Chapter 10
Alexa
I didn’t seem to be having a lot of luck at Blush. I’d thought it would be easy to find someone who would want to dominate me and take my virginity. It turned out that it was a lot harder than I had expected. Sure, there were a couple of men who had seemed interested. Both times, I’d been approached by men who had seemed more than eager to take me to a private room and fuck me.
The first one had been chased away by that idiot dropping his drink into my lap. The second one had disappeared into thin air. I had no idea why he’d left or where he’d gone, but by the time I’d come back from the restroom, it was as if he’d never been there in the first place.
I supposed it was good that neither of those guys had worked out. I’d always imagined that the encounter with the man I wanted to dominate me would be something magical. I’d hoped there would be an immediate spark, a magic pull that made me want to give myself over to him completely.
Nothing magical had happened with either of the men I’d spoken to so far. They’d both been interesting to talk to, thrilling because of our similar interests, and attractive in their own way, but that had been it.
I hadn’t felt that pull, that special connection I was looking for.
When they’d both left, for whatever reason, I had been secretly relieved. I’d come home both times thinking I hadn’t missed out on something special, something that could have changed my life.
Maybe the spark, the magnetic pull I’d been waiting for, didn’t exist. We grew up with romanticized depictions of love and movies that let us to believe true love and perfection was real. But maybe that just wasn’t the case. Maybe I would never feel that pull I was looking for. Insta-love just didn’t exist, did it?
My parents had always been my proof, the couple that had found true love and perfection together. I had believed that my whole life, and all the memories I had of my childhood, were happy where family was the basis of everything.
But then? They had gotten a divorce the moment Dalton and I had left. Everything they’d had while we’d been kids had been a lie. They’d stayed together for our sake, and the moment we had been able to take care of ourselves, they had gone their separate ways.
My parents had been my example. They had been the type of couple I’d aspired to be a part of one day. And there was nothing of that left now.
Which meant that maybe, just maybe, the kind of attraction I was looking for, the spark with someone, just didn’t exist. Maybe what I had felt with those two men—a whole lot of nothing special—was as good as it got.
Which was shit, to be honest, but maybe I just had to accept it and move on.
Move on to what? I had no idea. I didn’t just want to abandon the idea of being taken by someone dominant. I wanted to be told what to do, to be claimed in a way no one had done with me before. I didn’t just want to lose my virginity the old-fashioned way, with a man popping my cherry, and I thought it would be perfectly sweet of him not to break my heart.
I wanted to be broken, just in a different way.
Just thinking about it turned me on. The thought of someone telling me what to be, how to be, made me shiver with excitement. I wanted to be ravaged in the best sense of the word, and if I wasn’t going to get the fairy tale kind of attraction with it, then so be it.
Or was I supposed to give up on it altogether? Was a life without everything I’d hoped for as a child all that was left for me? I didn’t know. Maybe I had to abandon my fantasy of being dominated and move on to losing it with someone else the normal way.
I would go one more time to Blush, I decided. I would dress sexy. I liked dressing sexy. It made me feel like I was on top of the world when I stepped out of my comfort zone like that. And I would see if I met someone. If I didn’t find someone who sparked that kind of magic in me, who made me ache to give myself to him, then I would take it as a sign. I would close this chapter of my life, accept that it wasn’t meant to be, and move on.
The decision came with a strange sense of loss, but I couldn’t keep hoping for something that might not even exist. I couldn’t keep going out and getting my hopes dashed, going home disappointed and frustrated.
So this Friday would be the last time I would visit Blush. With that decision made, I got out of bed and started getting dressed for work. It was Tuesday, my second day back at work, and my life felt like it was going nowhere fast. It wasn’t that I hated my job. I liked what I did. I just felt like my life didn’t have any real direction. And life was over so quickly. Even if I reached an old age and didn’t die early like Dalton, it would still be over in a blink. And then? What would I have to look back on?
I shoved the morose thoughts out of my mind and did what I had to do. My bosses didn’t give a shit about my existential crisis. I still had to get my work done if I wanted a paycheck.
After work, I stopped at Ariel’s place. I hadn’t seen her since the night we’d gone to Far Bar together, and I wanted to catch up with her.
“How are you doing?” she asked when we sat on her couch with coffee.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Better. Luke is helping a lot with that.”
“Oh, my God, Lex. He’s so hot!”
I chuckled. “He is.”
“I can’t believe you’ve been able to resist him for this long,” she said. “You grew up with that?”
I nodded, still chuckling. “I don’t know. He’s always been around, you know?”
“And you’ve never felt anything around him?”
