The Dom Project

by Heloise Belleau

  I’ve waited so long. Give this to me.

  * * *

  Of all the fantasies he’d ever had of Robin, the strangest was the one where he went inside her mind. The details of how weren’t important—some hand-wavey science fiction device, perhaps. Her mind would be represented by a gorgeous twisty space a bit like a museum crossed with a jazz lounge, and he’d stroll through it, marveling at all the secrets and feeling like the perverted king of the universe.

  Should I be feeling guilty? he wondered as she slid the skirt up her thighs. Is this more than a mortal man should see?

  Fuck it. No way was he going to regret a second of this.

  He used the tip of the cane to draw a line across her cheeks, like he was illustrating a geometry lesson. She didn’t quiver or flinch. Wait, there it was, the slightest wobble of her stiletto heels. “Right there,” he said, making sure to keep his voice completely even, which was hard, but the geometry analogy helped. The mathematics of desire. Sounded like an essay title about Irina Mareau. Composition, field of view, the rule of thirds. Negative space, like the one at the very top of Robin’s thighs if she stood with her legs pressed together.

  He moved to the left and struck precisely along that line with the cane shaft, not very much harder than the first stinging blow. The faintest of pink streaks appeared; he watched, mesmerized, as it faded back into the warm ivory color of her flesh.

  “It’s coming harder next time,” he warned. “Stay straight.” It wasn’t easy to hit the right way with a cane, avoiding any contact with bone, but he’d had a lot of practice over the years. Not his favorite implement by far, but it was the one that seemed to suit Robin best: strict, old-fashioned, trim and elegant and straight to the point.

  She nodded. He picked up a hint of eagerness in the motion. It’s not for you, he told himself. It’s for what’s she feeling. His almost painfully hard cock still throbbed, but he was wearing thick jeans tonight, so she wouldn’t notice.

  He had a feeling these jeans would become a mainstay of their sessions.

  He struck again. The same place. As a rule, the cane hurt twice: once coming, second going. That second hurt had her arching minutely toward him and letting out a delightful sharp little gasp.

  “Lower, now.” Again. No gasp this time; she was expecting it. Now there were two matching pink streaks across her ass. John eyed them critically. The one below wasn’t quite parallel; he couldn’t have that, not for what he had in mind later.

  Well, maybe strict geometry wasn’t in the cards for tonight. An informal, asymmetric composition was more his style. He struck again, faster and harder. The percussive snap of the blows held its own savage charm.

  He stopped, letting the sound fade, then stroked across the streaks as if the cane tip was a lover’s trailing finger. Pausing, he listened attentively to the music of her labored breathing, then struck again.

  And again, until the streaks melted each other, becoming a pink-crimson field of color. Marking her, but not marring her. Making her more beautiful.

  “Oh...” Robin said—a word, not a cry, so he waited for her to finish, but she didn’t.

  “Turn around.”

  When she finally did, bracing herself against the counter behind her for balance, and he saw her hair was mussed and her pupils were blown, lips parted and color high in her cheeks—he gripped the cane hard between his hands, trying to transfer all his energy into its quivering length so that he didn’t do something stupid like press himself against her, taking her like the lover she couldn’t be.

  God, he needed to take a picture of her right now. Not the marks on her thighs, but her face, so dazed and breathless. “Stay there. Right there.”

  He walked backward toward the kitchen’s entrance, afraid that if he took his eyes off her even a second, the moment would pass. But she didn’t shift, and her expression didn’t change. Her wide blinking eyes just followed him as he moved.

  He had a Nikon with a portrait lens in the living room. He should have brought it with him, but he hadn’t expected this. He’d planned to have her pose for him at the end of their session, pretty and perfect and well lit, but now he needed to capture this moment, in all its imperfection. He’d have to go without the flash on this one, shoot with a high ISO, embrace the graininess of the image the same way he embraced the way her mascara had flaked off under her eyes.

