Nicole Laurent

This novella is yet untitled. Subject matter not suitable for those under 18.

The room was ice-cold, as cheap motel rooms often are in the height of summer. Most likely the air conditioning had been constantly running so the stale air and lingering cigarette smoke were less noticeable. I’d asked Harlan to turn the a/c off, or at the very least down, but he said the distinct chill made my nipples tight, the way he preferred them. He thought my goose bumps lent an air of vulnerability. That comment made me laugh as I was already secured with bargain bin polyester scarves to the peeling spindles of an ancient headboard.

Harlan had searched long and hard throughout the city to find this motel. Requirements deemed that the room rented by the hour and provided the accoutrements he felt necessary, such as spindled headboards. Most importantly, it must be a place that made you feel degraded simply by accepting a key. He could afford the Ritz. But the experience wouldn’t be the same, now would it?

     The man across the room was smoking a Marlboro Red and flicking glances through the gaps in the heavily lined curtains. He’d been many things to me over the last year. A keeper, a confidante, my master and my lover. But never a friend. You have to be open to that sort of thing, vulnerable. And not the kind of vulnerable you are when you’re stark naked, tied to a overused and stained mattress, staring up at a popcorn ceiling, waiting for the whore your lover ordered to show up.

Allowing someone to be your friend is an entirely different kind of vulnerable and it wasn’t an affliction I wished to contract.

I silently watched Harlan as he stubbed out his cigarette and paced across the small room to the sink to scrub his hands of the nicotine smell. He was always conscientious, always perfectly put together, always clean.

Except for sex. In sex, he liked everything dirty. Messy. Depraved.

And that made me feel safe. You don’t do dirty things with someone you care for. You don’t ask your friend to debase you. You don’t explore things best left to the imagination with someone you love.

For as many things as we’ve done, we have never invited a third party into our bed. I never imagined Harlan would allow another man to partake in our exclusive arrangement. It was both exciting and terrifying; two things that made me feel alive. So I think it was that, and not my precarious position, arms suspended over my head, everything that I am, exposed, that had me on a razor’s edge. It’s why I startled at the light knock on the door.

Right before my eyes I saw my lover transform into my master. It was a subtle shift in his bearing, a palpable presence in the room. I couldn’t explain it but I could always feel it. It was that precise feeling that made me feel alive. But that feeling never lasted from one encounter to the next.

I reminded myself that I was entirely safe, that this whole scenario had been my idea. Harlan had only done as I’d hinted—the master always puts his submissive’s needs first. And make no mistake; this was my need, not his.