She imagined having a collar on her throat, a taut tether holding her head in this drawn-back position. A human pet, helpless to whatever her Master wished to do to her. The shocking idea intensified the coil of need in her belly, the arousal between her thighs.
“Beautiful. Your pussy’s wet. I can see how slick it is from here.”
She closed her eyes, swallowed, aching for one touch, the pad of his finger sliding over her labia, collecting that honey for a taste. He didn’t touch her, however.
“Yeah, you’re feeling it good, aren’t you?”
She nodded, a quick jerk, not able to articulate it. But he wasn’t requiring that. Just that she feel and listen.
“Stay that way for the next five minutes. Then put your fingers inside yourself, bring them to your mouth and taste yourself. You think about how I’ll taste you, the next time we see one another.” He paused. “I want to fuck you, Athena. If I took you right now, I’m worked up enough I’d leave you sore as hell for the next couple days. So you think long and hard about that sex question. I’ll be in touch.”
He left her then. Descended the stairs and left her throbbing. She clung to the sound of him moving through the lower level, crossing into the kitchen, the door opening and closing. Never in her life had she not walked a guest to the door, but he’d put her on the stairs like this, her legs spread and shaking, her pussy wet and nipples hard. She wasn’t sure she could get up.
It was way more than five minutes before she could.
FIVE
Friday, first session. She’d stayed away from the club this week. Not unusual for her, given that she’d only been going about once a month, and had gone hardly at all in the first year after Roy’s passing. But she wondered if Dale was there. Was he having sessions with Willow or other subs? How did she feel about that?
Did she have any right to feel anything about it? No matter what Dale had said, or her own conflicted feelings, she had initiated this like a session appointment, not a date. If she were being brutal with herself, their interludes might end up being little different from a therapy session. She wouldn’t wonder who else’s brain her psychiatrist was examining when he wasn’t with her, right?
She absolutely refused to revert to a high school girl’s naïveté, thinking a boy liked her when she was just his lab partner. Dale was a great fantasy. He was sexy, charismatic, fascinating. He was also insightful, kind, had a good sense of humor, and a missing leg that seemed no more impediment to him than a birthmark.
He was coming to her house for a session that he would be orchestrating, based on the notes she’d made. He’d given her no other instructions than that. Or so she thought, until the delivery van pulled up to her house on Friday morning.
She saw it from her office window. It was a private courier service. That wasn’t unusual, though she typically knew when to expect a package. Lynn came out to accept it, and then brought it up to Athena, her face wreathed in a smile.
“It’s from Mr. Rousseau.”
It was obvious Lynn already liked him, but what woman in her right mind wouldn’t? Picking up her letter opener, Athena slit the tape, noting the box was marked “fragile” and “keep cool.” Inside, it was lined with a disposable cooler. As she opened it, Lynn sidled up to her elbow. Belatedly, Athena realized she should have opened it in private, since Dale could have sent her something she might not want to share with her household staff. Fortunately, her lack of foresight didn’t result in embarrassment.
She lifted out the basket. It was an arrangement of yellow carnations on a bed of mint leaves. The carnations had been shaped in two mounded clusters, and black pipe cleaner and buttons for stripes and antennae turned them into bumblebees. White daisies with cheerful yellow centers were planted around them.
She remembered him in the potting shed, the variety of planting tools, the private courier. This wasn’t an order from a florist. He’d done this.
“Isn’t that a delightful, clever thing?” Her housekeeper’s crisp British accent mirrored her own feelings on the matter. “Oh, don’t forget your card.” Lynn pulled it out, laid it next to the basket. “Do you want me to take the box out of the way? You’ll want to keep the basket here so you can enjoy looking at it.”
Athena nodded. She laid her fingers on the card, stroking the mint leaves with her other hand. As the woman moved to the door, Athena cleared her throat. “Lynn? What did you think of him?”
