RecipeforSubmission

by Sindra van Yssel

  She looked at him oddly for a moment. “Take me with you?”

  “Home?”

  “Yes.”

  It wasn’t as if he’d never taken someone from the club to his house before. For all the wildness that went on at Carpe Noctem, one could have more fun in private. He wasn’t sure why taking Kyra to his house seemed like a big deal. He wasn’t worried about her being a stalker. The look of indecision he’d seen on her face before she noticed him gave him a sense of comfort there. So what’s my hang-up? He trusted his instincts, though. Mostly. “You know it’s not safe to go home with strange men. We barely know one another, really.”

  “I’m not entirely sure it’s safe walking these streets by myself either. Or parking my car in this neighborhood. Heck, crossing the street anywhere is pretty dangerous, driving is an invitation to death, and flying isn’t much better.” She shrugged. “I’m willing to take this particular risk.”

  “An invitation to death?”

  “Perhaps I was being overdramatic.”

  “It sounds like the title to a book.”

  “It does. It is.”

  He laughed. “Sweet.” He could offer to take her back to the club, if he really didn’t want her in his home. He could simply tell her they were going to the club, that might work. Might scare her off too. He wanted to have her again, to hear her breath grow heavy and feel her pulse quicken. Home was the right place for that.

  He wanted to see her taste his food.

  He blinked. He took his dates to Ryan’s and let Pierre do the cooking, usually. He always enjoyed it when a woman chose to eat something that was his invention rather than Pierre’s, but he didn’t make a habit of telling them. Tell a woman he could cook gourmet food and they’d want to set up a very different arrangement than an occasional kinky date. So as good an angle as it was for seduction, he’d always forgone it. But then, he’d already told her he was going home to cook. He supposed most people didn’t do that at nearly ten in the evening.

  “Home then?” she asked hopefully, interrupting his thoughts.

  He was going to say no.

  “Please?” she added.

  Fuck. He couldn’t help himself. “That’s ‘please, Sir’.”

  She hesitated a moment. “Please, Sir?” Some submissives would have averted their eyes with those words, but she looked straight into his. And reached up and unbuttoned the top button of her blouse, revealing a hint of cleavage. It wasn’t the slightest bit indecent, and he could walk past a woman on the street displaying more flesh without even taking a second look. But his heart sped up. He took a deep breath.

  I am so screwed.

  “My car is this way.” He steered her into a turn and started walking toward Belsan Street again. The side of her breast bumped against his arm and set his pulse racing again.

  “Yes Sir.”

  “Are you doing research again?”

  She blinked. The question had caught her off guard, which had been his intention. She had been wrapping him around her little finger and he didn’t like that one bit.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “Just research.”

  Her walking got more stiff and her breast didn’t brush against him again. Had she really come down to repay him for the orgasm he’d given her before? That story he didn’t buy. Research, now that was plausible. Except that from the look on her face she’d forgotten it until he brought it up.

  But she clung to him tightly when they turned down Belsan Street. He steered her around a knocked-over trash can.

  “This isn’t a very safe neighborhood,” Kyra said.

  “It’s not bad, but no, I wouldn’t want to go walking long distances if I was a single woman. And that pausing and looking back and forth bit you were doing definitely makes you look like a target. These people aren’t very well off, but there’s not that much crime. It’s well patrolled—a couple of the cops poke their nose into Carpe Noctem now and then.”

  “Does that bother people?”

  Drew shrugged. “Some, maybe. But it reminds people that what we’re doing is legal, even if society doesn’t approve of us, so Ken—that’s the owner—welcomes the police. And they’d come whether they were welcome or not, so being friendly would be the best policy anyway.”

  “Interesting.”

  He glanced at her but couldn’t get anything from her face. Research mode. It was a safe place for her to be, for both of them.

  He opened the door of his pickup. It was a climb to get into the front seat, and he gave her rear a boost to help her in.

