Jealousy is a strange character. You can never predict when he’ll show up or what it’ll be over. It didn’t even have to make sense. I knew Nathaniel would never cheat on me. But as I watched him with her, the idea wouldn’t leave my mind: what if he only wanted to expand our collared time so he could have more control over me and, as a result, grant himself more freedom to spend time with women like Charlene?
You know him better, I told myself.
Maybe you only think you know him, I replied. After all, his note said he’d be in meetings all day, not that he’d take a break and entertain a known bitch in the hotel bar.
I whipped out my cell phone. Heading to lunch, Master. Not sure where I’m going. Can you get away and come with me?
From my position hiding near the bar, I watched as he took his phone out of his pocket and read my text. He typed something and my own phone vibrated.
Afraid not, Abigail. In too many meetings.
“In too many meetings, my ass,” I mumbled under my breath. Okay. Will let you know when I get back. I glanced up to see what he was doing, but both he and Charlene had left.
I waited for a few minutes thinking they might return, but the only person who came by was a hotel employee who wanted to know if she could bring me anything. I didn’t think it’d go over too well to ask if she could track down my husband, so I asked her if there was a place she could recommend for lunch.
The café she suggested was a short walk from the hotel, and since it wasn’t too hot, I took my time getting there. I tried to take in my surroundings, but my mind was too frazzled by what I’d just witnessed. Once I arrived at the café, I found a seat outside at a small wooden table and didn’t even try to read my novel.
I grabbed the notebook and pen I always carried in my purse and made a list of what I knew.
1. Nathaniel had grown a lot more sexually demanding lately.
2. He wanted to extend the time I wore his collar. (Still didn’t know what this meant.)
3. I liked it when he was demanding.
4. I didn’t like the feeling that something was going on I knew nothing about.
5. Something (I believed) was going on.
6. He had lunch or a date or a meeting with Charlene.7. He sometimes got snippy when I brought up the blog.
8. Before we came to the conference, he had been working a lot of late nights.
I tapped my pen against the table. I was missing something. Somewhere there were dots that needed to be connected, but I couldn’t see where they were to start.
I wrote another list of things I knew.
1. Nathaniel wouldn’t cheat.
That pretty much summed up everything; I didn’t see a point in writing anything else. I sat back in my chair and looked at the two lists. Knowing that Nathaniel would never cheat meant his date or whatever with Charlene probably didn’t have anything to do with his need for dominance. Which meant I had two issues to deal with: his request for more play and Charlene.
The waitress came by and I placed my order for a salad with grilled chicken and water with lemon. She left, but I didn’t feel like going back to my lists, and the paperback, filled with other people’s romantic lives, suddenly didn’t look so appealing.
The vibration of my cell phone saved me from having to pick. I jerked it off the table and answered without looking at who had called. I was certain it was Nathaniel.
“Hello?” I said, fully expecting to hear his low and sultry voice.
“Hey, girl!” Felicia said.
I exhaled. “Oh, hey.”
“Sorry. I’m not who you’re expecting. I can hang up and call back later if you’re in the middle of something.”
I closed my eyes and reminded myself Felicia was my dearest and oldest friend. She was also eight months pregnant with her and Jackson’s fourth child. At her last doctor’s visit, they’d told her that her blood pressure was too high and she would have to spend the rest of her pregnancy on bed rest. As the mother of three, including high-energy twins, she’d once shared with me how she felt torn between doing what she knew was best for her unborn child and doing what she wanted for her other children. Jackson did his best to make sure she got the amount of rest she required, but they did not have a submissive/Dom relationship.
Roll all that together and you had a tightly wound ball of pregnancy hormones, mamma guilt, and stir-crazy just ready to explode.
“I thought you were Nathaniel,” I explained. “But I’m glad it’s you. I’ve been wondering how you’re doing.”
“I’m as big as a whale and getting bigger by the second. Jackson only lets me up to pee. He’d buy a bedpan if he didn’t think I’d beat him over the head with it.”