Rebecca's Lost Journals, Volume 4: My Master (Inside Out #1.4)(2)

He’s wrong. Love isn’t a facade, but yes, it does twist you in knots. And he is completely wrong about love destroying what it touches. It’s people who do that. And I fear that is where this is headed for me.

The scenes we enact together take me deeper and deeper into the places I know represent his internal hell, and yet I can’t pull him back. Instead, he’s pulling me inside that dark hole that is his escape. Only there is no escape for me anymore: not when every scene pushes me beyond the limits that mean pleasure for me. He doesn’t see that, either. And as my Master, he should.

Oddly, as I’m beginning to find me again, I think he’s completely lost me. Or maybe I’ve lost him. My heart just contracted at this conclusion. I love him. Why did I let myself love him?





10:15 a.m . . .

H

e called me as soon as I sat down at my desk.

“My bed needs you in it.”

I swallowed hard at his raspy, desire-laden words. “It had me in it. You were the one who wasn’t in it.”

“Any bed I’m in needs you in it. You should be here.”

“We both know why I never travel with you.”

“Yes. And we are going to talk about that at the contract renewal.”

I wasn’t going to agree to go public with our relationship. I already battled people thinking I was too young to have depth to my knowledge. Having them believe I got where I’m at because I’m involved with someone connected to the gallery would be even worse. “My position won’t change.”

“We both know I can be very persuasive.”

Yes. We both knew that all too well.

He lowered his voice, roughened it up in that way he did that made me insanely aroused. “I can’t wait to have you beneath me again. I’ll call you later.”

“Yes. Later.”

We hung up and I sat there, twisted in those love knots, before grabbing my journal to write this entry, to explain what I am feeling so I can look back at it later and make informed decisions, not emotional ones. Tormented. Confused. Uncertain. Out of control. Those are the feelings that have been dictating my actions, rather than logic. Which is exactly why I need to be writing this.

? ? ?

R

alph just poked his head into my office and held up a piece of paper that said “61 days,” his score card of the number of days my fellow sales rep Mary has been nice to everyone. It’s a record, and I suspect it has to do with the fact that she discovered a couple of pieces of very special art that Mark bought for a steal for the July Riptide auction. Of course, she hates that I’m coordinating the auction, but I think she finally feels like she is on solid ground at the gallery again. Thank you, is all I can say. Give her a big commission and keep her happy. Her meanness to me this past year has been the shark in the gorgeous water that is the gallery for me.

I laughed at Ralph’s antics, as he intended me to. I love Ralph, I really do, but I don’t let myself get too close to him. He wants to know too much about my private life, and that isn’t going to happen.

I’d stopped writing at work because I was worried about someone finding one of my journals. It’s why I don’t use names. It would be bad enough to have my innermost personal thoughts exposed, but worse to expose someone else’s secrets through my writing. And this time I bought a journal with a lock attached to the cover. No one needs to read my thoughts, not even “him.”

I can just imagine if Ralph found one of my journals. Okay, leave it to Ralph to make me smile again, because thinking about the look on his face (he’s quite prudish) if he read just one of the erotic scenes I’ve described since heading on my submissive journey makes me want to laugh. I might wound our quirky, sweet little accountant for life.

Yes. My life outside this place is definitely not for anyone else’s consumption. I started a friendship with Georgia O’Nay that I pulled away from for the same reason. She was too close to people I know, too close to the things that would allow her to know my secret lover. But it turned out she knows anyway, for no reason I could control. The truth is, there are several people who know, and fighting public knowledge is probably a lost cause. This bothers me. It really does.

Eventually it’s going to come out that I am with him. Eventually every bit of success I’ve had will be questioned. If I believed in where he and I were headed, it would be okay. I’d deal with it. But I guess that’s what it really comes down to. I don’t believe in where we are headed.

Maybe . . . maybe I need to leave the gallery, to find another job in art—but wouldn’t I still be in the same circle of people? And I’ll never make the money that I make with Riptide, and I’m alone, with no one else to count on.

Yes, I have him.

But for how long?





8:00 p.m.

An hour before closing . . .

I

’ve decided I need to go home to my apartment tonight. I’m not looking forward to telling my Master that. We’re at contract negotiation time again and I know he’ll freak out and think I’m pulling away from him. Maybe I just won’t tell him. He won’t know; he’s off in another state right now.

I’ll decide later. I just need some space of my own. Of course, all of the things I use daily are at his place. I’ll have to go by there, and I wish I didn’t. When I smell his scent, see his things . . . it’s hard to turn away, but I feel like that is where this is headed. I need more than another contract, and less of what he’ll want included in the new one, anyway.