“I didn’t come in here expecting to—”
“I know,” she says. “Latin dance will bring that out in a person.”
I lower her from the wall. “Sorry about that.”
“Tristan, stop apologizing. I was just as culpable in this situation.”
I have no idea why I feel so obliged to apologize, when we both danced ourselves into a sexual frenzy. Dancing with Keisha was more erotic than dancing with any woman from my past, including the woman who taught me.
“I lost my head and had sex with you without protection. That’s inexcusable.”
“I’ve been your only partner, right? And I know you’ve been mine. It’s okay. I take birth control.”
Every muscle in my body relaxes with this revelation, despite my father’s advice to the contrary from long ago. Thank fuck she’s covered all the bases. With exceeding gratitude, I scoop her up into my arms and start for the door.
“Hey, where are you taking me?”
“To shower, and then to bed.”
She relaxes in my arms, then leans her head against my shoulder as I carry her into my bedroom and kick the door shut.
Saturday morning after breakfast Keisha meets me in my gym dressed in her knickers, plastron, chest protector, jacket, socks, trainers and glove, carrying her mask and foil. When she exits the dressing room I stop practicing and watch as she approaches. My eyes rove her body with the same appreciation hers are showing me.
She looks exquisite in her fencing whites.
“Seeing you dressed out gives me ideas, Ms. Beale,” I say.
“What if I don’t like fencing? Then these cute little outfits you bought will go to waste.”
“They’re not just cute little outfits and believe me, once you get into it you’ll love it.”
“Says the man who’s probably been doing this since he could walk.”
I think about that for a moment. “My mother did begin to teach Nate and me when we were five.”
Fleetingly, I wonder what Keisha did at that age, and then I nix that thought because that’s the type of thing a boyfriend might think. I like getting to know my submissives well, but I try hard not to romanticize anything about them. Wanting to know what type of upbringing she had is taking it just a little too far into vanilla relationship territory.
“Then, in homage to the late Mrs. White, I’ll give it a good old college try,” She says.
“Oh, you’ll give it more than that.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Physical fitness is part of your contract, and it will go a long way in helping you endure the rigors of our role-play weekends. I can tell from your muscle tone you have not been sedentary, and your lines suggest you could be good at this. What sports did you enjoy in school?”
“Track and field. I was a hurdler and long jumper in high school. And even though my music major didn’t allow me to continue in college, I used DePaul’s track and gym whenever I could.”
“I’m impressed and happy to be the beneficiary of your diligence.”
“You have a weird way of giving compliments.”
“You’ll undoubtedly find many things weird about me, but I prefer the term eccentric.”
“Eccentric is more pleasing to the ear.”
I give her an over jacket like the one I’m wearing to conduct the point scoring system. “Here, put this on.”
“What’d you do, rob Michael Jackson’s wardrobe?”
I try to resist reacting to her joke, but I smile nonetheless. “Funny. The answer is no. It’s an electric lamé or over jacket. When our body cords are attached to it and plugged into the reel on either end of the fencing strip, it’ll register electronic scoring as targets on our bodies are hit.”
“So, this is kinda what you like to do with the whips, crops, and floggers in The Grotto?”
I think about her analogy and it is spot-on. “Now that you mention it… Yes.” Ms. Beale never ceases to amaze me. I finish getting us both outfitted with equipment and in position.
“The first thing you do is salute your opponent as a sign of respect.” I close my mask. “Mask down, Ms. Beale.” My indication that she should do the same seems to surprise her. I move into the first position taught to new fencers. “This is the en garde position. Front foot facing forward and then your back foot at a ninety degree angle with your front foot. Your feet are shoulder width apart and your knees are bent. Like so.”
Keisha follows my instructions and manages to mirror my stance exactly after a few adjustments.
“Good form.”
She grins, pleased by my approval.
I point at the line next to me on the strip. “Don’t cross that line until you’ve been signaled to engage after completing the en garde stance.”
“Okay.”
Rolling from my heels to the balls of my feet, I move toward her executing the second move she needs to know.
“This is a classic lunge.” I explain to her. “It is how you attack your opponent.”
She mimics the movement I made until she does it well enough for me that I’m sure she’s ready to move on.
“You always want to block your target areas from your opponent during a lunge.” Using the foil, to point to the areas I describe. “The arms, chest and head are targets, and there are three parries designed to block these targets.”
I hold the foil horizontally at my shoulder. “This is the three parry to block your flank.” I move the foil next, diagonally across my chest. “This is the four parry to block your chest.” Finally, the foil rests horizontally near my head. “And this is the five parry to block your head. There’s also a two and a one, but those aren’t used quite as often as the ones I’ve just shown you. As we progress and you have need of the others, we’ll learn them.
“Now, for a bit of footwork. I’ll show you advancing and retreating today. I’ll save some of the fancier stuff for later.”
