Cantaloupe, granola and some small sandwiches were the easiest things to throw together once I was dressed. I sipped on coffee and orange juice while I scrolled through my email to make sure the observatory hadn’t blown to pieces in my absence. Soon, Noah was awake. He meandered out of my bedroom in his boxers to join me in the kitchen. His hair was hopelessly mussed. The look suited him.
I glanced up from my laptop. “Good morning, Sir. I made coffee if you’d like some.”
“Sounds great.”
I poured him a mug while he plucked a slice of cantaloupe from the plate on the counter. When I set the coffee in front of him I asked, “Sleep well?”
He bent down to kiss me. “I did. Thank you.”
“Good,” I said with a smile.
“Piper, I have a request.”
“Name it.”
“How much vacation time do you have saved up?”
“As much as I want. I work insane hours, but I’m not technically on full time as of yet. Dr. Fairbanks lets me set my schedules as I need them for the experience more than the paycheck.”
“Take the summer off. Travel with me.”
“Really?” I asked with sudden surprise.
“Sure. Why not? We’ll start on our list of Nevers this weekend.”
“Don’t you have obligations?”
He put his arms around me and let his hands rest at the small of my back. “Money flows whether I’m there or not as long as Ethan holds down the fort and I delegate. All of my travel this year has been for business. I want to relax. With you.”
“Traveling requires hotels. Last night you said you didn’t like sleeping in strange places.”
“And then I tested my theory,” he said. He paused to take in my look of confusion. “One of the rules I broke for you is not to fall asleep with women. That rule was in place because the first few times I tried after… well, after Selene, the dreams got worse without fail. They scared every last one of them off. I have now slept in the same bed with you three times. And not a single one of those nights was a bad one. In fact, they’ve been the best nights of sleep I’ve had in a long while.”
I smiled. I hoped to hear more about the trigger of Selene. I hadn’t pressed it because it was none of my business, though I was dying to know. I didn’t know a whole lot about her, but if she meant so much to Noah then she must have been an amazing person. There was no room in me for jealousy of a dead woman. All I felt I could do was listen and wait for when he decided to tell me about it.
“I want to take you to the firing range and show you how to shoot. I want to go bowling; regrettably, I’ve never bowled a single frame in my life.”
“Wait. You’ve never been bowling?”
“Not at all.”
“Oh we have to fix that.”
“Exactly. And we’ll go to Milan, surf off the coast of Australia, dine at the best restaurant in Kyoto, and anything else you’d like to do.”
I laughed. There were so many things he wanted to do in such a short frame of time, I wondered if I would remember most of it when it was all said and done.
“All right,” I agreed, “but can we dial it back? I don’t need the most lavish accommodations or to fly first class. I’m fully capable of paying my fair share for all these adventures.”
“If you insist.”
I had close to thirty grand sitting in my savings account with nothing planned for it. Once I was on full time at the Observatory as more than just a data entry monkey my pay would easily double, allowing my personal coffers to practically refill themselves.
“For this I do, Sir.”
Noah grinned his wide, Loki-ish grin. “There’s one other thing I intend to do, my pet. We’re not leaving a single country we visit until I’ve fucked you into oblivion in it. Unorthodox as it is, you’ll learn your place as my submissive as we travel; a new lesson in each city. It will be much more fun than staying in L.A. for your training.”
My heart just about skipped and I shivered. “I like the sound of that.”
“Good girl. Now, I’m going to eat and head out to my meeting. I’ll send you information about our itinerary sometime tomorrow.”
We finished off the majority of what I laid out in the kitchen and Noah left. I missed him like crazy the instant the door closed, but the prospect of finally being able to travel the world and seek out all of the things I had yet to experience in life thrilled me to no end. What thrilled me even more was that I would be doing all of those things with him.
I shot an email to Dr. Fairbanks letting him know I would be out for the summer. I didn’t have to give details, only that I would return sometime in August. All things considered, it was probably best to keep my co-workers in the dark about my plans. It was bad enough they would be short staffed over the busiest time of tourist season; it was even worse that an employee was not only traveling with a patron of the observatory, but also sleeping with him. Oh, what gossip would fly about me if they only knew the depth.
Like all things between Noah and I, we dove head-long into adventure. Before we left for the summer, I secured Anya’s promise to check up on Cocoa and my apartment while I was away. While absolutely excited for my plans, she admitted her jealousy of them, wishing she had a list of Nevers to fulfill with someone herself.
On Saturday, the itinerary arrived. It consisted of Milan and Kyoto like we talked about, and went on to other places on our list like Beijing and Dubai and eventually down to New Zealand and Australia before we came home mid August. When my portion of the bill came back as only fifteen grand, I was a little perturbed. Yes, it was half my savings, but it was still much less than I expected with the appearance of several posh hotels and two or three first class flights on the list. I was fair sure Noah low-balled my share on purpose. We would leave the next week. On May thirty first. My birthday. It left some time to shop, pack and fulfill the two quick Nevers we could while still in town.
