“I’ve been locked in a closet for an hour, made to pee in a bucket, spent the night chained to my bed, sometimes strapped down so I can hardly move… that was Jacob’s style. I submit because it completes who I am. I’m satisfied feeling so small. I’m a songwriter with a huge, necessary ego for half my life. I’m small the rest of the time and wish it were more often.” She was almost out of breath. “Should I go on?”
“If you want to,” he said.
“What is this? Some kind of therapy?” she said her words turning sarcastic.
“You’ve been wanting to tell me theses things, so I’m here to listen,” he said.
“With a deadpan expression on your face?” she said. He was making her angry seeing him so unmoved.
“Does that offend you?” he wondered.
“What offends me is that I want to know what you think of me. I pour my guts out to you and you’re there taking it all in.” She wanted to cry, but held back.
“It’s kind of a submissive thing, don’t you think? Pouring your guts out to a man that listens impassively.”
The remark unsettled her. “Yes, I suppose it is.” She was oddly suspicious hearing this from him. Then there was the feeling in her groin, the one so closely associated with the magic of a dominant man’s hold over her. She felt it with Jacob, and with a half-dozen other men throughout her life; and on several occasions this no-nonsense attorney made that magic well within.
“I’m not without my motives, Eden,” he said. “I am much more than you believe me to be. I don’t go to clubs. My array of leather and implements is quite limited. I don’t wear my choice of sexual lifestyle like a cloak for all to see. But, I have, all my life, dominated the women I love—to their satisfaction and mine. The fact that I don’t have a woman in my life right now is because Leanna, the love of my life for six years, died in a plane crash three years ago. I haven’t had the will to begin again after that loss. But I must admit, you’ve restored my faith in that aspect of myself that brings me such abiding pleasure.
“The truth is, I have an astounding urge to dominate you just as you desire to be dominated. And if that’s what you want, I’d gladly answer your need.”
The blood drained from Eden’s face and her deep blue eyes glassed over. Her palpitating heart seemed to jump into her throat. The shock registered deeply. Feelings of humility and gratitude welled to the surface. It was a striking moment between them. As the breeze caressed Eden’s face like a tender hand and ruffled Adam’s hair as it danced around them, they waited for Eden to speak, but there were no word. “Perhaps you need some time to think. A rash decision would be unwise.” He smiled briefly, rose from his chair and opened the patio door to go inside. “I’ll show you to your room if you like. Then I have to get back to the city.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I have three court times tomorrow and one the day after—that one’s for you.”
Just what she needed, plenty of time to consider his amazing offer.
***
Though Adam’s country cottage was decorated by a woman, there were distinctive signs of Adam’s hand everywhere she turned—the dark polished wood, the leather sofas and chairs, and the fine art, all mellow and erotic, enhancing the walls. Traits of a woman’s presence could be seen in the baskets of silk flowers—three of them about the downstairs rooms. There was the delicate Czech egg on the coffee table, and the pale peach walls, and an intricately woven rug of wildflowers before the sofa. Eden had no doubt that Leanna’s essence would continue wherever she turned.
There was a master bedroom upstairs with a four poster wrought-iron bed. Steely and imposing, it was the centerpiece of a room that had little more than its gleaming hardwood floors and an unadorned dresser. A large tapestry covered nearly one wall, giving the space texture and warmth with rich-hued shades of gold and green, scarlet and rose. There was little feminine in this bedroom. But there were two distinctive implements hanging on the wall nearest to the tapestry, a cane and a long deerskin flogger—delicious opposites. Adam allowed Eden a cursory glance of his bedroom, then showed her the other bedroom across the hall, her room. It too was uncommonly sparse. The double bed in the center had four posts like the master’s room, though this bed was made of plain blonde wood, a recreation of the 1950’s style in a more modern form. A chair, a stool, and again, an unadorned dresser lined one wall. The lone hint of a feminine presence was the straw sun hat hanging above the bed. Behind one door was a small closet with the sundresses that Adam promised Eden. The other door led to a white-tiled bathroom—a bathtub, commode and pedestal sink, all gleaming as though they’d never been used.
“Find something in here to wear,” he said. “You can hand over all the black to me if you’re worried about retreating to your gloomy melancholy garb. I can keep it for you until you’re ready to move on.”
“I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” she replied. “I’m finding the black a little drab myself.”
He didn’t smile, but remained pleasant.
“These were Leanna’s clothes?” she asked, as she peeked inside the closet again.
“What I kept.”
“Why would you keep them?”
He shrugged. “I don’t have an answer for that,” he said. “I’ll make lunch while you get settled.”
Adam left and she sighed. Sinking down on the side of the bed, she held one post in her hand as though it could comfort her. Would he tie her in this room? Would he whip her in the room next door? Would he lock her in the closet with her hands bound behind her? Would she give herself to him? Let him fill the unfilled need? It never seemed to be a choice with Jacob. With Miss Angel it was obsession taking control that sent her to the woman to be abused. Adam Cady seemed much too civil. She could hardly imagine what it would be like. Though what she wondered most was if he would make love to her.