It was a ridiculous question of course, given that Lynn had met him for only a few minutes. It also made Athena appear too vulnerable to her staff, but as she’d told Dale, Lynn was quite more than that.
The woman turned, gave her a look. “I think he’s the type of man that makes a woman’s heart beat faster and her cheeks flush when he looks at her. You deserve that, even if you only want it for a little while.” Lynn hesitated, her blue eyes kind in her lined face. “Sometimes that kind of man can get a woman’s heart started again, if you understand my meaning. All right, then?”
“Yes.” Athena squared her shoulders. “Thank you, Lynn.”
She opened the envelope. It contained a blue note card, with a header stamp showing a pair of dogs and EJDS, Inc. She puzzled over it, then her expression cleared. Eddie’s Junkyard and Dog Shelter. Was it a true nonprofit? Was there an Eddie? She’d heard more dogs barking elsewhere on the property, suggesting there was a main kennel area, so the “few” Dale had taken out for play and training weren’t the whole population. She didn’t know many people who could handle that many dogs at one time, but they’d been riveted on Dale like he was the pack leader. Who did the fund-raising?
Picking up her reading glasses, she smiled a little, seeing that his handwriting was a sprawling scrawl. Her gaze strayed to the carnation bees again, then went back to the note.
I’ll arrive at eight. Meet me at the door wearing a robe, something thin and silky. Nothing under it. I’ll be coming from the rec center so I’ll be hungry. Make me a good sandwich and have beer. See you then.
Well, a poet he wasn’t. But poetry wasn’t what she wanted. She could hear the command behind every word. There was nothing casual in this note. All the times in their life together she’d done things for Roy, poured him a drink, made him a sandwich, he’d always asked, never told her to do it.
Did he know you’re a submissive, Athena? As she reread the simple order, her pulse fluttered in her throat, the same jumpiness happening in her stomach.
I want to fuck you.
Her body had been wound up like a spring when Dale left that night, but her mind had been so muddled, her balance so off center, she hadn’t tried to do what he’d told her she could do, within the limits of his instructions. Her body had been on a low hum ever since, a state that became far worse at bedtime. Yet still she’d done nothing about it, hesitant to confront an arousal caused directly by Dale’s effect upon her.
As she held his instructions in her hand, her mind running away with imaginings of how the night was going to go, the hum of her body became an urgent purr.
She locked the office door before she went into the private bathroom. Laying the note on the counter, she glanced at herself in the mirror, seeing that telltale flush Lynn had mentioned. Sliding her hand beneath the waistband of her skirt, down into her panties, she found herself wet, where moments before she hadn’t been. One note from him, several almost-coarse commands—wear a robe, make a sandwich, have beer—had done that.
That was the power of a good Dominant. He could take a simple thing and create an explosion of response. It made her think of a couple who’d come to the club one night when she was there with Roy. It had been the woman’s first time, but her boyfriend, the Dom, had been highly experienced. When she was looking around nervously, he’d put a hand on her shoulder. Placement of his palm had been precise, the juncture of shoulder and throat, his forefinger against her carotid, the others wrapped firmly over her collarb
one. He’d leaned in, murmured two words, delivered with a direct glance. “Sit down.”
Athena had been close enough to discern the words, but more importantly, she’d seen the look on the woman’s face. It was as if all those worries and doubts vanished, all the scattered threads suddenly twisted together into an arrow that pointed directly at him for everything she needed for things to be okay. Her face had eased, her gaze lowered, and she sat down on the couch, her ankles crossed like a proper lady, her hands folded in her lap, back straight, obviously a posture he required from her. He’d touched her hair, warm approval in his face. When she dared a glance up, Athena had seen adoration and joy in her expression. Surrender.
She sat down in the wicker chair in the corner of the large bathroom, bracing her feet on the garden tub. Caressing her labia, she moved her fingers up to her clit, tugged on it. That first touch made her suck in a breath, arch at the dense wave of sensations. But stoking her arousal and achieving a climax were different matters. It really was so much easier with her vibrator, and . . . oh crap, she was using her wrong hand. She switched, and that of course made it more awkward. She had to go slow, be more precise with her movements, but her body was eager, needy.
