Ghost

by John Ringo

  After that she slipped on her shorts and T-shirt, sans bra and panties. She knew Mike had some around somewhere, but she could survive without either for a bit.

  She brushed her hair but didn't bother with makeup, instead creeping out of her room and trying the door of the cabin Pam had planned on using. Which was empty, the bed unused. Pam's bag was on the floor, so she didn't have the wrong room.

  She raised an eyebrow and looked at the door to the main cabin, then crept to it and tried the door handle. Unlocked. She slowly twisted it down and slid the door open soundlessly . . .

  Mike had woken up when Courtney opened the door to the bathroom. It wasn't that he was a particularly light sleeper. He could sleep through a firefight if he wasn't on duty, but he had a very acute security switch, so when someone started moving around he had to ID it. And he was curious what Courtney would do, so he stayed awake. When she headed for his door, he pulled the sheet up to cover most of Pam and simply waited.

  Courtney's expression was . . . crestfallen when she looked in the room. Mike wanted to laugh, but instead he shook his head and made a motion for silence and for her to wait. Then he carefully slid his arm out from under Pam's head, gently replacing it with a pillow, and carefully, grimacing, rolled to the side of the bed. He was totally naked, but he figured Courtney could either hide her eyes or get a good look.

  Getting out of bed was, as always, a trial. But he finally managed to snag his shorts and get them on, then crept to the door and past Courtney, quietly closing it behind them.

  "Are you okay?" Courtney asked as he limped down the companionway.

  "I will be," he said, straightening slowly until he was fully erect. "God, mornings are bad."

  "You're in worse shape than it looks," Courtney said, following him into the lounge.

  "Lots," Mike said, slowly bending and stretching. "I didn't get medically discharged because of this," he said, waving at the scars. "I got medically discharged because I've got major joint damage, well, all over." He got out the makings of coffee, as well as an apple, taking a bite. "Apple?"

  "So you and Pam . . . ?" Courtney asked, taking a bite of the apple and then finally getting a good look at his back. "Jesus! You're bleeding in places," she muttered around the bite.

  "Yes, me and Pam," Mike said, walking over to take a bite as well. He crunched it up for a bit, then leaned down and kissed her.

  The apple fell on the floor as her hand went up behind his head and pulled him in, hard. Suddenly they were on the floor, her hands running over his ruined back.

  "What will Pam think?" she asked as they came up for air.

  "I dunno," Mike said, his tongue sliding into the juncture between her neck and shoulder. "Let's go in and ask her."

  "Oh, God," she moaned as his hand slid down into her shorts and over her ass. "I wanted you to do that," she moaned.

  "I've been wanting to do it," Mike admitted, pushing her shorts down her legs. He pushed her shirt up and over her head and then down, trapping her arms. "And I've been wanting to do that, too," he said, roughly.

  "Oh, God," she moaned, her head falling back.

  Mike ripped the shorts off her legs then balled them up, stuffing them in her mouth. Her eyes flew open but then shut again as his mouth closed on her nipple and his hand went between her legs. She bit down on the cloth, smelling her own scent and getting even more excited as Mike expertly manipulated her, slowly stroking at her pleasure center, his mouth working on her nipple, sucking and blowing and occasionally nipping lightly until she shook her head from side to side and came so hard she thought she was going to stroke out.

  Suddenly he was in her, taking her, one hand clamped over her mouth and the other kneading her breast, hard, pulling at the nipples. She was beyond pleasure, beyond thought, totally in the moment and almost unable to breathe for the strength of the ongoing climax until she thought she would just die right there.

  Finally it was over, and as he slipped out of her, she made a little moan of sadness and longing.

  Mike pulled the shorts from her mouth and kissed her, tenderly.

  "Thank you," he said, laying his forehead on hers. "Thank you, very much. I'm sorry about that."

  "Thank you," Courtney said, slipping an arm out of her entrapping shirt and her hand over the back of his neck. "How are you feeling?"

  "You mean the joints?" Mike asked, backing away from her gently and smiling. "Exercise helps." He stood up and held out his hand.

  "I think I need a Kleenex or something," Courtney said.