***
Adam left her to sundresses, the mahogany spinet piano, a hundred pages of new sheet music that were quickly strewn about the floor, and the decision about submitting to him. He was kind and friendly, and in leaving not at all dictatorial sounding—even as much as he’d already been with her. Only his parting shot reminded her of what loomed before her with this man, left to tease and manipulate her mind while he was gone.
“You leave here, I will whip you, whether you want more or not,” he said with his eyes looking as penetrating as she’d ever seen them. “And I won’t be kind, Eden Rose.”
“Yes, sir,” she said giving him a friendly smile and a nervous salute. She was wearing one of Leanna’s dresses, a soft purple, almost lavender. With lots of fabric to gather in her hands, it swished around her ankles when she walked—Leanna had obviously been a taller woman. The dress was sensuous and seductive with deep armholes and cut low front and back. It would be pretty daring for a public wearing, but then, she wasn’t going to be anywhere public for a while—so she assumed.
While he was gone, Eden reflected on Adam’s offer.
The first night, she wandered into his bedroom, thinking as she crossed through the doorway that she was one step closer to the man behind the pestering proposition. Afraid of touching anything, she walked about the bed and dreamed of him there with her. For a time, she stood before a full-length mirror beside the dresser, gazing at herself in the lavender sundress. There was something strange about herself this way. On the inside she felt sensuous and graceful, but her hair and eyes looked as though she was still wearing black, making a statement about her dark soul. Annoyed by the disharmony, she tore the dress away and tossed it to the bed. A feeling of disrespectful rebellion suddenly took hold. She began masturbating. It was a flagrant act of disobedience—though he’d said nothing about being in his room. At the very least she thought of it as a slap on his face. Didn’t he know what she wanted? How much more could she tell him about her need to be dominated? Did he really need her invitation? Why couldn’t he just assume? He wasn’t being the good dominant to let her control this much. Ah, if he�
�d only been there.
Seeing the flogger and cane behind her in the mirror she imagined them used against her insubordinate flesh. Slapping her rear, she relished the reminders of darkness the not-so-subtle sting brought to mind. The harder she slapped, the more she thought of him slapping her and the twisted smile that would appear out of his mood. She made snakey erotic gyrations before the glass thinking of how he’d use these rooms to manipulate her. His room would be saved for special occasions when she was very good—or perhaps very bad. She pinched her nipples thinking of that. The flesh of her breasts pulled out taut from her torso looked rightly tortured this way. Her room, her slave quarters, was where she’d live the other half of her life, where he’d start off tying her, where he might consent to join her in bed before she earned the right to join him in his, where she’d first be corrected for her crimes of defiance. He was a much more calculating dominant that Jacob, Jacob so often rash. She wondered how she’d like Adam’s brand of cruelty.
The flogger and cane loomed ominously behind her, begging her to use them. Her heart beat fast thinking how much she wanted to feel them next to her skin, to run the crop through her pussy, and the flogger’s soft talons all over her naked body. With a happy smile, she bolted around the bed and had them both, doing exactly as her mind envisioned, letting them speak to her fantasy as she first made love to the flogger. Boldly, she pressed the thick wood handle into her cunt and let it fill her full. She squirmed on it as the leather dangled against her legs. Removing it, she licked it dry of her juices, and replaced it with a hand at her cunt, fingers diving into the wet, while the flogger made excursions about her nakedness. How she wished he was there to rear back and let it fly hard against her. Though it would hardly create much pain at all, it would bless her instead. She thought to press the handle into her ass. Dropping to her hands and knees before her fiery reflection, she accomplished that with just the juices from her cunt to lubricate its path.
The handle was raw and biting, sharp so she wondered if she’d bleed. But of course she wouldn’t, she was used to being well-worked from behind, in the ass, beyond the sphincter, as much anally raped as anything. Cold and crude. Doing it before the mirror was a rare treat—the luxury of a woman free enough from a man’s control to take a few minutes of lust to call her own. Ah, but alone in a master’s room with no master around to see the trashy display … would that he were with her now. Then he’d see her darkness and know who she was. If he had any doubts, he’d see it right here. She worked the handle/dildo deep until she would scream if it penetrated anymore. She wanted a cum, something nasty shooting through her. If only she could cane herself.
Snatching the thin slicing implement from the floor with her teeth she gazed at the animal passion her eyes discharged. Then pressing her shoulders to the bare wood she began to work her cunt with her hand, thinking all the while that Adam was seeing this vision somewhere in his mind’s eye. The cum came swift once she’d engaged her clit. Rocking with the spasms while driving the ass prick even deeper, she could feel the pain wash away her trepidation and give her a taste of a more familiar Eden Rose.
***
When Adam returned to his country house, he was immediately crabby about sheet music lying around the piano, distressed to see a sink of unwashed dishes, and even more annoyed when he found the bed in her room unmade. Those were only the most egregious of the dozen things out of order.
“I didn’t expect you,” were the first words out of Eden’s mouth when she noticed his disapproval.
“Don’t ever “expect” me, just assume I’m always here,” he said. “Live that way and you won’t piss me off. Now make it right.”
“But I’m in the middle of a verse,” she tried to object.
