Page 32 of Honey, Honey
It had been that craving for someone else’s hands on my body that had pulled me into Christian’s gravitational force. He was like the sun, pulling everyone he met into his orbit until they revolved around him. Until he was the focus of their world. It hadn’t taken long at all for me to fall into the same holding pattern, the same obsession as everyone else when it came to Christian O’Hanon.
He was a good Dom. An exceptional one, really. That was how I’d fallen so quickly for him, mistaking the sure way he carried himself, the deft hand as he guided us through our scenes together, the absolute confidence he invoked when he was a Dominant. All of it had snowballed together. Blinding me to the fact that we were not compatible. We were living two different lives, on two different timelines, with Christian insisting on an engagement ring I kept refusing. A whirlwind romance that would end with me married to him and us moving in together, even if we had just met two months before.
The way he pulled at my walls and boundaries, shoving his way and his will through them had left me reeling. It felt wrong. Just like every place I had moved before finding New York. All of it, so much so that I had almost pulled up stakes and left the city. But the thing was, I loved New York City too much to leave it. I had no family and few friends, but the one thing I had was the city.
I had New York.
I wasn’t going to give up the place I had earned for myself to run from a man that didn’t understand no. We had begun in a place that insisted on consent and trust, boundaries and limits, as its most tried and true tenets. Christian was a man that wanted what he wanted, when he wanted it. And I was, for all my faults and mistakes, what he wanted.
A good man would have understood my hesitation and given me time, but it turned out Christian wasn’t a particularly good man. He was, however, an incredibly selfish one. When I’d broken it off with him he had stalked me for weeks. Juana had taken to yelling at him and shaking her broom, making sure he knew he was no longer welcome in our building. Elaina and her kids made sure to keep an eye on him, glaring at him until he left when he parked across the street waiting for me to return from work. They’d called the cops on him more than once when I was out. Christian for his part stopped coming around my apartment and made a game of trying to find me at my jobs. Thanks to the random nature of BaristApp’s offerings he had only succeeded twice in nailing down exactly where I was that day. Both times I’d felt my heart in my throat when I saw his familiar handsome profile in line.
“You have to stop,” I told him.
“I won’t, I love you. This is what you do when you love someone.”
He was wrong. I knew that, but some part of me started to believe it. That I deserved this for letting him fall in love with me. That it was my fault somehow. Until we’d run into one another at the Cairn.
Christian had been there with another submissive. They’d been tangled up in one another in the great room. The submissive giggling in his lap while he toyed with her hair, leaning into to whisper in her ear. It was harmless in a place like the club, but seeing them together had been like a bucket of cold water being thrown on me.
She hadn’t even looked a thing like me. Blond hair, blue eyes, fair skinned and slight. My exact opposite. I think that had hurt more, somehow. Knowing that he was putting me through hell, making me look over my shoulder when I was out, making me wonder if I would have a day of peace or end up running from him, and yet...yet, he was choosing to play at the club and with a woman that could not look further from me.
It was sick how I hated that she looked nothing like me.
I’d gone straight to Connie and told her everything. The woman who manned the front desk was not just a receptionist. She was the right hand woman to the club’s owner, Zeus. Yes, weird name, but the man was god within the walls of the Cairn, so no one really questioned it. No one had ever seen him either.
My money was on Connie being Zeus, because no sooner had I told her about my split from Christian—the stalking, the police reports, the unwanted visits at work, than Christian suddenly vanished from the club. When I re-entered the great room he was nowhere to be seen, his blonde though? She was there and looking pissed, but alone. I was glad her night was ruined.
How fucked was that?
The answer was very fucked.Very, very fucked.
“Eight months probation. If you so much as think he’s following you, I want to know,” Connie said, holding up a finger.
I nodded, barely able to hold her piercing gaze. “Sure thing.”
She pointed her finger at me. “I mean it, Honey. You so much as think you see him and you tell me. He’ll pay.”
“But-”
She waved a hand, already turning on her heel. “Enjoy yourself. You're safe here.”
And that had been that. Connie had taken care of him even if I didn’t know the particulars. I hadn’t seen Christian since that night. The woman had power. She had to be Zeus.
I went to the club then freely, letting my guard down enough to slip into little space. Enough to take my pleasure with other Doms. But when the eight months mark of Christian’s probation came and went I wondered what had happened to him. Whatever it was he hadn’t reappeared in my life and that suited me just fine.
“You shouldn’t want something like that. I’m not a good man.”
“I’ve got no use for a good man.”
I shut my door, the words Law had spoken to me the night before ringing in my ears. I’d told him I didn’t want a good man, but it was a lie. After Christian,allI wanted was a good man. Someone to be good to me. But that seemed to be impossible to find even in a city like New York where anything was possible. Or at least possible at a price.
I paused, knowing the lights Law hadn’t liked were overhead. I didn’t have to look to know they were off now, light pouring in from the windows that lined the third floor far better than the old fluorescents provided and all for free. The building super fucking loved free. I was about to go down the stairs when Juana’s door flew open and the old woman poked her head out, looking at me.
“I thought you said you were meeting a friend.”
Fuck. She’d heard us.
“I did meet a friend,” I said, playing it cool.
