Author: Tiffany Reisz

“Yes, party. We’ll go to dinner and rent some movies.”

“Are we doing another installment of ‘Catch Nora Up on the Past Fifteen Years of the Vanilla World Theater’?”

“Yes, I got The Matrix.”

“Never seen it.”

“You’ll love it. Alice in Wonderland references, secret societies, theology, people in leather and vinyl outfits...”

“Ninjas?”

“Sort of.”

“I’m in. So presents? Yes? I see them. I’m opening them.”

“No opening presents. Not yet.”

“Wrong answer,” Nora said, reaching for the first box.

“Those aren’t your presents.”

“They aren’t? Then why are they on my table? If it’s on my table, it’s mine. So, you know, hop up.”

She expected Wes to blush like he always did when she hit on him, but he didn’t. Not this time. Instead, he did as she asked and sat on the edge of the table. She stood in front of him with her hands on his knees. Goddamn, this kid would be the death of her. That shaggy blond hair, that sweet face, those big brown eyes... Looking at that smile of his was like staring into the sun. She’d even started getting up earlier every day on the off chance she’d catch him walking out of the bathroom, towel around his waist, water dripping down his young, muscular back. If he only knew some of the fantasies she’d entertained about him...

Look but don’t touch, she reminded herself.

“In honor of The Matrix...” he began, putting his hands over hers.

“Which I haven’t even seen yet.”

“I’m giving you a choice. This will make more sense after you see the movie.”

“A choice of what?”

“You can have the presents in the boxes or...anything else you want. You can have the stuff on the table or what’s down the rabbit hole.”

Nora raised her eyebrow at him.

“I can have anything?”

“Anything,” he said. “But only if you decide to go down the rabbit hole.”

“Like a castle or a trip to Jamaica or a ten-carat emerald ring anything?”

“Any. Thing. Name it. Anything.”

“Wes, darling, you’re adorable. But you are a freshman in college. From Kentucky. You moved in with me—”

Wes raised his hand and covered her lips with one finger.

“If I told you that I could give you anything you wanted, would you believe me?”

Nora stared into his eyes and saw nothing but the truth in them. It was a beautiful truth, one she wanted to be a part of. Anything she wanted...from her Wesley...and she knew what her answer was. She wanted to take him into her bed tonight and make love to him. She wanted to teach him everything she knew about sex and how good it felt and how right it could be to join your body with someone else’s and let the entire world fall away from you until there was nothing left but you and him and the new being the two created together. She wanted his virginity for her birthday and his heart and body every day after that. And she wanted that because she loved him and treasured him and didn’t want anyone ever hurting him as he never wanted anyone hurting her, even though she loved that sort of thing, not that he would ever understand that. And she didn’t care that he didn’t understand. She cared that he loved her. Oh, yes, Nora knew exactly what she wanted from Wesley for her birthday. She wanted to look into his eyes the moment he entered her the first time, wanted to hear his breathing change with the first thrust, wanted to hold him before, during and after and let him tell her everything he felt and everything he wanted.

But she couldn’t ask for that, could she? Wesley deserved a little bit better for his first time than a woman who was still wet from the last guy she’d fucked an hour ago. She still could feel Griffin’s warm skin against her breasts, could still remember the press of him inside her. As cute as he was to offer, she knew Wes couldn’t buy her emeralds and castles. Maybe he wanted to see if she’d believe him. Maybe he wanted to know what she’d wish for if she could have anything on earth.

“Anything, Nora,” Wes whispered, and took both her hands in his. Nora smiled.

“I’ll take the presents on the table, the dinner with you and the movie. And that’s all I want,” she said, reaching out to cup his face. She kissed him on the cheek and he gave her a smile. In his eyes she saw a flash of disappointment quickly hidden.

“Okay, but dinner first.”

“We’re getting Indian, right?” she asked. “The correct answer is yes.”

“Yes.”

“You must have read my mind. I’ll go change out of the fetish-wear first.”

“Thank you. And I’ll change into mine.”

“The assless chaps, please. It is my birthday, after all.”

“Anything for you.”

At the bottom of the stairs, Nora turned around and found Wes still looking at her and on his face she saw no subterfuge, no lies, no jokes, no tricks. When he said, “Anything for you,” he meant it.

* * *

“Do you regret picking the birthday presents on the table?” Marie-Laure asked, dragging Nora out of the past again. It hurt leaving that memory of Wes, especially since returning to the present meant remembering she sat cuffed to the bed of a psychopath. While she dredged up her past, Marie-Laure sat on the bed four feet away, fluffing her goddamn pillows.

“No. Yes. Maybe.” Nora exhaled heavily. “The only thing I wanted was him. And that I didn’t feel right asking for. Castles are too much upkeep. Emeralds I could buy for myself. But I couldn’t buy him. That kid tricked me into coming back home just so he could wish me happy birthday and take me to dinner. And he didn’t even want to fuck me. And even if he did want to fuck me he didn’t try. He didn’t do anything that night but put his arm around me on the sofa and let me lean against him while we watched movies.”

