The Dom of My Dreams: A BDSM Novel

by M. F. Sinclair

  Thunder roared ferociously from outside. I yelped, then jumped back, my pulse speeding into overdrive. With a hand pressed against my chest, I bit my bottom lip and peered outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. Rain poured down in powerful rivulets. The weather hadn’t let up. Then I cast a fretful glance up the stairs. Nothing. Seton was truly dead to the world. Calming down again, I sank back against the desk chair and continued to read.

  They had gone to Café Rouge, where a cocktail had turned into seven and where they’d decided to go back to his place for a shag.

  The man wrapped his arms around the brunette’s waist, kissing her neck. ‘God, I want you,’ he whispered in her ear.

  The woman didn’t stir. She found the rain crashing against the French windows far more fascinating than her partner’s arousal. She knew nothing about this bloke, except that he was an investment banker. Come to think of it, most of her conquests were investment bankers who owned enormous flats in the Greater London area. She had never met an interesting man in her young, twenty-nine-year old life—though she hadn’t a clue what made a man interesting. What was so fascinating about a bloody banker? All they really do is put figures into a Microsoft Excel document. And they work on bank holidays. The brunette was under the firm belief that people who work on bank holidays should get shot for being such pathetic brown-nosers. She’d had to sit through endless dinners listening to their rubbish, marvelling at their pathetic attempts to impress her. Well, at least they had loads of money. And cars. They often owned flashy, expensive cars that they showed off as if having the best set of wheels was equivalent to having a big dick.

  Aside from bankers and men in general, the brunette hated Central London. She preferred a much smaller, much cozier area, preferably in a neighbourhood where eclectic cafés, fashionable restaurants and stylish art galleries were dominant. A neighbourhood populated by folk singers and poets. God, she wished she had suggested going to her flat instead!

  The man traced his fingers up and down her spine as he pressed his erection against the crack of her arse. ‘You drive me crazy, woman,’ he cooed in her ear.

  Still facing the windows, she said, ‘Do I really?’

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered, brushing a soft kiss across her smooth, delicate shoulders. ‘You’re a strikingly beautiful woman, you know.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  And she most certainly knew. Taking long drags on her cigarette, she felt like a femme fatale in a film noir—cool, aloof, sexy. She loved the fact that she didn’t have to feign lack of interest in the man, for she was genuinely not interested in him. But, alas, she came to fuck him, so fuck him she would. You know how it goes—get your jollies whilst you can and all that.

  The man’s erection startled her when she turned to him, momentarily destroying her seductive front.

  ‘God, that’s ugly,’ she thought as she watched him stroke his glistening little copper top in front of her. She had always thought that penises were ugly, and she marvelled at the way men treated their equipment as though it were something worthy of worship, like having a penis made them the masters of the universe or something.

  Gaining her composure, she put out her cigarette, took the man by the hand and led him to his stylish four-poster bed that overlooked a fifty-inch flat-screen LED TV with a blu-ray player and stereo system. Men and their gadgets, she mused.

  In a swift motion, she took her bra and knickers off and rolled a condom—extra small—over the man’s underwhelming genitalia. Then she lay there and thought of England as the man groaned his way into her tight, semi-wet passage.

  He was on top of her, panting irregularly in her ear as he thrust in and out.

  ‘Oh shit!’ he groaned with pleasure.

  The brunette stifled a yawn and thought of dogs having sex—the way the bitch just stands there whilst the dog is on top of her, drooling and doing all the work. Men and women aren’t so very different. Most humans act on impulse and instinct, don’t they? Their behaviours aren’t so very different either. After all, her lover’s sweaty face resembled a bulldog’s as he continued to pant heavily on her. But if he was a dog, then that must make her a bitch. A beautiful bitch, mind you—perhaps a Toy Poodle or a Shih Tzu.

  She couldn’t wait for the man to finish. She wanted to be off of him straight away. His breath stank and his thrusts had no effect on her. (She moaned every now and then and scratched his back for good measure.)

  Alas, she was patient. The brunette is a very patient woman. And she’s very understanding too. Men are fickle, egocentric creatures, so she humours the poor chaps by stroking their delicate little egos. She lets them talk her ear off about this and that. She lets them fuck her. She lets them drool and pant on her face. She doesn’t mind. And she would humour this bloke, make him think he was as virile as they come.

  Besides which, he would have to finish eventually, surely!

  The man’s quickened breath announced that he was about to come. Our clever brunette braced herself for the final plunge. She clenched her muscles, tightened her legs around the man’s waist and let out a groan that implied that she, too, was coming. The man shook like a leaf and yelped with a triumphant air on top of her whilst she made sexy little meowing sounds underneath him. Her faux-orgasm looked and sounded quite convincing. She should know. She practiced a lot when she was on her own.

  The woman smiled and resumed her seductress act after the man pulled out and rolled over to his side of the bed. He lit a cigarette and shared it with her.

  As she puffed on the cigarette, she wondered how she would get home. It was still raining outside and it would be difficult to hail a cab at two in the morning, and she was too tired to walk about in the rain and hail one. Would he let her spend the night with him? She glanced over at the man. He had a cheesy, post-coital smile on his face. The brunette supposed that he wouldn’t mind her staying at all. But did she want to spend the entire night with this bloke? What if he wanted more sex? By God, she would rather walk home in the rain than be subjected to that again!

