Taking Cara's Business

"A walk?" startled into looking at her, forgetting the impossibility of ever meeting her eyes again. She smiles back at me, holding my jacket.

"A short walk, yes. Just around the outside of the house and through the garden. We need to get your blood moving a bit. Come on." She hands me my jacket as I stand and cocks her head at me, pointing toward the door with her chin. "It's lovely out, let's go."

Pulling my jacket on, I walk with her, so bewildered by now that my mind has given up, like a housewife collapsing on the couch after a marathon spin on the stationary bike. When we reach the door she pauses briefly to let me go through it ahead of her, and once on the other side I look quickly around for her, not sure where to go. She leads us down the short hallway to the right, through a small bright room like a breakfast nook, and slides open a glass door that leads outside, again waiting for me to step through before following me and sliding it closed.

"This way," she says, and we take to a broad, smooth path bordered on each side by river rock stacked close and tight, just high enough to make a nice place to stop and sit, if one were so inclined, and look at the beds of flowers and ornamental grass.

The sun is warm and the breeze soft and I do feel better, walking outdoors, but this is a residential neighborhood, and even though the houses are spaced well enough apart, I am not sure about talking out here. "Siobhan…" I begin, but she shakes her head, reassuring me. "We're just walking, right now," she says, "getting your blood back circulating. Don't worry. Don't worry about anything right now."

The path curves around the side of the house and then doubles back. The backyard is not overly large, but the path has been laid to wind around, back and forth, and we walk. I wonder briefly how she is able to set such a brisk pace in those insane heels, but the thought is chased away by another growing concern. "Listen, I've completely lost track of time, and I don't know what your schedule is…"

She shoots a look at me, as though I've begun reciting Mother Goose or the periodic table of elements or some other damn random nonsense, but she doesn't break her pace at all and she doesn't answer me. My concern doubles. "I mean… it's just that… I'd like to come back, sometime, make another appointment, if that's ok. If you're still willing to work with me, I mean. It's just, today… I can't today."

"Is there someplace you have to be?" she asks.

"No, it's not that, it's just—" I stop walking. She stops, one step ahead of me on the path, and turns to look at me. I put my hands in my jacket pockets. I feel foolish. "I didn't bring enough—to pay for second session. Today." The ghost of that faint line between her eyes is back. "I mean, I can—I'd like to, maybe next week, or whenever you have time, I'm sure you're busy, but whenever you have time, or when you think would be a good time, it's just today I don't—I don't have it. For an extra session."

"Did I ask you to pay for another session?"

"No! No, you didn't… I just thought…"

"You thought I would? Without discussing it with you beforehand?"

My mouth opens and closes. Wordless. Me, the nerdy wordy wonder. Bereft Of Words, opening today at a theatre near you.

"Now that," she says, and looks away for a moment, then back at me. "That is not cool."

Well. Didn't see that coming! Not the sentiment, not the uncharacteristic wording, not the—what is that in her eyes? Not irritation. It looks like… like anger, oddly. Not Scary Domme Anger… just regular, everyday, now-hold-on-one-damn-minute anger. I am too surprised to feel afraid, or guilty, or contrite even. What the hell?

"Siobhan, what? I'm just trying to be fair."

"Well, how about you try listening, Cara, and give 'fair' a rest for the moment."

"Listen to—"

"I said, very clearly, not to worry." She steps closer to me and her voice softens but her gaze does not. "That it was all right, and not to worry about anything right now. Have I done, or said, anything—anything to make you think me dishonest?"

"No, of course n—"

"Fees are always agreed upon up front, and paid in advance. We went over this, several times, before today, before you set foot on the property. We don't manipulate clients, we don't slip something in that you never agreed to and then demand more money.

"That is not . Who. We. Are. And I—" she looked away again, briefly, took a breath and released it. Looked back at me. "The only demand I have made, I made up front and explicitly, the first time we spoke. I said I expected your honesty. Did you think I would return anything less to you?"

