Clara sighed. “I could tell she was uncomfortable around me, and I’m hoping it will help her if she gets overwhelmed, knowing there’s someone in the house to talk to.”
Darien’s eyes narrowed. “She has me for that.”
“Darien, there are going to be times she’ll need to talk to another woman or another submissive.” Clara held her hand up to stop him from interrupting. “Let me finish. Before you suggest your partners’ companions, she already knows she can talk to them. You’ve all become so cozy in your little group. Sasha may want to know that others also play your games. She seemed grateful, and I’m hoping she does confide in me. Sasha’s not stupid. The girl knows how fond I am of you and that I’ll relay concerns she has.”
Darien swiped his hands through his hair. “I can’t think straight when it comes to her. It seems she’s the most important person in my world. Honestly Clara, I’m afraid the intensity of my needs is going to frighten her, and I have three lousy months to convince her to commit to me.”
“Trust in yourself. You’ve always had the qualities of a good Master, and others have had you train their submissives because they’ve seen those qualities in you too.”
“Those submissives weren’t personal, though. This is different. This is Sasha.”
Clara squeezed his arm and headed downstairs to check on dinner.
Darien looked over the terrace balcony for a while, and then he went back to Sasha. He lay down behind his sleeping woman with his head propped into his hand, and picked up the news clippings.
He read about the accident that had killed her parents. Sasha had been in the car and was thrown clear. She was five years old and crawled back to the car where her parents lay dead. It was two hours before another traveler stopped his car to investigate the broken guardrail and found the little girl crying and trying to shake her mommy awake.
Next was her grandfather’s obituary. He had been a well respected man, according to the article. Sasha and her grandmother were the only people he left behind. The last clipping was her grandmother’s death. It mentioned different clubs and organizations she had volunteered with, and that Sasha was her only living relative.
It finally occurred to him how very alone she must feel, and his heart ached for the pain she must have experienced. The sun lowered in the sky enough to cause a ray to shine from the metal frame of the picture of her graduation where she stood between her grandparents, the people who had raised her. Within a year, they had both been gone from her life.
Lying with her and listening to her steady breathing, he understood what Clara had meant. Darien would not take this space away from her, and if she needed time in her painful past to sort out her thoughts or to step away from the maddening pace of his life, he would make sure she knew she could come here. Darien felt her breathing change and could sense she was waking up. As she rolled over to stretch, his lips met hers.
Sasha awoke to Darien’s kiss and snuggled into his body while his fingers brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Darien, how late is it?” Sasha pouted. “I’m going to find out what the heck Clara put in my tea.”
Darien kept waiting for her to ask questions about the ceremony. Somehow, he sensed none of that part of their lives would be discussed in this room, her room. “I hope you don’t mind, but I read the articles.” He glanced at the news clips.
“I’m going to put them behind the pictures. I used to keep them in a journal, but the rest of the stuff, well, I guess I just don’t want to think about it any more. This room is a place for happy memories. The journal holds a lot of recriminations and reservations I had about myself.” She smiled up at him. “I couldn’t have been that bad if I’m with you, right?”
Darien kissed her again. “You’re perfect, Sasha.”
“No, I’m not. You just haven’t seen my wicked side yet,” she laughed.
‘More wicked than last night?’ “I’m looking forward to it. Come on,” he pulled her up, “Clara’s got dinner ready.”
“Great, my stomach’s rumbling.”
As they left the room, Sasha casually remarked, “You can read the journal if you want, and then you’ll see how messed up I really am.”
She did not notice Darien look back towards the room, and he made a mental note to make sure Clara did not toss the journal out.
CHAPTER VIII
It took Sasha another day of rest before the twinges of her strained and stretched muscles began to relax. She had not discussed the ceremony with Darien as yet, but he could see a shadow behind her eyes and thought that it would happen soon. While he was wrapping things up for the transfer of club business to Edmond, Sasha spent the morning wandering through the house and around the property.
Clara retrieved the journal and managed to discretely hand it to him as he was walking to his car. After letting Edmond know he was on the premises if he had questions, Darien walked down to his apartment, poured a glass of wine and settled into a comfortable chair to read Sasha’s journal. Even though she had given him permission to read it, he experience a slight twinge of conscience when he opened it to the first page and saw a child’s effort at her name with flowers and hearts drawn around the letters. It seemed almost sad that one little incomplete journal contained everything she thought noteworthy in her life. ‘So noteworthy, she threw it out,’ he reflected. At the beginning were the unsure printed letters of a child explaining how grandma told her it would help to write down her thoughts, and that the journal was a present for her sixth birthday.
There were only a few sentences about how her mommy and daddy were with the angels looking down on her and helping grandma and grandpa take care of her. No mention was made of the accident, and Darien figured she must have been in such shock she had been fortunate enough not to relive the nightmare.
Years would go by with no entries or just a few sentences mentioning gifts she received on special occasions, or events that happened to her grandparents. For a diary, she rarely talked about herself until the end of middle school, and then sporadic entries began appearing about friends that were going steady with boys. They seemed to break up just as sporadically. Darien smiled to himself as he remembered those unsure years when girls were no longer the enemy.
