by Sionna Fox
I got up and undressed, put on some pj’s and fuzzy socks, and shuffled out to the living room. I gathered up the abandoned glasses from the coffee table and corked the leftover wine after offering Izzy a glass. She perched on the counter with a bowl of ziti while I washed and dried the glassware and put it away. I turned to her with my palms braced on the counter behind me.
“This is delicious,” she mumbled around a mouthful.
“Thanks.”
“I thought you weren’t seeing Matt again until Wednesday? Eager, huh?”
“He texted me this afternoon.” I didn’t want to think about what it might mean that he said he couldn’t wait to see me, that he’d been dreaming of kissing me all day. “I thought I was going to be home alone tonight.”
“Hey, I did let you know I was on my way home. It’s not like I want to see you two going at it in our living room. Do we need to put an elastic on the door like we did freshman year?”
“You were the only one of us who ever used it.”
“Didn’t you hook up with Wyatt that year?”
“Oh god, don’t remind me.” I shuddered to think of my drunken make-outs with a guy who thought he needed to unhinge his jaw and swallow my face to show his affection.
“Why’d Matt leave?”
“Being walked in on kind of killed my lady boner.” I glared at her and Izzy snorted into her pasta.
“I swear to god, Mouse, I texted you. Look at your phone.”
“I know. I’m just…I’m going to bed.” I trundled off to brush my teeth.
I wanted to text Matthew, to leave off on a better note than kicking him out so I could hide in my bedroom in shame. I didn’t know what to say, though. I couldn’t brush it off like I wasn’t mortified and thinking about hiding under a rock for the next ten years. When I picked up my phone, I had two messages, one from Izzy telling me she was on her way home, the other from Matthew. He had beaten me to it.
Matthew: Get some sleep, sweet girl. Next time we’ll get carried away where there are no roommates.
It was simple and sweet. It reassured me that he understood, and most of all, that he still wanted me. I messaged back.
Jolene: Yes, sir. Goodnight.
Chapter Eight
He didn’t check in the next day. I shouldn’t have been disappointed. He was busy, he’d warned me about his work and his hyperfocus. He didn’t have time to babysit my feelings. Checking up on me the day after my first real experiences was just good kink etiquette, nothing more. He wasn’t my boyfriend. We’d had one date, two dinners, and three and half rounds of sex. I was not getting attached. It was the sex, the things he did, making me think I was half in love with him. I couldn’t be feeling all gooey and sappy over him when I didn’t fully understand what we were doing. Or what he was doing with me.
He couldn’t have any shortage of experienced submissives throwing themselves at him. Women who would know how to play those games, who knew what they liked and what they wanted. Or maybe he liked fucking around with newbies.
I hated the idea of Matthew with other women, but I knew I had no rights to him. I should be grateful for getting laid after a six-year dry spell. If I was lucky, when this all went to hell, I would have a better understanding of what I wanted in a boyfriend or a lover. It wasn’t going to last. And I was definitely not a little bit in love with him after a week. Nope.
That night I ate leftovers and tried to watch TV, but I kept getting distracted by flashes of what we’d been doing on that couch twenty-four hours ago. I tried to push the memories away. I almost texted my best friend Will back home, but I wasn’t ready to dissect the whole thing with anyone. Especially not when it would involve giving Will way too many details about my sex life. We’d been friends since elementary school and had an unspoken don’t ask, don’t tell policy when it came to sex. Not to mention that I’d been ducking him for the last several weeks, not wanting to admit that my grand escape to Boston was going so poorly. To crawl back out of the woodwork talking about the guy I was sleeping with would have been too much.
I gave up, exhausted from the effort of not obsessing over my premature feelings, and got into bed with a book. I deliberately picked something dry, hoping it would put me to sleep. It helped, but my dreams ended up being a bizarre mix of early nineteenth century English literature and sex.