  He took up the camera and walked back toward her, shooting all the way.

  “What...what are you doing?” Her voice was soft and low and distant. He waited for her to safeword, to end the whole affair, but she didn’t.

  “This is for you.” He lowered the camera, holding it like an offering. She wasn’t in the space to accept it yet; she simply stood there and blinked, still holding up her skirt, her tantalizing plum-sized breasts rising and falling with every breath, bobbing right out of the goddamn lingerie he wanted more than anything else to pull off her.

  So he put the camera on the counter next to the gleaming candlesticks, took her hand and led her to the couch. She followed hesitantly but gracefully, her pulse beating strong beneath his fingertips. He guided her to sit down, wrapped a cotton throw around her shoulders, sat down beside her and held her loosely. Almost touching skin-to-skin. So close, so close it hurt, but he knew how to handle pain, didn’t he?

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I’m okay.”

  “I know. You’re just coming down now, right?” She was trembling softly. She probably didn’t even know.

  “Yes.” She kicked off her shoes and curled her knees to her chest, sighing. He rubbed her shoulder through the blanket, lending her his heat. They rested there for a long time, John imagining himself in that familiar fantasy, drifting through the halls of her mind—all with her knowing he was there, and sweetly sharing herself with him.

  She shifted, and poked him with her knee. “Ow,” he said, snapping back to Earth instantly.

  “That was great,” she said, a lovely smile on her face. “I’ve been caned before, harder even, but it didn’t reach me the same way. I mean, you’re really good at it.”

  “Wasn’t hard enough for you? I’ll keep that in mind. At least you didn’t get bratty to try and goad me into it.”

  “No!” she cried with breathy sincerity, turning to look at him with an exaggerated look of horror, “Never!”

  Just like that, whatever strangeness between them faded and they were friends again. John gave her shoulder a brisk rub, which was about as close to a buttpat between teammates as he could get while still remaining proper. Robin stood, keeping the blanket draped around her shoulders as she wiggled, clearly pulling her rucked-up skirt back down around her knees.

  Pity.

  No. Not a pity. Good. Boundaries. Boundaries are good.

  “So,” he said casually. “The necklace.”

  “Right.” She reached back to unclasp it. The blanket slipped down, leaving her shoulder bare. Deliciously, kissably bare. Boundaries. “Here you go.”

  He didn’t take it just yet. “We could go either way with the necklace. You can take it home with you and bring it each time. Or I could keep it here for you.”

  She bit her lip.

  He tried to tell himself he wasn’t invested in the decision. But as the dark gray pearls slipped through her pale fingers, his hand tightened into a fist. Let me give these to you. Let me have this stolen ritual.

  “You’d better hold on to them for me,” she said. “That makes the most sense.”

  “Sure.” His nails dug into his palm, a comforting pain. “You’re in charge. Until I am.” He put a game-player’s grin on his face. “I’ll hold on to the photos too.”

  “I trust you with those,” she said.

  The cold feeling in his chest warmed a little.

  Chapter Six

  Week One

  Session One: aka A Long Hard...To Do List

  I’d like to thank all my commenters on the last post. I had no idea so many people were reading this blog!

&nbs
p; *blushes*

  I truly appreciated the full range of opinions expressed, from “I did that before with a friend and it was no big deal” to “your fool ass is crazy.” I bristled a bit when I read that last one, but I can see where he or she is coming from. The emotional work isn’t easy. Never mind butterflies, I had full-grown pterodactyls flapping around in my stomach when I walked into my friend’s apartment. I was so worried.

  But it was worth it.

  The milestones for tonight turned out to be Service and Pain, two of my favorites. I think I’m going to enjoy this mix-and-match of the known and unknown, the familiar and unpredictable. It’s like the thrill I get when leafing through an old book and finding a risqué 1970s Polaroid pressed between unlikely pages. It’s a little less organized than my ideal, but I also think it’s good specifically for that reason, because Submission is, of course, all about letting go of some control.