Nora remembered the peace she felt that night curled up with Wesley, eating cake, talking, being vanilla and boring and happy. She forgot all about sex with Griffin, the Gansevoort, even forgot about her birthday. She didn’t even remember it again until she’d gone to bed that night and found a box from Søren on her bed. Kingsley had a key to her house. He must have had one of his underlings sneak it in while she and Wesley were gone. It took her a week to work up the courage to open the box and a week to recover from the gift inside—a handblown glass hart, tiny and exquisite, its antlered head held high proudly. When she was fifteen, she’d dug through boxes of her old toys until she’d found a little plastic hart that had been part of a set of toy animals her grandmother had given her. She’d given it to Søren after midnight mass on Christmas Eve. A visual pun, she’d explained to him. My hart...my heart. What the gift of the glass hart meant she didn’t want to think about. Was Søren reminding her he still had her heart? Or confessing she still had his? Both, most likely, because she knew both were true.

“You know your Wesley’s truth now—his family, his fortune. Do you wish you’d chosen the rabbit hole?”

As much as Nora hated to admit it, Marie-Laure asked a good question.

“I faced that same choice with Søren once,” Nora said, blinking back tears. “I could learn the truth about him and be changed forever. Or walk away from him, from the truth, and stay blissfully ignorant.”

“You made a different choice with my husband.”

“I did. I was seventeen years old and it was here in this house. His father had died and he finally felt safe enough to tell me what he was, what we could be. He warned me it would change everything and that once learned it couldn’t be unlearned.”

“What did you say to him?”

“Two words—tell me.”

Tell me.

And he had. And as he told her the truth of what he was, what she was, what they could be together if she chose, she felt like an amnesiac waking from the haze of forgetfulness and finally remembering herself. The only secrets he’d told her that night were the ones she already knew without knowing she knew them.

If you choose, Little One...I can own you. You would be my property, mine alone.

And her heart had answered before her mouth could find the words.

Of course you own me. You always have....

“But your Wesley, you didn’t want him to tell you what was down the rabbit hole.” Marie-Laure leaned forward and gave Nora a darkly amused grin.

“No, I didn’t. I think instinctively I knew I would be lost down there. I was right. Thoroughbred royalty. Southern gentility. And God, the money everywhere. Old money, new money, mob money. I do my damnedest to avoid the mob. I’d rather not end up like my father did.”

“Not your world?”

“Not at all. I like our version of royalty better than the vanilla version.”

Money bought nothing in Kingsley’s world but a key to the front door. Once inside, they built their own kingdoms. Dominants with boring day jobs earned respect with the power they created out of their own dignity and desires. Exquisite submissives—male and female—who laid themselves out on the altar of sacrifice and sexuality in order to find themselves at someone else’s feet. Wesley always accused the people of her world of putting on costumes and playing dress-up. He had no idea that the suits and the ties and the beige pumps and navy slacks her people wore during the day were the real costumes that they shed when they came out after dark. Nora remembered that night of her birthday party, curled up on the couch in her ducky pajamas, which felt as much like a costume as her kink-wear. He didn’t understand her world of role-play even as the woman he held in his arms played a role for him.

“But that’s what you left Griffin for? A night of being boring and ‘vanilla’ as you call it with your Wesley?”

Nora nodded. “I liked it. No...I loved it. It was a role I was playing, but one I liked playing.”

“Playing house?”

Nora smiled before she remembered she had a man with a knife at her side and was sitting on the bed of a sociopath.

“Exactly. Playing house. Husband. Wife. Home of our own. Dinner on the table. No kids, thank God, unless you count Wes. It was... Here’s the thing,” Nora said, shifting position as her foot had started to fall asleep. “That day, my birthday, Wes and I went out to eat. He took me for Indian food at this great hole-in-the-wall place by his school. One of his friends he played basketball with was there. Someone from his church, too. And he introduced me to them like...nothing. I was Søren’s property for ten years from age eighteen to about twenty-eight. I’ve been in love with him since I was fifteen and now I’m thirty-four. Almost twenty years. In twenty years, we’ve never done that, never gone out to dinner together just the two of us. Not around here. We can’t. Too risky. Can’t even go to a hole-in-the-wall Indian place. A shame, right? The man speaks Hindi, and he fucking loves Indian food.”

“You wanted a different life than my husband could give you? That’s why the boy?”

Nora swallowed.

“Maybe. I don’t know. Wes is...he’s so different from anyone I’ve ever known. Life is weird when you’re a professional Dominatrix. One day I would have dinner with Ilsa Strix and I’d ask her questions like ‘So when you put the three hundred and thirteen needles into that guy’s dick, did you charge by the time or the needle?’ Or you’re hanging out at the club and the seventy-year-old age-play fetishist shuffles past you in his diaper and bonnet. You go a solid week and you realize you haven’t had a single conversation or day that didn’t have something to do with kink or sex or money. You have enough nights like that and you start to wonder if maybe, just maybe, on the subway ride of your life, you got off at the wrong stop. Wes was a different stop. A prettier neighborhood. Good schools. Nicer scenery.”