Coda (Songs of Submission #9)(11)

It was cute. Sweet, even. In a way, her protectiveness made me love her more than I’d thought I could love anyone. She was a mother lion, even with her hands behind her back and her mascara running down her cheeks.

And as if cued, as I carried her, I had a vision in four-dimension Technicolor, clear as reality and sharper than the truth: my heart blew through the scar in my chest, and I dropped her. The vision went whoosh when the heart flew out of me, thup when it landed on the floor, and clonk when I dropped her. I didn’t hear myself fall, because I was dead.

This had to stop, but I didn’t know how to do it. I didn’t know how to shut it down. I shook myself free of the afterburn as I laid her on the bed. It faced the Pacific ocean, and the constant crash of the waves would make a nice backdrop over her screams of pleasure. She’d wanted to live on the beach, and I’d given her that, but I’d never given her myself. That was going to change. I couldn’t live like this.

“I missed you,” she said, and I knew what she meant.

“You barely knew me.” I rolled her onto her stomach. I wanted to tie her up, but I couldn’t. I had in the studio, but I’d kept thinking as I stroked her back, what if the heart rejects me and she’s tied down?

She tucked her hands under her thighs. “How much do I need to know you to love you?”

“Put your hands on the headboard,” I said, pulling her hair from her face.

She stretched her arms and turned to face the big glass doors onto the patio. The beach on the other side was private, and that slice of sunset was ours alone. Her eyes were blasted light brown in the dying sun, and they followed me as I stepped back and looked at her.

She was long and beautiful, with hair like a turbulent ocean. She was my songbird, my goddess, my slice of control in a world of chaos.

Ten years with her was better than sixty with anyone less.

I picked her legs up by the ankles and bent the knees, spreading them apart. Her cunt was wet, and her ass was welted pink. I looked back up at her face. Her eyes were closed tightly, wrinkles in the skin around her wet lashes, and I remembered how hard I’d hit her. Six months’ worth of frustration. I’d never hit her out of anger, only arousal, but maybe the two had gotten mixed up somewhere.

“This hurts,” I said, hovering my hand over her ass.

“Yes,” she said, eyes open into the sun again. “Thank you.”

She wasn’t trained to thank me for spankings. No one had told her it was how a submissive was supposed to please their master. She simply thanked me because she’d gotten something from me she couldn’t give to herself. How could I not love her?

“Wait here.” I kissed her cheek and went to the bathroom.

I snapped open the medicine cabinet. I had a shaving salve and a lubricant. Abandoned hair things. Toothpaste. Band-Aids. Monica had a pale pink box of who-even-knew under the sink. The movers had taken everything and brought it from my house to this new house, and my wife and I had been too distracted and too vanilla to note where we kept the salves for her poor, welted ass. I’d been a sorry excuse of a dominant.

I laughed at myself and put the lubricant back. That wouldn’t work.

I snapped it open. Little half-used tubes of whatnot clacked around. Perfumey stuff that would burn. Zinc oxide would be fine for a small area, but her whole bottom needed attention. I clicked open a smaller box. Ah. Sunburn ointment and Neosporin. Perfect.

I checked a little velvet bag with a drawstring. I didn’t know what I was hoping for, maybe the home-run of ass lotions or a magic unguent that would make her able to sit for more than five minutes without flinching. I just opened it and slid out a white plastic stick. A pregnancy test.

The nerve to my heart had been cut during the transplant, so I couldn’t feel it stop and seize up. Couldn’t feel the squeeze in my chest. But I knew it was there.

I turned the plastic wand. Not breathing. Not thinking about the fact that I’d been snooping into something that had been inside a bag, inside a box, inside a cabinet.

Not pregnant.

I wasn’t relieved. I wasn’t disappointed. I just realized how much I wanted a different result and how little control I had over it.

I slapped everything back in its place and went into the bedroom. She was still there, facedown, hands touching the headboard, bathed in the sunset. It would be dark in a few minutes, so I turned on the little lamp by the bed.

“I found these in your stuff,” I said, holding out the tubes.

“I think the Neosporin’s expired.”

I flipped the tube. “Next month.”

“Yes, sir.”

I sat on the edge of the bed. “Ass up.”

She shifted, arching just enough to get her pelvis off the bed.

“Goddess, when I say ass up, I mean ass up.” I put my hand under her and jacked her up until her ass was in the air.

She groaned. I spread her legs under her and pressed down on her lower back. Perfect. I kissed a raw welt, and she squeaked in pain.

“None of that.” Though my words were cruel, I didn’t want her to hurt right then. She’d earned her pleasure.

I squeezed a lump of the sunburn cream onto my finger. It was cool to the touch, and when I put it on the pink skin, she breathed easily.

“Now,” I said, “we have a problem. Fucking you in the ass isn’t going to solve it.”