by Adira August
“I did.”
“How long have you been reading female erotica and how often do you get a new book to read?”
Janet thought. “I’ve been reading erotica since college. I probably only buy one book a month, now.” She said.
“You used to buy more often?” Avia asked.
Janet told herself to just let go of any residual thoughts about protecting her privacy.
“When I discovered there was such a thing as erotica, I probably bought ten books a month. I didn’t read that many, I just collected them because they were hard to find. Over the years, my collection was winnowed down. Like any kind of book, a lot of them aren’t very good. The ones that are, I reread.”
“Are the three books you gave me typical of the stories you seek out?” Avia asked. “By that I mean the type of sexual content. All of them involve Dominants and submissives. Two of them, Bondage and Discipline with physical chastisement employing a variety of objects.”
“Yes, Avia, they are typical. … Get to the question,” Janet ordered, tossing off the last of her drink.
Avia asked, “Which question?”
“How an accomplished, intelligent, feminist like myself …” Janet prompted.
“... can be the same woman who gets off on the image being on hands and knees before a ripped half-naked guy with a riding crop in his hand.” Avia finished.
Janet waved the server over. “Big ice water, and some coffee with cream, please.” She was going to need to be sharp for this conversation.
Avia sat back, in listening mode. Her friend was taking her time composing an answer.
“You’re a passionate person, sometimes, Avia. You care deeply about things. And I’m willing to bet you’ve had a dream or fantasy where you’ve killed someone.”
Avia nodded.
“Okay,” Janet went on. “I‘m also willing to bet on a scale of one to one hundred, the chance of you actually carrying out a murder are about minus fifty.”
Avia smiled.
“Fantasizing about a thing is really a very far cry from wanting to actually do it. Your brain takes you to extremes, I think. You could just fantasize about something you might do, like slap someone’s face or tell them off. But sometimes, in your mind, you kill them. Or at least beat the shit out of them.” Janet finished as the server placed her order on the table.
“Also,” she went on after drinking off half her water, “Every element of the scenario in a book might not be sexual fodder. I think readers hone in on the parts they use and pretty much gloss over the rest.”
She picked up her coffee. “Personally, I’m not much into kneeling on a hard floor. But I think it’s a damned shame I’ll never find a man I’d trust to competently wield a riding crop.” She shrugged. “Or stop if I say so and mean it.”
Avia waited, but Janet seemed done for the moment.
“Is that what’s stopped you from indulging your fantasies? Not finding a man to trust?”
“Some of the fantasies,” she admitted. “And some of them I’d never do in real life.” Janet thought about it some more. “I think at the beginning, when I was young, I was ashamed. I thought there was something wrong with me. But later on …” She shook her head and drank off the rest of the water.
“For most women in the real world, sex isn’t severed from relationship,” Janet went on. "Hal’s been my ‘friend with benefits’ for almost ten years. I love him and I know he does me. It might not look like that, since we don’t live together, but it works for us. And we’re monogamous.”
Avia flipped a page. “Okay. And you don’t trust him to do any of what you might want to try?”
“Oh, I suppose I do, to stop. But the ‘competent’ part? No. Even if I worked up the nerve to ask and he agreed because he loves me, it’s just not Hal. He’s a sweet guy and it would all make him uncomfortable, instead of turn him on.”
“And that would make you embarrassed instead of aroused,” Avia said.
The server stopped and topped up their cups. Avia considered what her friend had said. “You think it would shock him if you suggested some of this. That he’d think less of you.”
Janet blushed. “That’s part of it.”
“I don’t understand,” Avia had now forgotten all about her notebook. “He sees your books, doesn’t he?” Janet shrugged again. “He doesn’t even know you read this stuff?” Avia laughed. “Oh, my God, J.J., what if he’s had a collection of Dom porn he’s been hiding from you for a decade?”
Janet looked absolutely dumbstruck at this idea.