Noah was bad at bowling. Unbelievably bad. I wish I could have sugar-coated it, but in reality he couldn’t throw a sixteen pound ball down waxed lanes if his life depended on it. Usually the first few times one is out on the lanes there are some pointers to be given. Alas, I saw no hope for him. Between Declan, Anya and I there was little we could do to assist. I even went so far as to open a new lane beside our main one to help him mimic the motions as I threw the ball. I told him not to keep his eyes on the pins, but the boards and the guiding marks instead. My last piece of advice came in the form of the analogy that bowling was a lot like a woman and better with curves to get him to curve the ball the way a bowler should.
None of it stuck. At the end of the fun, frustrating and terribly unfair night for him I held the highest score at two ten on my best game. Declan and Anya came in behind me at one eighty and one thirty three respectively. Poor Noah’s low score was a matter of pride for him. He was overjoyed that, for once in his life, he would have to struggle like all hell to get better at something. With a grand total of twenty seven pins knocked down that game, he was in for a lot of practice.
Just as Noah had struggled with bowling, I struggled at the gun range. Not at the firing part. Aiming and shooting was not too difficult once I got over the fear of wrapping my fingers around an item which had the potential of holding nine men’s lives at a time in my hands. Through the first two clips I was shaking so bad that I missed most of the target completely. The gun Noah brought with us to shoot was his two thousand dollar concealed carry Smith & Wesson 1911 forty five. It was beautiful; all polished silver with a wooden grip and unique trigger. It was also heavy and I was scared to death of the thing. I hadn’t expected the recoil at first and nearly clocked myself in the head with the rear sight on my initial firing.
It took some time to get into it. Noah insisted, though. He reminded me of my desires to get over my fears. Being anywhere close to a gun was indeed a major fear. As he rubbed the tension from my shoulders and told me that it was okay, he felt the exact same way when he first held a gun too, I nodded and resol
ved to push the thoughts of killing anyone out of my head and just focus on the target at the other end of the indoor range. At that point I was nearly unstoppable. I didn’t put his handiwork to shame by any stretch—he was an excellent shot compared to his bowling skills—but I held my own and managed to even come close to a head shot and center mass of all the poor paper men.
Two hundred bullets later, we packed it in. I agreed to come back and try to shoot with some of his other firearms in the future. Now that the first step had been taken with the proper instruction of stance and technique learned, my fear of guns began to dwindle considerably.
The day before our flight out of LAX, Noah took me shopping. This time he insisted, since the wardrobe would consist of mostly expensive lingerie and dresses, he both pay for it and be present for their choosing. I’d never tried on lingerie much less modeled it for anyone. Everything from thigh-high stockings and silk and lace bra and panty sets to a full length slinky ball gown, new shoes and formal evening attire were picked from the racks. I decided to excuse myself to the lady’s room when it came time for check out. I was not at all prepared for the final price tag on the lot of items. I wound up accidentally glimpsing the receipt as we exited the shop.
“I thought we agreed to dial the extravagance back a little bit,” I said.
“If it makes you feel any better, think of them as belonging to me,” he joked, “You just get to wear it all.”
“Somehow that puts images of you cross-dressing in my head so no; it really doesn’t make me feel better. Not even a little bit.”
“You’re right,” Noah frowned. “Forget I said it.”
“Forgotten, Sir.”
The evening wound down at a restaurant just around the corner from the shops. It wasn’t overly posh, though a little more upscale than the average dining experience entailed. Few patrons dotted the small establishment. No more than about thirty could fit inside at any one time. That included the bar area. We sat at a small table beside large paned glass windows as soft classical music played overhead; two out of only eleven customers at my first count.
For the first time in six months, I was carded when I ordered a drink. I passed it over to the waitress and she examined it quickly.
All of the sudden she laughed as she saw my date of birth. “Oh! Happy birthday, miss!”
I smiled up at her. “Thank you!”
Once she returned my ID to me and left the table, I saw Noah’s face find a way to simultaneously light up and somber out. “It’s your birthday?”
My license was tucked into my wallet. “Tomorrow, yeah.”
He looked rather perturbed. “And you didn’t tell me.”
I shrugged. “What’s one more year? I sort of thought you might already know considering you booked our flight out the same day.”
“I didn’t,” he replied. “And that simply won’t do.”
I waved away the statement. “It’s fine. You’ve done more than enough for me. It’s not like I need a gift from you, Sir.”
“Nonsense. It’s unacceptable,” he said. He got up from the table. “Wait here. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Hang on, really there’s not—” but he was out of reach before I could get another word out. “Fuck,” I said to the empty chair in front of me.
The drink order came and went and Noah took his time returning. I just stared at the chair in front of me. Really, he didn’t need to buy me a gift. Just knowing we were about to travel around the world together was more than enough of a birthday surprise for me.
He came through the door with a thin black square box roughly eight inches wide. He must have been keeping it in his car. It was set on the table between us as he took his seat once more.
“I was going to give this to you once we arrived in Milan.” Noah pushed the box toward me gently. “Go ahead and open it now.”
