Master Class

by Jason Luke

  The door was locked. Jansing had the key in his pocket. He pulled the door open and stood for a long moment in the cramped dark space. It smelled of dust and mothballs. Against the wall opposite were several cardboard boxes. He pulled them aside to reveal another locked door that had been disguised into the form of the wall. The Congressman used a different key and drew the door open. He had to bend to get through the low opening. He clambered through to a dark space and reached up for a light. He was standing on a narrow landing, and before him descended a dozen steps. He went down slowly, quietly, guided by the glow from the naked bulb suspended by a piece of flex cord. At the bottom of the steps was a third door, requiring a third key. The Congressman’s hands were suddenly shaking with restrained anticipation. He could hear the ragged rasp of his own breath, and his cock was so hard, it was painful. He had dust on the knees of his pants. He brushed it away with the palm of his hand and went through the door into a small but comfortable living area, laid out like a miniature subterranean apartment.

  Long ago this space had been a nuclear fallout shelter.

  Now it was a prison.

  There was a double bed, and a sink, with a tiny refrigerator under a counter that ran the length of one wall. Behind the door at the far end of the room was a small shower and toilet. The lights were on in the room.

  On the bed, laying on her back beneath a tangle of sheets, was a young woman.

  She was awake, staring blankly at the ceiling. She was naked beneath the covers; Jansing could see the press of her nipples and the shadowed indentation between her legs. The girl rolled her head towards the sound of him, her movements slow and drugged.

  The Congressman stepped quietly over to the side of the bed as if any sudden move might startle the girl.

  She had a pale, beautiful face framed by a long tangle of golden hair. Her skin was soft and lightly browned, tinted to the color of burnt honey. Jansing ran his fingers through her hair, soothing her like a fractious forest animal. He inhaled the scent of her like she was perfume. She smelled faintly sweaty, and he realized his own scent still lingered on her from when he had drugged and fucked her that morning. He growled deep in the back of his throat – an involuntary sound of his own maddened lust.

  He undressed quickly for his need was urgent and could be restrained not a moment longer. He pulled the sheets down. The girl had a slim perfect figure, and he noted the bruises from his fingers down her flanks and across her hips had almost faded. It had taken almost a full week after she had fought him. Now she lay pliant and subdued.

  He pushed her legs wide apart, and she did not resist. He ran his fingers between her legs, and the girl merely blinked. He knelt between her thighs and drew his tongue slowly over the lips of her pussy. She tasted musky and it inflamed him.

  “What’s your name?” he asked her the question in a soft almost sing-song voice.

  “An… Anna,” the girl’s voice broke dry in her throat.

  “No,” Jansing shook his head and clamped his fingers roughly around her throat. The girl flailed limply with her hands and tried to turn her head away. The Congressman was too strong. The girl gasped and her eyes began to flutter. He was slowly strangling her.

  “What’s your name?” he asked again, this time demanding the answer he wanted.

  “Slut,” the girl on the bed croaked. “My name is Slut.”

  Congressman Jansing smiled his triumph as he slowly stroked his cock, teasing himself with the temptation of her. “Good girl,” he said softly. “You’re such a very good girl.”

  He couldn’t wait any longer.

  The girl’s feeble grunts were like music to him as he used her.

  Chapter 4:

  The secret service agent drove around the block once, pointing to the house of Nicholas Edge that lurked behind a high stone wall and gate. Leafy trees fringed the property, so Clarissa only managed a glimpse before they had swept by.

  “I’ll drop you off at the corner,” the driver spoke over his shoulder to her in the back seat.

  “Okay.”

  “You have enough money to take a cab back to where you live?”

  “Yes.”

  The man said nothing more. On the next pass by the house he slowed, then stopped at the intersection. Clarissa stepped out onto the sidewalk. As soon as she pushed the car door shut again, the car sped away, accelerating around the corner and disappearing into merging traffic.

