CONNOR COBALT
Frederick has spent the past ten minutes giving me the silent treatment. He sits behind his desk and pretends to be interested in The New York Times on his computer. He’s pissed that I’m still taking Adderall. But I can’t function without it.
I finish texting Rose and lean back in the leather chair. Frederick hasn’t looked up yet.
“I’m not paying you to ignore me,” I tell him.
His eyes remain on the computer screen. “You’re right. You’re paying for my counsel, which you are clearly not interested in.” He starts typing on his keyboard, the pounding more aggravating than I’ll let on. He has a squared jaw, tousled brown hair and broad-shoulders—in his thirties, fairly good looking, but he never married. His work is his wife.
I press my fingers to my lips in thought. “And you’re not even the slightest bit interested in what Rose texted me?” I try.
His fingers falter as he types, but he regains fluidity. Frederick enjoys talking with me, whether he’ll admit it to himself or not. I’m his most interesting patient.
“She asked me to bring home wine and tequila.” I don’t say anything else.
I watch the curiosity build in Frederick’s eyes until he lets out a sigh and rolls his chair back, his body angled towards me.
“You’re too easy,” I tell him.
“So you’ve told me.” He pauses. “How far have you been with her?”
I hesitate to reveal this, which surprises even me. I’m usually open about everything with Frederick, but being with Rose makes me want to keep every moment close to our chests, so no one can share what happens but us. It takes me about a minute to finally say, “She sucked my cock.”
Frederick’s brows rise in surprise. “You got her to blow you?”
“Rose had the choice.” I don’t want one of us to lose with sex. We both need to come out successful and fulfilled.
“How kinky?” Frederick asks.
I let out a mock sigh and stare at the ceiling. “We’re not there yet.” I tilt my head. “Give her time, Rick. She’s a virgin.”
“I’m surprised you’re not pushing her harder. For years, you’ve talked about how you want to—”
“I’m going to push her as far as I think she can go without having her run out on me. She’s packed a suitcase before, remember? She stayed in a hotel in the Hamptons for a week just to prove a point. And we weren’t even living together then.”
Frederick laughs. “I remember. You were both fighting about the Theory of Relativity.”
“She loves to disagree with me.” We argue a lot about theories because they’re easily debatable, but we always, somehow, kiss in the end. When
she finally returned to Princeton, I spent the day with her in bed, sucking on her neck, gently easing her to go further. She was too scared to do more.
But I think, for once, she will now.
“When she went down on you, you didn’t let her use her hands?” he suddenly asks.
“No.” These questions are annoying me more than usual. “Did she like it?”
“Immensely.”
“You’re very possessive of her,” he states, taking out his notepad. “How can you tell?”
“You sound irritated.”
Wonderful.
“Did you go down on her afterwards?”
“No.” I shift my jaw, trying to get my words to cooperate and not come out so damn coarse.
“Because you didn’t have time?”
“No,” I almost snap at him. I clear my throat as Frederick scribbles something down.
“Because she wouldn’t let you.”
I stay quiet since he phrased this one as a statement, not a question. “She’s frightened to let you touch her. The alcohol she wants you to buy
will lessen her inhibitions and reservations. If she’s afraid in the first place, maybe she’s not submissive, Connor.”
I feel a tightness in my chest as I speak, the words coming more easily now. “She responds to submission in the bedroom, but outside of it? She’s not submissive, and she never will be.” I pause. “And I like that. I need someone who can match me outside of the bedroom. It keeps me sharp. But in bed, I give her everything she needs, and she gives it back. That’s the part I love. In that space, I can take control, empower her—it’s a dynamic that never gets old.”
I think about her, back at those academic bowls and conferences. She never seemed like someone who would want to give up control in the bedroom. But as I saw her recoil from other men, I realized it wasn’t about wanting to dominate—she was just afraid to ask to be controlled. She thought being alone and unfulfilled sexually was safer. But it was never the right solution, not for her. And I’m here to prove it.
Frederick nods.
“There’s more.” I need to be honest about what’s going on recently.
“She thinks once she gives herself to me, I’ll leave—that our relationship is nothing more than a game because I won’t allow myself to love anyone.”
“And why don’t you love her, Connor?” His chair creaks as he leans back, and a shadow of a smile plays at his lips.
