Inside, there were two stories. A few rooms were on the bottom, but most were on the second floor. Nate had given each of us a brief tour, pointing out which rooms we could take. The professors had taken claim of rooms that they had grown fond of over the years, as this was not the first retreat. But with the students, Nate had basically shown us which rooms were off-limits and given us the freedom to decide amongst ourselves. Except for me.
This one is yours, he had said, pointing to a room in a section away from the rest of the others. You had to go past the farthest bathroom and around the corner to a semi-secluded room. In a quiet voice, he added,It’s one of the nicer rooms.
I didn’t question him. I thanked him and put my bag down. He was Dr. Evans then. Nothing more.
I grabbed a hoodie from my bag then drifted through the hallways. In the middle of the rest of the rooms, there were open double doors to a room filled with a few bookshelves, a coffee bar, and soft chairs. A small, nondescript desk in the corner. On the bookshelves, I read familiar names of theorists, philosophers, activists, quite a few books I had read over the last few years, and many that I had not. But as I hovered near the coffee bar, my eyes caught on something different on the shelves. A small picture frame lying face down.
Painted silver edges, scratched in places, revealing the black metal underneath. A picture of Nate, younger, maybe in his twenties, a grin on his face, those blue eyes still capable of staring into the soul. The frame was small, and the picture even smaller, but in his hand, he was carrying a paddle, with gleaming spiked metal.
That he had been practicing his domination techniques for years, made me feel satisfied and inferior. Why did he want someone like me?
“That was my first time using that paddle,” a voice said. Nate was standing at the entrance, leaning on the doorframe. “Out of all of the pictures, how did you find the one picture of me?”
“I have a good intuition for these things,” I joked. I stared back at the picture, then turned back to him. “How old were you here?”
“Twenty-eight.” Even the Nate in this photograph was older than me.
“It took you that long to come across a paddle?” I teased.
“That paddle is different.” He drew closer, taking the photo from my hand. “It has spikes, thumb-tacks, if you will, built into the wood. It could tickle you, scratch you, or make you bleed.”
I shivered. “Sounds like a torture device.”
“Yes,” he said. He studied the photograph for a long time, thinking of the past. “I should tell you this, Mara. There was once a time when I ignored someone’s safewords. It doesn’t matter that we had agreed to fight for what was right. That we both knew that we could die.” He put the frame face-down on the shelf again. “I still ruined her.”
My gut wrenched at the thought. He had ruined someone? But I knew parts of the story.
“Lisa,” I said.
Shock flickered in his eyes. “You’ve heard.”
“But she wasn’t your girlfriend.” I paused, trying to read his expression. “She was something else.”
“We wanted to get closer to someone who had been killing off our members. Lisa was almost killed in the process.” His eyes narrowed, then he looked away. “I almost killed her.”
My bottom lip dropped open. But there had to have been a good reason. “All to get closer to this murderer?”
“And we did. But Lisa was never the same.” He sighed deeply. I should have taken that as my single to run far away, as fast as I could. But something kept me in place. The regret in his eyes. He had hurt that woman; he felt remorse. Guilt. He knew that despite his intentions, what he had done was wrong. It may have been for a cause larger than themselves, and yet he never wanted to do that to another soul again.
He didn’t want to hurt me.
He forced a laugh to ease the tension. “I’m not into those types of devices anymore.”
And that piece of information hung in the air, waiting for me to take it. I had to. “What are you into these days, then?”
“Leashing an intelligent, irresistible woman, and making her crawl to me.”
His voice held me, took me apart from the outside, made my insides hot and tender. I wanted to lean into him, to feel his weight on me, to have his collar around my neck again, but we couldn’t. Not here. Not now. When I looked up, his eyes enveloped me, caressed me, waited for me.
“Over here,” he said. He gestured to the side. “I have something for you.”
We went to the small desk, and he opened one of the drawers and removed a hand-bound notebook. Inside, messages were scrawled in nearly illegible handwriting, cursive that was gracious but hasty, the ink blotted in spots. But the words—sacrifice, power, illusion, fantasy—seemed familiar.
“It’s an original,” he said.
“Of what?”
“Florence Berkley auctioned off one of her notebooks at a charity event a few years ago.”
