Natalie's Son

Only a man would think to give me a hotel room and a dog collar for her fiftieth birthday. I examined the collar in my hand as he stood across from me, watching. Black leather, sturdy, the kind you’d see in a boutique too chic for its own good. The coppery tag pressed into my palm: JACK. Flip it over. IF LOST—RETURN TO NATALIE. My teeth caught on my lower lip, involuntary, and I wondered if I ought to laugh or slap him or (god, yes) fasten it around his elegant neck before we left the room for dinner.

“Mom,” Jack said softly, his voice pitched intimate, “I got it custom-engraved. I…” He paused, searching my face for clues, then shrugged in that lopsided, sheepish way he’d had since ninth grade. “It’s yours. I’m yours.” Even softer, he added, “We talked about it. Remember?”

I sat on the edge of the bed and skirted the line between delight and disbelief. “You want this?” I asked, meaning not just the collar but everything it promised. My words came out musky, like a perfume you can’t quite name. “I mean, you really want it. Like we talked about?”

He was in front of me before I finished the question, hands clasped behind his back in a gesture that would’ve been contrived on anyone else. “For as long as you want me.” The hope in his eyes melted my heart. “Please, Mom. Don’t say no.”

I curled my index finger and beckoned him closer. I held his face between my hands and searched his eyes. Where had my little boy gone to? This was a man I held. I brought his mouth to mine. Softly. Gently. Sucked just enough that our lips made a wet sound when I drew back. “And if I say you have to earn it first?”

His breath caught. “Whatever you say.”

“The night is mine, then. From now until checkout.” I surprised myself by how natural it came. I’d spent my entire adult life resisting the urge to own anything or anyone. My lovers, my friends, of course, but my son, most of all. But on that night, with the skyline flickering like static beyond the glass, I felt every latent appetite uncurling with feline precision.

“My rules,” I said, and sipped champagne.

He swallowed audibly. “Your rules.”

I fastened the collar to his neck. Smoothed the leather against his skin. “This isn’t like Little League,” I told him. “You don’t get to back out when it gets tough.” He didn’t look away. Couldn’t keep the hint of a grin from sneaking onto his face. “Take off your clothes. The only thing I want you to wear is the collar on your neck.

He hesitated for exactly one heartbeat, the way men always do when their mother asks for something impossible and then makes it possible with a single command. Then he was naked, his clothes piled in the corner of the room. I waited for him to kneel and raised an eyebrow. Shifted my gaze to the pile of clothes. Back to him.

“Sorry,” he said, scampering to his feet. In a flash, he had his clothes in the closet where they belonged, either hung or folded or stacked neatly. Who says boys are untrainable? He rushed back to his knees in a skid that made my legs burn. “How may I serve you, my mother and goddess?”

“It’s my birthday,” I said gently. “Tomorrow, I’ll put you through the wringer. Tonight, I want to feel beautiful. I want to feel loved. If I tell you to make love to me until the sun comes up or I pass out, do I need to tell you anything else?”

“No.”

He crawled to me with a grace I would have found theatrical in any other setting, but here, on the obscenely plush carpet of that incredibly luxurious room, it was only right. When he reached the foot of the bed, he pressed his brow to my knee. I realized with a tight, nostalgic ache that the very bones of his skull were familiar to my hand from years of palm-on-forehead fever checks, soft hair smoothed after nightmares. He rested there until I tilted his chin up. This was my son. Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. Blood of my blood.

“Show me how badly you want it,” I told him.

He did not hesitate. His mouth trailed along my shin, then the inside of my thigh, so reverent I could almost believe there was holiness in this. I shifted my skirt up with a single motion. Jack inhaled with a raw, animal hunger, his teeth ...