by Jaye Peaches
“Please, Jason, forget about this. I ate too quickly and got light-headed,” I said and stood up. My feet held firm and there was no residual dizziness. I smiled at him.
We walked to the lift shaft together without speaking and he pressed the button for my floor. I glanced at him and tried to ignore the rising sense of embarrassment. Nothing was said as we parted company. Nevertheless, I could tell he was not fobbed off my rapid recovery. There was one thing I had learnt quickly about Jason Lucas, he was very perceptive and not likely to be fooled by lies.
I was treated, later in the evening, to a rare text from Jason.
: Are you OK?
A simple message, so I sent him a simple reply.
: Absolutely fine. Watching really bad TV show, you’d hate it
***
I could barely hear Trudy’s voice over the music. Wednesday evening and we were having a drink in an exceptionally noisy pub a few streets from where I worked. Trudy had dashed over from her office where she worked as a clerk for an insurance company. She was already downing her second glass of wine and wriggling in her seat in time to the music.
Trudy and I went back many years to a time we hardly remember. Our mums had worked together when Trudy and I were small and they had become lifelong friends. Many weekends I would play at Trudy’s house as we dressed dolls and told each other our secrets. I did not tell Trudy my secrets anymore. Eventually we had drifted apart as our parents moved about and we had relied on phone calls and occasional catch up visits. When I had graduated and I came to work in the City, we had rekindled our friendship, easy now that we worked no more than a few streets from each other now. She had introduced her own friends to me while I tried to build liaisons at my old job. It became easier to adopt her friends than maintain relationships with indifferent work colleagues.
“Look, Trudy, it is hard at the moment. New job and everything. I can’t be out with you every evening.”
She had been backing me into a corner for the past few weeks, constantly wanting to go out to nightclubs with me.
“Every evening! Gem, name an evening?” she frowned at me and I felt awkward.
The lie filled chat was not going well.
“I’m still waiting for an explanation of why you wouldn’t see me for practically a month, plus you’re disappearing at the weekends again. What is it about the weekends? Most girls your age are partying and the like, you vanish into a black hole!” Trudy took a large swig from her glass.
“You know and have always known it is not my scene. Not at the weekend. I visit my parents and spend time doing my artwork. I am an introvert,” I restated the same old defences.
Trudy rolled her eyes up at the ceiling.
“I’ve seen you dance, Gemma. There is no way that is the behaviour of an introvert.” She looked past me over my shoulder, “Oh, he’s a hunk. What do you think?”
I looked over my shoulder at the dark haired man Trudy had latched on to with her eyes. Had she no shame at all? It would not have surprised me if yet again I made my own way home and she swanned off with a man on her arm. I sighed, oh Trudy, one day you were going to regret your wayward antics.
I looked down at my empty glass.
“One for the road then?”
She was already gone from my side and I wondered why I bothered sometimes with her company. The simple answer was Trudy was all I had. Her friends were my friends and beyond them there was a heaving throng of an abandoned past. I circled a finger around the rim of my glass. I knew the inbox of my personal email account was full to brimming with invitations. To this party, this gathering or event and some from individuals who sought me privately for one-to-one meeting. I had ignored the bulk of them and had replied to only a handful who I did not want to offend. The reality was I did not want to go back to those people I once called friends and acquaintances. Some even had been my bedfellows and I dismissed them all. Eventually my lack of interest and response would bring the most concerned to my door. I would then have to decide once and for all where my future lay.
***
The following morning and I was at my desk half-listening to the gossip. This manager, that manager, endless tittle-tattle. I heard Jason’s name mentioned and perked up to listen.
“He’s gay, come on, never seen with a girl. He has to be.”
I sniggered quietly – how wrong they were!
“I heard that he’s going to retire early to a tropical island with a harem of virgins,” another voice boasted. There was lots of laughter around that idea.
“Gemma, what do you make of Mr Lucas? You’ve had a one-to-one meeting with him after all,” Penny sidled up to my desk. I tried not to blush.
“Well, all I know is he likes my software, so read what you want into that,” I grinned back and she flounced off satisfied.
Friday came around again and I got a text ping. My Jason Lucas.
: Someone will pick you up at the usual time and I’ll meet you there.
No signoff just the one sentence. I had a moment of foreboding, what was going on?
Another impersonal driver picked me up at my apartment. How many did he employ? He deposited my bag in the boot and held the car door open for me. I could not keep the nerves out of my hands as I smoothed down my skirt yet again.
“Music, Miss?” asked the driver. I shook my head as he looked at me in the mirror. Not today.
The house felt colder than usual. I could sense his absence straight away. Leaving my overnight bag in the master bedroom, I made myself a tea. Hearing a voice, I headed to the entrance hall expecting to find him there, but the voice was coming from CCTV room. I approached cautiously, upon entering the small room a dark suited man sprung up and stared straight at me. He put his mobile phone away in his pocket. I recognised his face as my earlier driver.
“Everything alright, Miss Marshall?” he asked keenly.
“Sorry, I didn’t realise anyone was here.”
I felt uncomfortable with the young man. He was tall, well built and his eyes had intelligence lurking behind them. He was no more comfortable with my presence then I was with his.
