by Wendy Leigh
When he invited me to fly to Geneva on his plane, I imagined the kind of smallish plane on which I flew to Atlantic City with Grandpa for one of my birthdays a few years ago.
But this isn’t that kind of plane. This plane isn’t small. This plane is massive. This plane has “787 Dreamliner” scrolled on its body.
“One hundred and eighty thousand tons of fuel to get us to Geneva, Miranda,” Robert Hartwell says by way of an explanation, and although I know he means well, the authority in his deep, gravelly voice again brings to mind my school principal, and for a moment, I feel uncomfortably small.
I force myself to shake off the feeling and follow him up the airplane gangway, half-surprised that he hasn’t offered me his arm.
In fact, since the moment when he squeezed my hand so hard that I thought he might crush it, he hasn’t touched me at all.
So although I can’t wait to feel his heavy, muscular hands take possession of me, I’m still somehow afraid, both of him and of what he has in store for me.
At the same time, I can’t believe how lithe he is, with what pantherlike grace he moves for such a big man, and the thought of his size and grandeur makes me shiver with lust and longing.
At the top of the gangway, a pretty blue-eyed blonde greets me with a warm, toothy smile.
“Miranda, I’m so glad!” she says, as if we are old friends. “I’m Mary Ellen.”
Mary Ellen Mead, Robert Hartwell’s personal secretary, who was so kind to me when I made that first call to his office.
I’m glad to meet her, but I also wonder what she’s doing on Robert’s plane flying to Geneva with us.
Holy Moses! Is Robert Hartwell planning to hit me with a mile-high threesome?
“Mary Ellen is hitching a ride with us so she can enjoy a few days with her aunt in Geneva,” Robert Hartwell explains, reading my mind in that infuriating way of his.
For a moment, I debate whether or not I should get Mary Ellen’s aunt’s address before takeoff, just in case I need an escape route, but then I decide that there’ll be time for that during our eight-hour flight to Geneva.
Robert and I board the plane and enter a high-ceilinged lobby straight out of a superluxury hotel, far more glamorous than any on the average plane.and in keeping with a flying palace.
A series of Monets, similar to the one I saw in the Hartwell Castle anteroom where the horrendous Mrs. Hatch left me waiting, hang on the walls.
On the floor, a plush, bright blue carpet.
“Aubusson,” Robert Hartwell says, watching me shoot an appreciative glance at the rich, highly colored carpet.
Infuriating! Does nothing I think or feel ever escape this man?
Noticing a glimmering pot of crimson orchids on the slinky cocktail bar, I find myself unaccountably glad that they aren’t violets.
Mary Ellen turns left at the spiral staircase, but Robert Hartwell climbs up the stairs.
I throw Mary Ellen an embarrassed smile and follow him.
At the top, we go through a double door, which he locks behind us.
We are now in a vast cabin with thirty large freestanding leather armchairs dotted around it, instead of regular airplane seats.
I follow Robert (as I’ve decided I ought to call him, now that we are sharing a plane together) through the cabin.
On either side of the corridor are private, train-style compartments, with glass doors, each engraved with pictures of naked cherubs. Past the compartments, another door leads to a casino, then another door, which leads to a room with black walls, and in the center, a pink marble Jacuzzi.
Finally, a massive bedroom with gold walls, a hot-pink heart-shaped bed, a gilt chandelier hanging from a mirrored ceiling, a giant TV screen on the wall, and a rose-pink leather couch in one corner.
As I survey his sex palace of a bedroom, a sentence from the documentary pops into my mind: “Robert Hartwell hasn’t been seen with another woman since the tragedy.”
For a moment, I wonder whether the real reason he hasn’t been seen with another woman is that he keeps his women stashed away here, on his private plane, the perfect setting for threesomes and even orgies.
“Not my taste, Miranda,” he says, indicating the decor, then adds, “And certainly not my wife’s.”
At the sound of the word wife, I give a visible start.
“Lady Georgiana?” I hear myself let slip; then I hold my breath, expecting him to be devastated by my daring to utter her sacred name out loud within earshot.
Instead, he goes on: “Just a new toy from Dubai.” Then, to my surprise, he adds, “Perhaps you’ve got some ideas on how it should be redecorated.”
Me? Ideas on decorating a private plane? Not in this lifetime.
“Unimportant for the moment. Time for takeoff,” he says, and indicates that I should sit next to him on the couch.
Now that we are sitting next to each other, he leans across me and fastens my seat belt, and I thrill to the woody, musky scent of his masculine aftershave, and to the heat exuding from his body.
There is a sudden knock on the door.
He is gone for a few minutes, then comes back, a frown on his handsome face.
“Temporary delay,” he says, then sits down next to me again and, with no warning, takes a pair of gold dice out of his pocket.
“Evens you win, odds you lose!” he says.
“Lose what? Win what?” I say, taken completely by surprise.
“The winner decides. The loser doesn’t,” he says.
“Decides what?”
“The penalty for losing,” he says.
This is starting to sound risky . . .
“Are you afraid of taking a risk, then, Miranda?” he asks.
