Page 117 of The Comedown

I scramble for something to stop this from actually happening, saying, “You need to get back out there.”

“The smoke hasn’t cleared.”

“As soon as it does, you need to be there, or else you’re going to start losing money.”

“You still got me confused with Bodee.” It’s not posed as a question, but he pulls back, nodding along like he’s answering it himself.

After lowering me to the floor, he goes back over to the door, and instead of turning the knob and returning to the superdome full of fans currently screaming his name, he flips the lock into place.

“We’re not leaving this room ’til you learn.”

“Learn…what?”

“That I’m nothing like your ex.”

“We don’t have time for this. Not now.”

All he says is, “I’ll fucking make it,” reminding me of the same promise he gave Holter earlier today, that no matter how busy he might be, he’d make time for my son.

And me.

Bodee’s never been able to do that. Bodee’s never even tried.

The fight to stop this leaves me, just like he said…gone.

“You won’t like it,” I say, eyeing one of the metal chairs butted up against a circular table. The top part is exposed at least, and it does have a seat and back cushion.

“Fucking try me,” is Julian’s response.

“Unbuckle your pants and give me your belt,” I tell him with a wave in the table’s direction. “And sit in one of those.”

His eyebrows lift, but he follows directions, watching me the whole time.

“You want my pants down or…”

“I’ll let you know.”

His right hand goes to his left hip, and with one smooth upward tug, he removes his shirt off his left shoulder, head, then right shoulder, dropping it by his feet before taking a seat.

“Collette,” he says to me over his shoulder, but I ignore him, too focused on the belt and making it into handcuffs. “You better not whoop my ass over one kiss.”

Both the cuffs adjusted, I hold the figure eight with a looped tail out for inspection. “We both know it wasn’t just one kiss. Put your hands behind your back.”

“You gonna arrest me?” he jokes, but there’s an edge to his tone.

I get his wrists through each loop, then tighten them, and fasten the extra slack to the top handle of the chairback so he can’t go anywhere.

“What the fuck is this shit?” Julian says more to himself than to me.

I come around to face him, asking, “Ready to play this game?”

With his jeans’ zipper undone and spread wide open, I can see his hard cock jump under his boxers as he says, “I ain’t fucking playin’. Do what you gotta do.”

Julian has a habit of giving up his control at the first hint of it being threatened. He mistakenly believes this actually keeps him in control because he still has a say. He’s about to learn what it feels like to have both his control and his say taken away.

If he wants to prove he’s nothing like Bodee Keys, he’s going to have to show me what he’s like when he’s completely out of control, both professionally and personally, because Bodee became a very dark, malicious person when his control was threatened. Julian thinks he doesn’t have any control when it comes to me, but he’s about to find out what no control actually feels like. And he’s going to do it while being sober, so he can face his choice to not fulfill his work obligation at the same time. Before I handcuffed him to the chair he made the choice, now I’m going to make him actually look it in the face.

“Do I have your permission to touch you?” I ask because even though I’m taking away some of his say, it’s not that kind of say I’m looking to rob him of. I’d never do that to anybody.