky bastard. One shirt was red and had a white maple leaf on it. It read 'The Eh Team'.

I tried not to smile. I tried really hard. Bastard.

The other was a black T-shirt and had a red, no wait, not a maple leaf, a...cannabis leaf. The shirt said, 'Oh Canaba.'

"We never said we were exclusive," I said out loud. "As long as he isn't buying that bitch Vancouver T-shirts, I guess I may talk to him eventually."

I put the 'Eh Team' nightshirt over my pink sweats.

Cue pounding on the door.

Fuck.

"Leah!"

Like I'm going to answer him with four-day unwashed hair. Not.

I heard mumbling outside my door. Who's he talking to? Oh no. I thought I heard very softly, "She could be dead."

The key turned in the lock.

I narrowed my eyes at him.

"Not dead," Drew said.

"That would be you, dead man," I said. "Don't you knock?"

"I knocked."

"I didn't hear you."

"Bullshit."

"Well, I'll leave you two lovebirds alone," my landlord said, and hightailed it out of my apartment. Coward.

Drew looked me up and down. "Hi, hot stuff."

I snorted.

"Nice T-shirt."

I flipped him my middle finger.

"Is that any way to treat the love of your life?"

"Don't forget to pack your angry eyes," I said. "Because you're going to fucking need them, you fucker. You're breaking and entering."

"Actually, I'm only entering. I didn't do any breaking. Your landlord let me in."

I am not going to smile. This guy is incorrigible.

"But my Spidey sense is telling me all is not right with the world."

I looked at his chest. Superman T-shirt. I pointed.

"Yeah, well. I didn't do laundry. I still have Spidey sense even when I'm Superman. It's just Super Spidey sense. And it tells me I'm in the shit house. I want to know why."

I crossed my arms over my chest.

"Oh-ho-ho," Drew said and pointed at me. "I know what that means. My wife used to do that. That means if you are so dumb as to not know, I'm not going to tell you."

I had to roll my lips in to keep from smiling. I thought it meant, 'I'm so pissed and angry, I'm not going to tell you, and besides, I'm sure you know.' But his version might have actually been closer.

"Well, I'll tell you. I AM that dumb. So if you think I am so dumb as to not know, you're right. And if you think that if I'm so dumb then you won't tell me, well then HA! Shame on you! Because how can I fix it if I don't know what it is?"

"I saw you having dinner with another woman."

"What? Me? I, no. I didn't—" Drew stopped mid-sentence as he seemed to remember something.

"Ah hah. See?" I said, and I pointed at him.

Now he crossed his hands over his chest and made the, 'I am pissed at you. If you are that dumb as to not know, fuck you, I'm not going to tell you,' expression. And he held it.

Suddenly I knew.

"Your sister," I said.

"Mmn-hm."

"But she lives out of town," I said.

"Mmn-hm," Drew said. His arms didn't uncross.

"But something was really wrong, so she came to you this time. That's why you had to cancel dinner."

"Mmn-hm."

"And after all we'd been through, you expected me to trust you," I said.

"Bingo," Drew said. His arms uncrossed. "Because after all, isn't that what the Dom/sub relationship is all about? Trust?" He turned to go.

Drew stopped with his hand on the doorknob. "I stopped in to make sure you were okay. Obviously you are. You see me with someone and you don't even do me the courtesy of asking who it is before you jump to conclusions? You wanted an excuse to not be all in? To not trust again?"

He let out a big puff of air, like he was deflating. "My dearest, sweetest, Leah. I can love you enough for both of us, but I can't make you trust me enough for both of us. Only you can do that."

Drew let himself out and quietly closed the door behind him.

I dropped to the floor like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Then I curled up into a ball, and I didn't move for a long, long, time.

Life is kind of ironic really. I was floating above my body, which reminded me of Labor Day, which just made me want to remain floating and not come back to earth even more. I looked down at my crumpled form, and my pallor was gray.

Perhaps I was dying. Other people died, why not me?

It was that thought that got me up. I may be a lot of things, but I am not one to sit on the pity pot and wallow. The kind of person who just feels sorry for herself, 'Poor me, poor me'; that I'm not.

You're braver than you think.

From out of nowhere a saying that I couldn't remember ever hearing before was placed in my head as if by magic. 'Fall down seven times, get up eight.'

So. I made a mistake. So what? Big deal. Didn't those fucking toys in Toy Story make mistakes? I bet they did. What about that red cowboy hat? That's a fashion faux pas, for sure, right?

