“What’s with this room?” he said.
“You haven’t seen anything,” she said, then took his hand in hers. “Let me show you something wild.” She tugged him through the hall to the secret door, then through the hidden hallway to the crawlspace.
“Is this wise?” he asked as he peered into the sandy ground. “Haunted house and all?”
“It’s tricks,” she said. “Come on.”
He raised an eyebrow, but he followed her nonetheless down the ladder, then crawled behind her as she made her way up through the musky air to the platform where the producers made their spooky magic. When they reached it, they both stood up, and she explained the vision she had seen of the woman stepping out of the wall. Tristan ran his fingers up and down the squishy surface.
“Holy shit,” he said. “This looks like wood, doesn’t it?”
“Hollywood and its illusions,” she said, and they shared the laugh of two flyover-state people who had been taught not to trust the coasts.
“I wonder if there’s anyone in there now,” he said.
“Probably not. I don’t think anyone else has discovered it yet.”
Tristan smirked. “But I wonder… If someone were in there, what would they see happening between us?”
He pushed her back into the wall, and it contoured to her body like a foam mattress, wrapping around her curves. She pressed the palm of her hand into it to steady herself, but Tristan wrapped his arm around her waist, alleviating the need. He bent his head and nipped at her neck with his teeth. When she let out a yelp, he bit harder.
“You like that,” he said, and she moaned in agreement, then bit her lip.
“What if someone hears us?” she said.
“They won’t if I cover your mouth,” he said.
“Do it.”
He cupped his hand over her lips as he worked himself out of his pants, then yanked off her shorts and slid into her. She gasped against his life lines, his love lines, her hot breath warming his skin as he took her. Their bodies formed twisting, eager shapes in the wall, and Sabrina let her head roll back as Tristan commanded her to come.
She did as she was told.
• • •
Her sister had trained her in the art of submitting. She hired a man to come over and left him with Sabrina alone in the house they now shared as adults, where their father stayed secluded and sick in the back room.
“So, what are you wanting from me?” the man asked.
Sabrina shrugged. “I thought you were supposed to tell me.”
His laugh was warm and gentle. “We have to talk it out first, doll, or else we won’t know how far is too far.”
She stepped toward him in a way that she suspected was seductive. “Do whatever you want to me.”
He held up his hand. “Your limits?”
“None,” she said, even as she shuddered to think of the things she’d seen in pornography. She didn’t want to be difficult. Men didn’t like difficult women.
“We’ll start small,” he said. “A little spanking. A little rope play. How does that sound?”
“You’re the boss.”
“If that’s your fantasy, yeah, I am.”
He stayed true to his word, and every time she let out a moan of discomfort, he stopped and eased up on his ties, or hit her a little softer. By the end of the session, her ass was red but not bleeding, and she wore no imprints of ropes in her skin.
“That’s it?” she said.
“That’s all I’ll do for someone as green as you,” he said. “But you call me if you need more.”
He slid her his card, and the second he left, she handed it to her sister.
Over the next two years, her sister forbade her from having sex with anyone but the man she paid. She forbade her to set up her own meetings and told her she needed to learn obedience, that she needed to go as far as he would take her.
When Sabrina asked him to torture her, he refused. “You don’t want that.”
“How do you know?” she said, anger building in her belly. She pushed it down.
“Because, when you’re uncomfortable, your shoulders tense. When you asked me that, they tensed bad. Pick something else.”
After he tied her up for the hundredth time and fucked her until she could no longer take him, he drew her into his chest and hummed in her ear. She melted into him, and in her chest, she felt the first hot glow she’d ever felt. She knew its name, and she had memorized her script.
“I love you,” she said.
The man groaned as he nudged beneath her chin. “You don’t,” he said. “You don’t even know me.”
But she was so sure. It was what was supposed to happen, falling for the man, and she lifted up off his chest and looked into his face and saw what she thought must be loneliness there. She felt the first tear fall, certain she was reciprocating the message in her gaze: I’m lonely, too. We’re two of a kind.