I move again into en garde position. “Okay, here’s the advance. Watch my feet.” I execute an advance quickly. “To slow it down for you, the advance is done in three distinct steps, and your feet should remain shoulder width apart at all times. The front foot moves first, beginning by lifting the toes. Straighten the leg at the knee, pushing the heel out in front. Land on the heel and then bring the back foot up to the en garde stance again.”
I show Keisha several times until she gets it. Honestly, she’s such a good dancer none of this is hard for her. She executes several advances until the movement flows naturally to her.
“Final movement I’m going to show you today is the retreat, which is sort of a reverse of the advance. It’s a three-step process also. Back foot first to the ball of the foot. Down with the heel and then on the ball of the foot. Like so.” I retreat, advance, then retreat, encouraging Keisha to join me until she’s able to follow me without a misstep.
We go through the parries, slowly again and again, all while advancing and retreating, until Keisha is familiar with them all without my assistance. “Now, these will be executed very quickly, but we’ll go slow until you get the hang of it.”
Holding back slightly at first to give her time to figure out how to block my attacks gives her confidence as the moves become second nature to her. Because I begin relatively slow in the beginning, she’s able to think fast and position her foil so I don’t score against her every time. As I gather speed, even though she parries successfully to block, I still hit several targets on her chest.
As I’m doing this, at some point I begin to think about cropping her breasts and I lose my concentration, allowing her to score a point. I smile as my focus returns, and I score three successive points against her until she retreats off the strip.
“No fair! You have me at a complete disadvantage,” she says
I stop and flip my mask, fold arms and cross my legs at the ankle. I hold my foil in one hand and beckon for Keisha to lunge again with my other hand.
She pushes her mask back and shakes her head. �
�You’ve got to be crazy if you think I’m lunging at you again right now.”
“You were doing well for a beginner if we discount the odd moments when you were whacking me like you were trying to chop vegetables on a cutting board.”
“I’m a girl. We always resort to flailing during fighting, didn’t you know this?”
“I’ve seen you hit someone, remember? You don’t flail when you fight, so don’t do it while fencing. In fact, if you treat fencing the same way you do boxing, you’ll do fine. Practice the moves enough, and they’ll become second nature to you. Use the gym when you’re here and in a few months, you’ll be fencing like an amateur.” I grin partly at her and partly at my stale joke.
She fakes a smile then her face becomes serious. “Funny, White.”
“Okay, I’m going to use my left hand during this final bout. This should give you some advantage.” I move to my place on the strip, and Keisha takes her place again.
“En garde,” I say.
“En garde,” She responds.
We fight a near equal match, because I’m using my non-dominant hand. However, I still win in the end, pressing toward her using a swordplay routine I learned from Tim Morehouse himself. The scores I make are on or near her breasts, and in one final move I relieve her of her foil, and score in a place that is likely to get me disqualified in a formal match.
Keisha looks down at the tip of my foil between the juncture of her thighs. “I don’t recall that being a target area.”
“It’s always a target for me.”
I drop my foil, pull her into my arms, and kiss her until her knees go weak. Our tongues fence, but there’s no clear winner, despite the sheer number of targets we both hit. This is the first time I can recall ever not caring who wins during a fencing match. From the look in Ms. Beale’s eyes when we part, I’m sure she feels the same way.
As neophyte submissives go, Keisha is top-notch. She is teachable, obedient, and eager to learn. Her ace in the hole is most likely that roommate of hers, who for some inexplicable reason rubs me entirely the wrong way. Yet, I’m grudgingly indebted to Jada for helping Keisha in ways that ultimately benefit me. I can’t be sure, but I believe she may have been convinced by Ms. Jameson to try anal sex.
We canceled our formal role-play weekend because of the opening, but she spent the night at the condo on Thursday. After enjoying a leisurely session in the Grotto, she was looking through the chest of drawers that contains many of my smaller sex toys and came upon my butt plug collection.
“What are these?”
I peer over her shoulder into the drawer. “Butt plugs.”
“Oh.” She is always so cute when rendered speechless. She turns to look up at me, holding one of the hard metal plugs in her hand. “So this would be inserted in my…”
“Yes,” I say. I take the hand in which she is holding the plug. “You’re a big girl,” I tease. “You can say ass in my presence.”
She makes an impatient noise. “It’s not that I can’t say it in front of you. It’s just this still freaks me out tremendously, but at the same time I’m curious.”
I pin her eyes with mine. “Do some research. Make an informed decision just as you would about anything else.” I squeeze her hand and release it, allowing her to feel the weight and heft of the plug without my support again. Inwardly, I am hoping she will relent and agree to try anal sex, because it is something I enjoy doing from time to time, when I’m in a particular mood.
I take the bedding Keisha gathered from the bed and drop it in the chute in the ensuite which delivers it to the laundry room on the second level.
“I’ve done the research,” she says. I didn’t realize she’d followed me into the ensuite, and I turn, hopeful that she will make the decision I’ve been desiring.
“And?” I move into her personal space, taking her forearms lightly in my hands.
“I think I want to try it…eventually,” she says.
“Are you sure?”