  J gets me on so many different levels, and yes, he’s a genius with the cane. I felt good, and then bad and then really good and then...well, you know how it goes. It’s not easy keeping certain intense emotions within boundaries, but it helps that we both know we’re so much more compatible as friends than anything else. I’m looking for the kind of long-term relationship that he...isn’t. And I think after this arrangement, I can approach the search with renewed confidence.

  J is reading this.

  Thank you.

  I don’t have any pictures yet, but stay tuned.

  Love,

  The Picky Submissive

  Robin posted the entry and clicked the laptop shut before she started obsessively reediting. She’d spent what felt like an hour on those words, wanting to get the tone exactly right. Breezy enough to balance out the sprinkling of pompous capitalized nouns. Without regrets. Not too emotionally tangled. Pleased, but not infatuated.

  Already, she found herself stroking the laptop’s hard plastic case where it lay beside her on the bed, thinking about just one more pass, maybe refreshing and checking her IP logger to see if John had read her post yet...

  “Stop it,” she told herself sternly, set the laptop on her bedside table and wriggled under the covers. Her bottom wasn’t exactly tender, more like extra sensitive, so that she could feel the texture of the sheets rubbing through the cotton of her nightgown. She rolled over on to her stomach and sighed.

  There was one thing she hadn’t been honest about on her blog. The principles of chastity and denial weren’t all that attractive to her. Tonight’s session had proved that, but even before, she’d really been talking herself into it. Consciously turning denial into a sexy ritual seemed so much more interesting and unique than I’m not getting laid but damn, I wish I were.

  But she couldn’t admit that to her readers or to John. Not yet. She’d talk about her change of heart when the contract was up, and write out an entry about how she’d given chastity the college try. She could call it “For God’s Sake Unlock Me.”

  She hadn’t signed away her orgasms, at least. Hmm.

  No. Her thoughts would turn to John like iron to a magnet, and she already strongly associated him with dangerous pleasure. Limits had to be mental too. She couldn’t get obsessed. Couldn’t turn John into her one and only because he absolutely wasn’t. He was a good friend and he’d never wanted her as anything other than a friend.

  Although maybe, considering his high sex drive, he saw her as something less and more...

  She groaned and rolled on to her back. This was the worst. The lowest point of a roller-coaster day, and all she wanted to do was get off, in both senses, and go to sleep.

  The laptop no longer hummed, but she could still sense it lying beside her, quietly emanating heat. There was a porn clip one of her commenters had linked. It was only a few clicks away. She leaned over, opened up the laptop, pressed Play. It was that easy. Don’t think of John.

  A man in a suit gripped the arm of a woman dressed as a maid. He had dark hair, but he wasn’t John. “You’ve been stealing,” he said, in a flat voice. The maid widened her eyes in an approximation of fear. The poor acting didn’t bother Robin—in fact, she liked the ritualistic monotone, the stylized poses. It struck the right balance of conceptual danger and reassurance that it was all a show. Oh yes. This was perfect.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she said.

  “Don’t hurt me,” Robin whisper-echoed. She licked her finger and didn’t think of John.

  * * *

  “You guys gave me a defective machine,” Professor Arkin grumbled. John was already wriggling underneath the shelves behind the podium, tracing cables with his fingertips, following his instincts. He found the problem pretty quickly.

  “Try it again.”

  “Why? It’s only going to fail! I’ve wasted a third of my class trying to fix the damn thing.”

  What a dick. “It’s called a projector. And you got the cables confused and plugged it into itself,” John said, making sure to speak loudly enough so the whole class would hear. As he wriggled back out again, he caught a few muffled laughs coming from the back of the auditorium. “Should be fine now. Give us a call if you have any other problems.” He dusted off his jeans and clambered to his feet.

