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  Jonah Noble

  Anticipation is everything

  Jason Luke

  Copyright © 2015 Jason Luke

  The right of Jason Luke to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Author’s note:

  When I wrote Jonah’s first novel, ‘Interview with a Master’, I made no secret of the fact that most of the character’s words, thoughts and encounters were based largely on my own personal experiences.

  I have done the same again for this novella.

  “Here?” Leticia’s voice lifted an octave with the sound of her incredulity. “You brought me here?”

  I parked the car without comment, and then looked across the sidewalk to the glass doors that fronted her old apartment building. Leticia was watching me, searching my face for some kind of sign.

  I said nothing.

  I got out of the car, went around to the passenger door and held it open for her. We hadn’t been here for two years – not since Leticia had moved into my home. She stepped carefully out of the car and stood close beside me, her eyes lifted to the façade of the building, as though looking for the window of her old apartment.

  The night was balmy – that time of year between the change from spring to summer. Leticia clutched a small purse in her hand and used the other to tug demurely at the hem of her dress.

  “Jonah…” she scowled quizzically. “What’s going on? I thought we were going out to dinner.”

  I smiled. “We are,” I said.

  I took her hand and we went through the doors and into the foyer. The sound of Leticia’s heels echoed around the empty space and bounced off the walls, magnified by the heavy silence. We rode the elevator to the top floor.

  “It’s a special night,” I said as the steel doors glided silently open. I led her along the passage towards a fire door. “And as such, it’s deserving of a special location.”

  Leticia arched her eyebrows. It was two years since she had moved into my home – two years we had lived together. She smiled at me – a bemused curl at the corner of her mouth – and followed me up the short flight of stairs and onto the apartment building’s rooftop.

  I stood aside, gestured with a flourish, and waited for Leticia to step through the doorway. She came uncertainly, hesitating on the threshold. She gave me one final wry smile and then leaned close to my ear so that I could smell the intoxicating scent of her perfume that seemed to swirl around her like a scented cloud. “You never cease to amaze me.”

  The rooftop was decorated in exactly the same way that it had been on the first night I had brought her here for dinner. Hundreds of tea-lights and candles flickered and glowed like golden pinpricks of light against the deep dark backdrop of a moonless sky, and in the middle of the romantic lighting was a small table, covered with a starched white cloth.

  Leticia went towards the table like a sleepwalker – like it was an impossible dream. In the center of the table was a long-stemmed rose in a narrow glass vase. She picked it up, held it to her face to inhale the perfume, and then turned back to where I stood, her eyes dancing and glittering with the sparkle of emotional tears.

  “It’s beautiful,” Leticia breathed in a whisper. She held out her hand to me and I went to her. I took her in my arms and kissed her passionately, so that for many moments the whole world seemed to fall away and it was just the two of us, clinging to each other, as the world turned and the stars in the sky winked and glistened like diamonds.

  The sound of someone discreetly clearing their throat brought us back to reality. We broke apart. A waitress was hovering on the edges of the candlelight, holding a bottle of champagne. Leticia licked her lips like she could still taste and feel the temperature of my kiss, then hooded her eyes. “We’ll finish this later,” she said with a hushed promise.

  There was a small marquee set in one corner of the rooftop and from within it a procession of wait staff filed towards the table, carrying plates and glasses. I drew Leticia’s chair back and she sat, her eyes fixed on mine as though no one else in the world existed. I eased myself into my chair and the waitress showed me the label of the champagne bottle. She opened it with practiced ease, filled our glasses, and disappeared like an ethereal shape, back into the night.

  “To us,” I toasted. Leticia scooped up her fluted glass and gazed at me through the rising bubbles of the wine.

  “Yes,” she said softly. “To us, Jonah – and to whatever the future holds.”

  Another waitress brought steaming bowls of soup and I watched Leticia carefully – studying her face – the subtle nuances of her expression that I had learned to read like the weather. Behind her dancing eyes and loving smile, was a darker shadow of something I had not recognized before – some depth of emotion that lurked just below the surface. I sipped at the champagne and frowned.

  “You know, I’ve lived an interesting life, and had my share of regrets,” I said, measuring my words and watching Leticia’s face. “But one of my greatest regrets happened on this very rooftop, the first evening I brought you here.”

  Leticia looked suddenly bewildered. She leaned forward, becoming almost alarmed, so that I had to hold up my hand to reassure her.

  “No,” I said emphatically, “meeting you… falling in love with you… is not something I regret. Not at all,” I wrapped the words up in a sincere smile. “My regret is the analogy I used that night when you asked me about the BDSM lifestyle. Do you recall what I said?”

  Leticia frowned in confusion, and then recollection. “Something about seafood?”

