“You know, Reg, you look stressed. Something bothering you?” Will asked.
“Not my usual relaxed and peaceful self?” he joked.
“Hell no.” Will waited a moment before he said it. “It’s Jocelyn, isn’t it?”
“She’s been gone two weeks.”
“God, you’re probably horny too,” Will snickered.
“That’s not my problem. I can have all the sex I want,” Reggie replied.
“Can you now?” Will didn’t believe him.
“You trying to say something?” Reggie looked at his friend suspiciously.
“Yeah, you don’t have all the sex you want because you want it with Jocelyn,” Will went right straight to the point.
Reggie stared off for some minutes. The thoughts in his head were as agitated as the water around him, one bubbling cauldron. He didn’t really like the heat in either place.
“Dammit, Will, I’m breaking every relationship rule I’ve ever had.”
“And is that a problem?”
“For me it is. I’m courting a woman who’s as strong and pig-headed and controlling as I am. And I’m cherishing every minute with her like I was an eighteen year old kid. I wasn’t even like this when I was eighteen. I’m used to my life one way and she’s tearing all my order apart.”
“That sounds serious.”
“I warned her, she couldn’t be the submissive I needed. And so she practically demands we begin a relationship. And now I’m in a relationship that I never wanted.”
“So now you don’t know how to let her down gracefully?”
“No, I don’t want to let her down gracefully, I don’t want to let her down at all.”
Will shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this way.”
“What way?”
“You’re smitten.”
“Smitten, good god.” The word made him shudder.
“You’re more than smitten, you’re fucking in love with the brat.”
“In love?”
“Look at yourself. She’s gone, you’re miserable, how else would describe your state of mind? You’re right, you’re just like an eighteen year old school kid.” He tried to keep from laughing.
“Will, she’s not the kind of woman that I’m accustomed to. I’ve been a sexual dominant for years and it’s satisfied me. And now, something else comes along that’s so absurd and I have my friends telling me I’m smitten.”
“You should have heard Alex after you left the other night.”
“What did she say?”
“The same thing. Let me see…I quote, ‘Reggie is hopelessly in love, and the first opportunity I get I’m going to throw it in his pretty face’.”
“I’ll paddle her ass for that one,” Reggie said dryly.
“But, it’s true.”
“It’s true.” He shrugged. “I tested myself today. A little spanking aficionado, little nymph of a naughty brat, just hired her. And I find out after she’s already on the payroll that she likes to be ‘disciplined.’ My God, I was going back in time, way back, farther back than Alex, farther back than…”
“So you paddled her butt, then what happened?” Will asked.
“I didn’t say I paddled her butt. I told her I was out of the business.”
“But you paddled her anyway.”
“She was a charming little thing,” Reggie admitted. “But I don’t want to do it anymore. It isn’t what I need. It’s a lot more complex than that, and a lot simpler too. I need something more substantial.”
“And that’s Jocelyn,” Will said, as if he knew it all along.
Reggie sighed deeply, the warm eyes of his nurturing friend had helped him pick up pieces of broken plans a number of times in his life. He’d helped Will, too, mostly with Alex. It was a good gift to give a friend as good as Will. If he was going to admit anything, it was a perfectly good time and the easiest place he’d find. “And that’s Jocelyn,” he repeated Will’s remark as if it was mantra to be repeated over and over, just to see how well he could handle the news. He’d thought around the idea for days, for weeks in fact. All his musings on the nature of himself and his bizarre relationship boiled down to this one fact.
Chapter Eleven
Jocelyn picked over the fruit in the tiny grocery store, looking for something choice. Nothing seemed to suit her, and she ended up putting a little bit of everything in the basket. Quandaries, puzzles and decisionless days were never her best. Two days back from London, however, and she’d still not reached an answer to her present haunting problem.
“Jocelyn, is that you?” a female voice cut through her thoughts.
She turned.
“Alex!” The lovely blonde’s amiable face appeared just steps away from her. “What a surprise to see you here.”
“I don’t come down to this market often, but I love the produce. The best in town don’t you think?”
“Exactly,” Jocelyn replied. Such a change from weeks before when she first met the woman. There was none of the tension that was present in that first and very bizarre evening.
“You know we really should get to know each other better,” Alex said. “Our dinner party, well you know how that ended up. I’m really sorry. I was a little screwed up about the whole thing. Reggie has always had a way of shaking me up so much, I manage to screw things up even more. Of course, that’s in the past.”
“Reggie does have a distinct effect on people,” Jocelyn agreed.
“Speaking of Reg, he dropped by the other night and said you were in London?”
“I just got back.”
“So you’ve called him?”
“No, I haven’t,” she admitted. “I really needed some time to myself.”
“I can understand that. Reggie’s pretty intense.”
“Frankly, Alex, I’m not so sure that there’s going to be a relationship.”
“Really?” There was a look of concern on her face.
“Would like to go to coffee?” Jocelyn suddenly asked. It was a spur of the moment idea, but it seemed absolutely perfect for the situation.