  She frowned at him. “I could have made it.”

  “Sure.” He knew that. “But then I would have missed out on the chance to put my hand on your lovely ass.” He closed the door and walked around to the other side. He didn’t know whether he was flirting with her or trying to chase her away, but he knew he had a grin on his face when he got into the truck.

  “You always help ladies into your truck that way?”

  He started the engine. He wasn’t going to brag about his conquests, not to her. She said always, so he could tell the truth. “Nope.” He let in the clutch and eased his truck down the narrow alley.

  “You’re a sexist pig, aren’t you?”

  “Nah. I respect equal relationships, or ones where the women are in charge. I’ve got some good friends who are Dommes—that’s with an extra m and an e—and I couldn’t imagine them any other way, really. One thing I’ve learned, and you see it nice and clear if you hang around kinky folks, is that people aren’t all made to be any one way.”

  “But you like to be top dog.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah.”

  “Hmm.” She sat back and got that unreadable expression on her face. He glanced at her a couple of times after he finished negotiating the traffic circle he’d been in, but she didn’t get any more transparent. He was used to sensing the moods of the women he played with. He’d been accused of being psychic more than once. And he’d been able to read Kyra fine a week ago, in the club, but not now. He wasn’t sure he liked it, but it was certainly a challenge.

  What she had said the week before about the submissive being in control was true in a way. Usually Drew could pick up on things before his play partner voiced them. He watched and he listened, and then he gave out orders. But if he couldn’t manage to get Kyra to tell him what she wanted, and couldn’t get her to betray it with her gestures or her face, he’d have to guess. Or he’d have to do what he wanted, and hope it worked for her too.

  Chapter Four

  Kyra looked around the old house. Drew lived in the Kalorama neighborhood in a brownstone row house. Inside, the little irregularities of the plaster walls made the rooms look both softer and colder, which wasn’t a bad thing after a summer’s day. A black leather couch was the only thing that looked remotely kinky, and even that was an everyday item.

  She wasn’t precisely sure what she wanted. More information, sure. Whether it was for her book or because she found Drew fascinating, she hadn’t decided yet. Maybe both. She had the intention of presenting it to him as a simple proposition, to give him as much pleasure as he’d given her the week before so they could call it quits. She wasn’t sure she wanted to quit, yet. She had more research to do.

  She grinned.

  “You like something you see. Tell me.” His voice was soft but it was a demand. And he certainly hadn’t said please.

  “That picture. The landscape. It’s not what I expected.”

  “You thought that my walls would be full of bondage photographs or something?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I have a friend, one of the Dommes I mentioned earlier actually, who takes bondage photographs. Very artistic, actually. She does lovely things with light and shadow. There are a couple in the bedroom, if you’d like a look.” He nodded toward the stairs. “Second door on the right.”

  She smiled at him. “Is that where you want me? I thought you were going to cook.”

  “Did you have dinne
r?”

  “A salad.” It hadn’t been much, but she was trying to lose a few pounds and her evenings usually didn’t require her to have a lot of energy. And men usually liked to hear that women were trying to look better, as if it was all for them.

  “Is that all?” He looked dismayed. She’d seen colossal salads, loaded with meat and all sorts of fat and calories, but he seemed to assume the truth. He bent down and she tilted her face up for a kiss, but he moved right past that and kissed her neck, sucking too gently to leave a mark. Her neck tingled and she arched her back to press herself into his body. He nibbled his way to below her ear, and by that time the tingles stretched all the way to her core and she was feeling decidedly warm. He had wrapped his arm around her back, holding her to him. “Are you hungry?”

  She’d forgotten about her stomach, and it made a noise to remind her, which she hoped he couldn’t hear. She pitched her voice low and sultry. “Not for dinner, exactly.”

  He chuckled. “Your stomach gave you away. Go on and look at the photographs if you want to. For your research, of course. I have never left a woman’s needs unmet in this house, and I don’t intend to start now.”

