“If it’s too much for you to come down here, perhaps I could fly up there. To see you.”
“Now that we’ve met, I’d like to do some cam sessions.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t expected him to shut down the possibility so rapidly.
My heart sank. I still wasn’t comfortable with the idea of doing cam sessions, and it felt like we were going backward instead of forward. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust him, I just didn’t trust the security of the internet. Sites constantly got hacked by one bunch or another, and I feared I’d lose my job if anything related to my secret life were made public.
“I don’t see that happening,” I said flatly.
“Oh. Well, I hoped that meeting each other would change things.” His voice was sharp, and suddenly I wanted to cry.
“Me too.”
The conversation went downhill from there. I went through the motions, spanking myself like he asked me to, but I couldn’t get in the mood. He must have sensed it because he cut our session short.
When we hung up, a lump started to form in my throat.
What had I thought anyway? That because we had a nice weekend together, he was suddenly going to want to move to Texas and see me every day? As much as I’d tried to keep my expectations under control, they’d run amok. Now that I’d experienced what it was like to be with him, I wanted to be with him more rather than less, which made the distance between us a bigger problem than it had been before.
The next day I sent him an email apologizing for sulking during our session the night before. When I didn’t hear back from him for two days, I started to worry so I sent him a text.
A few hours later he responded tersely that he was fine, saying he was otherwise occupied on a business trip.
Stung, I set down my phone.
He must be really pissed at me. He’d never been short with me in that way. Sure, he abused the heck out of me in other ways, but he’d never been completely unreachable before, or irritated with me for contacting him. That’s how he acted now—annoyed.
I sent him back a text to please call me when he returned from his business trip.
For the next week, I waited and waited. I’d almost given up on him when he called.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so busy, Sophie,” he said. “But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, and I don’t think we should continue with your training.”
“Why? What do you mean? Did I do something wrong?” As much as I’d seen this coming, now that he actually said the words, I panicked.
“You have demonstrated that you are too distracted to be compliant with your training.”
“What does that mean?”
He sighed wearily. “It means that we have to stop. You’re not happy, and if you’re not happy the training is pointless.”
“But I need you!” I whined, feeling like I was floundering in the midst of a landslide. Everything was crashing down around me. I could see I was headed for a disaster, but I was helpless to stop it.
“You don’t need me. You just think you do. If you decide to continue your journey, I have no doubt you will find a Dom who will enjoy training you as much as I have.”
Something inside me snapped. “That’s right. I let you train me! But for what? To be a slut for who? There’s no one I want except you. I want to be a whore for you, not some unknown stranger. You’ve molded me into the perfect greedy girl for you!”
“The goal was to help you along your journey.”
“Journey to what?” I spat.
He remained quiet, then finally responded with, “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I want you to stop being so freaking withholding. I want you to see me for who I am, what I could be to you.”
“And what is that?”
“A partner. A part of your life, and not just that compartmentalized tiny part that you toss aside. I’m not a doll for you to put on a shelf when you’re tired of playing with me.”
“You knew what you were signing up for. I call it cyber-training because I know my limits.”
“Because why? You’ve been hurt? Who hasn’t?” I didn’t recognize the venomous tone that spewed from my lips.
He sniffed. “I’m sorry you don’t understand. I didn’t mean things to end this way.”
“So you set it up for cyber only, but when I needed more you flew to Houston and met me. You changed the rules, not me. And I thought it went well. I felt like it was the beginning of something, but somehow you’ve decided it was the end. You didn’t even talk to me about it!” My voice grew more and more shrill. “So much for all the trust and communication we built. It makes me wonder if anything between us was real.”
“I’m sorry, Sophie. I can’t give you what you want. I need to go.”
“Well I’m sorry too! ’Cuz you’re a crappy Dom,” I spouted, wanting to hurt him the way he’d hurt me.
“It disappoints me that you feel that way. Goodbye, Sophie.”
“Goodbye.” I hung up.
Stunned, I let the tears come.
Damn! I knew the minute I saw him that it was too good to be true. But that wasn’t true… In the back of my mind I hoped that somehow, even though it didn’t seem likely, we’d be able to stay connected and build on that.
Felix must have sensed something was wrong because he ran over to me. I scooped him up into my lap and let him lick the tears off my cheeks. His cute little face made me smile.
With a sigh, I picked up the phone to call Shelby. I was going to need some girl time—the kind with ice cream and possibly a screening of The Notebook in her home theater.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The next evening I went over to Shelby’s. Her house was big enough for an army, but the rooms she spent the most time in had a cozy feel to them. By the time I arrived, she already had popcorn popped, the ingredients to make Coke floats, and three sorrowful breakup movies cued up for us.
I gave her a hug then we plopped a few scoops of ice cream into our glasses, poured Coke over them, and settled into the theater-style seats for some serious girl talk.
“So how’s your dad? I was sorry to hear he was in the hospital.”
“He’s fine.” I launched into the story of my dad’s health scare, told her how Bunny was holding up famously, and even about Spencer’s phone call.
“That sounds awkward.”
“It was, but what’s even more awkward is when the ex-husband you can’t stand is more emotionally available for you than the man you’ve been screwing around with.”
Shelby grimaced. “That is bad. I’m all for casual sex and everything, but the way this thing has been going… I don’t know, it doesn’t sound like you were getting your needs met.”
“Yeah.”
“Sophie, you deserve more than that. This breakup has been coming for a long time.”
I nodded and sipped my drink, hoping to drown at least some of my sorrows with sugar and milkfat.
“I agree, but when we were together things were so great. I totally fell for him.” I did need more; touch not being the least of it. Plus, I needed emotional support. Caring.
Shelby turned on the video and I tried to pay attention to the movie, but my mind kept going back to Quentin.
The idea of men using women for sex wasn’t foreign to me. Neither was compartmentalizing. All the women I knew, moms especially, constantly talked about how women were great multitaskers while men needed to keep things separate, working on one thing at a time.
So it didn’t surprise me that Quentin had found his hobby of dominating women online to be enough. The problem was, it wasn’t enough for me anymore. I had to forget the breathtaking intimacy between us, and the moments I felt closer to him than I’d ever felt to anyone. But as fulfilling as my relationship with Quentin was sexually, there were times when I felt more alone than I ever had before.
He knew me better than Spencer ever had and up until now he had accepted me even with my flaws, but he wasn’t available for me at the end of a crappy day. We’d never go on vacation together and explore a new country. We’d never put together furniture, or have children. Not even pets.
I needed the companionship that helps a person cope with the daily ups and downs of life. Sometimes, he seemed so close I could almost touch him, but it was like being suspended by a rope and never being able to touch the thing that I wanted most desperately. I could see it, smell it, almost taste it, but I wasn’t allowed to touch it. He was always just out of reach, and having the sex part without the companionship simply didn’t work for me anymore.