  I nodded, almost felt myself cringe at the memory. “That’s right,” I said, and set the wine glass back down on the table. “I basically said that the BDSM lifestyle was like seafood – a broad category, but within that category there were people with different acquired tastes.”

  Leticia nodded.

  “I wished I had used a better analogy,” I said. “Something more sophisticated – like art, for example,” and shrugged my shoulders. “With a little more careful thought, I would have used the different schools of art to draw the same comparison… art lovers love all different types of art. Some love Cubism, others love Realism…”

  Leticia nodded her head like she was hearing me without really listening. It wasn’t the first time I had seen a far-away look in her eyes over recent months. There was something troubling her thoughts – perhaps some nagging doubt, that showed in her eyes as distraction. We sat in awkward silence for several seconds and I made no attempt to fill the empty void. Leticia fidgeted with her napkin, then glanced over her shoulder to where a waitress was emerging from the marquee. When she turned back to the table she was gnawing her lip.

  I waited until the waitress had delivered a basket of bread to the table and disappeared again before I reached across and took Leticia’s hand in mine. Her skin was warm and soft, her fingers trembling with a kind of unaccountable nervousness. She looked into my eyes.

  “I brought you here for a reason tonight,
” I said, fixing her with my gaze, my voice steady. I squeezed her hand reassuringly. “I have something I want to ask you.”

  Leticia’s eyes became wide and filled with nervous tension. I pushed my chair back, reached into my jacket pocket, and then dropped onto one knee beside where she sat. I looked up into Leticia’s beautiful face, lit by a backdrop of a million sparkling stars.

  “My life has been a thousand mile journey with a twist at every turn, experience piled upon anguish, misery mingled with dizzying heights and the blackest depths of despair. Leticia, until I met you I was lost – an empty soul without a reason to go on, without the will to want more.

  “I love you,” I said, and held out the small jewelers box. The lid was open, revealing a diamond that shone as bright as the night sky. “Meeting you changed my life. You have made me a new man, taught me so much about life and laughter so that I don’t want to spend a day without you. So I want to ask you tonight – here, where it all began for us – will you marry me?”

  I heard Leticia’s breath jag in the back of her throat and then the blood seemed to drain away from her face so that her features looked waxen. Her eyes brimmed with tears and her mouth fell open in a gasp. She covered her face in her hands and began to sob, her shoulders shaking, her fingers trembling as tears spilled down across her cheeks.

  “No,” Leticia said softly. “I can’t.”

  * * *

  I sat at the table, brooding darkly. I felt the wrench of Leticia’s rejection burn like acid at my guts. Suddenly the night sky seemed overcast and clouded, the flickering candlelight like a sullen torment. I watched the bubbles rise up through the glass of champagne and twisted the long stem absently. The jewelry box sat discarded on the table between us.

  Leticia was dabbing at her eyes, her face a mask of despair and heartbreak. She was sobbing softly, her lips quivering. She tried to form words but then a fresh wave of sadness would overcome her and at last she lunged from the chair and ran towards the fire door like she needed to escape. I watched her from the table – saw the heavy slump of her shoulders. A chill gust of wind came out of the darkness and the candlelight guttered.

  When she finally came back to the table, Leticia’s face was slick with her tears, her makeup smudged, her expression almost tragic. It was as if the life had been drained from us both. She sat heavily as if her legs had lost the will to hold her.

  “I’ve noticed the distance in you,” I said. My voice had no tone, no inflection – just words that hung heavy with doom in the air between us. “I thought it was because you were becoming uncertain about our future. I thought it was because I had not done enough to commit to our relationship.” I lifted my eyes to Leticia’s and saw the words strike her like blows. “That was why I proposed to you tonight. I wanted you to know that I love you, and that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  Leticia’s expression cracked and crumbled once more. She lapsed into another outburst of tears and then reached her hand across the table desperately. I looked down at her fingers – they were outstretched in some kind of anguished plea for understanding and need for comfort.

  “I have been wondering about our future,” Leticia admitted, “but not in the way you think.”

  “You don’t love me?”

  Leticia shook her head urgently so that her hair swished and broke across her shoulders. “I love you with all my heart!” she choked out the words and fixed her gaze as if imploring me to see the truth in her eyes. “I’ve never loved someone so completely. I’ve never known the sheer perfection of feeling complete until I met you.”

  I nodded stiffly, but inside I felt some part of me die – some piece of the man I had become take shelter behind the stark, rigid exterior that had shielded me from emotion for so many years like a shutter. I felt my gaze turn cold, like a furnace shutting down, its flame extinguished.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. The words sounded like a hollow echo to my own ears.

  Leticia wrung her hands together. She looked away, as though searching for the right words, but I knew her better than that. I knew she had rehearsed what she was about to say over and over in her mind. I felt myself tense as though preparing for the impact.

  “Over the past few months…” Leticia paused for a long time, “I have been wondering if I should leave you,” she said in a sudden rush. “Whether you would be better off if we weren’t in a relationship.”

