All the Things We Need Read online

  It was the last day of my vacation but the first of his. I didn’t expect to hear from him again, much less while he was enjoying the sun and sand and the possibilities of dozens of other girls at dance clubs who’d let him take them for late-night walks on the sand. But he called me every day. Texted me, too. He sent me pictures of himself on the beach, at the bar, grilling burgers with his buddies. And by the next Friday, he was urging me to come down and spend the weekend with him—because he wasn’t renting a house, he owned it, and though he did have to go back to work on Monday, he could stay those two extra days.

  Did I cancel all my plans to spend the weekend with a man I just met?

  You bet your ass I did. And it was glorious. He grilled me steaks and asparagus on his deck, plied me with expensive wine, made love to me and then slept beside me with the sounds of the ocean rocking us into dreamland. He made sure I wore sunscreen so I didn’t burn. He made sure to send back the salad I ordered that came with bacon bits on it that I’d requested not be there. I left late Sunday night, already missing him.

  That was our summer. Weekends at his place by the ocean, and though the three-hour drive put too many miles on my car and got boring as shit really fast, I didn’t care. During the week, we talked every night and texted throughout the day. With another nearly three-hour drive between us when he was at home in DC, getting together during the week was out of the question. We had to make do with technology. As summer heat became autumn chill, he shut down the beach house, and I spent my Friday and Sunday nights traveling to Washington, instead.

  I knew I was in love with him the first time he let me tie his hands.

  It started off silly. We’d been watching a movie, the typical sort of porny femdom type scene played for laughs as the black-vinyl-clad woman whipped a fat, sputtering businessman who vowed to empty his bank account for her. My chilly bare toes were tucked beneath his thighs on his oversize leather couch, because even though winter was sniffing around us, I was determined to hold on to summer as long as I could. He had a beer. I had a glass of wine. We’d stuffed ourselves on homemade lasagna I’d put together from my mom’s recipe, one of the few things I could proudly say she’d taught me to manage in the kitchen. When the woman on the screen planted her stiletto heel in the small of the businessman’s back and snarled, “And I want the stock options, too, you worm!” I coughed out spurious laughter.

  “Why’s it always got to be like that?” I said. “All degradation and humiliation. They never, ever show how beautiful it should be.”

  His fingers curled under my calf, and he looked at me with shining eyes. “How beautiful what should be?”

  “A man on his knees.” I leaned close to kiss him. The wine had made me sleepy and sexy and warm. So did he. “Worshipping a woman, adoring her. That’s beautiful.”

  He slid from the couch and got on his knees in front of me, between my legs. His hands on my thighs below the hem of the summer-weight dress I was still so stubbornly wearing despite my goose bumps. He pressed a kiss to my bare knee, and the shudder that rippled up and down my spine had nothing to do with the temperature.

  I put my hand lightly on his hair. He turned his face to press his cheek to my flesh and gave me a wicked, tempting grin. My fingers tightened in his hair, testing him. When his eyes fluttered closed and his mouth thinned, I might have taken that for distaste, except for the soft moan that slipped out of him.

  We’d fucked a hundred times by that point. Backward, frontward, side by side. We’d never talked specifically about how I liked to pin his wrists above his head when I was on top, or how he so often urged me to straddle his face while he stroked himself.

  On the television screen, the dominatrix had cuffed the businessman’s hands while she wielded a flogger with a multitude of leather straps. The movie was still playing the scene for shits and giggles, semi-mocking the entire exchange. It wasn’t very sexy to me at all, nowhere near as arousing as the man on his knees in front of me.

  “Would you let me tie you up?” I breathed into his ear, leaning forward to take his chin in my hand. I nuzzled his cheek and found his waiting, eager mouth.

  “Yes. If you wanted to.”

  I stood, drunker than I ought to have been. Not from the wine. From possibility. I took him by the hand and led him upstairs. I didn’t look at him along the way. My heart pounded in my ears loud enough to block out everything else. I was dreaming, wasn’t I?