He is even more infuriating than I originally thought he was!
“Just try me!” I say.
He gives me a smile so confident that I feel like slapping it off his face—except that I have the strong suspicion that he would immediately slap me right back.
“Evens, then,” I say, and keep my fingers crossed that this time I’ll get the better of him.
He throws the dice, and I don’t.
“To the victor go the spoils,” he says, and I feel even more like slapping him than before.
Then I remind myself that he’s a foot taller than I am, stronger than Hercules. Besides, it would be a pity to bruise that handsome face.
“So what exactly do you want from me, Robert?” I say, and my heart pounds in anticipation.
“Many things, Miranda. First and most important, I’d like a direct answer to my question as to whether the erotic scene you read to me was autobiographical, or simply a work of the imagination,” he says, and hands me a bar of Lindt salted caramel chocolate.
I relax slightly.
Trust him to know that about me!
I take a big bite of chocolate.
“Autobiographical,” I say.
“I was counting on it,” he says, his voice low and husky.
“So is the victor satisfied with the spoils?”
“Dream on,” he says, and I want to shake him.
“I don’t intend to make this easy for you, Miranda,” he goes on.
“Just being optimistic,” I say.
“An admirable trait. Now, tell me about the first time you discovered that you were sexually submissive.”
“Do I have to tell you?”
“Of course,” he says in a matter-of-fact voice.
And suddenly, assertive as I think I am, and self-willed, I capitulate to the sheer dominance of the man, to his breathtaking power.
“I was sixteen, going on seventeen, and had never been kissed, Robert. But before I tell you the whole story, you need to picture me then: short, plump, with frizzy hair, and far from pretty.”
“Very hard for me to imagin
e,” he says, and I am flattered.
“Anyway, my father was marrying an actress half his age, and I was invited to the wedding. Grandpa and my mother both said I shouldn’t go, but something in me felt that I ought to.
“So there I was, wearing a pale-blue caftan, my fat face framed by frizzy hair barely held in place by my black velvet headband.”
“And you had no idea that pretty soon you would be transformed into a beautiful swan?” he says.
“Thank you, Robert. Anyway, I was feeling fat, ugly, and uncomfortable when all of a sudden, there was my father’s best man, his friend Warren Courtney. I’d heard of him, but we’d never met before. Tall, with long legs, sparkling white teeth, and flashing blue eyes; to an unsophisticated sixteen-year-old like me, he was the Marlboro Man come to life.
“Oh, and he was wearing a black leather jacket. He was dashing, arrogant, and . . . I guess a little like you,” I add, with a blush.
“He was how old?” Robert asks, ignoring my comment.
“Forty, but I didn’t care. And when he offered me a lift to the wedding reception in his red Corvette, I almost fainted.
“I was so flustered that as I got into the car, I dropped my corsage. He picked it up, handed it to me, and said, ‘Just like a woman.’ Well, no one had ever called me a woman before, and I was lost.”
“You must have been so adorable,” Robert says.
“You haven’t heard the rest of the story,” I say darkly.
He offers me another piece of chocolate, and I go on.
“His miniature dachshund, Polly, was in the car, obviously cold and hungry. I asked why he hadn’t fed her. And he laughed.
“ ‘I believe in keeping dogs and women hungry,’ ” he said, and pinched my thigh hard.
“I should have gotten out of the car then and there, and never seen him again. But I didn’t. He was everything I shouldn’t have had in a man, yet everything I wanted. And that was it,” I say, then wince at the memory.
Robert leans over and strokes my cheek.
“Tell me as much or as little as you are comfortable with, Miranda,” he says, and I feel a stab of pleasure at his unexpected gentleness.
So I go on: “I spent a month with Warren in his penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park, where he kept a bullwhip on display above the fireplace. Fortunately, he didn’t use it on me.”
Robert gives a start, stunned.
“But then what did he . . . ?” he says finally.
“Almost everything else. Bondage, discipline, pain, humiliation, you name it, Warren subjected me to all of it.”
“And how did you feel about it all?” he says.
Nothing to do but to bite the bullet.
“I hated the pain. But I loved being made to take it. But more than that, I loved him with my whole being,” I say.
“And during your month with him, what did you learn, Miranda?”
“That there is nothing more exciting than seeing an urbane, courteous, civilized gentleman transformed into a savage dominant simply because he is consumed by lust for you.”
“And what else?” Robert asks, a glimmer of excitement in his eyes.
“That it isn’t enough for a submissive to obey her Master and to take pain, humiliation, punishment, or whatever he wants to give her; she has to take what he gives her in exactly the way in which he tells her to take it.”
Robert nods approvingly.
“Anything else, Miranda?”
“And that having sex with a submissive isn’t always of primary importance to a Dominant.”
“You mean that Warren never . . . ?” Robert says, puzzled.
“Not often, but often enough to make sure that I wasn’t a virgin anymore,” I say, then flush with shame.
“And then?” Robert asks, a frown on his handsome face.
“He dropped me and never saw me again,” I say, then flinch at the memory, far more painful and humiliating than the heaviest lash of any of Warren’s many whips.
