Off Duty

by Ellie Masters

  “Oh, God,” Laura moaned, rising then sitting beside me on the sofa.

  “I … they had to take her to the ER since I started CPR,” I said, my voice monotonal, shielding painful wounds behind a cold recitation of facts. “She was pronounced dead on arrival. The coroner said she drowned, that she’d severed her spinal cord at C-2 when the diving board gave way. She struck the back of her head. Either way, he said she was surely unconscious when she went into the drink, and died without suffering. That’s cold comfort, but even if she’d survived she’d have been a vegetable, probably. She didn’t deserve that. No one does.”

  “Keith, I’m so sorry,” Laura said, stroking my hair as I drank another deep drink of tequila.

  “Yeah, thanks. The worst of it was she was two months pregnant,” I said. “We’d been trying, ready for a munchkin. I don’t know if she knew and was waiting to surprise me, or if she didn’t know yet. Her periods weren’t at all regular, so that’s anyone’s guess. Laura, it killed a part of my soul, killed it. I was crushed, angry, bitter. They even put me on desk duty a month after I got back, and there I sat for four months.

  “Cindy … she saw in me what I didn’t,” I recounted. “She was submissive and showed me I was her master even without me even knowing it. We were overjoyed with one another. I wasn’t burned out yet, I wasn’t bitter. I was one of the happiest men I ever knew. Anyway, the lease was terminated on that house and the mortgage signed on this one, so the movers came and schlepped our stuff to the new house, to this house, and here, I slowly unpacked. Half the weapons of ass destruction I used out there were things we had together, I guess.”

  “I had no idea,” Laura said, sounding uncomfortable.

  “Virtually nobody does,” I told her. “I’ve never opened this door to anyone until you. But since we’ve grown closer, I’ve done a ton of soul-searching and introspection while … I think I know I was fending you off as bad as you were to me. You had your reasons and I had mine. I didn’t date for three years after Cindy died. I’ve come to realize that I never let things grow serious with anyone. I’d chase ‘em off by not letting ‘em inside, you see. I’d put up a front. I’d put up my armor by looking like a bloodless asshole, Laura, by acting in many ways as you have. I finally realized in the dungeon that I was looking in a mirror, at the yin to my yang, maybe? You took down my armor the same as I took yours. I’m … I’m ready to turn Cindy loose. I’m ready to let her be gone, to let her be at peace, to let me dare to hope for a happy future. That’s what you did to me out … out there. It’s like I’ve been running around with a festering boil for nine years, one I pretended wasn’t there, but you lanced it and let all that crap leak away. Maybe … no, not maybe but definitely … we saved one another out there.” What else I was about to say, I don’t know. I opened my mouth and a scream came out, then a wail of pain finally let go as the emotional dam inside me crumbled away.

  How long I sobbed, I’ll never know, but I know my eyes were burning and my voice was shot on the heels of it when the tears stopped and I was in Laura’s arms as she held me, stroking my hair, until I cried out those nine years of grief.

  “Thank you for trusting me,” Laura said. “It tells me you love me and that you trust me at least as much as I’ve trusted you.”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Doctors shouldn’t prescribe tying one on, but friends do,” she said. “More of those awful Mexican cactus squeezings?”

  “Just what the doctor ordered,” I said with a wry smile. “More Patron, please.”

  “As Master wishes,” she said, beginning to rise.

  “I really do love you, Laura, or that door would’ve remained nailed shut,” I told her as she poured more booze into my glass. “I’d have never opened it to you. Christ, I didn’t even cry like that when my dad died. I’ve seen a thousand senseless things in my career, but me trying to save Cindy tops that list. But I guess denial isn’t just a long river down in Egypt land, right?”

  “In your shoes, I might’ve done the same,” Laura said. “Emotion always overrides logic, which is why I guess I’ve mostly stifled emotion.”

