She considered me for a few seconds, assessing me like a bird of prey, regal and low-level terrifying. Like she was going to toy with me a little before devouring me. Then she nodded as though this went without saying. Maybe in her world, but not in the cutthroat swamp I inhabited.
“Agreed,” she said. “No lies. Anything else?”
She’d agreed so quickly I had to wonder if she understood how important it was to me, but asking her again wouldn’t make me any more secure in her answer.
“Nope. You?”
Her lips turned up a fraction. “I’m sure my attorney has the rest under control.”
We sat in silence for a few minutes. I always won the quiet game, but I was going to have to pretend to date this person.
Was this going to work?
Why the hell was she acting like I’d killed the Last Unicorn?
I sat there trying to think of something to say to get her to open up even a little. “Why did you pick the name Elena?” I eventually asked.
I’d seen everything from her background check to her latest STD tests at this point, so I knew it wasn’t her real name.
“It was my mother’s name. She died when I was a kid.”
Good one, Alex.“I’m sorry. I lost my dad when I was young too.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. But then she fell silent again.
“Should I use your legal name in any context?” Did she use it with people who were close to her?
“Elena feels more like me now, so I just use it with everyone.”
I nodded and fiddled with my phone, trying to figure out what else we could talk about. It didn't feel like she was interested in this subject. I finally thought of a topic we could bond over. “You must have complicated feelings aboutCrown of Swords, huh?”
She sighed. “Why would you say that?”
“Because everyone says it’s got all kinds of issues in the way it portrays BDSM. Everyone talks shit about it and no one can figure out why it’s so successful.”
She stared at me for a moment like she was deciding whether to even bother answering me, then let out an even deeper sigh. “I’m so sick of hearing all the reasons why ‘everyone’ hates it and it sucks. I’m much more interested in why lots of women love it so much and I refuse to be one more person shaming them for that love.”
Apparently, everything out of my mouth was going to piss her off. “Okay, I’ll bite. Whydowomen love it so much?”
“Because no matter what you think of the writing or the portrayal of BDSM, it manages to capture the excitement of submitting for the first time, of discovering there’s someone out there who knows your deepest fantasies before you’ve ever spoken them aloud. It evokes everything I love about being a sub. I wouldn’t use it to teach BDSM, but there’s no denying the power of the cultural movement it’s started.”
“I thought you were a dominatrix?”
She blinked slowly at me like I was a dumbass. “I have no idea how that’s related to what I just said.”
I was pretty sure the last time I’d felt like this much of an idiot, I was in a principal’s office explaining why I’d left dog poop in my middle brother’s locker. To be fair, he deserved it.
“Don’t you…you know,dominatepeople? You just said it evokes what you love about being a sub.”
“I can be a dominatrix and a sub, Mr. Chase. My personal preferences and my professional ones don’t need to align. Subs sometimes make the best dominants because we’ve been there and know how to get in your head.”
I didn’t know how to answer that, so I let the silence drag again before trying a different angle, getting desperate. “We’ve got time to kill and are going to be spending a lot of it together. Let’s play Truth or Dare.” I grinned playfully at her. Surely, there was a fun side of her buried deep under all those layers of buttoned-up control.
“Are you twelve?”
Maybe not.
Here lies fun, slain by Lady Elena.