  She stood in the mid-morning sun for a moment, her heart racing and her hands trembling. She felt like she was about to meet for a crucial job interview that would change the course of her life. She straightened her clothes, tugging at the hem of the black leather skirt she wore. Like the black see-through top, the skirt felt uncomfortable. Certainly, they weren’t the kind of garments she would ever keep in her own wardrobe. She got the inkling that Anna Wilkinson – the man’s missing partner – had been some kind of a rebel.

  The handbag she carried was black also. She slung it over her shoulder and walked back along the leafy street. The neighborhood was quiet and the houses on either side of the road stately and imposing. There were luxury cars parked in driveways, and many of the homes had high border fences for privacy.

  Clarissa reached the iron gate that ran across the width of the driveway and she paused one final time. There were leaves in the gutter and birds singing in the trees. The scene was a picture of placid tranquil suburbia, yet she knew that the house beyond where she stood had seen tragedy and trauma in its recent past. What she saw from the outside was just a façade.

  There was a metal plate fitted with a speaker and several buttons built into a brick gate post. Clarissa cleared her throat, combed her fingers through her hair – and then pressed her thumb on the top button. She heard a small electronic buzz and felt a vibration come up through the tip of her finger. After a moment there was a scratchy, impersonal voice through the speaker.

  “Can I help you?” It was a man’s voice; gruff and formal.

  “Yes. I’m here to see Nicholas Edge.”

  “Hold on.”

  The connection went silent.

  Clarissa took a step back and looked through the posts of the high steel gate. At the end of a long gravel driveway she could see a white two story house. It reminded her of the majestic old southern homes she had seen in films about the civil war. Columns supported the front of the building, and the staircase leading to the front door was wide and grand, fringed on either side by pots of green plants and ferns.

  There was a luxury car at the end of the driveway, baking in the sun with light glinting off the windows.

  “Who are you?” the same man’s voice came back through the speaker.

  The sound startled Clarissa. She leaned back close to the speaker and thumbed the intercom switch once more.

  “My name is Clarissa Oldham,” she said in a thin reedy voice that was dry with nerves.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  “Wait.”

  Hidden in the foliage of a tree behind the high stone wall was a private closed circuit security camera. It displayed a black and white picture of the girl through a bank of monitors in a downstairs room of the house.

  Out by the street there was a loud electric buzz and Clarissa flinched, startled. Then the wide gate began to slowly roll back.

  “Proceed to the front door,” the voice said.

  Clarissa walked down the long driveway; the high heels of her shoes making each step a challenge on the loose shifting pebbles. She was intensely aware that there were eyes on her. She could feel them, and it made her cringe with self-conscious awkwardness. She kept her head high, trying to guess from which windows she was being observed. The front of the house became more imposing as she drew near. She could feel the beat of her heart and hear the rush of her own blood in her ears. Her steps turned tense with apprehension.

  As she approached the car, the front door of the house finally opened and a man stood in the threshold, sha
ded by the gloom of the home’s interior so she could not see him clearly. The man took a few faltering steps, and then came limping down the stairs and into the bright light.

  Clarissa knew instantly that the man was Nick Edge. His face was racked with some terrible anxiety, his eyes wide, his forehead a frown that knitted his eyebrows together. His mouth was open, but drawn tight. He was well built, Clarissa saw. He had powerful arms and a broad chest, each muscle standing defined against the tightly drawn cotton of his t-shirt.

  The man reached the bottom of the steps, dragging one leg stiff and unbending. He was wearing torn, faded jeans. He looked like a swarthy outdoorsman – someone accustomed to mud and hard dirty work.

  “Anna?” the man called out, his voice raw and disbelieving. “Anna? Is that you?”

  Clarissa said nothing. She kept her face composed, her lips pursed to hold herself together. She wanted to wait until they were close; she wanted to be sure that the Congressman had been right about her remarkable similarity to this man’s missing friend.

