“You’re not listening!” Mattie’s voice jolted Alice out of her daze.
Her head snapped up and she clutched her iPhone, pressing it closer to her ear and mumbling, “I am, I’m listening. Something about neuropeptides being responsible for pair-bonding in humans…”
“That was two paragraphs ago.” Mattie’s mouth sounded like it was barely moving. Alice knew that meant her sister was really mad.
Alice snuggled deeper under her mountainous down comforter and decided to try to lighten the subject a little. “So you’re telling me Wade and I are together just based on brain chemistry?”
Maddie sighed. “I’m trying to finish my dissertation and you want to talk about your boyfriend? Where are your priorities?”
She grinned. “What priorities?”
“Grow up, Alice!”
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, although now she was thinking about Wade-about his big smile and big eyes and big hands that turned her this way and that way, and his big…
“Can I just finish this chapter?” Maddie interrupted her thoughts again.
“Go on.” Alice assured her, “I’m listening.”
And she tried, she really did, but distraction came easily to Alice, always had.
Once when she was young and Maddie was babysitting, Alice had wandered off at the beach chasing a lizard across the sand, panicking her older sister to tears and, when she finally found Alice on her belly staring at the rock the lizard had disappeared under, to a sub-zero sort of anger as well. They hadn’t spoken for the rest of the day. Alice hated when Maddie was angry and tried to do everything she could to avoid it. If that included listening to the latest chapter in Maddie’s dissertation, well, certain sacrifices had to be made.
But Alice couldn’t help it-her eyes were already closing, her mind drifting. A faint mew from somewhere way down there on the floor made her smile. Then Dinah jumped up onto the bed, her motor running, rubbing her white head against the hand Alice was using to hold the phone. Alice petted her with the other hand, scratching behind the cat’s ears, tracing the line of her spine, making her tail rise. Wade says I do that when he pets me. The thought made her shiver.
Dinah mewed indignantly at Alice’s distraction, nudging her phone hand again.
Maddie was still reading, something about oxytocin and g-protein coupled receptors.
Gah! How was she supposed to even feign interest? Dinah gave up on being petted and curled into a white ball of fluff on the covers, tucking her pink nose under a paw to sleep, and Alice gave up on trying to listen, settling down and drifting naturally into thoughts of Wade.
She had eight months of memories to flip through in her head, but the reality of Wade made him so much more of an immediate experience. Memory didn’t do the man justice. No matter how much time she had with him, she craved more. They’d spent plenty of time together-movie dates, the theater, a heavenly weekend trip to Bermuda, and whenever he stayed over, he would make her waffles or French toast while Dinah did figure-eights between his feet in the kitchen-but that wasn’t the best thing about Wade for Alice. She kept the best thing locked like a smooth, secret heart tucked inside of her beating one.
She hadn’t even told Maddie. Not that Maddie would understand with her belief that love was nothing more than biological instinct and brain chemistry. Alice knew better. Love went deeper than those things. It burned like a laser beam through to her core and broke her heart wide open. Love made her do things she never would have considered before. Love was silk and softness, but love was also leather and the bite of a riding crop and Wade’s commands. She hadn’t told anyone about the ropes and bindings, the endless cycle of pain and pleasure that forced her to her knees at Wade’s feet again and again.
Not that she had anyone to tell, besides Dinah and Maddie. Dinah didn’t care, and Maddie would reduce it all to hormones and endorphins before declaring her sister insane and having her committed. Or calling the police. Or insisting Alice move back in with the responsible Maddie and stop her work as a freelance writer, a profession that barely kept Dinah in Meow Mix and Alice in Lean Cuisines, but one that Alice couldn’t give up. For her, imagination was everything. To Maddie, it was practically the root of all evil. Even Maddie had wondered aloud how two such different souls had managed to come from the same DNA. For Alice, it proved that the world was bigger than scientific explanation.
“So what do you think?”
Was she finally done? Alice stifled a yawn, searching for a truth to tell her sister.
“I think you’re awesome, Maddie.” She couldn’t tell if the silence on the other end of the phone was pleased-Maddie or mad-Maddie, but then her other line rang and when she saw Wade’s name on the Caller ID and heard the “Closer to God” Nine-Inch-Nails ringtone she’d assigned to him, all thoughts of her sister fled her brain.
“My other line,” Alice said, already breathless. It was almost midnight. If Wade was calling this late, it could only mean one thing. “I have to go.” She didn’t even wait for Maddie to protest before switching over. “Hello?”
“Are you ready?” His voice was smooth, like butter, and it melted her immediately.