  "Your wish, milady," Mike said, getting a Kleenex and handing it to her.

  "I'll be right back," Courtney said, taking his hand to stand up, the other hand between her legs. "This is always embarrassing."

  "I don't think so," Mike said, running his hand over her back. "I'll be right here. There is cuddle time I'm missing."

  When she came out he was on the couch in the lounge, nursing a cup of coffee and another by his side. He had slipped on a pair of shorts, but she was still naked.

  "I didn't know how you took it," Mike said, waving at the coffee.

  "Cream and sugar," she said, picking up her shirt and shorts and shaking her head. "I'm running out of clothes."

  "And you don't have any short of your car, which is far far away," Mike said, waggling his eyebrows and leering. "You are so at my mercy!"

  "Oh, be merciful kind sir!" Courtney said, dropping to her knees and grasping at his legs in mock horror. "Please don't force me to be naked and at your mercy!"

  "Don't tease an old dog," Mike said, holding out the cup. "I have cream and sugar, but how much?"

  "Much," she said. "Where is it?"

  "I'll get," Mike said. "You rest your lovely bones."

  "I do need to get some clothes," Courtney said, looking out the window. "Where are we?"

  "Still about five hundred yards from Rumrunners," Mike said, bringing over cream and sugar and a spoon.

  "We are going to be allowed to go back to get clothes, right?" Courtney said, coquettishly.

  "Do you play those games?" Mike asked. "From some signs, I'd guess you'd enjoy them."

  "What games?" Courtney asked, taking a sip of coffee. It was strong but not bitter, very smooth. "You make good coffee."

  "Thanks," Mike said. "Bondage and dominance games was what I was talking about."

  "Uhm, no," Courtney said, her eyes flying wide. "Are you talking about whips?"

  "No," Mike said, taking his own sip. "We really just played one, right there," he said, pointing to the spot where they'd made love. "I pinned your arms and gagged you. You seemed to enjoy it."

  Courtney closed her eyes and her nipples sprung erect at his words.

  "Whoa," she whispered after a moment. "Uhm, I guess so."

  "It's a form of bondage," Mike said, shrugging. "Bondage and discipline are about dominance and submission. There are various ways to play it, master-slave, rapist-rapee, but the thing to keep in mind is that it's all play. The point is for both parties to have fun."

  "Complicated guilty pleasures," Courtney said quietly. "That's what you were talking about."

  "Yep," Mike said.

  "So . . . what is your complicated guilty pleasure?" Courtney asked, still quietly.

  "Shorts stuffed in your mouth?" Mike said, reaching out to stroke one nipple lightly. "Arms pinned? Hand on mouth? Guess. So what do you fantasize about when you're masturbating, Courtney?"

  "God," she whispered. "Is it obvious? Is there some sort of mark on my forehead?"

  "Not particularly," Mike said. "And at this point I need to be careful . . ." He looked up and smiled faintly. "This should be interesting."

  Pam appeared in the opening to the companionway and looked at both of them blearily.

  "How come you're still alive?" she asked, shaking her head. "Much less up? Much less . . ." She looked at Courtney, still sitting on the couch naked, her head down. "Much less . . . God!"

  "Morning, Pam," Mike said, smiling. "Coffee?"


  "How many times last night?" Pam asked, sitting at the table shakily.

  "Orgasms?" Mike asked. "You have to keep count. Engagements? Three, I think."

  "What was I?" Courtney snapped. "A quick breakfast snack?"

  "No," Mike said, leaning over and kissing her on the head. "You, my dear, were a truly great wake-up. My joints aren't even stiff anymore."

  "I need some clothes," Courtney said, hugging her breasts.

  "I'll arrange," Mike said, getting up and going to the cabins. He came back with a towel. "Here."

  "Is that all I get?" Courtney asked. "All that you'll . . . permit me?"

  "For now," Mike said with a grin. "Pam, when you walked in, we were discussing . . . guilty pleasures."

  "Like two at a time?" Pam asked, shaking her head. "I'm not sure I'm ready for that."

  "No, actually we were discussing dominance and submission," Mike answered. "Coffee?"

  "Coffee?" Pam said, screwing up her face in confusion. "You just trot that out and ask if I want coffee?"

