His support and affection are constant and are never to be withheld by way of punishment. I will be loved and adored, showered with affection in exchange for offering him the gift of my submission. I must strive to overcome hesitations, inherent feelings of guilt and shame that stop me from embracing the true me and that disappoint my Sir. I must never put my own selfish wishes above those of his. I shall never refuse him simply to deny him, to do so goes against the very gift I’m offering him.
Requests considered as trivial, from the shade of nail lacquer on my toes to my choice of outfit or those that are serious, for example in regards to health and my physical and emotional welfare, are to be obeyed. Discussions are welcome, negotiations can be made, outright refusal and snark will result in punishment.
My pussy is his, just as my body is. I shall maintain it in a manner he sees fit. Be it frequent waxing or maintaining a healthy weight.
Through it all, for my gift, he shall treat me as a treasured possession. I shall never be demeaned or damaged in his care. With him, I am safe. My environment is safe and I may question and expect truthful answers from him.
I may dedicate my time to my art without fear of the consequences. However, if he believes I am working too hard or am not caring for myself, he reserves the right to protect me from myself.
I offer my consent and myself to the man who will cherish me as no other can.
Nathan Adam Conroy
Sir
Marina Joy Denison
submissive
Chapter Sixteen
Five days.
One-hundred and twenty hours.
The time it took me to revert to ways of old.
Well, not entirely old. Just to get a touch sassier. A bit more like the real me. Walking around like a zombie, muttering ‘Yes, Sir,’ ‘No, Sir,’ sure as shit isn’t Marina Joy Denison.
Christ, it’s a hell of a surprise I lasted that long. I blame my humility on a few things; fatigue, shock, and finally, pain.
Firstly, fatigue. Two further nights’ rest, a slumber so deep the house could have been hit by lightning and I wouldn’t have noticed, tucked up against Nate...that’s all it took to have me back on fighting form.
The cot in the hospital had been a fancy one. Comfortable in its own way, but with the discord between Nate and I, my sleep was anything but restful. I’ve ceased feeling like the walking dead and instead, am slowly returning to normal.
Secondly, shock. Who wouldn’t be surprised to learn they were a sub after twenty-eight years of burying it away? I guess, at some point, anyone in this lifestyle, feels as though they’re walking in a dream. Combine it with the idea that Nate hid his true character from me, that he’d known from the start what I was... Well, hell, my first day on the job, as it were, was bound to turn me inside out.
Thirdly, pain. Turns out, I have a pretty advanced ulcer eating away at my stomach lining. The churning, nauseating sensation in my belly, combined with my fondness for antacids has a source. With no family background of them, my low alcohol intake, as well as being under fifty, it’s unusual at my age to have an ulcer.
Stress, apparently, lies at the root of the problem. I’m on medication to reduce acid levels in my stomach and Nate has made it a rule that for one hour a day, I’m to take a breather. Yoga weaves its way into that time and becomes a ‘soft’ rule too. But I think that’s only because he gets to watch and enjoys me turning myself into a pretzel. After all, there is nothing stressful in my life anymore. I don’t have to avoid the Russian mob, and I’m no longer running a business that catered to its clients twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
It’s been three weeks since my ‘first’ day, and life is odd if strangely good. For the first two of those five days, I walked around like the aforementioned zombie. I didn’t dare say a word, because lying is way too easy for me ̶ and God, doesn’t that make me sound like a hideous person?
It’s not that I lie for the sake of lying; it’s just so easy to prevaricate and inadvertently fib. I’ve come to realize that this is a self-defensive trait. To hide the true me from the rest of the world.
Now, I’ve no problem with continuing in that vein with the majority of folks I come into contact with…just not with Nate.
For those first days, I was careful who I talked to and the subjects were always bland and unlikely to cause me to be dishonest. For example, I refrained from discussing my time in New York in anything but a general way, as I don’t intend for the commune to ever know I ran and owned a brothel in the city that never sleeps.
