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Monroe had played over the phone with her the following week, and they met the next weekend at a party and one more munch. They agreed to continue the getting to know you dance a little longer before taking it out of the meet and greet environment.
By the middle of week three, they had really hit it off and decided they would go on a very public date and one last meet and greet before they took it from there. Monroe knew they were good together, and he thought she agreed. They might have been made for each other, but right as they were going to the next step, she dropped him without warning. He hadn’t even warranted a text. That’s why he hesitated to believe Mallory had actually ditched him. His gut told him it wasn’t like her.
“Monroe, how’re those play sessions going?” asked Sharlee.
Sharlee was the company computer magician, also known as Vapor, in her private underworld life. She’d joined their team several years ago, filling a gap they didn’t know they were missing. She’d married Jacquard Reynaud, the CEO of Reynaud, and Associates, less than two years later.
Monroe was invited to buy into the fledgling business, joining Garrett and Jac nearly six years ago, and when he left the service, he became more than an investor. They welcomed him as a member of another family. A family he would give his life for and knew they would do the same. Besides his military career, it had been the best decision of his life.
The security services company took jobs from the alphabet agencies and private citizens who had more money than sense. The diversity was great, but Monroe was ready to raise his own family. He watched his teammates as each found the woman they wanted to spend their life with, and it was time he did as well. Easier said than done.
As a fit man staring at forty-five, he had expectations. He decided to start back at the BDSM gatherings and maybe check out a few parties. He wasn’t one to leave finding a woman who was into the same lifestyle as he was to chance encounters. Besides, it wasn’t as though he had been looking seriously for long. He liked the single life until recently, and now he wanted more.
There was little doubt that once he found her, he would not be returning to public scening or even parties unless she, whoever ‘she’ turned out to be, wanted to play in that kind of environment. Monroe would find someone with like-minded kinks, and this was the best way to do it. He didn’t share-not in public gatherings or intimate parties, not her preferences nor her body. He was as possessive as fuck and knew instinctively it wouldn’t work for him.
Glancing at Sharlee, he answered, “Yeah, not well.” He shrugged. “It looked promising, but things changed. I met a cute little thing but mature, carried herself well. She’s a handful of years younger than me and has been in the lifestyle for a while but not practicing recently. We got along and played together some. I liked her, and I thought she liked me.”
“Thought she liked you?”
“She’d gone to a few of these meet-ups somewhere else before she was with me, and then we met up three times at parties and such. We spent hours on the phone discussing just about everything, and I thought we’d really connected.”
Monroe stopped speaking and stared out the office window. “And?” Sharlee prompted.
“Evidently, she changed her mind. Even though we made a date for last weekend and last Thursday night when we talked, it was for at least an hour. She was still excited about going out, and yet, she ghosted me.”
“Maybe she just got cold feet. I mean, all of you guys make a statement when you enter a room.”
“She had accepted me as her Dom, so even if she had changed her mind about other things, she would have told me. In this lifestyle, at any level, honesty is at the core of the relationship. I called to verify on Friday, but she didn’t answer. I thought she’d forgotten, but when she didn’t come to the next meet on Saturday, I got worried. My gut grew cold. I called her again, and it went to an automated voicemail. Guess it could have been more me than her, but I can’t help thinking something is off.”
“What made her so special?”
“You mean besides the fact that she loved my rubber paddle?” He grinned at that.
“Really? Wow, that is something. But, yes, besides that?”
“She’s a professional that carries herself that way. She’s self-assured, funny, and naïve about silly things like where to park her car for safety. Mallory is the first woman who didn’t think that being retired military was all I expected from life. She asked me what I did now that I had retired like I had many lives left to give. That word ‘retired’ didn’t give her visions of a decrepit old man in his last decade of life.”
Sharlee laughed and typed on her computer. “What else do you know about her?”
“What I know is something has happened to Mallory. Maybe she’s sick or has been in an accident, but I don’t know how to find her. She hadn’t given me her address or last name yet because I wouldn’t let her until Friday. I have her number, but that’s it.”
Monroe had paced the room as he divulged his deepest concerns that she was hurt or sick and didn’t have anyone, him, to take care of her. His frustration at not getting the information he needed to check on her because he thought he was giving her a sense of control, of safety, had boomeranged on him, and it made him nearly go mad with worry. As he verbalized his thoughts, his fears rose.
“That’s more than I usually get. Is Mallory her name?” asked Sharlee. “Give me her number.”
“It’s a cell number.”
“Doesn’t matter,” said Sharlee as she typed in the numbers Monroe recited by memory.
“Mallory, her name is Mallory. The thing is, when you go to these gatherings, it might be your name, or it might not. She told the attendant that she wasn’t using a pseudonym.”
“Do you use your real name?” asked Sharlee.
Monroe chuckled. “Charlotte, look at me. I scare men and women when I turn on the dominant, so, yes, I use my own name. We never give last names except on the paperwork. The attendant asked if it was the pseudonym Mallory wanted to use because the name was perfect. Mallory denied it was a pseudonym.”
“But she could have been lying.”
“I told you honesty is an essential building block. Doms,I, take a dim view of lying. That’s why the community encourages a pseudonym. It would have been the safe thing to do, but since we had just met recently, I would not take over things until after our Friday date, so I resisted the urge to get her full name.
