by Lisabet Sarai, Trina Lane, Elizabeth Coldwell, Charlotte Stein, Jane Davitt, Justine Elyot
My responsibility as your Dom is to make you happy and keep you safe. The last, I can do without thinking, the first—Helen, if I didn’t think that submitting more fully to me would enhance what we have for both of us, I wouldn’t push for it the way I am in this letter. I’ve seen hints of how you’d react to going into deep submission for a while and I’m so—God, I want that so fucking much.
I’m going away and I don’t know if you’ll be here when I get back once you’ve read this. I’m asking a lot, I know and risking losing even more, but you’re the first woman I’ve met that I’ve ever felt so compelled to possess. When we met in your bedroom and you saw me with your book, you looked heartbroken, betrayed, and every protective instinct I have kicked in. Hurting your body in the most perfect, careful way I can—I’ll do that with pleasure. Literally. Hurting you emotionally—never.
I hope that this letter isn’t doing that.
Helen closed her eyes, remembering Connor’s expression when he’d finished writing the letter and had taken off her blindfold, a flash of longing in his eyes. Hurt her? No, it wasn’t doing that.
* * * *
Connor’s instructions had begun with a terse, ‘Get up at six-forty-five a.m.,’ that had been enough by itself to have Helen feeling rebellious on first reading. She hated getting up early, especially in the winter when the world outside was dark and chilly, and one of the pros of working for herself was waking when she felt like it.
It seemed that Connor had ideas about what to do with the additional time in the morning, though, and Helen had to admit that they were more appealing. The morning spanking she got was one part of their routine that she’d adopted eagerly. Sometimes, when Connor had meetings planned and needed to leave early, it was no more than a token smack or two, and that left Helen feeling vaguely dissatisfied, a feeling similar to eating in a dream and waking hungry.
If she got up when Connor wanted her to, there would almost always be time for that spanking, with her over Connor’s lap, the covers pushed down, his bare legs spread apart. She was never punished in the morning. Connor dealt with the day’s infractions either when they happened or at night, before they slept. The slaps raining down on her bottom were light, playful even at first, until they were both awake enough for Connor to make the last few count, his hand landing with a snap-crackle-pop briskness.
It occurred to Helen that, although up until now there’d been nothing that she could realistically do to earn a punishment between waking and getting put across Connor’s knee, that might change if Connor’s instructions became part of her life.
Lateness wouldn’t be tolerated, and it seemed that Connor wanted her to bring him coffee in bed, put toothpaste on his brush, make sure that his shoes were polished…
“God, just call me Jeeves,” Helen muttered, flicking through the instructions with rebellion rising again despite her good intentions.
If she were honest, though, rising early was something that Connor had mentioned before, if not in detail. She’d treated it as a joke and most mornings after she’d been spanked and sometimes fucked, Connor smiling down at her as she met his thrusts with a gasp of pleasure, a throaty moan when the sheets scrubbed at her burning arse, she just snuggled down again and went back to sleep.
“It’s not you acting like some downtrodden wife,” Connor had said, perplexity, not annoyance, in his eyes. “You’re my sub, Helen. If I thought subs were inferior lesser beings, that’d show up in the way I treated them and trust me, word gets around. Drop the PC crap, it just doesn’t factor in. I’m completely focused on your needs and fulfilling them and you should feel the same way about mine. It should be a—” He’d taken a deep breath, his voice showing his state of mind more than his expression, shaking slightly. “I—knowing that you trust me to tie you up, give you the pain you need—that you allow me to do that to you—you don’t know the way that makes me feel, but it goes two ways. It should be an honour to serve me. To anticipate my needs successfully because you know me so well, you’re so aware—” He’d broken off and had rubbed his hand over his face. “Never mind.”
“Look, if it means that much, I’ll make you a cup of coffee now,” Helen had said lightly, uncomfortable with the naked emotion on Connor’s face. She’d dropped a kiss on his head on the way to the kitchen by way of an apology for her lack of response, but he’d turned away.