  "Cream and sugar?" Mike asked. "Black?"

  "Cream and sugar," Pam said, shaking her head.

  "Dominance and submission is the last love that dare not speak its name," Mike said, getting her a cup of coffee and carrying the cream and sugar over. "Say when."

  "When."

  "Despite the fact that most studies put it as the most common fantasy," Mike continued, sitting down by Courtney. "Something like fifty percent of women are willing to admit to submission fantasies. The total is probably higher."

  "I know girls who . . ." Courtney said, adjusting her towel. "Well, they're definitely not submissive."

  "I think of it as a bell curve," Mike said. "Some women are towards the dominance end all the way to full mistresses. Some are so submissive that they're full masochists. The 'do anything to me, Master' types."

  "Do you know any of those?" Pam asked.

  "I've known a few," Mike admitted. "Not many. I don't really travel in the circles, what's referred to as the 'scene' among those that really get into it. But many females, I'd say most, fall somewhere in the middle. They enjoy being dominated, and I'm talking about in agreed to scenes here, not in day-to-day life, but they're not full-scale masochists. They may even like to be spanked and told they're bad girls or whatever, but they don't want to be whipped until they bleed."

  "Pass," Courtney said hastily.

  "But . . . well . . ." he said, pausing. "What went on between Pam and me last night was not that far from what went on between Courtney and me."

  The two girls looked at each other for a second and then, almost simultaneously, dropped their heads and shook them.

  "Girls," Mike said, trying not to laugh, "there's nothing to be ashamed about. You're both very nice young ladies who have an . . . interest. Apparently, I might add. You certainly each seemed to have a good time."

  "I did," Pam admitted, looking up. "But . . . it's pretty hard to just talk about it."

  "Talking about it is important," Mike said. "For a few reasons. One of them is that, well . . . do you want to continue to play? I mean for more than just today and tomorrow? That's one thing to talk about. Another is the details of what you're interested in exploring and, more importantly, what you're not willing to explore. The term for it is 'negotiation.'"

  "I don't want to be one of those weirdos who goes around town being led on a leash," Courtney said definitely.

  "Agreed," Mike said. "And now we work out the details. Would you be willing to wear a collar here on the boat? Inside? Outside when we're out of sight of other boats?"

  Courtney writhed for a minute on the couch and took a deep breath.

  "I don't know," she said, looking at Pam.

  "Well," Pam said, "I don't know about you, Courtney, but I just got horny again thinking about it."

  "Thank you," Mike said, nodding at her. "Let me lay some pretty boring groundwork. Dominance and submission, and bondage and discipline, first have to involve trust. You have to trust that the dom, in this case me, will use his intelligence and skill to not push you past the point that you're comfortable. A scene is something like a scary movie. You go see a scary movie and there's a bad guy chasing some girl around and killing her. That's scary, but you know it's not real. D and S is the same thing. It's setting up something that in real life would be terrible. Rape. Being owned as a slave. Being forced to submit to a stranger, like a cop, for some reason. All of them, effectively, revolve around rape. But the difference is, the sub is in control. The sub can, at any time, say 'I'm done' or 'time out, we need to talk.' You can't say that in real rape."

  "How do you do that?" Pam asked. "I don't think I could have talked most of last night. I was too . . ."

  "In the moment," Mike filled in. "When a sub is fully in the moment, they often describe it as flying, like an out-of-body experience. But that moment can get broken very easily. Trust me, you could have if I'd pushed past your boundaries. Do you like anal sex?"

  "No," Pam said definitely.

  "Then if I'd rolled you over and gotten out the butter?" Mike asked, grinning.

  "You would have had a fight on your hands," Pam said.

  "You definitely would have been out of the moment," Mike said. "I didn't push at any real boundaries last night. It was far too soon, for one thing. What you do is you say 'yellow' if you need a time out and discussion. You say 'red' if you're done, take me back to shore you asshole! If you're gagged, and if we do this you're going to be gagged a lot, you grunt in the gag. What you don't do is say 'stop' or 'no' or 'please.' Those mean 'more and harder, master.'"

  Pam grinned at that and dropped her head, shaking it from side to side.