Robert erupts in fury.
“Then Warren Courtney wasn’t a genuine dominant at all! A genuine dominant is kind, considerate, responsible, and deeply concerned about the well-being of his submissive. Especially if she hasn’t walked on the wild side before. All he was doing was using BDSM as a shield against committing to you,” he says, livid with anger.
“But I got over it,” I say defiantly.
“Yes, but after that, you only lived out your fantasies with men you didn’t love. I’m right, aren’t I?” he says in a voice that doesn’t brook any contradiction.
Much as I hate to admit it, he is right,
“Yes,” I finally admit, “because if you don’t love someone, and they abandon you, it won’t hurt so much.”
Robert looks at me thoughtfully.
“But perhaps one day it will be different for you, Miranda,” he says.
With you, Robert, only with you, I think
. “Maybe,” I say brightly, then add, “But in the meantime . . .”
“In the meantime, you are highly responsive to an experienced Master,” he finishes.
On cue, the seat belt sign goes on, the plane starts revving up on the runway, and the vibration gives me an erotic charge.
Robert senses it immediately and, without any warning, thrusts his hand up my skirt, into my thong, and then sticks his finger deep inside of me.
Then another one, as he fingers me in time with the rrrm rrrm rrrm of the engine.
And as the plane soars into the sky—and my muscles clench around his fingers, then release, then clench again, then release—so does the buildup of my orgasm.
He pulls out his fingers, then pushes them into my mouth.
“Lick,” he commands, and I do, tasting the lemony flavor of my innermost self.
We are thousands of feet in the air now, and the seat belt sign is off.
He presses a bell next to us and pulls down my skirt so that I look demure and respectable again.
The door of the suite opens and a steward enters carrying a vast tray with dome-covered gold plates on it, which he places on a table next to the bed. The table is already set with gold cutlery and bone china plates.
With a flourish, he lifts the golden domes from the plates to reveal our dinner, and bows out of the suite.
Seeing the first two dishes he has unveiled, I blush scarlet.
Lobster bisque.
Shrimp cocktail.
Our dinner is straight out of the pages of Unraveled!
“Am I expected to slurp my food out of a dish on the floor, Robert?” I say.
“Not this time, Miranda,” he says, and an electric shock of desire shoots through my entire being.
We are flying over the ocean now.
Robert motions me to stand up.
“Strip,” he says, “I want to look at you.”
Without any hesitation, as naturally as if I have taken my clothes off in front of him a hundred times before and displayed myself naked in front of him, and always will, I obey his command.
At the same time, I am conscious of the fullness of my breasts, that they don’t stand up of their own accord, that they aren’t perky.
Not good for fashion. Not like Lady Georgiana’s, I’ll bet. The thought comes into my mind unbidden, and I wish it hadn’t.
I clasp my hands behind my neck hoping to display my breasts to their full advantage.
“Incredibly hot, and very, very beautiful,” he says.
Hearing his flattering words, I’m tempted to look over my shoulder for the beautiful woman he must surely be addressing.
Then, with his strong, unforgiving fingers, he pulls my nipples, twists them, pinches them, grips them as hard as he gripped my hand during lunch, even harder, and I wince in pain, but remain silent.
“Good girl,” h
e says. “The cabin is soundproof. But don’t make any noise until I give you permission. And only then.”
At that moment the plane lurches slightly to the left.
He puts his arm around my waist, steadies me, and, in the same motion, swiftly turns me over his knees.
It crosses my mind that he has deliberately arranged for the pilot to swoop the plane at that specific moment, just so that he could bend me over his knees in such a fluid movement.
Either way, I am pressed against the material of another of his black formal suits, which indicate that he is still in mourning. And although I don’t really want to admit it to myself, I hate the fact that after all this time, he still is.
But my emotions are eclipsed by the realization that I am bent over his knees, stark naked, and as I feel the moisture seep from between my thighs, I wish to God that I wasn’t.
I am trapped over his knees, my face over the pink patterned carpet, my arms hanging down in front of me.
He holds me in place with one hand while with the other he removes his black silk Hermès tie, then expertly binds my wrists together in front of me.
In shame, embarrassment, and anticipation, I squeeze my thighs together, aware that if I keep them open, all of me will be displayed to him in the bedroom mirrors and afford him a view of my most intimate parts.
I feel his hard hands stroking my ass cheeks, first individually, then together, squeezing them, stroking them again, pinching them, kneading them.
The sensation is not unpleasant, and I feel myself relax slightly.
Then he raises his arm high in the air, and his hand crashes into the left cheek of my ass. Hard, so hard that it takes all my resolve not to cry out in pain.
Then the right cheek.
Then both together.
Up, down, across.
For what seems forever, he spanks and spanks, then spanks more.
Finally, he gives me momentary relief by stroking my scorched ass with his big hand, lulling me into a false sense of security.
Then he spanks me again, making me feel like a chastised child, a punished woman, an object, owned and yet still desired.
At last, when I’m on the verge of crying out in pain, he plunges his fingers into me again, thrusting them in and out.
