Submission in Seattle

by Jack Quaiz

  Kristina knew that she was just one woman among many in the unusual life of Howard Cole, but she didn’t mind. Her world felt complete. She was deliciously satisfied and quite proud at having taken twenty five strokes of the terrible cane. She left his house smiling, feeling the sexy soreness in her buttocks and vagina. With any luck, she thought, she would be reminded of her caning for two or three days as she sat in her boring office cubicle. Her breasts bounced a bit as she got behind the wheel and her sore nipples peaked, reminding her of other pleasures.

  She drove along the conservative Sunday morning streets, observing the ordinary people living their ordinary lives. “If they only knew...” she speculated. She grinned at the thought of the secret she carried inside and wondered how long it would be until she needed to contact him again.

  As he watched her go, Cole felt strangely alone. He was pleased that Krissy believed she had taken the full twenty five strokes, when he had actually stopped at nineteen. The little psychological games were all part of the service. It had taken him years of trial and error to learn how to weave a woman’s fantasy into a practical reality. He played the role well, very well, but he knew there must be more.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Howard Cole placed his glass of Willamette valley pinot noir on the desk next to the computer and looked around the expensively furnished home office to clear his mind. As was his nightly custom, he powered up his computer to check his email. He grinned slightly as he recalled his session with Krissy the previous week. He thought briefly about how much more interesting his life had become in the years since he had discovered organized BDSM and later, the internet.

  “Life certainly has its surprises,” he said before taking a sip from the one glass of wine he allowed himself.

  While he waited for the computer to complete the logon and download procedure, he recalled the unlikely chain of events that led to his unusual lifestyle.

  From his elegant home in a heavily forested suburb of Seattle, Cole reached out into the shadowy world of those who searched for satisfaction via the internet. His occupation as a patent broker allowed him ample time to pursue his true love, the sexual domination of women.

  He enjoyed being his own boss and was usually able to set his own hours. His clients were major universities and small research companies that needed to sell their patented ideas to various industries. They usually met with him at his office in Bellevue where he shared a receptionist and secretarial staff with four other businessmen. None of them had the slightest understanding of his unusual sexual tastes.

  Most of the businessmen in his circle of friends brought their wives or girlfriends to business related functions. Cole usually showed up alone, which caused some speculation that he might be gay. In reality, he simply did not want to mix his sex life with his work, for obvious reasons.

  He remembered that on the rare occasions when he brought a woman friend, his colleagues and their wives would spend the next few days trying to figure out what gave the woman such a mysterious air of sexuality. Ill equipped to understand sexual submissiveness, they usually decided it was something mundane, like her clothing or perfume.

  He had no idea what a strange direction his life would take when he graduated from a Southern California law school in his late twenties with a profound distrust of the adversarial legal system. During his final year of school, he interned at a law firm specializing in criminal defense and other trial work. The things he saw there convinced him that he could never participate in the courtroom games that his classmates loved. That was also when his wife announced that he wasn’t the kind of man she wanted to be married to and demanded a divorce. Shortly thereafter, he discovered a talent for patent law and never looked back. According to his estimate, he could retire at age fifty and live very nicely for the rest of his life.

  When the monitor finally displayed the list of incoming email, he snapped back from his self-analysis and quickly focused on the messages.

  Ah, three responses tonight, he noted. They were replies to the personal ads that he had placed systematically on various websites and newsgroups. Each of his ads was slightly different, but they all contained basically the same message.

  Cole described himself in the ads as a professional dominant for women only. Although the ads didn’t mention it, his fee was negotiable. It would usually depend on what the customer could afford. He didn’t need the money, but it helped establish a very important boundary. It also created an atmosphere that allowed for some intensely hot play sessions.

  When he first considered this idea, he was told by his friends from the Seattle SM scene that there was no such thing as a professional male dominant, unless you wanted to dominate men, of course. It was a simple case of supply and demand in the sex industry. The conventional wisdom also said that most, if not all, submissive women were looking for a long term relationship. After some research and several experiments in advertising, he discovered that there was a small, but significant market for his services. Not enough to make a living, which he didn’t need anyway, but enough to keep him busy with interesting new women.

  Once he had worked out the system, there was a slow, but steady stream of women who answered his internet ads. Most of them lived too far away, didn’t have the money to travel or were just too frightened to meet with a stranger for such an intimate and dangerous activity. Cole gently discouraged many others who did not meet his personal standards for physical appearance or intelligence. About two or three times a year, he would arrange to meet with a new correspondent who seemed to be a good potential customer. In the back of his mind was always the possibility that he might meet a woman who could become his permanent partner.

  He discovered that many submissive women didn’t feel like they could really give up control to a man who was going to be a major part of their lives. A professional dominant, on the other hand, could do his job and vanish. The woman could carry on safely with her normal life, keeping only the treasured memories of her submissive sexual experience.

