Master Class

by Jason Luke

  Edge’s face stayed fixed and frozen, but Clarissa saw something move like a shadow behind his dark eyes. “Have you been looking for a Master to train you for very long?”

  “A few months,” Clarissa said. She felt a small tremor of uncertainty. She hadn’t rehearsed this line of possible questions and she felt herself stepping into uncertain ground.

  “Where?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Where have you looked to find someone suitable?”

  “Um… online, mainly,” she said, keeping her answer short.

  “Did you meet with anyone?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  Clarissa licked her lips. It was a nervous reaction. “I chatted to a couple of men through social media, but they were crude and vulgar,” she made up the story. “They seemed to want to intimidate me.”

  Edge inhaled a deep breath and then nodded. He seemed satisfied. Slowly, Clarissa let the tension seep away.

  Impulsively, Edge got to his feet and planted his big brawny hands flat on the desktop, so he was leaning over the edge of the desk towards her.

  “Very well,” he said. “Come back tonight. We’ll go through the basics.”

  Clarissa blinked, then started to smile in genuine relief. She let go of a breath she had been holding in her lungs and it came out from between her lips like the sound of a gasp.

  “Thank you,” she started to stand and reach for her handbag. Her heart felt like it might burst from her chest. She was half out of the chair when a sudden thought struck her and she sat back down, pinching her expression with curiosity. “Can I ask you a question before I go, Mr. Edge?”

  Nick Edge nodded. He didn’t sit.

  “When I first arrived today, you called me Anna. Can I ask you why?”

  The question gave Edge a long moment of pause. His face changed, becoming darker.

  “Anna is the name of my business partner.”

  Clarissa went through the charade of feigning surprise. “Really? A woman helps run your submission training business?”

  “No,” Edge shook his head. “I had another business. Anna and I worked with runaway kids, helping them when they had nowhere else to turn. We arranged food and shelter for them – got them off the streets and into care. That kind of thing.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know.”

  “Then one day, Anna was kidnapped.”

  “Kidnapped?”

  Edge nodded and his eyes seemed to glaze over. His gaze turned inward with recollection of the moment.

  “We were in an alley, and it was dark. We knew it was a place that street kids frequented when they were on the run. There was a young boy sleeping in a dumpster and a teenage girl hidden under some cardboard boxes. Anna went back to our vehicle to get them food. I heard a sudden screech of brakes. I turned back to see what was happening. On the street, a white van pulled up on the sidewalk and two men dressed in black got out. They were big men, well trained. They were dressed in black, their faces covered. I heard Anna scream. One of the men punched her in the face. As she started to fall to the ground the second man caught her and they dragged her into the back of the van. I started to run – but it happened too fast. There was nothing I could do to save her.”

  Clarissa was truly horrified. She hadn’t known the details of the young woman’s disappearance. She could hear the pain, still coarse and raw, in Edge’s voice.

  “The word on the street was that a sex-slave operation was working its way through Washington. They were hunting for girls to train and sell to men who could afford the price. Anna got caught in their net.”

  “Is she still alive?”

  Edge shook his head. “I don’t know. I hope so. I believe she’s still somewhere here in the city.”

  “Being used as a sex slave?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry.” Clarissa didn’t know what else to say.

  Edge sighed like he was letting go of all the memories and tension. “I changed the nature of our business overnight. I called in some buddies who I had served with in the military. Now we’re no longer helping street kids. Now our focus is to find the sex-slave traders. We’re hunting the men who kidnapped Anna… and all the other young girls who they prey on.”

  “That sounds like grim, ugly work…”

  “It’s a bleak and ugly world that most people don’t even know exist,” Edge said.

  “And you called me Anna,” she brought the conversation back to her original question. “Do we look similar?”

  “No,” Edge shook his head ruefully. “You look exactly the same. You look like a mirror image of her; the resemblance is uncanny.”

  Clarissa gave a tepid little smile, but inflected it with genuine concern. “Is that fact going to inhibit my training?” It sounded a little selfish, and it was meant to. Clarissa had to play her part perfectly. But her question was also genuine. Did Edge have some kind of emotional connection to his missing business partner that would be a barrier to her sexual experience? If she couldn’t get this man to fuck her, her grandfather’s farm would be lost.

  She wondered whether even Congressman Jansing had considered the possibility that Edge was so emotionally invested in the missing girl that for him to have sex with Clarissa would feel somehow like screwing his own sister.

  “No,” Edge’s eyes turned hard as stone. “It won’t impair your training.”

  He said not a word more.

  Clarissa waited until she was sitting in the back seat of a cab and on her way home before she pulled the burner phone that Congressman Jansing had given her from her handbag.

  She glanced surreptitiously at the driver and made sure he was focused on the road ahead, then thumbed the pre-programmed number. She pressed the phone to her ear and waited.

  Congressman Wilton Jansing was standing in the corridors of the White House when one of the two phones in his pocket vibrated. He smiled apologetically at the man in the dark suit he was talking to, and reached into his pants.

  He held up his finger to cut the other man’s words short.

  “Sorry, Chuck,” he broadened his southern accent. “I really need to take this call.”