  He let go of her and she barely kept her balance. Before she could say a word he’d turned and headed for the kitchen. Never left a woman’s needs unmet, indeed. And you turn and leave me like this?

  But she damned well wasn’t going to beg. She supposed going up and looking at his “artistic” bondage pics would be just the thing. It would be research, after all. And a little good-natured disgust would leave her less turned-on and more in the mood to just have food. Fine. She stomped up the stairs.

  The first door on the right was a bathroom. It wasn’t pristine but it was clean and it didn’t smell. Had he said second door? She wasn’t sure. She didn’t intend to go snooping. The second door was the bedroom. A queen-sized four-poster bed occupied the center of the room, with a black and tan duvet over it. He’s either a sprawler or he has company in that bed often enough to get a large one. A momentary jealousy washed over her but she pushed it away. I don’t have the right to judge. Maybe I wish my bed were filled more often. Clothes were piled in a large plastic basket in the corner, and the large oak dresser had a few drawers that were open an inch.

  She took a couple of steps in and looked around at the light blue wall. There were two framed black-and-white photographs. One was of a nude woman, in profile, reclining diagonally. She appeared to be lying on some stairs, although a tarp or sheet was crumpled under her. Her arms were stretched over her head and she looked relaxed. Comfortable, even. It took Kyra a moment to notice that a rope was wrapped around the woman’s wrists three times, binding them together.

  The second picture took her longer to figure out. At first it was only clear that there was a woman and a pier and some water, because the angle was so unusual that it took a moment to resolve the patterns of light and dark into objects. The woman was bending out over the water, her skirt billowing up and displaying her bare ass. Her hands were bound behind her—no, more accurately her arms were, as they were joined at the elbow in a way that didn’t look comfortable to Kyra at all. She wasn’t even sure she could get her elbows behind her like that. But nothing about the woman other than her arms indicated any sort of strain at all.

  She hadn’t expected pictures that needed to be stared at for a while. She’d figured either his idea of “tasteful” would be a centerfold spread or that the pictures would be tamer than a lingerie catalog. These pictures were neither. She found herself sitting on the bed, wondering how the women in them felt. She could only see the one face, and it was positively serene. Was that a pose, something present for the moment the shutter blinked and then gone again? She looked satisfied. Maybe she’d just been fucked. Maybe she knew she was about to be. Or perhaps she’d surrendered to the moment.

  Did she look like that after Drew had made her come in the club? Maybe, for a moment, before the heat rose in her cheeks and she felt she had to get out of there, had to get some fresh air. What would it have been like if she’d been able to bathe in the sensation?

  As a way of cooling off, this isn’t working. She breathed in. A lovely smell was wafting up the stairs, hinting at the sea and lemons and reminding her that she was hungry. She lay back on the bed for a moment to stretch and then stood. The sensitivity her skin had felt when he kissed her was still there, and now she was salivating at the idea of such good-smelling food. She used to joke she could go days without noticing her body except for the annoying demands that it made on her, insisting on sleeping and eating, stopping her from living in her world of words. Now she felt so aware of it she could barely think.

  She walked down the stairs. “One minute!” he called out. She found the dining table in a nook next to the living room. Where the bed was oversized, the table was small and round, made for no more than three to eat at. A blue and white tablecloth hung over it, and two plastic placemats were set out. One had the presidents on it, in sequence, the other a periodic table of the elements. She sat down in front of the presidents.

  The meal sure hadn’t taken him long to prepare. Maybe he was heating up a microwave dinner. Sometimes those smelled better than they tasted, as if the makers could have only one or the other and decided that smell was a better advertisement.

  He arrived a moment later with two blue delftware plates and placed them both in front of her. “Bon appétit, mademoiselle.”