He acts as though he understands what I can’t, putting me at odds with myself. He’s listened to my beliefs about love for years, but that doesn’t stop him from routinely asking more.
“People relate love to insects fluttering inside their digestive system.
I’ve never had that affliction.”
He cracks a smile. “It’s a metaphor.” “I know what a metaphor is, Rick.”
“Then stop being a smartass and so will I.”
I straighten in my chair, becoming more serious. “I’ve seen the kind of love that cripples. Take Loren Hale and Lily Calloway—when one is shot
with an emotion, the other feels it. If you stripped one from the other, they’d be less than themselves. If that’s love, I want no part of it.” I want to be whole. I want to be the best possible version of myself without the chance of being wounded or broken.
“Can you empathize with Rose?” he asks me.
“Yes, but love is a weakness that I won’t submit to.”
“Sometimes you can’t control everything, Connor,” he tells me. “Even as intelligent as you are, there are things out of your grasp. Love, death— you can’t predict either. They just happen.”
“And you believe it’s already happened?” I refuse this outcome. It’s not computable.
“Why are you with her?” “Attraction.”
“And?” “Affection.”
“What else?”
“Amusement—these are just words, Frederick.” “Love is just a word.”
“I can’t love her,” I tell him definitively as I stand and pocket my phone. He stays seated, and yet, I feel as though he has the advantage on me.
He still sees what I can’t. “And why is that?”
“Smart people do stupid things when they’re in love. I’ve yet to do something inane.”
Frederick grins. “Give it time.”
I suppress the urge to roll my eyes. I wave him off and head to the door. “See you next week.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“Of course you are,” I say back. “You get to hear about me spanking my girlfriend.”
“Get out of my office, Connor.” He returns to his papers, but his grin grows wider and wider until I leave.
* * *
I stop by the liquor store after my session with Frederick, and it’s late when I arrive home. The lights are off in the living room, and I don’t hear Lily or Lo’s climaxes through the walls.
When I reach the second level, I stop by my door, not about to knock. I haven’t been that courteous since we moved in together. There are some
barriers that I choose to destroy for her.
As soon as the door creaks open, I find Rose sitting on the bed, flipping through the latest issue of Vogue. Her eyes flit up to mine and she drops the magazine on her lap. “Did you bring it?”
I hold up the brown paper bag. “Wine and tequila as you requested, but I would advise only choosing one tonight. Unless you’d like to be ill.”
“The wine is for you,” she says curtly.
My eyebrows rise. So the tequila is for her. She’s that nervous.
She pats the mattress. “Take a seat, Richard. You look like a scared little cat. Sadie would claw you for your cowardice.”
“My cat loves me unconditionally,” I reply. The bed rocks as I climb onto it, and I set the paper bag in between us. “And I’m fine, so you must be projecting your fear onto me.” I smile, just so I can see that flicker of contempt in her eyes.
“I’m not scared.” She straightens up and pulls her shoulders back. “I know exactly what we’ll be doing tonight. I can’t say the same for you.”
“So what are we doing tonight, hun?” I ask. “Other than getting drunk.”
She reaches into the paper bag and pulls out the bottle of Patron. I watch her unscrew the cap and start rubbing the lip with the hem of her black thigh-length nightgown. It’s silk and looks like a slip underneath a dress.
I immediately imagine myself slowly lifting the thin fabric off her body, leaving her bare for my touch. I want her naked. Now.
Patience.
I place my hand on the smoothness of her leg, her skin nearly as silky as her nightgown and exceedingly warmer. The minute I pull her closer to me with that one hand, her chest rises. But she focuses on wiping the rim of her Patron.
Rose plans on drinking straight from the bottle. She’s trying hard to
progress our relationship, willing to forgo a glass. That’s a big deal in Rose Calloway’s world. Her effort hasn’t gone unnoticed in my eyes.
When it’s successfully clean for her lips, Rose takes a swig from the bottle. She nods to the bag. “Get your wine. And then we’ll play the game.”
“What game?” “Truth or dare.”
She says it with a straight face, almost challenging me to laugh. I keep my expression complacent, but I can’t help what I say. “Shall we spend seven minutes in heaven too?”
She shoots me a heated look. “We’re playing. Don’t make me tie you up.”
I laugh and rub my lips, unable to contain my amusement. “Darling, if anyone is going to be tied up,” I say, my hand descending towards her ass, “c’est toi.”
It’s you.
