Story of L

by Debra Hyde

  Rattled, Liv beelined to her kitchen, grabbed her cup of tea, and gulped its contents, hoping a quick surge of caffeine would fire up her brain power.

  She was going to need it.

  Hours later, possible excuses still eluded her, but it hardly mattered. Her workday underway, Liv had her geologic landscape class at the Connecticut River, exploring remnants of the Early Jurassic via a bevy of dinosaur tracks and plant and fish fossils. As they came across their first find, she advised them to take good field notes and pictures and warned them against using supplemental materials after the fact.

  “I know them all,” she told them, “and I'll know if you use them. I want your words, your observations, not theirs.”

  The number of digital cameras and high-end cell phones that emerged from backpacks and back pockets amused Liv. During her undergraduate years, a cell phone was a dreamed-of luxury. So were digital cameras.

  Yet she could not fault her students for their eagerness. A perfect autumn day lay before them, the air crisp and invigorating, the sky sunny and cloudless. Water lapped upon the river bank while a slight breeze rustled overhead. Nature's beautiful ambiance, complete with the first hint of color in the maples—late compared to decades ago, if the Weirs were to be believed.

  Liv loved the Connecticut River, its simple beauty unchanged by time. What had her father told her over a fishing pole one summer's night? Remember where the river is and you'll never be lost. His advice had proven itself true through the years. If Liv knew where she was in relation to the river, she never lacked for direction. The river was her compass and her comfort.

  Pencils scribbled, shutters clicked. Once, a phone rang, prompting Liv to tell everyone to mute them. But otherwise the students sketched and measured and made field notes, an abbreviated exercise in rose diagramming that, by plotting compass bearings and dinosaur tracks, revealed the herding patterns in theropods. Predictably, and to Liv's ongoing gratification, the results pointed the students’ childlike enthusiasm away from the tracks of T. rex's direct ancestor and toward a far more erudite understanding of prehistoric life. Academically, she lived for moments like this.

  Yet it always represented a conclusion and the thrill faded at exercise's end. Her mind wandering as she drove the school van back to campus, she turned to the memories of aromas, first of early autumn like the hearty soil readying for a new layer of seasonal debris, duckweed rotting in the river, the fading scent of honeysuckle. But such earthiness led to other memories—the musk of the leather hood, that of her own body, aroused, of lube and latex. And then, that curious scent, that of a certain perfume.

  Abruptly, an idea spiked through her, a thought so blistering that her patience dissolved as if a corrosive acid had hit it. That scent. She wanted it, its seductive intrigue, its allure and all-consuming envelope.

  And I want to carry it with me always.

  * * * *

  But Liv recoiled at the Cabochard she found at the downtown perfumery. Where was its leather chypre? Its earthy notes? This scent—this pretender!—reeked citrus. It barely hinted at the darkness she remembered.

  Liv said as much to the man behind the counter. “That's not the scent I remember.”

  The man nodded sympathetically. “It was reorchestrated some time ago. The older version was better,” he agreed. “Redolent.”

  Liv pushed the sample strip back at the merchant. “It won't do.”

  Her disappointment apparent, the merchant sighed and offered some advice. “I'm shooting myself in the foot here, but if you want the vintage version, try an online auction.”

  Liv grinned. “That advice is worth its weight in gold. Well, in gift cards.”

  She bought a $30.00 gift card, matching the horribly modernized eau de toilette price. As she made to leave, the man politely called after her.

  “You embody it, you know.”

  Liv turned back, her hand on the door. “What?”

  “You match its meaning perfectly,” he claimed. “Cabochard.”

  Baffled, her brow furrowed, Liv said nothing. The man smiled meekly. Almost embarrassed to reveal an explanation.

  “Headstrong. Cabochard translates to headstrong.”

  Liv let a grin overtake her. “No kidding,” she said as she opened the door and the noise of the street overtook her. Stepping into it, she laughed. No, she wasn't headstrong. Maybe preoccupied, but headstrong? No, no way.

  But she knew who was.