“I’m just finishing off setting up the perimeter cameras.” As if I needed an explanation for his presence. I was not sure what setting up entailed but he pressed the keys on his keyboard. Then I heard the front door open and shut. Jason was back.
I dashed out into the hallway to see him there, loosening his tie and kicking his shoes off. The security man came out and stood behind me.
“What’s going on?” asked Jason curtly, looking first at me and then back to the other man.
“Fixing a monitor. Everything is good, Mr Lucas, just heading off to the gatehouse for the night,” the security man answered quickly.
Jason nodded in acknowledgement and the man turned on his heels, heading towards the back door by the utility room.
“What were you doing in there?” Jason’s voice was icy, not the warm reception I was expecting.
“Nothing, honestly. I was bored and wanted to explore. I didn’t expect to find anyone there,” I answered clearly in a calm voice. I was not guilty of anything. Jason relaxed his stance and I followed him into the kitchen.
“Let's eat,” was all he said.
A well-practiced routine followed as we found food and drink and sat down to an unusually quiet meal.
“Busy day?” I asked.
“Yes, but it is over now,” replied Jason neutrally.
He got up, mealtime was over and he held out his hand to me.
“Come we need to talk.”
I took his warm hand in mine. A thumb rubbed over my knuckles, a small gesture of reassurance. I followed him not to the bedroom but to the large sitting room and we settled into one of the long couches side by side. I sensed the apprehension rising in me again, was this it? The end of the line speech.
“Gemma, I know we’ve been having a good time together this last month.”
; I nodded in agreement waiting on his next words.
“Trouble is I know we’re not being honest with each other. We both have a sexual history and it is obvious you’re more experienced than you first appeared. No beating about the bush anymore. No secrets.”
I looked down at my hands and sensed the end game coming. Once he knew about my past, my preferences and true nature, he might not like me. I was rapidly losing confidence.
Jason cleared his throat. “I’ve not been honest with you.”
I glanced up to see Jason looking with unease at me! What was going on?
“More a lie of omission,” he said. “You see I’m thirty-one and I came to the conclusion that life is passing me by when it comes to important things in life. Here I sit in a big empty house, on my own. Well, mostly on my own.” He smiled a fraction at me. “So recently I decided to change my approach. I want you to come with me and I’m going to show you my secret.”
He held out his hand, my legs were getting weaker with anticipation as I followed him.
He led me not upstairs but to the corridor at the back of the house and we came to the mysterious locked door. Jason looked visibly uneasy and I had not seen him look so tense before now. He unlocked the door and held it open for me. A small anteroom with a closet and bench, similar to a cloakroom. He pushed the next door open and I crossed the threshold.
My mouth gaped wide and my legs went completely jelly like. I never imagined I would see what I was seeing.
The perfect kinky dungeon.
Oh, I had seen rooms like this before, but not this elegant. Beautifully arranged and with tasteful furnishings even if they were for unusual purposes. I tracked my eyes round the room. There were no windows, however, the ceiling was high enough not to give the room a claustrophobic atmosphere. The ceiling had a metal grid of small bars horizontally attached and suspended down from it. There was the equipment hanging on the walls, the whipping bench based on the sawhorse design, a gigantic four poster bed, the padded fucking table with rounded edges, the polished St Andrews wooden cross by the far wall, low level chests of drawers and the velvet divan in the centre of the room. It was all there, the complete set up.
He was looking attentively at me, gauging my reaction.
I turned to face him and my face remained fixed in an expression of amazement. The door had shut behind him.
“Yes, you see I am the master of this house in more than one way.”
My ears pricked up at the tone of his voice. Jason looked so cool and very dominating to me - why had I not seen this before?
No smile. His face was not giving any emotion away. “And I know I’m looking at my secret sub.”
He knew all along! How long had he known?
“Gone on, babe, have good look round.”
Chapter 7
I touched with my fingertips, my nervousness gone. I was buzzing with reawakening desires. I opened a drawer in the chest and its contents were neatly arranged in foam moulding, clean and pristine. Jason was leaning against the wall following me with his eyes and I knew he could sense my excitement. The hooks on the wall held an extensive range of whips, canes and straps, some look vicious. The poster bed had no canopy or drapes, although I could see a multitude of rings and hooks attached to it. The sheets were a pale crimson red. The cross looked intimidating and the cool wood was smooth to touch. The padded sawhorse bench had black leather on top and its legs had cuffs attached at the base. I did not touch it, shying away from it. Glancing to Jason I wondered if he had noticed my reticence.
All the furniture looked custom made for him and expensive, not the handmade rubbish I had been tied to in the past. On one wall there was a smoked glass door, peering through it, I saw a large bathroom with white tiled floor and black tiled walls. The main room smelt clean and faintly perfumed. No evidence of the familiar aroma of stale body sweat that I would expect. I turned to Jason who had not moved.
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t tell me before? You’ve had this... this... lair tucked away all this time. I’ve been dreading you finding out about me,” I was exasperated all of a sudden.
“You like my playspace then. Come let’s go to my study and talk. Honesty now,” he opened the door and took my hand.