  She thanked his retreating back as he bustled back to the kitchen. On the smaller of the two plates was a pile of couscous, fairly plain, with a few pine nuts and sprigs of something green in it. On the larger one something like steak, cut into flat strips and very rare, sat in a pool of off-white sauce. Little green rectangular flakes had been sprinkled on top of the meat. She wasn’t sure quite what she was supposed to do with it.

  He dropped off two plates like the ones in front of her on the periodic table, disappeared again, and reappeared with a bottle of white wine and two glasses.

  “Um, what is this?” It smelled like fish, looked like meat, and either way it was undercooked. It looked good and smelled good, and she wasn’t going to be so rude as not to eat it.

  “Tuna. In my own sauce, with nori as a garnish.” He sounded pleased with himself.

  “That’s the seaweed stuff they serve with sushi?”

  “Right.”

  Fair enough. She could eat sushi, and that had raw fish in it. She was used to tuna steaks being sort of a uniform grayish tan, but these were just seared around the edges, and quite red in the middle. Still, she never trusted fish from the market enough to eat it raw. She picked up her fork uncertainly.

  “Relax, Kyra. The food is safe. Try it. If, once you do, you honestly think it would taste better if it was cooked more, we can,” he paused, looking as if he was having difficulty keeping his face neutral, “um, fix it.”

  She nodded, skewered a bite-size piece of tuna with her fork and swirled it around in the sauce before putting it in her mouth. Then she thought she’d died and gone to heaven. It was salty, sweet and a bit spicy, and despite all the complexity of the sauce she could still taste the contrast between the seared outside and the cool inside of the fish. She hardly had to chew it, it was so soft.

  “Oh my god that’s good!”

  He smiled. “Thank you. I don’t usually serve dinner without vegetables, but since you had a salad for dinner, I thought you were pretty well covered for the green stuff.”

  “Mmm. I still think you were a meanie for getting me all revved up with that kiss, but given this meal, you’re forgiven. Do you always cook like this?”

  He shook his head while savoring some of his own food. “Normally I eat at my restaurant, Ryan’s.”

  “I thought your name was Drew.”

  “Ryan is my last name.”

  “Oh. You own a restaurant.” Okay, not the most brilliant of responses.

  “Can’t spend my whole day tying up girls and making them scream in pleasure
,” he said. “No money in it, for one thing.”

  She laughed. “If there were, would you do that instead?”

  He shook his head. “No. I think I like variety too much.”

  He cooks, he’s at least as tidy as I am and he knows how to make me melt inside. Figures he likes “variety”. Even if he wasn’t talking about his choice of sexual partners, she thought she had a good picture. No matter how she felt, Drew wasn’t a guy to get attached to. To do some research with, sure. And a fun time, definitely. She was curious about one thing.

  “What’s with the place mats?”

  He smiled. “Oh. Sometimes my nephew comes over. I bought them back when he was four and I did a lot of babysitting for my sister. I found out that I liked looking at them at breakfast better than ordinary ones, so I bought a few more and threw out the rest. I’ve got planets, Spanish words, all sorts.”

  “How old is he now?”

  “Fifteen. He still comes over, but it’s not exactly babysitting. We usually end up playing board games or just chatting.”

  She took another bite of tuna and closed her eyes, letting herself concentrate on the taste. “This is fantastic. You’re spoiling me.”

  “I love to see someone enjoy their food. Too often people either plow through their dinner as if it was a thankless but necessary chore, or they are too busy starving themselves to get thin to enjoy anything at all.”

  “Well, um, I could stand to lose a few pounds.”

  “You’re perfect the way you are.”

  “You’re a sweetie. It’s nice of you to say so.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sure some men care about nothing more than a thin waist. But I think you’ll find most of us like the curvy parts of a woman. Breast men and ass men outnumber waist men by a good margin.”

  “And which are you?”

  He leaned forward, dropping his voice until it was almost a whisper. “I want it all, Kyra. Your breasts, your pussy, your ass, your legs, your lips, your eyes, your submission. I like my sex the way I like my food—I want to savor every last morsel.”