“It never occurred to you?” Avia asked.
Her friend just shook her head, slowly. “Crap, Avia, how would I even ... where would I start?”
“Rent a copy of Secretary to watch together,” Avia suggested.
Ben Hart shook his head “no,” but Hugo didn’t need the prompt.
“I’m sorry, the Hart name can only be used to promote Hart products - ”
A stream of rapid Chinese interrupted him from the speaker on the table. “Yes, yes, I understand,” Hugo said. “But you cannot call them ‘Hart Suites.’ You can say that the suites, whatever you name them, are stocked exclusively, in Hong Kong, with Hart products.”
He rolled his eyes at Ben. “ … Correct … Yes … And our marketing department sent you a variety of ways to incorporate the Hart name into your advertising without suggesting either ownership or endorsement.”
More Chinese. Several voices this time. Ben checked his watch. He wanted to be done by ten. He raised his voice enough to be heard over the speaker and above the argument being staged for his benefit.
“Ben Hart, Mr. Cheong, can you hear me?”
Cheong came back in English. “Mr. Hart. You are joining the conversation at last?”
“I’m afraid I’m ending it, Sir. There are complicated legal issues here that cannot be overcome. Your business is greatly valued by Hart Development, but I’m not seeing a way past your determination to implement your advertising strategies. I’m sorry, I wish there was something we could offer you, I just don’t know what that could be.”
Ben listened to the silence. Then -
“Ah, Mr. Hart. What can I do, when you have granted us exclusivity to your much-desired products only in Hong Kong? I have hotels in many cities. Many. As you know. My competitors will copy my strategy, using your products, and overtake me.”
Hugo grinned and shook his head.
“Mr. Cheong, please, if you have any ideas, I’m happy to listen. I’ve already placed my products in so many cities. It isn’t as if I can ask the buyers to send them back.” Ben waited.
“You have products in Macau?” Cheong affected surprise.
“Um …” Ben hesitated and clicked a few keys on his laptop in case they could hear it. “I don’t … think we do, actually. Please, one moment, let me make sure.” Ben hit the mute button.
Hugo laughed out loud. “Just like you said.”
When Avia lowered herself into the bath, the response between her cheeks surprised her. Her … You can’t even think the word? Are you 12? … anus didn’t hurt, exactly, it just made its existence known. As she relaxed into the fragrant water, the feeling dissipated. She had to admit, she’d kind of liked it. She also had to admit, she felt guilty liking it. Take a lesson from J.J. and get over it. But she didn’t know how she could do that.
Avia usually showered at night, but tonight she wanted time to think about her day. About what she’d done. What was done to her. Everything happened so quickly and then she was dealing with work, she’d had no time to process. To just feel.
“The freedom to feel…”
That voice. It was bad enough he’d been so right about so many things, (Or good enough?) but he had to also be so damnably attractive. Even his voice, his deep, rumbly, emanating from somewhere normal people didn’t have vocal cords deep in his chest, voice.
The voice he played like an enchanted instrument to captivate and control her. The voice with the lau
gh just under the surface, the professorial tone when he delivered information. The sharp snap of an order. The whisper of a promise. The caring warmth when he soothed her in the chair.
Thinking about him, his voice, his willingness to give her what she needed, she didn’t know why she was questioning. But part of her felt odd, at the least, embarking on relationship with no relationship.
But was it no relationship? Or just a different kind? New to her? Something … outside the box. Had she always lived in a box? Always done the expected, the best she could deliver and then some? Was she always such a “good girl?”
Yeah, you were. And you know it.
But this? Coldly scheduling sex like a hair cut? Dominance and submission? Bondage and discipline? With no declaration of like, let alone love? How is that any kind of relationship?
He soothed you. He cared for you. He made you feel safe.
She sank under the water for a moment.
