Because He Breaks Me(5)

On my way to the train station, I ducked into Starbucks and treated myself to a venti caramel latte, sipping the steaming hot drink as I rode the subway to Midtown.

There was a gnawing pain in my stomach, the kind of gnawing pain that let me know something was wrong, but it was like I was feeling it through some kind of haze, as if my body was disassociating itself from what had just happened.

He can’t stay away from you.

He’d said it himself.

He would text me, I was sure of it.

I pulled my phone out of my bag and clutched it in my hand, just in case.

But by the time I got to work, I hadn’t heard from him.

I’d planned on telling Kiersten about Dean Bellingham’s invitation as soon as I got in, but her office door was closed, and so I headed to my cubicle and checked my inbox. Sure enough, Kiersten had sent me some changes Callum had requested for his tour, along with a slew of edits to the catalog copy for Jojo Kye’s book.

I was done with all of her requests by lunch.

I spent my break with a chicken cobb salad and an iced tea from a Café Metro, somehow scoring one of wrought iron tables on the sidewalk. I pushed the salad around on my plate and flipped the top of my iced tea around on the table absentmindedly.

I still hadn’t heard from Callum.

I missed him.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the contract he’d left sitting on my kitchen table, took a deep breath, and slid the pages out of the envelope.

There it was, all laid out in black and white.

The expectations he’d had for me.



The Submissive Agrees To:



Live in an apartment of the Dominant’s choosing, to which he will have access to at all times. Said apartment will have at minimum two bedrooms, and it will be up to the Dominant’s sole discretion whether or not he sleeps in bed with the submissive.



The Dominant will keep the kitchen stocked with foods of his choosing, and the submissive will eat only from these provided foods, unless she has the prior permission of the Dominant.



The submissive agrees not to consume any alcohol or be in places where copious amounts of alcohol are being served.



The submissive will wear only the clothes that the Dominant has preapproved. She will be provided with a clothing allowance of twenty thousand dollars per month.



The submissive will allow the Dominant to do whatever he pleases to her sexually, and will be ready and willing to provide for the Dominant’s sexual needs as he requires. This includes being shaved and ready for the Dominant at all times.



The Dominant will use any toys, ropes, whips, cuffs, or bondage equipment which he deems acceptable and conducive to his pleasure. The submissive agrees that she will not push the Dominant into sexual situations that invoke an emotional response in the Dominant, and that there will be no expectation of any romantic overtures from the Dominant.

It went on for pages and pages, but I stopped reading. My stomach rolled on itself, a sick feeling that gnawed at my insides, this time bitter and raw, with no filter.

How could Callum have asked me to sign something like this? The contract I’d signed in Florida had been one thing. But this was a whole other level of twisted. To expect me to give up my whole life, to let him take control of me, and for what? Just so he could use me sexually? It was messed up.

Reading the words in black and white just solidified the choice I’d made when I’d told him no this morning. Because the truth was, Callum Wilder was not capable of loving anyone.

And the sooner I got that through my head, the better.









The afternoon passed in a whirlwind.

Kiersten had left the office while I at lunch, but she began emailing me nonstop, firing off instructions at me rapidly – a dinner reservation to be made at Pastis, a sample publicity plan she’d uploaded to the server that needed to be forwarded, a list of bloggers that needed to be vetted and approved.

Every time I emailed her back, I wondered if I should tell her about Dean Bellingham. But there wasn’t really a seamless way to do it, and I decided I would wait until she was back in the office and I could tell her in person, hopefully tomorrow.

I was in the elevator on my way out of the Archway offices at the end of the day, pressed in with about fifteen other people, when my phone buzzed.

Callum.

I checked it, my heart hammering in my chest.

But it wasn’t Callum.

It was Nessa.

U out of work? Sephora run?

I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t really want to hang out with Nessa either, not because I didn’t want to see her, but because I knew she was going to ask me about Callum, and I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell her. But I couldn’t avoid her forever – she was my roommate. And I knew there was a good chance that being with her would take my mind off things.

So I texted back.

Sure! Twenty minutes?

“Hot date?” a voice chirped in my ear.

