I had been known to dismiss submissives for arriving to training sessions late, sending them home in devastated tears. And I have been known to break off business deals, simply because the other guy was unable to get his ass to a meeting on time.
So when Tiny parked the car in front of Leticia’s apartment block, it was several minutes before six o’clock. Old Hector, the doorman, came from the shadows under the awning and shuffled across the pavement.
I got out of the car and leaned back in through the window. “Take yourself out for dinner, Tiny,” I reached into my wallet and pressed money into his huge hand. “You look like you could do with a decent feed. I’ll call you when I’m ready to leave.”
The giant man’s face split into a surprised smile. He threw me a playful salute, and the car pulled away into the evening traffic. Hector walked with me into the foyer and we spent a couple of minutes chatting.
I rode the elevator to Leticia’s floor, and knocked on the door. I heard her squeal in panic, and then the sound of footsteps.
“You can’t come in!” she shouted through the door. “I need three more minutes, okay?”
“Sure,” I smiled.
I went pacing back down the passageway. I tucked the bottle of wine under my arm and checked my phone. There was a message from Trigg. I didn’t read it.
Then I saw the door to Leticia’s apartment flung open and her head popped out through the doorway. She looked left, then right – saw me at last, and her face brightened into a wide happy grin.
Leticia held the door open and stood back anxiously. I stepped over the threshold.
The apartment was filled with the aromas of roast meat and vegetables; the kind of country home-cooking that makes a man’s mouth water. I saw a splash of fresh flowers in a vase on the table, and I got the sense that the whole apartment had been cleaned. I set the wine down beside the flower arrangement and then raised my eyebrows as I turned to Leticia.
She was wearing a simple white cotton dress. It bulged around the firm press of her breasts, clung to the form of her waist, and ended just above her knees. She wore makeup, and I noticed a delicate silver bracelet around her wrist.
“What do you think?” Leticia waved her arms wide.
“I think you look... beautiful,” I said into the expectant silence. Leticia seemed to melt just a little, and then she blushed and transformed from a young woman into a shy sixteen-year-old girl for an instant, then back again. She looked up into my face with a yearning little expression, like a flower leaning towards the sunshine. “Thank you,” she whispered. She stood disconcertingly close, enveloping me with her scent. I could see the agitated rise and fall of her breasts under the thin cotton. She seemed to catch her breath for an instant. Her lips were soft and glossy…
I glanced towards the kitchen to distract myself. “Dinner smells great,” I said abruptly. I turned on my heel, thrust my tense fists deep into my pockets and cast my eyes around the walls, giving myself time and breaking the spell of dangerous intimacy.
Leticia’s smile was brittle: too wide and bright to be natural. She flitted around the apartment fluffing sofa pillows and straightening magazines. “I hope you like roast lamb.”
She went into the kitchen, and I opened the bottle of wine. When Leticia came back into the living room, she was carrying plates.
The food was sensational. Despite her self-depreciating comments, Leticia was actually a wonderful cook. I poured wine for us both and we laughed and talked easily until the meal was finished and the plates cleared away.
Leticia led me towards the sofa. She drew her legs up beneath her and I saw a flash of toned brown thigh before she arranged the fabric of her dress around her and reached for the notebook.
“Last night you told me about your first time with Sherry,” she reminded me. “You said it was the start of a sexy affair that lasted for several months. I’d like to know more…”
I stared down into my wine glass. “Unlike Claire Moreland, Sherry was very discreet – very composed,” I said. “No one in the office had the slightest idea anything was going on between the two of us. Sherry did her job and kept her routines. I was painfully aware that everything should appear normal to the rest of the staff, so I was careful in what we did – but we still did plenty of things as the days between our Friday night sex sessions seemed to drag on forever.”
“What kind of things?” Leticia was curious. “Surely if your contact was limited…?”
“It was, but there were still opportunities. “Sometimes I would call her into my office to collect layout pages for the next edition. She would stand at the side of my desk and I would explain how I wanted the pages set up. While she was leaning over my desk I would slide my hand up her skirt. She was always wet, and she would stand there and make banal little comments like ‘yes, I see…’ or ‘what about the photos for that story…’ while I was sliding two fingers inside her pussy and she was biting her lip and trying not to groan aloud.”
I could no longer remain seated. I stood up and began to pace the floor, looking down at the glass of wine in my hand.
“I ordered her to stop wearing panties to work, and each morning she would come into my office to hand me the overnight messages that had been left on the answering machine. It was inspection time and she would dutifully pull the hem of her skirt high so that I could see she was indeed following my orders. Sometimes, while she stood there, I would tell her to finger herself – but it always had to be quick. Sherry was in a permanent state of arousal. She shaved her pussy completely smooth so I could see her delicate little fingers rub her clit until they became sticky with her juices, and I would tell her to rub the essence on her lips and wear it like lip gloss. She did everything I ordered her to.”
“And what about you?” Leticia asked. “Was it arousing for you?”
