The Agreement

by Lund, S. E.

  "Come in," I said and sighed.

  He stepped across the threshold, turning around, staring at my apartment.

  "Kate why do you live like this? This apartment looks like it belongs to a poor kid, not the daughter of a wealthy judge running for election."

  "I don't want his money and I don't earn enough even with the scholarship to live anywhere else."

  He walked around and the way he was looking at everything and touching all my possessions made me feel as if he were entering my mind and my body.

  While I went to the side table in the entry and deposited my keys on a tray, he stood in the hallway and took in a deep breath as if he were smelling me. My apartment had a pleasant scent. With Thanksgiving approaching, I put a few decorations up, a couple of tiny pumpkins on a dish on a small round table in the living/dining area. Vanilla and cinnamon were the main scents from a container of potpourri beside the dish with my keys.

  I took off my coat and hung it on a coat tree by the door, then went to Drake. "Let me take your coat," I said, extending my hands. He shrugged off his coat. Then, he unbuttoned his jacket, loosening his tie as well. He kicked off his boots and watched me hang up his coat, and I felt awkward under his gaze, trying to hide my nervousness.

  "Do you mind if I take a look around?"

  I shook my head without responding, worried that my voice would give away my nerves.

  He came to me and tipped up my chin with a finger. "Its OK. I know you're nervous. A bit excited. You know what? So am I."

  He sounded a bit nervous, and as if to demonstrate, he took in a deep breath and smiled. I glanced away.

  He walked down the hallway that led to the back of the apartment and my bedroom, examining the art on my walls. Stopping at one long narrow picture that I called 'Lady/Knight', he checked it out more closely. A pencil drawing of a couple, a man and a woman, the man in full knight's armor, the woman naked beneath him, her arms outstretched. She strained to meet his mouth, which was trapped behind the metal grill of his helmet, his lips just visible through the grating. He lay on top of her, resting on his elbows, and not one piece of his flesh touched hers.

  "You did this?"

  I went to stand beside him and tilted my head. I pointed to my initials at the bottom right hand corner. KMcD

  "I did it in my Freshman year. I took a fine arts elective."

  "It's good. Actually technically skilled." He turned to me. "Tell me about this."

  "What's to tell?" I said. "It's a pencil drawing of a knight and his lady love."

  "And why is she naked while he's in full armor?"

  I said nothing for a moment, thinking of how I wanted to explain it. "Our assignment was to show contrasts in textures. I thought that metal and flesh were opposites – almost mortal enemies – and contrasting, kind of like male and female, masculine and feminine. My professor said I took the assignment way too literally."

  "Metal and flesh aren't always enemies. I use steel to cut out tumors, open the skull to let pressure off a swelling brain."

  I frowned. "I never thought of that. I was thinking more of war."

  "It's all in your point of view. Even in war, metal can save lives. Trauma surgeons like my father worked in hospitals on the front lines in Vietnam using steel and cutting flesh to save lives." He turned back to the drawing once more. "Did you at least get a good grade? This is very good."

  Technically, it was good. My prof said I showed excellent use of shading and perspective.

  "I got an A."

  "Good. But why a couple? If you wanted to show contrast between flesh and metal, if you wanted the war theme, why not a hand holding a sword? Or were you thinking of a different kind of war – the war between the sexes?"

  I was silent for a moment, not wanting to admit the melodrama surrounding it.

  "It was after a boyfriend and I broke up and I was all upset about it. You know what it's like when you're nineteen. You'd think it would be the other way around, right? The woman would be covered in armor while the man would be naked, so willing to have sex."

  He studied the drawing for a moment.

  "Oh, very deep," he said. "He can't really touch her even when they have sex because he wears armor to protect himself. It's symbolic of men's psychological armor. There she is, naked, open, and he can't really touch her even when he's fucking her." He turned and looked at me as if for acknowledgement. "Did you study psychology?"

  I kept my eyes firmly on the drawing. "Yes," I said. "I took a course in my Freshman year."

