Day 5: Part 4

Apparently, I'm Incapable of Learning Any Sort of Lesson

I didn't have to ring the doorbell when I arrived at Jasper's. The loud rumbling of my truck had stated my arrival well before any action on my part could have. I had sat in the truck for a moment, though, pressing my face against the cool glass of the window. I spent the first three minutes in my truck trying to figure out ways to beg Jasper to take me back. I spent the second two berating myself for even considering such a lowly act when he had been a complete and utter douchebag the whole time. I spent the last four just thinking. Thinking of nothing in particular, but mostly about Jake. Because he was safe to think about.

"What happened to your nose?"

Jasper answered the door, looking as calm and infuriatingly indifferent as usual.

"Someone hit me," I said, trying to mimic the bored pitch of his voice.

"Who?"

"James."

His expression didn't change for a moment and I considered opening my mouth and spouting a list of appropriate responses he could have given instead of such an awful fucking answer. But then, in a sort of slow motion, as though working out the details of what I had said and reacting to them as he figured each one out, his top lip began to curl over his teeth.

He stepped back over the threshold of the door and opened it further.

To say that Jasper was surprised I was back would have been quite the understatement. He called Tanya to lead me back to my room, where the ridiculous number of clothing still hung untouched in my closet and fresh new boxes of lavender bath beads by the half-dozen were piled on the bureau.

Tanya was fucking excited to see me, though. She was prattling on about how much she missed my company and how she had been trying to figure out a way to get me back for the past day and oh! what a surprise it was that I came back. I half considered jogging her memory about when she had been a sad, frozen robot the last time I had seen her in the playroom, but decided that denial was much better. It always was.

"Some new House Rules," she said, handing me the familiar green folder with a dramatic flip of her arm after we reached my bedroom. "Master says to read them over and then join us for dinner. I made pot roast."

She seemed particularly proud of herself so I rubbed my stomach and smiled ironically at her. "I do love eating dinner here. Mind if I take a shower first, though?"

Tanya pursed her lips. "I suppose so. Though Master wants to eat as soon as possible so we might start without you."

Against my wishes, my smile widened. "I'll just reheat it, no worries."

Her face fell. "Um, well. Re-read the old House Rules, too, maybe?"

"All right."

Tanya warmed the water up for me and I showered and wrapped my hair in a towel, before sitting stark naked on the bed in order to properly revel in how damn nice it felt to be clean. The green folder was perched, unwittingly, by my feet and I spent a long moment trying to decide whether or nor I really wanted to open it.

You could be cured.

Decent logic.

You could fix whatever you fucked up with Edward.

Relatively decent logic, though I wasn't a huge fan of the idea of simply biding my time here until I was fixed enough to get into a relationship.

Right, better make this about you. Emmett thinks it's a good idea. And he has your dog, so . . .

Deal.

Original House Rules:

There is to be no drugs, no smoking, and no gratuitous use of profanity within the house. Alcohol use must be kept to a minimum. Smoking may be done outside and cigarettes must be disposed of in the proper manner.

Occupants will have free roam of the house. All areas of the house are permissible, expect the playroom, which will be locked when not in use. If entering a private bedroom or bathing area, please ask permission. Tanya is the only exception, unless otherwise stated.

Guests are not permitted unless permission is given. No exceptions.

All food, clothing, and toiletries are for your use. No permission is necessary. The only exceptions are Tanya's and my clothing, which are off limits. Tanya has purchased clothing items for you. They are only to be used by Tanya with your permission.

Tanya is most comfortable when she is assisting guests and house members on a constant basis. Refer to Tanya whenever a need arises. Examples include showering, food preparation, and laundry.

I expect the playroom and the specific relationship Tanya and I have to remain secret to anyone unaware. It may only be discussed within the house.

Because you are not my sub, you are free to come and go as you please. However, I ask that you inform either Tanya or myself on location and timeframe, in order to guarantee your safety.

Revised House Rules:

Tanya feels most comfortable walking around the house naked. She will do so at every opportunity. This is non-negotiable; if you are not comfortable with it, you may leave.