  The other man nodded. Jansing turned his back to the man and began striding towards an open doorway, his footsteps echoing above the hushed buzz of milling voices.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “Good news,” Clarissa said.

  “He fucked you?”

  “No. Not yet. But he’s willing to train me as a submissive. I’m going back to his home tonight.”

  Jansing grunted. It was progress, but it wasn’t the news he needed. He pressed his lips into a pale bloodless line. “The clock is ticking on your grandfather’s farm,” the Congressman warned.

  “I know.”

  “Then don’t fuck around. You don’t have that luxury.”

  He hung up before Clarissa could say another word.

  Chapter 5:

  There were floodlights burning above the gate post when Clarissa returned that evening to the big sprawling property. The lights cast a glow over the sidewalk and spilled wide pools of light across the lawns that fringed the driveway, making the grass appear unnaturally green.

  When Clarissa thumbed the microphone button and leaned forward to the speaker, someone was waiting.

  “Hello, I’m here to see Mr. Edge.”

  “Yes,” the response was immediate and more polite than the reception she had received earlier that day. She didn’t recognize the voice, and imagined that it was one of Edge’s staff.

  The gate buzzed open and rolled back across the driveway on its electric motor. Clarissa started along the driveway.

  She had spent a great deal of the afternoon on her outfit and makeup. She was wearing a soft pink blouse that was sheer enough to reveal a hint of the white bra underneath, and a short black skirt that was just the right length to be modest enough to wear in public, and provocative enough to attract the admiring glances of every man she pas
sed. She wore black high-heels to make her long legs appear even longer, and her makeup was flawless; just enough color to accentuate her eyes but not enough to turn her features superficial. She walked amidst a cloud of perfume, and she walked with her shoulders back, her chin lifted, and a deliberately accentuated sway to her hips. Her hair was out, fanned down her back. Under the bright lights it looked the color of smelted gold.

  When she reached the top of the wide steps, she saw a notice pinned to the front door.

  ‘The moment you step inside, your training begins.’

  Was it a warning? A threat? Some ominous cautionary notice to remind her of the erotic world she was about to enter?

  The note gave Clarissa a final moment of pause, and a shudder of nervous exhilaration ran in a cold chilling thrill all the way down her spine before finally clenching tight between her thighs. She felt unaccountably aroused; submission had been a fantasy of hers for several years, but she had never seriously considered the lifestyle before. Now she was on the precipice of experiencing things that she had only ever read about. It scared her to the point of fleeing… and aroused her to the edge of orgasm.

  She had already pleasured herself twice earlier in the day while lying on her bed in her tiny apartment with her eyes closed and her legs wide apart. She had brought herself off the first time merely by imagining Nick Edge kissing her as he ran her hands down over her breasts to the warm wet ache of her pussy. That had been all it had taken for her to moan and writhe through her first release. The second orgasm had taken longer, sparked by the thought of her on her knees, naked, while Edge stood towering over her, feasting on the perfection of her body and craving her with wild lust in his eyes. Clarissa had been unable to resist the temptation to touch herself again, fantasizing about the man’s cock in her mouth and trying to imagine how such complete surrender would make her feel. Would she feel more feminine? Would she feel like a piece of property? Would the emotions match her expectations… or would she walk away from this encounter somehow feeling sullied and used?

  Could he be enticed to fuck her?

  That question – more than any other – dominated her thoughts. When she had called her grandfather before leaving her apartment, the old man had sounded disconsolate and quietly despairing; not that he would ever give voice to his worries. He was too old-school, too tough to ever admit his deepest fears. Clarissa’s grandfather was a man made in the old mold; a hard-as-nails old timer who had toughened by a tough life.

  Nevertheless Clarissa had sensed her grandfather’s quiet despair, and the futile helplessness that was not in his words, but clear in his voice. It had hardened her wavering resolve.

  She reached for the door. It was unlocked.

  She stepped inside.

  Clarissa stood in the crushing silence for a long moment of confusion. She had expected to see Edge, waiting for her. Instead she was alone. The house felt empty, creaking as it settled for the night.

  “Hello?” she called into the silence. She knew the hallway ahead of her led to the office Edge had taken her earlier that day. To her left was a set of double doors, and to her right was a staircase leading to the top floor of the house. The stairs were timber, the balustrade ornately carved, with a stainless steel railing. Clarissa chewed on her bottom lip… and then went tentatively down the hallway towards the office.

  There was another note, pinned to that door.

  ‘Proceed to the far end of the hall and go through the last door.’

  Clarissa felt her apprehension and nervous angst rising. She was breathing in quick shallow gasps. The only sound in the house was the drumming beat of her heart.

  Intrigue and fascination compelled her to walk towards the last door at the end of the hall. Fear made each one of those steps faltering and uncertain. A final note waited for her.

  ‘Undress down to your panties. Leave everything else behind… and step into a new world of sensations.’

  Clarissa licked her lips nervously. Her hands were shaking. Her skin felt tingling, her bloodstream coursing with an overdose of adrenalin. She could barely control her fingers as she reached for the top button of her blouse.

  What was she walking into?

