Man and Master

by Jason Luke

  She was teasing her clit with soft skillful touches; her fingers not yet brushing against her pussy. The movements of her hand were slow and measured, almost matching the lazy undulations of her body. Joshua zoomed the camera in to focus on Gabriele’s stunning face. In the grips of erotic arousal, she was even more beautiful.

  “Tell me everything,” Joshua urged her. “Tell me what is happening in your fantasy.”

  “Your cock,” Gabriele gasped. One of her fingers finally dipped into the molten heat of her pussy, and the shock of it made her clench her teeth and moan. “It’s hard. I have it in my hand.”

  “And what are you doing?”

  “You’re standing over me with your hands on your hips, looking down at me. I’m staring up into your eyes and slowly stroking you. You feel so hard. I can feel the ridges of you, and the heat…”

  She drew a short stab of breath and moaned again. The sway of her body turned to spasmodic jerks. Joshua panned the camera down and captured the concealed movement of her hand; the swell of the fabric as her knuckles pushed out against the lace, and now the soft wet sounds of her wetness.

  “Do you want to suck your Master’s cock?” Joshua asked, feeling himself no longer just a spectator, but now a participant. It was as if he had become an active player in Gabriele’s fantasy.

  “Yes!” Gabriele gasped.

  “Then do it!” Joshua whispered.

  The room fell silent, but the quiet hummed with erotic energy. Gabriele threw her head back and hunched her shoulders. Her hand within the confines of her panties suddenly became frantic. Gabriele’s mouth was wide open, her breath sawing across her throat.

  Joshua sensed she was on the edge of her orgasm, and he was hushed to mesmeric silence. He watched on in fascination until suddenly Gabriele cried out in a voice that was breaking apart.

  “Yes, Master! Oh, fuck yes! Cum in my mouth!”

  The words strangled into a tight shriek of swelling tension and then a staggering wave of relief. Gabriele shuddered, froze for a paralyzing moment… and then convulsed in thrashing spasms that threw her forward like a tree buffeted by storm winds. Joshua filmed it all, from the moments leading up to her orgasm right until the instant that her eyes cleared and she clutched at the edge of the table to support her legs, panting and drained.

  For a long time Joshua said nothing. He had turned the camera off. He set it on the armrest of the chair and got slowly to his feet. Gabriele was drawing deep breaths of air to fill her lungs. Her arms were shaking. One hand was still deep inside her panties, touching herself through the last shreds of afterglow.

  Joshua came to her slowly and took her in his powerful arms. Gabriele had the glorious look of a freshly-fucked woman. She went soft at his touch and her eyes closed.

  “You are very, very beautiful,” Joshua breathed.

  And then he kissed her.

  At first Gabriele thought it was a gorgeous dream; an extension of her fantasy brought about by the delicious glow of her orgasm. Joshua’s mouth was hot and demanding, and she instinctively parted her lips and fluttered her eyes open. The realization that this was real made her heart stop beating. Joshua’s arms were wrapped around her shoulders, sliding down her back as he crushed his hard body against hers. She felt herself molding to him, pushing her hips forward to meet the thrust of Joshua’s groin, and at the same time drawing her own arms about his waist.

  The kiss was like an impossible scorching fire that sucked the breath from her and burned on her lips. Yet she felt compelled to leap into the flames. She kissed him back with the same reckless ferocity, feasting on the taste of him; reveling in the unfettered access to his body with her exploring fingers.

  Joshua dominated her. Joshua plundered her. His tongue thrust to explore the inside of her mouth and the thrill of the sensation was a delicious taboo that Gabriele had never before experienced. It was so intimate, so demanding that she felt, incredibly, renewed desire begin to stir inside her panties. Joshua bent her backwards with his savage need for her and she clung to him fiercely until her lips felt wonderfully bruised and the sparks between their entangled bodies threatened to consume them both in flames.

  At last Joshua broke the kiss, cupping Gabriele’s face in the palms of his hand, their mouths still so close that they shared the same breath. Joshua’s gaze was misted with lust. Gabriele’s eyes were deep dark pools of willing desire.