She thought of Dale’s expression when he’d told her she could give herself relief like this. She thought of him being here, watching her. He would sit on the edge of the tub, thighs spread in that casual male way, maybe a hand braced against one of them. He’d put himself between her spread legs so she had to spread them wider, so he could watch every movement of her fingers, the way her labia got slicker, how her cunt sucked on her fingers when she pushed them inside herself.
His gaze on her would be sharp as a laser. With Willow that night, he’d been thick and hard, the denim molded over that tempting bar of steel. Some of the Doms wore untucked shirts so as not to reveal their state to the sub. He had been deliciously unconcerned about it.
She thought about his arrival tonight, what he might wear, what they might do that would get him aroused like that. What he would do to her to make himself that way.
It was a titillating shift of perspective, and she responded to it, her hips lifting, the wicker emitting its quiet strawlike noise, which sounded loud as a squeaky door. There were two doors to the bathroom, one leading to the hallway. She’d locked it, but what if one of the staff came by, heard her doing this? But . . . oh God, it felt good. She played her fingers over her damp flesh, body quivering.
She imagined herself in the shoes of the nervous girlfriend, and Dale was the Master who’d told her to sit down. She kept rising up to her touch, getting closer, closer . . . Her gaze strayed to the clock. Six minutes already? Noooo. She was so close . . . she couldn’t help herself. She worried about going over his imposed time limit, and that worry grew as her fingers refused to stop. Would seven minutes really be so much worse than six? Oh . . .
The climax rocked her, a tiny, intense thing, not nearly satisfying enough, but enough to have her curling around her hand, pressed between her legs. She breathed hard through the aftershocks. “Oh . . . oh . . .” That syllable became a reassuring mantra while she rocked her body.
It took a little while for her to settle, but when she did, she rose unsteadily, returned to the note on the counter. The air-conditioning vent had tipped it into the thankfully dry sink. There was something written on the back. She squinted at it.
PS—if you bring yourself to climax today, don’t wash that hand unless absolutely necessary.
She brought her fingers to her face, inhaled the musky scent of her orgasm. Dominance and submission. She’d been a Domme and now she was trying out submission. It was merely an exercise to see how she liked it. An adventure, like a vacation, where there’d be a beginning and an end, and then she’d come home. Only she wouldn’t have pictures, except in her mind.
Why was she lying to herself? She heard Dale ask the question again. Did he know you’re a submissive? There’d been a tightness to his voice, as if he might have judged Roy in the wrong if her husband had known that about her. But there was no right or wrong to it. There’d only been love, a love she missed intensely, which conflicted with the strong, pulsing anxiety and need she felt toward tonight. She didn’t know how to reconcile it. A part of her knew she should call this off, that it would go badly in the end because she couldn’t manage her feelings, couldn’t get a proper hold on all of it. But she wouldn’t call it off. She wanted it too much.
Leaving the bathroom and returning to her desk, she fitted her hands-free to her ear and dialed her assistant at the office. “Ellen? I need you to do me a favor, when you have time. See what you can find out about Eddie’s Junkyard and Dog Shelter, Incorporated. It’s local. Not a first priority, but maybe look into it between tasks or next week. Just email me what you find out. Thanks.”
There. She could do something with that. A little more settled, she took a breath, sat back down at her desk. Thinking, she opened a drawer, looked at a pair of thin gloves she kept there. Roy had given them to her to wear in the wintertime indoors, when her hands became cold and achy. She wore them to type at her computer. She slipped one on her left hand, a reminder not to wash it. Now she could touch other things, but she’d also retain the scent for Dale. For her Master.
She backed away from the startling thought like an electric shock. What was she doing?