He hadn’t drunk the coffee either, she remembered. She’d found it later, cold, untouched and felt a mixture of exasperation and guilt.
I wasn’t ready, she wanted to tell him, wishing that they weren’t separated by thousands of miles. This really wasn’t a conversation she wanted to have anything other than face to face. Now I am. Punish me for taking too long to get it, for every time I disappointed you, let you down—do it. And don’t ever let me get away with anything again. Push me, be strong, be inflexible, make me perfect for you. Because I want it, too, I just didn’t know…
Chapter Three
Connor opened the front door, walked through and closed it with a kick, a small suitcase in one hand and a carry-on bag in the other.
Helen took a step forward, her gaze fixed on his face, trying to read his expression. He looked tired, which was understandable, but she didn’t think that the lines of tension around his eyes were caused by jet lag. She hadn’t spoken to him all week, but she’d sent him an email, as brief as his letter had been long, telling him that she’d be waiting when he got home.
Connor set his luggage down and shrugged out of his suit jacket, leaving him in dark trousers and a grey shirt. He’d taken off his tie at some point. Helen could see the bulge it was making in his jacket pocket. He laid his jacket over his suitcase and walked towards her, pausing just far enough away that a hug was out of reach.
Helen had thought about being naked for him, but there had been a small chance that the driver might have helped Connor in with his luggage, so she’d settled for naked under a red satin kimono-style robe, gaudy with dragons and flowers. She loved the cool slither of it against her skin and the bright colours. Now she let it fall away, slipping to the floor in a whispered hiss. Before the folds had settled into place, she was kneeling, a move she’d practiced during the week in front of a mirror until she could do it gracefully. She stared at Connor’s shoes and tried to keep her breath even. The blood was loud in her ears, a seashell roar, but she heard Connor say her name, a question hidden within it.
Glancing up, she waited and finally Connor smiled, a delighted relief visible for a moment before he schooled his features to the stern calm that made her shiver deep inside, desire flaring.
“You’re allowed to speak if there’s something you want to say.”
She’d rehearsed half a dozen speeches but when it came down to it, they all seemed a little pointless. She was kneeling, naked, in front of him, doing it for the first time without being ordered to, and she could feel how happy it was making him. She tilted her head back a little more and let him see the smile on her face.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked. “Supper’s ready.”
Connor sniffed. “It smells like curry and too good to be homemade. Takeout from the Gulshan?”
Helen reminded herself that perfect submissives didn’t scowl. “I would have cooked myself, but I thought you might be hungry and—”
“Starving,” Connor said amiably. “Which is why I appreciate you not cooking.”
“Oh, you—” Helen began to get up, her face flushed with indignation and more than a little embarrassment. She’d stripped naked for him the minute he’d walked through the door, like some sex-starved bimbo, and spent the week dreaming about fresh starts and good resolutions, and here he was, laughing at her and her cooking.
Connor’s voice rang out sharply. “I didn’t give you permission to stand.”
Helen thudded back onto her knees, with far less grace and a good deal more speed than the first time, her heart hammering. “I—I didn’t think you wanted this. God, I feel lik
e such an idiot,” she muttered.
Connor’s hand touched her hair lightly. “Helen, I’m allowed to tease you,” he said gently. “And that’s what I was doing. Call it a way of keeping my emotions in check, because right now they’re all over the place. Seeing you like this—you look incredible. Thank you. Just don’t expect me to let you get away with flouncing and tantrums the way I used to. Not if we’re doing this properly. Are we?”
Helen nodded. “That list,” she said. “I didn’t follow it, not really.”
Connor sighed and Helen, her confidence restored, glanced up.
“No, listen.” Connor frowned at her and Helen sighed herself. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound, uh…”
“Dictatorial?” Connor suggested silkily.
