by Wendy Leigh
“Uncomfortable, Georgiana?” he says, and his words hang suspended in the air, like a time bomb about to drop.
Realizing his mistake, he gives a start and is momentarily out of control.
“I understand, Robert,” I say, and pat his hand, hoping to reassure him that I understand how much he still loves Georgiana, understand how her name is always on the tip of his tongue, but that I don’t care. I’m just glad to be here with him.
Upstairs, back in the suite, I go into the bathroom, get undressed, and put on the black satin La Perla nightgown Robert picked out for me this afternoon.
Then I make my way into the living room, where he is watching CNN. In only a white terry robe, he looks hotter than I could have ever imagined.
When he sees me, he jumps to his feet. “Miranda, you look incredibly sexy,” he says, and I blush. Then he gives me a deep, strong, passionate kiss that leaves me purring with pleasure.
After he pulls me even closer to him, so tight that I can hardly breathe, he kisses me again, so commandingly that when I look up at his handsome face, I am overwhelmed by the sense that I have just been kissed by a living god.
He leads me to the four-poster bed, then gently, ever so gently, undresses me.
He runs his eyes all over my body, while I try not to blush.
“Miranda, I just can’t be this near to you and not. . .”
He stiffens, pulls away from me, and commands, “Kneel on the bed, and don’t move a muscle.”
Then he takes a black silk fringed scarf and blindfolds me with it.
Next, I hear him going into the adjoining suite.
After a few minutes I hear the door open, then close, and he moves toward me again.
When he removes my blindfold, I am confronted by the sight of him, naked, and his long, thick erect cock is the most impressive I’ve ever seen.
I feel as if I’ve died and gone to heaven, because I’m about to be made love to by a man whose naked body could rival that of any Greek god, any Adonis in its sheer masculine perfection. His shoulders are broad in the extreme, his biceps bulge, his arms are muscular and strong, and his chest is chiseled and covered in just the right amount of black curly hair, the kind you long to run your fingers through.
Yet iron-hard as his body is, his skin is soft and unblemished, apart from a small red birthmark just above his washboard-defined stomach. Other than that, his body is flawless, sublime.
His entire body ripples with sculpted muscles, down to his long, lean legs. And his ass, high and taut, is world-class and it’s all I can do to stop myself from pinching it.
“No touching,” Robert says, and, longing, as I do, to run my fingers over every inch of his Adonis body, and to put my mouth around his throbbing cock, I feel a brief stab of disappointment.
But that doesn’t dull my pleasure in simply admiring his big, beautiful cock at such close range.
I saw some porno in college and most of the men in it have cocks almost as big as Robert’s, or so it seemed. But I read somewhere that most of those cocks belong to small men, whose cocks look bigger on-screen because their bodies are so small. Plus porno movie cinematographers know exactly how to light a scene and photograph it so that cocks look much bigger than they are in reality.
Yet here is this tall, muscular, broad-shouldered man who is at least six foot three, and his smooth, cut cock is bigger than anything I’ve ever seen on film.
How Lady Georgiana must have loved it . . .
Stop it, Miranda! Just lie back and enjoy it.
He puts a cushion under my ass, and I start to thank him for being so considerate about my sore and punished rear, but then I understand his motivation: by raising me higher, he will be able to penetrate me deeper.
Problem is, I’m built small and I haven’t had a tremendous amount of sex in my life, so as he tries to enter me, I tense up inside, and he can’t.
Instead, he moves down my body and in between my legs, parts them wide, and sticks his tongue deep into me, licking and sucking, teasing and probing, while I go stiff with shock.
Robert Hartwell, the Robert Hartwell is down there, giving me head!
I am so overwhelmed by the thought that I freeze. If Robert is expecting to make me come this way, he must be very disappointed.
But he doesn’t show it.
Instead, now that he has lubricated me fully with his strong and insistent tongue, he is finally able to enter me at last, missionary style. And the feel of his enormous cock driving into me, pumping with all his force, is earth-shattering.
But before I can respond to his fierce rhythm, his green eyes glaze over, and he grabs my wrists and holds me down.
Then fucks me with every iota of thrust and strength and passion a mortal man could ever muster.
His grip is so strong I can’t move, and as he plunges into me again and again, to my amazement, he keeps his weight off my body and makes wild, passionate love to me like the sexual stud that he undoubtedly is.
Robert Hartwell, a superstud and a dominant.
The incarnation of my most romantic dreams, my most scorching fantasies.
In the distance, I hear myself screaming as he makes me come.
Better than I’ve ever come in my entire life, and almost as good as when I’m using my vibrator. But not quite.
Even that doesn’t matter to me, because he gives a final, long, hard thrust and explodes into me, and I love that he has let go and unleashed the essence of himself, right into the heart of me.
“God, Miranda, God, you don’t know what you just did to me,” he groans, and I melt into his arms in ecstasy, feeling happier than I’ve ever been in my life, safe and content.
For a while we stay that way and, jet-lagged, I fall into a deep sleep.
Then I hear a loud thumping on the door of our suite and nearly jump out of my skin.