  “I sued the company that made the diving board, and they settled for a ton of money,” I said. “I was living poor here for the first few years until they settled, then paid a lot of money toward the house and paid it off entirely. I still pay through the nose for taxes, but at least if I get crippled and unemployed next week, I still keep a roof over my head”

  “You seem to live frugally,” Laura said. “Your dad’s old truck. Your boat isn’t some glitter-ridden gaudy monstrosity.”

  I snorted at this. “There’s a car in the garage that I drive here and there, a three-year-old Mustang, but I like Dad’s old truck. Cindy’s sister turned sixteen a week before Cindy died, and Cindy had the insurance on the car to pay it off if she was disabled or killed, so I gave it to her sister. She’s still driving it. But Dad’s truck ... it was top-of-the-line when he bought it, as far as I know, but a good memory of him too, y’know?”

  “I do,” she said. “My dad had one very much like it, but a Chevy and black.”

  “I remember you saying,” I told her. “It impressed me that you could pick up on even the year model.”

  “Just one of my things, that I’ve always noticed the variances,” Laura said. “In some ways, I like to think that trait makes me a good diagnostician.”

  “I think we both owe this to Cindy,” I said. “She showed me my desires, showed me what I am, and from that, I could help introduce you to Laura Peters, without the alphabet soup. And in return, you were able to set me free. In other words, darlin’, you’re stuck with me. Goddamn you, you’re sentenced not to die until after I do. I couldn’t take another loss like that.”

  CHAPTER 27

  I rose from my seat, drained in more ways than one. “I’m sorry for reacting how I did. In my head, I thought the most vile things of you. I shouldn’t have, but I did. I thought this had all been some joke. I let myself think that you hated me so much that you did all of that just to laugh at and humiliate me.”

  “I would never do that.”

  “I know that now, or rather, I may be learning that. But don’t you see how broken I can be? I find it impossible to trust, and jump to thinking the worst.”

  He cocked his head. “Well, that’s true, and we’ll deal with that in a bit, but I own some of that.”

  “No, just me. Either I’m pushing or running away. You look at me like I’m something wonderful, but you don’t see the blackness eating at me. I look like I have it all put together, but I’m just a mess.”

  He stood and came to me, gripping my arms in his. “I’ve been a bit brusque with you in the past, called you a bitch and other names. I’m not proud of that, but I understand where you went in your head.” He stooped down to get eye-to-eye with me. “But listen up, that won’t be tolerated from here on out. We sit and talk it out. If you run from me again, you won’t like what happens next. That’s one of the worst possible offenses you could make. Am I making myself clear?”

  His words had me gulping. There was the steel I needed. Perhaps it was my time to talk.

  “Look, Keith…” I almost said We need to talk but swallowed those words down along with the lump in my throat. “Are we moving too fast?” I glanced at the tee-shirt covering my nakedness, feeling now horribly overdressed, but still bereft of one small thing.

  “You want to slow this down?”

  Did I? I gripped the hem of his shirt, wringing the fabric in my hands. “Maybe, I just need some direction. Perhaps if I knew what you craved? You like your whip and all the other toys, but what are you looking for in me?”

  “I thought I’d been pretty clear out there.”

  “There’s more to this than the bite of your whip.”

  He released my arms and took his seat, leaving me standing before him, fidgeting with that damned shirt. “Do I need to punish you for running away from me just now?”

  I squeezed
my legs together, because the thought of heading back to his dungeon for a punishment made me instantly wet, but I didn’t want to be one of those slaves begging to get whipped. He needed to make that choice, not me, and he’d already said next time. I took that to mean I’d gotten a pass.

  “Your head, love. What’s going on in that head?”

  “Only that I prefer pain with my pleasure. But to answer your question, No, I don’t want to head back outside.”

  “From the way you’re fidgeting, it looks like that’s just what you do want. Love, I can smell your need from here.”

  “Well, I like it. I love being restrained, and whipped and beaten, but I don’t think that’s the best thing considering I’m still too sore to sit and my back still stings from your whip. You said next time, and if I ever run from you again, I hope you light into me, but for now...do you think you could just hold me?”