“May I explain my reasoning?” she asked. The formality of the request felt strange when it was Connor she was talking to, but there was something about it that she liked. It made it plain that what they were doing was different, special.
Connor nodded and she began to speak, choosing her words carefully.
“You told me that anything we did would always be negotiated, agreed to by both of us. The list was given to me by you—by my Dom—but we’ve had no chance to discuss it at all. Until we do, I don’t consider myself bound to obey it, but after we have, I want you to know that I will. To the letter. Or at least I’ll try.” She stared up at him. “Connor, you should have told me before. All of it. I—this is new to me, still, and I’m learning, but that means I’ll make mistakes and I suppose I’m not the only one.”
“I suppose you’re not,” Connor said. His hand was warm against her face now, his thumb stroking her cheek. “You’re completely correct about the list, too.” He exhaled gustily, smiling and inviting her to share his rueful amusement. “God, the thought of knowing what you were doing every hour of the day was about the only thing I had to distract me from some interminable meetings, and now it turns out that you were just lounging around the place having fun.”
“I wasn’t.” Helen felt oddly nervous about admitting how her week had gone. “I met the deadline for work and got the drawings off, so I’m free for a week or so now, and I…”
“What?” Connor prompted.
“I ironed the three shirts that were in the washing,” Helen blurted out. She shook her head. “No, they need a new word for what I did to them, because ironing just doesn’t cut it. They’re like glass.”
She expected Connor to laugh, but he just nodded.
“Thank you. I’ll look at them later. How did it make you feel?”
“Ironing them?” Helen thought about it. “Irritated at first. Impatient. I just threw the iron over them and did the job. Then I saw how bad they looked and I started from scratch, washing them again, ironing them damp…loads of steam…” She smiled reminiscently. “I still didn’t enjoy it, not the actual task, but knowing I was doing it because you’d told me to, that it was as much a challenge as holding still when you spanked me—God, by the end, I was really, really wishing that you were around so that I could beg you for permission to come.”
“So you obeyed that instruction, too?”
“Oh, yes, because that was something we’d already agreed you had the right to tell me to do, so I didn’t have a reason not to, it’s just that usually you, uh, well, you don’t enforce it much.” Which in Helen’s mind was a good thing.
“No,” Connor admitted. “I love watching you come, but I’ll love watching you try not to even more—and I’ll enjoy punishing you when you fail if you’ve tried very hard not to.”
“‘When’?” Helen said, stung by his certainty. “Not ‘if’?”
Connor grinned then and gestured her up. “When. Definitely, most certainly ‘when’ until you learn a little more control.” He pulled her close for a hug then released her before she’d really had time to appreciate the feel of his body against hers. “Let’s go and eat. And talk. I’m too tired to really go into anything serious tonight, but I’ve missing having you to talk with.”
“Is that all you missed?” Helen couldn’t help asking, following him into the kitchen. She shivered in the cooler air, her bare skin making it less than comfortable. “May I get my robe?” she asked, patting herself mentally for not just turning on her heel and going back for it as she would’ve done a week ago. “I put the heating on an hour ago, but this room’s always the last to warm up for some reason.”
Connor eyed her. “No, I don’t think so. I like that robe and I’d hate to get curry stains on it.”
“I have mastered the art of fork to mouth, you know,” Helen said, then caught up to what he’d said. “You’re going to feed me?” She swallowed as Connor nodded. “Oh.”
“Problem?” Connor asked, as he transferred foil containers from the oven where Helen had been keeping them warm to the counter. “God, this smells good. I suppose it’d be cruel of me to feed you my vindaloo, given that you think a korma is spicy, but yes, I do plan to feed you.” He glanced back at her over his shoulder. “I could tie your hands behind your back and put a plate on the floor, but I don’t think this is a suitable meal for that.”
Helen watched him dish out rice and sauce and tear naan bread into chunks, his shoulders relaxed, the tension gone. He meant it. He was going to feed her as she knelt beside him, not as a game, but as an intimacy, one as mundane as a goodnight kiss, because this was what they were to each other.
