Page 3 of Vivacity
My toxic trait is that I psychoanalyse everyone I meet. Before someone has finished shaking my hand, I’ve mapped them on a mega-matrix of Enneagram-meets-IFS-meets-Meyers-Briggs-meets-Clifton-Strengths-meets-attachment-style-meets-dominant-nervous-system-state. It’s annoying and presumptuous and, God help me, I fucking love my psychoanalytical crack. I suspect it’s more a product of my personality than my psychology degree.
The upshot of my private party piece is that it gives me, I think, more insight and therefore more compassion than your average Joe when it comes to my fellow humans.
I fervently believe that the majority of us are trudging through life buried under the weight of two core fears:
I am not enough.
This situation is not safe.
In fact, I’d go so far as to say that these two can explain ninety-nine percent of human behaviour. I didn’t say theyexcuseit, but they definitely help me to look beyond most jackassery and see the scared child beneath it.
But.
But.
Sometimes it’s really,reallyhard to believe that someone isn’t just a raging arsehole. Case in point: Mr Ethan Kingsley, to be henceforth known asEight. Because my instincts tell me this guy is an Enneagram Eight; I’d put money on it. If Pixar decided to put an Enneagram spin onInside Outnext time, he’d make a fantastic Eight: The Protector, which is a more constructive take on the effective but harmfulcontrol freakconcept.
An internet search might suggest he’s a Three—The Achiever—but having met the man, I now know that’s not true. I suspect this position as CEO of Kingsley Hotels, the empire his father famously built from one corporate hotel in Canary Wharf, is less about external validation for him and more about control. When I complimented this roof terrace a moment ago, there wasn’t a hint of pleasure in his thanks. If anything, it was an awkward acknowledgement of the truth—that this place is objectively gorgeous.
We’re all here tonight to celebrate the opening of his fifth London hotel. The party is filled with celebrities and supermodels and high rollers, and I’m getting zero “basking” vibes from him. Whatever this guy gets off on, he’s most definitely not high on achievement right now.
I consider him as I return his verbal shot across the net with an easy backhand. My brain is mapping him on an enormous mental whiteboard right as my eyes—and other body parts—are indulging in a leisurely perusal of the fan-fucking-tastic physical package shielding what is presumably a walking ball of unresolved trauma.
His light brown hair is perfectly styled and raked off his face. He’s broad in the shoulders and lean everywhere—face, body—and wears his immaculate custom suit far too well. My friend Marlowe, who enjoyed a threesome with him and her now-boyfriend this summer, wasn’t lying about the hotness factor.
But it’s the pale grey eyes that are the most arresting. They’re intense, insightful, and cold as fuck. I wonder what they do when he’s close to coming. I wonder if they burn, or if they become mere opalescent rings, swallowed up by a ravenous void of pupil.
I wouldn’t mind finding out.
His overall leanness may remind me of a predator—a panther, maybe—and his tightly wound energy is totally giving hyper-function. I bet this dude needs a truckload of orgasms to numb him out of his default nervous system state of sympathetic.
And it would definitely be a case ofsex as anaesthesiafor him. A quick fuck over his desk to momentarily obliterate the fear, the noise. No co-regulation through intimacy for this guy.
It’s confirmed. This lovely specimen is my toxic trait’s wet dream and possibly my lady parts’ wet dream too, both of which point to encouraging silver linings given the dominantraging arseholefactor we’re dealing with here.
So he wants full control, and he wants his assistants—and everyone else—to know exactly who’s boss at all times, but what I’m hearing is if someone can’t hack his Eight-ness at full-throttle then he’ll ditch them, because broken people are far too real and vulnerable and confronting for him to handle.
What a keeper.
He broke Talia. He broke the two Seraph assistants who came before her. He probably broke his ex-wife. And, once he’d ruined them, he didn’t want his broken toys anymore.
I’m pretty sure Taylor Swift wrote a song about that.
But he should heed my warning just now.
He really should be careful what he wishes for, because I am so emotionally healthy, so wonderfully robust, that I can take anything this controlling dickhead throws at me and then some. The problem with him seeking out someone unbreakable, someone who’s done the work on herself and is secure within, isthat she’ll take none of his dominant bullshit in the workplace. And I’m not sure this guy is ready for how it feels when someone pushes back.
My only consolations are that he looks likethatand that, in the bedroom at least, our needs will be compatible. He can dominate me all night long. He can dominate me until the cows come home and all his burdened, exhausted, controlling bodyguard parts can breathe a sated sigh of relief and lay down their weary heads. Because I am a whore for that shit.
Literally.
I amliterallya whore for that shit.
It’s the best part of the job.
‘No time for broken things,’I muse now. ‘Got it. You know, you really should be more careful what you wish for.’
He narrows his eyes at me. ‘Meaning?’