  Many of the women he met were in situations that prevented them from seeking the kind of relationship they truly desired. Perhaps they were married and unable to leave. Perhaps their career or public image was at risk. Others wished to safely learn about their submissive feelings. It seemed that each woman had her own unique reason for seeking his services.

  He dropped out of the Seattle SM scene when he realized that he wasn’t finding what he needed there. By avoiding public gatherings of the SM community, it was also less likely that his secret life would become known to his vanilla friends and colleagues.

  He would still occasionally meet his kinky friends at Beyond the Edge Cafe, the unofficial meeting place of the leather community. Only a few of his most trusted scene friends knew of his second occupation and they would occasionally send him a woman who needed his services.

  A meeting of the local SM club had to be something special for him to attend these days. He might go if a nationally known figure was speaking. Laura Antoniou had been at the last one and Cole had enjoyed it greatly. He sat in the back and waved politely at old friends who recognized him. After the meeting, instead of joining the milling crowd of people eager to meet potential play partners, he waited only long enough for Laura to autograph a set of her books for him. Then he quietly disappeared from the room.

  Now, staring intently at the computer monitor, he quickly read and eliminated all three of the responses. Not my type, he sighed. He sent each of them a polite reply telling them that he was currently unavailable. Then he answered a two day old email from a previous customer who wanted to schedule another session. Their first two sessions had been in her home, but this time she was interested in being “kidnapped” and taken away to be ravished by Cole.

  He quickly typed an email message:

  “Dear Victoria,

  I would be pleased to provide you with a kidnapping scene on Sunday the 18th. The usual rules will apply, except that this time I will not specify a fee. After
you have had a few days to think about the experience, simply send me whatever amount you feel is appropriate.

  I will need the full details of your schedule that day. Make certain that you are available until at least 10 PM.”

  Cole sent the message and shut down the computer.

  He thought about the particular fondness he had for Victoria. It wasn’t just the fact that she had a very sexy, mature body. Under her too perfect exterior and snobbish attitude was a little girl who needed to be dominated. He also had a great deal of respect for her. Victoria wasn’t a thrill seeking young SM player like Kristina. She was the mature female of the species, experienced and formidable.

  Too bad her obsession with her looks and her society lifestyle were so annoying, he thought. Still, she had responded very nicely during their sessions and he felt like there was potential for more good play. Unlike some of his customers, she didn’t seem to mind marks and bruises, as long as they could be covered by her clothing. In fact, she had indicated that she would like it a lot rougher if possible. Cole grinned at the thought.

  At that moment, in the elegant ladies' room of a historic hotel in downtown Seattle, Victoria Windham-Jenkins checked her make up for the fourth time. She was forty two years old, but looked like she was thirty. “A young thirty,” she said to herself as she reshaped the outline of her slightly too bright lipstick. It made her feel better after her exchange of insults with a snobbish couple in the grand dining room a few minutes earlier.

  She was aware that both her mood and her behavior had been gradually deteriorating in recent weeks. I’m getting to be such a bitch, she thought, it reminds me of that weird movie I watched last week. What was that Navajo word for life-out-of-balance? Koyaanisqatsi or something?

  She tried to remember exactly how long it had been since her last session with Howard Cole. Was it four months ago or five, she wondered? Her secretary had jokingly pointed out one of Cole’s internet ads last year and Victoria had since experienced two successful sessions with the professional dominant.

  Victoria’s wealthy husband had died a decade before, leaving her with a company that controlled two hundred thousand acres of prime timber land and two world class paper mills. There was more money than she could possibly spend. She still missed the old bastard, though. He was so deliciously rough and he always seemed to know when she needed it. She constantly tested him and she could still remember how his big hand would bruise her bare bottom when she pushed him too far. Actually, she thought, I could use a little bit of that right now.

  Although she was technically the Chairman of the Board, her presence was rarely required at company headquarters. A veritable army of managers and accountants took care of things quite nicely without her. When she was not attending society functions she spent her time in the gym and at various health spas being wrapped in odd substances guaranteed to preserve one’s youthful skin tone. As yet, she had avoided the plastic surgeon. It was a matter of pride, which she had in abundance.

  She paid a small fortune to keep a hairdresser on call at all times to maintain her elaborate bleached blonde hairstyle. She copied it from Farrah Fawcett almost twenty years ago, but she thought of it as her trademark and would never consider changing it. Looking in the mirror one last time, she admired her bright green eyes, then patted her hair and smoothed the low cut velvet gown around her womanly curves.

  As she left the ladies' room, she cheered herself with the thought that men were always in plentiful supply. They would compete among themselves to see who could serve her most sincerely. She remembered a recent art gallery opening, where she had counted four attractive men of various ages who swarmed around her offering flutes of champagne, crab cocktails and radishes that were carved into perfect little flowers.