Still her choice, always her choice to obey. She could walk away, shake her head, laugh…
With the sense of something at once momentous and at the same time as natural as breathing, she went to the table and knelt down by Connor’s chair.
* * * *
The list of requirements that Connor had neatly typed out was now creased from handling and scored over with handwritten notes. Helen sat naked on the bed and read it through, frowning to herself, as Connor watched her. He was wearing a white towelling robe, his hair still damp from his shower, and she wanted to touch his warm skin and kiss it, learn its taste again after their time apart, but he’d told her to read the list so that was what she was doing.
“Which bit is making you look like that?” Connor asked, nudging her knee with his foot.
“You still want me to sleep on the floor.” Helen looked up at him. “Why?”
“It’s standard to have a sub sleep on the floor,” Connor said with a shrug. “It’s not as if you can’t earn the right to sleep beside me.”
“I know, it’s just…” Helen gathered her thoughts.
They’d made love the night before, which had helped to re-establish the bond between them, and her body was still feeling the after-effects of her morning spanking, delivered with vim and vigour, but the hour they’d spent discussing Connor’s list had felt more intimate than either of those. When Connor had left her to shower, she’d read the list again with desire twisting inside her, the uncompromising, detailed orders arousing her to the point where her hand was inches away from pushing between her legs to ease the demanding throb of her clit. Only the thought of how disappointed Connor would be with her disobedience had stopped her.
“Do you like me sleeping with you?” she asked. A month ago, she would have said it challengingly but now she phrased it as a genuine question.
“Of course I do,” Connor said without hesitation.
“Then why deprive yourself of that?” Helen was sitting cross-legged on the bed, but she moved to her knees, her back straight, her hands on her thighs, just as Connor liked her. “Connor, you told me once that you weren’t a traditional Dom. You don’t make me call you by a special name, though sometimes I wish you would, so why make me do something that you don’t even like just because other Doms do?”
One thing she loved about Connor was that he never dismissed anything she said out of hand. She watched her consider what she’d said and saw the moment when he’d accepted it, his mouth twitching into a half-smile.
“I see your point,” he said. “Okay, let’s turn
it around. Sleeping in this bed with me can be part of your routine rather than a reward to be earned, but it’s still a privilege and if I don’t think your behaviour’s been up to scratch, I might decide to punish you with a night on the floor. Or I might choose another way of disciplining you. It’s really up to me, isn’t it?”
“Always,” Helen said and lowered her head, the single word sending a pulse of excitement through her.
God, she loved this. It had only been a few hours, but she could feel her submission in a way that she never had before, experiencing it on a deeper level. She was still hesitant, still feeling her way, but her confidence was growing. They’d talked far into the night, sharing confessions and fantasies with a frankness that had left Helen shaken to the point of tears.
“I just couldn’t get a feel for what was possible and what wasn’t,” she’d murmured, her head against Connor’s shoulder as his fingers stroked her hair. “I got so scared of you laughing at me for asking for something totally unworkable that it was easier to go back to what I was used to in the way of a relationship and let you decide how far to take it.”
“And I was playing it safe because I didn’t want to scare you off. Which was stupid of me. I should have seen that you were ready for more than a spanking here and there and some fairly standard bondage.” Connor had shaken his head. “Communication is one of the cornerstones of a good relationship, especially one like ours and I blew it. I didn’t talk to you, I just watched you slip away before I’d even really had you.”
She’d clutched at him, kissed him fervently, beseechingly. “Don’t let me go anywhere. I don’t want to. I just want you.”
“Troy,” he’d said against her hair, the word muffled. “My Troy.” It was the one pet name he’d given her, shorthand for saying that just as the original Helen of Troy had been, as far as Connor was concerned, Helen was just as beautiful and cherished. He didn’t use it often, but when he did, Helen melted.