The Opposite of Love by T.A. Pace Page A

that it made a difference if you were higher up on the food chain status-wise. If she had still been pushing luxury homes for a living, there would have been no way she could risk her reputation. But she was a consultant now, and the idea of her life belonging solely to her, to do with whatever her heart desired, was downright sexy. She was sure she’d encounter boundaries that she wasn't willing to push, and the sex club might turn out to be one of them, but for now, she was having fun and finding out surprising things about what turned her on and what didn't.
     
     
    James didn’t much care for the kind of women who liked to fuck the way he did. Sure, he liked to fuck them, and he shuddered to think of a world without them in it, ready and waiting on barstools to be chatted up, liquored up and dicked down. But he found it hard to respect someone who would let herself be defiled and debased, let alone enjoy it. He veiled his distaste with dirty talk, calling a redhead a filthy slut while fucking her throat until she gagged and coughed up white mucus, calling a blond a dirty bitch while fucking her ass. And they ate that stuff up. “Yeah, Daddy,” they said. “Give it to me.” Like starving nymphos who’d hump furniture in the absence of a stiff dick.
    These weren’t women he took out to dinner. If one demanded preamble to the act, he would offer a movie on the sofa and takeout, but no more. To acquiesce on this was to open the door to a litany of invitations to parties and social events where introductions were inevitable and assumptions automatic. James was careful not to be identified as anyone’s beau and thus off the market.
    There had been a time when he would let a woman sleep over out of sheer exhaustion. But after a few bad breakups and several stalkers, he realized the wisdom in keeping his address a secret. Now he always offered to come to them—even disguised it as chivalry—plus it was easier to leave when he wanted than to convince a woman he’d just fucked that she didn’t want to sleep over. In the past, he’d told them he snored, farted, kicked, and sleepwalked, but a well-fucked woman was undeterred. They always wanted to sleep over. He once told a leggy brunette who’d been particularly vocal in bed that he had PTSD from an incident at work and he’d been known to wake up choking a bedmate on occasion. She slept on the couch.
    He found it was always best to get out early. Yes, there was the possibility of middle-of-the-night sex or morning sex, of course. But mid-night sex was often a one-sided come-dump and morning sex was when they wanted the tender stuff. It never lived up to the intensity of the alcohol-induced, end-of-the-evening sex, and the law of diminishing returns was to be respected.
    Additionally, there was the transformation: watching a woman go from legs crossed, spine straight to spread eagle, sweaty and swearing; buttoned up and proper to pried open, carved out and lumped into a hot mess on the bed—and this was what they wanted him to do. Sometimes it made him a little sick.
    With Melanie, it was different. She had allowed him to coax her and had slowly opened up to the idea of experimenting with things she’d never done before. It was almost like having a virgin to teach about the joys of sex. He wanted to help her explore her boundaries, to find her inner kinky girl, and to be that person just for him.
     
     
    Their safe word was zenith. (Melanie had wanted it to be blue, but James explained that it had to be something unmistakable; lots of words sound like blue.) If her mouth was full and she was unable to speak, she could tap him twice and the scene would stop.
    James had explained all this to Melanie through emails, web links, over drinks. Scenes, safe words, bondage, spanking, discipline; surprisingly she hadn’t balked. She’d flinched when he brought up whipping, but he assured her that was a long way off—if they ever got there at all. They would take it slow.