I focused so hard on Nate’s voice; seeking soft intonations and drops in tone. Anything to make sure there wasn’t some kind of hidden request buried in his words.
I ate whatever he put in front of me even though sometimes it made me feel sick.
I love cursing. Fuck is my favorite word but did I utter it once? No. I didn’t.
I was perfect. Even if I do say so myself.
I did what he said, when. I didn’t argue. I even had my pussy waxed with him watching, for Christ’s sake.
We went shopping together, and he had to approve of every item before I could even put it in the basket; and the weirdest thing was, he paid and I didn’t even bat an eyelid.
Christ, it was like I’d been transported to a parallel universe. One where I’d had my personality completely removed.
Then two things happened to have the real me surging back into existence, something that made me feel a whole hell of a lot more human.
Sam and I had a minor apocalyptic battle over the Thoroughbred issue. I.e. His establishing a Thoroughbred stud farm on Blue Ridge and spending a small fortune on said venture without my permission.
And on the very same day, I discovered Mona is potentially pregnant with her married, gay lover. Thanks to the self-induced purdah at the hospital, I learned the news nearly a month after the gossip first exploded on to the scene. Something that didn’t make me feel totally tickety-boo.
The former, I could handle. For those five days of being a milk-and-water miss, Sam managed to escape from my justified fury. He did so, mostly, by staying under the radar. He must have camped out in his lab, because I didn’t see him. Nor did I see Jase, the man hired to care for one of our ailing stallions, who must have been on similar orders to stay out of my way.
I saw Jase first and I fought with Sam afterward. After the amount of money Sam has poured into this pet project of his, I can’t just throw the entire thing out of the window, even though I’d like to. He’s got his heart set on having a stable of purebred stock—fuck knows why—but to simply discard the entire thing would be a waste of the money he’s invested.
It goes against the grain to let him get away with it, but it won’t be for long. At the end of the year, when it’s time for individuals to put in grant requests for whatever they’re working on, Sam’s grant will be piteously low.
He’ll have to come and beg me for extra throughout the year. And doesn’t the prospect just fill me with malevolent glee? I’d rub my hands together in satisfaction, but I’d look like Dr. Evil minus Mini-Me.
Of the two, it was the latter: Mona’s precarious, impregnated position—overuse of the letter P? Much?—in an insecure relationship that had me bursting out of my self-containing cage. No matter how often I called her, her phone was never on. And neither was Eddie’s. Stuck in Montana, away from the two women I call my family, with no way to contact them... I burst. Either that or my stomach ulcer nearly did.
After a five-minute stretch of calling Mona’s phone and hearing the dialing tone, Nate happened by and caught the brunt of my fury. I cursed, raged, and refused to listen to him, when he tried to speak. I threw the plate of food he’d brought me for lunch at the wall and generally behaved like a spoiled brat.
My punishment?
I had to stand in the naughty corner.
Christ, even now, three weeks on, I don’t know whether to be embarrassed or turned on.
“Calm down, Marina,” h
e’d gritted out, switching his gaze from the new mural, that was a plate of spaghetti bolognese, decorating the bedroom wall to me. His focus on me made me shiver, but I was way too worked up to even calm down at the sight of his very contained but meaningful stare.
“I can’t talk to my fucking family, Nate. How the hell am I supposed to calm down? Mona’s pregnant, for Christ’s sake. By a gay man.” I choked out the word, unable to believe the words. The media might have believed she was Zane Matthews’ surrogate, but Eddie and I know differently. “I didn’t find out because she called to tell me. Oh no. I had to find out via the internet. And will she answer her fucking phone? No. And Eddie’s gone AWOL now. I’m stuck on this fucking ranch, and I’m no fucking use to them here. How can I help them if they don’t turn on their fucking phones? They need me.”