  "So you're implying that despite the fact that men want to have sex, they're not really touching the women they fuck. There's always that male armor keeping them from intimacy. Am I right?"

  I forced a smile. "You're one of the few to get it."

  "I have a degree in psychology. I was trained to look for underlying explanations for behavior."

  He took a step to the next painting framed and hanging on the wall. An abstract, all greens and yellows and black lines – I bought it from a friend who went to art school.

  "Research suggests that men fall in love more easily than women," he said, his voice light. "Do you really believe that men never let down their armor even during sex?"

  "You tell me. You're the expert at keeping things compartmentalized."

  "What could you possibly mean by that, Ms. Bennet?" he said, as if surprised. "Are you suggesting that I use D/s as a way to keep my distance from the women I fuck? I assure you, it's quite the opposite. I get right into their minds."

  "But you don't love them. You're not really intimate with them, despite controlling them sexually."

  "I'm exceedingly intimate with them." He smiled, but I could see a bit of edge in his eyes. "It all depends on how you define intimacy. Back to you and your difficulty sleeping with men on the first date." He stepped closer to me so that I was forced back against the wall. "You can't open your thighs without being intimate with a man and it bothers you that men can fuck women without being intimate, without actually caring about her the way you think they should. Am I right?"

  I nodded. "My body is private. How can I get naked with someone I don't care about?"

  "My heart is private. How can I care about someone who won't get naked with me?" he said, countering my logic, stepping even closer to me, lifting up a strand of my hair, running it under his nose. "What if I was to tell you that your inability to have casual sex was because of your father's and society's influence on you, not because of anything inherent in male-female sex differences? We're both animals with drives, Kate. Society has just controlled women's drives more, redirected them, couched the control in moral platitudes."

  I frowned. "I forgot you wanted to be a psychoanalyst. I never did like Freud and his focus on fathers."

  "He was right, but in the wrong way," Drake said. "Your father – the generalized father of patriarchal authority – made you believe that if you were purely sexual, if you needed to be fucked, you were bad. Isn't that right? He and the Church made you believe you were a bad girl to just want a hard cock inside of you. So you always held back, using this idea of intimacy as a shield – as armor against just feeling pleasure for its own sake. You use the demand for intimacy as an excuse so you can maintain the façade of being a good girl when really you're just an animal like me."

  I just stood there, turning my face away from his. I could tell he enjoyed how his physical proximity made me nervous but he did nothing. Finally, he turned and walked into the living room, the moment ending but the thought still hanging there.

  Was he right? Did I demand intimacy as a way of pretending I'm a good girl?

  Why was it not good for me to just want to fuck a man?

  After taking off his jacket and laying it on the back of a dining room chair, he removed his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He sat on the couch, right in the middle so that I either had to sit beside him or pull up a dining room chair. He leaned back, his arms stretched out on the back of the couch, his fee
t up on my coffee table.

  He caught my eyes. "Am I right?"

  "Maybe," I said. "But whose approach is more satisfying in the end?"

  Drake shrugged. "I've tried your approach. I was married for five years. You haven't tried mine. Yet. Why don't you give it a chance? Then you'll know."

  "I can't imagine that meaningless sex can be rewarding in the long run."

  He sighed, as if he was growing impatient with talking. "It's not. But it's good enough for now."

  I stood on the other side of the coffee table and stared him down. "I only want to fuck someone who loves me," I said. "Is that so wrong?"

  "Someone will love you, Kate. Do you really want to wait until he does? Is masturbating all alone in your room at night, for what – a year? Is that really good enough for you?"

  That hurt.

  I turned on my heel and went to the kitchen, opening and closing drawers, looking for my tea strainer so I could make some tea for us, but of course, I really just wanted to escape him. He came to me, standing behind me. He probably realized he went too far with that.

  "I'm sorry." He reached out and touched my shoulder, softly.

  "You’re a bastard."

