Struck by Lightning.
Slow Satisfaction.
Cecilia Tan.
For everyone who had to wait for satisfaction while I finished writing this novel. All of you.
Acknowledgments.
Many people helped bring me to this point in my career and it is impossible to name them all, even if it were not tricky to name people in a work of erotic fiction. But corwin, my corwin, deserves first mention. My dreams would have been so much harder-if not impossible-to achieve without that last twenty-three years of love and support from him.
This book wouldn"t have happened without my indefatigable agent, Lori Perkins. Thanks, Lori, for never telling me I was too kinky.
Huge thanks go to my colleagues over the years at the New England Leather Alliance, whose mission of outreach and support for the leather, BDSM, and fetish communities has made a real difference in people"s lives: Vivienne, Danny, Scott, Rae, Percy, Jack, Bendy, and everyone else who has busted their hump to volunteer for the community and fight for BDSM acceptance and education.
To my parents for always telling me yes when it came to expressing my creativity, whether it was music or writing or acting or what, and never judging me for my choice of partners or my s.e.xuality.
And to my fandom friends, who truly understand that love is what binds us all together and makes being human worthwhile.
Love is the music that makes the soul sing.
One.
Your Mother in a Whirl.
Dearest Karina, I have no idea if you"ll read this. I hope you will. I decided to sit down and write because whenever I try to explain myself to you in person, either my pa.s.sions get the best of me or my fears do. Perhaps sitting down in a quiet place to compose this, without the distraction of your presence, I can put my feelings into words.
First, an apology. I regret many things, but none more than how much I hurt you. I have no excuse. My past is my past. My baggage is heavy, and perhaps now you can see why I wanted a fresh start with you, as if I had no past, no attachments, no burdens. And you gave me the freedom to be myself and to love you without reservations. I wish I had been able to keep my past and my demons at bay for one more day back in April, and I wish it again now. I"m sorry. I let my fears get the better of me that night at the ball, my suspicions and my paranoias blinding me to what I had right in front of me.
The love of my life.
I"m a fool. Maybe that means I don"t deserve you. Stefan, who has never said a word out of line in all the time he has worked for me, even told me I had made a mistake.
I hope you will let me apologize in person. I have so much more to tell you, so much that I dare not put in a letter. I want to tell you everything. Everything you want to know, anyway. It might take years. But I want to spend years with you. I want to share my life with you. Whatever life I will have going forward from this moment, I can"t imagine it without you.
But I cannot lie: that life is about to get very complicated again.
I thought I had put a whole chapter behind me when we met. I thought my contractual obligations had been fulfilled and I thought the false obligations had been dissipated, but it was not so. I cannot say more in a letter, but please let me tell you in person.
I do not know what will happen from this point. I would disappear completely, into anonymity in some distant country, perhaps, except for you. There is no other woman like you in the world and I was a fool not to love you as you deserve.
Please let me try.
Yours, heart, body, and soul, James Byron LeStrange My hands trembled a little as I read the e-mail from James on my phone, while the taxi picked up speed on the highway, hurrying me toward the hospital. Why did I read it then? Why? I should have at least waited until I was alone, but there had been three texts from him on my phone when I had landed, all saying some variation of "I"m sorry" and promising to explain more. And if there was one thing I wanted most from James it was an explanation. When I"d looked into my e-mail to pull up the name of the hospital my sister had sent me, I saw the message from James there, and I"d been unable to resist.
Unable to resist. That was my second beef with James. He seemed to be able to manipulate me too easily. How else could you explain how much I missed him, how much I wanted him, even though I was trembling with rage at him?
He probably thought his message was as apologetic and conciliatory as possible, but it only made me angrier. Any apology was meaningless without an explanation after all the secrets he had kept from me, so an apology that still kept all his secrets intact was as fake as the aliases he used. Did he truly not understand that? After failing to tell me who he was during our affair in New York until I forced it out of him, failing to tell me about the secret BDSM society in England he was a member of, failing to tell me he pushed Damon, a member of that society, to "test" me, and then failing to tell me that he might be married? Failing to tell me anything about what the h.e.l.l was going on while throwing out phrases like "love of my life" and "love you as you deserve" was insulting.
Part of me wanted to believe him. Part of me wanted to forgive him immediately and kneel at his feet and wait for him to tell me all about it. Surely he would... If he really loved me... But d.a.m.n it, he didn"t deserve my devotion or my submission the way things were right now. He was going to have to earn it back.
If I let him.
I considered deleting the e-mail.
But I didn"t. I had other troubles coming at me at the moment. I didn"t know what I was going to find when I got to the hospital. I barely saw the office parks and housing developments roll past as I stared out the window. My mother had fallen down a flight of stairs. The last time Jill and I had talked, they hadn"t yet known the full extent of her injuries, especially the blow to her head. All I knew from Jill"s e-mail was that she had come out of surgery okay and that Jill was worried Mom"s boyfriend might have had something to do with it.