  But it was better than a dream.

  I’d played around with control in high school without knowing it, only that I liked it best when my boyfriend was underneath me when we dry humped our way to mutual orgasms. In college and thereafter I’d tried to find my pace, led by the sorts of movies George and I had been watching. Porn, too. I demanded things of the guys I dated. I was bossy. A bitch, even when I didn’t want to be, because that was how I thought it was supposed to work. But although the idea of some of what I watched excited me, humiliating the men I was supposed to love—or at least like enough to fuck—left me cold. I liked the clothes a dominatrix wore, high heels and lingerie. But I didn’t care for being a dominatrix if it meant hurting someone else in order for them to give me what I wanted, and that was the only way I’d ever seen women on top behaving.

  In his bedroom, I said, “Take off your clothes.”

  He pulled his polo shirt off over his head and tossed it to the side. I loved his body. He’d been an athlete in high school and college, and it showed. Smooth skin that didn’t tan, against which my own olive coloring looked even darker. He undid his braided leather belt and pushed his khakis over his hips, down his thighs. He was self-conscious about his legs, complaining that no matter how much he worked out, he couldn’t bulk up his thighs. But I loved his legs like I did the rest of him, lean and strong and sleek.

  He wore dark blue boxer briefs, but hesitated with his thumbs in the waistband. “Elise.”

  “Those, too.”

  Then he was naked in front of me, his cock already stirring as I watched him without so much as lifting the hem of my skirt. We stared at each other for what seemed like forever before I deliberately and obviously let my gaze roam over the rest of him. Assessing. Judging.

  Owning.

  He was fully erect by the time I looked into his eyes again. His breathing, short pants. His fingers had curled into fists.

  I’d waited for him to refuse me somewhere along the way, or to move or somehow to take control the way so many men did, even those who seemed to like it when I took charge. But he didn’t. He gave me what I wanted, and it turned him on as much as it did me.

  Later, I would learn how to choose rope that wouldn’t rub his flesh raw, how to tie knots and decorate him in silken cord. But that first time, all I had was the necktie I grabbed from the rack inside his closet door. I’d never seen him wear one—our time together had so far always been casual dress. I snapped the fabric between my fists, making it taut.

  I didn’t have to ask him to go to his knees. Or to put his hands behind his back, crossed at the wrists. He did those things with only a look from me, and at first, I couldn’t move. I was afraid to. My knees had gone so weak, I thought I might fall.

  I tied him sloppily, without finesse. At first too tight, so that the edges of his tie cut into his skin. Then too loose, so that he could have easily gotten free, if he tugged. He didn’t. He let me take my time. He let me bind him. And when I urged him forward on his knees to eat my pussy as I lay back on the edge of his bed, he did that, too.

  I came three times with him tied up in front of me. I came a fourth with him inside me, his hands no longer bound but moving over my body. He fucked me so hard something rubbed raw inside me, bringing blood, but no regrets.

  “How many times have you done that?” I asked him when it was over, in the dark and quiet as he spooned me.

  “Never.”

  My h
eart lifted even as my head told me he had to be lying. “Oh, c’mon.”

  “No.” He nuzzled the back of my neck and pulled me closer. “You were the first.”

  * * *

  “He was not the first,” I told Alex. “Not the first man I’d ever loved or the first to let me play around with being on top. But he was the first I’d ever gone that far with in terms of domination, the first I’d ever felt fully like myself with. The first relationship I didn’t doubt myself in. With George, I was always beautiful and always strong, at least until the end, when it all fell apart.”

  “Why’d you break up?”

  “That,” I said, “is the question, isn’t it?”

  Alex looked thoughtful. “You were crazy in love with him.”

  “Yes. Too much.”

  “Did he love you?”

  I let out a low, strangled laugh. “Ultimately, not enough. So does it matter if he loved me a little, or at all? I don’t know.”