There was a boy named Mike who had invited her to an end of the school year party, and at some point they had played a game where the couples went into a dark closet for a kiss. Sasha wrote how nervous and excited she was. Just like her romance novels, she expected the awkward twelve year old would sweep her into his strong arms and passionately declare his undying love.
Darien chuckled at the heavier writing, indicating her anger and frustration as she gripped the pencil. Apparently, as soon as the light in the closet went out, the gallant young gentleman told her, ‘We really don’t havta’ do this, if you don’t want to.’ Sasha’s interpretation of the boy’s remark was that he obviously did not care enough about her to kiss her, and she stormed out of the closet, up the stairs, and walked home without saying goodbye to her friends.
It was almost two years before she made another entry. Darien took a sip of cabernet and read on. She was now in high school and most of her friends were dating, if not already having ‘done the deed’. Sasha tried out for the cheerleading squad with her friends. They got picked; she did not. The coach said she lacked the necessary enthusiasm to egg the crowd on. Her friends dated players on the team, and after a few unsuccessful attempts trying to set Sasha up, it became obvious her friends were moving on to that special circle sports jocks and their popular girlfriends inhabited. Sasha was left behind.
The next entry was when she was a senior. There was no mention of her former friends, and Darien had the feeling she spent the last two years in school pretty much alone. The president of the math club invited her to prom and her grandma made her accept.
Sasha kept a cutout from a magazine tacked on the bulletin board in her room of a model in a beautiful gown. To Sasha, she was the perfect woman. She could not believe her grandma m
ade her an exact replica of the dress and expected her to wear it in front of her classmates. It was like trying to put a gold necklace on a rag doll, pointing out its flaws. Sasha thanked her grandma because she knew the material was expensive and could not imagine the time it must have taken to make the velvet creation. There was no way she could fake the illness she had planned and back out.
Lawrence picked her up for the dance and stuck her twice pinning on the orchid. When they arrived at the school, the beginning of the night was not too bad, and the prom committee had done a real good job fixing up the gymnasium. Lawrence attentively brought her punch from the unspiked bowl, and they spent most of the time with the other members of the math club while Sasha pasted a frozen smile on her face as the group deliberated and joked about calculus equations. It sounded like a foreign language to her.
She noticed Lawrence’s eyes would wander over to Betty, the class valedictorian. The pretty girl looked bored as she stood by the wall with her date. She was stuck with the class nerd, a clumsy guy who was always dropping things and embarrassing himself. Lawrence invited them to join their group, and when the nerd left to get refreshments Betty admitted her parents made her take him so he would not have to go to the prom alone. Her father worked for the nerd’s family.
Lawrence asked Sasha if she minded if he danced with Betty. He had not even asked Sasha to dance yet. Naturally, she told them to have fun, and when the nerd came back and saw them, he frowned and asked Sasha to dance. He stepped on her feet continuously as he held her at arm’s length. Lawrence offered Betty and the nerd a ride home. The nerd was dropped off first and Sasha next. She told her grandma what a great time she had and how everyone said her gown was the prettiest.
Darien carefully tore out a page. It was a picture of Sasha and her date standing in a small living room. The orchid was pinned onto her dress crooked, and his beautiful Sasha had a tight mechanical smile. The dress was a stunning, ageless style.
There were a few short sentences about her grandpa’s death and some entries about how depressed her grandma was. There was a one-sentence entry about how her grandma had gone to join grandpa, and she was happy they were together again.
A few months later, there was another short entry. She finally made it to college after selling the house and barely clearing up the financial mess from her grandpa’s illness and the funerals. It left Sasha with two thousand dollars to get established on her own.
She got a job at the ‘Lion’s Den’ as a waitress and there was a cute bartender named Brian working behind the bar. Sasha scribbled an excited entry that Brian wanted to teach her to bartend because the other bartender was graduating and leaving the area.
The entries became more frequent as she discussed how Brian taught her how to make drinks, and he told her how to smile and talk saucily so they could make better tips. Eventually, they were dating and Sasha was thrilled to finally have a real boyfriend.
Her mention of the first time they had sex caused Darien laugh out loud. She had finally found her knight in shining armor, and when they made it back to his apartment after their date, he threw her onto the couch and passionately kissed her. He practically ripped her clothes off her. Brian was surprised to be her first, but it did not stop him from, in her words, ‘ravishing her’.
Over the years, the entries mentioned some of the outlandish things he began having her do. Most of his ideas seemed to center around putting Sasha in uncomfortable situations in public. It usually started with him saying how boring work was, and why don’t they…and then she wrote how the little games secretly excited her.
Darien thought about this. It was probably the reason she was worried she might be an exhibitionist. In reality, she was doing what she thought would please Brian, and her enjoyment stemmed from pleasing her boyfriend, not from humiliating herself in front of others. Brian had inadvertently begun Sasha’s training to want to please even if she had to perform in public. and Darien was fairly sure that was why the ceremony with the others present did not upset her more. She already had two years of training in sexual public proclivities to fall back on.