At the far end of the second floor, there is a fully-equipped gym and weight room. Please make ample use of the machinery in there. However, either Tanya or myself are required to be in attendance at all times.

As a guest in our home, and under the purposes of Systematic Desensitization, I will require you to behave in a manner that you are most likely not accustomed to. Examples include regular playroom visits and party attendances. The latter will involve a consultation with you, though the final decision is mine alone.

You are not required to add any additional amount of income to the household.

While Tanya finds pride in her work by assisting guests and household members, there are regular cleaning activities that will be split between she and you. This, too, is non-negotiable.

With permission from Emmett, I have taken the liberty of removing the remaining items in your apartment and transferring them here. Items that I deemed unworthy of transport, I have disposed of. Most clothing items were included in the disposal. If any issues arise, please see me as soon as possible so we can discuss a solution.

Holy Jesus, naked Tanya? I contemplated this for a moment before deciding that, aside from a serious ego bust on my part, naked Tanya was probably not going to kill me. I sent a silent prayer to the gods of clothing and clothing accessories that she had been wearing a bathrobe when leading me to my room. Concerning clothing, however, I was vaguely uncomfortable with Jasper's quick disposal of my clothes.

I ran my tongue over the front of my teeth in a contemplative gesture. For what is was worth, I supposed, it had been quite an ugly debacle of mismatched clothing. Most of it were still items I had worn in high school, and whatever new things there were thrown in were only there because of jobs or whatever I had bought out of the you-must-have-something-new principle of being an adult. I collected myself from the bed and rifled through the massive closet for a few familiar pieces before I went downstairs.

I crossed the living room with every intention of just continuing into the kitchen, but stopped at the threshold when I saw Tanya's very naked body perched lightly on one of the barstools that circled the kitchen's island. She had a newspaper opened in front of her and was holding it with one hand while drinking a glass of something in the other. Her back was to me and I stared at the curved arc of her spine as she bent over to place the glass on the countertop.

I cleared my throat and she turned her head around towards me.

"Hello, Bella!" she said. She folded the newspaper and put it down on the counter before hopping off the barstool. Her thighs and breasts bounced lightly as she moved towards me and before my staring could take a creepy turn, I looked at her face.

"Hey," I said.

"No need to be embarrassed," she said in a casual way, as though telling me where I could place my dirty plate after dinner. "I'd offer you something to eat, but Master hadn't eaten all day and there's nothing of the pot roast left." She smiled. "But I can make you anything else."

I looked up at her, careful to train my eyes so they looked only at her face. "Why do you do that?" I asked. "Call Jasper 'sir' sometimes and 'master' others?"

She walked over to the sink and laid her glass in the bottom of it. She turned around and leaned against its metal edge, both palms propped up on its lip. "Well, if we're inside his home, he's the master, so Master. When we're not, it's Sir. It's respect, I guess." She frowned. "How's your nose?"

I gently touched the plastic sheath. "It's all right."

Tanya was beautiful, of course. Her hair, which was usual splayed across the font of her body in long, wavy lines was pinned loosely on top of her head. The style gave her a carefree, childish appearance and I was struck by the dissimilarities between her and Alice. Alice was lean, but very small, and her lack of height trumped the apparent leanness of her body. Tanya was tall, really tall, and it perfectly accentuated her innate elegance. Or, perhaps, it was the cause of her elegance.

I looked up at her face again and she was looking back, one side of her mouth curled up in amusement.

"Yeah," I said. "I can be creepy sometimes. I promise it'll be the last time I ogle your chest." I sat down on a barstool and reached over to the wicker basket on the counter and pulled out an apple. I took a bite and chewed for a minute. "So this whole . . . waiting on me thing. It's going to take some time getting used to."

She unwound her fingers from the sink and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "Oh?"

"Yeah. I've been doing that sort of stuff for, like, 20-some years. It's going to take a lot of time for me to not just turn a shower on or fix myself sometime to eat whenever I want. Like, a long time."

