by Gabi Moore
“I apologize for the interruption,” I said, wondering where on earth I could go to get away from that penetrating stare of his.
“Not at all. It was good to meet your mom and sister.”
“My mom? Oh no, that’s Angie’s caseworker. My mother is passed,” I said. He nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I’m the one who should say sorry for this weird afternoon.”
“Weird? I thought it went perfectly,” he said. I raised an eyebrow. He was looking at me with the same deep curiosity that he had a moment ago given to that stupid backpack. Only this time it felt real. I couldn’t stop myself staring at his mouth. At that juicy pucker on his lower lip. About how I was irresistibly struck with the fancy that I could order him to kiss me.
“But we didn’t do anything,” I said, choking on my own voice. He laughed.
“Ouch! Didn’t do anything? Now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings,” he said playfully.
“But--”
Before I could jump in an apologize again, to explain that that wasn’t what I meant, he was gone, in his car and pulling off.
I stared after him.
If I were smart, I would find some way to use him to get to his father. A powerful man like Dean would know things, would have connections. And I was nicely placed to milk those connections. It was too perfect, him landing like this in my lap. I couldn’t figure him out, either. Going to a professional Dominatrix to hold her hand? It didn’t make any sense. I hated that my first thought was Jeff Cane and what he had to do with any of this. He had already shown me a side to him I never thought existed, so who knew what else he was capable of? If I were smart, I would figure out a way to get a handle on this.
But I didn’t feel smart just then.
I stared down at my hand, and it felt cold and empty now without him. I touched my own palm and tried to make sense of the strange twinge I felt. Not just that disquieting pulsing between my legs, but somewhere deeper inside still.
Have you ever walked in a forest and found a log or a stone, and thrown it over only to discover a whole pale world of wriggling worms and bugs underneath, hidden till that point? And you feel like you’ve stumbled on a whole separate unfolding drama, tucked away from the rest of the forest? That’s what I felt right then. Like I had unearthed a patch of my mind and was surprised to find strange, wriggling life inside. There were parts of me that I never knew were alive.
Parts that hadn’t seen the sun in a very, very long time.
Chapter 7
Myth: BDSM is all about pain
Reality: BDSM is all about pleasure. Pain is just one kind of pleasure
“Open your hand,” he said. I stared at him, tears in my eyes.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Just relax your fingers and open your hand.”
I looked down at my fist, the knuckles white from the effort. His green eyes looked at me, begging.
“I can’t.”
“What are you holding onto anyway? Just let it go, you don’t need it anymore,” he said, and gently held my fist, trying to stroke the tension away from my fingers. But they were almost glued shut, like nothing in the world could wrench them open.
I felt near hysterics.
He stared hard at me, and I realized we were both naked. His eyes in mine, he firmly pressed a finger into the knot of fingers and wriggled it in, trying to unball my fist, to dig out the treasure I was gripping so tightly. If I couldn’t give it to him, he’d have to take it from me.
“Open,” he said resolutely.
As he pulled hard on each of my fingers and peeled each one away, I began to lose control.
“Oh god …please…”
His strong hands pulled apart the next finger and then the next. I was at his mercy. A deep shudder ripped through me and before I knew it my eyesight blotted out and a big, juicy wave of pleasure washed over me, just as he eased open the last finger. My world dissolved, and the only thing left was his smiling voice.
“Oh god!” I whimpered.
“Good,” he growled.
I shot upright in bed.
Fuck. It was just a dream.
My hand shot down under the blankets and under the hem of my pajamas. I recoiled when I realized how dripping wet I was. Heart pounding, I wiped the sweat from my brow and tried to catch my bearings. It was 4 in the morning. Just a dream. I couldn’t remember what it was about. I just knew that it had rattled me, badly. And …something else.
I fell back down into bed and automatically touched myself. My clit was swollen hot and nearly bounced at my touch. Fuck, that felt good. Being half asleep made this feel so easy. Had I… come in my sleep? It was a thrilling thought. My fingertips tended to that trembling little nub and I closed my eyes and tried to recall whatever delicious thing had done this to my body while I was asleep. But I couldn’t remember any of it. And soon, that thick swell of pleasure seeped away and I lost it, and my body felt cold and ordinary again. I stopped stroking and got up, angrily tossing the covers off.
I hadn’t been myself lately. I never got upset about things, never had bad dreams or let people get to me. So what the fuck was going on?
As I stood, a deep ache radiated through my pelvis stopped me dead in my tracks. That was new. I felt raw. Hungry, but in my very cells somehow, like my limbs were starving. Maybe I was going crazy.
Something possessed me to throw off my pajamas and stand naked. The ache glowed a little warmer. I stretched up high and admired the dim reflection of my breasts in the mirror on the dresser. I turned my body this way and that way to examine my shape. I was as sexy as I always was (i.e. very) but this time it seemed to have a different effect on me. I wasn’t just the picture of something sexy, the sexiness was inside somehow. Just looking at the curve where my abdomen flowed into my hip and then thigh, and the neat triangle of fur where my thighs met… all of this made the ache deepen.
