I tended not to show my emotions—a hang-up I’d learned from my parents—but around him, I found my usual blank expression hard to maintain. I wanted to soften, to let him in, but I couldn’t let him see those parts of me. He wouldn’t understand them. Hell, I barely understood them, and I lived with them every second of every day.
Besides, a secretary falling for their boss was so fucking cliché it hurt. No, a gay secretary falling for their straight boss was worse. I knew the path I was on would lead me to heartache and loneliness. The problem was I kept telling myself that serving and submitting to someone didn’t necessarily have anything to do with sex or gender.
I’d served plenty of women and had had scenes with men I hadn’t wanted to fuck. On top of that, I viewed my service in two distinct ways. Outside of the bedroom, my service centered on day-to-day tasks. In the bedroom, service took on a whole other meaning. I wanted to be a toy, a thing my Dom used to please himself. I kept telling myself that my service to Mr. Chamberlain could stay exclusively in the first category.
In the end, it was all excuses. I wanted him. I wanted him to want me. I wanted to serve him and make him happy. I wanted him to want my service. None of what I was feeling indicated I wanted a chaste and straightforward arrangement.
I wanted messy and complicated. I wanted to be tied up in him so much that I’d never find my way out again. I wanted him to wrap me up in the web of passion and violence I sensed behind his reserved and guarded façade.
For fuck’s sake, I needed to get out more. I sounded like some lovesick submissive waxing poetically about their Dom.
As I stared at him, I knew I had to stop. This wasn’t healthy for me, this… chasing after the unobtainable.
I could already hear what Dr. Henson, my therapist, would say on Sunday. He would say that I was equating my relationship with Mr. Chamberlain with that of my parents. He would say that because I saw the same behaviors in him that I saw in my parents, I was recreating the same submissive, subservient behaviors I’d developed to gain Mr. Chamberlain’s love and approval in a way I never had with my parents.
See, I thought, I could analyze myself.
After seeing Dr. Henson for so many years, I would hope so. Of course, analyzing myself and seeing a way around my issues were two completely different things. Going to see Dr. Henson hadn’t been my idea in the beginning. My parents had made me go to therapy because of my acting out. I laughed, thinking back to their idea of acting out.
I hadn’t been fighting, doing drugs, or having sex. No, my acting out had been forgetting to say please and thank you one too many times at the dinner table—the only real time I’d ever spent with them.
Dr. Henson had seen right through it all. How could he not when a sixteen-year-old boy had spilled his every thought and emotion to give him what I thought he wanted? He’d learned fast to ask more pointed questions because him asking me to tell him about myself had turned into a forty-five minute play-by-play of my life up until that point.
It had taken him no time at all to see what was driving my attitudes and behaviors. Dr. Henson had shown me that my submissiveness and service-oriented thinking had developed as a result of my absent parents. They’d been so busy living their jet-setting lifestyle that they had left me in the care of nannies and servants. Those people, who had treated me with more love and affection than my parents had, had displayed their feelings through the lens of their job—through their service to me. In my childish brain, I’d come to associate their service with their love so that as I grew older, I thought to show love was to serve.
At first, I had rebelled against what he’d told me. I’d stuffed down all the subservient needs I’d had to live a normal life. In the end, all I’d done was made myself miserable with failed relationship after failed relationship. After I’d finally broken down in front of him, Dr. Henson had helped me find a new way.
Sometimes, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d had a normal childhood would I’d be the way I was, liked the things I liked. I knew there was this stereotype that all people who liked BDSM had traumatic childhoods or some inciting incident that made them that way. I hated that I was that stereotype. I wished I could say I liked to serve or be submissive because I liked it, but I couldn’t, not completely.
In point of fact, my limits included indifferent dismissals, the cold shoulder, and pretending I wasn’t there. My service came from a place of such warmth and affection that having it rebuffed in such a way was something I knew I couldn’t handle properly.
In my head, I knew that was a part of my attraction to Mr. Chamberlain. His calm and calculating demeanor made me want to break through and bask in the warmth below. I wanted to be the one he showed his other side. I wanted him to treat the rest of the world with his signature detachment while showing me his tenderness. I wanted his cold eyes to melt when they landed on me. I wanted to feel special.
Dr. Henson was going to have a field day with me on Sunday.
I started feeling anxious at what I already knew he was going to tell me. A mirror of what I was telling myself in the back of my mind.
I needed to quit.
I looked down at the tray of food I’d made for him sitting on his desk and knew I’d already gone too far. Hell, I’d gone too far days ago, but had been unable—no—unwilling to see it.
I had to quit.
Mr. Chamberlain would never be able to give me the kinds of things I needed. I had to leave before I found myself trapped in a cycle of give-and-take that I could never escape. Oh, I would still be able to leave physically, but mentally, I’d always search for that little spark of love that would never come.
“Do you need anything else, sir?” I asked, breaking the silence around us.
“No,” he said, as quietly as if he sensed the change in my mood even though I’d done everything in my power not to show it. “That will be all, Quentin.”
Nodding once in confirmation, I turned and fled the room as fast as I felt comfortable. I hoped to give the impression of boldly striding away instead of what I was really doing—running away.
Sitting at my desk, I stared at my monitor and tried to reorganize my thoughts. My legs were trembling as the adrenaline I’d used to enter his office in the first place left my system.
The rest of the week, I decided as I stood and made my way back to the break room to reheat my lunch. I’d give myself the rest of the week to indulge in my thoughts and feelings for Mr. Chamberlain. On Sunday, I’d tell Dr. Henson all about it and verbalize my decision to quit. I needed to tell someone else to make it real.
Was it sad that Dr. Henson, a man I paid to talk to me, was my closest friend? I was friendly with people at the club I frequented, but none I was close enough to talk to about all of this stuff.
Again, I had trouble making friends for many of the same reasons I had trouble finding a relationship. As I went through the motions of reheating my lunch, I vowed to start opening up to the people in my life. Well, the people at the club anyway. It would probably be easier for me to find real friends if they already knew about my need to serve. If I explained to them that it was my way of showing affection and care, an essential part of my personality, maybe they wouldn’t get annoyed by my need to serve them in little ways.
I returned to my desk and started eating mindlessly, my thoughts still on what I knew I had to do. I wasn’t worried about finding a new job. My parents had settled me with a rather large trust fund. I’d told myself it was their special way of showing me they cared. And since I wasn’t a big spender, I had enough money to live comfortably for the rest of my life. I chose to work because I needed something fulfilling in my life, something that utilized my skills. I hated being bored.