She bobs her head with a bit of ambivalence then answers with enthusiasm. “Yes, I’m sure.”
I hug her before my mind registers what I’m doing, then release her to look into her eyes again. “You won’t regret it. In fact, I think you’ll like it as a change of pace from time to time.”
She shrugs. “Okay.”
“In the meantime, we’ll need to train your virginal ass,” I say, taking the plug in her hand and striding over to the chest of drawers to replace it. “You will need a relatively small one, at first.” I open the drawer and spot the one I have in mind, quickly, before she changes her mind.
“Here, take this one, and a tube of lube.” Then I change course. “In fact, I should probably demonstrate this for you.”
Her eyes grow wide. “Uh, I think I can figure it out,” she says quickly and takes the items from my hand.
I grin lasciviously. “Are we being coy again, Ms. Beale? After all the things we’ve experienced together?”
“No, I just need to do some…” She clears her throat. “…prep before using it. Otherwise, you know…could be messy.”
It dawns on me then that she has done some research, or asked some pertinent questions of someone who has done this before.
“Okay.” I don’t push any further for demonstration.
After the grand opening, I will push Keisha in regards to her training to limits I haven’t wanted to explore while she’s been busy on-boarding staff and preparing for all the events that make for a successful opening. By then she won’t be pulled in so many different directions and will be able to focus on more hardcore facets of BDSM.
Today is the grand opening of Kente Studio Records. It makes for a rather minute project in my portfolio, but pays big dividends in my private life. Having the co-owner as my submissive is a huge perk that it took some machinations on my part to make happen, but I wouldn’t change anything, other than the drugging debacle at Wicked, which reminds me that I need to follow up with Velasquez on that situation. Soon.
As I step from the limo in the parking lot behind KSR and duck directly into the building, I enter the hubbub of activity going on in the building just half an hour before the doors open to the public. Lines are already forming outside, and Velasquez and his team are on the job, manning the crowd.
I peek first in the window of one of the studios. I notice several celebrities inside chatting, eating and drinking. This must be the makeshift greenroom. I don’t go in, because I don’t want to be caught up chatting with anyone right now, especially Darnelle, who still has a bone to pick with me, as it were. She’s heard through the grapevine that Keisha is my new sub, and isn’t particularly happy with me right now. She’ll get over it.
I stop by Keisha’s office first, and as expected, she isn’t there. She’s likely in the showroom where the stage and seating is set up for the program. Her newly hired uniformed staff look professional and competent.
Tracey, the receptionist, greets me as I enter. “Good morning, Mr. White.”
“Tracey.” I acknowledge her as warmly as I dare with a female staffer. “Where’s your boss?”
“In the showroom putting some final touches on the program.”
“Thanks.” I make a beeline for the door to the showroom.
As I enter, I see Nathan and Jada directing a group of employees cordoning off a section stage left for the media, and Keisha has a clipboard in hand, jotting things down, and crossing things off of a list, no doubt. When she looks up and sees me, she smiles, but then she is approached by a couple of staffers with questions. I remove my jacket and roll up my sleeves to help Jonah Sairu, my Kenyan designer friend, who is balanced precariously on a ladder hanging a KSR Banner in front of the stage.
I hold the ladder at the base. “Why is it always the vertically challenged guys who try to do jobs they’re not equipped to handle?”
Jonah peers down at me, holding the edge of the banner in his teeth as he slips a cable tie through the scaffolding holding the klieg lights. His
face lights up with a smile, then he attaches the end of the banner, talking as he comes down. “It is because tall guys like you are never around when you need them. Your brother seems content to follow one of the co-owners around, so even he was not available to help me with the banner.”
I release the base of the ladder when he has only a few rungs left to descend. When he is safely on the floor, he grabs my hand, shakes it vigorously, and pats me on the back simultaneously. I suppose this is the enthusiastic Kenyan version of the man-shake.
“I must thank you for sending Kente Studio Records to me. No other designer in Chicago could have done them justice.”
I look around at the décor. “You’re right about that. Considering the name and the brand they are hoping to portray, you were the first to come to my mind.”
The studio is decorated appropriately for the celebration layering Jonah’s design signature throughout the showroom. Statement walls are interspersed between the windows alternating with solid colors that complement and enhance the tapestries of the Kente cloth wall fabric. These are accessorized with authentic African musical instruments used as objet d’art that relate specifically to the products that will be sold in each area.
As Jonah tells me about his newest project for HGTV, I see an older woman, who could only be Keisha’s mother, entering the showroom. I know I’m right when Keisha greets her with a hug and takes her on a tour, skirting the seating area. Mrs. Beale peruses the showroom in awe, stopping several times, looking as if she is overcome with emotion.
When Keisha cuts a glance at me which registers as a plea for help, I spring into action.
“Excuse me, Jonah,” I say. “I need to assist Ms. Beale with getting her mother seated.”
“Oh please, go ahead. I’m going to take this ladder into the back and return to my seat for this spectacular event. Let’s have a drink together later, my friend.”
The Venture Capitalist Page 17