What am I going to do?

"I'm going to go pound on Drew's door. That's what."

That stopped me short. I didn't know where Drew lived. I mean, I knew basically where he lived, but I'd never been to his house. Well damn. He'd always come here.

Why?

Was it because I didn't want to go out of my way?

I called Drew before I lost my nerve.

He picked up on the first ring.

"Listen, I'm sor—"

"KNEEL!" he roared.

My knees hinged, obeying the command before the rest of my brain even realized what he'd said, and I hit the floor hard. I took the phone away from my ear a little, because he had been that loud.

"Are you kneeling?" he asked without waiting for me to answer. "Put your forehead to floor."

"Yes, Sir," I said meekly.

"And fucking stay there until I say you can get up," Drew said, harshly. He hung up.

I blinked.

It wasn't sexy.

It wasn't not sexy.

Strange.

It seemed right somehow.

But he wasn't here. How would he know if I got up?

I had the feeling he would just know. Maybe because somewhere deep down I believed we were connected. Or maybe, he wouldn't know at all. Maybe he trusted me to stay here. Maybe that was the point. Maybe it was about trust.

What if I had to go to the bathroom?

How long was he going to leave me here?

I tried to calm my mind. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. It didn't work. Pretty soon I was thinking about sex. The way Drew let his hand graze over my skin. The way he touched me with reverence. The way his tongue felt when he took control of a kiss, subtly at first, and then more forcefully, like he was leading a dance. The park. The ambulance. The imaginary beach. Here in my house. Vancouver. Oh, God. Vancouver, Vancouver, Vancouver.

Then Drew was beside me, stroking my hair. Was I imagining it?

I turned my head to look at him.

"How'd you get in?"

"You left it unlocked," Drew said.

"Really?" I asked.

"Um-hm," he said. "Subconsciously waiting for me?"

I teared up. "Maybe." I swiped at my eyes. "Damn allergies."

"They can be a major pain this time of year," Drew said. "I've got an allergy shot with me if you want it," he said. He grabbed his crotch. I followed the motion.

"Yeah," I said. "I want it."

Drew stood up. He held out his hand. "You may rise," he said.

"Listen, Drew, I'm really sorry," I said.

"Ssshh...I know. It doesn't matter." He swooped me up in his arms, and cradled me to his chest. "It gave me a chance to go all caveman on you. That's all that matters."

I am not going to fall in love with this guy. Think of how much everything has hurt already.

"If I saw you nose to nose with another guy, my first reaction would be to punch him in the face. Of course, I trust you, so I wouldn't do that, and I wouldn't ignore your calls." He sat down on my bed with me in his lap.

"You do that again, I'm going to punish you, until you see stars. Not the orgasm kind of stars. Not the moon and stars kind of stars. Wile E. Coyote has little white asterisks circling around his head kind of stars."

"Kind of hard to take you seriously when you're talking about the Coyote and the Road Runner," I said.

He flipped me over his knee, pulled down my sweats, and smacked me in the ass.

"Eeeek!"

"This is for not trusting me," Drew said and gave me another slap. It wasn't hard. It was more playful than anything. The first one surprised me. I was ready for the second one.

"Okay, little sub, say, 'Yes, Sir, can I have another?'."

I was sure that was from a movie, but I didn't know what one. "Is that from Toy Story?" I asked.

Swack. Harder that time.

"Yes, Sir, can I have another?" Drew said.

I repeated it.

Swat.

"I was a bad girl," Drew said.

"You were?" I asked.

Swack. Hard.

"Ouch."

"I was a bad girl," Drew said again.

I should not be getting turned on by this.

"I was a bad girl," I repeated.

Drew caressed my ass, soothing where he had slapped it.

"I will trust my Master," Drew said.

That bites. I hate saying Master sometimes. I hesitated.

Swat on the butt, caress.

"I will trust my Master," I said.

"Baby, you don't have to trust me completely, maybe you never will. Trust me enough to know that I will always try to do what's right. I'm human. I'll fall short. I'm going to always try to do what's right for both of us, as much as I can figure that out. So that means you have to talk to me."

Smack.

He surprised me with that one.

Drew picked me up, as if I weighed no more than say, twenty pounds less than what I actually weigh, and propped me up on the bed on my hands and knees. He bit my ass on the spot he had been slapping.

"Eeeee!" I said.

He laughed. "I like that sound, make it again."

"No."

He bit me again.