by Luke, Jason
I shook my head. “Sorry,” I said, and then started to smile. “But there was a notation in the diary for that weekend. Just a brief little reminder….”
“Yes…? What did it say?”
I drew out the moment. Leticia was on the edge of the sofa. Somehow, during the course of our conversation she had become invested in the story, following its twists and turns.
“It was brief. Just a couple of scribbled lines. ‘Meeting David. Excelsior Hotel. 3:00 pm.’”
“That was all?”
I nodded. “But that was enough.”
“Who was David?”
“He was her husband.”
“No!”
I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “She had a husband. He was some kind of an engineer who worked away in the middle-east; a fifty year old guy with loads of money who worked overseas for three months at a time.”
“My god!” Leticia breathed. There was genuine shock and incredulity in her voice. “But you told me she was divorced,” she protested.
“She told my father she was divorced,” I explained. “She lied.”
“How did you find out this David guy was her husband? He could have been a friend.”
“I phoned the Excelsior Hotel. I asked to be put through to the front desk, and then I asked if Mrs. Claire Moreland had arrived yet. The receptionist said she wasn’t expected for a couple of hours, but her husband had arrived early. Would I like to be transferred to their room?”
Leticia gasped. She lifted her hand and pressed it to her mouth. “Oh, Jonah. Tell me you didn’t…”
“I didn’t,” I said. “I hung up, and spent the rest of the weekend making plans. When Claire flew back in on Sunday evening, I was ready for her.”
Leticia squirmed on the sofa. Her eyes were bright and shiny. She was looking up at me in anticipation.
“Do ut des,” I said softly.
“What?”
“It’s your turn to answer a question.”
“No. Jonah! Not now!” Leticia protested. “I want to hear what happened between you and Claire. I want to know how this affected you and changed your life.”
“And I want to know about the most erotic sexual experience you have ever had.”
Leticia sat back in the sofa with her face suddenly in shadow so I sensed her mood, without seeing it written across her face. I stood my ground and after a long moment she realized sulking in the dark wasn’t going to change matters. She let out a long sigh and finally leaned forward, back into the lamplight.
She was suddenly embarrassed. “The only erotic experience I ever had was actually someone else’s,” she said softly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean it never happened to me,” she said. She made a little pleading gesture of frustration and then sighed again. “It happened to my girlfriend. I spent a Friday night staying at her home. Her parents were away for the weekend. We got high…”
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen,” Leticia said. “Dwayne was working a double shift at the processing plant. My girlfriend and I got drunk on cheap wine and I fell asleep. When I woke up I was in the living room. It was late. I went upstairs towards her bedroom, but as I passed her parent’s room, I noticed the door was slightly open. I paused, and heard my girlfriend’s voice coming from beyond the door. She was panting. She was moaning and whimpering, and her voice was husky.”
“So, what did you do?”
“I peeped,” Leticia said guiltily. “I went to the door and looked inside.” She hesitated for a moment. I stood, watching her patiently. She wasn’t looking at me. She was gazing blankly into the darkness.
“It was my girlfriend. She was on her hands and knees, naked in the middle of the bed, and there was a man I didn’t recognize behind her. He had his hands on her hips, digging his fingers into her skin, holding her in place as he thrust himself inside of her.”
Leticia shifted her position on the sofa so that she had her knees tucked up beneath her. “There was a couple of candles burning – enough light for me to see the look of passion on her face. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut and she was groaning every time the man thrust against her. Her breasts swayed and swung beneath her in rhythm.”
“Were you aroused?” I asked gently.
Leticia nodded. “The man was a lot older than my girlfriend. He might have been thirty. He had a broad chest and big muscled arms. He reached out with one of his hands and suddenly grabbed my girlfriend’s hair. He pulled on it, like it was a rein. My girlfriend lifted her head and arched her back – and then opened her eyes.”
“She saw you, watching them?”
Leticia nodded. “They both did,” she said softly. “My girlfriend came over to the door, and she had a soft dreamy look on her face. She invited me to join them.”
“And did you?” I asked.
“No,” Leticia shook her head, with maybe a hint of regret in her expression. “Dwayne was my boyfriend. I wouldn’t cheat on him. I told my girlfriend the same thing. She seemed to understand, but she could tell I was turned on. She would have been blind not to see it in my face, I suppose.”
Leticia sighed and looked around the living room. She looked everywhere, except at me.
“She opened the door wider so I could see, and then she went back to the bed and laid on her back. The man got off the bed. I thought for a moment he was going to come and drag me into the room, but he didn’t. He just smiled at me, and then stood at the edge of the bed and slid his… his penis into my girlfriend’s open mouth.”
“They wanted you to watch them?”
Leticia shrugged her shoulders. “I guess so,” she said. “They started getting louder, saying all kinds of things to each other, like they were suddenly turned on by the idea of having an audience.”
“Saying stuff?” I frowned. “You mean talking dirty to each other.”
She nodded. “Uhuh.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“It turned me on even more,” Leticia confessed. “It was incredible. It was like nothing I had ever imagined before. Watching these two people having sex really turned me on, but once I heard them talk to each other the way they did – well I… I was…”
“You had an orgasm?”