—
Time didn’t help settle nerves the way some people thought. In certain situations, the wait made it worse. Throughout the week she’d alternated between a pleasurable kind of excitement and uncertain anxiety. By seven, the latter had taken over. She prepared as he’d ordered, taking off all her clothes, sliding on a robe, brushing out her hair. Athena threaded her fingers through the thick strands, tightened the belt of the robe. It was green with a soft satiny feel, and it clung to her curves. It was also short, just past midthigh. It was something she’d bought herself some time ago for whatever reason. When she’d pulled it out of the closet, it still had tags.
Seven fifty-five. When she removed the glove, she found she’d been correct. She could still smell the lingering scent of her climax on her fingers, the unmistakable scent of her sex. The dampness of her palm intensified it.
The security chime in the lobby told her a vehicle had turned into the drive. She opened and closed those moist palms, and went downstairs. Opening the front door, she left the storm door unlatched. Now she sat down on the padded bench in the foyer. Her folded stationery, displaying the list of things he’d told her to write down, was next to her. In hindsight, the few pages she’d written didn’t feel like enough to start. Not enough structures and rules to keep things moving as slow as they should, but it was too late to change it now. She hadn’t brought a pen down with her, so she couldn’t scribble a caveat: “All the above are null and void if I completely freak out, like I’m about to do now.”
She shook her head at herself and focused what she could see through the open front door. There’d been an old beater truck by the office at the shelter, so this must be his personal use vehicle. He drove a dark blue Ford that looked shiny and less than a couple of years old. She didn’t know how much it paid, working as caretaker at a combination junkyard and dog rescue shelter. She assumed he received a pension of some kind from being a SEAL. Whatever the sources of his income, it was apparently enough, but then she’d also seen his place. He kept it clean and neat, but he didn’t spend a lot of money on obvious things, and that kind of person usually made a dollar go further than most. Maybe he did floral arrangement as well.
In truth, she knew almost nothing about him. Except that he’d been a SEAL, and that he’d mesmerized her with the way he’d taken over Willow, enough to invite him to her home and ask him to do the same to her.
Maybe this was a midlife crisis, exacerbated by Roy’s death. Everyone knew how well midlife crises went. At best, a person looked back on them with chronic embarrassment. At worst, they coul
d destroy lives.
She remembered waking up in Dale’s house. She could trust this man. If it went terribly wrong, embarrassment would be her worst punishment. Which simply meant she’d never return to the club, and she’d close this chapter of her life. She could do that.
Her throbbing pulse, her shortness of breath as his door opened, told her that might not be the case. Which escalated her to near panic. She could bolt up from her seat, lock the door and run back up to her room. There was still time.
Her, Athena Francesca Summers, running away from anything? Really? What would Dale do if she did such a thing? She had a vision of him kicking the door down, pursuing her up to her room, pushing her down on the bed, ready to punish, to claim . . .
Okay, she’d just shifted straight to the fantasy of the pirate captain ravishing the beautiful heiress. It didn’t help that she could easily imagine him in tight black trousers, shiny boots and a billowing white shirt unlaced at the neck. Technically, he already had the peg leg.
There was a structure for all of this. Controls and safe words. So why did she feel like a bug in a jar?
He’d stepped out of the truck and pulled a tote bag out of the back. After shutting the door, he circled around the grille, coming toward the front stoop. Like the night with Willow, he wore belted dark jeans, snug black T-shirt and his boots. The T-shirt was tucked into the jeans. Unpretentious yet severe, suggesting functional intent.
He saw her through the storm door. What did he see in her face? She wasn’t sure herself. He came up onto the porch, stood in front of the glass door. He nodded to the latch.
“Open the door, Athena.”
It was unlocked, but she expected he knew that. He was making a point, one that her subconscious understood well. She rose, smoothing the robe over her thighs. She thought of the first board meetings she’d chaired when Roy became sick enough he had to step down. She’d gone from vice chairperson to overseeing the board solo. She’d been nervous then, too. A part of her had wanted to run, to avoid the significance of what standing at the head of that table meant.
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