She just laughed and made a show of holding her hands palms up in front of her in surrender.
“Much better. You’ll get used to the way I operate, and what I’ll expect from you, not only when we’re in scene, but any time we’re together or we talk. Here, I’ll help you out.”
“Thank you,” she answered, a small, Mona Lisa smile on her face as he guided her from the car.
“Good girl,” he said before he could stop himself.
She blinked, her smile widening, then she laughed once more, and he knew it was alright that they were slipping so naturally into those roles.
He led her inside the retro-looking diner and they were seated right away at a small table, with Brody pulling her chair out for her. Once they’d ordered and the waitress brought their tea, they settled into conversation.
“So,” he started, “tell me more about you.”
“What kind of things do you want to know?”
“What was it like growing up in France? What part of France are you from? And is that where you met your ex-husband?”
She laughed. “So many questions!”
“Tonight is about getting to know each other.”
“So you mentioned,” she said, wry humor in her voice.
“More back talk?” he asked with a low growl.
“Maybe,” she answered, her eyes sparkling.
“A little brat in you, huh?”
“Maybe,” she said again. “Although I think it’s something new. I guess you bring that out in me.”
“Apparently. Not that I mind—I enjoy bringing a brat to her knees.”
“Oh, do you now?”
“You’ll see,” he said, enjoying their banter. “So, talk to me, Claudia.”
“Okay, okay,” she said with a small chuckle. “Um, well, I was born in Nice, and grew up there. I was waiting tables at a café when I met Kenny, my ex. He was there on vacation. He came in one day, then he came back the next day and asked me out. We ended up traveling all over Europe for the next three months, and when he was due to return to the States he asked me to come with him. So I went to Austin where he lived, and we got married almost right away. I was only twenty-one; he was a bit older. He introduced me to kink, and although later he grew distant and the power play became unbalanced, at first I fell in love with it. I loved going to the clubs. Loved the way it made me feel, like something precious, valuable. And I admired him so much—too much, perhaps. He was a sound engineer, then after a few years he began to produce music. And just as his career was really taking off, I… um… Never mind. You don’t want to hear this part.”
He reached across the table and laid a hand on hers. There was that warmth again that somehow always landed in the pit of his stomach. “I want to hear everything, remember? Anything you’re comfortable sharing.”
She took in a long breath, then exhaled slowly. “This is the not-so-pretty part.”
“Then it’s probably the most important part,” he answered. “Tell me whatever you want to. I’m here to listen, no matter how not-so-pretty it is. This is what we’re doing here. I want to know all of you, Claudia, the good and the bad. It’s only then that I’ll really know how to begin our negotiations. When you fill out thequestionnaire, you’ll be answering questions about your deepest fears, your triggers. We might as well start now, yeah?”
Chapter Four
“Yes. Yes, you’re right. No time like the present—isn’t that what you Americans say?”
She paused, turning things over in her mind, trying to figure out what to tell him, and maybe even more importantly, what not to say. But she could hear the sincerity in Brody’s tone, and it put her at ease. It made her want to tell him the things she rarely talked about with anyone.
“So… Kenny was advancing in his career, starting to work with a lot of big name people in the music industry, and he was working all the time. I never begrudged him working hard. I worked hard, too—I had started waitressing when I first came to the US, then eventually became a hostess at a very nice restaurant in town. But over time, as he became more successful, he changed. Or maybe it was who he’d always been to some degree. I don’t know. But around that time, when his career was really gaining momentum, and he was becoming increasingly obsessed with how things looked—including me—I had a thyroid crash. I gained a lot of weight, and he was very critical of me. The last year we were married he talked me into quitting my job, because he thought me working in a restaurant was too menial,that it wouldn’t look good to the important people he worked with. I didn’t want to quit, but I did it, anyway.
“I was so lost those first few months, with too much time on my hands, and most of it alone. He was away for work very often, in Los Angeles and New York and Nashville. I didn’t even realize until later that for the most part, my only friends were the wives of some of the people he worked with. None of the women who worked as sound engineers or in other aspects of the business, and certainly not any of the musicians. In retrospect I came to understand that he always steered away from women with any real sense of personal power, and he certainly didn’t want me to become friends with women who were secure in their own power. I had a few friends from the dungeon, but Micah was the only one who really stuck, and it was only later that I discovered the subtle things he said to people to keep them away from me, at the dungeon, but also to those wives.”
“That must have been hard. And lonely.”
“It was, absolutely. I did a lot of cooking, took online cooking classes, and took up gardening to keep busy, which I really came to love. But I was still lost in so many ways. And realizing more and more that his behavior with me was… not okay.”