That moment of panic when she couldn’t move her arms. He’d come instantly, reassuring her. His Rules suspended because she needed him to be there. His patience, allowing her to choose when to begin again. His look when she’d placed her arms back on the restraints and called him “Sir.” Humor and gratitude and something else ... admiration, perhaps? For a just a moment before his mask of objectivity dropped into in place.
She sat up, keeping her head back, letting the water run off. Grabbed her shampoo. She lathered and stood and rinsed off under the shower. And realized she was inventing issues where there were none.
She hadn’t needed Carson or J.J. to make some declaration to know they liked her when they’d met her. Avia already knew Ben Hart liked her. The easy smile, the head tilt, the attentiveness to her words. The flow of energy between them. She knew and he knew and he knew that she knew. The way it always worked with new friends. No one had to define it.
So why was she questioning this decision? Because you think you “should.”
She dried and lotioned and slipped on some shell pink pajamas with a pattern of hummingbirds in pale turquoise.
In the bedroom, cross-legged on the bed with her laptop in front of her, she set out to research Hart Development’s website. Find that catalogue. Maybe after, look for some information on the “ecstatic orgasm.” And sexual response to anal stimulation?
As she waited for her computer to boot up, she wondered idly why she thought she “should” question her decision. A stray bit of sexual moralizing she hadn’t rooted out?
You know why.
No, I don’t.
Yes, you do.
No, I don’t.
Yes -
Shut the fuck up, I’m working.
If passion is defined as intense feelings regarding something or someone, Benedict Hart was a passionate man.
Because he felt things so strongly, he was also a disciplined one. That discipline came with a price. He ran and swam to work off the physical tensions passion fueled, to allow people like Cheong to believe they’d gotten the better of him while he inked a multimillion dollar deal with a guaranteed future revenue stream that opened two new major markets.
He sketched and planned and built and tore down in the palas, to channel his creative passions. In this way he allowed others to do the bulk of the development and marketing work while he only supplied the essence of his ideas and intentions. Thereby, he short-circuited his need to micromanage every aspect of the many jobs it was no longer possible for him to do alone.
Some needs he mastered through sheer force of will. Like his need to not cause pain, except as pain converted to pleasure.
But he also accepted, understood, that discipline was an essential component of the journey. And so he ignored his own revulsion and intellectualized the process. He coldly calculated how much pain of what kind to administer in which way to be most effective for each Companion. And if he also became impotent for a time after administering discipline, his Companions didn’t need to know that.
And that had worked in all but one case, where her pain threshold had been so high, that to reach it, he would have had to inflict physical injury. Break her skin. Blood her. He would not. As a last resort, after he’d carefully, thoroughly, strapped her, he’d applied capsaicin cream to her flaming red ass. A thing he perceived as so cruel with almost anyone else, he’d become nauseous at the prospect. But she needed, asked for more, so she could complete her journey.
So he had done it. She screamed. And then she came. And came. And he’d ended it. She’d been a dedicated masochist who’d used him. Manipulated him. He’d thought himself too experienced to be so taken in. Sadism was no passion of his.
Yet, passion defined as state of urgent sexual or romantic desire and longing made Ben Hart a man of extraordinary passion. And no swim or jog or intellectual endeavor could slake his need to drive himself again and again and again into the body of Avia Rivers, this one vibrantly alive sensual creature, until she convulsed in unrelenting orgasm as he emptied himself into her. This is the hunger he had to master, to get the thing he most desired: a companion in ecstasy. His own need must come not second, but not at all, to give her everything she required.
This kind of deep hunger was not amenable to will, but only to satisfaction. Luckily, in terms of sexual response, the brain cannot tell the difference between a fantasy experience and an objective one. He knew exactly how to slake this thirst, so necessary to maintaining his control.
So this night, his clothes ripped off and flung at the divan at the end of his bed, he threw a heavy flannel sheet over his custom-designed recliner and settled in.
He let his nude body go still and slack. His mind wander. His respirations deepen. He’d waited all day to have her as he longed to have have her, see her as he wished he might. To feel her, feeling him. He would not wait longer.
