Burn (Songs of Submission #5)(24)

“Not to me.”

“I’m getting that.”

CHAPTER 19.

MONICA

The room wasn’t a room. It was one of two suites on the top floor. I saw the skyline through the floor-to-ceiling windows in every direction. The décor matched the lobby’s; matte blacks and dark matte woods with textured grains stained for contrast. I traversed the corners and expanses of the living area and bedroom, every step further proof that I was alone. The black leather couch was too big. Seating for six. Closet space for a family or clothes horse.

Something was missing. After the second time I circumnavigated the rooms, I realized that I didn’t feel as though I was being watched. I hadn’t realized the feeling stayed with me when I locked my door behind me, but in its absence, I grasped that it had.

I tried to call Kevin and got no answer. We were on international roaming. He’d probably off shut his phone. We needed him. He’d taken us on to energize the creative process, but the practicalities of an installation were beyond me. If he got held up too long, Darren and I would be in a world of shit.

I pulled my jacket off, and the sleeve went inside out. The poly-satin undersleeve’s seam had split ages ago, but the loose threads and edges were invisible when I wore it, so I kept the thing, promising to fix it some day. Were our relationships jackets we wore? Every one was a manageable, condensed, digestible thing on the outside with a gaping wound on the inside. Then when we pulled ourselves out, they prolapsed, like a jacket sleeve, and exposed the raw, broken places we never got around to fixing?

I looked at the jacket a little too long. I was so f**king horny and pink, it was painful. Jonathan was right. We could f**k ourselves blue, but until we figured out how to be together, we were only using each other’s bodies for mutual immolation.

His room was likely behind the thick wooden door with the big lock. It sat next to the empty china cabinet that would probably be filled if I called the concierge and announced I was entertaining. If Jonathan wasn’t in his room already, he would be soon enough. He had to make a show of sleeping. I touched the door, trying to feel him on the other side. I lay my cheek against it. How I wanted him. If only he wasn’t carrying the baggage of Bondage Girl, the looks, the smart comments, the self-defeating turning of my own brain.

What if I rejected him completely, again? Like an addiction, the bodily ache needed to be broken first, then the habit. If I made it through this trip, I might get home ready to take on something new. Maybe date? Maybe meet someone nice? Like any addict, I couldn’t see a world outside the drug. But I knew there was one.

I stepped away from the door and got ready for bed in a haze. I hung up the dress and got out my work clothes for the next day. I’d done all right. My voice was an instrument for the piece. I’d recorded cleanly and done good work. I just needed to finish the job. Tomorrow. I had to focus on that.

I got into bed naked, feeling the brush of cool, hotel sheets on my skin, and immediately Jonathan was back on my mind. The drug. Putting his hands on me. Stroking my back, my ass, my thighs. He cupped my br**sts, caressing them, then pinched and twisted the ni**les until pleasure turned into a sharp bullet of pain. My hand followed the path my mind created for him, and I looked forward to release and rest. Arching my back into the imagined warmth of him, I spread my legs, giving my fingertips a place to land. I slipped them between my folds, pretending they were his, imitating the tenderness he showed right before the roughness took over.

I rolled over onto my stomach and slipped my fingers over my clit. I wasn’t ready. How could that be? I couldn’t go to bed frustrated. I wouldn’t be able to sleep. My mind needed to talk some sense into my body, but apparently, they weren’t on speaking terms. I put my ass up and felt a little tingle that might have been something or nothing, but I didn’t touch myself. I just imagined myself in his ready position, waiting, unsure of what he’d do next. But it was too comfortable.

I slipped down to the floor.

The carpet was grey wool, rough to the touch. It dug into my knees and palms as I crawled, naked, into the living area. My arms and legs kept a midtempo rhythm, head bowed in submission to someone who wasn’t in the room. Everything was taller. I was lower than the table, the couch, the chairs. My body’s reaction was almost immediate. Fluids collected between my legs, lubricating them against each other.

What a repulsive creature I was, unable to find arousal without crawling on the floor. Even my self-loathing turned me on so intensely I had to stop crawling for a second to shudder at the power of it.

I was alone. I was safe. No one was watching. I could allow myself to feel it, to do it, to be however I wanted. I got to the door between my suite and his. On my hands and knees, I put my lips to it, thinking his name over and over, tasting the flat flavor of wood and dried lacquer, finding his sawdust scent inside it.

Doubts came, but I washed them away in the knowledge that no one had to know. Only a locked door kept the company of my submission. My sexual abdication. The resignation of responsibility and control.

When I moved my lips from the door, I saw myself in the window, a translucent reflection of a lone, naked woman crawling to her master’s door. I fell to the carpet, put my cheek on the rough wool, and watched my reflection as I turned my back to the door, hoisted my ass up, and slid my hands between my ankles.

I was ready for him, but he wasn’t coming.

I spread my knees and slipped my hand from my ankles to between my legs. I gasped, then as I pushed through the layer of thick slickness to stroke myself, I groaned.