  ‘That was fucking great!’ he said, taking the fag from the brunette’s fingers. ‘Wasn’t it great, gorgeous?’

  ‘Er...yes, it was.’ As great as watching paint dry.

  ‘I can’t wait to do it again,’ he enthused.

  The brunette sighed. Running in the rain to find a cab at 2 A.M. didn’t seem like such a bad idea after all.

  Blood drained from my face, perspiration breaking across my brow. A numb, fuzzy sensation took over me.

  What the hell was this?

  It couldn’t be true. My mind was playing tricks on me. The brunette in the prologue wasn’t me. Seton wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t be so cruel.

  There was a brief synopsis on a separate page. Swallowing back a lump of dread, I read it.

  Meet Madeleine Faulkner. She seems, by all accounts, to be a cold-hearted bitch. She only engages in casual flings and treats the men in her life like they are nothing more than something you scrape off your shoe. Our Madeleine is also an accomplished career woman. She works for a small advertising agency that’s on the lookout for the Big Client that will take the company straight to the top.

  Our Madeleine will be asked to court a potential big client, which means she will have to leave her ivory tower of catering to already established clients and do some actual work. Her intelligent businesswoman façade has been put to the ultimate test.

  What our clever little Madeleine doesn’t know is that the gentleman she will be courting, we’ll call him ‘S.,’ has much more than just a conventional business arrangement in mind.

  S. will make her sell her body, and her soul, for his signature. He also plans to beat the cold arrogance out of her—literally as well as metaphorically—and show her that she is nothing more than a sad, pathetic spinster in the making.

  And in doing this, S. will send a message to all narcissistic, self-absorbed young ladies out there: Behave, or the big, bad S. will get you.

  I snapped the lapt
op shut and pressed my hands against my stomach, fighting a wave of nausea. I didn’t want to read anymore.

  I was Madeleine Faulkner, the “coldhearted bitch” who was about to have her arrogance beaten out of her. Except for the smoking and the whole sexy factor, and the fact that the story was set in London instead of Northampton, Madeleine was just like me. I could even recall having similar thoughts during various casual dalliances. He had me pegged, that much was certain. I shuddered, clenching my fists and fighting the urge to run as far and as fast as I could from this place and from the man who had hurt me so much.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and shivered violently, tears blurring my vision. As horrible as it was, I wanted—needed—to know what other awful things Seton had written about me. I was also curious about the story and how it would unfold. Roughly, I wiped the tears away and opened up the computer. The screen glared back to life, and I forced myself to read the damn novel all the way through.

  The whole thing read more like a satire than a contemporary thriller. It had dazzling prose, deep character study and rich, detailed descriptions centered on the sadomasochistic relationship between Madeleine and S. It was vaguely similar to The Story of O, only more sinister. Seton used lots of metaphors and symbolism to describe the heroine’s quick shift from aloofness to obsession. It even served as an ironic cautionary tale for women everywhere. And Madeleine—or, more precisely, I—was depicted as a cynical, coldhearted, narcissistic, immature, idiotic sex fiend who treated men like they were nothing more than sexual objects. She was also characterized as being shallow, frivolous and farcical. A caricature. The second-person narrator, whose identity was unknown, but whom I suspected was S., used a tone dripping with contempt, at times sneering at the woman and her callous behavior. He especially hated the fact that she had accepted S.’s scandalous proposal with nothing more than a feeble protest. He loathed the fact that she was so easily persuaded, and all for his signature—or rather, for the possibility of obtaining his signature, for he made no guarantees—lowering his opinion of her all the more. But about halfway through the story, his tone became less harsh, less judgmental, and turned to one of benevolence and pity. The subtext remained sinister and ironic throughout the book though, and the ending was one of those twisted, ambiguous ones that left you guessing and thinking long after you had read it.

  If the novel was intended to be dark, compelling and thought provoking, then Seton had succeeded admirably. Madeleine was Seton’s most magnificent literary offering, outdoing Married and the others by leaps and bounds. It was a story of obsession, a masterpiece of suspense, and its powerful erotic undertow would pull the reader in until its final page. It was also a clever satire—one that encouraged the reader to snort with derision at the unsympathetic heroine.

  A sob escaped, sweeping its way up to my throat. I clutched the desk with a grip so hard it almost hurt. The Chinese food sat before me, completely forgotten. Anger surged, causing a lifetime’s worth of bitterness and insecurities to come spewing out once again. This is what happens, I thought, tears trickling down my cheeks, this is what happens when you love someone. This is what happens when you give your heart, your soul and your trust to another person. They tear you apart. They break your heart, and your spirit, they push you away, and then they move on.

  Seton, my love, the one I gave my heart to, had played me for a fool. He’d been with me—fucking me, controlling me, making me love him—just to develop the female character in his story. Mind control was the main theme in the novel. He had wanted me to develop an obsession for him so that he could put my reaction down on paper. He had devised everything, and I fell for it—lock, stock and barrel. All the time he’d been with me—kissing me, holding me, touching me—he’d been friggin’ lying to me!