Had he seen what I was seeing now? Had he liked it? Was he thinking of me now?
I watched my reflection arch and twist before me, like it was posing for him, trying to beckon him. What turned him on? What was it that pushed a strong, capable man like that right off the edge …what had him moaning helplessly? Thinking about him made the ache burn so much it nearly hurt.
I went downstairs. Down the staircase I went in naked feet, in the dark, and pushed open the door of the dungeon.
The instruments sat there, mute. My heart thumped and to my astonishment, the ache in my pussy had reached fever pitch. In here? This was nothing more than an office. My 9 to 5 sweat shop, nothing sexy about this place, surely? But my body disagreed. I obeyed the ache and closed the door behind me. I dragged my hand across the tray of instruments. I picked up the whip. The throb subsided. I placed it down again. My fingers went to a pair of handcuffs. Without thinking, I looped the steel curve round my wrist. The ache intensified. I tore it off again, sent the cuffs clattering to the table and left, slamming the dungeon door behind me.
Do you want to know about a ‘day in the life of a dominatrix’? Ok, let me show you my typical schedule.
This morning, I woke up, did 30 minutes of yoga, had two cups of coffee and a banana, and scoured r/skincareaddiction. I then watched a video of a goat playing the keyboard. I showered while listening to Bellini’s Casta Diva. My outfit for the day was a white leopard print jumpsuit and silver heels, and I had chosen it to meet the reporter who would help me expose and humiliate one of the world’s wealthiest men in a sick bid to get revenge on him for what I was beginning to think was a sexual assault. Ok, so maybe that last part was not so typical.
I put my sunglasses on, grabbed my handbag and walked out to my car, practicing my speech. I had two home-printed photographs in my handbag and more where they came from, and I wasn’t going to budge an inch until he agreed to at least double what he had offered the last time we spoke. Plus, I’d make him buy my coffee, just to rub it in.
The first picture was of a midd
le-aged man standing in front of a thick tree, hip jutted out to the side like a runway model, trousers unzipped and halfway down his thighs, revealing a baby pink adult diaper with the word Princess emblazoned across the crotch. The man is clearly Jeff Cane, and behind him, out of focus but plain as day, sits the California State Capitol building in soft early morning mist.
The second picture was the real treat, though. In it Mr. Cane stared straight at the camera with a seductive smile. He was on his hands and knees, wearing a cheesy schoolboy shirt and cap, flaunting his bare ass. Or it looks bare until you stared a little more closely and realized that he was wearing a tight, glitzy purple thong.
Women are physically weaker than men, yes. The average man can easily overpower the average woman. But when you do the work I do, you see just how much power a woman can really have on a man. A man can kill a woman if he wants. But a woman can do one better: she can arouse a man.
“Miss, please.”
I spun around to find the source of the voice, my hand hovering on the car door. At first I didn’t see her, but a short woman was rapidly walking over to me from the street, a worried look all over her face. I clutched the bag to my body.
“Yes?”
“Are you Nora Smith?” she asked, a little out of breath.
I said nothing and watched as she approached me nervously.
“I know this is a little weird, but please can I speak to you for just a moment?”
She didn’t look like trouble. In fact, she was dressed even better than I was, which almost never happened. I kept my hand on the car door and watched as she nervously looked over her shoulder a few times.
“You don’t know me, but I know you. Please forgive the intrusion. I can’t talk for long, but I had to speak to you. I’m Elizabeth Cane…” she said and waited for me to respond.
Fuck. What the hell was it with this family? Was his great Uncle Joseph once removed going to spring out from the bushes? I took a step back.
“Please, I’m not angry, I haven’t come here looking for trouble,” she said, looking as though it was hard for her to get her words out. “But I have to ask you something. My husband comes to see you – please, it’s no problem,” she quickly added when she saw the panic on my face. “Please, I know and I’ve always known, and it’s fine, truly. In fact, I need you to keep seeing him. I can’t give you details, and I don’t know why you’ve dropped him, but I’d do anything for you to take him back,” she said, tripping over her words. Her hands were clasped in front of her, and her eyes were wide.
I didn’t know what to say.
“I can pay you. Whatever you want, just please don’t stop seeing him. I know you understand him. You’re very important to him, I hope you understand,” here she looked over her shoulders again but this time I could make out something odd: a deep, angry purple bruise extended all along the side of her neck. She had smeared make up over the skin there, but it did little to conceal the marks.
“I… I’m sorry but your husband and I …I can’t see him again,” I said helplessly. It was as though I had slapped her.
“But why? Please, what would it take for you to reconsider?” she said, and all at once she was clasping my hands in hers.
Had he given her that bruise? My head spun. Her eyes darted to a car rolling by slowly in the street and she immediately dropped my hands.
“I have to go,” she said, voice heavy with despair.
“I’m sorry I can’t help you,” I said, and I meant it. She seemed so small, so frightened. She was shaking her head like me refusing her was out of the question.
“Please promise me you’ll see him again? Please? I’m afraid of what will happen if--” Again she was distracted by the car in the street and simply took off, not bothering to finish her sentence.