With no clearly informed intent of anything, my hands are out of my pockets now and reaching out to her. "No, Siobhan, no, never," I say, and seeing the progress of my hands and the flash of her eyes I stop them and let them fall to my sides. How can I make this right? "No, it's… I expect… I expect to pay for your time, your… work. I respect you, and your professionalism, and I don't… I'm not looking to get something for nothing, that's all. That's all," I say, hoping she'll understand me, that I'm sincere about this, that I never ever meant to hurt her or insult her. "I'm sorry, Siobhan. I apologize if I hurt you."

Instantly the anger is gone and the quizzical look is back, as though I've suddenly started spouting word salad. "I … am not … 'hurt'," she says in words of one syllable, enunciating as though to a non-English speaker or a wild animal or an exceptionally dull and very confused child.

Well again. There's really no way for me to respond to that. I'm certainly not going to argue with her about it. I know for sure that no one ever admits they're hurt until they're good and ready. I sigh, but only very softly. There's only one thing left I want to say, and then I can go. It's disappointing, but… it's not the end of the world. And it's a long, long way from the worst thing that's ever happened to me, or even the worst thing I've ever done. It's just… disappointing. I look at her for a long moment, and smile, a little sadly.

"Look, I… I just didn't want to take advantage of you. That's all." I smile again, briefly, and look over at the house. I can see the outline of someone at the sliding glass door we came through. The silhouette pauses for a moment—looking out at us?—then retreats, and disappears.

I glance back at Siobhan, one last time before I go.

She is… smiling.

Smiling?

No, wait. That's… that's a grin she's holding back. In fact, she looks like—it looks like any second she might—

Siobhan never, not once in her life, I am absolutely convinced, ever produced any sound that even remotely resembled the disgraceful snort I burst out with earlier, but with a shock that shakes me from head to toe I realize that the tables have bizarrely turned and she is standing there fighting with everything she has not to explode into gut-wrenching convulsions of mirth.

She manages it much more gracefully than I, and with only that bare hint of a suppressed grin she asks me, in a perfectly level and well-modulated tone, "Cara. Oh, Cara. Do you," and she pauses to firmly push the struggling grin back down and into submission, "do you really imagine that you could?"

I stare at her, utterly lost now. Did I black out? What are we talking about? "Could what?"

The look she casts is one of exasperation tinged with growing and irrepressible affection. I feel, again, like a tragically dim-witted toddler. I just shake my head. I've got nothing.

"That you could," she says again, speaking very slowly, encouraging me to keep up. "Take advantage." I'm staring at her now, dumbstruck and thoroughly befuddled. "Of me," she says, looking hard at me, into my eyes, staring at something truly incredible, something she never would have believed if she were not standing there witnessing it for herself.

"Well…" I stammer, "I mean… it must happen, sometimes. At least, I imagine… you know… I would imagine people try, from… time to time. And I wouldn't… I would never, you know… do that," verbally limping across the finish line and mentally collapsing to the ground.

"Do what?"

"Take advantage," I say.

And there it is, the look in her eyes like she's just seen it: an actual square egg, or an honest-to-pete leprechaun. "Ohhh kaaay," she says, and in the infinitesimal moment between the syllables I hear the bubbles of her suppressed laughter. "I would like," she goes on, speaking with great and evident care, "to invite you to come back inside with me. You still have thirty minutes left in the session for which you have already paid. You are my last client this morning, so my time is flexible; if you choose to leave early, there will be no refund—"

"I know, I understand that—" I interrupt and she holds up one hand to stop me.

"—and if I choose to extend the time allotted for our appointment, that is my business and not your responsibility." Her hand comes down and she holds it out for me to shake. I respond automatically. Her grip is warm and dry and very, very firm.

"Good then," she says briskly. "Come along."

I flog my beleaguered brain as we return to her room, trying to suss out what just happened.

"Now," she says as she closes the door behind us and holds her hand out for my jacket. I take it off and my collar catches on the leather band buckled around my neck, startling me. How on earth did I manage to forget it was there? She sees my eyes widen but makes no comment as she crosses the room to hang my jacket once more on the coat-tree by the loveseat. My hand goes briefly to the thing encircling me, my fingers making the barest tentative contact before jumping quickly away as if they might be burned. My flesh beneath the leather is active and alive and astonished, all in that instant. It is utterly bizarre, and somehow no longer the least bit funny.

