Teaching Maya by Tara Crescent Read Free Book Online Page B

someone. I felt like a fool.
    “ Red wine okay?”
    I nodded again. He walked away, but returned in a moment with a bottle and two glasses in his hands. He poured, and sat down in the couch across from me.
    “What brings you to Paris, Maya?” The question was polite, but his voice was disinterested.
    “ Is something the matter?” I asked. A question in response to a question.
    “ Is something the matter?” he repeated. Suddenly, he sounded livid. “Yes, I think something’s the matter, Maya.” I’d seen Ryan angry, once, for a brief second, when I’d asked him how to go about finding a sex partner. But then, his irritation had been quickly masked, his control quickly reasserted. This time though, he was just angry.
    “ Your last text message to me was quite the parting gift, Maya.”
    “ Huh?” I was puzzled. I’d expected many reactions to the text. Pity, maybe even mockery or amusement, but never anger.
    “ Tell me, Maya, you don’t think that maybe it was relevant information before we’d had sex? That your previous sexual experience was awful? That you’d never orgasmed?” There was ice in his voice.
    “ Why are you angry with me?” I asked. Tears were spilling down my cheeks; his anger was unexpected and painful. “I wanted to be treated like a normal woman, not some kind of freak – can’t you understand that?”
    “ Shit,” Ryan swore. He got up and moved quickly to sit next to me, and gathered me in his arms. “Hush, kitten,” he soothed. He held me in his arms as I composed myself.
    “ Why are you angry with me?” I repeated, nestled up against him.
    “ Because you should have told me, Maya. I had the right to know something that important before we slept together. I would have done things differently, gone easier on you.”
    “ So, pity sex.” My voice was flat.
    He laughed. “Maya, for someone who’s supposedly pretty smart, you are an idiot; do you know that? You are utterly gorgeous. I slept with you because I really, really wanted to. And had I known about the stuff between you and your previous boyfriend, I would have still really, really wanted to sleep with you. Trust me; there would have been no pity.”
    “ However Maya,” he continued, “you let me tie you up and beat you, but you didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth about your previous relationship. I’ll be honest, Maya, I feel used. And I don’t like it.”
    Crap. He was right. I had been so consumed by the idea that Ryan would magically fix my problems that I’d ignored the fact that he had a right to know what he was getting into.  
    “ I’m sorry,” I said, and I really was sorry. “I should have told you.”
    “ Mmm hmm.”
    Ryan was still holding me. I took that to be a hopeful sign. “Can we be friends?”
    Ryan laughed, humourlessly. “Ah Maya… Nina and I are friends; Gayla and I are friends. You and me? What I feel about you, Maya, whatever it is, it isn’t friendship.”
    And what do you feel about me? The question hung, unspoken in the air, but I didn’t have the courage to ask.
    “ What now, then?” I asked instead.
    He answered with a question of his own. “Why are you in Paris?”
    It was time for honesty, and so I told him about the last dream. I didn’t leave anything out. I told him all of it; how I dreamt I was tied up and being whipped by him, how the faceless woman had laughed at me, Ryan’s cruel words in the dream. I was revealing more than I wanted to, but he deserved the honesty.
    He continued to hold me in his arms, but he was quiet as I talked. There was silence when I’d finished my story.
    “ Ryan?” There was hesitation in my voice as the silence stretched.
    “ There’s no faceless woman, Maya.” His hand stroked my hair lightly. His voice was now wry. “On the other hand, the cross and the whip really do exist, if you want to see them.”
    Hope blossomed in me. “Just to be clear,” I asked carefully, “are you actually propositioning me?”
    “