  Gabriele gasped and tried to grasp the enormity of what that kiss meant; tried to put into words how intense it had been.

  “I felt it,” she said with slow awe and wonder. Her eyes were hectic, searching Joshua’s for some sign of understanding. “When you kissed me… you left your mark on my soul.”

  Joshua blinked in dawning shock, and then his hands came from Gabriele’s face as though her flesh had scalded him. Pressure punched him in the chest. It was as if he had lived this moment once before and he struggled against instinct and desire, forcing himself to claw through the mist of emotion. He reeled away, stricken and mortified. “You need to leave,” Joshua’s voice rasped, tight with pain. Suddenly he was stiff with restraint, as though on the verge of transforming from man to beast. “The session is over. Take the camera and go, Gabriele. Go now!”

  Chapter 7:

  “Check your email,” a voice advised when Joshua picked up the phone in his office the next morning.

  “Thanks, Buddy.” He said and then hung up.

  It was as simple as that.

  When Gabriele arrived a few minutes before 8 pm she sensed, with feminine intuition, that something was not right. Joshua was standing in the doorway waiting for her. He was soberly dressed in dark pants and a grey shirt. He was wearing a tie, but the top button of his shirt was undone, and the knot of the tie was hanging loose.

  Gabriele came inside like a wary cat entering an unfamiliar room. She had rushed here from work again. She let the carry bag strap slide off her shoulder and set it down by the door. She was wearing a pale pink dress. Beneath the garment, Joshua could see the shadow of a darker shade of lingerie – maybe it was red.

  Tonight it wouldn’t matter.

  Without a word, Gabriele reached for the buttons of her dress and began to disrobe. Joshua stayed her hand. His face was deeply etched with apprehension and a look of dreadful foreboding. “Don’t undress,” he said gravely. “There will be no training tonight. There are things I want to talk to you about instead.”

  Gabriele faltered, searching Joshua’s eyes for some sign, some sense of understanding. Her fingers were shaking as she re-fastened the buttons. “Have I done something wrong, Master?” she asked in a small fearful voice. “Are you displeased with me for some reason?”

  Joshua shook his head. “You have done nothing wrong.”

  Gabriele pursed her lips. “I… I don’t understand…”

  Joshua nodded. “You will.”

  He led her down the long corridor and held his office door open for her. Gabriele entered the room and instinctively dropped to the floor. The fit of the dress made it impossible to spread her knees, so she hitched the hem up around her waist and then lowered herself to the carpet, clasping her hands behind her back and averting her eyes. Joshua watched her distractedly for a moment. He saw a flash of purple lace panties between her spread thighs.

  “No,” he said. He lifted her to her feet and indicated the chair facing the desk. “We’re not doing any training tonight. This is not a situation for Master and submissive roles. This is me talking to you, Gabriele.”

  She perched herself on the edge of the seat like a patient waiting for bad news from a physician. Her eyes were enormous and deeply troubled. Instinctively she began to shake. Joshua’s dark serious expression worried her.

  Joshua dropped wearily into the big leather chair behind the desk, and the old worn leather creaked as it settled about his body. He spun round to the cabinet under the window and poured two tumblers full of scotch. He slid one glass across the table to Gabriele and held his own in his hand f
or long contemplative seconds without drinking. His gaze was unfocussed, his stare directed at a blank space on the wall as though he were seeing some other time, some other place in his mind.

  Gabriele watched him anxiously, waiting as the silence drew out until she thought she might cry out.

  Joshua seemed to be at war with himself. Finally he spun his chair around and fixed his eyes on Gabriele.

  “Tell me again how old you are?” he asked softly.

  “Twenty-two.”

  “And your ex-boyfriend, Randall? He was your first ever sexual partner, right?”

  “Yes,” Gabriele began to feel uncomfortable by the apparent line of Joshua’s questions, but she answered Joshua honestly. “We met about three years ago. After two years together, we moved to the city and rented an apartment.”