  “Anna?” the man was slowly shaking his head. He had a thick thatch of dark curly hair and a drawn but honest face.

  “Hello,” Clarissa said at last when they were just a few feet away from each other. Her voice was scratchy. She held out her hand. “My name is Clarissa Oldham. You’re Nick Edge, right?”

  The man looked blank for a long and dreadful moment. Clarissa saw the light of his incredulous hope fade, replaced by something close to confusion. He gaped at her, seemingly overcome by disbelief.

  “Who?” The man’s voice broke. It was painful to watch. Clarissa sensed he was close to some kind of exhaustion. She fought to keep her own composure and hold her expression blank. It was important that she not reveal any awareness of this man’s kidnapped friend. She had to play innocent – and make it convincing.

  “Clarissa.” Her hand was hanging in empty space. The man’s arms stayed hanging limp by his side. Clarissa used her extended hand instead to sweep a tendril of hair away from her eyes.

  And then she smiled, and shifted her weight a little to accentuate the curves of her figure, but without being provocative. The skirt she wore felt tight and clinging across the tops of her thighs, and she was sweating beneath the sheer fabric of the blouse. The sun was hot… but it wasn’t that hot. She felt herself on the edge of panic. Everything hinged on this one moment.

  The man looked away for a long time, and when his eyes finally swung back to hers, Clarissa could see that he had rearranged his features into an empty, calm expression. There was a dead, implacable look in his eyes.

  “What do you want?” Nick Edge tilted his head a little to cut out some of the sun in his face and studied her with open scrutiny.

  “I heard that you train women in the art of submission,” Clarissa felt a momentary lift of the tension. “I heard that you’re a Master… and… well,” she broke off for an instant to convey just the right sense of awkward embarrassment. It wasn’t much of an act. She felt truly intimidated by the sheer presence of this man. He was brooding and dark; she could see the torment written across his face. He frightened her a little, and he aroused her a lot. Despite the fraught moment and all that teetered on its outcome, she felt her body clench, and something stirred hot and violent low down in the pit of her stomach.

  “You’re interested in learning submission?” Edge asked with no real curiosity about the answer. Clarissa sensed he was still reeling from the shock of her appearance, and behind the cold dead stare, probably still dealing with a turmoil of stirred emotions.

  She licked her lips a little. She wasn’t a skilled seductress. She was a virgin who had only one brief relationship with a boy her same age three years earlier. She was out of her depth, but she knew at least that subtle was best.

  “Yes,” Clarissa answered. The sun was behind her, highlighting the curve of her hips and the fine length of her legs. “Provided I can find the right man to train me. I’ve done a little research. That’s how I found out about you, Mr. Edge. I also discovered there are a lot of predatory creeps out there, waiting to take advantage of my willingness to learn.”

  There was nothing else Clarissa could have said that would have struck a more powerful chord with Edge. The man’s face turned hard as stone and then suddenly softened. He ran his eyes over Clarissa once more; at first clinical and appraising, but then openly appreciative.

  He hunched his shoulders and gnawed at his lip like there was a quiet fight going on with his conscience.

  “Come inside,” Edge grunted. “We’ll talk some more.”

  Clarissa followed Edge into the house and felt the sudden and dramatic drop in temperature. There was a low hum of an air-conditioning unit working manfully in the background. The floor in the foyer was polished wood. Clarissa felt herself cringing with every step. The sound of her heels seemed to echo right through the house.

  Edge seemed not to notice. He led her down a corridor and into a room decorated as an office. He held the door open for her and gestured to a chair.

  “Take a seat.”

  Clarissa unslung her handbag and let it drop to her feet. The nerves came washing back over her like a tidal wave. She sat and shivered.

  Edge went around behind a large desk that was littered with folders, files and typed pages of information. There was an ungainly stack of books piled at one corner. He eased himself down into a high leather chair, clutching at his stiffened leg as if to guide it.