  “Shit.” Alex leaned back in his chair and ran both hands through his dark hair, standing it on end though it usually fell haphazardly into his eyes. “What happened?”

  “We were together for just over a year. The sex was fantastic. We got along great. I’d had a bunch of short relationships that hadn’t been very deep or meaningful, but with George I fell hard. He was smart and funny, he had a good job, he had his shit together. I imagined myself baking him pies and making babies, doing it all up June Cleaver style, except instead of a white picket fence and an apron, I’d have a leather flogger and a headboard with permanent eyebolts in it.”

  Alex snorted soft laughter, but that was all right. I’d been making light, though I felt anything but.

  I shrugged. “He had this way of looking at me…he didn’t need to say a word. He’d just stare. Like he thought I was amazing and wonderful. I thought…” I paused, hating the way my voice rasped. “I thought I made him happy, you know?”

  “I understand. Totally.”

  Looking at him, I thought he did. “I let myself get lost in him, though. Addicted, I guess. Part of it was the sex. That power, the control. It was heady stuff I’d dreamed about for a long time but hadn’t really had, not in that way. He made me cockdrunk, but it was more than that. I was crazy in love with him, like you said, the key word being crazy. Loved, loved, loved, crazy mad insane with it, to the point where as much as I might have exerted control in the bedroom, I was totally out of control in the relationship. He was the one who was in control because he just…didn’t feel the same way.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “We had this intense sexual connection, but for me it wasn’t always about trussing him up like a turkey or any of that other stuff. I mean, sure, I liked it, but it’s never been all about constantly topping someone for me. I know there are people who can’t get off without a script and a scene and all that, but it doesn’t have to be like that every time for me. There’s more to life than handcuffs and paddles.” I paused. “My switch gets flipped for all kinds of things, like the way he always opened the car door for me or got the things down from the high shelf. How he stocked his fridge with the kind of cheese I liked, even though I’d never mentioned it. He just knew. Myriad tiny things all making up the whole. It’s always been about that, for me.”

  “Who doesn’t like to feel they’re understood?” Alex asked quietly. “I get it.”

  “So we had this time, you know, this bright and shining time when he made me feel like I was the best thing that had ever happened to him. I didn’t doubt ever, not for a second, that George thought I was beautiful and amazing and wonderful.” I paused again, hating the sting. “And then one day, I wasn’t so wonderful anymore. He stopped doing all the little things. Then he stopped answering my messages. He stopped reaching out first. He started to cancel plans.”

  “All bad signs.”

  I laughed bitterly. “He stopped making me important. And I can forgive a lot of things, but not that. When I asked him where things were going with us—”

  Alex winced. “The conversation every man dreads.”

  I laughed. “You think women like it any better?”

  “I guess not.”

  “I had to ask. I didn’t want to. But I had to know what he felt about me. What he wanted. I told him I loved him and wanted to be with him, and I was willing to do whatever it took to make it work for us. He gave me the romantic equivalent of a pat on the head and a chuck under the chin. He said he loved me in his own way, but that being with me was like eating ice cream every day. You decide you like a new flavor, right? And you glut yourself on it. You eat it every day. You think you’ll never get tired of eating it. It’s your favorite flavor. You can’t get enough, until one day, you wake up and you decide you’re sick of that flavor.”

  “Ugh,” Alex said, but nodded. “He wanted a new flavor?”

  “Yes. I guess he decided he really wanted to try vanilla.”

  “Wow.”

  I nodded. “Right? He said he’d never been able to make anything work out, that he was always looking ahead for the next best thing.”

  “After a year, he said this to you?” Alex looked disgusted.

  I laughed, not because it was funny but because it was all I could do. “Yes. After a year, he said that to me.”

  “He was stupid, you know. You were the best thing that ever happened to him.”