“Sure,” I nodded. “It turned me on to see her following my instructions without question, and to watch her masturbate. Sometimes, if she arrived at work before the other girls, I had time to slide my cock into her mouth, but usually the tasks were all about keeping Sherry aroused, and subtly creating a system of command and obey, where she learned to submit herself to a series of small challenges.
“As I explained, most of the tasks were actually forms of training: wearing no panties during the day, fingering herself while I watched, and even keeping her pussy shaved so that it was always soft and smooth for my pleasure were actually training techniques that I still use with submissives to this day.”
Leticia looked up at me with growing interest. She set her notebook down for a moment and her eyes became hooded.
“Do you like all your women shaved down there, Jonah?” she asked softly.
“I insist on it,” I said. “It pleases me.”
I retrieved the wine bottle and shared the last of its contents between our two glasses. I left Leticia’s drink on the coffee table and went across to the window. Leticia was watching me, her expression unfathomable, and I wondered what dark mysterious thoughts were going on behind her eyes.
“The fact that Sherry needed to be in my office often was a bonus,” I went on. “But she couldn’t stay for more than a few minutes – that would raise suspicion. But she was always seeking clarifications on the layout of the paper, so our contact was regular, yet always fleeting. One morning I gave her a thick whiteboard marker pen. I used several of them for drawing up the next edition of the newspaper. I placed the pen in her hand and told her to take it to the washroom and use it to make herself come. Sherry looked down at the marker and merely nodded obediently. I went back to work, but it was hard to concentrate. I imagined her with her legs wide apart, her skirt up around her waist and the thick pen sliding slowly in and out of herself. In my imagination I saw the way her pussy lips would flare and wrap tight around the shaft, and how hard it would feel inside her. I thought about her rubbing her clit, and visualized the look on her face as she brought herself off. It was incredibly arousing.”
“Sh
e used it like a… a sex toy?”
I nodded. “Sherry came back into my office about ten minutes later. She was all very calm, as if nothing had happened. She simply handed the marker pen back to me casually and said, ‘oh, here is the pen back that I borrowed, Mr. Noble’. When I looked down, the marker was coated in a slick layer of her sex juices.”
Leticia scribbled into her notebook, and then set her pen down. I was leaning against the windowsill with one hand in my pocket and my legs stretched out, ankles crossed. I finished the last of the wine.
“Why do you think the BDSM lifestyle has become so popular all of a sudden?” Leticia asked. “Everywhere I go there seems to be information and articles and images that weren’t there before.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Well unless you hadn’t heard, there was a particular novel that was very popular with ladies,” I smiled briefly, and then gave the question more serious thought. I pushed myself away from the window and stood in the middle of the floor. “That book certainly created tremendous awareness, but more than that, I think it sparked women’s imaginations and made them look more closely at their lives.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning that I think women want men to be more like men again,” I said. “The world went through a bizarre stage for a while where men changed. They started using ‘product’ in their hair and wearing make up for Christ’s sake! Men, wearing concealer and foundation and hair gel and eyeliner… doing everything they could to look like women. I think women got fed up with all that. I think women suddenly realized that in order for them to be made to feel like a woman, they needed men to act like real men again.
“A real man stands in the bathroom doorway watching his woman putting on her makeup, and he’s overcome with desire. His eyes roam up and down the woman’s figure, and suddenly there is a spark of lust in his eyes. The woman sees it in the reflection. She knows that look, and she feels a tiny tremor of anticipation. The man steps up behind the woman and there is a growl in the back of his throat as he slides his hands up across her hips and around her waist. He pulls the woman back against him and she can feel the hardness of his erection. The man’s hands are suddenly all over her – caressing her breasts and sliding down the flat of her abdomen towards her panties. He bites her neck and the woman’s breathing quickens. She has turned him on, and now the man wants her – and she needs to feel wanted. That’s the way it should be.”
I shook my head. I heard the echo of my own voice and realized I was speaking with genuine passion. “The man doesn’t see his woman in the bathroom mirror putting on makeup and ask if he can borrow some eye shadow!”
I took a deep breath. Maybe my rant had taken me off topic. I sighed. “Leticia, BDSM has always been part of our society. Maybe it has never grabbed the headlines before, but it has always been there, and it always will. The fact that more women are aware of the lifestyle choice now is a good thing. Choice means options, and there are a lot of ladies in stifled marriages that know there must be more to living than the boring routine they have suffered through for years. They look to their husband as the first choice to satisfy that new awareness – that new yearning for more. And that means husbands across the country have to up their game. They have to re-discover their manly instinct and drag their butts out of the rut their marriage has become. It’s awkward, and it’s uncomfortable, and it can be intimidating for a guy, but if they don’t make the effort, their wives may start looking elsewhere to make them feel complete. It’s up to men now.”
There was a long silence. The only sound in the room was the scratch of Leticia’s pen as it raced across the page of the notebook. She was frowning with concentration, trying to get down what I had said onto paper. I waited patiently until she looked back up at me. She flexed the fingers of her hand and smiled. “I’m guessing that happens to be a sore point with you?”