"How long?"

I took another bite of the apple. "Like, a few weeks?"

Tanya pressed her eyebrows together a frowned in a delicate way. "A few weeks," she echoed.

"But I promise, I'll do the best I can until then."

"All right," she said and then glanced above my head. I followed her gaze behind me towards a large, antiquated clock hanging on the wall aside the entryway to the living room. "Oh, damn. I'm sorry, but Master wanted to see you in the playroom at seven o'clock, but I told him you were still upstairs and that I'd send you whenever you came down." She turned and pulled out some sort of pastry from a brown bakery bag on the counter, wrapped it in a napkin, and handed it to me. "There's a bathroom two doors before the playroom. Throw out whatever you don't finish there."

With an apple in one hand and a pastry in the other, I stared at her again. But this time, it was purposeful. Her face was relaxed and her eyebrows had separated and returned to their proper places. But her expression was sort of blank; like she was listening to a not-particularly-exciting lecture on something she didn't really care about.

I narrowed my eyes. "Are you okay?"

Her expression became exaggerated; she smiled widely, too widely, until her eyes became tiny, painful slits. "Of course, why do you ask?"

"I don't know. You look – " I gestured at her body with the hand that held the pastry, " – checked out."

She glanced at the clock again and I held my hands up.

"All right, all right," I said. "I'll bid you farewell."

I trekked slowly up to the playroom, depositing the entire pastry and the few bites that remained of my apple in the bathroom along the way. I ran my fingers through my hair and righted the hemline of my T-shirt as I stared at that fucking terne handle. Not only was the vertical handle terne, but there was this additional rectangle of perfectly smooth, shiny metal that surrounded it, bolted to the door by tiny screws.

I pressed my finger against one corner of the metal and ran it across to the other side, leaving an oily stain in the vague shape of my fingerprint. I grinned.

I knocked on the door at it opened almost immediately. The air of the hallway, as it rushed in to fill the stagnant air of the playroom, made the soft ringlets of Jasper's hair to brush away from his face. Goddammit, he had that angelic look about his face. The one that convinced me all he needed was a bedtime story and a glass of warm milk and he'd become the puddle of adoring mush that would make him a half-decent . . . animal.

I frowned and he mimicked my expression.

"Bella. Care to come in?"

"Sure."

He gestured fluidly to one of the overstuffed armchair and I took a minute to appreciate the hand-to-arm-length ratio. His hands were large, but lean, the way that I'd imagine guitarist fingers to look. He wore a small, almost invisible, silver ring on the middle finger of his left hand. At first, it looked tarnished, but when he drew his hand back towards his body, it didn't shine in the light of the room like it should have. I squinted my eyes.

"Are you wearing a ring made out of pewter?" I blurted.

He had bent over the ottoman in front of the other chair, presumably to pull it forward towards my chair, as he was apt to do, but stopped mid-bend. He curled his fingers into his palm.

"I am," he said. "Very perceptive of you to notice."

"It's beautiful," I said. His lips curled at the edges and I flushed. "I mean, it's incredibly manly and reminds me of something a gladiator would wear."

His smiled disappeared immediately. Instead of moving the ottoman towards my chair, he crossed the room and sat on the low coffee table pushed up against the far wall. He spread his legs and placed a corresponding elbow on each of his knees.

"Sorry, was that inappropriate?" I said, noting that I sounded more exasperated than apologetic.

Ignoring my half-assed apology, he said, "Alice called me shortly before you arrived and explained to me what happened last night. She understood the implications of your actions during your episode. Alice was with me for a long period of time and your behavior was not lost on her."

I nodded.

"I assume you plan on staying here for much longer this time?"

I nodded again.

"Then I must warn you, Bella. If you leave this house again you will not be welcomed back."

I froze. I had been in the process of crossing my legs underneath me, but stopped with only one leg on the chair. I looked at him. His expression was calm but his eyes were a little wider than nonchalance would have usually accounted for. They were also intense, cuing me in to the fact that this wasn't one of his usual "Jasper's word is the gospel" type of thing. He was asking me to choose.