In the morning, I wondered if Matthew had ever played headmaster. Picturing him in the rumpled suit and tie of a put-upon academic—would the jacket be corduroy or tweed? It would definitely have suede elbow patches—wielding a ruler over a faux-remorseful schoolgirl whose plaid skirt was several inches shorter than regulation, I almost called out sick. But contract jobs don’t come with sick days. I got myself off quickly, imagining Matthew taking me over his corduroy knee, laying stripes across my ass with a wooden ruler, and forced myself to go to work.
At mid-afternoon, when I’d started to worry he was going to cancel on me or stand me up entirely, I received instructions. He would pick me up at seven, I should plan to stay over, and he didn’t care what I wore since we weren’t going anywhere and he had every intention of doing away with my clothes in short order. A tingling thrill traveled up my spine at the prospect of Matthew unceremoniously stripping me naked and having his way with me.
I squirmed in my desk chair for the rest of the afternoon. My naughty schoolgirl fantasy that morning had only made me want more. It reminded me why I’d given up masturbation in the first place. It was never enough. I was always left wanting. With no outlet for the need for more, I’d wound up crying in frustration more than once, feeling my loneliness sharp-edged and rough in my chest. So I had stopped doing it. Now masturbating to thoughts of Matthew only made it harder to wait. I was going to be ready to climb him like a tree the moment he pulled up to the curb, playing it cool be damned.
At precisely seven, my phone buzzed.
Matthew: Downstairs. You have sixty seconds to get your ass in this car.
I gathered my keys and my bag and ran down the stairs. He didn’t get out to open my door. I let myself in, and as soon as I sat, he launched over the center console and plastered me to the seat with the force of a kiss that left me trembling when he pulled away.
“If I got out of the car, I would have fucked you on your doorstep.”
“Oh,” I whispered, thoroughly flustered.
He put the car in gear and threaded us through traffic the few miles to his apartment.
“How was your day?” His face was annoyingly placid, meanwhile I was still struggling to calm the flapping in my chest.
“Fine. Mind-numbingly boring, but fine, I guess.” I fiddled with a piece of hair that had fallen out of my bun. “You?”
“You would probably categorize it as boring, but today was a good day.”
“Why would I think it was boring?”
“Because I really do look at cell cultures all day to see if the variables we’re introducing to them have any effect.”
“Right, fair enough. Why was it a good day?”
“We saw something.” He shrugged, but I could see the cautious excitement on his face. “Of course, we have to replicate it. It could have been a fluke. Any number of things could have caused us to see something that wasn’t really there. But if it is…” He trailed off, resting his right hand in my lap as he drove the rest of the way to his apartment.
He took my hand chastely in the elevator. The moment his door clicked shut behind us, he spun me around, pinned me to the wall with his hips, and planted both large hands on either side of my head. His face loomed over mine in the shadow created by his body. My heart pounded in my ears and my breath grew short.
I lifted my arms to wrap them around his neck and pull him closer, but he grabbed both of my wrists in one hand and pinned them roughly above my head. His eyes dropped from my face down to my heaving chest. He narrowed his eyes and inhaled, like a predator looking for the tenderest, juiciest bits of his prey to devour first. I arched my back, wanting him to make h
is choice already and put his mouth somewhere on my body.
A low rumble started deep in his chest as he dragged his gaze back to mine. “Patience, sweet girl.”
He feathered kisses over my neck and shoulders. My head fell back against the wall as the light touch tickled and burned my skin. He used his free hand to pull down my top and lift my breast free from the cup of my bra. He sunk his teeth into my soft flesh, and I sobbed in shock and sweet relief. His mouth moved in a wide arc over my skin, nibbling, licking, biting, sucking, closer and closer to the straining pink tip.
I whimpered, my legs turning to jelly. I was held up only by his hands on my wrists and the force of his hips against mine. He took my nipple into his hot mouth, but his touch was too gentle to be anything but a tease. After only a few nips and swipes of his tongue, he pulled away, tucked me back into my bra and shirt, then let go of my wrists and set me on my unsteady feet. He directed me to the kitchen with a firm swat on my ass that promised more later.