  "No, I'm not. I'm just being honest." He took hold of my shoulders and turned me around to face him but I did my best to avoid his eyes, because mine were wet. The truth of his words hurt me.

  "Kate, you deserve to have pleasure when you need it. You're not a bad girl for wanting to feel it. I can give it to you. I want to give you the pleasure you need in the way that most appeals to you, deep down inside if you're brave enough to admit it to yourself."

  He bent down and tried to catch my eyes, but I closed them.

  "Here," he said and folded me into his arms. I didn't stop him, but neither did I melt into his embrace. I was still too hurt to let him comfort me, my body stiff, unyielding.

  "I'm sorry I hurt your feelings by speaking the truth so plainly. If this is going to work between us, you have to let me break down those protective walls you've built up around yourself. Otherwise, you won’t really experience submission the way you need to."

  I looked up at him briefly before glancing away. "So you're telling me you have to be mean to me in order for me to be able to submit?"

  "No," he said, and tilted my face back to him. "You have to be honest with me about what you need and want. You have to honest with yourself."

  I just stood there, breathing deeply, fighting with myself.

  "Kate, are you sexually attracted to me?"

  "You already know you're very handsome."

  "I didn’t ask that. I asked you if you were sexually attracted to me."

  I couldn't say it. I felt it, but couldn't admit it.

  He tried again, his voice very soft. "Do you want to fuck me? Is there a part of you that just wishes you could right now and to hell with convention?"

  Finally, I exhaled. "Yes. But I'm afraid."

  "What are you afraid of? That you'll have a great orgasm or three?"

  "I'm afraid that you'll hurt me."

  He sighed, frowning. "I told you and Lara told you that I'm not into pain. I don’t want to hurt you, Kate. I want to make you feel pleasure."

  "Not that kind of hurt." Of course, he knew what I really meant.

  "That won't happen. We'll only have sex. None of that relationship stuff. We won't have breakfast together or go to movies or on dates. We'll fuck. I'll tie you up and make you come until you scream. I'll come. Then I'll go home. You'll sleep like a baby. End of story."

  "What if I fall in love with you?"

  He shook his head, smiling. "I won't let you."

  "That's like saying you can control the weather. You can't."

  "I can control the weather, too."

  I caught his grin and couldn’t help but smile. Reluctantly.

  "I know this is all new to you. I know you're afraid." He pulled me against him, his arms around me, his hand caught in my hair, his obvious erection pressed against my belly. He desired me. He wanted me to know. To feel it.

  Then, just when I thought he'd push me a bit, he released me and returned to the couch, sitting in the middle once more. He meant what he said. He wouldn’t force me to do anything. It would be my choice, but with him being the way he was – so desirable, so powerful, so… knowing, how could I resist him?

  I stood in the kitchen for a moment, still debating with myself. I pushed a few dishes around, pretending to wash a cup, but finally, I gave up pretending to be busy and returned to the living room to stand in front of him once more.

  "Just theoretical, but if I was really your sub-in-training, what would you normally do at this point?"

  He examined me, briefly catching my eye. "I'd suggest that you come and sit with me and we can talk some more."

  I sat on the edge of the couch, not touching him, not looking at him, my hands crossed on my lap.

  "Did you go to a Catholic school as a child?"

  I glanced up, frowning. "Yes. Why do you ask?"

  "You have very good posture. Your hands are folded." He pointed to my clasped hands.

  I glanced down at them and then unclasped them, smiling a bit ruefully.

  "Yes, they expected us to sit properly. The nuns gave us the cane if we were slovenly in our dress or behavior."

  He nodded. "A good Catholic school upbringing. Making uptight women out of excited little girls full of life and promise. Only the really rebellious ones escaped with their libidos fully intact."

  "Yeah, the nuns really did a number on us."

  Then he patted his knee. "If you were really my sub-in-training, I'd tell you to come closer. Sit on my lap. So why don't you?"

  I frowned. "Am I a child?"

