Page 15 of Surrender to Me

Chapter 9

Warmth swallowed me whole, comforting me. When I opened my eyes, the same black walls encircled us: shackles hanging on the wall, a shadow box to the side, the couch beneath us. I was lying in Owen’s lap; I had fallen asleep. I cringed as I sat up, getting myself out of his lap. It was as if we couldn’t cross the boundaries any further.

Owen watched me as I observed the marks on my legs. Twenty purple and red lines crossed my thighs, almost as if I were wearing striped thigh high socks. I poked at them, enjoying the deep ache.

“Each mark represents a new piece,” Owen said. “As the marks heal, so will you create a new work of art.”

I nodded, taking it in. I was exhausted. Everything about what we had done was symbolic. While I had endured one of the worst pains I had ever felt, and done willingly, it was more difficult to face those questions that Owen had asked of me when I felt pulled apart and vulnerable. I had been literally chained to a wall, and Owen had shown me my deepest fear. I had conquered it, even when I thought I was going to break.

Well… I had at least faced the possibility of what could happen if I didn’t succeed. I still had to go up for review, get through the program, and see what the gallery owners and clients actually thought of my work. There was room for success and failure in my future.

Owen handed me my clothes. I looked at him, a bit confused. It seemed rushed. My clothes were somehow folded, even if we had slung them into a pile on the floor when Owen had undressed me earlier. That was like Owen though; everything was perfectly ordered even when I made sure to tear it to pieces.

“Thanks,” I mumbled and started buttoning my shirt. He straightened his clothes and looked towards the door. Apparently, it was time to return to the party, even though I wanted to crawl into bed with a glass of wine and his arms around me.

“You have a lot of work to do with these last few hours,” Owen said. He tilted his head towards the dungeon. “Are you sure you’re rested? They’re as eager to get photographs of their scenes as you are to create from them.”

“Scenes?” I asked.

He put the padlocks in his pocket and held the cane’s handle in his hand. It looked much smaller now that we were finished. It was only a red piece of plastic, but damn, did it have a searing bite.

“A scene is what we did,” he said. “Our actions when we enter the space of raw vulnerability, our fantasies. It’s what we did that first night when you danced for me. What happened in Monterey.”

Monterey must’ve been his fantasy, not mine. I understood though. Still, the word ‘scene’ seemed suspicious. “Why is it called a scene?” I asked.

“It’s a break from the normal order. Even if in our daily lives, we’re equals, inside of the dungeon, we’re on a different playing field. In a sense, you are performing a role. Hence, a scene.”

“Performing?”

“You were submitting to my emotional and physical manipulation. That was your role.”

I guess it made sense. I had technically agreed to be ‘his’. Even if I wasn’t his submissive, I had still given up control to him, trusting that he would take care of me and bring me out of it. But the word ‘scene’ seemed to trivialize everything we did like it was a screenplay we had both picked up and started reading random lines for. ‘Scene’ didn’t capture how it felt, like he had crawled inside of my mind and pulled out these fears that I had repressed for so long, and made me look those fears in the eyes for the first time.

Owen held out his free hand, and I took it.

“Rest if you need it,” he said.

I sighed. “I’m fine,” I said.

We walked to the entrance of the dungeon, and from there, he bowed his head and took his leave, walking up to the library and leaving me at the bottom of the stairs. Like we had done nothing.

Maybe it was nothing. Maybe the point was that he wanted me to focus on my goal rather than get sidetracked by his green eyes and strong embrace. He shouldn’t have stroked my hair like that then, I thought. He shouldn’t have done something so intimate as to dig inside my brain and make me see what was there. I glanced at the ‘scenes’ unfolding in the dungeon: a man kneeling before a latex clad woman, two people with nightsticks in their hands circling a woman with a hood over her head, the glory hole shower full of men and women enjoying each other, a woman in a cage watching everything around her unfold who locked eyes with me. I looked away. All of these people had a place in their relationships. They knew where they stood. They didn’t feel discarded once the scene had ended.

But I guess I did know where I stood. I was Owen’s inside of Surrender only. Inside of the safety and security of a scene.

I needed a drink. I wanted to drown out the banter in my head that I was nothing to Owen and would never be anything to him, that I shouldn’t have let him inside like that. I groaned and marched my way up to the lounge, huffing with each step. I needed a damn drink. I wondered if I was becoming my mother, wanting alcohol to calm my nerves, falling for a person who would never be mine, because careers, mine and his alike, always came first, and that only pissed me off even more. A couple smiled at me as they descended downwards, and I nodded back, keeping my anger inward. I still had precious time I could use to capture my inspiration, but I didn’t feel like doing anything. My good mood was slipping away fast, almost completely gone.

“What’ll it be?” a bartender in a gold vest asked.

“Two shots of vodka and a coke chaser,” I said.

“You’re the photographer, right?” he asked.

I held up the camera hanging from the strap around my neck. “Did this hunk of metal give it away?”

He poured me doubles instead of two singles, but I didn’t correct him, not even when he smiled like he was doing me a favor. He had no idea how much I hated when people acted like that. Then I felt like an asshole. Maybe he was trying to be nice. Maybe he was actually grateful for what I was doing. Perhaps I was helping his people out by photographing their ‘scenes’. There it was again, that word that put everything into perspective. I snarled and slumped into the stool as far as I could.

I tossed both doubles back, then asked for another round. The bartender silently made the drinks, singles this time. The rattle of the vodka in the tumbler broke up the soft mumbling of conversations around us. The bartender was lanky like Clay, and his eyes were brown like mine. He was plain like me, too. I watched him, the way he moved from group to group sitting at the bar like a fluttering hummingbird. He wasn’t my type at all, but I wondered what Owen would think if I flirted with him and got his number. We weren’t in a scene now, were we? He couldn’t tell me what to do. I knew the asshole was watching from the library.