She was making plans to settle on a degree that would allow her to work close to where Brian was moving after graduation. There were a lot of entries about how perfect he was and how in love with him she was, and then came the bitter entry about his deceit with her roommate. It was the last entry in the journal.
Darien closed the small book and sipped his wine, reflecting on the sad story that had been Sasha’s life. A smile curled his lip as he realized he knew exactly how to make sure he captured his submissive’s heart, and he picked up the phone and called Kate.
Darien spent an hour on the phone with William and Eric, and both men enthusiastically agreed to help Darien continue his training with Sasha. Details and times were discussed, and the last call he made was to make reservations with his travel agent.
Edmond was sitting in the ‘Warden’s Office’, scribbling notes on a legal pad. “It looks like you have everything pretty well set in place.”
“The entertainment needs to be fine tuned. I’ve given you a list of bands that seemed to work out better than others, but I still didn’t have time to get a real handle on which genre to settle on. Also, I didn’t make a decision on head bartender or cocktail waitress. That little blonde, Shelly, needs to go. I left you the security tape showing her swiping tips off the other waitresses’ tables.”
“I don’t know why they do that shit. Where do they think they’re going to go and make the money they do here? It looks like you got all the routine things under control for me.”
“I had plenty of time while I tried to figure out how to find Sasha and get her down here. Now, if I can only convince her to stay.”
“Darien, I think you’re more concerned about this than you should be. It’s obvious the young woman is crazy about you. If you ask me, I think you’re more concerned about your ability to train her correctly, and that, my friend, is rubbish. Stop second-guessing your methods. I even sent you Katie for a few days when I first acquired her.”
“I still don’t know why you did that. She cried for three days straight until you picked her up again, and I’m not sure what she got out of my training.”
Edmond smiled wickedly. “I wanted to make sure she wanted me and not just any Master. I figured if I had her spend some time with the ‘pro’, I’d know for sure.”
“You can be a bastard, Edmond,” Darien chuckled.
“Maybe, Darien, but we did agree it was a good idea to put the girls with two other Masters for training to help round things out,” Edmond reminded him. “So, am I spending time with your sub?” Edmond rubbed his hands together.
“Sorry, Edmond. Between her friendship with Katie and the time she’s spent with you, I don’t think it would be productive. I only have a week before we’re leaving,” Darien reminded him.
“Who gets her first?” Edmond was curious as to whether Darien would send his girl to Eric, who would most certainly drop her into the kinky, fetish world he and Melinda shared, or William, who was into a definite slave relationship with Veronica. Darien had always been the wild card who enjoyed all spectrums of the lifestyle, though he probably leaned towards William’s regime. Edmond felt that he and Kate had a more cultured, respectful relationship.
“I chose Eric because the chaos will keep her unbalanced. Sasha tends to analyze things too much, and with William, hell, half of his training is isolation, and she doesn’t need the hours to imagine the ridiculous ideas she has. I’m only giving them two days with her. I figure William can bring her back down from whatever nutty plans Eric has.” None of them really had any idea what Eric and Melinda were into.
“I’m sure William will make the most of them,” Edmond chuckled. “I expect Veronica will too. She’s the perfect choice to teach Sasha the pleasures of female sex. Did you know she suggested to William they add another woman sub to their relationship?”
“He told me this morning, and a
fter seeing how Ronnie was with Sasha, I told him he should give it some thought,” Darien said.
“I have enough on my platter keeping Katie challenged. I couldn’t imagine dealing with two. Of course, William’s different. He’ll just send one to a cage or tell them to occupy each other if it gets on his nerves.”
Darien nodded in agreement. “Well, if you’re settled I’m taking off. I’ll stop in while Sasha’s gone to see how things are going. If you want me to fire Shelly, she’s not on until Friday and I can be here to do it.”
Edmond’s cock twitched at the thought of delivering the cruel blow to the girl, and how he was going to stretch out the moment. He had already planned to drop veiled hints she was up for the head waitress job, and rip the rug out from under her when she smugly showed up in the office. “No, I’ll handle it.”
Darien smiled, knowing exactly what was going through Edmond’s mind. “Like I said before, you can be a real bastard, Edmond.” Darien waved and headed back home.
When Darien walked into the house, Clara called out him, “Sasha’s out in the woods, probably at the clearing. She left about half an hour ago.”
“Would you get me a bottle of Zinfandel and a couple of glasses? I’ll be right back.”
Clara smiled when Darien returned with a long whip coiled around a clip on his belt. “Have fun, and don’t do anything I wish I was doing.”
Darien rounded the corner through some trees and gazed at Sasha. He laid down the wine and glasses to watch her. She had on the sundress he had put out for her to wear that day, and her sneakers were off to the side as she walked barefoot in the soft grass, idly picking wildflowers. Her hair was in a braid and it swept the ground when she leaned over. He shook his head and strode into the meadow. “Strip,” he ordered.
Sasha was so jolted by his unexpected appearance that she almost fell over backwards. “Darien?” A big smile lit her face.
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