A Daddy for Damian by Joe Satoria

13. DAMIAN

The way Kristopher had touched me with the rope, my hands and wrists couldn’t get enough. I wanted him to continue doing it. I wanted him to do it again, to tie it, but make it a little tighter, to pull me again like he had.

I felt the sweat creep up around the collar, and the way the tie around my neck almost became tighter with the way he’d pulled at me.

In the back of the car, we sat in quiet as I played with the rope Sara had given me to play with. It was supposed to be so I could practice, since I was his assistant, I guess I should’ve known about the industry.

I saw the appeal with the way my skin was electric and the way it felt.

“It’s nice, right?” he asked again.

I nodded. “I don’t know any of the knots and things.”

“Yeah, she should’ve given you an instruction manual,” he mumbled. “This isn’t really a beginner rope. You should’ve got something with a bit more tug to it. This would slip through your fingers if I—” he yanked the rope from my fingers with ease. “Like that.”

“I was trying to replay what you did,” I admitted.

He handed me the rope, placing his hands and wrists on the centre console between us in the back of the car. “Well,” he said, “see what you can do.”

I didn’t even know where to start. Ok, I’d seen him double the rope up, and I knew he started each wrist, winding it around.

“Like this,” he said, instructing me. “You need to thread and loop. You need to make sure it’s equal on both sides. And then you loop it through the middle.”

It couldn’t have been as easy as he was making it out, and before I knew it. I’d got him into the same binding as he’d done to me, like handcuffs, with the ending of the rope used for pulling.

I tugged it, and he crossed the console into my area. His head close to mine. I didn’t know if I should, but my head wasn’t the one making this decision.

I kissed him.

I lingered. I always lingered. My eyes closed, almost waiting for something else to take over. I lingered there with my lips to his, waiting and hoping for him to kiss me back.

“Are you—” Kristopher began as I opened my eyes to see him pull back. “Are you only kissing me because of my history?” I watched as his eyes flickered to the rear-view mirror to see the driver.

“No, no,” I said, letting go of the rope. “I just—after last night, I—”

He wiggled his wrists and hands as the binding came loose. “You’ll need to improve this,” he said, slipping his hands out of them. “And when we’re back in Manchester, you should book the flights.”

“Yeah, ok.” I took the rope back, twiddling it around and around in my hands.

“Your friend is joining you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’ll send you my flight information over so you can try to get booked on my flight with me,” he continued, completely changing the topic. “And I think you should also not bring that bag. Bring something nicer.”

I looked to my messenger bag. I’d had it for years, since my final year of high school. It had been through the wars, admittedly, and my mother had patched it up a couple times. “Ok, sure.”

Kristopher had shifted around in his seat, facing forward with his mobile in hand, tapping his fingers on the keypad. “I’ll go over the usual itinerary while in Berlin later,” he said. “Before that, try to clean the office. I didn’t realise how much of a mess it was, and it all needs organising.”

“Absolutely,” I said, grabbing at my notepad. “And where will we be staying in Berlin?”

“There’s a hotel, it’s already booked,” he said. “You and your friend will be sharing.”

“Are you in the same hotel?”

He looked me over, up and down. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, but I was only asking a simple question. “Yes,” he said. “But I’ll be busy. And it keeps me away from living with family.”

“Oh. Don’t you like them?”

He snickered. “I’m thirty-five,” he said. “The last thing I want is to stay with my parents. Or worse, my brothers.” He grinned. “They have children. Not my vibe.”

“And they’re like you?” I asked. “Half-English?”

He nodded. “I was in boarding school here from my teen years. Our mother is British, and our father is—” he snickered once more, scratching his eyebrow. He looked at me. “Absent. He runs a big company in Germany. But I have to make an appearance.”

I didn’t know whether to note this or just remember what he was telling me. It felt like the first time he was expressing himself and getting everything out on the table. “I never really had a dad growing up. I mean, he was there, but he wasn’t really there.”

“Oh, he was there,” he chuckled. “But it’s nothing. You won’t see my family, so you don’t need to know any of this.”

It almost made sense, the way he was, he was someone who liked to flirt and be affectionate, and then pull away. Because I was the same when I went on dates with people. I liked the idea of being intimate with them, until they wanted the same thing, and then suddenly, I didn’t want to.

“Anyway, this isn’t my biography,” he said, “so just forget it.” He grabbed his phone once more as he began tapping away on it.

Looking back at my notes, I’d underlined the percentage amounts and the money he’d invested. “So, how—”

“Just forget it,” he said once more. “I don’t really share my life, especially not family.”

“Ok,” I said. “This is a question about the place we were at.”

“Hit me with it,” he said, looking back at me away from his phone.

“How do you decide what to offer?” I asked, looking back at the figure from the page, alongside the percentage amount.

He took the notebook from me. “A lot of the time, my research tells me how much they’re looking for from an investor. And I told her I don’t do anything for less than ten per cent. Which is true, I usually don’t. She has a successful business. She knows it, everyone knows it. If she wanted, she could’ve got a bank loan and kept every per cent.” He was scribbling down on the page. “So, often I will go under their value. If a company if valued at a million pounds, each per cent is ten-thousand pounds. But if I don’t agree with the valuation, I’ll usually under offer, or I’ll ask for more percentage.”

He handed me the notebook back. “And you make money from selling it again?”

“Profit,” he said. “The more I own of something, the more I get. I can sell if the valuation goes up, I can get someone to buy me out, or the company can buy them back.”

I still wasn’t one hundred per cent there on it, but it made him rich, or he was probably already rich, considering he went to boarding school.

“And you enjoy it?”

“It’s fun,” he said, “especially when it gives me things like this.” He reached out, his hand grabbing at the rope on my lap by my crotch. “I think—when you find someone, you can do it on them.”

Find someone? I wasn’t sure how I liked the way he worded that, especially since I thought we’d fuck, eventually. At least, I wanted to fuck with him. I wanted to fuck right here in the back of this car. And in a way, I kinda felt like he was leading me on.

He was unattainable. He was my boss. He had a reputation, but he was looking to change that. Right around the same time he employed me.

I wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a direct hit to my ego, since I knew I was cute, but I felt like a huge dig.