  To intimidate the other women that night, she had worn a tight red evening dress that displayed her large breasts and narrow waist. That sexy Italian artist told me I looked like Marilyn Monroe, she recalled with a smug little smile. She remembered how she took the lucky fellow home with her that night and discarded him the next morning as if he were an empty wine bottle.

  Her memories ended as she returned to the party and surveyed the crowd. Tonight she had her eye on a handsome young doctor. She watched him show a mouth full of perfect white teeth when he grinned at a joke. “He’ll do nicely,” she thought while moving in for the kill and trying unsuccessfully to suppress a shark-like grin. The result was never in doubt. They left the party early and her chauffeur drove them both to her place. The poor doctor was used and sent home by midnight.

  Afterwards lying alone in her gigantic bed, she thought of her late husband, Eric, and wished that he was there to give her what she really needed. Fast and easy sex was better than nothing, she figured, but she could still feel a tension within her that would be impossible to describe to anyone else. She reflected briefly on her arrangement with Howard Cole and thought, I guess I do have something to look forward to, if I can just hold out till next week.

  When Victoria awoke the next Sunday morning, she remembered that she had given the housekeeper the day off. She was alone in her very large house. It had twenty three rooms, an outdoor swimming pool that was of little use in Seattle, and a smaller house for the servants. Cole hadn’t told her when she would be kidnapped, but since he had asked her where she would go and when, she expected it to happen when she left the house to have lunch at her favorite Sunday restaurant. She told her driver to take the day off, so she would be free to go out alone.

  After a very light breakfast, she got into the shower and started to shave. She always shaved her labia and left just a little triangle of hair above. After shaving, she spent several minutes stroking herself and thinking about what might happen to her later that day. She was reasonably certain that Cole had understood her requests for rougher play. Just as she was on the verge of coming, she stopped the erotic self-stimulation in order to leave herself with a nice edge. “Oooh, gotta stop now," she said to herself.

  Having a hair stylist on call, she normally did not wash her own hair. Unfortunately, the stylist was not available today and she resigned herself to being without her perfect hairstyle until tomorrow. It’s going to get messed up anyway, she hoped. Reaching for the shampoo, she proceeded to wash her long blonde hair. It pleased her to see that she remembered how.

  With her eyes tightly closed, she put her head under the shower stream and rinsed out the floral scented shampoo. Without warning, a strong arm reached past the frilly shower curtain and wrapped around her waist. She was lifted completely out of the tub and a black cloth bag was placed over her head before she could identify the intruder. She hoped it was Cole, but she wasn’t expecting him for a few more hours. With her heart pounding, she said meekly, “Howard, is that you?”

  The intruder was in the process of pulling her arms behind her back and snapping a pair of handcuffs on her wrists. A muffled voice said simply, “Shut up, Bitch!” It didn’t sound at all like Howard. She was completely terror-stricken.

  Still damp from the shower, naked, handcuffed and shivering with fear, she was forced to walk through the house to the garage. The intruder lifted her into a vehicle that seemed to be a van of some sort and pushed her down onto the carpeted floor. He strapped her down firmly to the floor with several wide nylon straps that felt like rough seat belts, then covered her with a thick, soft quilt. She was unable to move or see, but she heard someone get into the driver’s seat. Then the garage door opened and the van drove out.

  When her panic had subsided a bit, she called out to the driver, “Who are you, where are you taking me?” He ignored her completely.

  Oh God, I’ve really been kidnapped! she thought in panic. Her corporate security department had warned her that this was a possibility and now it had happened. She felt very frightened, but at least it was warm beneath the quilt, which was apparently filled with goose down. Maybe they’ll just keep me for a few days until the ransom is paid. I certainly have enough money for that, she
mused.

  The pressure of the tight straps and the gentle rocking movement of the vehicle gradually calmed her and created a warm submissive feeling. Somehow the feeling combined with her fear and produced a subtle erotic aura. Blinded by the cloth bag and completely immobile, there wasn’t much to do but relax.

  After a long time, the van seemed to drive into another garage and she heard the electric rumbling as the door closed. The unseen driver opened the side door of the van and released the straps. With upward pressure on her cuffed wrists behind her back, he forced her to walk into a house and down a flight of stairs. She thought she was in a basement, but it was quite warm and the floor felt like smooth varnished wood. There was a slight smell of perfume, or was it incense?

  Still without a word, the man pushed her face down onto a firm bed and removed the cloth bag from her head. Before she could turn to look at him, he placed a padded leather blindfold over her eyes that was held in place with a strong elastic band. She was surprised when he took a minute to comb out her damp hair and dry it with a towel. The touch of the comb felt very intimate. Damn, I’m getting turned on, she realized.