“If you sellin’ pussy, I’mma do more than threaten you.”
And there it was. The moment I’d been dreading since the first time he kissed me.
“I’m a dominatrix,” I said. “Dame CoCo is my name. I have a dungeon in a rowhouse in Dupont Circle. Men pay me to dominate them verbally, physically. I don’t have sex with them. I don’t touch them sexually. They pay tribute, they follow my rules, and I break them down. That’s the service. That man was a federal judge who became obsessed and couldn’t handle being cut off.”
The Maybach was going sixty in a thirty-five zone and Quest didn’t seem to notice or care.
“How long?”
“Since I lost my fuckin’ fallopian tube.”
“How many men?”
“I’m not doing this.”
“How many men, Mehar?”
“It doesn’t matter how many. It’s a job. It’s how I’m funding my spa. Every dollar I’ve saved for that business came from the dungeon.”
“Other men.” His voice had dropped to something barely above a whisper, and somehow that was worse than yelling. “Other men are on their knees in front of you. Other men are paying to be in a room with you. Judges, politicians, whoever the fuck else. A bunch of grown men paying my woman for the privilege of being at her feet.” He laughed, but there was nothing funny in it. “And that nigga on the sidewalk said he’s been sending you tribute every week. So while I’m eating you out on blackjack tables and calling you Peach and telling you shit I never told another living soul, you’ve got a whole roster of men on their knees in a basement somewhere calling you Dame CoCo.”
“It’s not sexual, Quest.”
“I don’t give a fuck if it’s sexual to you! It’s sexual for them. A man is on his knees in front of you and that’s supposed to be MY position. Mine. Nobody else’s. I don’t share, Mehar. I don’t share you, and I damn sure don’t share whatever the fuck it is that happens in that room with those men.”
“You don’t own me.”
“I put my stamp on you the moment I kissed you.”
“Oh hell no. Every man who’s ever tried to control what I do with my body got cut the fuck off.”
“Don’t compare me to those niggas.”
“Then don’t act like them!”
We were both yelling now. The Maybach was flying through streets I wasn’t paying attention to and the night that had been perfect twenty minutes ago was on fire and neither one of us had an extinguisher.
“I asked you who trashed your apartment,” he said, and his voice cracked on the word apartment, just barely, just enoughfor me to hear the hurt underneath the anger. “I looked you in your face and asked you if you knew who did it. And you said no. You lied to me, Mehar. You lied to my face after I shared… you know everything about me.”
That hit me so hard I couldn’t breathe for a second. Because he was right. He’d given me the most painful thing he’d ever carried, and I’d been sitting on a secret that I was too scared to share. The comparison wasn’t equal. Quindon was a dead child and Dame CoCo was a business, but the betrayal of trust was the same. He trusted me with everything. I’d held back the one thing that could break us.
“Quit,” he said.
“What?”
“Quit. Right now. Tonight. Shut it down. I’ll fund the spa myself. Whatever you need, the full amount, tomorrow. Just quit.”
“No.”
“Mehar.”
“I said no. I’m not quitting my business because a man told me to. I don’t want your money for my spa. I want my money. Built by my hands, earned on my terms. That’s the whole point. If I let you write a check and shut everything down, then you bought my obedience and I’m right back where I started. A woman who gave up a piece of herself so a man could sleep better at night.”
“So you’d rather lose me than give up a dungeon.”
“I’d rather not be with a man who makes me choose between him and myself.”
“Cool. We done.”