I hoped she was wrong. I hoped that was merely Jill being freaked out over the accident and needing someone to blame. But I couldn"t do anything from thousands of miles away in England, which was why I was here now.
I read James"s e-mail again. If there was one thing James was good at, it was holding back: emotion, information, even his o.r.g.a.s.m. Here, he wasn"t holding back the emotion. I could tell he was trying to be sincere. Love of my life. James wouldn"t say, or type, those words if he didn"t absolutely mean them. James had never lied to me directly; he insisted on honesty in everything we said.
But that didn"t cover what was not said. I saw the words "I would disappear completely, into anonymity in some distant country" and felt a spike of anxiety and rage. I know you would, James, because you"ve done it to me once already. How did I know he wouldn"t do it again?
He did say he would explain. In person. But in person he had a way of making me forget myself, of drawing me into his aura of power and desire. Even in public.
I turned off my phone as the taxi exited the highway, the blue signs pointing to the hospital showing it was near.
Pulling my fully stuffed suitcases up to the hospital reception desk was awkward. Thankfully, the nurses on my mother"s ward were very sympathetic that I had come directly from the airport. They took the bags behind the duty desk where they"d be out of the way, and a nurse with a cardigan sweater over her scrubs led me to my mother"s room.
Jill was sitting in a chair outside the room, reading the newspaper. She stood up when she saw me, giving me a bear hug.
"Can we go in? How is she?" I asked.
"She was asleep last I looked." Jill folded the paper as if trying to keep it from making crinkling noises and then tucked it into the tote bag on the floor next to her chair.
The nurse motioned for us to wait and slipped into the room. When she came out she said, "Yeah, she"s asleep. It"s probably best to let her try to rest as much as possible. It"ll be time for her next meds in an hour. I"ll be back then."
Jill pulled another chair over from farther down the hall and we sat down together. I finally let out the breath I had been holding. "Well, I made it."
"I"m glad. It"s been rough here by myself."
"Have you seen her boyfriend? You said something on the phone about him and in your e-mail."
She scrubbed her face with her hands. "I haven"t seen him. But I"m suspicious as h.e.l.l."
"So you said! You also mentioned some of Mom"s stuff going missing?"
"It"s hard to be sure. It"s nothing so obvious as the place looking ransacked, you know? But I couldn"t find that velvet case with the good silver in it."
"The silverware she never let us use, you mean?" Some holidays my mother would take the silver out and polish it, but I never once saw her put it out on the dining room table for a holiday meal. I couldn"t understand the point of having a special set of fancy silverware if you never used it, until one day Jill read me a book about dragons and then it started to make sense. The silver wasn"t for using: It was guarded treasure. It was part of Mom"s dragon h.o.a.rd. "Her h.o.a.rd?" I asked to see if Jill remembered.
She smiled. "Yeah. Speaking of which, I"m pretty sure some of her jewelry is gone, too. That"s the thing though. It"s only a few items, not all of it. Just most of what I remember us playing with as kids."
"Could she have p.a.w.ned it herself?"
"Maybe. I called the bank because I was worried maybe he was emptying out her bank account, too. She doesn"t seem to be hurting for money right now, but who knows? Maybe she sold it years ago and we just don"t know."
"I take it that means there was no suspicious activity on her account."
"No. They a.s.sured me she doesn"t have a cosigner and the only automatic withdrawals are for the minimum payments on her credit card and a monthly gym membership."
"Gym membership!"
"I know, right?" Jill couldn"t help but smile at the thought of our mother, who thought sweating was unladylike, going to a gym. "There"s a shiny new place downtown."
"Maybe it"s the hot place to meet guys," I said, not joking at all. "Okay, but, Jill, back up for a second. You haven"t actually told me anything that points at what"s-his-name."
"Phil. Okay, I admit, the missing silver could have been Mom"s own doing. But her engagement ring? The one Dad gave her? She"s not wearing it and I couldn"t find it anywhere. It used to be in a special ring box of its own."
"I don"t remember that."
"Really? We used to play with it. Here, look at this. Do you remember this?" She dug into her bag to pull out a family photo alb.u.m. She flipped a few pages, and there we were in dress-up clothes, clearly playing "wedding." From the look of the napkin on my head, I was the bride. Jill must have been playing the part of the priest, and the whole wedding party, including the groom, was made up of teddy bears and stuffed animals. Many of them were wearing bow ties.
"Am I wearing her engagement ring here?" I squinted at the picture. I couldn"t have been older than four.
"I think you are. I remember the ring clearly, and it"s definitely not in her stuff now. Neither is the string of pearls she told me Dad bought her on their honeymoon."
"And what are the chances that one day she got fed up with the stuff from Dad and sold it in a fit of pique?"
"It"s possible, but not likely. I think she really liked those keepsakes of him." Jill sighed.
"You still haven"t told me a good reason to suspect Phil. Not all men are jerks, Jill."