  In the course of her adult years, Liv had learned how to scratch many an itch, but one that had eluded her was the restlessness of a Saturday night. Born of the teenage need to escape the confines of one's parents and their content complacency, then later reinforced by weekend parties at college, this vague restlessness still visited Liv on occasion. Nebulous but nagging, it often sent her in search of a compatible scratch, and, already consumed with thoughts of Cassandra, Liv returned to Hippolyte's, hoping that God only knew what might make her feel better.

  It wasn't the void at work. Like a hibernating Balrog, that force remained dormant and satisfied. Where the Balrog raged dark and elemental, this itch seemed little more than a minor imp, ephemeral yet energetic More mischief than mayhem, it seemed a thing born of boredom and a flailing attention span. Tonight, Liv had both.

  To her surprise, Liv found Hippolyte's subdued and understated upon her late arrival. She had expected to find raucous and rambunctious play underway, but the place was sparse with women. Even Quinn and Tara were absent. Liv's hopes faltered. Her itch might not find its scratch tonight.

  She resigned herself to grabbing a snack and drink and headed for the buffet when a body separated itself from a small cluster of people. Reese! And bearing a smirk that seemed to suggest that he knew she'd come to Hippolyte's tonight.

  “Good,” he declared. “You're finally here.”

  Liv bristled at his confident air yet she found herself yielding to it in the same breath. Whatever game he intended, Liv would be its quarry.

  “Cassandra?” she whispered, already feeling deferential.

  “In absentia, I'm afraid.” His smirk grew. “But she's quite pleased with you, so much so that she sent me to reward you.”

  “Reward?” Liv blinked. Yielding had dumbfounded her.

  “Yes,” Reese cooed seductively. He stepped close enough to run his finger along her cheek. Staring into her eyes, he asked, “Do you consent?”

  The tone in Reese's voice conveyed that her future depended on her answer, that any reluctant qualm might well spell the end of Cassandra's interest in her. If she wanted to be Cassandra's darling, then she'd have to steel her courage and accept Reese's offer. She leveled an equally strong stare at him and answered.

  “Yes.”

  He grinned and grabbed her by the hair. He pulled her to him with a patently satisfied “Good.”

  Whatever servile position he assumed as Cassandra's aide, he was thoroughly dominant in Liv's presence. He dragged her to a flogging post, pushed her back-first against it. Pressing against her, pinning her, he grabbed her wrists and forced them over her head, lacing them into a pair of leather gloves that dangled from above. Liv did not resist. If anything, she yielded to the press of his body against her and indulgently reveled in the sensation.

  Reese was a means to an end. Connecting with him meant connecting to Cassandra and, flooded with desperate desire, Liv moaned in unapologetic and abject longing. Chuckling, Reese had no problem with her plight. If anything, he enjoyed it. His hand touched her throat, making her flinch once, then again as it traveled through the valley of her breasts. She shivered as he continued down her torso and stopped at the waistband of her pants. Then both hands grabbed the open collar of her shirt. “You'll be compensated for this,” he said.

  He pulled, ripping her shirt open and sending buttons popping and flying. He exposed her, then clucked appreciatively at her braless breasts. Liv felt like prey before his predatory stare. He grabbed a breast, kneaded it roughly and pinching its hardening nipple
before succinctly abandoning it for the zipper of her pants.

  Awash in this cruel choreography, Liv squirmed, ready for more. Reese's swift moves inflamed her and, aching, she arched toward him. “Please,” she begged. “Oh God, please!”

  Another dominant might slow his pace in the face of her hurried desperation, preferring a slow, teasing torment to keep her suffering, but Reese merely laughed at her and tugged at her pants. As soon as he had them at her knees, he shoved his hands between her legs. Fingers at her labia, his palm against the flat of her mons, he plied her with humiliation.

  “You're swollen, wet, like I've been teasing you for an hour. Big, puffy lips—and I've barely touched you.”

  Liv moaned, at once embarrassed and excited.

  “Sluts are like that,” he observed. “Does that make you a slut?”

  Liv failed to answer. He shoved a finger into her, a savage intrusion.

  “Does it?” he demanded.

  Liv gaped like a fish out of water. Floundering, she forced an answer.

