“I played in some S&M clubs for two years, with some rather strange results.”
“Strange?”
“Some of the scenes were what I needed, others desperately wrong. It was difficult to know what I was getting changing from master to master.” He seems to understand.
“And then?”
“I met Heinrich, my husband of four years.”
“And he mastered you.”
“Very well.”
“Very well? Then why are you divorced?”
This seems embarrassing to admit but I go on without hesitation. “I wanted his heart, and that seemed closed, more closed each year, to the point that I don’t know if he has one. He’s a selfish man, and I’m told I’m the same.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.” Lockhart does make me honest.
“Who else has been your master?”
“Only Bernard, and he won’t call it that. He took me in several scenes, but then Heinrich showed up with his new lover—his new submissive. I’m not good enough to handle that kind of competition, so I decided that a change of venue would be helpful. The alternative scene in the city is too small. I know all the nooks and crannies and personalities. There wasn’t anywhere new to go.”
“Or, perhaps, the wounds of your marriage are still fresh? Otherwise, it would make no difference if he were there or not.”
“Perhaps so. Maybe that’s what Bernard was trying to tell me.”
“He thinks you need to be trained, Anna.”
“Yes, he does.”
“And what do you think?”
“That I’m a very good slave. Yes, I’m sometimes recalcitrant, and selfish. But it’s a lifestyle I love. I’m not asking you to love me—although I’m still looking for love.”
“And if I can’t give you love, will that still work for you?”
I think for a long minute, time seems endless in Lockhart’s house. This is an unhurried place and Lowell Lockhart puts no pressure on me for quick answers. I take another sip of brandy and set the glass on the table.
“I know I need a change. I inherited a bookstore when I was twenty I’m an excellent businesswoman, financially secure. I write and paint and give lectures on Art History. Most people would think I’m very successful, especially for my age, but I’ve become settled. Perhaps too long and I’m restless now. Yes, I’m looking for love and sexual fulfillment. But most of all right now, I’m just looking for some peace in my life. I thought I might have it with the man I loved after Heinrich.”
“The man that made you an adulteress and settled into your husband’s bed?”
I’m startled that he knows this. “Yes.” I clear my throat nervously. “Ian was not a dom. If I could have anything sexual right now, it would be finding the peace I get from being submissive and filling that sexual need. Eventually, the love will come… I think… Eventually.”
Lockhart nods then rises from his seat. For a man of such size he moves with grace, strolling to the windows to look out, then moving to a cabinet he pulls out a cane.
His grip of the sleek black rod holds my interest so that I can’t take my eyes away. He whisks it cleanly through the empty air and I wince at the vile and lovely sound.
“I’ve been told I’m an unlikely man for a master.” He pauses. “I’m not really sure why—since I’ve mastered the art of dominating women so well. I do know I’m strict, demanding, and thorough with my slaves. And I undoubtedly have what it takes to master you, Anna Keller. I am sometimes affectionate, but I’m always exacting. I expect the women that serve me to be wholly dedicated to me, while at the same time independent within themselves. I’m not looking for a permanent relationship, marriage, or the hassles involved with personal attachments.” He looks at me almost sorrowfully—as though there’s a great passionate story behind his words. “Yet, in truth, I do become attached to all my submissives, and it pains me when they move on. They do, however, all move on. And so will you.” He plays with the cane, running it along his palm as I stare in wonder. “The fact that any arrangement we create will not be lasting only heightens the drama. It demands we be passionate and all consuming on the sexual and psychic plane. Does that make sense to you?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Good.” He moves again, taking up a new pose, staring at me. “You would not live here—at least not all the time. I cannot take that much intrusion in my passive life. When I want you here, you’ll be here. When I tell you to go, you will. The roles we play will be clearly determined and you will not overstep the boundaries I establish. I will indulge myself with you in whatever way I choose, inside or outside this house. I make the rules, you live by them. I dictate, you conform. I won’t tolerate disobedience, and will punish you only once for any error. There are no second chances. You’re out if your resistance goes that far. You give yourself over to me completely and I will define your life. Other matters—like how you make your living—do not concern me and are yours to control. Though, I would suggest some flexibility in that area for obvious reasons. There will be days when I’m very demanding of your time, while other days you’ll fend for yourself. I assume you’ll want some activity of your own beyond this relationship that will please you?”
I nod. His unassuming appearance has not changed, but as he speaks, I can see the dominant emerge in the frank way he outlines our arrangement.
“You are a pleasing woman, Anna, and I’ll enjoy training you. But I’d suggest that you take a tour of Welliston and be sure it’s where you’d like to live for the next two years.”
“Two years?” This stuns me.
“At least. The way Bernard describes you, it will be as necessary to unlearn your bad habits as it will be to create new ones.”
I’m so flustered I don’t know what to say.
“Brain addled?” he asks looking quite amused.
“A little. You speak of our relationship as something short-lived, but then you suggest two years.”
“Two years is an honest assessment of the time I’d like to spend with you. Of course, that could change. I could wake up one morning and decide I hate you around, or some other woman might catch my eye, and I’d send you packing in favor of another sub.”