“Damn! I thought I’d put out the ‘do not disturb’ sign!” Robert says, jumping out of bed and throwing on his robe.
I hear him open the suite door, but can’t hear anyone else’s voice.
I wait expectantly for him to come back to bed again, but to my surprise, he doesn’t. Instead, I hear him go into the adjoining suite and close the door behind him.
I’m tempted to join him, but I don’t want to trespass on his privacy, so I close my eyes and drift off to sleep.
Only to be shaken roughly by Robert a short time later.
“Wake up, Miranda, get dressed, and pack your bags this minute!” he barks at me.
I jump up, petrified.
“Is the hotel on fire, Robert?”
“No, Miranda, I’ve just come to my senses,” he says, looming over me and giving me the coldest, hardest stare I’ve ever seen in my life.
Like a velociraptor, about to pounce.
“Don’t you think it’s time for you to come clean, Miranda?” he demands.
My eyes widen.
“I don’t know what you mean, Robert,” I stammer.
He laughs a short, unpleasant laugh.
“Oh, I think you do, Miranda, I think you do,” he says.
I’m wide awake now, and terrified.
The tender, passionate lover of an hour ago has been transformed into a harsh and cruel man with thin lips and expressionless eyes, his powerful frame almost threatening.
“It’s time for you to tell the truth, Miranda, and I won’t take lies for an answer,” he says.
“What lies are you accusing me of, Robert?” I say, my voice shaking with a combination of rage and fear.
In answer, he storms out of the suite, while I cower in bed, feeling helpless. When he comes back, he’s carrying a large purple funeral wreath garlanded with French writing and flings it at my feet.
Orchids, irises, and roses scatter all over the floor, and letters spin all over the suite.
“A warning from a well-wisher, and just in time . . .” he says.
He strides over to the bar, pours himself a big glass of brandy, and swallows it in one huge gulp.
Then comes back and towers over me again.
“I’m accusing you of trying to trap me by pretending to be a submissive.”
“Trap you why? Trap you how, Robert?” I say, still not understanding.
“You know very well what I mean, Miranda. For financial reasons,” he barks.
“Robert, this is a nightmare, like some kind of horror movie in which someone is accused of something they haven’t done and know nothing about,” I say.
“Know nothing? I think you know everything, Miranda. Everything. I don’t know who tipped you off or why, but after they did, you played an extremely clever game, didn’t you?”
An hour ago, he was kissing me as if he would never let me go. And now this?
Words fail me, utterly and completely.
“Don’t look so innocent, Miranda. You somehow learned that I am a dominant who hasn’t had a submissive for years. So you arranged for your sister to deliver to Hartwell Castle this erotic novel that you knew only too well would excite me immeasurably. Then you put on a good show of wanting it back desperately, which got you in to see me,” he says.
“Then, after I took the bait, you kept up the act and submitted to the heaviest spanking I’ve ever given anyone. And when I spanked you with all my strength, for as long as humanly possible, you didn’t shed a tear. Not one,” he booms so loudly that I start shaking from head to foot out of fear. “And when I fucked you, you put up a great performance of enjoying it, but didn’t really come. Not the way a true submissive who is getting exactly what she craves comes.”
I blush with a shame so strong that it eclipses even my shock at his accusations, at the dramatic change in him.
Oblivious, he roars on: “You aren’t really a true submissive at all, Miranda. You are faking submission so that you can get a financial hold over me. Which is why you made up that whole story about someone called Warren Courtney. And most important of all, that unbelievable night with the Master. That imaginary night, designed to lure me into your spiderweb.”
He’s six foot three and ten times stronger than I am, but I don’t care. I fly at him, shake him, and scream my head off as if my life depended on it.
“Fuck you, Robert Hartwell, with all your money, your power, and your spankings. Everything I told you about Warren is true. And so is every word of Unraveled. I did it all, I took it all, I loved it all, and I will again.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“I don’t give a flying fuck whether you do or you don’t. It’s true,” I say.
“So you expect me to believe that you are a genuine submissive, Miranda, that you didn’t invent your S&M affair with Warren Courtney or your night with the Master, and that you didn’t just grit your teeth during my spanking?”
“But I was wet,” I say, outraged.
“Easy to get wet by fantasizing about something else, or someone else, and not because of what’s being done to you,” he says scornfully.
If he doesn’t believe me, I think I’ll go crazy.
So I look deep into his eyes.
“Robert, I’m not a liar and I’m not a cheat. I don’t give a fig about your fame or your fortune. You excite me more than any man I’ve ever known. But just as you are a real dominant, I’m a real sexual submissive.”
“Prove it, then,” he says. “Fucking prove it!”
“Tell me how, and I will.”
“Five nights in my dungeons, five tests,” he says.
Dungeons! Robert Hartwell has dungeons!
“And if you pass them all, Miranda, then, and only then, will I believe that you are a true submissive.”
“And if you do?”
“Then you can ghost my autobiography.”
“As if I’d want to now!”
With that, he turns his broad back on me, storms into the adjoining suite, and locks the door behind him, locking me out and breaking my heart.
