The Word Master

by Jason Luke

  “And then…?”

  Her lips twisted into a knowing smile that was a reflection of irony rather than humor. “Then I started getting into it,” she admitted. “Once I concentrated on your voice and your instructions, everything else seemed to slip away. I found myself connecting to something deep within me that I hadn’t known existed before tonight – some feminine instinct, maybe,” she shook her head like it made no logical sense. “Some secret part of me was awakened.”

  I nodded to encourage her. April had more that she needed to say.

  “I want to learn and discover more,” she said in a confessional rush of words. “But I don’t want you to misunderstand… I’m not enamored with you. I’m gay, Jericho, and not even a man like you is going to change that. But I also recognize the fact that I need to explore this submissive part of me… so I can share it with my partner.”

  I kept my face impassive. I sensed this was important to April and I didn’t want to do anything that might make her withdraw, or reconsider what she was feeling.

  “That sounds fine,” I said calmly. “How do you want to proceed?”

  She shrugged her shoulders. “I am willing to continue being your model for the sub-club segments,” she said. “And I’d like you to answer the questions that I am going to have.”

  I smiled warmly. “You have a deal.”

  April seemed to visibly relax. The tension went from her shoulders and her expression lightened in relief. She let out a long breath and finally gave me an impish smile.

  “Can a woman who wants to be dominant learn what you have learned?”

  “Sure,” I said. “In fact I believe it would probably be easier for your partner to learn domination than it would be for a man. Women are much more intuitive. I tend to think your lady would have a far better idea of how to get you to the edge of orgasm and hold you there. And I’d guess she would be far better equipped to encourage your journey towards sexual submission than any random male Master you might seek out.”

  April seemed satisfied with my answer. She smiled.

  “How do you think your partner will react to the idea of you learning these submissive positions and techniques from me?” I asked. “She won’t feel threatened?”

  April shook her head. “No,” she said. “She will understand my reasoning, and we have a strong bond of trust. She will realize that I’m doing this for me, and for us – not for you.” She paused for a moment, as if playing back the words she had just said. Then she smiled again. “I mean that in the nicest possible way!”

  “Of course,” I laughed for the first time. “No offense taken. I’ll be grateful for your help.”

  In that instant, something changed in our relationship. It might have been a clearer understanding, or some shared intimacy. I felt it in the way April looked at me, and in the set of her body. A barrier had come down.

  We were friends.

  She tapped at the keyboard for a few moments and then glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. There was a soft, happy smile on her lips. She saw I was watching her.

  “What?” she touched at her hair.

  “I was just wondering if you were going to wear lingerie for the sub-club segment on tomorrow night’s show.”

  She shrugged. “Would it help me learn to be more submissive?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.”

  “Would it help you?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt – from a purely professional point of view, of course,” I added in hasty humor.

  April chuckled. “You’ll have to wait and see,” she said in a soft teasing breath, her eyes filling with mischievous promise.

  Quite suddenly Grover’s voice came through the speaker, his tone subdued and drained of its usual color. I guessed he was still stinging from the chat we had.

  “That chick you are waiting for has just called in,” he said simply. “Line fourteen.”

  April and I exchanged glances. I nodded.

  She pressed a button on the desk. “Put her through, Grover.” She glanced at her monitor and frowned. “I’ll block in some more music,” she said.

  I held up a warning finger. “I don’t want this recorded,” I explained, “and I don’t want it ever going to air.”

  April inclined her head to show she understood. She tapped a few more keys and then announced, “You’re off the grid – and she’s on the line right now…”

  Chapter 15.

  I paused for a moment and opened another mental box.

  Guys are like that – we have boxes inside our heads. It’s why we can’t multi-task. We only ever open one box at a time, and the lid is always tightly closed before we reach for a new box to open.

  Compartmentalizing.

  One of the boxes in a man’s head isn’t filled with work responsibilities, or personal interests, or family… it’s entirely empty. An empty box! We open it when we want to think of nothing at all… something that is impossible for a woman to do. Women are very different. They have all their boxes open at the same time. Family thoughts merge into work issues, and that spills into another box for friends…

  As a species, guys are simpler.

  I closed the box for friends that I had placed April into and opened the box that read, ‘Danger!’

  “Hello, Sondra, thanks for calling in to the show,” I said carefully.

  Her voice was sultry, and almost knowing. It was as if she sensed I was wary. There was a kind of smugness to her tone – the voice of a woman who knew a secret, and wanted me to know that she knew.

  “Thanks for taking my call, Jericho. Am I on the air?”

  “No,” I said. “We don’t play live calls.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  I narrowed my eyes suspiciously. “Because we never know what a caller is going to say,” I explained. “Every call is recorded and the best ones are played back on air.”

  There was an instant of hesitation, then her voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “Are you going to broadcast this call?”

  The question hung between us. I saw April glance at me – and then look quickly back at her computer. She could hear the conversation. Grover had it relayed through the overhead speaker.

  “No,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Because you want to talk to me, you don’t want to talk about you.”