She played coy. “I’m always ready for you.”
“The blue one, backless. No panties.” He wasn’t playing around tonight. She was fully awake and squirming already.
“No stockings. No bra.”
“But-” The dress was impossible to keep on, just a wisp of fabric really, and without anything underneath…
“No buts. Fifteen minutes. Out front.”
“Okay.” She didn’t hesitate, not really. She was a good girl and rarely disobeyed-except when she had to. Or she forgot.
“Pardon me?” The smoothness in his voice turned gruff and Alice straightened up even further.
“I meant yes. Sir,” she corrected herself. “Yes, sir.”
“Fifteen minutes,” he said again and the line went dead.
“Fifteen minutes, Dinah,” she exclaimed, dumping the cat to the floor along with the comforter as she tumbled out of bed. “Goodness! Can we make ourselves presentable in fifteen minutes?”
Dinah sat back on her haunches and began to wash herself with the pink rasp of her tongue, safe in the knowledge she was always ready for anything. Alice wasn’t so fortunate, but she managed to get herself together, just barely, with a five minute wash-down, scrubbed and shaved in the shower. Not her hair though, that was clean already and she brushed it out and left it long and straight over her shoulders like spun gold.
There weren’t many clothes to put on, just the midnight-blue dress, more gauze than material, and her slip-on heels. She considered leaving the light wrap she’d chosen. He hadn’t mentioned her wearing one, but while it was spring, the air outside was chilly and she would be standing on the porch for as long as it took.
“Don’t wait up for me, Dinah!” Alice called, checking to make sure the cat had plenty of food and water before shutting and locking the door behind her.
The day had been a lovely, bright blue thing and the night that had followed was crisp and clean, no hint of moisture in it. She breathed deeply, fending off the lightheaded dizzy feeling that came with Wade’s late night calls and gazed at the stars, wondering just what he had in store for her tonight. His basement-he called it ‘The Sanctuary’ and for Alice, it most definitely was-was crammed full of various implements of pleasure and pain, not the least important of which was Wade himself.
Without him, the rest would have been a little absurd.
It could be anything, of course. Or none of those. Some nights they spent upstairs in his big bed making plain old vanilla love and that was good too for variety.
But she had a feeling tonight wasn’t a vanilla sort of night. He’d mentioned a surprise last week, just a casual comment, and she hadn’t pressed him. She’d learned to wait patiently for Wade to reveal what he wanted, when he wanted. It was always better that way, less punishment involved. Besides, the anticipation was delicious.
In the scheme of things, she never had to wait too long. The black car pulling up in front of her little bungalow was proof enough of that. But strangely, it wasn’t Wade’s car-and Wade wasn’t in it. Instead, a driver appeared, a tall man in a dark suit and hat with pristine white gloves, to open the door in the back for her.
“Ms. Lydel?” he called, motioning her forward. “Mr. Knight sent me.” She rushed off the porch, jolted out of her surprise by his words, her mind buzzing with possibilities. Her body was already flushed and ready for whatever Wade might have in store. She thanked the driver as she got into the car. It wasn’t a limo, but it was a long, sleek black thing that prowled through the streets with a low rumble and a secret sort of power in its haunches, as if it might launch them into outer space or another dimension with the slightest tap of the gas pedal.
She didn’t ask the driver where they were going, she just sat back and waited, watching the world pass breathlessly by. It seemed as if they drove forever, through city streets, then onto a highway and off, the scenery changing to black nothingness after a while, with only faint lights painted on the darkness in the distance. And he drove very fast, making her clutch her little purse in one hand and the edge of the seat in the other.
“Are we in a hurry?” Alice gasped when he took a sharp curve fast enough to tilt her torso nearly parallel to the seat.
“Late,” he replied shortly, the car hurtling through the darkness.
She didn’t know how they could possibly be late. Wade had told her fifteen minutes and she’d been out there in ten. When they finally stopped, Alice took the driver’s white-gloved hand and let him help her out, feeling disoriented. The driver was mumbling to himself about their tardiness as he shut the door behind her.
“She won’t be pleased,” he remarked, shutting the car door with a thump that made Alice jump. She looked around, trying to see if Wade was waiting for her somewhere, but there was nothing, nothing at all, just a long gravel drive leading up to a building of some sort she couldn’t even really see. The night was complete darkness, no streetlights, not even a moon to light the way.
“Excuse me?” Alice called to the driver but he was already striding toward the building, not much of him visible except for the flash of his gloves. “Can you help me?”