  And how dare he judge me! How dare he describe me in such a disgusting, unflattering light!

  I skimmed through the manuscript again, and my anger was replaced by hurt. I couldn’t believe he felt this way about me. I knew he thought that I was pathetic, and that he’d decided to help Jeremy’s “sad old bag” friend just to amuse himself, but I never imagined that he had such a low opinion of me. He didn’t know me. If that was what he truly thought of me, then he clearly didn’t know what lay inside of me.

  And on and on I went, a whirlwind of conflicting emotions coursing within me like a thunderstorm. One thing was painfully clear though: Seton didn’t love me. He had never loved me, and he never would. My body trembled with agony, my chest heaving with the pain that twisted through my heart like a knife.

  Seton, how could you do this to me?

  I did nothing for a long time, just sat there, a lone, sullen figure in a dimly-lit room. Muffled sounds came from the TV, which was still on. I tuned it out. There was nothing left to do but wait. I no longer cared if he caught me in front of his fucking computer. Let’s see if he would have the audacity to be angry with me.

  Footsteps came from the room above me. “Marjorie?” a velvety-smooth voice, thick with sleep, called out from upstairs. “Are you down there?”

  I jumped and gasped at the sound of his wonderful English accent.

  That voice. That rich, mesmerizing voice.

  I turned my gaze to Seton as he padded down the stairs, a sexy, drowsy little smile glinting in his emerald eyes. “Why didn’t you wake me, my pet? I would’ve—”

  He froze on the landing, his gaze shifting from me to the laptop and back again. Understanding dawned in his face, followed swiftly by a shuttering expression.

  “You’ve read it,” he stated flatly.

  Fresh tears fell. I had been expecting him, but now that he was here, gazing at me with that carefully blank look on his handsome face, I was no longer certain that I wanted to face him. All I wished for at that moment was to wake up from this horrible nightmare. Because it had to be a nightmare. This couldn’t be real.

  “Yes, I’ve read it,” I answered with a flat tone that mimicked his. “And I think it is your best work. Congratulations, Seton. I’m sure that the people at Leather Binding Press will be very pleased.”

  Seton’s gaze slipped to the floor as he took the last few steps down the stairs. He moved toward me with slow, cautious steps, as if afraid that I might suddenly pull out a knife or something. I gazed up at him, eyes swimming with tears. He looked beautiful with no clothes on. His nakedness did not discomfort him. In fact, it made him look, if possible, more imposing and confident.

  “You know about Leather Binding Press?”

  I looked away, suddenly finding it hard to keep my eyes on his. “Yes,” I croaked, fresh tears coursing down my cheeks. “I know everything. I know you researched me for your new novel. I know that you had planned to use me, turn down Bookends AtoZ, and then move on to an NY publisher, just like Jeremy predicted.”

  He didn’t answer right away, just groaned. I felt him take a few steps closer. “Marjorie, I—”

  “Just answer me a couple of things,” I interrupted icily, eyes staring at nothing. “Was Jeremy involved in this little scheme too?”

  He hesitated for a few seconds, then, “No. He’s going to kill me when he finds out.”

  I smiled bitterly at his statement. Well, at least there was that. “And did you go to Mitch to gather extra information about me, to fill in the blanks that Jeremy left? After I mentioned his name in that e-mail I sent to you, did you get his number, called him up and arranged an interview?”

  Another pause. Then, “Yes.”

  A dry sob rose in my throat, followed by more tears falling down my face. “So that’s what he was trying to tell me at his place just moments before you made your presence known! He was feeling guilty and wanted to tell me the truth, but you interrupted him.”

  “Yes,” he whispered.

  Silence fell between us. A silence that was tense and pensive. But I wasn’t unhappy about it, because it afforded me the opportunity to let all of the scattered pieces of the puzzle fall into place. Everything was so clear now. Th
e mystery surrounding David J. Seton had finally been resolved. Now I knew why he seemed so fickle and contradictory, why he behaved a certain way one minute and did something completely different the next. He was playing a part—he was the main male character in his fucking story. The question that remained was, who was the real Seton? Was he really sexually dominant, or had that been an act too?

  Swamped with shock, pain and anger, I shifted in my seat, moaning softly from all the post-coital soreness, and pushed to my feet. Our gazes met. Seton took a few tentative steps forward until he was right in front of me. His handsome face was expressionless, but his eyes were dark with sorrow. Strong arms touched me, pulled me closer. Slowly, cautiously, Seton took my hand in his and held it to his chest, just over his heart. The steady, rhythmic beat echoed through my palm. I closed my eyes and took a shuddery breath.

  “Look at me, Marjorie,” Seton commanded.

  I snorted softly at the imperious tone in his silky-smooth voice. Even at a time like this, he was still the one in control. I glanced up at him. His jaw was clenched, but his eyes were somber, his expression so brooding, yet so austere, that I had to suppress a gasp. He was no less formidable in his current vulnerable state. In fact, it made him seem more impressive and, in turn, more appealing. Any lingering doubt that his sexual dominance had been an act quickly dissolved.