  "No," he said. "But I like to sit close together at first. Just touching for a while with all our clothes on. If you decide to stop at any time, you just have to get up. I won't prevent you."

  I stood up and moved a bit closer, standing directly in front of him.

  "How do I…"

  He reached up and took my arms, pulling me down on top of him so that I sat on his lap with my legs to the side, my arms around his neck. It was far too close at first and I trembled a bit to feel his arms slide around me, one arm around my waist, the other resting on my hip. I tried to avoid looking in his eyes as much as possible, and he didn't push, but finally I felt stupid and met his gaze, his blue eyes so gorgeous with those thick dark lashes.

  Oh God...

  He adjusted me a bit, grasping my hips and moving me a couple of inches. My thigh pressed against his erection, which I could tell was now hard as rock.

  "Sorry," he said, grimacing a bit. "You're pressing just a bit too hard on my…" He let his voice trail off. He moved his hips beneath me. "That's better."

  He wanted me to know he was aroused. I couldn’t help but respond, closing my eyes as my flesh throbbed, a pleasant ache building in me.

  "You smell so good," he said, breathing in. He slid one hand up my thigh and just let it rest on my hip.

  "It's my perfume," I said. "It's called Mystique."

  "I wasn't referring to your perfume."

  "Oh." I tensed. "Maybe I…" I tried to get up, embarrassed that he could smell me but he stopped me.

  "I love how you smell. Your female scent and the thought of how wet you are makes me so hard."

  He took my hand and pressed it against his erection, sliding my fingers along its length so that I knew how hard and thick he was. I couldn't help but imagine him filling me up.

  That flustered me, and I felt caught between wanting to run away from embarrassment and wanting to stay. Other than my own arousal, a pleasant swollenness, a wetness between my thighs, butterflies in my stomach, I was warm in his arms, comfortable nestled against his chest.

  "So we just sit here like this?"

  "Yes," he said, stretching out again, his arms on the back of the couch. "We can just talk. With my new subs, I always let them choose the time of our first fuck. If t
hey want anything to happen, they have to make the move. If they want me, all they have to do is kiss me. But I warn them. If they do, I take that as a sign they want to fuck me and I take over. I take control and I fuck them. If they change their mind, they have to use a safe word. If they do, it all stops right then, and I go home."

  I relaxed just a bit, knowing that I had ultimate control over whether and when we would fuck the first time. It would be my choice.

  He caught my eye for a brief moment.

  "So be warned. Don't kiss me unless you mean it." He held my gaze, grasping my chin when I tried to look away. "I can sit here like this for as long as you want and talk if that's all you want tonight. Sure, I'm hard as rock, but it will fade eventually if nothing more happens. But if you kiss me, I'll take it to mean you want me to fuck you. I'll take your clothes off and I'll eat you and then I'll fuck you. I'm not a frat boy, Kate. I don't like to play games."

  My cheeks heated at that and I stiffened. "I thought you liked playing games. Isn't that what people in the lifestyle call it? Playing?"

  "Fuck games, Kate. Not emotional games."

  We sat like that for a few moments as his warning sunk in, his arms on the back of the couch, me nestled against him, my arms around his neck. He wasn't touching me. I was touching him. If anything was going to happen, I had to make it happen.

  And the thing was, I wanted it to happen.

  He had me right where he wanted me. He knew exactly how to manipulate me, knew what to say, how to get me to think and feel the things he wanted me to think and feel.

  He was a Master. I could see that now.

  Sitting on his lap like that, his body warm beneath mine, his shoulder muscles beneath the expensive white shirt solid under my hands, his aftershave masculine, his slight male musk intoxicating. His very large and very hard erection pressing against me was a reminder of how aroused he was.

  He was mine – this gorgeous powerful man – if I wanted him. I had never felt this much lust for someone and I felt almost out of control, my body warm, swollen, my breathing shallow.

  Yet, I had ultimate control. I decided if anything happened. But I decided only if he would fuck me or not. Once I kissed him, he'd take over and have his way with me.