I sat at the counter while he made me dinner. He had scrambled my brain with his teasing by the door, and I was more than happy to watch him move gracefully around his kitchen. What I would have thrown together with a whole lot of unnecessary pacing between fridge, cupboard, and stove was a carefully orchestrated dance under Matthew’s supervision.
It was soothing to watch him have command over something as simple as what we were going to eat. He managed to make it look effortless. He didn’t wrestle for control of his subject; he simply was in control. By the time he set a plate in front of me, I was ready to bolt down the food and race back to his bedroom so he could make me his subject for a while. My body was already going slack in anticipation of his taking over. I stared at his hands as he picked up his fork, thinking of all the ways his quick, agile, strong fingers had already brought me pleasure.
“What is that face about?” Matthew’s question pulled me partway back to the present.
A lazy smile formed on my lips. “You.” I started shoveling food into my mouth. “This is good,” I mumbled between bites of his simple stir-fry.
“Slow down, Jolene.”
I chewed and swallowed carefully, took a sip of water, and grinned cheekily. “Yes, sir.”
He shook his head and half laughed. “Not going to work.”
I exaggerated a pout and got another laugh out of him.
“Can I ask you something?” He turned to me between bites.
“Uh-huh.” I sensed an imminent shift into a more serious territory.
“Why does Izzy call you Mouse?” He scrunched his brow, as though genuinely confused why Izzy would name me after a creature known for being extremely anxious and timid.
“Seriously? Have you met me?”
“Yes.” It was impossible to tell if he was being deliberately obtuse or if he really didn’t get it.
“She started calling me Country Mouse freshman year. I mean, I’m nervous and I’d never really left Vermont, and almost everyone else was more like you guys, you know?”
He raised an eyebrow. Did he not see how different our backgrounds were?
“Private school, travel, that stuff. I was this naive, sheltered local from the middle of nowhere. It dropped to Mouse somewhere along the way.” I shrugged. The shoe fit, after all.
He furrowed his brow for a minute before he spoke again.
“It is fitting, but not for the reasons you think. For one, you’re not as awkward as you think you are. Mice are prone to anxiety. All prey animals are to some degree. Mice are also curious, adaptable, intelligent, and rather affectionate and loyal when they’re used to being handled. We wouldn’t be able to use them in cognitive and behavioral research models if they weren’t. Calling you Mouse highlights some of the best things about you, your curiosity and desire to learn, your intelligence, your affection. I don’t think you let many people close enough to see that. It’s a privilege, little mouse.” He brushed my cheek with the back of his fingers and tucked a piece of hair behind my ear, then leaned over and kissed me softly between the eyes.
I blushed hot and twined my fingers in my lap. I had no idea what to say to that, or the earnest and sincere way he’d said it. I’d spent all those hours telling myself there was no way this would ever be, could ever be, about more than sex, and Matthew blew it all up in my face by being impossibly sweet.
Did he realize what he was doing to me? How fucking unfair this was? Panic reared its ugly head, screaming for me to run, making my heart race and my breath shallow. Every second I stayed was only going to make it hurt worse when it was over. A tiny voice cheered that maybe he had feelings for me, but fear easily shouted it down.
Matthew scooped me off the stool and plunked me in his lap. “I’m sorry, little mouse. I didn’t want to upset you.”
I lifted my head from the spot nestled into his chest where I’d automatically sought and found comfort. “No, I’m sorry. That might be one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. I don’t know why I’m all”—I flapped my arms at myself—“this.”
He kissed my temple. “We’re going to have to work on you accepting praise without panicking,” he said into my hair, softly teasing. “Come on.” He set me on my feet and pulled me into the living room. “We have more to talk about.”
I followed him and perched on the edge of the couch. I’d skipped right over “more” and had heard only “we have to talk.”