  “I—I don't know!”

  “You don't know?”

  Reese crammed a second finger into her, then pushed deep, his palm pulling away from her mons to support the spear of his hand. Liv felt skewered, a victim upon an enemy's pike. She wilted upon it, but an excruciating pain rocked her when her cervix struck his fingers. Crying out, she stiffened, trying to avoid repeated contact.

  “Are you a slut?” Reese rephrased his question but not its demand. “Tell me!”

  Frustrated and near tears, Liv struggled for a suitable answer. A slight shift from Reese's hand quaked through her. A barrier broke, the answer before her in its debris.

  “I am what you decide I am,” she bellowed.

  “‘I am what Cassandra decides I am,’” Reese corrected.

  Choking back tears, Liv whimpered and repeated Reese's words, bleating them in a voice meek and compromised.

  Satisfied, Reese pulled his fingers from her. He cupped her breast, its nipple between his fingers while his other hand squeezed the full flesh of her cunt.

  “This will please Cassandra.”

  He rubbed back and forth against her until her hips answered in kind and a moan escaped her lips. Seeing her ripeness, he trailed his fingers to her clit, then set to work on her. His rhythm was sure, steady, as insistent as his questions had been. Liv half-expected him to proceed with the quiet, deep focus a brilliant dominant, but he surprised her with an unexpected litany.

  “If you were mine,” he murmured, “all mine, I'd play with that cunt of yours until you screamed with exhaustion. I'd put clamps to it…

  “String weights from it…

  “I'd whip it…

  “Shove things in it.”

  Liv moaned. His words made an object of her, something to be used, a toy to his perverse whimsy.

  “I'd bend you over, strap one on, and fuck the living daylights out of you. Cunt and ass. Ass and cunt.”

  Reese pulled her nipple taut, sending a fierce flare of sensation through Liv. Feeling it, aching for his every word to come true, Liv shuddered.

  “You're close, aren't you?”

  Hard-edged, the question wasn't rhetorical. Remembering the spear of his hand and the pain it caused, Liv barked.

  “Yes! Yes, I'm close!”

  The admission propelled her even higher. Aware, Reese rubbed faster.

  “You'll come.”

  The words were flat, matter-of-fact, all statement and no command. And so certain in their voice that Liv could not disagree. She arched her back, reached for the ecstasy of release, and fulfilled the destiny of those words.

  Liv gasped as her orgasm punched through her and sent her rolling. Raw, wild, it was a beast bellowing, a monster marauding, and its roar shocked Liv as it tore from her throat and screamed into the open. However primal and primitive, its appearance was limited in lifespan. It faded from monster to mere imp, too soon depleted of its energy. Liv sagged at the flogging post, spent.

  Reward delivered, Reese repeated his single assurance, “This will please Cassandra,” and left Liv on the post like so much wash left out on the line. Sweat dripping from her, Liv felt every bit the object—and all the closer to Cassandra for it.

  He'd left her there, dangling and on display, her body flush with sated arousal, for all to see. Liv floated in sheer objectification, a blotter to the ink of her endorphins, her high so elevated that it would keep her body and her mind at peace for days after. Yet she did not become wholly aware of it until someone lowered her arms, helped her to the floor, and removed the mittens. There, the glorious euphoria briefly overtook her, then dissipated. Too soon, Liv felt grounded, sober, and if not for the abiding respect she always felt for a capable top post-scene, she would've mourned its quick passing.

  Liv rose, hiked her pants back into place, the drama of seizure and force that Reese had given her a memory freshly imprinted in her mind. She shivered, just thinking about it. If life under Cassandra's thumb was going to be like that, only more so, then Liv wanted nothing else. She clutched her torn shirt and, reclaiming her body as her own, left the playroom for the coat room.

  A misnomer, the coat room was really a room sizable enough for women to stash their outerwear and toy bags and, unlike a formal coat room, it forswore the coat check for the honor system. Tonight, it was crowded with perv paraphernalia packed in everything from duffel bags to wheeling suitcases. Liv, by comparison, had traveled light. She had stashed nothing more than a maroon fleece jacket and her leather backpack, yet when she found her belongings, her breath caught in her throat.