“Now? Sure. I have about an hour before I’ve got to get home.”
The two women completed their purchases in the market, and walked down the street together to a small street-side cafe.
“Let’s go inside,” Jocelyn suggested. “It’s quieter.”
Alex followed the woman to the back of the restaurant where they found a table in one corner. They ordered lattes from a smiling faced teenage girl.
“If you don’t mind my observation,” Alex said, as she admired Jocelyn and her beautiful mass of auburn curls, “You look unsettled. Not that I know you very well, but I picture you being very self-assured.”
The waitress returned with their cappuccino, and the two women waited for her to leave before continuing.
“I am unsettled,” Jocelyn taking a sip of her latte. “And I’m not used to this kind of thing paralyzing me. I hate it. I don’t do it in business and usually never in my personal life. But…”
“But Reggie is a different sort of man,” Alex said, getting straight to the point.
Jocelyn didn’t have to answer, the two women were on a common wave length. “You know him well, don’t you?”
“I know of him. But know him? I don’t know if anyone could. Maybe you.”
“You’re giving me too much credit.” Jocelyn smiled.
They drank their coffee in the comfortable quiet, the kind of quiet where women get to know each other, sense their feelings for someone they hardly know and make conclusions on a potential friendship.
“Do you mind my asking you some personal questions?” Jocelyn finally ventured.
“About my relationship with Reggie?”
“I realize it’s a little forward, but then Reggie told me to.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I know a lot about his dominant sexual inclinations. I know some of what he’s done in the past, but it’s all a little vague.
Reggie says he trained you? I asked him what that meant, he told me to ask you.”
“Now isn’t that a typical Reggie response.” Alex laughed.
“Is this too personal?”
“Not really, I don’t think you’ll go blabbing this everywhere.”
“Oh, no, please, I just want to understand him.”
“I can’t tell you what ‘training’ means for every submissive. In fact, I don’t really think he ‘trained’ me in the official sense, if there is an official sense. He did help Will and me through a very tough time. For many years, I was haunted by sexual fantasies, wild, crude, nasty fantasies. I didn’t know what to do with them. When Will came along, I thought I’d found my knight in shining armor, he was so perfect. For a while the fantasies died away and good sex with him was all I needed. But then, like some caged beast, the fantasies came roaring back and threatened to ruin our relationship. That was when Will suggested that I see Reg.”
“You lived with him, I gather?”
“For several months. Not too many people have friends like Reggie. I guess we can be glad that Will had one. I don’t know much about his relationships with other women, though Will told me that he took certain women and helped them live out their darkest desires. That’s what he would do for me.”
Jocelyn watched Alex’s eyes, how they glazed over with an obscure appearance, as she slipped away from the restaurant and Jocelyn and back into memory.
“I was young and naive and very scared. But my desire was unstoppable. Reggie spun a web of control around me that took me into this very odd sexual world. You notice his eyes and his chiseled face, the cold reserve, that incredible aloof persona. I thought I’d fallen into heaven. A wild carnal heaven. I’d do anything he said, just to have him talk to me, and command me, demand things of me that I’d never done, indecent and absurd things. It really didn’t matter. I did it all as his submissive.”
Jocelyn followed her new friend into her peculiar place, trying to look with her eyes into what Alex had experienced.
“He set up situations for me, and required that I submit to his sexual demands. He dressed me in exotic clothes, and gave me to other men who used me. They tied me up and spanked my bottom until it was raw, and then took me in the ass. As much as I often resisted the extremes he demanded, my months with him were deeply satisfying. There were softer scenes too. Group sex with women and men, when I discovered my bisexuality. I learned that the bounds of my real sexual appetites were very wide, and that at the very core of my sexuality, I’m basically submissive.”
“This was what you’d fantasized about, these scenes Reggie created?”
“Many times. But don’t get me wrong. Our relationship was hardly blissful. I was angry that he wasn’t going to be my lover. He demanded all these things and at best, he stood back and watched. Sometimes he completely ignored me once he set his plans in motion. It was a savage thorn in my side that he didn’t want to have me for himself, and it became my goal to become his lover.”
“You were never lovers?” Jocelyn asked.
“Only at the very end. The first time Reggie took me into his world was about four years ago. I wanted him so much that I forgot about Will altogether, and he knew that. Just before it was time for me to leave him, he gave me my great desire. He set up a scene that ended with just the two of us. That night, we tried to make a connection, and everything should have been perfect. I’m still not sure what happened. But after all he put me through, and considering his very intimate knowledge of me, the lovemaking was so impersonal. I was betrayed by his coldness, his inability to give back to me what I really wanted. There was so much inside me that I wanted to share with him, but he wasn’t able to go there. He seemed okay with that. But I certainly wasn’t.”
She paused letting the old sadness claim her again.
“I realized then that he wasn’t the man I really needed. I finally got my head on straight and moved back in with Will where I belonged.”
Jocelyn let the story settle, wondering for herself why Reggie would go to such lengths with a woman, when he asked for so little for himself.
“But you’ve been with him more recently, haven’t you?”