“But this is a commitment, isn’t it?”
“More than you planned on? You need to be trained. If you accept that fact, then you figure what time you spend with me is a commitment to yourself. I suspect you’ve been running from one thing to the next too rapidly. That in fact, you still have some uncertainty about your primary needs. Though you were married four years to a dominant man, sometimes learning to be submissive is not the place to also be in love.”
I’d never thought of it that way.
“You have made your choice, why waste our time worrying over it?” He comes to me and kneels on one leg beside me, his hand reaching to my face affectionately. He runs his fingers through my short hair. “This will have to grow.”
I nod agreeing, so swept up by his respectful attitude and kindness, I can’t imagine not agreeing to anything he says. He is like Bernard, and yet kinder still. Two years, a hundred, it seems at this moment there is no amount of time too great to give to him. I’m wary of the way both these doms think I need training, since I’m not sure what that really means. But he knows I’ll surrender, and my choice is made.
***
It takes three weeks for me to move my things north to Welliston. The shop was not a perfect match for me. I wanted another bookstore, and this is more a curiosity shop with lots of novelties that I wouldn’t personally want to lay my hands on. It will take more time than I figured to get the place in shape—order stock, rearrange shelves, and do a major redecoration of the main room. What I do like are the multi-pane windows on three sides; the light that comes into the shop from all angles; and the warmth of a small woodstove in the corner, which removes the wintry chill from the air. Considering the way Lockhart describes my training, I’ll have many hours to fill on my own—at least at the
start. This work will be a blessing. Better to be busy than worry over my next meeting with my master. The store should give me a break and a little liberty in my thinking.
I hire a young woman to work with me. It’s my plan to have Ellie trained to do everything, should Lockhart’s demands keep me away for several days. I minimize my life, turning the rooms above the shop into an apartment. It’s been done before so there is already a bath and kitchen. It will require some renovation, but at this point, I’m not averse to living out of boxes or in cramped quarters. Right now, the simplicity suits me.
As soon as I arrived with all my worldly goods, I called Lockhart to tell him I was getting settled. He said he’d call me soon. It’s been two weeks now and I anxiously wait, hearing nothing from him so far.
I spend most of my days in the shop getting things arranged for the opening I have scheduled in three weeks. I have this miserable thought that in the middle of the process, I’ll suddenly be rent way from it and forced to dive into Lockhart’s passion. Yet, as difficult as that will be for the businesswoman in me, the submissive is crying for our first session. I can’t even imagine what he might have planned.
Just as I anticipated, a week before the opening, I emerge from a stack of massive boxes into the shop’s main room to find Lockhart strolling casually about, hands in pockets, staring at the mess. He has his back to me but hears me enter.
“Getting anywhere?” he asks.
“I suppose.” I’m practically panting. Breathless already from the physical exertion of unloading a half dozen crates that arrived today, Lockhart seems to take the rest of my sparse breath away. I’d forgotten how he towers over me with his kindness of heart and his large size.
“Here, let me.” He takes the boxes I’m carrying from my arms and sets them on a table. “Do you have a man around here to help you?”
“No. I suppose I should have. But I think Ellie and I can manage. Most of the heavy stuff is done.”
He nods, staring out the bank of windows that look out on Lake Welliston. Autumn is long past, the landscape now stark, the barren branches of a thousand trees lift up toward the sky, like Pentecostals praying. There seems to be something penitent about this winter world so sapped of life. Even the blue, cloudless sky seems grim and unrelenting.
“Do you have some time now?”
“Now? Time?” I stare around me. “Yes, of course. I could use the break.”
“Is your Ellie here?”
“No. She’s at lunch, but I’ll leave a note. How long will I be?”
“No more than two hours.”
I scratch something on a paper and pin it to the door, then exit my shop with Lockhart, his hand at my back like the perfect gentleman.
We walk several blocks in the crisp December air. The town is quaint with a charm that feels comfortable. It’s a place I can manage. I never thought there would be such a difference from the city. Even knowing that Lockhard has incredible commands for me to follow, I’m easing into this so that it hardly seems like an effort at all.
We move along the sidewalk as though we’ve been friends for years. He tells me about the shops, gossiping about people we pass—slyly revealing detailed intimacies so I wonder where his information comes from.
I learned from Ellie that Lockhart is the town eccentric. He’s been a major contributor to the library, and the small theater—even acting in several major roles to great reviews. He’s a champion of civil liberties, which makes him too liberal for many in the town. But no one bothers him. He’s erected a protective barrier around him that keeps people from getting too far inside his life. Some think he might be gay, which I find amusing, because that certainly isn’t my impression of him. Those that know him better find his libertine love life a rich source of gossip. But it’s clear his interest in the darker sides of sexuality is not commonly known—if at all—except by the very few who share his taste for our perverted underworld. Thankfully, Ellie knows nothing about the bizarre lifestyle that goes along with Lockhart’s libido.