I regarded my coffee intently. “I didn’t say that,” I said.
Ariel squealed. “You like him, don’t you?”
I could feel myself blushing, and I nodded. I couldn’t hide it from Ariel. We’d known each other since fifth grade, and we told each other everything. Almost. I wasn’t about to tell her about my trips to Blush.
“I’ve had a crush on him for a while now,” I said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Because he was my brother’s best friend. He was like a brother to me, too. And when it changed for me, when I noticed how hot he was, Dalton moved out and I barely saw him anymore.”
“And now?” Ariel asked. “You’re seeing him a lot now, right? He keeps checking in on you and stuff.”
I nodded and sipped my coffee. “Yeah. I see him often. Really often. But it’s not the same.”
Ariel pulled her feet up and tucked them underneath herself on the couch. She was getting comfortable. We were in for a long night of girl talk.
“Why isn’t it the same?” she asked.
I shrugged again, trying to avoid her intense stare. “Dalton just died. Luke is here to help me through it, to see that I’m okay. This is literally the worst time to have a crush on him. I can’t turn it into something other than what it is. Besides, I doubt he’s interested. I don’t think he sees me as anything other than his best friend’s little sister.”
Ariel shook her head. “You don’t give yourself nearly enough credit,” she said. “You’re hot and funny. Any man would be lucky to have you.”
I smiled at Ariel. “Thanks,” I said. “That’s sweet of you, but I don’t completely agree. I’m…different.” I thought about Blush and what I went there to do. I couldn’t tell Ariel about that, but unless I found someone who was into the same stuff, I doubted I was the kind of woman a man was lucky to have.
“So you’re seeing him all the time, knowing how hot he is, and you’re not even thinking about doing something?” Ariel asked. She looked incredulous.
I shook my head. “Nah. I don’t think so,” I said.
“I don’t know how you do it. I don’t think I would be able to control myself.”
But that was just the thing, wasn’t it? I wanted someone else to control me. Controlling myself had never been what I was after.
My phone rang in my handbag, and I got up to answer it. I fished around in my bag where I’d left it by the door and found my phone.
“Oh, God,” I said. “It’s him. Speak of the devil.”
I answered it, Ariel’s eyes glued to me.
“I just wanted to check in,” Luke said.
I smiled. “That’s sweet of you, Luke. I’m okay. I’m with Ariel now.”
“Hi!” Ariel shouted, and Luke chuckled in my ear.
“That sounds good,” he said. “Are you going home later?”
I looked at Ariel, putting my hand over the phone.
“Can I crash here?” I asked.
Ariel nodded.
“No. I’m staying here tonight,” I said.
“That’s good,” Luke said, and I could picture the approval on his face. He was very protective of me. It was attractive. The idea of someone “owning” me popped into my mind again.
“I’ll speak to you tomorrow,” Luke said.
I ended the conversation and walked back to my seat on the couch with my phone.
“He was just checking in,” I said.
“He really cares for you then,” Ariel commented.
I shook my head. “I think he feels like he should because of Dalton being gone. Luke and my brother were very good friends since kindergarten.”
“Wow,” Ariel said.
“It’s driving me crazy, though,” I said.
“What?”
“That he keeps checking in on me. It’s hard not to have a crush on someone when that someone is Luke. He’s making it worse because he really is a great guy. He’s all confident and arrogant, and you know how much hotter that makes a man.”
“And he’s already about as hot as they get,” Ariel said, laughing.
I laughed, too, nodding. We joked about it some more, about his looks and his abs we were sure were hiding under his shirt. Ariel took a guess at the size of his package, but that wasn’t something I was willing to think about. That would just be torturing myself, and I was already struggling with seeing him so often without letting my feelings get out of hand.
Besides, I had a plan for my virginity and my sex life. Falling in love with Luke didn’t fit into those plans.
“If you like him so much,” Ariel said when the conversation got serious again, “then why don’t you do something about it?”
“Like what? It’s not like I’m going to grab him and kiss him.”
Ariel shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just saying.”
I sighed. I knew what she was saying, but it just didn’t work that way.
When we finally went to bed, I felt worn out. We may have spoken about Luke for most of the night, but Dalton was the one on my mind. Tonight, I missed my brother something awful. I realized I would never be able to call him again just to catch up. I wouldn’t be able to stop by his place after work like I was doing with Ariel. We would never go out to movies together for our birthdays again.
My brother was dead.
My eyes welled up with tears, and I didn’t hold them back. I cried for my brother and for the years with him that I’d been robbed of. I cried because of the injustice of it all.
I cried because I wanted Dalton back.