"You think I don"t know that!" She started to raise her voice, then hushed herself before a nurse could come scold us.
"I"m just saying don"t jump to conclusions. I don"t exactly have great examples of men treating me well in my past, so trust me, I"m inclined to jump on the boy-bashing bandwagon right now. But let"s try to be calm about it and think it through. I know we"re both upset about Mom. I"m just saying let"s not take that out on some poor guy who may be sitting at home worried half to death that his girlfriend is seriously injured."
Jill took a deep breath. "Okay, let me tell you the rest of what I know, which will explain why I"m so suspicious of him. Did I tell you yet about her car?"
"No. What happened to her car?"
"When I got here yesterday, I went to the house thinking, stupidly, that I"d use her car. So I go into the garage and find it completely dead. Not a click. At first I think that"s weird, I wonder if she left her lights on and totally drained the battery or what? I didn"t have time to wait around for a jump start, so I took a taxi. Later, I went back to the house to sleep, and that"s when I started to think things were missing."
"So you said."
"So it could have been the boyfriend, or it could have been someone who heard about her being out of commission who broke in. Either way, I didn"t feel safe in the house, so I spent the night with the Rosemonts next door. And they told me the car"s been out of commission for six months and that Phil drives her everywhere."
"Okay, that"s weird."
"I think he convinced her not to get it fixed in order to make her depend on him. "Oh, honey, it"ll be so expensive. Why don"t you just let me drive you?" Meanwhile, Mary Rosemont says she hasn"t spoken to Mom in months, either. She"s cut off all her friends and even stopped going to church."
"Well, is that because the real reason she went to church was to try to meet men?" I asked.
"Karina!" Jill"s voice was sharp.
"Seriously, Jill. I"m not joking around. She found a guy and then she didn"t have to go anymore."
"I think it"s more likely he"s the kind of abuser who cuts a woman off from her friends and family and makes sure she"s completely dependent on him with nowhere else to turn."
The word abuser made my throat tighten up. "And you think he attacked her?"
"I don"t know. Plenty of abusers don"t use force, though. Sometimes the manipulation is more emotional and psychological. They just have to feel like they"re in control all the time and like the woman doesn"t have any autonomy." She rubbed her face and sighed. "When I did that domestic violence training course, I never thought I"d be applying what I learned to my own mother."
"What domestic violence training course?"
"You remember. When I was volunteering at that shelter. There was a whole orientation course. Chilling stuff."
"I can imagine." I swallowed, wondering what Jill would think if she knew I"d spent the summer messing around with a bunch of rich bondage nuts in England. Probably that I was nuts. And what would she think about a guy who made me agree to being spanked or fondled before he would do it? Wasn"t that what my own abusive professor tried to do? Get me to agree to his terms before s.e.xually using me? How was Renault different from Damon, or James? What if James wasn"t any different from Phil?
My stomach made a queasy flip as I entertained the thought. What was the difference between James and a creep like Phil or the abusers Jill learned about? Maybe I was too sucked in and blind to be able to see that there wasn"t one.
The truth was, I missed James. The whole flight from England, even though I was burning with anger, my arms had ached with emptiness. I missed his scent, and even now I kept thinking I could hear his voice coming from somewhere down the hall. Was I deluded? Was it like being addicted to a drug that felt good but was ultimately the worst possible thing for me?
I tried that thought on for size, but it didn"t fit. James might be bad for me, but it wasn"t abuse. I couldn"t quite put together why at that moment, but I felt there was a difference. I still had ma.s.sive issues with him, but abuse wasn"t one of them.
I wondered if Jill would agree, but this felt like the wrong time to bring it up... I jerked upright, realizing that I had nodded off right there in front of her.
She glanced at her watch. "Let"s go see if she"s awake."
"Okay."
We tiptoed into the room in case she wasn"t.
My first sight of her took my breath away. Her face was drawn and pale, making the bruise on her forehead look even darker and more lurid than it actually was. A bandage was wrapped around her head. There was an IV in her arm, and other tubes and monitor wires disappeared under the beige blanket. The bed was arranged so she was reclining sitting partway up, but her eyes were closed as if she were sleeping. Her left hand was bandaged and in a splint, too.
I crept closer, until I stood at the railing next to her outstretched IV arm.
Her eyes flew open then, and she whispered, "Karina!" Then she cleared her throat and said in a more normal tone of voice, "My baby girl, I"m so glad you came to see me!"
I leaned down to kiss her on the cheek, trying not to get tangled on any of the wires or tubes. "I"m so happy to see you, too."
"Oh, I"ve missed you missed you missed you missed you," she crooned. "Did it take you a long time to get here?"
"Well, I was working in London for the summer, so I had to fly back, but it"s fine. My a.s.signment was over anyway. Are you okay, though, Mom? The doctor said you had a fall."
"Oh, I"m sure I will be fine very soon, honey. Don"t worry about that. London, you say? You mean England?"