Ghost his autobiography!!
When all I really want is for him to love and trust me again.
I rip open a box of Swiss chocolates the management has placed next to our bed, gorge on a few of them, and try to calm down and recover.
Then I replay the nightmarish events in my mind.
Everything was so perfect till that fucking wreath arrived.
A funeral wreath, signaling the death of all my hopes, my dreams, my love.
And not just any wreath, a wreath made of purple flowers, clearly in memory of the divine fucking Georgiana.
But that can’t have been it.
There must have been more for Robert to turn against me so suddenly and so viciously.
I scramble to find the letters from the wreath, but Robert flung it down hard with all his power and strength, and now all the letters of the French words are scattered all over the suite and there is no way for me to put them together again.
Like Humpty-Dumpty.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put my hopes and dreams together again.
My emotional dreams, and also my career dreams of ghosting his life story.
So what do I do now?
Call the desk and book a flight back to the States?
Or swallow my pride, take Robert’s tests, and prove to him that I am the real thing after all?
The problem is, whatever happens, I know I won’t be able to stop myself from looking back and remembering how good everything between us was, and wishing it could be that way again.
So how can I throw myself into passing his fucking tests?
I take another bite of the most delicious truffle I’ve ever eaten in my lifetime, and then it strikes me.
This is what I should do!! I should take Robert’s tests of my submission not just because I want to prove to him that I’m the real thing, that I’m not a fraud, that I haven’t been plotting against him, but because taking them will give me the ultimate S&M experience of submitting to a cruel, relentless, experienced master who will teach me more about submission than I could ever imagine!!
And if I can stay true to that objective, the thought of having my submission rigorously tested by an experienced, accomplished, sadistic dominant Master who won’t tolerate anything less than perfection excites me more than anything has in my entire life.
And aside from loving Robert and wanting to win his trust back, I know that I’d rather be Robert’s submissive than his ghostwriter.
In fact, I don’t want to be Robert Hartwell’s ghostwriter anymore.
What I really want, in the dark recesses of my heart, and somewhere else, much lower, is to take his dark and dangerous tests and to pass them with flying colors. For my pride, for my fantasies, and also because I plan to be true to my motto that it’s far better to do something than to regret not doing it!
Before I can change my mind, I snatch up a pen and a piece of hotel stationery, the creamy paper thick and weighty in my hand. If I know one thing about Robert Hartwell, it’s that the man loves a deal memo—so a deal memo he shall have. Scribbling frantically, I write:
“I, Miranda Stone, agree to spend five days at Hartwell Castle, under the sole direction of Robert Hartwell. This deal memo confirms that I undertake his tests of my own volition, and if I am deemed to have failed, I will have no further contact with Robert Hartwell.”
There. It’s done. Not exactly legalese, but it gets the point across. I fold the paper neatly in thirds, tuck it into an envelope, and scrawl “Robert Hartwell” across the front. I leave it propped on the suite’s dining table, where he can’t miss it.
When I wake u
p in the morning after a night of tossing and turning, the envelope is gone.
I spend the rest of the day locked in the suite, unable to eat, unable to sleep, just flicking through TV channels showing programs I don’t want to see. All I want is to turn back the clock to before Robert got that wreath.
I don’t know what it said, or who sent it, and when I tried to ask him, he turned away from me and refused to answer. But somehow, someone used the wreath to send him a lethal message that destroyed his trust in me. And I’m numb with sadness and disappointment.
Then the phone rings. I am not sure whether or not to answer it. But perhaps it is Robert. Perhaps last night, and the wreath and its lethal message, was just another nightmare. Perhaps everything will be the way it was again.
But it’s Mary Ellen, inviting me to supper at the hotel restaurant.
For a moment I have the wild thought that perhaps Robert asked her to keep me company, but I’ve got no way of knowing, and I can’t tell her what happened last night. Either way, I force myself to get dressed and join her for an interminable dinner in the restaurant. Not interminable because Mary Ellen isn’t nice and sweet and charming to me, because she is, but because inside, I am crying.
After dinner, I go back to the suite and wait for Robert to come back, but he doesn’t. I can think of nothing but the tests he’s proposed. Could I pass them? Do I want to? Five days at his mercy . . . My heart beats faster with a combination of fear and sheer, unadulterated pleasure.
Then, for about the tenth time that day, I remind myself of my motto again: ‘It’s better to regret what you’ve done then to regret not doing it.”
I stay awake, hoping for his reaction to my letter, but when he returns at midnight he says nothing to me, gets into bed as far away as possible from me, and studiously avoids all contact with me, even an accidental brush of the hand.
In the morning I wake up bright and early, only to discover that Robert has already gotten up, so there is no chance of me attempting to mend the rift between us.
Bitterly disappointed, I shower and get dressed, and when I walk into the living room he hardly looks at me. He snaps, “Breakfast?” and strides out of the suite. I follow him. We sit opposite each other at the breakfast table, saying nothing while Robert methodically works his way through five newspapers—Russian, American, English, French, and German—and ignores me.