NOTE FROM RIOTTORI: APOLOGIES GUYS. THIS SHOULD BE TAGGED ONTO THE END OF CHAPTER 10 (BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW TO DO IT!) THIS ENDS ANA'S MEMORY OF HOW SHE 'CAUGHT' CHRISTIAN. I THINK I'LL MOVE ON TO THE PRESENT AND C'S POV. ALSO, THE ITALICS AND PAST TENSE SHOW FLASHBACKS, ALL THE REST IS THE PRESENT. SORRY IF THAT WAS UNCLEAR. SOME OF YOU MAY BE ANGRY WITH ANA AFTER THIS (I'M A LITTLE ANGRY WITH HER MYSELF) BUT BEAR WITH US, I BESEECH YOU! ; )
I had exited The Red Room, closed the door behind me and locked it up. Then, I had gone into his office. All these actions were performed as if I were in a dream – it was this dream-like state that I found myself existing in, to cope, to survive. It smoothed down the edges of the hurt, rounded them off. I was not hysterical, I was not the scorned woman, not the woman on the edge. I was efficient and methodical, looking for the clues I needed to know about this side of my husband, this sickening shade of his: black for betrayal.
I found the NDA in a file innocuously marked: Business Plans. My surprisingly calm hand leafed through the papers that held my hurt, the powerful black print that could unravel my world. I found the contract easily after that, and had sat in my husband's high-backed office chair to read it.
A scrawled signature, a name I couldn't make out, had sealed my fate – a girl with awful handwriting. Funny the things you think at a time like this.
My husband and this girl-of-the-messy-handwriting had agreed to meet once a week in our Escala home for the period of one month (although he could extend this contract if he so wanted). She would be his 'Sub', he her 'Dom'. The soft and hard limits had not changed since my day although he was less fussy about what she ate and wore, I noted. I must have broken him of that habit. I had blazed the trail.
I didn't cry. Odd that I didn't cry. Love and sex, wife and sub, two very different things, apparently. I would have to phone Dr Black, tell her she had been right. I breathed in deeply, my next move determining the rest of my life (or so I thought at the time).
I got up and went home and made dinner for my family.