  “Thanks.” I shrugged. “Didn’t feel like that, though. It felt like shit. It felt like he was telling me that everything we’d done wasn’t what he really wanted. It made me feel like he’d never truly understood me at all—that I’d been alone in this thing the whole time.”

  “What do men do when they fear women?” Alex asked after a second. “They make them doubt.”

  “He said he needed some time, but that we could just stay in each other’s lives while we dated other people. As if I could’ve handled that. And that maybe, after some time, if neither of us had found someone we liked better, we might get back together.”

  “Oh. Wow. The fucker. Jesus, Elise.”

  I drew in a breath, hating the sick feeling in my stomach. “He said we’d keep in touch. I told him he could go fuck himself with broken glass. He said good-night. I said goodbye.”

  “Good for you!”

  I laughed again, embarrassed this time, but hell, I’d owned up to everything else, I might as well finish the story with the truth. “I regretted saying it immediately. That’s the thing about crazy. It tends to stick.”

  “So does shit when you throw it at the wall,” Alex said.

  This time, my laugh was not bitter or embarrassed. A full-fledged guffaw burst out of me, hard enough to hurt. “You have such a way with words.”

  He grinned and buffed his nails on his shirt. “Thanks.”

  “He told me there was a chance, Alex. There was a maybe. And I…God. I’m such an idiot. I took that maybe, and I held it close to my heart, and I kept it there for the past three, no, almost four now, years. Because as long as there was a maybe, it wasn’t a no.”

  “Have you talked to him since?”

  “I used to talk to him all the time.” I frowned, not proud. “I’ve apologized. I’ve asked him to reconsider. I’ve asked him to tell me he hates me. I’ve asked him to tell me he doesn’t. He never answered me. He never told me to stop. He didn’t block or delete me. I know because the messages went through and because I still see him in my contacts list. He read the messages, but never answered. He just kept letting me hold on to that maybe.”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  I almost gagged on the thought of it. “Yeah. Stupid. Pathetic. Embarrassing, God, so fucking embarrassing. It was like a sickness with me. And I knew it, but I didn’t care. Because there was that tiny, teensy-weensy spark of hope. At least I told myself there was.”

  Al
ex frowned. He looked embarrassed then, himself. Then determined. “Look. I’m going to be blunt. Can I be blunt?”

  “If I say no, will you say it anyway?”

  “He put you on his C list,” Alex said.

  I blinked. I swallowed a sour taste. “Ugh.”

  “Look, I’m not proud to say this, but…I’ve been that guy. That asshole guy who keeps people around just in case.” He looked ashamed. “Sometimes you had to work a little harder than others to keep someone on the string, but sometimes all it took was letting them know you were reading their messages and just not answering to keep them around in case you wanted them, when you didn’t have something better.”

  I put my face in my hands. “Oh, I think I’m going to puke.”

  “Don’t,” he said. “If you puke, I’ll puke. It’ll be like the pie-eating scene in Stand By Me.”

  I peeked at him through my fingers. “So that’s my story. I’ve held on to a man who dumped me, hoping one day he’d come back around and we could have what we had when it was good. I fucked my way through half a dozen men since then and wouldn’t let any of them in, just in case one day George answered me. I met my lover, who was totally into letting me tie him up and do all manner of kinky things to him, and it was really great, until I found out he’s married with two kids, one an infant that can’t be more than a couple months old, and the last time I saw him was only weeks ago.”

  Alex choked on his last sip of coffee.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Fuckery. I didn’t know. I thought we had rules because I didn’t want it to be more than sex with him. I didn’t want to get caught up in a relationship or fall in love or anything like that. I should have guessed it, though, that he had his own reasons for the rules. I should’ve known. I guess I didn’t want to know. That doesn’t make it any better.”

  “Knowing definitely is worse than not knowing,” Alex said. “Don’t beat yourself up about something he kept from you.”

  “He broke it off. And now that I do know, I could never go back to the way things were. But I miss him. God.” I shuddered with unhumorous laughter. “I miss what we did anyway.”