They could both shine; he ran the business, while she purchased exotic fabrics, invented clothes and created a catalog of unusual wares that struck a cord with a hip, New Age, intelligent, sort of quirky clientele—people just like her. There were far more than Ben would have ever guessed.
Initially, Dana liked taking orders from him. When she got a little spacey, he would reel her in. Several times he actually spanked her at work for not paying attention, in private of course, which was profoundly successful in settling her agitation and clearing her head. She thrived on the reward and the sexual results, which were good for her disposition as well.
It all went along with the kind of sex they seemed to love the most, the kinky stuff. She’d be tied, blindfolded and gagged, her body brutally beaten and afterwards her ass reamed with his prick. It was hard sex, rough and passionately violent, until that exquisite moment when she seemed to soar far above the terrible pain. Her energy poured out like hot coals and she would be a vanquished, happy beauty when she came back to earth.
About a year into the relationship, Ben suggested that she needed a deeper kind of discipline; he thought it was a natural, even expected, transition. But she began to balk at his gestures to exert more control—that is: she sometimes balked, while at other times, she fell into an erotic stupor, a kind of dreamy, thoughtless subspace trace that could last for days. He could demand anything—demand she strip off her clothes in the car, or at work when the employees had gone home, demand she masturbate or suck him off in the corner of a restaurant—anything and she would aimlessly obey his orders. When she wasn’t in the mood, however, there were screaming matches when he’d finally have to gag her until she settled down. Sometimes he bound her and tied her in a corner of the room until she settled down. She was like liquid sex after the fiery rage. Her spirit was content and grounded. It was just the getting to that state of surrender that became an increasing problem, especially over the third year when he upped his domination of her even more and she had more to resist.
Most often, Dana hated when he interrupted her during some creative process, or she was doing anything where the intrusion of his demands jerked her from a pleasant task. Her mind didn’t want to change that fast. She would squirm from his grasp, or would plead for him to change his mind. Even when she knew that her attempts to circumvent his plan were futile and he could easily overpower her, she tried anyway. In time, she rarely gave in without a fight and those dreamy moments of seamless submission did not come easy.
Ben had an excuse for his extreme behavior. His sister had died in a car accident and he’d lost his best friend to cancer. His anger over both of these losses put him in a foul mood, for which he would eventually apologize. But his personal choice of therapy was exerting control over what he could—Dana and their business.
Frequently, his darker demons played out at work, where he became more tyrannical with Dana. Not everyone, just Dana. While he put a smile on his face to clients and employees, behind the scenes, he attempted to control her every act, her every thought. He expected her perfect compliance to his accounting systems. Before, she’d been lackadaisical about her efforts to conform to his ‘nitpicky’ accounting. If she felt like writing down the things she removed from inventory, she did. If she forget, she didn’t give it a second thought. He let the behavior slide for a long while, thinking it was best to give her the freedom to create without hindrances or restrictions. Her flippancy annoyed him, but he loved her so he let it pass. But when his world started to crumble, a dark and dictatorial Ben upped the ante, caning her in the coat closet if she made a mistake, even when there were clients in the outer office. She never was certain if anyone knew about these punishments, since the cane was nearly soundless and so was she.
Afterwards, she was terribly embarrassed; feeling sure that the truth was written in the pained grimace that flashed across her face when her sore bottom chanced to rub against a desk or doorway. Often after the office canings, Ben made her take off her panties in front of him and sit on her naked ass while she worked at her desk. If there was someone in the office who was attuned to their kink, he forced her to do it right in front of them. Those with an inside track on their relationship included most of Ben’s friends, whether they were into the Bdsm kink or not. Knowing that his friends understood the nature of their Dominant/submissive relationship generated a feral excitement in him that kept him aroused for hours. It aroused her too; but she was scared.
The fights, the anger, the unhappy compromises soon drained them both. There seemed no safe place for them to love—only late at night, only in the wee hours when they were half asleep and too tired to argue could they briefly, almost unconsciously, come together, his cock in her cunt, and have even a taste of the loving passion they previously shared.
Both were at fault for the demise of their passion for each other. Both were afraid.
Not that Dana didn’t need to be controlled; by her own admission she did. She even did little things to bait Ben’s anger and to set him off balance, sparking the hot confrontations. She loved the fireworks that followed when he caught her misbehaving, but then, she would turn on him the instant he was prepared to extract his price. The wars were grisly, ending the same way, with a struggling Dana being subdued, bound and finally whipped, until the frenzy of hot emotion passed in them both.
One afternoon, they were alone in the office since their two employees had gone home for the day. The tension had ripened during the day and had reached the point that it was threatening. She’d done it again, refused to fill out his purchase form according to instructions; he was about to blow his stack.
Dana expected the confrontation; she wanted it. Her insides were prickly and she knew what would take place—in fact, she’d been warned before lunch that he wanted ‘to talk’.
When Ben finally ordered her into his office, she answered, “Just a minute,” in a sweet singsong voice that she knew would only piss him off.
“Right now,” he countered with his voice thundering across the empty reception area.