Leticia nodded.
“Just from watching and listening to this couple having sex?”
She nodded again.
“What kind of things were they saying?”
“I can’t remember,” Leticia hedged. “But the words themselves didn’t turn me on,” she lifted her face and looked at me at last. “It was the attitude. It was the way the man spoke, the hoarse cry of his voice, and the expression on his face,” Leticia explained. “And it was in the way he made my girlfriend pant and plead for more. She was wanton – a totally different character to the girl I thought I knew. It was as if the way the man treated her, changed her completely from a quiet nerd into a thousand dollar whore.”
“Did he spank her?”
Leticia nodded. “A little. Not hard or anything. But he slapped and squeezed her breasts, and he pulled her hair. He called her his sexy slut… names like that. And every thing he did seemed to drive her wilder until she collapsed into a screaming spasm and had an orgasm.”
“And then what did you do?” I prompted her. “Did you go back to your room, or did you talk to them about what happened?”
“Oh, god no!” Leticia cringed at the thought. “I stayed standing in the doorway. The man crawled onto his knees on the bed and began stroking himself. He was looking right at me. He seemed to be staring right into my soul. I watched him, and I stood there, while I felt his eyes all over me – undressing me – and then he suddenly cried out and groaned as he shot his stuff all over my girlfriend’s face and breasts.”
“And then…?”
“And then I fled down the hallway to my room. I was embarrassed. I didn’t know what to do, so I went to my room. The next morning, when I went downstairs for breakfast, the man w
as gone. My girlfriend and I never spoke about it. Ever. It was just one of those things.”
“Do you still think about that night?”
Leticia nodded. “Every day,” she muttered wistfully.
She got up suddenly from the sofa, looking slightly shaky – almost as if she were appalled by the secret she had shared. “I need coffee,” she said. “Would you like one?”
I nodded. Leticia disappeared into the kitchen and I went to the living room window. There was a view of the inner city. I stood watching the headlights on the street below, and I brooded.
My instinct was something I had always trusted in my business dealings, and with women. And right now my intuition was warning me: there was an opportunity here. It was a predatory sense – the same sense of the hunter who stalks a vulnerable prey. I sensed that within Leticia was a woman crying out for an opportunity to explore her sexual fantasies that had been stifled by a stale relationship and small town claustrophobia for too many years. It would take only a nudge…
There had been a time when I had seized moments like this with bold ruthless confidence. But now, as I stared down at the city, I sensed my own hesitation, and with it, an unfamiliar conflict.
‘A fuck you knock back, is one you will never make up,’ a business associate once told me, and I had pretty much lived by that questionable motto throughout my adult life, spurning every opportunity to develop deeper relationships with women for the freedom to bed whoever I pleased.
Leticia came back into the living room carrying two mugs. She handed one to me and stood there, shifting her weight from foot to foot self-consciously for a moment. I could see the turmoil behind her eyes. She looked down at the floor, then back up into my face.
“I can imagine what you think of me,” Leticia began. “But I haven’t had the exotic lifestyle you have lived.” It sounded like a prepared speech she had rehearsed in the kitchen. “I’ve never been the kind of woman who would sleep around, but I would appreciate you not judging me as some frigid prude just because I don’t have a long list of sexual liaisons, just as I am not judging you for your own lifestyle choices.”
The speech delivered with suitable defiance, she took a quick tremulous breath, and brushed loose hair away from her eyes.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
We sipped our coffee in silence. Leticia fetched her notebook from the table and curled herself up in the corner of the sofa. She arched her eyebrows at me.
“Do ut des.” She got the pronunciation right this time. She was a quick learner.
I set the coffee mug down and my mind drifted back to that Sunday so many years before, when Claire had returned from the weekend in New York she had shared with her secret husband. I started to smile, remembering that night’s events with fond satisfaction.
“I photocopied the page from Claire’s diary and left it on her kitchen table for her to find,” I said, picking up the thread of the story again. “Below her handwritten note, I had scribbled my own message, demanding she meet me in the study at nine o’clock. I was there fifteen minutes early. Claire was already waiting for me.”
“Was she pissed?”
“She was furious,” I grinned. “There was a wicked, malicious glint in her eye. I stepped into the room and she was pacing the floor like a caged lioness. She had her arms folded across her chest as if she was trying to restrain herself, and there were livid spots of color on her cheeks. She was literally shaking with rage.
“I asked her how her husband was. She glared at me, and told me I had no right to go into the guesthouse. I took the little diary from my pocket and taunted her by waving it in her face. I told her that little book gave me the right to do whatever I wanted. It was like showing a red rag to a bull. She flew at me.”
“Attacked you?”
“Clawed at my face,” I said. “She was desperate. She couldn’t afford to lose her husband’s money, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only other man she had played her little games with. It was all falling down around her. Suddenly the boxing and martial arts lessons paid off. I caught her wrists and held them away from my eyes. We were pressed against each other. I could feel her heart racing like a trip-hammer. Her mouth was a red slash across her face. I tightened my grip – and suddenly something behind her eyes changed. I think that was the instant she realized I was a lot stronger than her. But it wasn’t only that. There was suddenly something else in her eyes. It was arousal. She let out a broken little gasp and her voice was strangely husky.