  A blouse sat upon her backpack. And atop it, another envelope.

  Liv's heart raced. She reached for it, hand trembling. Taking it, she brought it to her face and inhaled. That effulgent fragrance met her—headstrong! Reese's previous instructions echoed in her mind. Open it at home, not a moment before. She squirreled the envelope into an outer pouch of her backpack, hoping out of sight would mean out of mind enough for her to drive home.

  But when she slipped into the blouse Reese had left her, she felt the sway of submission flare again. The blouse was far more feminine than she preferred, scented too, yet she deferred, knowing Cassandra wanted it so.

  In fact, Cassandra had orchestrated the entire evening, hadn't she? However strong and competent his dominance, Reese was merely the conductor to Cassandra's extraordinary composition.

  Buttoning the blouse, Liv stepped before a floor-length mirror. The blouse draped beautifully. Its sleeves hung long on her arms and its length draped first from her shoulders, then gathered into numerous pleats from below her breasts in long vertical sweeps. Two parallel waistbands interrupted the pleats, one just above her waist, the other sitting on the mount of her hips. Two columns of buttons ran down an exceptionally wide lapel in double-breasted mimicry. Its grandeur was pure silk and practically shouted haute couture.

  Cassandra, it seemed, not only preferred the high-end but the high femme as well. Liv could not fault the woman's tastes—the blouse was flattering to her form—but Liv already felt herself fighting the urge to shrug off its cling. Femme had never been her natural default.

  Thank God it isn't frilly, she thought.

  But what if the blouse was a signal? What if it was Cassandra's way of telling her that she wanted a more femme Liv? Once, Liv would've declared it incompatible to her innate style and turned tail on such a demand. Now, remembering Cassandra's fearlessness, and wanting more of it, Liv wasn't so convinced. Still, she shrank at the thought of others spotting her en femme, knowing the uncomfortable roil of embarrassment would follow. And leave everyone gossiping.

  Liv pulled on her leather jacket, hefted her backpack onto her shoulders, and gave the mirror a final glance. The blouse did not stand out. Liv made her exit without incident, but unlocking her car, she came away from Reese's reward with a fuller sense of what submitting to Cassandra would mean.

  Cassandra's new note answered Liv's question; submission
would not be easy. And Reese was right: Cassandra would place difficult hurdles before her. She stared at the newest one, a demand that she remove all jewelry.

  Piercings included.

  The words provoked Liv to tears, a sudden and unexpected reaction. She cursed herself, knowing full well her reaction was a thing of a body and mind made weary by play. If only she had waited until morning to open the note… after a good night's sleep, she rued.

  Now she would rue sleep instead, worried that fatigue would exaggerate her vulnerability, conflate this weepy anxiety while she slept, and turn dreams into nightmares. Stripping naked, she climbed into bed and buried herself within its blankets and pillows. Closing her eyes, she cupped herself and, feeling the heft of rings that lay between her legs, tried to imagine what life would be like without them. What life would be like as a submissive.

  Liv's eyes shot open. Submissive? Suddenly she understood. I'd be submissive. Her hasty desire for Cassandra had clouded that fact, but now its impact was clear.

  Sleep came slowly to Liv after that, arriving only after she imagined Quinn, pliers in hand, pulling each ring open, its bead falling into Quinn's hand as she slipped it free of her labia. Nearly in slumber, Liv sighed, content at last.

  Liv slept like the dead and woke slow and slothlike, her torpor a numbness born of Cassandra's command. She would comply; that was a given. But what slowed Liv in the morning light of autumn's first crisp day was the subject of submission itself. How often had she longed for the command of a strong, unhesitating woman? Years, she decided as she put a mug of water in her microwave. How often had she imagined herself an all-giving slave to a haughty voice and wielding arm? Countless times, she admitted as she put two tea bags to steep in the mug's hot water. Yet how often had she ever given herself over to anyone even remotely capable of meeting her fantasies? Never. Nada. Zip.

  You fraud!

  The word blasted across her thoughts, but Liv knew an intrusive thought when she saw it and squashed it immediately.