She jerked visibly. He could see her from his open door. Still, she hesitated, fooling around with papers on her desk, upping the anger in him that now so easily festered. She was trembling with scared excitement. Ready. Wanting. Afraid.
“Dana!” his voice thundered again.
She turned and looked at him across the space that separated their offices. He stood at his door with the cane in his hand, ready to beat her. The look on her face was the same bewildered but wanting look that expressed her inner turmoil so well.
“Not today,” she finally said in a brash refusal—even she was surprised to hear the words coming from her mouth. And that wasn’t all. “I’m not submitting to that today, Benjamin,” she said haughtily. “I’m sorry if I goofed up. I’ll fix it if you like, but I’m not getting caned today. My ass is just too sore.” She turned her shoulder toward him coldly, while the hot fire in her belly crescendoed. Dana had never been this verbally daring and she knew she was walking on dangerous ground. To Ben, her revolt seemed like a calculated rebellion, not the spontaneous act of sedition it really was.
“Really?” He looked at her dumbfounded. The declaration so took him by surprise that it looked as if he was actually going along with her. He turned, put the cane down and went back to his desk. He wasn’t even fuming, just thinking soberly about what just took place.
After a few torturous minutes, Dana couldn’t stand the quiet. The vile, unrelenting tension in her soared until she thought she would explode. She finally stomped across the office.
“What the hell are you doing anyway?” She stared at him baffled.
“I’m giving in to you,” he stated evenly. “It’s what you want.”
“No! It’s not what I want!” Her face was filled with terror and remorse.
“Then what is?” he wondered.
“I can’t believe you! You’ve been beating my ass, caning me, been hard and cruel with me for months because we bot
h love it, and what’s this? You suddenly quit?”
“Yeah. I quit,” he said, coldly, and in a kind of daze, as if the awful truth had just finally dawned on him. He understood the man he’d become and he didn’t like it. The transformation away from that man felt complete; there was no ache for confrontation in his bones anymore. And no anger, which was very strange. What he truly needed from Dana he wasn’t getting, and it was time to stop their vicious game. That he knew for sure.
“What do you mean, you quit? You love the fireworks, you love this raw, nasty struggle between us. I love it too. Why do you back down now?” She looked livid, anxious, scared and still nearly in tears.
He replied, speaking quietly, “I don’t love the fireworks, Dana. I don’t love the raw, nasty struggle. I don’t think you know what I want, probably because you have no idea what you want.”
“Sounds like some kind of psychobabble to me,” she fumed.
“No psychobabble. It just hit me in the gut just now. I’m not trying to mess with you, but the fact is, I don’t want the fireworks every time we turn around. I’m tired of that; bone-weary tired. I don’t want to go head-to-head with you over this small silly stuff.”
“You don’t want a sexual submissive anymore?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No? Then what do you mean?”
“I don’t want you openly defiant anymore, Dana. I don’t want you screwing up just because you can, because it riles me. I don’t want you putting up a fight every time I try to exert control. It’s a rollercoaster I don’t want to ride anymore.”
“What the fuck? You started this, I didn’t!”
“I know. And I’m sorry.”
“So, what kind of submissive do you want?”
“One who wants to submit. Who does so graciously, willingly, like you were when we first met three years ago. I want to go deeper, really deeper; I want to take a woman to the down and dirty bottom of her submissive being. I want to own her like property, mold her as I see fit and have her take on that persona of surrender because it’s her natural being and she can’t stand not surrendering all she is to the man she loves. This may sound terribly chauvinistic, but I want a woman who will adore me, do things for me because she loves to, and will gladly submit because submission fulfills who she is as much as being a Dominant fulfills me.”
Her cheeks were burning by the time he finished his speech, and because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, Dana blurted out in an act of self-defense, “Well, Benjamin Hunter, you’ll never have that with me!”
“No?”
“No! You got what you have right here, right now. If you don’t like it, find another woman.”
“You’re serious?”
She thought a moment, as if she was making sure. “Yes.” She stood up to him with a firmness she’d never shown before. It was hardly like her, and she was shaking so much that she was sure he would notice. But that didn’t stop the feeling from sticking firm.
“And,” she started on, “as long as we’re changing things, I think we should stop working together. This is never going to work out with you making your constant demands like a little Hitler. I’m going to hate it and before long, I’m going to hate you.” She took a deep breath. “I want you to move on.”
“Move on? You’ve got to be kidding! Who’s going to run the business?”
“I will.”
“You?” He stared at her incredulous.
“Yes, me! I can do it. Why not? I want you gone. Out. I’ll do whatever I have to; buy you out if that’s what you want. You just broke things and I can’t see any way to put it back together. This is some mess you’ve made.” She stopped, took a breath, then finished him off: “It was getting old anyway, and you were just plain mean,” she said, sounding like an eight-year-old kid. She left his office, closed her office door behind her, and didn’t come out until sometime after he left that night.
Ben hadn’t expected her to act this way. The change was frightening. Where was the funny, silly, quirky woman he’d known? He hadn’t seen her in weeks, maybe months. He couldn’t remember when she’d worn one of her truly kinky outfits—probably because he really didn’t like them. He’d kept her lifestyle in line with his, which ruled out a good deal of her spontaneous antics and crazy clothes.