  “Just hold?” His gaze went to the apex of my thighs, zeroing in on the glistening evidence of my growing need coursing down to my knees.

  “Take off the shirt,” he said with a growl. “Clothes are things you need to earn around me, and I can say, in this house, that price will rarely ever be met.”

  “Yes, Sir,” I said, pulling the hem up to my hips.

  He licked his lips and stared at the juncture of my legs. “Sir?” His eyebrows lifted. “That isn’t something you’re allowed to use here either. Love, you’re mine. All of you. Every bit of you. I intend on making that more permanent, but until then, call me what I am.”

  I yanked the shirt over my head, revelling in what he said. His words flowed through me and settled in deep. What the hell had I been thinking to run from this man?

  I cast the shirt off and watched the fabric flutter to the floor, then lowered myself to my knees. “Thank you, Master.”

  We’d had a long night, and I didn’t know what to expect, but his shorts tented, making me grin.

  “Now, slave, what is going on in that pretty little head?”

  “I’m wondering if I might be able to take care of that.”

  He glanced at his crotch and gave me a grin. “Now aren’t you the needy one.”

  And so it began. Not whips and chains, or screams of pain. I took him in my mouth. He took me against the wall. Then I found myself nearly upside down, draped over the couch. He moved me down the hall, and fucked me there too. Before the bedroom, we stopped in the bathroom where he fucked me again. I found myself on all fours beside the bed. There he took me, with his cock, his fingers, and finally his mouth.

  My screams were not those of pain, but of the most delicious pleasure. He might have only had three orgasms, but he was going double digits for me. I wound up in his bed, snuggled against his side, a very content and worn out slave.

  We still had much to discuss and demons to slay, but I knew where I belonged, and had only one more thing to say.

  “Master?”

  “Yes, slave?”

  “If you really feel like you need to punish me for running away, I won’t say no.”

  He huffed a laugh. “Now where did you ever get the idea you had a choice?”

  CHAPTER 28

  I got the subtlety, I did. She was asking me to break her, to punish her bad behavior, and I wholly believed she really deserved it, but by this point, I was exhausted, and more than a little bit intoxicated, and in this shape might accidentally lynch us both with that whip. The mental imagery amused me, and oh-my-God the headlines in the papers, right?

  Local Paramedic and Trauma Surgeon Dead in a Whip Misadventure!

  “You’ll be lashed harshly tomorrow,” I added. “Eighty of the whip, Laura, and perhaps confinement. You might not have noticed the jail out there, but you’re going to notice it tomorrow. You’ll be a disciplined girl, and how much you suffer to get there is on you, my love.”

  “Oh, God,” she moaned, then caught herself. “I know I deserve it, Master. As bad as it’ll be, in my heart, eighty is even lenient for what I almost threw away for my fucking stupidity.”

  “You bled a bit today, but only a couple of dots where marks intersected,” I pointed out.

  “I gave you my consent, Master,” Laura said. “Even if I scar, that’s your privilege. Maybe I even want that, to be marked for life by my master, marks only the two of us will ever see. I won’t say I’m not afraid. Truth is, I’m terrified. It’s arousing and frightening at once. When I saw us fucking in the mirror, I really wondered who I was when I saw my face. But I … I didn’t love myself when I came here, and I think I could love this new me, this enslaved and disciplined me. I’ve lived a life without consequences, the top dog at that hospital, but … with you, I like that I don’t get choices, that you’re my lawgiver, and if you order me to march out there naked to be whipped, that’s the law. There’s no recourse. There’s no appeal. There’s no begging. There’s simply acceptance. I’m owned here and you’ll do as you please. It’s … it’s breathtaking, how much I’ve needed this. I don’t understand it. I’m only just discovering it, but even so, that need is deep-seated inside me, Sir.”

  “I saw it in you the same way Cindy saw it in me,” I said after a moment of digesting this. “That’s the only answer I have.”

  “Master?” she said.

  “Go on,” I prompted.