“Then sing it to yourself, but get this handled,” he nearly barked at her. His voice was sharp, his biting eyes penetrating her with their irritation. Both sent her quickly on her way.
While she scrambled like a good servant to right all her wrongs Adam retreated upstairs. After his house was back in order she made him dinner. It was a struggle since she wasn’t much of a cook, though he seemed to enjoy the tossed salad and baked potato.
Their conversation was light, filled with a few pieces of information regarding her attempts to sever ties with Jacob. He was pretty certain the song-writing contracts would be voided. Jacob wanted a settlement, which Adam planned to hammer out. Eden was willing to let him make the decisions about it assuming he had much better knowledge of such things than she did. Besides, there was plenty of money. If paying off Jacob made it easier to be done with him, she didn’t care what she lost in money, just what she’d gain in peace. She wanted him gone, now more than ever when she harbored hope that there was another chapter in her submissive life on the verge of being written.
Once they were finished with their meal, he read legal briefs and then a novel. For a while Eden played for him the music she’d written that day and then began to toy with the thoughts on the book. Still, she was preoccupied with the growing energy between them. She felt guilty trespassing so shamelessly into his room. She was tired. Sleepy, but afraid to go to bed. When he finally decided to retire for the night, he was about to leave her in the living room with Eden still feeling too timid to rise without some word from him.
“You going to come or not?” he asked as he extinguished lights.
She jumped up realizing that she was so drowsy she was practically asleep. They mounted the stairs, Eden following close behind him. He’d be in his room, she in hers.
That night, rather than think of floggings and the whisk of the cane, she thought of them making love, of simple kisses, his lips brushing against the back of her neck and the massage of his hands along her groin.
chapter six
Adam was with her in the morning, eating breakfast on the summer patio by the trees. Eden could think of nothing more lushly feminine in the midst of this jungle garden than a simple meal of coffee, scones and steaming scrambled eggs. It was an untamed place, Adam’s garden not as well-manicured as his house, intentionally so. Perennials bloomed wild, with rivers of color sweeping amidst the color green, which was still the most predominant hue in this summery place. In Leanna’s floral print dress, Eden felt a little more than an extension of her surroundings. She hadn’t worn anything so womanly in years, perhaps ever. This dress, unlike the lavender, buttoned up the front and she left many buttons undone, deciding being naughty suited her. Her nipples beneath poked through the thin fabric as she leaned back in the chair. Devilishly drunk on this morning feast, she opened her thighs, the skirt on either side falling away to show much of her legs—though not enough to make Adam know it was deliberate. She had a flair for the accidental when she flirted with men.
“Are you sleeping well since you arrived?” he asked.
“Yes, the bed’s very comfortable. I put a glass of wildflowers in the room though. It seems a little plain.”
“That’s by design,” he said, and he opened his morning paper.
She guessed right, she mused as she sipped from the cooling coffee mug in her hand … she should probably have used the rose china cups for their morning meal … they would have been much more graceful in hand than the crockery they were drinking from. The moment inspired the actress in her! She could see herself as if on stage, making herself into a gentle woman of refined and impeccable tastes. A fly buzzed her head and she waved it aside, then poured another full cup of coffee in Adam’s empty mug. For the moment he was preoccupied with a column in the Wall Street Journal.
While he read, she ate. The scone was full of fresh blueberries and the eggs were warm and smooth sliding down her throat. She looked toward the vines at the back of the garden where the raspberries and blackberries climbed the broken wood fence. It took a woman of sensuous tastes to create the pleasure of this garden. Just as in the house where Leanna’s imprint remained, she made her mark on this landscape, the flowers so carefully planted to weave color and foliage in an intricat
e, and what appeared unplanned, disarray. It was a subtle design that suggested the mood and spirit of the woman. Eden thought of it like music, even simple harmonies required a master’s design behind them. Here in Adam’s domain he would be the author, Leanna the artful implementer of his grander visions. Perhaps tomorrow she’d perch Leanna’s sunhat on her head and stroll to the back of the property to see if she could feel what Adam’s submissive lover once felt.
“So,” he suddenly looked up from his paper, “were you in my room while I was gone?”
She was taken off guard, knocked abruptly from her fanciful daydream.
“Your room?” she repeated as she tried to find a suitable answer. Jacob always said she was a lousy liar. Having already unsuccessfully lied to Adam she doubted she’d get away with even a little fib. With that thought there was a strange shot of fear and guilt, enough to wonder if Adam could sense it. “Yes, I was,” she admitted at last. “I was strolling about the house. I hope you don’t mind. Just trying to get comfortable with this place. I didn’t disturb anything.”
“You’re right. Nothing was out of place,” he said. “So tell me what you did there?”
“Other than looking around?”
“Other than looking around,” he repeated.
Guilt was such a terrible thing rearing an ugly face inside her. “You sense some tawdry tale?” she wondered, trying to sound amused and nonchalant. It was the best act she could accomplish. For the moment the bright sun slipped behind a cloud and the atmosphere around them darkened. The shadow over Adam’s face became more intense than the one naturally created by the arbor of morning glory above them.
Adam & Eden Page 6