That night, Ben wore the issues out going over the complex tangle of struggle, of Domination, submission, and what neither one of them seemed to be getting. Maybe she was right. Maybe it was time to end their once blissful partnership. It certainly wasn’t blissful now.
He counted it a good thing that he could come to this conclusion.
Give up his business, his livelihood? That wouldn’t be easy, but it would be necessary. It was too much a part of their failing relationship to try and keep it going in what would certainly become a hostile environment.
She could never run the business on her own; she’d run it into the ground through blatant neglect, but at that point he really didn’t care. She’d been right about one thing; he had to leave, put as much space as he could between Dana and him. Sanity. He had to preserve his sanity since he’d been on the way to crazy. Maybe stopping the war would stop her descent as well. That was the best he could hope for.
Still troubled, Ben slept on his conclusions and woke in the morning thinking he’d been too rash. Perhaps, they could work things out in a different way. No relationship, just work. It was possible and he was game to try—although he was not optimistic.
But Dana wanted no part of his alternate plan. She actually had his personal things boxed up and on the receptionist’s desk when he got to the office at 8:30. She was moving into his larger office space, a smile of triumph on her face. He had the feeling that she hadn’t left that night, although she was dressed differently than she’d been the day before, in a prim black pantsuit. What fantasy life was she living in now? he worried. But she wouldn’t let him worry about her. She wouldn’t talk but to say:
“You said you’d leave, that’s what I want. I’ll be as gracious as I can; this is still partly your business and I will be fair.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “You just find someone who can keep things going.”
“I’ll keep things going, Benjamin. I will.”
That was the last he’d seen of her until she stumbled in door of Textile Trading the day before as he was going through the invoices.
Chapter Five
She has the beautiful symmetry of a dancer’s body, and when it’s crudely re-configured in stocks, against a whipping post or bound to a cross, none of that diminishes her loveliness in his eyes. Torture augments her beauty; she shines as a brilliant jewel. Her eyes light up and her face becomes a remarkable palette of mesmerizing grimaces, wounded looks and peaceful letting go. He has her now bound in the pillory, his Colleen at his mercy, just as he promised.
On the sides of the dungeon space a dozen eyes peer from the darkness on the scene—watching, waiting. Some have seen the couple before and know what to expect.
Colleen’s head fits through the pair of roughhewn beams, while her wrists are anchored to either side of her face in their own openings. Her slim wrists have been fitted with special cuffs that prevent her hands from getting loose. She will struggle trying to free herself, but she won’t be successful.
Her body below her neck is ironically free to move about, although there’s really little freedom there. He thought about securing her ankles in hobbles, keeping her high-heel-clad feet neatly locked together—the pink stilettos were a nice touch. But he knows he’ll like the look of her flailing ass and kicking feet as he whips the single tail about her rump. She’ll jump and he’ll have to order her to knock it off. Too much flailing about would be dangerous; just enough is a turn-on.
“I want your feet together when I start,” he whispers in her ear sounding coolly in control. Her lovely flesh is already starting to glisten with sweat. Feeling the energy behind his veiled threat, the dew at her sex gather
s, strongly scented with her sexual musk. She feels her insides quaking with suspense, with want and need and a solemn prayer for what comes next.
Then he begins. Little snaps and swishes of the terrible implement fly at erratic speeds and strike her skin in an inconsistent rhythm. Some strikes leave vicious cuts that flaw her smooth expanse. She jerks nervously, with small cries emitted like a bird’s strange caws.
The small crowd waits breathlessly.
He beats her harder as the need in him works it way from his raw emotions to the calculated movements of his arm and the hand that holds the implement. Her feet begin to dance, although she tries to keep her movements to a minimum. She knows he’ll approve. Every new hit assaults the skin and radiates a warmth she can feel from the point of impact all the way to her steamy snatch.
If only…she thinks silently… if only he’d place his hand between my legs… He’d stoke the fire enough for her to cum. If for just an instant she could feel his fingertips gliding like melting butter across the ripeness of her clitoris, she would cum.
He knows her mind as well as he knows her body. How obvious she can be without using words. She rolls her hips about, and rubs her thighs together until he barks a new command.
“Keep those feet spread, slave!”
Oh, how he teases her!
Still she rolls her hips in the throes of rising desire, reaching for him, reaching for more with her sex about to lift off into paradise.
“Ohmygod,” she quietly vents Even her breath burns. Even her aching limbs desire. What more must she do?
Suffer. The answer comes as natural as her arousal.
Of course, suffer, because that is what fuels his fire.
So she suffers for him, takes his anger and his sadistic need, though she works hard to transform both into the most glorious pleasure she has ever known. She thinks in superlatives and usually gets the results she wants. She can feel him moving closer, although he’s hardly budged an inch from his position. It is his spirit she feels swooping all about hers, destroying anything that would come between them. The blows rain down harder still—she knows this intuitively—but they no longer feel hard, or cruel, or cutting, but more like lessons in love.
A Master For A Desperate Slave Page 6