He also would not hurry. When he was relaxed, his mind emptied of concerns about business or other worldly things, he prepared. From a compartment in the side of the chair, he retrieved a four-inch long, one inch wide internal stimulator, a silver metal “butt plug.” But so much more at the one thousand dollar price.
He’d worked with his team for five years to find a substitute for the vibrators that invariably burned out far too fast. All the HartThrob internal stimulators, from the smaller VibeHer series and this designed for men under the name VibeRant, used a patented technology he fiercely defended.
No electronics involved, the device powered by the natural reactions and movements of the user. Inside, tiny, precisely machined to perfect smoothness metal balls in channels, circled in fine machine oil. Centripetal force pushed the balls outward, the curve forward, and the plug rocked. The vibration of the spin translated through the metal to the user. It was exquisitely arousing.
Ben Hart felt the device warm in his hand, responding like a thing alive to his most subtle movements. At this point in a personal session (which is how he thought of masturbation as it was never simply jacking off in the shower for him) he’d reach for a single-use lube packet and insert the stimulator. Instead, thoughts of sliding the small VibeHer into Avia’s obedient, well-lubed backside while her fingers clutched and she forced herself not to pull away, made him instantly hard.
Dammit. He wanted to take his time. He put the device back into the compartment. He needed no extra stimulation for this session. It was Avia, herself, who was exquisitely arousing.
He cleared his mind and waited for his erection to subside.
Using the padded straps he’d had built into the chair, he secured his legs to metal half-moon loops on each side. He tilted the chair back into a prone position and restrained his upper body with a padded chest strap. The lights dimmed by remote control, he wrapped the sheet about himself.
“Holy crap.”
Avia’s mouth dropped open at the Welcome page for “HARTLINES®: Sexual Support Systems, Devices and Products.”
The page featured links to brightly colored dildoes, G-spot stimulators, paddles, floggers and - no, serious
ly? - FauxCum™.
She clicked on the last to see if it was what the title suggested. It was. In a variety of flavors including “natural.” She searched her memory. What exactly was the natural flavor? And what was the purpose of having a handy substitute?
Avia had already spent time at the main Hart Development site, read the history of the company, viewed images of research and manufacturing facilities and bright-faced employees. Here was a brief bio of Ben Hart, essentially what he and J.J. had already told her.
She’d followed the link to RedDeer Publishing and perused the titles and descriptions and especially the customer reviews.
But just the welcome page of Hartlines overwhelmed her. It was like looking at course listings for some arcane branch of philosophy she was required to get a degree in. She didn’t have a clue where to start. She wasn’t sure she was up to close examination of lifelike giant plastic penises, so she clicked on “Endless Vibrations™,” which reminded her of bell choirs, wondering if Hart had his own line of mood music.
Instead of music, she found a page of silvery objects labelled VibeHer™. The top row of objects were narrow and rounded at one end, widening to an irregularly-shaped body that curved in abruptly to a neck that bloomed into a half-sphere. What the hell … She blinked at the prices. The smallest was $500. The largest $1000.
Below that row, the objects were fatter, the necks wider, the bases a metal ring. The tops were broadened and a shaped like … It’s a dildo. A $2500 dollar dildo. So the top row were - she clicked on the “more” link. They were butt plugs,
“... but so much more, and we did intend to pun. Better than a vibrator, no batteries, nothing to wear out, with a lifetime unconditional guarantee.”
Below this, a cutaway showed the of the interior of the device and more images of the outside. Next to that, a video Avia clicked on, fascinated. It opened with an animated presentation of the device, including the cutaway.
“... shows the patented interior design, exclusive to Hartlines. Every contact with the user different from the one before, prevents nerves from fatiguing for a fresh thrill with every vibration! As the body of the stimulator rocks and rotates, the stem massages the sphincter…”