  “The apartment you are currently in?”

  “Yes.”

  Joshua nodded. For the first time Gabriele noticed a slim manila folder on Joshua’s desk. He was absently thumbing the cover as he asked his questions.

  “And you said that Randall is trying to establish a web-design company?”

  “That’s right,” Gabriele’s anxiety was beginning to bristle with the first hint of her resentment. What she did outside of training and who she had relationships was none of Joshua’s business. She was his – mind, body and soul – when she was here with him. That was the only claim he had on her.

  “Is there a point to these questions?” she asked boldly.

  Joshua’s smile was as cold as winter. He didn’t answer. Instead he went on with his next question.

  “Does Randall spend time in other cities, talking to investors?”

  Gabriele shrugged. “Sometimes he is away overnight, meeting with people from other similar design ventures,” she said lightly. “Maybe once a month, depending on who he has been trying to contact, and when those people can fit a meeting with him into their schedule.”

  Joshua nodded. Finally he sipped at his scotch and then straightened in his chair, squaring his shoulders and clasping his hands on the desk like he was about to conclude a business deal. The burn of the alcohol bloomed through his bloodstream.

  “Gabriele, what do you think my impressions of you are?”

  The sudden change of Joshua’s questions came as a relief. She had felt herself tensing with antagonism. Now the subject was coming back to a more relevant subject, she began to relax.

  “You probably think I’m a pretender,” Gabriele said brutally. “Just another young woman with her head filled by romantic notions about the lifestyle, trying to match her dreams with an impossible reality.” She paused for a moment of self-analysis before she went on. “And a few days ago, I would have agreed with you. I was. I had no idea exactly what submission required. I’d been misguided by the books I had read, and the wonderful erotic tales they told. My head was in the clouds even if my heart was well intentioned. But I’m different now. I understand, Joshua. I know in my heart that this is the piece missing from my life.”

  Joshua said nothing, and in the disconcerting silence Gabriele felt compelled to continue speaking. She frowned and pursed her lips. “I doubt you would have noticed me if I’d walked past you on a busy street. I don’t think I’m the sort of person you would normally be attracted to… if I wasn’t paying you for the attention and the training.”

  Joshua laughed, and the sound was like a contradiction to everything Gabriele had said.

  “I happen to think you are extremely attractive,” Joshua countered. “On a physical level, you have a beauty that not many other women in the world could compete with; a beautiful face, an alluring smile, and an exquisite figure…” he broke off like there was more to come; more he wanted to say.

  “But…?”

  Joshua shook his head. “No ‘but’,” he shrugged. “It’s just that physical beauty is often illusory. As a person, I see someone who is still too young to appreciate just how big and bad the real world can be. I see you as a young woman who doesn’t quite yet know the difference between a good idea and a bad idea. Consequently, your natural stubbornness compels you to hang onto the bad things in your life for much longer than you should,” Joshua wasn’t trying to be gentle in his appraisal. He knew that sometimes it was necessary to be cruel, in order to ultimately be kind.

  “In the future, I hope you will be able to see things for what they really are, not for what you wish they would be. You can’t make a bad idea into a good one, Gabriele, no matter how hard you try… and no matter how long you persist.”

  There was a thinly veiled message in Joshua’s words but before Gabriele could sift through to their meaning, Joshua began talking again.

  “Now, tell me what kind of man you think I am,” he insisted.

  Gabriele flinched. Why was Joshua asking all these questions?

  She shuffled her shoes on the carpet and plucked nervously at the hem of her dress. Her eyes dropped to her lap like she was unwilling to speak. She licked her lips and then slowly lifted her chin until she was staring into the dark steady gaze of Joshua’s eyes.

  “I believe you are a good man,” she said with absolute truth. “I believe you are well-intentioned and above all else, I know you are honorable.”

  Joshua looked a little ruffled by the glowing adoration in Gabriele’s tone.

  “How do you know I’m honorable?” he challenged her.