I jumped. “What?”

I turned to see Bailey, the girl from yesterday, standing in the elevator next to me. I’d been so caught up in my thoughts that I hadn’t even noticed her.

“You’re texting,” she said, nodding toward my phone. “I just thought maybe it was with the mystery man who sent you those flowers yesterday.”

“Oh,” I said, shoving my phone back into my bag. “No, it was my roommate. And there’s no mystery man. I told you, those flowers were from my mom.”

“Riiiight,” Bailey said, but not in an unfriendly way. “Anyway, if those flowers did happen to be from some hot guy, I’d definitely take your chance to spend time with him while you can. Rumor has it Kiersten was somehow able to steal Dean Bellingham away from Royal House.” She shook her head in awe, then slipped a hair tie from around her wrist and gathered her long red hair into a loose ponytail. “Shit is about to get crazy busy.”

The elevator doors opened and Bailey stepped out and into the lobby before I could ask any more questions. But for some reason, there was a queasy feeling in my stomach. How had Kiersten stolen Dean from Royal House? Had she slept with him? Whatever, I told myself as I passed through the revolving doors. This isn’t any of your business, Adriana. It’s above your pay grade and responsibility. Your job is to just keep your mouth shut, follow orders, and try not to screw up.

Twenty minutes later, I was at the Times Square Sephora, under the fluorescent track lights, the bass line of the pop music remix that was blaring over the speakers helping to drown out my tangled thoughts as I tried to avoid the made-up Scary Barbie sales staff who wanted to sell me mascara that cost almost as much as my rent. Nessa was high on her newfound romance with Isaac, and you could see it on her face and in her body language. Her shoulders were relaxed and her tone was giddy.

“He’s just so different than what I expected,” she said as she picked up a sample bottle of Daisy perfume by Marc Jacobs and sprayed it liberally on her body. I wrinkled my nose and tried not to choke. It wasn’t that the perfume smelled bad, it was just that she’d sprayed so many of them already that they’d morphed into a cloud of scents that had never been intended to go together.

“How so?” I asked, turning away from her cloud of perfume toward a display of lip glosses. I selected a pale peach one and pulled it out, testing it on the back of my hand.

“He’s just… I don’t know, sensual I guess,” she said. “And good at making me feel relaxed. Like after we had sex, you know, he made me feel like he really wanted me to be there with him, made me total secure in the fact that he wanted me to stay. And then last night, he took me to dinner and then asked me to spend the night.”

A frisson of jealousy moved through my body as I slid the lip gloss back into its place in the display. It wasn’t that I wanted to be with Isaac. He was cute enough, but not my type. No, what I wanted was that security, the idea that the person you were with wanted to be with you in exactly the same way you wanted to be with them.

On other hand, I was also a little suspicious. I wasn’t sure if it was my newfound cynicism about romance and men, but I found it odd that Isaac was suddenly so enamored with Nessa. They’d lived near each other all this time, and now he’d decided to not only take an interest in her, but to spend all his time with her?

“What do you think of this one?” Nessa asked, puffing her newly-lined lips out in a duck face. “It’s called Rose Petal Pink. Do you think Isaac would like Rose Petal Pink?”

“Do you like Rose Petal pink?” I asked pointedly, which was really ironic coming from me, since I’d just been considering signing a contract which would have given a man complete control over my body. For me to encourage anyone to value their own thoughts and opinions over what a man wanted was laughable.

“I think so,” she said, studying herself critically in the mirror. “Do you think I should get collagen injections? I get a discount at work.”

“In your lips?” I picked up a soft bronzer and used a disposable cotton pad to brush it across my cheeks.

“Yes.”

“No.” I shook my head. “You’ll look fake.” I hope that working in a dermatologist’s office wasn’t going to cause Nessa to start injecting her skin with all kinds of chemicals.

“Yeah,” she said, making another duck face in the mirror. She placed the Rose Petal Pink lip gloss into the small mesh shopping basket that was slung over her arm. “Anyway, tell me about you and Callum!” she said. “I can’t believe he showed up at Aubrey Zane’s party like that. Did anyone from work see you guys together?”