Sitting in two opposing armchairs, we faced each other. Bizarre fantasies rush through my head, visions of myself tied down or prostrate on the floor before him. I was desperate for him to take me there and then, just knowing what he was and what it meant to me. Was that what he wanted from me? His hushed but clear voice brought me back to earth.
“I’ve been a dominant for ten years,” Jason started his story. “I’m wealthy, therefore it’s easy to keep quiet about my lifestyle. Money buys silence and privacy. I’m a member of an exclusive club and we only use the most vetted submissives. They are very obliging, however they are shared and I would prefer monogamy. Sometimes I’ve acquired my own subs or used escort agencies for longer term routine arrangements and occasionally I’ve tried conventional relationships but none of them last long. Now I want to settle down, have a long-term relationship with a partner who will meet my particular requirements. Therefore I started to make enquiries.”
He looked directly at me and I could not hold his gaze, I felt much more comfortable looking at my feet.
“Your name was one I heard on the grapevine, but you were, I think, in a relationship so I backed off. I tried a couple of others but they were uninteresting out of bed, they went their way quickly. Then I was in a HR meeting and your name cropped up as a potential intern. I don’t usually bother with such trivial appointments. I checked out your background and decided I would break my rules. You’ve done well at your job, whatever happens, you’ll always get a good testimonial from me.”
Why did he need to set my mind at rest?
He continued as I put aside my doubts. “I decided to go for the vanilla approach, I wanted to get to know you without the Dom/sub thing interfering. I didn’t want to scare you off, even though you’ve done stuff before.”
I fidgeted a bit. Where was he going to take me?
“You impressed me, your work, demeanour, discretion and above all your fucking.” He reached forward and touched my knee. “You’re really hot in bed, Gem.” He tipped my face up making me look into his incredible blue eyes.
“You’re not bad yourself, Jason,” I tempted a smile back at him, my voice mocking slightly.
He frowned for a moment, and then recovered his composure.
“So I have a proposal. I want to go the full thing with you. You will be my submissive and I will be your dominant. We’ll try it out over a few weekends.”
I gasped. He wanted me as his submissive! The nature of the conversation was becoming better by the minute.
Jason’s stern face brought me back down to earth.
“However, there is one thing I need to know from you. Why did you leave your job and everything? You’ve not been seen in any clubs for months. What happened, Gem? Why have you been celibate? The gossip is you had a bad master.”
I did not know how he knew all about my previous relationship but he was close to the truth and I needed to relieve myself of all my secrets. They were hindering my ability to progress further with Jason.
“Yes you’re right about me. I’ve always been submissive, at least in handing over control for sex. Couldn’t cope at university with all those immature idiots. I found it difficult to relax and be myself with men. The best relationships were with the controlling types, not in a freaky way, just in bed department. Letting someone direct me, emotionally and physically, gave me the confidence and escapism that I lacked using my own initiative. Eventually came the kinky side, the thrill of being tied up or spanked.”
I shut my eyes for a moment as I drifted back in time. An image of my younger naive self-materialised and I saw how much I had changed in those few years.
“I got into the play easily. I had been lucky with my first master. He
was very kind and quite old for me. He showed me the basics. How to do scenes and built me up gradually. He instilled in me the obedience and desire to please others. I learnt a lot about myself from him. The dynamics of submission. The power exchange and connection with the dominant. I immediately felt an energy with him, even though I wasn’t in love. The simplest non-sexual acts became erotic and enticing. Couldn’t ask for a better start. Then he wanted me to move on, he suggested I needed younger men. They had different needs he told me, more adventurous, modern. So I started to swap and moved about. Some were just one scene tricks in clubs or I went to the doms’ houses for a few hours in the evening. Others, well, four of them were serious and longer term relationships. Then he came and it all went wrong.”
I stopped and looked at Jason.
He was listening intently, one leg resting over the other with a finger on his lips - a shrink like pose I thought.
“OK, Gemma, go on. You’re doing alright,” he said encouragingly.
“He was real nice at first. A kind of gentle giant. Great sex,” I paused, but Jason was not perturbed by this confession. “Kind of romantic at the beginning. Odd traditional quirks about him I failed to pick up on. He didn’t do anal sex - said it was for queers and he hated gays. We would argue about women’s rights, you know, women should stay at home to look after their men. All the same, I was enticed by him, became blasé and my judgement suffered. Then he got possessive, not just when we’re together. Phone calls, emails, constantly checking up on me. He was unpleasantly demanding, wanting me available 24/7, which I wasn’t prepared to do.”
Recounting that night was so difficult, the nausea rose in my mouth, there was a sensation of panic building in me. If Jason had not been sitting there I would be resisting those images and forcing my memories into their cubby hole, their little hiding place at the back of my mind. Every time I had tried to recall the dreadful man, I had disengaged, scribbled over his face with my mental black marker pen. Everything had to be forgotten or at best distorted into a bearable memory. Jason was forcing me to reconstruct a night in my life I had spent months ignoring and dissociating my rational, sane psyche from recalling. I had to do this, start to remember and deal with my horrors. I had to trust Jason to help me not go crazy. I could so easily go mad.