  Starting with one of the laughers in the back, Professor Arkin’s class started to applaud John, a couple of students even hopping up to give him a standing ovation.

  He took a bow.

  Then, before Professor Arkin seized a chance to kill John with his eyes, he got the hell out of there.

  He was halfway back to the A/V department when light from the library’s mirrored windows caught his eye. Feeling like a magpie, he leaned against a nearby tree and studied the gleaming patterns. Robin was perched somewhere on the fourth floor. The ego boost he’d gotten from his just-like-magic plug-in performance drained away when he contemplated their contract. He’d thought the time limit had been brilliant, at first, giving them both an out, but now it felt more like a countdown. What happened after? Was he supposed to turn back the clock? Having breakfasts with her, teasing her about her work, trying desperately not to think about the time he’d seen her wide-eyed and panting, breasts rising delectably out of the top of her bustier?

  The thought of making a serious play for Robin—now that was a contradiction in terms, but it seemed to fit the situation—entered his mind. He imagined her wearing the pearl choker every day, coming to him every night, and the idea was so electrifying he might as well have stuck his goddamned tongue in the socket back there. But. But, but...that was assuming she felt anywhere near the same about him.

  Reading her body and reading between the lines of her blog posts, he was cautiously confident about his chances of ending the contract with something beyond friendship. He wasn’t some vain egotistical prick, but he also wasn’t one of those timid guys who talked themselves into believing they were completely undesirable. He had a steady job, he was funny, he had a nice body. Basically, he had a lot to offer. Nothing instantly ruled him out, even if they’d been just friends up to this point.

  But then what? He’d have to change his entire lifestyle, the one he’d so carefully constructed to fit his personality. And what about her? Sure, she’d learned to accept his “eccentricities” as a friend, but as a full-time lover? If they moved in together or—God forbid—shared a room? When he’d first met Robin, she’d been a real “fixer”—always psychoanalyzing him and wanting him to join yoga with her and nagging him about the deadlines for his assignments. One fight too many about the subject had gotten her to back off, but could he really expect her to be so hands-off with a man she wanted to share her life with?

  Jesus, John, share her life? It’s just sex. Not even sex. Maybe it could be sex, but that’s still all it is. So they were friends and they were clearly sexually compatible. He should know better than anyone that sexual compatibility didn’t automatically lead to hearts and flowers and collars.

  He turned his back on the glittering library, walked toward the low-slung bunker-like building that he
ld the A/V department and tried to put his mind back on business. Not that business was particularly taxing. His boss would be cloistered in the back room behind a thick metal door, where he did God-knows-what all day. The student assistants would be giggling over tentacle porn while rehearsing K-pop dance moves and playing online games. Anything but actual work.

  His phone rang with the first bar of “Tainted Love.” Someone in his family contact list was ringing him. When he saw Jim Sun flash on his phone the words of the song might as well have been fuck my life because the last person in the world he wanted to talk to now was his brother.

  Don’t be cynical. Maybe Jim was only calling with belated birthday wishes, or belated apologies, or a belated repayment for that time John had hired a lawyer to make sure Jim’s misdemeanor public indecency conviction for passing out naked in the Mulholland Memorial Fountain didn’t turn into an automatic sex offender registration.

  “Jim!” he said, as cheerfully and optimistically as he could.

  “Dude! Bro! What the fuck?” John’s optimism vanished when he heard his brother’s voice. “I checked that plant outside your door for the key, and it’s not there anymore.” No context, no explanation, not even a hello. And oh God, John thought he knew where this was going.

  “What are you doing at my apartment?” He said it very slowly through gritted teeth, not putting a rising intonation at the end because he had a feeling he didn’t want to hear the answer.

  “Trying to get in! How come you moved that key? Shit, man, the cops are almost here.” In fact, John could hear the sirens now. “You better come over here and let me in and, uh, tell the popo I’m legit. I think your neighbor called them when she saw me trying to jimmy open the window.”