  "I have a hard time with the way that you just trot stuff like that out," Courtney said, shaking her own head. "I kind of like it, but it's hard for me to accept how . . . open you are about it."

  "I'm open in here," Mike said. "With you two, between us. But I don't go around in leather bondage gear in public . . ."

  "Do you have leather bondage gear?" Courtney said, involuntarily wriggling again.

  "Some," Mike said, frowning. "Not enough if we're going to get . . . complicated. I can fix that in a day or so. The point is, this is 'behind the bedroom door.' Even out on the boat, in the middle of the Stream with nobody around to see, would be behind the bedroom door. And you can push it further, a bit, but you have to know when to stop, both as the dom and as the sub. Otherwise you really do get Nine and a Half Weeks."

  "Lost me again," Pam said, frowning.

  "It's about the only major movie ever made about dom sub games and it was horrible," Mike said, shrugging. "Basically a dom finds a newbie sub and completely takes over her life. You can do it. I could do it to you two, probably. Slowly take away your will to resist, break every barrier, turn you into submissive sluts . . ."

  "Are you trying to get me horny again?" Courtney said.

  "A bit," Mike admitted with a grin. "But . . . I sort of did that, accidentally, once. In the movie, the sub finally ran away from the relationship, broke the mental bond, which is way more important than the physical ones, and ran. That . . . rarely happens in real life when something like that occurs, and it does. And it didn't happen in my relationship. I was young and just wanted to get laid and . . . be able to say 'bend over' whenever I wanted. And she . . . wasn't quite right when I met her and she fell, well, not in love but into total submission. And I used her. I knew I was using her, liked it and didn't like it at the same time, she knew she was being used, liked it and didn't like it at the same time. Finally, I broke up with her and told her to hold onto her soul. I couldn't just . . . back away. It was too easy to just use her. My resistance, then, wasn't that high. Young, dumb and full of cum. I had to simply . . . leave."

  "That must have been tough," Pam said, frowning. "I mean a guy walking away from . . . you could do pretty much anything you wanted?"

  "Anything," Mike said, clicking his teeth. "Anytime, anywhere."

/>   "And you walked away," Pam said.

  "Had to," Mike said with a shrug. "For her. I won't say she took it well. But the point is, I can manage that, now. But, if you get into this . . . scene, it's something that you have to look out for. There are other guys, like me, who won't back away. Who won't . . . let you go. There are predators in this subsection of the sex world, guys who will gladly hold onto you and break you, knowing what they're doing and using you instead of . . ." He shrugged. "Instead of caring for you and wanting to simply have you enjoy yourselves and get their enjoyment as well. The 'bedroom door' is tricky. If you stay in the scene, get deeper in it, you might do full scenes, with other people watching . . ."

  "Not on your life," Courtney said, shaking her head.

  "You'd be surprised," Mike said. "Think about what you fantasize about when you masturbate."

  "Uh . . ." Courtney said, then paused.

  "Yeah," Mike said, nodding and working his jaw. "Or . . . hmm . . . going to a club in a miniskirt and no panties and sort of . . . sitting on your master's lap, with his dick out through his zipper and . . . moving to the beat . . ."

  "Okay," Pam said, holding up her hand. "I can see what you mean by the bedroom door being tricky."

  "You also have to know when the scene ends," Mike continued. "Firmly know when you're . . . yourself again and the scene is over. Submissive means in sex play, not in 'real life.' That's part of the dom's job, to make it plain when the scene is over. In a way, I've made a mistake by leaving Courtney in nothing but a towel. It's continuing the scene when we should really be out of scene. But I thought she'd sort of like it. Just a guess."

  "No comment," Courtney said, pulling at the top of the towel.

  "Here's the question: When do you have to go back to Missouri?"

  "That's a big question," Pam said carefully. "Not until classes start, I guess."

  "I've said it before, you can stay as long as you'd like," Mike said, just as carefully. "If you'd like, we can just fish and dive—I'm a qualified SCUBA instructor by the way, so I can get you qualified on that if you want. Or we can fish and dive and . . . play. For as long as you'd like. Or, rather, until it's time to go back to Missouri. Not forever."