“I pushed her back until she was up against a desk. Her mouth fell open in surprise. Then I spun her round and pressed my hand into the middle of her back. She folded forward, bent over the desk, and started to thrash and squirm. I ignored her. I held her down with one hand and kicked her legs apart. Then I reached up beneath her skirt and rubbed her pussy. She was wet – her panties were soaking. She groaned, and then suddenly went into another spasm of thrashing and snarling. I tugged the lace aside and slid two of my fingers deep inside her pussy. She arched her back and let out a sob of desire.
“I told her to lay still. She grunted. I slid my fingers in and out of her pussy and she started to rock her hips. I felt her push down hard against my hand. She was trying to grind her clit against my palm. I eased my fingers from inside her and reached round. ‘Open your mouth!’ I told her. She did. I forced both fingers between her lips and she sucked her juice from them.”
I stopped talking. Leticia looked up at me. Her cheeks and neck were flushed with hectic color, and there was a trance-like look in her eyes. She looked away quickly and cleared her throat.
“How did it make you feel? Taking control like you did?”
“I loved it,” I said. “It felt ‘right’. It felt natural. I rubbed my cock against Claire’s pussy and then thrust myself all the way into her in a single stroke. She groaned and I felt her hips rock and sway to accommodate me. I kept my hand pressing down between her shoulder blades and started to fuck her. She lifted her hips, and began to push back against me. I slapped her bottom so hard it left a red handprint on the flesh, and Claire seemed to suddenly thrill beneath me. It was like some deep shudder rocked through her entire body. I slapped her again, just as hard, and then drove myself into her until I was ready to explode.
“Claire wriggled one of her hands between her legs and began to play with her clit. I felt her fingers brush against my shaft as I was sliding inside her. I seized her arm and pinned it behind her back. She moaned in frustration. I told her she wasn’t to come. She didn’t have my permission. She started to plead.”
I looked at Leticia. “That was the real power,” I said softly. “That was what turned me on, and catapulted me into the world of BDSM. I loved the way Claire pleaded and begged for her release. It wasn’t about physical domination for me. It still isn’t. It’s about that emotional transfer of power: the command and control. That’s what turns me on, Leticia. That’s what I find so addictive about being a Master. I love the power, given to me by the submissive. It’s symbolic of their trust. Claire showed me how intoxicating that feeling could be. After that night in the study, my life changed.”
I sighed. I was tired. I checked my watch. It was getting late. I massaged the back of my neck and felt myself deflate. I went to the dining table. I swept my jacket off the back of the chair and started to roll down the sleeves of my shirt. “I think we’ve covered enough for the night,” I said.
Leticia came off the sofa, then saw my expression and nodded reluctantly. “Okay,” she said. “I understand. When… when can I see you again?”
“We can continue tomorrow night, if you’re free. How about my place, after dinner?”
“Sounds good,” Leticia smiled brightly.
“Eight o’clock?”
“It’s a date,” she said.
* * *
I poured the glass half-full and swallowed it. Then I re-filled the tumbler and sank into the deep leather chair. This one I would sip slowly.
Let
icia watched me with cool expressionless eyes. I slipped the knot of my tie and leaned back until I was staring at the ceiling. The old leather creaked and groaned around me.
“This is my office,” I said. I took a sip from the glass and turned my head towards her. She was sitting across the desk, knees pressed together, hands folded in her lap, as though the setting intimidated her.
The walls were paneled with dark grained wood, the room lit by an oyster-shaped desk lamp and an old antique light fixture that hung from a chain in the ceiling. One wall was lined with shelves of leather-bound books, another wall hung with old artworks, their thick paint cracked with age, the frames heavy and ornate. There were intricate models of World War I fighter planes atop a long wooden shelf behind the desk, and on a lower shelf were dust-covered trophies and long-forgotten business awards.
It was a man’s room. It smelled of cigar smoke and brandy fumes.
“It’s… it’s very severe,” Leticia said politely, frowning as her eyes swept around the walls.
I nodded. “So was my father.”
“Your father?”
I nodded again. “A lot of the things in this room were his. They’re all I kept when I sold the old estate.”
She glanced around the walls again and tried to find some kind of new appreciation for the room. She couldn’t.
“Well… it’s nice that you have memories of him…” Leticia offered weakly.
‘They’re not memories, they’re reminders,” I said and sat upright in the chair. “I filled my office with these things of his as a permanent reminder of what a bastard he was – and to ensure I didn’t turn out to be the same kind of man.”
“Oh,” Leticia said. She was uncomfortable and lost for words for a moment.
And then she asked quietly, “Did you?”
“No… and yes,” I said. “I’m not the same bastard my old man was – I’m a different kind of bastard. For him, power came from wealth and influence over businesses and his rivals. For me, the power I sought was on a far more personal level.”