  There was another pause while she interpreted my words. When she spoke again I picked up a trace of humor in her voice. “I do want to talk about you,” she purred. “I’d like to know when you are going to meet me.”

  “I never said I would…” I reminded her.

  “You will.”

  This time the delay was longer. I listened closely. I could hear soft rustling sounds down the line and I wondered if she was laying on her bed and what she was wearing.

  Was she touching herself?

  Was she slowly pleasuring her pussy with her fingers – edging herself closer to orgasm?

  Was I being drawn in to her fantasy by having this conversation with her?

  “What makes you so sure?”

  Sondra laughed then – a delightful sound like the tinkle of crystal glass.

  “You have no choice, Jericho!”

  “Really?” I frowned. April shot me another glance, this one a measure of her concern. Sondra had stopped sounding mysterious and suddenly started sounding more like a stalker. “Why do you say that?”

  Sondra huffed into the phone, like the verbal lunge and parry was becoming tiresome. “Because if you don’t I will call your radio show every night.”

  I shook my head. “That will do no good, Sondra,” I tried to keep my voice reasonable. “We can block calls.”

  The laugh came back – laced with a hint of bitterness. “Do you think I only have one phone, Jericho? You can’t block every call – it’s a talkback radio show.”

  She had a point.

  I looked across the desk. April stared back. Her eyes were wide, her expression bewildered. She shrugged her shoulders
helplessly, and then silently mouthed the words, “She’s right.”

  I nodded and let out a long breath I hadn’t realized I had been holding.

  “Okay,” I capitulated. “I will meet you – but it will be in a public place of my choosing, Sondra, and it’s a conversation, nothing more. I agree to meet you, but you have to agree to stop these phone calls. No more calls to the show, no more calls to me. Once we meet, it’s over. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” she said. “Unless you want to continue seeing me, I promise never to call or bother you again after we have dinner together.”

  “Dinner?”

  “Why not?” Sondra’s voice was alive and animated now, bubbling with her enthusiasm, but still retaining the smoky sultry rasp.

  I thought about the idea for just an instant. “Okay. Dinner. Saturday night at a local restaurant.”

  “Saturday night?”

  “Yes,” I said. I had compromised as much as I was ever going to. “Not before then. I have this radio show every week night.”

  “We could meet before your show…”

  “No. Saturday night. Take it or leave it.”

  She hesitated like she was considering the offer, but I knew she wasn’t. She was playing games.

  “Okay,” she sighed at last. “I guess I can wait until then. Do you want me to choose the restaurant… since you’re new in town?”

  I felt the shock of her words jump down my nerves and jerk them tight. “How did you know that?” I hissed the accusation. “How do you know I haven’t lived in Boston all my life?”

  Sondra went quiet on the phone and behind my eyes flashed a mental image of young Cindy being discovered in the bathroom with Grover – that sense of sudden horrified guilt she must have felt at being caught out. I pictured her young face flushing with angry color as she stammered to explain.

  “Well…? Do I know you?”

  “Maybe,” Sondra gathered her poise, but I sensed her mood had changed decidedly. She was no longer keen to talk. She wanted to end the conversation – quickly. “You’ll have to wait until Saturday night to find out,” she said. “Meet me at the ‘Victorian’ Restaurant on Newbury Street at seven o’clock.”

  The line went dead.

  Chapter 16.

  I had expected some level of shyness from April when we began Thursday night’s show, anticipating her becoming timid and withdrawn as the first half hour of the program flew quickly by, and we began preparing for the sub-club segment.

  Instead, she dutifully cued the music, closed the blinds to block off Grover’s view through the producer’s booth, and demurely began to undress while commercials played over the speaker.

  All the while, April refused to look at me. It was as if she had retreated to a world of her own. She seemed calm and focused as she stood in a pair of red lace panties that were high cut across her hips and a bra that looked two sizes too small for her, waiting for my instructions. She had her eyes closed, breathing deeply like she had stolen the idea from a meditation class. There was a pillow on the studio floor that she had brought to work in an oversized shoulder bag.

  I glanced up at the clock, suddenly aware of the pressure.

  The commercials stopped and the same strains of jazz music that had played beneath the segment the night before came through the speakers. I leaned in to the microphone and deepened my voice so that every word was a calm controlled command that resonated with purpose and will.

  “Good evening, sub-club members… and welcome to my world of sexual obedience and submission…” I let a few seconds of music play without speaking and then began again. “I trust that you are alone somewhere in your home, and that you have a candle burning. I expect you to be wearing lingerie. Now…” I paused and husked my voice as if it were filled with lust. “Drop to your knees, and put your hands behind your back.”

  Across the small space of the booth, April took a last deep breath and then sank down onto the pillow. She put her hands behind her and the movement pulled at her shoulders so that her breasts seem to bulge. Her back was straight and she had her hair brushed out tonight. It fanned across the lustrous pale flesh of her back, sparking like fire in the dull glow of the studio monitors.

