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Leticia’s eyes opened and she blinked at me. A self-conscious little smile passed across her face. She looked away shyly as a crimson blush of color rose from beneath the collar of her blouse.
“What happens next?” I asked.
Leticia didn’t answer for long moments. She seemed still to be drifting amongst the lingering tendrils of her imagination. “Nothing,” she said at last. “That’s all there is. That’s all there has ever been.”
“You don’t have sex with this dream lover?”
“No.”
“He doesn’t undress you?”
“No,” she said again, more firmly this time.
I frowned. The rain outside became a downpour so that I had to raise my voice above the hissing sound as it overflowed the guttering and spilled down the drainpipes.
“Did you ever act out this fantasy with your boyfriend?”
She shook her head.
“Did you ever try to talk to him about it?”
“A couple of times.”
“And…?”
“And nothing,” Leticia said. “Dwayne dismissed the whole idea as a waste of time, and wondered why couldn’t I be satisfied with what we were doing in the bedroom.”
A wicked flash of lightning ripped the dark night apart. Flickering stark light filled the room for a split second, and the echoing thunder sounded like the roar of artillery. The rain seemed to intensify, and a swirling gale of wind flung leaves and dust and debris against the window. I stared out into the storm-filled sky.
“You’re not going home tonight,” I decided.
Leticia recoiled. “What?”
“You’re staying here,” I said. I turned to confront her. “You’re not driving all the way back into the city in this storm. There are plenty of spare bedrooms. You can sleep here and go home in the morning.”
She shot a speculative glance at me and started to protest. “I don’t have anything to wear.”
I waved her words away. “Then sleep in the nude. It’s not safe to drive in this weather.”
Leticia smiled at me graciously, and then lapsed into pensive silence.
* * *
The storm raged throughout the night. When Leticia came down from one of the empty upstairs bedrooms the next morning, driving horizontal rain still slammed against the windows, and the wind moaned and undulated through the swaying treetops.
Leticia looked tired. She had her handbag on her shoulder. She came into the kitchen the way a cat walks into an unfamiliar room – her steps uncertain, her eyes everywhere at once.
I was sitting at the breakfast table. Mrs. Hortez had extra places set on either side of me. She smiled at Leticia and shooed her to the chair beside me in a spatter of Spanish and nodding smiles. Leticia pushed at her hair and smoothed her hands down her skirt. She sat beside me and I could smell fresh perfume in the air.
“Sleep well?”
Leticia nodded. I slid coffee in front of her and she cupped her hands around the mug like it was the Holy Grail.
Over the rim of her mug I saw her eyes settle on the third place setting. She set her coffee down but said nothing.
There was bacon, eggs, toast, and more eggs. The aroma of cooking drifted through the house. Leticia seemed to slowly come awake and relax. She nibbled on a piece of toast and stared out through the big kitchen windows at the driving rain.
Footsteps echoed on the tiles in the hallway. Leticia turned towards the sound, and I watched her eyes carefully. Trigg came into the kitchen from the room I had set up for her at the back of the house. The two women saw each other at the same instant. Trigg’s steps faltered for the briefest of seconds, and then she came to the table with a strained smile on her face.
“Leticia Fall, this is Trigg Alexander,” I introduced the women and they nodded and smiled at each other.
“Trigg is an old friend,” I explained. “She’s staying here while her house in the city is being renovated.”
Trigg was an attractive woman. She was a little older than me. She had a slim figure and long dark hair, pulled back over her shoulder in a ponytail. Her eyes were clear and grey, and her manner exuded an air of no-nonsense competence and efficiency. Trigg poured herself coffee.
“Nice to meet you, Miss Fall. Did you stay the night?”
Leticia nodded, and I cut across the conversation.
“I wouldn’t let her go home,” I explained to Trigg. “Not in this weather.”
There was a flash of something between the two women – some kind of intuitive assessment that was purely feminine and impossible for a man to understand. It lasted only an instant – a split-second electric charge that peaked and then began to taper without ever quite disappearing.
I turned my attention back to the bacon and eggs that Mrs. Hortez had piled up on my plate, and while I ate I imagined Trigg and Leticia standing beside each other – the younger girl’s naïve, sweet innocence and gangling self-consciousness set against the poise and quiet confidence of a woman such as Trigg. Leticia would seem perhaps immature and girlish, and I wondered how much of Trigg’s smooth, perfectly presented appearance would suddenly appear contrived without the natural fresh-faced beauty that glowed upon Leticia’s skin.
There was a long silence. The only sounds were the sizzle of frying bacon and the gentle clink of knives and forks.
“I understand you’re a journalist, Miss Fall,” Trigg spoke into the silence, and Leticia smiled graciously and then her tone became self-effacing. “I’m just an intern,” she said. “I’ve got a twelve month trial with one of the newspapers in the city. Hopefully I’ll be good enough to make a career of it.”
More silence. There seemed to be nothing more either woman wanted to offer or volunteer in the way of conversation. I didn’t spend too much time thinking about that. I waited until Leticia had finished her slice of toast.
“It’s still too dangerous on the roads for you to go home.”
She looked sideways at me. “Mr. Noble, I have to go home. I need to change. I…”
I shook my head. “I saw your car in the driveway. It’s a little hatchback. A toy car like that would get blown off the road. You would end up in Kansas.”
She smiled, despite herself, and I went on. “If you leave here today, it will be with my driver, Tiny. In my car. He can pick you up later tonight and bring you back if you want to continue interviewing me. By tonight the storm will have passed.”
She thought about that like she had a choice. She didn’t.
“Okay,” Leticia nodded. “But before Tiny drives me home, I wanted to ask you a question that occurred to me last night, if I may.”
“Sure,” I shrugged. “I told you from the start – you can ask me anything about my life, or about my experiences in the BDSM lifestyle and I will answer you honestly.”
Leticia looked thoughtfully down into her coffee cup and when she had her question framed, she glanced up at me. “Why doesn’t the BDSM lifestyle work for more couples?” she asked. “From what I’ve read, and learned, it seems that lots of women want to experiment with the lifestyle, but their partners either are against the idea of trying anything new in the bedroom. Or – even worse – they give the concept a try and fail miserably.
“Now these are people in committed, long-term marriages, so you have to assume that the bond of trust already exists between them. Surely BDSM should work for these women, shouldn’t it?”
I shook my head. “There are two problems. Men are scared of trying anything sexual they are unfamiliar with. And men have no idea how a woman feels. They don’t understand what’s required to make BDSM sex-play work for the woman.”
Leticia made her eyes wide and raised an eyebrow at me in an artful challenge. “And you do understand women?”
“I understand what women need to make BDSM work in their bedroom,” I said.
She sat back on the chair and reached for a new page in her notebook. “Well,” she said with a smug little mocking smile, “this should be interesting.
If you’re right, then what you’re about to tell me is the secret to success for the average married man. I’d hate to miss a single word.”
I scraped my chair back and got to my feet. I started pacing across the kitchen like some kind of guard on sentry duty.