“If what? What will happen?” I yelled after her, but she was already gone. I tried to get a look at the car but it sped off.
My blood ran cold in my veins. What bizarre backwards land was I living in these days? Did I really just bump into the wife of client and have her begging for me to not stop seeing her husband? I quickly got into the car, strapped myself in and locked the door. I had entirely forgotten the speech I was going to give the reporter.
“I don’t understand, yesterday you swore up and down that you had pictures, and now this?”
“I do have the pictures. It’s just that… I can’t do the story anymore. At least not yet.”
“No? But you still haul me all the way out here and make me cough up $700? Fucking priceless,” he said and rubbed his tired face.
“I’m sorry. I’ve just …I have more information now and I just don’t want to risk anything.”
“Bullshit. You don’t have anything and you’re wasting my time,” he spat, and looked as though he was ready to up and leave.
“Wait,” I said.
He eyeballed my cleavage.
“Let me show you,” I continued. His expression changed and he sat down. I looked all around me, then slowly reached into my bag, pulled out the first photo and showed it to him. His eyes went wide. As he reached his hand out to grab the picture I snatched it back and stuffed it into my bag again.
“I want to publish these,” I said. “The plan is still the same. We just need to hold off for a little while, OK?”
He eyed me closely and then nodded slowly. I had to admit, they were shocking pictures.
“You have more?” he asked quietly.
“Lots more.”
He whistled low under his breath and smiled.
“Give them to me now and you get double.”
I cocked my eyebrow at him. Now he was talking. But still, it only convinced me that I should hold out and demand even more later, after I figured out what the hell was going on with his wife.
“Not yet,” I said calmly. He frowned, then we sat in silence for some time. This card would always be there when I was ready to play it, but that woman’s terrified face was still burnt in my mind and giving me the creeps. There was no harm in waiting.
He glanced at his watch and then me.
“You know, I paid for a half hour, and we’re only ten minutes in. Does that mean I get you for the other twenty?”
I looked at him the same way you look at an unidentifiable brown smear on the bottom of your shoe.
“You’ve got to be kidding…”
He looked again at my cleavage.
“I’m not,” he said, lowering his voice. “For interest sake, how much would it set me back to get a, uh, night with you, huh?”
I stood up and threw a bill on the table to pay for my coffee. “More than you have” I said coldly, and walked out. I knew he was watching my ass as I left. I couldn’t help that, and frankly I didn’t care. But I wanted him to understand the vast gulfs of money and prestige he’d have to cross to even get a chance at making such a crude suggestion to me. The oceans of difference between him and the sort of man I would even consider looking at twice were more immense than he could imagine. The café door tinkled as I walked back out to my car and left.
The sky was like it always is this time of year – blue, empty and light, even though everything down on the surface feels about ready to burn up and evaporate. As I drove, my mind inevitably wandered over to its new favorite obsession: Dean Cane. I kept returning to him like an unsolved puzzle, but every time I left feeling like I was no closing to understanding him and what he was after.
You, dear reader, probably think all of this is blindingly obvious. You can see all the signs, of course. It was plain as day: I was seriously attracted to him. But you have to understand, at the time, I was like a person seeing after being blind all my life – I just had no idea what I was looking at. People fall in love all the time, I know, and you’ve probably done it too, but for me? It was weird. Weirder than anything I’d ever done with a man before. Weirder even than the visit I’d had from that frightened woman this morning.
I set aside the question of whether to go ahead with my ev
il plan and instead put my thoughts onto something that felt more sumptuous: I had another appointment with Dean tomorrow.
And I had some planning to do.
Chapter 8
Myth: Dominatrix work is easy
Reality: Easy if you’re some kind of masochist
“Mistress has decided she needs a shopping trip to Milan this week and won’t be requiring your measly body to torture and humiliate,” I said.
You’ll laugh, but this wasn’t even the first time I had said this line today. I could almost hear the pouting on the other end of the line.
“Yes, Mistress. When can I expect her return?” came the response.
I sighed loudly.
“When you’re required again for my amusement I might consider contacting you, but not before. And don’t even think about contacting me and interrupting my trip, do you understand?”
“Of course, Mistress.”
“My little toy. Have you been jerking off every night like I told you?”
“Yes, Mistress.”
“Nasty little man. And have you been remembering to say my name when you come?”
“Of course, Mistress.”
“Good.”
“I think I am in love with Mistress.”
“Well of course you are. That’s inevitable.”
“May I send Mistress a gift in Milan?”
“You may not. But you may send me a picture of you wearing your belt, every day, so I know you’re not disobeying me. How many hours are you on every week?”
“Three, Mistress.”
“How pathetic. Increase it to four.”
“Yes, Mistress.”
I hung up. Then I looked down at my notepad and crossed off another name from my list. Three down and four more to go. There was no ‘trip to Milan’, of course, but screw it. I could afford to take a break whenever I wanted. And for whatever reason. In fact, I was enjoying blowing all my clients off so much I momentarily fantasized what it would be like to be done with all of them once and for all.