  I said nothing. I felt myself reel with confusion. I felt a creeping coldness wrap its fingers around my heart and I spoke at last.

  “You have been thinking about leaving me?”

  “Yes,” Leticia nodded with a dire expression of guilt. We locked eyes – I could feel the sear of my temper in the way I glared at her. Leticia seemed to wilt until she was slumped in her chair, heavy with her own despair and frustration.

  “Jonah, you’re like some wild animal – a panther, or a leopard. There is a raw untamed quality about you that is so compelling, so mesmerizing that it’s like a force of will. It’s who you are – or who you were – a magnificent man who is strong, iron-willed, determined and unmistakably sexual.” She fell silent suddenly and stole a glance back at my face as if to measure the effect of her words. “And I feel like some of that has drained away from you over the time we have been together. I feel like the panther has been caged.”

  “You’re saying I’ve changed?”

  “No,” Leticia denied. “But I fear you will. I know you still have all those qualities I listed, but I feel sometimes like the restraints of this relationship will domesticate you… if you know what I mean. You’ll never be tamed, never lose the essence of who you are… but I don’t want our relationship to dull your instincts. That’s why I have been thinking of leaving you – setting you free again, so that the man who was a BDSM Master can be that same man again.”

  “What makes you think that is what I want?” I asked in a careful voice.

  Leticia smiled at last, but it was an expression without any humor. “It might not be what you think you want,” she said, “but it’s what you need. You need to be involved in the lifestyle, and I know I’m not the woman who can satisfy that side of you. Panthers don’t want to be hand-fed. They want to hunt. They’re predators, Jonah, and you are too.”

  Leticia got up from the table and took a few short steps away, until she was standing beyond the light of the candles. Beyond her shoulder the moon was cresting the horizon, spilling light across the contours of the distant mountains and silhouetting her shape against the darkness.

  “You know I have no interest in BDSM,” Leticia’s tone changed and became conciliatory. “I’m curious, not fascinated. I’m interested, not aroused. On a sexual level we are mismatched,” she shrugged her shoulders as if she wished she were different. “There’s no escaping the fact. And I know you’ve been patient and amazing as a lover, but I also know that every time we’re in bed together, I can feel your restraint. It’s like you need to run, but you’re being held back by someone who can barely walk. I feel it in your touch… even your kiss. The love is there, the passion we have for each other still burns… but we’re poles apart in our desires and our needs.”

  I got up slowly from the table, as though any sudden movement might spook Leticia into the night. I went towards her, trying to pin her with just the force of my gaze. When I was close enough, I reached out for her and took her hand. It was trembling. She looked up into my eyes, her face filled with sadness and uncertainty.

  “You seem to have thought this through carefully,” I said. “You seem to have made up your mind about who I am and what I want. But what about you, Leticia?” my voice took on an edge of challenge. “Instead of telling me all the things you believe I need sexually… why don’t you tell me the things that arouse you – the things that you’ve kept only in the fantasies of your imagination.”

  Leticia said nothing for a long time. Suddenly the meal, the ring, and the significance of the evening were forgotten. It w
as just Leticia and I in the darkness, teetering on the precipice of breaking apart.

  As a man who had kept his thoughts and feelings hidden for so long, I recognized the same sudden restraint in Leticia. There were things she wanted to say…

  If we were fated to go our own separate ways through the rest of life, then there was little I could do, but if we broke apart for the want of honesty I would be devastated. I needed to know what was on her mind. I needed to know why.

  I needed to know everything if we were to find a solution and make decisions without the lingering despair of regret.

  “Tell me!” I snapped, my voice cracking like a whiplash. It was a tone Leticia had never heard me use – the voice I had only used when training and disciplining submissives. Leticia flinched and the look in her eyes became shocked. A long stunned silence seemed to stretch out between us.

  Slowly, Leticia’s gaze became vacant. She wrapped her arms around her shoulders and took a deep shuddering breath. “I’m cold,” she said, her voice soft and flat. “I want to go home.”

  * * *

  When we arrived home, Leticia went to the bedroom while I stalked restlessly around the big empty house, brooding darkly. Gnawing at my thoughts was the realization that on many levels, Leticia had been right: I recognized within myself the seeping sense of frustration – the constant need for restraint that jabbed under my skin like a burr. For my entire adult life I had been involved with the BDSM lifestyle, never once considering how much a part of who I was had been formed by my experiences.

  Nor had I appreciated how much I was missing the sexual energy and the thrill of being in control of a woman’s thoughts, feelings and body – all those erotic elements that had made me into a Master.

  I went into the kitchen, wandered down the long empty hallway, haunting the house like a restless ghost. The lights through the house were turned off so that I moved like a shadow while around me the old house creaked and settled.