We made small talk until after he'd returned with the tea, and I ordered a bottle of sake.
"That bad, huh?" Sakura asked. "You almost never order alcohol."
"A little something to calm my nerves wouldn't hurt," I said. "You're not going to make me drink the whole bottle myself, are you?"
"Of course not! Just, you know … " She gave me a sideways look. "How's your father doing?"
"In rehab? Fine, I assume."
"You assume?"
"It's hardly the first time, Sarah. And it's not like they call and tell you every day what they're doing."
"What are they doing?"
The waiter slid aside the door and placed a sake bottle that looked like a bud vase on the table with two tiny cups. They were like ceramic thimbles. When he was gone I filled the thimbles and answered Sakura's question. "A lot of sitting around in groups talking about how sorry they are. At the end of twenty-eight days, he'll come out packed with remorse over every little thing he ever did while drunk and swearing he'll never drink again. I'm sure the staff already have a pool going on how long until he falls off the wagon this time. I'm sorry to sound so jaded about it but it's happened so many times I just can't get my hopes up that this time it'll be different."
I pushed both cups toward Sakura suddenly. I'd lost my taste for it.
She shrugged but didn't say anything, just picked one up and ignored the other. "Well, if it's not your father who has you in a lather, which one of the men in your life is it this time?"
"What kind of an assumption is that? It could be Gwen."
"Your sister is the sweetest, kindest person who ever lived and she adores you. I'm betting it's not Gwen."
I tapped my finger anxiously on the shined lacquer of the table. "You're right. I think Axel hypnotized me."
She nearly spat out her sake. "What!"
I waited until she'd dabbed herself with a napkin before I went on. "Is that possible? For a dom to … to brainwash a sub?"
"Hang on, hang on. I thought you just had a quickie in the limo, a spur of the moment thing."
I had to consciously stop myself from chewing my lip. "We did. But it was, you know."
"No, Ricki, I don't know. What's up? Did he do something you didn't want him to?"
"Well, no. I mean, but he's got like a … pheromone or magic spell, I swear. It was like my resistance just … melted away."
"You resisted, though?"
"Not seriously. I mean, I knew I could tell him to stop. But I tried to break free, push him away, and … I am not explaining this well at all."
"Take your time." She downed the sake and then refilled her thimble.
"It wasn't like he spanked me or one of those things. But it felt like … " I groped for the words. "Like he was in complete control."
"Okay, and that was a bad thing?"
"Yes! Because he made me forget all the reasons why I might want to say no. Like it was some kind of mind control."
Sakura gave a little shrug. "Sounds to me like you fell for his dom aura."
"Dom Aura? Is that the name of a band?"
"Very funny. Call it what you want but when a guy, or a woman, for that matter, is dominant-like me-we kind of have an air about us."
I thought about that feeling, like his will had wrapped around me. "An air."
"You know what I mean, Rick'. Like when a dog trainer walks into the pen and all the dogs quiet down, even if it's not a trainer they know sometimes. They respond to the air of authority."
"You're saying I'm like a trained dog." Yeah, he snaps his fingers and you salivate between the legs. Fuck.
"No. It's just an analogy. Jeez." Sakura sighed. "Look, Ricki, I'm your friend. So I have some advice for you. Sometimes a submissive-"
"I am not submissive!" I was a competent, take-charge woman who wanted to run a movie studio, not a pushover.
She held out her hands. "Okay. Sometimes the person who played the part of the submissive in a scene doesn't feel so great afterward. Even if the scene was great, a kind of morning-after syndrome can set in. I kind of wondered if you were having some of that when you first told me about it."
She was right: I hadn't even waited until the next morning to feel regrets. "What's the cure?"
"Talking it over with the person who played the dominant role, typically. They feel responsible, after all."
That was the word he'd used: responsible. When he'd tried to get me to tell him what was wrong.
"No way in hell," I said. "I think he programmed me. Hypnotized me."
"Hypnotized?"
"How else do you explain it?"
"Explain what? That you did what he said and the result was really, really great sex?"
Here's where it gets really embarrassing, I thought. "There's more. It's not just the whole … lack of resistance on my part that worries me." I balled my hands in frustration. You're not some sixteen-year-old virgin, I told myself. Just spit it out. "Since that night, I've been having … trouble."
"Trouble."
I said the next word so quietly she didn't hear it. "Coming."
"What?" She leaned in, trying to hear.
"You know, getting there! Ever since Axel, I … can't!"
Her eyebrows eloquently expressed her skepticism. "And you think this means he hypnotized you?"
"How else do you explain it?"
"Well, how many times have you tried?"
"Sarah!"
"Don't sound so scandalized! We need data to figure this kind of thing out."
"More than enough times to be convinced that there's something going on," I said, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. I wasn't about to give her the exact details on what I'd fantasized about-or not fantasized about-while masturbating. Though thank goodness I had someone like Sakura to talk to about it. "He put some kind of a dom whammy on me." It was too embarrassing to tell her the whole corny thing he'd said about there being an on-off switch under my choker, but wasn't that just the kind of thing hypnotists could do? Make you sneeze every time you said the word "aardvark" and that kind of thing?
Sarah didn't seem to think so. "Okay, first of all, there are a lot of folks into hypno-play, but you wouldn't do it without consent. Just like you wouldn't do any other thing without negotiating it first."
"Oh, like the way he negotiated kidnapping me?"
Sakura bit her own lip. "Point. But like you said, that was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Far as I know Axel isn't into hypno."
"But it's a thing that doms do? Hypno means hypnosis?"
Sakura looked at me seriously. "You've really never heard of this?"
"No." I could feel my face flushing as if I'd downed the sake, even though I hadn't. "Look. I know I've been acting like I know all about kink because my parents were into it, and the club and all, but you know I've never done anything like that. Until now, I mean."
"Okay," she said. "Let's back up. First of all-hypno, yes, it's a thing some couples do. I mean, we play with minds as well as bodies. That's half the fun. But Ricki, like I said, not without consent. Can you describe the scene you did? Any special trigger words or anything like that?"
"Um, no. Not exactly. He snatched me, we wrestled a bunch, it got really sexual, and then there were things like he … " I tried to say it without blushing but describing it meant remembering in vivid detail what it felt like when he … "sliced my underwear off with a straight razor. And he told me to bend over so he could do it. And well, he told me to say his name."
"His name?"
"Yes. I don't know. We played around with whether I was supposed to call him Axel or Mr. Hawke, and it never got very … firm, you know? It was just some dirty talk."
"Some light role play?"
"Yeah. Just some light role play and him giving me dirty commands." And me loving it. How could it make sense that all fear, all resistance, all the usual things I felt during sex without a straight razor, all the things that made me jam my foot on the brake, had melted away when he was in control? Talking about it now, even in the broad strokes I was giving to her, was bringing back sense memories left and right. I remembered how right it felt to bow down, to press my forehead to the carpet and wait for him to reward me. "This really has me messed up, Sakura."
"Obviously." She schooled her expression quickly from concern to a smile though, as the door slid aside again and the waiter put down two tiny plates, one in front of each of us. He was tall for an Asian guy and very slim, with a few blond streaks in his otherwise very black hair. I assumed he was an out-of-work actor.
"Compliments of the chef," he said with a grin and a nod and then slid the door closed again.