“And I don’t need you? This ranch doesn’t need you? If they wanted to talk to you, then they would. If their phones are switched off, then it’s for a reason. And concerned or not, you cannot break the rules without there being consequences.”
“I don’t have time for this. I need to go back to New York,” I’d spat, flustered at the idea of all I had to do to get myself ready for a flight back to the city. My mind had already turned inward, before he broke into it like an ax cutting through wood.
Transported back to that day, I can still feel my anxiety levels shooting through the roof.
“You’re going nowhere.” Ice drips down his words. “We’re not playing, Marina. You can’t simply discard the path you’ve chosen... Have I said you can leave the ranch?”
That ice makes my eyes flash to his. Caught in the cold stare, I hug my belly. “Please, Nate. Surely you understand. I can’t just leave them to it.”
“That’s exactly what you’re going to do. You don’t even know if you’re leaving them to anything. If they need to speak to you, they will contact you. As it is, you’re out of the loop, because they want it that way, and you will not invade their privacy until they’re ready to confide in you, do you understand me?”
My lower lip pops out, a sulk starting. Defiance oozes out of my every pore.
“I want to be there for them. Even if I switched off my phone, I’d expect them to come after me. To help me. It’s just what we do.”
“Well, not anymore. If Mona’s pregnant, then that’s her choice. If she’s a surrogate, then again, she chose to become one. It has nothing to do with you.”
“You knew?”
He shrugged. “As little as you mention the pair to me, you did tell me her surname once. Simone Barranquet is a pretty unusual name. And the pair of them, that writer and her, they always seemed to be on the TV when I was in hospital.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Nate crosses his arms and casts me a pointed look. “I wasn’t saying much to you at the time.”
Still feeling pretty raw about the role I played in Nate’s injuries, I flush. “You could have told me at any time during these last three weeks. Why didn’t you?”
“Because more important things have been on my mind.”
His low voice, filled with that unmistakable quality of Sir, has me ducking my head. Instinctively, I react to the tenor but the old me is so pissed off at him, I’m on the brink of more rebellion. Half-turning away from him, I take a step back when he dashes across the room and stops an inch away from me. Every part of him invading my personal space, when his hands grab my upper arms.
There’s no pain, even though his hold is fierce, he uses the grip to drag me closer to him and to bite out, “You’ve just broken so many rules, I can’t even fucking count how many times I need to punish you. You’re going to stand in that corner over there until I can think of what to do with you.”
“I don’t have time for this, Nate.”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so mad at me. He sucks in a huge breath of air as though begging for calm, then grinds out, “There’s nothing else you need to do except obey me.”
Mouth working as I stare at him, studying the tic in his jaw as his fury at my disobedience makes itself known. Still, I hesitate, torn between his words and the idea of my friends needing me, even if he is right. They don’t need me enough to contact me. But that hesitation seals my fate, and he releases his hold on one of my arms, then with the other, he drags me to the armchair and bites out, “Stand there and don’t move a goddamn inch.”
Until this point, he hasn’t spanked me since the first day. Not to punish, at any rate. On a morning and on a night, each day, he hits my behind five times as a reminder to be good. The freakish thing is that I want him to spank me more even though I do everything within my power to avoid punishment. I think that’s the whole idea. Reverse psychology.
Making me want something even though I only earn such treatment through misbehavior.
As it is, the idea he is about to spank me has all thoughts of my friends flushing free from my mind. My pussy starts to heat up, need begins to slither through my veins. And then, he starts to take off his belt. His lack of a hard-on tells me I’m not in for a treat, and the instant he has his belt in his hand, I step away from him, knowing what's coming.
“You get your ass over here, right this second, Marina,” he orders, and my legs make the decision for me, pushing me forward and settling myself on his lap so he is comfortable and not straining his wounds, and I can rest my hips and head on the armrests.
