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“O-okay.” I bumbled awkwardly out of his office and shut the door. Now with my memories back, I knew I’d been somewhat sexually adventurous. At least before Professor Stevens. And I’d been largely comfortable with my own nudity even outside of a sexual context.
A lot of people separated nudity into categories. There was shower nudity, always okay. There was sex nudity... largely essential and normal and nobody felt uncomfortable because everybody naked was engaged in a shared naked activity. And then there was random walking around the house nudity, which most people were only okay with inside a long term relationship involving plenty of random nudity.
I had been okay with random nudity, even in a full frat house after all the sex and games were over. I was just that way. But with Shannon it was different. I felt so overwhelmingly awkward when he looked at me that way outside a specific sexual context. If we were engaged in some naughty activity, fine, but otherwise... let’s just say I was more than relieved to close his office door and be outside his line of sight.
The white cat gave me a dirty look and stalked me up the stairs. I’d meant to ask Shannon how nice the place was and what I should wear, but I’d been caught off guard by his continued irritation over the candles, the way he watched me move, as well as knowing that thisprivate callmost likely involved his latest hit.
There was no way I’d go back in there and interrupt such a call to ask about wardrobe, so instead, I selected a simple navy summer dress with a cardigan to go over it. Itwasstill winter... if you could call it that. The temperature had peaked at fifty-five, and wouldn’t drop below forty until well after midnight.
I took a quick shower and got ready, pausing only briefly in front of the bathroom mirror to inspect the burn marks left by the wax. I’d played with candles and wax before. Most of the time, it wasn’t nearly so scary because we usually used soy wax since it melted at a much lower temperature than paraffin. So it stung a little, but didn’t usually leave marks behind.
In truth, I kind of liked these marks. And if I took care of it, they wouldn’t linger very long. I applied burn cream from Shannon’s first aid kit and finished getting ready.
When I descended the stairs, he was waiting for me on the living room sofa, stroking the white cat, who had rolled onto her back so he could rub her belly. She hissed at me.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
The cat jumped off the sofa and flounced off to another part of the house in full-on diva mode.
Shannon input the code, and I followed him outside to his nondescript black hitman car and got into the passenger side. I managed to wait until we were out of the neighborhood before I asked the question that had plagued me for days now.
“Why did you leave so fast that morning? Was it because of what I told you? About my professor?”
Shannon didn’t reply, but he gripped the steering wheel harder, and the muscles in his jaw and running down his neck tightened noticeably.
“Let’s just have a nice dinner, and we’ll talk about it when we get home.”
I was sure I couldn’t have anice dinneruntil after we’d talked about it, but I didn’t want to ruin things.
“Are you going to let me leave the house more?” I asked.
“Of course. You’re not a prisoner.” But the way he said it wasn’t very convincing.
Sure, I wasn’t a prisoner. He’d just made clear on more than one occasion he was never letting me go and stated in pretty absolute terms that he felt I belonged to him. Why would I think I was a prisoner?
“Are you still mad at me about the candles and wine?”
“No. I wasn’t mad to begin with. But you knew I wouldn’t like it.”
I was quiet for another ten minutes until he pulled up beside the restaurant and turned off the ignition. The restaurant was in what had once been a somewhat old-fashioned cottage in the historic district.
“Oh my God, Shannon. Please, please for the love of God, talk to me about it now! I can’t have a nice dinner if I don’t know what the fuck is going on. You just ran out right after fucking me, and you didn’t even say goodbye. You were just gone.Whoosh.Then you were mad when I called. And then I thought you just didn’t want me at all because the balcony was unlocked and there was money and it was just all too easy. Does what happened to me change how you feel?”
At this point, I was sure I just honestly didn’t care if he dragged me out and strangled me in the parking lot. There was no way I could sit in a restaurant and politely eat pasta in romantic lighting without knowing what the fuck was going on.
Shannon, for his part, looked perplexed. He turned in his seat to face me. “Why would it change how I feel? How I feel about what? About you?”
I nodded. And all of a sudden I felt like a complete moron. Whatever he felt had to be infinitely smaller than what normal humans felt in romantic relationships, and here I was cornering him... asking him to define everything. To explain himself. I was being thewhere is our relationship goinggirl to the last guy on the planet who wanted to hear it.
“Why would it change how I feel about you?” he asked quietly. He seemed to really be struggling trying to figure out the complex algebra I’d laid out.
“You don’t think I’m dirty or tainted somehow? Like... like damaged goods?”
“No.”
As much as I was grateful for the silence with him, for the lack of intrusion and overwhelming emotion and smothering, I needed more than one word. Damn.