She walks to the desk in front of the far wall and leans her hips back against it, crossing her arms and looking at me speculatively. "Come here, please," she says politely.

I go to stand in front of her.

"I want you to tell me," she says, "about what happened for you, earlier. When I first fastened the collar around your neck."

I look away. Swallow. I can't explain it. I remember it, but it's as though it happened a very, very long time ago.

"Just tell me, Cara," she says, and I look back at her quickly. She's not laughing anymore either, but she doesn't look angry, or ferocious. Just… she just looks… oh gods, she's so beautiful.

"Words, Cara," she says, placing me back in the present, back to where I stand in front of her, ending any attempt to escape, insistently, gently. "What was it?"

I sigh, glance away again, then back at her. "I don't know," I say. "I don't know what I expected when I came here today. I didn't know what to expect. And then, the… when you got this out, and came over with it…"

"When I got what out?" she asks, her eyes beginning to probe me like an accountant looking for an elusive error in the books.

"The… when you got… the…" now this is very, very puzzling. I know the word, I haven't forgotten it, or what we're talking about. It just won't emerge from my throat. It's the oddest thing. I look up at her, frankly stumped.

"This," I say finally, gesturing toward my neck, then feeling my hand fall back down to my side. It's so strange. I don't feel nervous, or giddy, or dizzy, or any of the things that made it so hard to speak coherently earlier.

She continues to study me like a report. She nods faintly, as if to herself. "Then what happened?"

"Well… I just… I don't know. I started laughing… and I couldn't stop. For a while."

"What set you off, do you think?" she asks.

"I don't know—"

"Oh, come on," she says, laughing a little herself now, but gently, affectionately almost. "Most people pay someone in a club a pile of money to make them laugh that way, and then spend the next two weeks repeating the joke to everyone they see. You saw the collar in my hands, then what?"

"Oh, Siobhan, it was just…" I'm relaxing a little now; it's beginning to feel like we're just talking. "I guess it was just that it was the very first thing, when we started, and out comes this… this… you know, this iconographic thing, and it just seemed—it was—unreal. And then, when you—when you put—when it was actually on me, it was just too… much. I guess it seemed sort of… cliché. I'm sorry," I add quickly, "that's not a cut, I'm truly, truly not passing judgment on anyone's… it was just the image, and it just happens that the image of… that image… just has always made me… giggle." I smile, more at the memory of myself laughing uncontrollably than at anything else. "I am sorry."

"Why are you sorry?" she asks me, still probing, and in that moment something shifts away from the comfortable familiarity I was just beginning to feel.

"Well," I say, again, for the millionth time, it seems, since I arrived here, how long ago? Didn't she just say, outside, that there were thirty minutes left? That just can't be right, I've been here forever, all morning, it must be getting late by now, and I turn my head to look for the clock on the wall—

"Stand still." And I do. "Well, what?" she asks me.

For crying out loud, what is the big deal? I laughed, OK, it was stupid and immature, I've apologized, can't we move on? I am paying for this, and while I don't want to take advantage of her, I don't want to waste time either.

"Cara." I look up at her again. "What are you sorry for?"

"For laughing," I say, beginning to feel a little exasperated myself.

"Why are you sorry for that?" she asks, relentless as a cat.

"Because it just seems… rude, that's all."

"Rude." She repeats the word as if she's never heard it before. "Rude?"

"Yes, rude," I say, standing up a little straighter. "I did not intend rudeness, but, I think it was… rude, and inconsiderate. I don't want to offend you."

"Offend me," she repeats, and now she stands up, no longer leaning back on the desk. "Cara, I want you to listen to me very closely, because there is something here that you don't understand yet. And it's very important."

"Ok," I say.

"Look at me," she says, and I nod. "Listen. Are you listening?"

"Yes," I tell her, "I'm listening to you."

"Cara." Her eyes have grown dark and impossibly deep and I hear her words but I don't understand them.

"You cannot 'offend' me."

"Yes, I know. I'm sorry," I apologize again.

"No, you don't know. You are not understanding it yet."

Not understanding what?

"It is not possible, for you. It is not possible for you to 'offend' me. Even if you tried, and I don't think you were trying, but even if you did try… you could not do it. You are simply not capable."