The first cut of the belt into my butt makes a hand spank seem like a snowflake falling onto the curve of my cheek. I don’t have to count, just endure as the leather stings my flesh. I count, but silently. Ten times, he raises the belt, and each time I cry and struggle on his lap, wriggling and moaning, shrieking and rebelling against his treatment of my poor butt. Even covered with thick denim, the sting penetrates the fabric and makes me howl with the dull thuds.
All of a sudden, he stops and states, “Get off my knee, strip and go stand in the corner. You don’t move a goddamn inch until ten minutes are up.” Standing there quivering, I watch him close his eyes, clench them for a second and then, in a quieter, calmer voice, he murmurs, “You’re to think of why you’re there; why you’re being punished and if you so much as think about touching your pussy, you’ll get the belt again. But this time on your bare behind. Do you understand me, Marina?”
“Yes, Sir,” I whimper, reacting to both his fury and attempt at patience. I’d like to mock his idea of my touching myself with my ass still stinging and burning from the belt, but he is right. Damn his hide. I could cum, if he’d so much as touch me in the right place.
This masochistic tendency is one of the hardest parts of my nature to come to terms with. Standing in the corner is both mortifying and a privilege. Being whacked by a belt doesn’t make me feel as though I am being abused, but cherished. He cares enough to punish me for my insolence.
The instant he grabbed a hold of me, my focus changed, shifted from the outside world and directed entirely upon him. Nothing else exists. Nobody, no one.
I took off my clothes and walked to the corner and stood there, for God knows how long, until he told me I could move.
The lashings of the belt didn’t made me cry, nor has my time in the corner. I’d stand here, my mind split in two. The time to breathe, to look back over the last half-hour urges me to delve into what just happened.
While I’d been wrong to behave as I had, to break the rules I’d been obeying religiously, I had a justifiable reason. Or, at least, I think I do. My insides are rebelling by the time he bites out, “Come and kneel in front of me.”
Naked, more than just physically, I kneel in front of him—something in itself, I’m becoming accustomed to—with my head bowed. My mind is still a whirl of activity. Rebellion, frustration, exasperation... I am literally chomping at the bit with my self-righteous anger. I am concerned for my friends. How can I be punished for that?
Almost as though he knows my thoughts verbatim, in his coldest tone, a tone I’d never heard before the shooting i
n Chicago, he bites out, “You weren’t punished for caring for your friends. You insist on believing you’re as hard as stone but you have a very soft heart. I know that, why do you think I haven’t given up on you?” That stings. More than the belt. “I don’t doubt that it’s kind of you to care about your friends but your first loyalty is to me and to the bond we have together. You must consult me when you feel you need to make an important decision. You do not start planning without asking me for my opinion.”
“They’re my friends. I can’t just drop them.”
“One.” The number was a threat. A punishment had been earned. Despite myself, the memories of that first day rushed to the fore. The pins, the spanking...they were a reminder to behave and the actual agony of those five minutes with my nipples throbbing as pain spliced them in half with those damned clothespins... that punishment alone made me behave like a good girl for the majority of the five days since.
My mouth snaps shut and the words quivering on my tongue fade away almost as though they’d never been there.
“I don’t expect you to drop them. But neither have they contacted you for assistance. We don’t know where Mona even is, and Eddie, well, I don’t know her, but from what you’ve told me in the past, she’s a woman of routine. If she isn’t answering, then yes, I admit, there’s something odd about that, but again, she will ask you for help if she needs it. Like she has done in the past, right?”
He is correct. Damn him. The instant he mentions it, the memory floats through my mind. One I’d forgotten. But it is memorable, because Eddie is so cool, calm, and collected that she rarely asks for help.
This one time, Eddie’s sister, Helene, had had the misfortune of being in a liquor store when a gang burst in and tried to hold the place up. The owner of the store refused, the robbers held the customers hostage, and a bad situation went from worse to shit. The police managed to negotiate a release and Helene had been freed. No injuries, save for the psychological damage being held at gunpoint can do.
Sinfully Mastered: Naughty Nookie Page 20