  Clarissa glanced around the walls. It was a man’s room. There were guns on the walls behind glass cases, and a dozen or more framed photographs that depicted men in combat. In a corner bookcase she noticed several large hardback textbooks about ancient warfare.

  Edge stared at Clarissa and she held his gaze, making her face bright and eager.

  In the few minutes since she had met Nick Edge, an inexplicable connection had begun to form between herself and the man. She sensed it with certainty. It seemed a cocktail of curiosity and sexual awareness. She had deliberately dressed in the same kind of clothes Edge’s missing friend had been known to wear, and in her excitement and panic her nipples had hardened and turned dark, pressing through the lace cups of her bra. In the still air of the room she could smell her own musky scent of secret arousal like a subtle undertone of her perfume.

  “Why do you want to learn submission?” Edge asked. His voice matched her impressions of the man perfectly. He spoke with a deep bass rumble, each word measured and without obvious emotion.

  “It fascinates me,” Clarissa spoke around a little breath of willingness. “I’ve read a lot about the BDSM lifestyle and done a lot of research. I’m drawn to the whole power-play aspect.”

  “But you want to submit to a man?”

  “Yes,” Clarissa nodded. She had spent much of the previous evening in the penthouse bathroom preparing for this moment, and rehearsing her answers to the questions she expected in front of the mirror. “I know that submissives too have power even though they give their bodies willingly to please their Master.”

  Edge grunted. He was gnawing at his lip again. He had one hand under his chin, his elbow resting on the top of the desk. He was leaning back in the chair, his lower body swinging in slow lazy movements. He was watching her closely and his eyes were narrowed. Somewhere in the far recesses of his mind he was troubled – either by the sudden appearance of the girl or the fact that she bore an uncanny resemblance to his business partner. Experience made him cautious. He had learned that serving his country.

  “Do you have any submissive experience?” Edge asked at last.

  “No, sir,” Clarissa shook her head. She had added the honorific as a deliberate but delicate ploy. “I’m actually a virgin,” she lowered her head then as if the admission was somehow shameful. Her long hair fell like a curtain over her eyes.

  Edge arched his eyebrows in curious surprise. “Really?”

  “Yes. Why? Is my virginity a problem?”

  “No,” Edge shook his head. “
It’s just that you’re a very beautiful young woman. I’m surprised you haven’t…”

  “Been fucked?” she said it, and the word was so jarring and so foreign to the way she had demurely presented herself that it sounded as shocking as blasphemy.

  Edge straightened a little in his chair. Some of the bland façade slipped from his eyes revealing a gleam of fascination. “Yes.”

  Clarissa shrugged her shoulders and the movement changed the shape of her breasts beneath the sheer blouse. Edge noticed.

  “I had a boyfriend for a short time a few years ago…” Clarissa tried to keep as close to the truth while telling her lies. “But it didn’t last long. And it wasn’t the kind of relationship I wanted. I knew – even back then – that I wanted a man to dominate me.”

  The words hung in the air like the echo of an invitation. Edge drummed his fingers on the edge of the table; thinking.

  “I have very specific requirements of my students,” he said, watching her eyes as he spoke. “Every woman I train must adhere strictly to the rules I enforce, without exception.”

  “That should be no problem,” Clarissa made her eyes wide and bright. “I’m very obedient in the hands of the right man.” It was there again in her words – yet another veiled invitation. It was the last of the bait she had to dangle without removing her clothes. All she could do now was hope and prey that Edge would bite.

  “You realize that I train women in sexual submission? I’m not interested in giving women experience in any other forms of the lifestyle. My focus is on the sexual aspects of BDSM so that women who leave here will know what to expect from a future Master… and what kind of signs are warnings that the man they are with might be dangerous to them.”

  “That suits me perfectly,” Clarissa felt a warm flush on her cheeks. She would never normally dare to be so brazen and she felt the words catch in her throat for an instant before she could deliver them. “All I’m interested in is sex training.”