When we’re almost on the edge of town, Lockhart darts into a small shop—the apothecary—so the name on the door indicates. The shopkeeper looks like an aging hippie with long grey hair tied in a ponytail and clear blue eyes. He wears a well-worn East Indian shirt and Birkenstock sandals.
“This is Anna,” he tells the man.
“And I am Colin,” he informs me, holding out his hand for me to shake.
“I want her in rings.”
“Ah, how many?”
“Five.”
“I have no idea what he means until I’m led into the back of the shop, to a small display case with piercing jewelry underneath the glass.
“You’ll do this all at once?” Colin asks.
“Might as well. It takes some time to heal these things.”
Without consulting me, Lockhart chooses five gold rings from the display, two pairs of matching size and a third a little larger than these four. The master lays his cash on the table and five sealed packets emerge, along with five needles all in hermetically sealed packages. The sight of the needles seems to pierce my consciousness with the reality of what the master plans. My head’s dizzy, so I lean on his arm for support.
He puts the bag with his purchase in the pocket of his coat, and we head back into the December air. I am much less relaxed than when we left my shop, anxiety doubling inside my stomach. A block or two down the street, he stops, opening the passenger door of a pale green Mercedes that must be at least two decades old. Still, it carries with it a weighty importance, and the smell of leather inside reminds me of the leather that has collared and bound me in the past. We drive through town, down the highway for a mile and turn off at his winding drive. The closer we get to his house, the more my body quakes. He glances at me several times as though gauging my nervousness.
“You have done this before? Piercing?” I wonder aloud.
“Yes, several times.”
I was hoping he’d give me a more detailed explanation, but with none, I turn silent and introspective.
Heinrich would like this move. We’d talked of piercing, brands and tattoos—all of which would have intrigued me, but there was nothing permanent pierced, etched or burnished into my skin—perhaps because our relationship wasn’t destined to be permanent. If I were to take that metaphor seriously, it would mean my relationship with Lockhart is permanent—though we both know that is not the case.
In his house, I watch him casually throw his bag of trinkets on a table by the door. He hangs my coat on a coat rack packed with winter parkas and woolen scarves. Leading me through a hallway to the back of the house, I find myself in a bright sunroom that faces south. Like my shop it’s banked on three sides by dozens of windowpanes, perfect rectangles of glass all side by side by side. The sun pours through these panes—many of them beveled, so like prisms the reflected light makes rainbows everywhere. The room’s been painted white; and so contrasts the rest of the house, I feel as though I’ve changed worlds, altered planes of energy, transformed in matter and composition so I’m now existing in a place wholly different that the dark and mysterious house of my master.
But still, he’s here with me, behind my back, his gentle hand on my shoulder to comfort me. He reaches to the bottom of my sweater and begins to pull it over my head. These hardly seem the surroundings for a first scene with him. I’ve thought only of his cellar, or attic, or even the cluttered living room where we had our first interview. It would be so easy to make any of those places match the darker designs we both have in mind.
Here, in this white room, there’s a sterile quality—not unlike Bernard’s white-tiled chamber. Yet, there is more here: the out of doors, the barren vines and the stark trees reaching in like fingers and claws, the intense sunlight pouring into the room. The sun is warm on my bare skin.
Lockhart unfastens my bra, letting my breasts spring proudly free. Then he sits behind me to remove my jeans. As he inches them over my hips, he finds I wore no panties.
Does that mean I am bolder than other women? Is that significant to him? Because I can’t see his face—or his crotch—I have no idea how he responds to this first unveiling. I help him as I struggle out of each pant leg, and then, because he’s given me no other orders, I remain facing into the room with Lockhart behind me.
I can feel his eyes peer into me, and his warm breath on the small of my back. He strokes my skin tenderly, delicately running his right hand from my shoulders, down to my hips and over my protruding buttocks. He cups one cheek in his palm and squeezes. I want to fall back into his arm. My insides are mad with desire that suddenly leaps from my body. There’s so much erotic tension between us, and all that’s been suppressed for weeks now pours from me like a thunder-driven shower. I’m sure he feels how my body explodes. And I can’t help myself, as my ass moves into his hand wantingly.
Lockhart rises and then walks around me to view my naked front. He smiles, but doesn’t touch as he takes this first look at the body he’s agreed to master.
“Yes, five rings will be just fine.” He has his fingers at my pussy, opening the labia so he can see what’s inside. Then, he moves to the side of the room, and pulls out a green metal examination table, what, until that moment, struck my eye as an objet d’art, an antique from the 1930’s. Obviously, it is fully functional.
“Here,” he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a flask. A shot of whiskey tastes awfully good and reasonably settling on my anxious stomach. I’m lightheaded almost seconds later as though I’d just consumed three shots, not just a quick swig. I take another and return the flask to him.
“On the table, Anna.” The order is firm.
I sit for a time with my legs dangling down childlike, while Lockhart pulls on surgical gloves and carefully marks my nipples for the piercing. He seems practiced at this, though that does little to put me at ease.
“Now lie down,” he orders.
“Will there be blood?” I ask.
“Very little. More at your labia than anywhere else.”
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