Not capable? Not capable of what? What am I not capable of?

"Listen. This is very important, Cara. Listen carefully. You cannot 'offend' me."

Silence.

"You cannot 'hurt' me."

I don't understand.

"Can you hear me, Cara? Listen again."

The clock, on the wall, the clock I cannot see. Snick. Snick. Snick.

"Cara, outside this room, this house, there are many things you do, many things you can do, many responsibilities that you have chosen to take on. There are people who depend on you."

Snick. Snick. Snick.

"In this house, in this room, Cara, you are capable of nothing—can you hear me?—nothing that could possibly 'hurt' me. Even if you want to. Even if you try as hard as you can.

"Listen. Listen, Cara."

Snick. Snick. Snick.

"You cannot take care of me," she says.

"I know that," I say, puzzled, and for some reason I cannot fathom, afraid.

"No, Cara." She shakes her head. "I don't mean that it's not your responsibility. I mean, that you cannot do it. It is not possible." She pauses. "Listen. Listen, Cara.

"You cannot. Take. Care. Of me."

A tiny, tough, thick-walled little bubble rises up and breaks, and the broken place burns, deep in my chest, and I swallow, hard, pushing, pushing it down, back down into the dark where it belongs. "I know," I say in a very small voice.

"No," she laughs—she laughs—"no, you don't. Look at me," she says and I raise my eyes to hers and I am so confused and nothing makes any sense and I don't understand what she is saying to me and I don't know anything anymore except this one thing and that one thing is I will not cry. Will. Not.

With one hand she reaches around to grasp my hair at the back of my head, a good big handful, tilting my head back as she steps in closer, and with the other hand she reaches down to brush a stray lock of my bangs away from my eyes and traces the outline of my ear with her fingers and I shiver, suddenly feeling her touch humming along my nerves, branching and blossoming in places I never would have thought to imagine: the left side of my middle back, skin flaring out in a starburst burning itch; the heel of my palm just under my thumb suddenly twitching, one tiny muscle jumping and dancing like a marionette on an invisible string; a pinpoint of white electricity piercing the flesh behind my navel from the inside, sharp and hot.

Her eyes hold me locked in tight to her, my thoughts and my feelings and my will flowing up toward her, drawing out thin and light, softly curling to coil gently around her finger, tracing my ear, just there.

"That's right… yes." The sound of her, running down into my ear like warm syrup, sending pleasure rippling through my body, that voice easing through the delicate eardrum, over the bones, unhurried, undeniable, her words running down and down into and past the back of my throat and down, down, deeper, deeper, down into the darkest secret place where they pool and swirl and coalesce into dark wet heat gathering, growing.

Her fingers lightly now, so lightly over the side of my neck, running along the edge of the leather thing she has fixed around me, making the skin jump and shy like a scared horse, now tracing around and over the artery, there, right at that place where only the fewest filmiest membranes lie between blood and air. Some escaping, climbing tendril of liquid flame has come seeking up from the gathering black sweetness inside me, rising through my throat, seeking her, homing in to her as it rushes forward and opens my mouth and the sound is the highest softest breath of moan. Something like a sub-audible growl answers from behind her tongue and my bones are heavy and full of something hot as she leans closer and the scent of her carries her words straight to the heating, juddering mass I am slowly becoming, "oh, yes… that's it, Cara, yes, that's it…" her hand in my hair pulling harder now, tipping my head back and back and her other hand sliding down from my neck, over my side along my breast as I gasp and around the small of my back, pulling my head back farther and farther and her arm the only thing holding me up, my neck stretched and bare and… and… naked, the collar somehow stripping me, exposing me, as her lips touch and press and suck hard and the dark wetness explodes up and out to meet her.

Pain, sudden and sharp, clears my head as my eyes snap open. She is holding the fingers of my right hand in her left, bending them backward. I freeze. She eases the pressure on my fingers but retains control of them. Her face is not angry but it is dead serious. "None of that," she says, and reaches up with her other hand to encircle my left wrist where my palm is flat against her shoulder. As she pulls my hand away from her I realize I had just been… I had just been pushing against her. Trying to push her away. I didn't even know I was doing it.