  Gabriele’s smile was intuitively feminine with secret knowledge. “Because despite the nightly temptation of a willing young woman who comes to you near-naked and desperate to be dominated, you have so far refused to lay an unwarranted hand on me. You’ve seen my breasts and my pussy. You’ve had your mouth between my legs. You’ve been able to take advantage of me any time you wanted to… and heaven knows there have been plenty of times I prayed you would… but despite all that you have not once used me in a way that violated my trust. You’re scrupulously professional, and I also think you’re caring.”

  With the words said, she felt the tension go from her body and she slumped back in the chair. She felt awkward, but relieved. Gabriele had never been one to freely speak her mind. She kept a lot of what she thought to herself because she had learned since being with Randall that it was often better to bite her tongue than speak her feelings. Joshua was teaching her that the reward for honesty was peace-of-mind.

  “You call me professional,” Joshua countered, brutally critical of himself. “But then last night I kissed you.”

  Gabriele smiled. “Yes, you did,” she sounded wistful. “And I’m glad. I’ve never been kissed like that before. It was a moment I will remember and dream about for the rest of my life.”

  Joshua looked faintly embarrassed. He cleared his throat gruffly and bludgeoned the conversation back down a darker direction.

  “You trust me?”

  “Yes, I do,” Gabriele was emphatic.

  “And you believe that I act with your best interests at heart when you are here with me, in my care?”

  “Yes. That’s why I trust you.”

  Joshua picked up the folder and slid it across the desk. The cardboard made a cruel hissing sound, like the noise of a snake. “Then you need to take a look at the contents of that file,” he said ominously.

  Gabriele felt an ice-cold chill of dreadful premonition as she reached for the folder. She flipped open the cover. There were several black-and-white photos and an additional typed page of information that looked like the printed contents of an email conversation.

  She picked up the first photograph, and her hand was shaking. She felt sickening nausea churn in her stomach. She stared at the image through eyes that were beginning to blur with scalding tears.

  It was a grainy image of a young man striding along a hotel corridor. He had his arm around a blonde woman in a very short dress. The man was looking at the woman’s breasts and leering. The woman had a handbag slung over her shoulder and was wearing high heels. She was laughing.

  The man in the photograph was
Randall.

  Gabriele let the photo slip through her fingers and picked up the next one. And then the next. They were all images of Randall with different women. They appeared to have been taken from security cameras. On some of the images Gabriele saw a cluster of digital numbers stamped into the corners. She put the last photo back into the folder and closed it. She sat back in the chair, very straight. She closed her eyes and a tear escaped to trickle down her face. Her cheeks were pale and washed of all color.

  “You bastard,” Gabriele said through her pain.

  “The truth hurts,” Joshua did not defend himself. “And this is the reality, Gabriele. Your boyfriend has been cheating on you – not once, but multiple times in seedy hotels and motels right around the country.”

  “We’ve been separated,” Gabriele’s breath shuddered. “He can do what he wants just as I am doing with you.”

  “Look again,” Joshua tore open the cover of the folder and thrust one of the photos under her nose. “Look at the date. This image was taken six weeks ago at a hotel in Denver. Some of the other photos date back many months. It’s not just a few days of fucking other women since he left you. The bastard has been doing it for months behind your back.”

  “Why?” Gabriele asked in anguish and pain. “Why did you do this, Joshua?”

  “Because you’re naïve. Because you need protecting from yourself… and because Randall fucking Waddingham was a bad idea that you have been clinging on to for much too long.”

  Gabriele was shaking her head, weeping softly. She felt overwhelmed and betrayed on every level. “How did you find all this out?”

  “I was Naval Intelligence,” Joshua reminded her. His voice was hollow. He felt filled with self-loathing. “And I still have some friends. One of the guys I used to work with now works in the police force. I asked him to do some checking.”

  It was too much for Gabriele. She staggered to her feet, blinded by a sudden torrent of sobbing tears, and teetered down the hallway. She had to get away. She had to flee. Her whole world; her whole sense of purpose and self-worth, had just been torn apart in a single horrific moment. She blundered down the long passage towards the front door.