“Relax, little mouse. We need to establish some basic ground rules and expectations before we can move on to any more of the fun parts.” He rubbed my arms soothingly, but he was grinning like a cat with a canary. Or in his case, a cat with a particularly naive, plump mouse.
And I wanted to be the mouse. “Okay, sir.”
“Good girl. A few things first, okay?” I nodded. “I’d like you to get into the habit of using red, yellow, and green to let me know how you’re doing. Red for stop, yellow to slow down or pause, and green means you’re willing and able to take more. I’ll check in with you periodically, but you can also use any of the words whenever you feel like you want or need to. For now, I will also take your other words at face value. If you say stop, no, don’t, no more, or anything else to that effect, I will stop. If you say slow down, I will slow down. If you beg for more or harder, I will do as I damn well please, no matter how pretty you are when you beg. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” I murmured, my discomfort fading with a flush of heat low in my belly, remembering how he’d already made me plead.
“There may be a point when you decide you want to play with struggling, and you want to be able to say no, stop, or don’t, and have me continue anyway. If you get to that point, we will discuss it. If, in the future, you want to choose other safewords, we can. Right now, I want you to be able to let go and feel everything that happens between us without worrying about saying the right words to make it stop if it gets to be too much.”
“Does that happen? People forget their safewords?”
“It can. You can get overwhelmed and forget or be unable to get the words out. A good top is watching for cues that you’ve hit your limits, and will check in or pull back even if you can’t or don’t say the words, but tops can get carried away too. It’s a risk I’m not willing to take with you yet.”
God, I loved hearing him say yet. I loved the inherent promise that we would be doing this with each other for a while. “I understand. Thank you, sir.”
“Good. Is there anything you absolutely want to rule out from the start?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, not out of any of the things you’ve shown me. It’s not like I have any basis for comparison.” My face was scorching hot.
“We’ll start slowly and work our way up.” He took my hands in his. “I’m not going to give you a caning tonight while you’re gagged and hanging from the ceiling.” He smirked at me and I smiled back.
“Actually, I think we can rule out gags.” I shuddered imagining the feeling of having to hold something in my mouth for any length of t
ime.
“Noted, thank you. Anything else?”
“I’m sure I’ll think of it while you’ve got me hanging from the ceiling and you’re caning me.”
He shook his head at my poor attempt at a joke. “We’ll also start slowly with any bondage.”
I opened my mouth to protest that I wanted him to tie me up sooner rather than later. He held up a hand to cut me off.
“I know it’s something you want to try, and believe me, I want to have you naked and bound. I want you to get a feel for it first, the sensation of rope against your skin, the way simple bindings feel, before you’re tied to anything, let alone before we attempt to suspend you.”
Imagining the feel of rope pulled tight around my flesh made me go all melty inside. I wanted it now. “Okay.”
Matthew tipped my chin up. “Sometimes things sound like a great idea in our heads, then you’re tied to the headboard having a panic attack because it turns out you absolutely do not like being bound, or bound in that way.”
“Okay, I get it.” I did, and I appreciated his caution with me, but now that we were talking about it, I wanted him to pull me into the bedroom and do something already.
“Is there anything, aside from bondage, that you absolutely want to try? Anything you’ve been thinking or fantasizing about?”
I flushed beet red remembering the dreams I’d been having, and the schoolgirl thing that morning.
“You’re going to tell me, little mouse,” he purred. “Have you been masturbating?”
I mumbled and nodded while I tried to fold in on myself.
He grabbed me and spun me around, then pressed my back to his chest so I didn’t have to look him in the eye. “I need you to tell me what you want, little mouse. This isn’t solely about me. Right now, it’s not about me at all. What you want, and what you’re willing to try are the most important things, okay?”
His arms around me and the steady heat of his body relaxed the tension in my shoulders by fractions. That I could feel his erection pressing into my ass while I sat on his lap, physical evidence that he wanted me, even when I was being awkward as hell, was reassuring in its own way.