I considered it. I thought of Edward and his look of blatant desperation as he watched me walk out of his house today. I opened my mouth to tell Jasper I didn't know if that was something I could do. But then I thought of those burning fields and the ashen trails and the devastation that lay before Edward and me. And I nodded.

"Good," he said, rising from the table. "Then shall we proceed." He held an arm out towards the bench and I frowned.

"I'm not really sure about that."

The glorious muscles in Jasper's neck tightened. "I was lead to believe that you read the additional House Rules?"

"Well, yes, but – "

"Bella, what do you see yourself in this house?"

"What?"

His jaw clenched this time. I almost smiled. This less-calm, less-collected Jasper, in all his magnificent gorgeousness, was . . . highly amusing. I pressed my lips together and licked them, trying to hide the smile I knew was creeping around the edges of my mouth.

"Perhaps I need to be more direct," he said and my smile vanished almost immediately.

"There's no reason to be condescending, Jasper."

This time, he froze. A smirk had begun to work his lips, but it stopped halfway through. He narrowed his eyes. We stared at each other for a moment and I was at a complete loss. I hadn't really said it rudely, or annoyingly, or anything synonymous to that, just stated it. I raised my eyebrows at him.

"I wasn't being an ass, um, I mean a jerk, sorry. It was just not necessary, you know?"

He nodded slowly. "Then please, let me restate my question. Do you see yourself as a sub in this house? As my sub?"

"No." The work was a quick, clipped syllable.

"Then I will repeat my question. What do you see yourself as?"

"Someone who is trying to overcome her panic attacks?"

He frowned slightly. "Is that all?"

"Is there anything else?"

We stared at each other for a moment.

"Bella," he said. "I know for a fact that Emmett endorses what I do here. It would be wise to listen to him."

My temper flared. "What do you think I'm doing here? I'm here, aren't I?"

"In turn," he said, his voice lowering and assuming a more gravelly pitch. "I would suggest that you discontinue your habitual treks between here and my brother's house."

"What? We just went over that. You said that if you leave again, you're not welcomed back." I lowered my voice and tucked my chin into my neck. "And I said okay. That all just happened."

He lowered his head a little and smiled slowly. "Thank you for refreshing my memory, Bella."

We stared at each other for another moment. My eyebrows were raised towards my hairline in a look that I hoped clearly said: And . . . . ? His head was still bowed and he was now looking at the ground, his blank face suggesting he was purposefully remaining unemotional. But his eyes were searching the ground, running back and forth quickly across the hard wood as though following the trail of an erratic, three-legged bug as it made frenzied dashes beside his feet.

I opened my mouth to ask him what his fucking problem was, when that ear-splitting crackling noise shot from the intercom and spilled into the room. I jumped and fought back a little shriek, while Jasper remained entirely unmoved. Except for his eyes, which had stopped darting.

"Master?" The snakes of wiring wrapped between the walls of the home made Tanya's small and demure voice sound grainy and robotic.

Jasper crossed the room and pressed the red button next to the speaker.

"Yes, Tanya?"

"I'm sorry to interrupt, Master, but Sam called."

"And?"

"It's on. Tonight at nine. The fish mart."

"Thank you, Tanya."

Jasper let go of the button and then performed the most un-Jasper feat I'd seen thus far. He leaned his shoulder against the wall behind the intercom, stuffed his hands indelicately into pockets, and crossed his ankles so the tip of one of his ridiculous pointed-toe shoes was pressed against the floor. He raised one of his eyebrows and pursed his lips in a way that suggested upcoming conspiratorial actions.

He was excited about something.

"So, Bella," he said in what I was sure was supposed to be a flirtatious way. Except the monotony of his voice failed to take on any additional pitch. "Care to come out with Tanya and me tonight?"

I was, of course, instantly apprehensive. "Where?"

"I know you have often attended Emmett's house parties. But have you ever attended a real dungeon party before?"