  “Good girl,” I spoke to April but the words carried to everyone that was tuned in to the program. “Now make sure your knees are parted. I like to be able to see that gap between your thighs, and the soft mound of your pussy. Present yourself to me so that my imagination can run wild, thinking about the pleasures that await behind that thin film of sexy lace.”

  April’s knees were already parted, but she moved them just a little wider. She was looking directly ahead, though I was sure she could see me from the corner of her eye. I studied her the way I would inspect any other submissive woman who presented herself to her Master.

  “You look beautiful,” I said softly into the microphone, “and desirable. Open your mouth for me. I need you to be a good girl for your Master tonight, and I know you want to please me.”

  April opened her mouth wide and closed her eyes. She lifted her chin a little so I could see the long elegant lines of her throat.

  “Last night when we were training, I ordered you not to come. Do you remember?” It was a rhetorical question, but I wanted every woman listening to my voice to feel some connection. I imagined them in their living rooms or bedrooms, nodding their head as their thoughts flashed back to the previous evening. “But I bet some of you did,” my voice took on an edge of harshness for a moment. “I bet some of you were naughty girls and disobeyed me… didn’t you…”

  I left a few seconds of dead air and then said, “As punishment, you will spank yourself.”

  April’s head turned and she opened her eyes. She was staring at me, her expression a mixture of confusion and anxiety.

  “For every time you brought yourself to orgasm since last night’s session, I want you to spank yourself three times – reach back and slap your sexy bottom so you can feel the sting… and imagine it is me, staring down at you sternly, my expression grim as I punish you for coming without your Master’s permission.”

  I paused for an instant, sat back in the chair and pulled the boom arm of the mic closer so that I was comfortable. “I’m not talking about the times you might have orgasmed with your lover,” I went on in my deepest, sexiest voice, “I’m talking about the times you were alone, with your fingers thrust deep inside yourself while you were fantasizing about your Master. They are the orgasms you are to be punished for – they are the releases that I strictly forbade you.” The soft lull of my voice disappeared in an instant and suddenly the words lashed like a whip. “Spank yourself!” I commanded. “Three times for every secret nasty disobedient orgasm you gave yourself.”

  The music came up. Perhaps in the silence it merely seemed louder. I closed my eyes and started to count to thirty when suddenly there was the sound of a loud slap.

  My eyes flew open. April was spanking herself.

  I gaped at her in surprise.

  Her hand was rising and falling like an axe, the ‘crack’ of each slap leaving a livid red mark on her bottom. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut and there was a bleak expression of intense breathless arousal on her face that seemed an intoxicating cocktail of erotic thrill and determination.

  Twelve times the loud sound of her spanking herself echoed around the tiny booth before the tension finally went out of her body and she seemed to shudder. Her eyes came open, misted and distant like she was waking from a delicious dream. She turned her head slowly, saw me staring at her, and then blushed with the awkward embarrassment of a schoolgirl. She trapped her bottom lip between her teeth and lowered her head like she was ashamed.

  For a moment I was lost – shocked out of character. Long seconds of silence went out across the airwaves. Finally I said, “Remember the sting. Remember how it feels to disappoint your Master… and remember that your mouth, your breasts, your pussy – and your mind, all belong to me now. You gave them to me – you su
rrendered yourself to me last night when you knelt at my feet and touched that secret part of your soul that craves to submit. Don’t ever disappoint or disobey me again.”

  In the background I could hear a song ending. I let some of the sting go from my voice. “We’re going to take a short break. When we come back, you had better be prepared to please me.”

  April leaped to her feet instinctively and punched at the keyboard. Her face was flushed. She bent over the desk in just her panties and bra and I could see the dampness of her arousal soaked through the fabric between her thighs. Her bottom was still bright red, the marks of her spanking burned on the pale flesh like a brand.

  She set four commercials to play and then straightened, sweeping the hair away from her face. We stared at each other in silence, neither of us knowing what to say.

  Finally April’s mouth twitched into a guilty smile. “You… you have been on my mind,” she said in understatement. “I’ve been thinking about last night and the idea of submission – a lot.”

  I didn’t say anything. April was wringing her hands together, torn by her excruciating embarrassment. She had given herself four orgasms while fantasizing about me. She glanced around the small studio like she was looking for a place to hide.

  “You didn’t have to spank yourself…” I began.

  April shook her head vehemently. “No,” she insisted. “I wanted to. I decided I wanted to learn how to submit, and I can’t do that unless I commit to the experience completely. But our understanding hasn’t changed, Jericho,” she looked me steadily in the eye. “You arouse me – I never knew that submitting sexually in this way could be such an intense emotional and physical thrill… but I am in a relationship with my partner and I love her very much.”

  “I understand,” I said. April was new to the lifestyle, and she would evolve into the woman she wanted to be in her own time. She was young – there were plenty of years ahead of her to work out who she wanted to be, and what sexually aroused her.

  But it gave me an idea.

  “You want me to train you through these sessions, but you don’t want it to develop into anything specifically sexual, right?”