I nodded. “Sorry,” I said. “I tend to go on.”
“Have you had married women come to you, Jonah?” Leticia asked. “Do married women come to you and ask you to train them as submissives because their husbands won’t – or can’t – make the effort to give them this BDSM experience?”
“It’s happened,” I said vaguely.
“More than once?”
“Several times.”
“What do you do? Do you take those women on as new submissives?”
“No. Not if I know they’re married.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re married women,” I explained. “I encourage them to go back to their man and try again. And if they have already tried again, I would encourage them to try harder. It’s easier to save their marriage through concerted, patient effort than it is to start all over again.”
Leticia shook her head. “Surely if a woman has gone to her husband and shared her fantasies about BDSM with him, and he refuses to try to please her, then there’s nothing more that can be done.”
“Not true,” I said. “The man simply needs to understand that he has to change his approach.”
Leticia challenged me with raised eyebrows. “You’re looking at the problem from the wrong side,” I said. “The average man is intimidated by the whole BDSM fantasy. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because they don’t feel comfortable if it’s something they’re not familiar with when it comes to sex. So when the wife comes to the husband all breathless and excited because she has read a collection of erotic BDSM stories, he refuses. In her mind, the woman has the fantasy all played out. She’s visualized the setting. She’s visualized how the man of her dreams looks. She’s imagined how the room will look – the sights, smells, and sounds. She can see herself tied to the bed with soft romantic lighting and rose petals scattered all around her. Her fantasy man blindfolds her, covers her with kisses, ties her hands together and ravages her. It’s perfect – and no average husband can compete with that.”
“My point exactly!” Leticia said.
“So the husband needs to do everything the woman fantasized about, but do it in a different location, and at a different time.”
Silence. Leticia just sat staring at me in confusion.
I went on. “The fantasy the woman has in her head is impossible for her husband to re-create. It will always be a disappointment, because the fantasy is so perfect. So if she imagines these events happening of a nighttime in a bedroom, the husband needs to repeat them of a daytime in the kitchen. That way it becomes their shared fantasy, and he has no expectations to live up to. He can’t fail – he can only produce a different, similar experience – but it will be one the woman will appreciate because he made the effort, and he made that moment theirs.”
Leticia thought about that. She sat in the silence frowning and pursing her lips getting her head around the idea. She nodded grudgingly, as though just maybe the idea had merits after all, and then went back to her earlier question.
“So married women are off limits?”
“To me, yes. Maybe not to others, but they are to me. It’s in the Jonah Noble big book of rules.”
“What about boyfriends?”
“It’s the same,” I nodded. “Every woman in a committed relationship is off limits.”
Leticia tilted her head to the side and studied me. “That’s a strangely old-fashioned attitude…”
I shrugged. “It’s my rule,” I said. “It works for me. If I know a woman is in a committed relationship, they’re off limits.” And then I added, “Leticia, there are plenty of single, separated and divorced women in the world looking to explore their submissive fantasies with a Master. I don’t need to get in the middle of a marriage.”
“You mean women like Sherry?”
“Exactly,” I said. “Sherry was naturally submissive. Remember, this was years before that book came out. It wasn’t something that Sherry read about and decided she wanted to discover more. The need to submit sexually was something instinctive within her. When she came back to the office every Friday night after work, she was in a trembling state
of arousal and anticipation.”
Leticia looked thoughtful and then frowned. “How do you test the limits of someone who is a natural submissive?” she asked. “I mean, I understand if you have a new submissive who wants to explore BDSM submission to discover more about herself. But what if she already knows? What do you do when someone like Sherry comes to you, and she is already a willing submissive? How do you take that to the next level?”
“Good question,” I smiled.
I started pacing again. “For the first few Friday nights, Sherry and I were simply in lust. I took her in every office in the building: bent over desks, or with her back pressed up against a wall and her dress down around her ankles. I laid her out on the front reception counter and slid down between her spread thighs, and I teased her mercilessly with my tongue and fingers. I made her beg for every orgasm she received, and I made her beg to suck my cock. I covered her with my body and felt her tiny heels digging into the back of my legs as she wrapped herself around me and writhed in orgasm. And I made her kneel before me and finger-fuck herself while she used her mouth to suck me to orgasm. She was insatiable.
“Then, one night, she asked me to hurt her.”
Leticia balked. “Hurt her?”
I nodded, and then explained quickly. “Not pain for the sake of pain,” I said. “Not cruelty. Sherry wanted to experience exquisite pain – the kind of sweet pain that is almost – but not quite – pleasure.”
“Oh.” Leticia sat back in the sofa and the sudden tension went out of her body. “So what did you do?”
“We talked about it,” I said. “Sherry told me the idea of being tortured aroused her, but she had never been able to explore the fantasy because she feared being hurt. She didn’t want the kind of torture that was typified by the idea of enduring unimaginable punishment or beatings. She wanted to feel strung out with the torture of needing to come, and being made to wait and wait until she felt she would explode.”