Clearly I wasn’t going to get out of this without opening said gift. I sighed and shook my head at the attention he had been giving me, but reached out to pull the cover off the box all the same. Inside, set on emerald silk bedding, was a pair of bracelets. They looked like chainmail. Each one was two and a half inches wide and was knitted in a cross pattern that alternated between dull metal and a brilliantly polished shine to draw the design out. Accompanying the bracelets were two discrete padlocks.
“Oh my gosh,” I whispered with amazement.
Before I could protest, Noah said, “Hold out your wrist.”
I complied and extended my right arm out across the table. He lifted the first of the bracelets from its home and wrapped the cool metal around me. A magnet caught each end, letting a small closed hook slip through from one end into the other. As he secured it closed, the first padlock was snapped into place. It fit snug against my skin, but didn’t bite into me. I had free range of motion with my hand still and the padlock didn’t appear like it would catch on anything. When he was finished, he motioned for my left arm. I sat in silence while he placed the other one on me as well then pulled my wrists back to get a closer look at them.
“They are platinum; strongest of the precious metals,” he explained. “These are your reward for your progress thus far. They are a symbol of your training, of your submission to me, and a reminder of your goals. I had the set crafted specifically for you in Paris. Another pair doesn’t exist in this world. They can come off for purposes of airport security and the like, but only I carry the key.”
“You must have been confident I was going to make it this far.”
“Quite confident. Extremely confident, in fact. And they look stunning on you. How do they feel?”
They were a bit heavy but I supposed I’d become accustomed to the weight and after a while not even notice it. I was gaping slightly as I looked up from the cuffs to him. “Sir, I—I’m not really sure what to say. They’re gorgeous. Thank you.”
Noah smiled softly. “You’re very welcome, my pet. You’ve earned them. With this, however, comes another leap into your submission.” He reached into his back pocket and produced a folded slip of paper. “While we’re out in the world you will still be undergoing your training. This is a list of what you should be prepared for.”
I took the page from him and unfolded it to look at the contents. The list included bullet points of:
• Posture & Position
• Focus
• Sensuality
• Muscle Control
• Toys
• Exhibitionism
• Orgasm Control
• Sensory Deprivation
• Endurance
Each of the bullet points had a definition and examples notated below it in greater detail. The list turned me on. Not just physically, but mentally as well. Up until now I’d enjoyed being used by him, I’d enjoyed the submission. Noah’s balance between harsh and delicate touches drove me wild with desire to please him. Seeing what his basic plan was for me on paper and that he intended this relationship for the long term almost made me giddy with the anticipation of it.
Still, the entire trip was going to be complicated to delineate into categories. On the one hand, he told me he had plans for me in every city and by the time we returned to Los Angeles a good portion of my initial training would be completed. On the other hand, he expected the both of us to be able to set aside the sex for long enough to enjoy each other’s company outside the hotel room with the sights and experiences in each place.
His voice interrupted my thoughts. “Again, I don’t expect perfection. Yet. Hence the training. Are you ready, sweetness?”
I passed the paper back to him and said, “Yes, Sir. I’m ready.”
Becoming his lady on his arm and his slut between the sheets was going to require substantial concentration and possibly complete exhaustion by the time summer ended. I couldn’t wait to get started.
{CHAPTER FOURTEEN}
“Are you ready, my dear?” Noah asked. He was standing a hair’s breadth away from me in a foreign bedroom, though our bodies ne
ver touched.
Here I was, half way around the world, and I was about to submit to the first official night of training for him. I was grateful for the privacy of our rented Italian villa; I felt a little more comfortable without the fear of waking any neighbors a hotel would pose. And, after a good night’s rest and a day out in this glorious city, the jetlag faded away. My mind was clear.
I nodded subtly to him in acknowledgement of his question.
“Answer aloud and answer clearly,” he said. Since entering the villa his demeanor had changed. Privately, Noah held himself a little differently than he did in a public forum. He became more serious when he addressed me as his submissive. His voice melted into a warm resonance which demanded listening. “Remember; don’t be ashamed of what you are or who you belong to. You are tied to me in all things, my pet. You are mine to do with as I please in our sessions until such time as I release you or you ask to be released from service. Now, are you ready?”
I wished he would stop asking me that. I’d given no indication I was anything but absolutely enthralled with this and willing to do anything and everything he asked.
I raised my gaze back to him and replied, “I’m ready, Sir.”
“Undress,” he said. He stepped back to give me room. “Look at me while you do. Your attentions should always be focused on me.”
I crossed my arms in front of me and lifted my shirt up over my head slowly, folded it haphazardly, and set it on the desk beside me. My gaze never left his as I reached behind me to unclasp my bra. Watching his eyes wander down my body would never get tiresome, I felt. He looked at me as if I was the only woman in the world. The cold metal of my cuffs brushed against my skin for an instant as I pulled my bra off and set it on top of my shirt. I slipped off my shoes, wriggled out of my tight jeans and panties and also set them aside. The only thing that kept me from complete nudity was the pair of platinum chain link cuffs around my wrists.
“Kneel with your hands behind your back,” he said. As I knelt on the plush carpet beside the four-post bed, he went on, “Tonight will be the first of many nights of training on this trip. Some of it will be pleasant for you, some of it will not. This will put you another step closer to earning that collar, sweetness.”
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