“It was just a short time, and it was very different from the first. Will and I separated because of a stupid mistake I made. Will suggested that if I wanted to make amends, I submit to Reggie again, which was the last thing I ever wanted to do. But…I wanted Will enough to humble myself before the master and take my lickings.”
“So he punished you?”
“It was pretty personal this time. He focused on my ass. It makes me burn even now to think of it. My poor bottom should be callused as much as he spanked me, and caned me, and strapped me. He did it all. This fair ass was blushing regularly. And even now, there’s something about the way Reggie disciplines me that’s unique. Will has his own technique. But he doesn’t have the same command as Reggie. I think it’s because Will loves me, which makes a big difference. Reggie loves to abuse rear ends, of course you likely know that.”
“I do.”
“This second time, he was still cold and distant. But for the first time, I saw a crack in his steel-plated armor. Like he wanted something more. Not necessarily from me, but from some woman. Frankly, I think his friendship with Will prevented him from going very far with me. He’s intensely loyal. Though we did make love, if you could call it that. It felt like two lonely, empty people coming together, finding some kind of bond in that. But it was never anything that could last. When the time was right, he turned over the reins to Will.”
“And you’re no longer in love with him?”
“I don’t think what I felt was ever love. You can’t love, really love, what you don’t know.”
“But he can still make you obey him?” She recalled the night in Alex’s apartment.
“He can still remind me of who I am, when I find myself faltering. But that’s not love, Jocelyn. That’s mortal fear. The situation you’re thinking of a few weeks ago, he was one step from joining Will in his battle with me. And I had no desire to have my ass end burning more than it already was.”
In the long silence that followed their eyes met. Some curious union begun between them. Something in common and something opposite in their natures made a blossoming friendship.
“You’ve been on a wild ride,” Jocelyn observed.
“And you too I gather?” Alex asked.
“It’s why I’m hiding away in my apartment not calling him, because I don’t know what to say.”
“How about the truth?” Alex suggested.
“I’m afraid of how he’ll take it. I can’t imagine letting him down, how he’ll take the hurt. If he’ll hurt at all. But I also know, I can’t have the relationship he wants.”
“You need to talk to him Sitting in your apartment avoiding Reg and trying to figure it out will get you no answers.”
She nodded, looking into Alex’s understanding face. “You’re a wise woman,” Jocelyn observed.
“As wise as you are, I’m sure. Why don’t you join Will and me tomorrow. We’re going out on the lake, just a little gathering of friends, nothing fancy at all. He has access to this terrific yacht that belongs to his uncle, and he takes it out a couple of times a year.”
“Sounds terrific. Reggie going to be there?”
“Will tells me he was flying to Boston for a couple of days. I’m not expecting him.”
“I’ll think about it, the water and fresh air might be enough to soothe my soul.”
Alex smiled warmly, like a woman who knew herself well, even though Jocelyn had already seen enough of her to know otherwise. It was comforting, considering her own small struggle.
***
The next morning, Alex grabbed the jangling telephone. Her happy conversation suggested that she’d scored some triumph. Hanging up, she made the announcement, “She’s coming!”
Will stood in the kitchen with a carton of milk in his hand taking a long drink.
<
br /> “Who’s she?”
“Jocelyn.”
“You invited Jocelyn? I thought she was in London?”
“She’s home.”
“Reggie doesn’t know that.”
“I know.”
“He doesn’t know. Is she running out on him?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“What are you cooking up?” he asked his wife suspiciously.
“You know we had that conversation about Reg the other night. I think they really want to be together, they just don’t know it.”
“And you’re going to see that they do?”
“I’m just giving them the opportunity to see each other, since there seems to be a little impasse there.”
“It’s likely to backfire, babe, and you know what that means?”
“Yeah, Reg will be blistering my ass for interfering. And you know, I don’t care. He’s a friend. I consider it the least I can do.”
“You’re on your own with this.”
“But you won’t warn him?” she asked.
“Hey, I’m out of it. As far as I’m concerned, Jocelyn Killian will be crashing our party without invitation.”
Alex put her arms around him, kissing him affectionately. “You really are a darling.”
“You watch your ass, Alex,” he warned, gently patting her bottom. “I won’t protect you from Reg, you know that.”
“Did I ask you to?” Her lips formed the most tantalizing smirk, which made Will lean in and kiss her again.
Chapter Twelve
The water was like glass. The sun beamed joyfully in a sky dotted with white puffy clouds that suggested it would be a perfect day to enjoy the lake.
Alex was glad that Reggie was already on the boat when Jocelyn arrived. He was in the stateroom below going over nautical stuff with Will. She greeted the exuberant woman with a smile and a rush of excitement. It had been sometime since Alex had such a delicious time manipulating anything. She couldn’t wait to see Reggie’s face, and Jocelyn’s, too. She wasn’t sure how the woman would react; she might well be sacrificing a friend doing this. But Jocelyn needed a little shaking up. She certainly didn’t need to be hiding from Reggie.
The Alexandra Series Page 44