  “I have a third hole, Sir. That’s yours too. Tomorrow … God, I can’t believe I’m saying this. Tomorrow, before you jail me, can we go to my house? I want you to do something to me there, rule and own me there, so I know my house is no refuge from your ownership. I also have … I like butt-play and have an array of ass plugs. But … suddenly it’s important that you have the key to my house, unquestioned entry. I … Jesus, I know this isn’t as deep a door as you opened to me … I have a stripper pole in my basement, and I’d love if you made me slither for you. Maybe lash me if I’m not one hundred percent pleasing?”

  Jesus H. Christ! my mind exclaimed. Despite erupting in her three times tonight alone, damn if my cock wasn’t twitching.

  “I still … Master, I think detention in your jail will be the harsher punishment, and I deserve that. I’m not trying to get out of it, but I think some time between your whip and that jail cell, time in my house under your rule, will benefit this journey we’re taking.”

  “I agree,” I said.

  “I mentioned being afraid of tomorrow, Master, and I am,” she said.

  “Wait here,” I ordered. “I’ll return.” I went to the dungeon and fetched a bondage belt and cuffs for her ankles, then went back to the bedroom, where I put the bondage belt around her slim waist, buckled behind her, then handcuffed her wrists to a ring on her lower belly, and cuffed her ankles with a short chain. She could only shuffle, but could at least get to the john, for instance.

  “Thank you, Master,” she moaned. “God, I love being so helpless with you.”

  I gave her pussy a hard spank and she moaned anew. “No masturbation,” I said. “You only orgasm when I say you do. Got that?”

  “Master is a harsh one,” she moaned. “But, yes, Sir.”

  We fell to sleep, or I did, at least. By the haunted look on her face when I woke, she’d slept precious little, hopefully fretting about the day ahead. She asked permission to go to the bathroom. I liked that, that she wanted permission for everything when in my presence. I released her handcuffs, then told her she could use the john. Most of her wounds were healed by this point, or mostly healed. There was a little bruise here and there, but the welts on her back were all but gone, only three remaining. She flashed a grateful look and shuffled to the bathroom. When she came out, I told her to make us breakfast.

  “Yes, Master,” she said, then shuffled to the kitchen.

  As she did this, I did something I needed to do alone. There’s a high shelf in my parlor with what looks like a simple vase on it, but it’s the urn with Cindy’s ashes. I took it down from the shelf, struggling not to weep, then kissed it.

  “I love you, Cindy,” I said. “Go with God, my l
ove. I think I’m going to be okay.” I returned the urn to its place, then went into the kitchen for breakfast.

  Breakfast was a ruination of burnt bacon and eggs. The toast was on a timer, so that wasn’t fucked up, and neither was the stuff she didn’t have to cook, like the butter, OJ, jelly, that sort of stuff. She looked at me in horrified humiliation, maybe more so at my look of amusement. Beginning to weep, she scraped the burned chow into the trash, and knelt before me.

  “I’m sorry, Master,” she said.

  “Nervous, much?” I asked.

  “A wreck,” she confessed. “Mixed emotions, like that joke about your mom-in-law driving off a cliff in your new Corvette.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I chuckled. “I liked my mother-in-law.” This was true. We still kept in touch. I’d even had Christmas dinner with them this past Christmas. Cindy’s parents are good people. I was genuinely fond of them from the start, and kept on good terms. “You going to eat?”

  “I think I’d just throw up, Master.”

  “Malnutrition isn’t one of my kinks,” I told her. “I’ll let this pass for now, but I hope you’re not some sort of anorexic trying to be Skinny Minnie here. I ran a call ten years ago, a cute lesbian couple. One was anorexic and the other bulimic. The bulimic ate the anorexic. I mean, the anorexic was back in twenty minutes, but a chewed up mess. It wasn’t pretty.” I smirked, but saw on her face that my joke had fallen flat.

  “No, Sir,” she said. “It’s just nerves. Truth is, once this whipping is done, I’ll probably want to hit Jack in the Box and loot them for a dozen of those nasty tacos.” She made a sardonic chuckle.