  What was on the other side of the door?

  Who would be waiting for her? Would it just be Nick Edge… or would there be many men, all of them ready to use her?

  And what kind of sensations: erotic, sensual… or painful?

  Clarissa closed her eyes in an attempt to control her breathing and feverish shivers. When she finally had the blouse undone, she peeled it off her shoulders. She felt unaccountably hot, like her body was on fire. She reached behind her back and drew down the zipper of her skirt. She let it fall about her feet. She was down to her panties and bra. She could smell the familiar faint muskiness of her own arousal. She unfastened her bra and slid the straps down her arms. Her nipples were sensitive and hard as pebbles.

  Clarissa tilted her head back and blew out one last long nervous breath at the ceiling. She looked back over her shoulder. The front door of the house was there, like an invitation, reminding her that she could still flee. She hesitated, but never really considered the option. There was no way back – she knew that. There was only this door and what lay beyond it.

  She had no choice.

  She pushed open the door.

  The room was dark and she blinked, made blind by the sudden blackness. A pale wedge of light from the hallway cast the silhouette of a man as a dull shape. She could see nothing more.

  “Close the door.” It was Nick Edge’s voice, harsh and growling, bristling with stern authority. Clarissa pushed the door closed and her blackness became absolute. She shivered and swallowed down a lump of panic that was lodged in her throat. She could hear her blood drumming in her ears. She could hear Edge breathing, but not moving. Clarissa stood very still with her hands defensively across her hips, cowered and cringing.

  “You will not be harmed,” Edge said. He spoke from somewhere to her left. Clarissa turned her head instinctively toward the sound.

  “I… I believe you.”

  She heard him move then, catlike footfalls, barely audible. For a big muscular man he moved with amazing grace. Clarissa searched the darkness. Her night vision was still poor. The shadows in the corners of the room were still pitch black, but closer, she could see her hand before her face. She forced herself to relax, and for a moment she stood without trembling. But it was only a moment. Then the shakes washed back over her, making her fingers flutter and her knees tremble.

  “Where are you?” she asked into the silence.

  “Here,” Edge said. Impossibly he had ghosted around behind her, standing so close that his voice seemed to sound right in her ear, and she felt the gentle breeze of his breath. She squeaked in fright and froze. Her heart stopped beating.

  Edge reached around and ran his hand gently across her torso, his fingers careful and caressing. Clarissa sucked in a ragged breath and drew her tummy tight, flinching instinctively to Edge’s sudden touch. Her mouth was open, each breath tremulous.

  “Submission for a woman is sensory,” Edge whispered in her ear. “We men are only interested in the visuals; a perfectly shaved pussy, a pretty, adoring face… a firm pair of breasts…” his tone was level and dispassionate. “But for women, the erotica of submission is much more inclusive of the other senses. It’s the scents and sounds, it’s the tastes… but most important of all, it’s touch.” Somehow Edge made the last word sound like the sexiest thing a man had ever uttered. It was the way he said it; the emphasis and inflection of his voice. “It’s touch,” he said again, and as he spoke, he slowly eased his hand down her torso to the waistband of her skimpy lace panties.

  Clarissa felt herself swaying. A hot flush burned through her body, beginning on her cheeks and rushing like an out-of-control wildfire over her chest then down to the mound of her sex. When the heat blazed through her pussy, she felt it melt her juices, and they spilled like lava to dampen her p
anties.

  “Do you understand, Clarissa?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, choking out the word. Edge was right behind her and she could feel the heat of his body, even though his only contact with her was the possessive touch of his hand. She wanted to lean back against him; to feel the hard muscles of his chest and the rigid thrust of his cock against her. In the darkness she felt solitary and isolated. She yearned to be anchored.

  Edge’s hand moved inside the lace of Clarissa’s panties and – without his command – she shuffled her feet apart for him. Her breath caught in her throat. His fingers were an inch away from the hot fire of her pussy and she could already imagine the sensations of his touch as it brushed over her clit. She was tingling with the anticipation. She made the soft sound of a whimper in the back of her throat. Impulsively she reached back behind her and brushed her hand against Edge’s thigh. The muscle through his jeans was flexed and tense. The whimper turned into a groan.

  Edge’s hand inside her panties stopped moving. He drew it back and stepped away from her. There was no effort to conceal his footsteps now. Suddenly he was purposeful, and the energy in the room changed and charged with tension.

  “No!” Edge admonished Clarissa. He was back on her left somewhere, but she didn’t turn her head to seek him. The lash of his voice had startled her and doused the fire of her arousal. “Do nothing unless ordered. Do you understand?” his voice was bitter.

  “Sorry,” Clarissa muttered. She had broken the spell of his seduction and now she was silently berating herself. “It won’t happen again.”

  Edge stood in the darkness like a ghost, and Clarissa could tell he was furious by the hoarse rasp of his breathing. His harsh reaction to the reckless brush of her hand across his thigh had bewildered her; it seemed distorted and out of all proportion to her offense.

  “Discipline is everything,” Edge’s voice came out of the black. He had moved closer. She could sense the vague outline of him. He was just out of arm’s reach.