by Joey W. Hill
Did he know you're a submissive, Athena? As she reread the simple order, her pulse fluttered in her throat, the same jumpiness happening in her stomach.
I want to fuck you.
Her body had been wound up like a spring when Dale left that night, but her mind had been so muddled, her balance so off center, she hadn't tried to do what he'd told her she could do, within the limits of his instructions. Her body had been on a low hum ever since, a state that became far worse at bedtime. Yet still she'd done nothing about it, hesitant to confront an arousal caused directly by Dale's effect upon her.
As she held his instructions in her hand, her mind running away with imaginings of how the night was going to go, the hum of her body became an urgent purr.
She locked the office door before she went into the private bathroom. Laying the note on the counter, she glanced at herself in the mirror, seeing that telltale flush Lynn had mentioned. Sliding her hand beneath the waistband of her skirt, down into her panties, she found herself wet, where moments before she hadn't been. One note from him, several almost-coarse commands--wear a robe, make a sandwich, have beer--had done that.
That was the power of a good Dominant. He could take a simple thing and create an explosion of response. It made her think of a couple who'd come to the club one night when she was there with Roy. It had been the woman's first time, but her boyfriend, the Dom, had been highly experienced. When she was looking around nervously, he'd put a hand on her shoulder. Placement of his palm had been precise, the juncture of shoulder and throat, his forefinger against her carotid, the others wrapped firmly over her collarbone. He'd leaned in, murmured two words, delivered with a direct glance. "Sit down."
Athena had been close enough to discern the words, but more importantly, she'd seen the look on the woman's face. It was as if all those worries and doubts vanished, all the scattered threads suddenly twisted together into an arrow that pointed directly at him for everything she needed for things to be okay. Her face had eased, her gaze lowered, and she sat down on the couch, her ankles crossed like a proper lady, her hands folded in her lap, back straight, obviously a posture he required from her. He'd touched her hair, warm approval in his face. When she dared a glance up, Athena had seen adoration and joy in her expression. Surrender.
She sat down in the wicker chair in the corner of the large bathroom, bracing her feet on the garden tub. Caressing her labia, she moved her fingers up to her clit, tugged on it. That first touch made her suck in a breath, arch at the dense wave of sensations. But stoking her arousal and achieving a climax were different matters. It really was so much easier with her vibrator, and . . . oh crap, she was using her wrong hand. She switched, and that of course made it more awkward. She had to go slow, be more precise with her movements, but her body was eager, needy.
She thought of Dale's expression when he'd told her she could give herself relief like this. She thought of him being here, watching her. He would sit on the edge of the tub, thighs spread in that casual male way, maybe a hand braced against one of them. He'd put himself between her spread legs so she had to spread them wider, so he could watch every movement of her fingers, the way her labia got slicker, how her cunt sucked on her fingers when she pushed them inside herself.
His gaze on her would be sharp as a laser. With Willow that night, he'd been thick and hard, the denim molded over that tempting bar of steel. Some of the Doms wore untucked shirts so as not to reveal their state to the sub. He had been deliciously unconcerned about it.
She thought about his arrival tonight, what he might wear, what they might do that would get him aroused like that. What he would do to her to make himself that way.
It was a titillating shift of perspective, and she responded to it, her hips lifting, the wicker emitting its quiet strawlike noise, which sounded loud as a squeaky door. There were two doors to the bathroom, one leading to the hallway. She'd locked it, but what if one of the staff came by, heard her doing this? But . . . oh God, it felt good. She played her fingers over her damp flesh, body quivering.
She imagined herself in the shoes of the nervous girlfriend, and Dale was the Master who'd told her to sit down. She kept rising up to her touch, getting closer, closer . . . Her gaze strayed to the clock. Six minutes already? Noooo. She was so close . . . she couldn't help herself. She worried about going over his imposed time limit, and that worry grew as her fingers refused to stop. Would seven minutes really be so much worse than six? Oh . . .
The climax rocked her, a tiny, intense thing, not nearly satisfying enough, but enough to have her curling around her hand, pressed between her legs. She breathed hard through the aftershocks. "Oh . . . oh . . ." That syllable became a reassuring mantra while she rocked her body.
It took a little while for her to settle, but when she did, she rose unsteadily, returned to the note on the counter. The air-conditioning vent had tipped it into the thankfully dry sink. There was something written on the back. She squinted at it.
PS--if you bring yourself to climax today, don't wash that hand unless absolutely necessary.
She brought her fingers to her face, inhaled the musky scent of her orgasm. Dominance and submission. She'd been a Domme and now she was trying out submission. It was merely an exercise to see how she liked it. An adventure, like a vacation, where there'd be a beginning and an end, and then she'd come home. Only she wouldn't have pictures, except in her mind.
Why was she lying to herself? She heard Dale ask the question again. Did he know you're a submissive? There'd been a tightness to his voice, as if he might have judged Roy in the wrong if her husband had known that about her. But there was no right or wrong to it. There'd only been love, a love she missed intensely, which conflicted with the strong, pulsing anxiety and need she felt toward tonight. She didn't know how to reconcile it. A part of her knew she should call this off, that it would go badly in the end because she couldn't manage her feelings, couldn't get a proper hold on all of it. But she wouldn't call it off. She wanted it too much.
Leaving the bathroom and returning to her desk, she fitted her hands-free to her ear and dialed her assistant at the office. "Ellen? I need you to do me a favor, when you have time. See what you can find out about Eddie's Junkyard and Dog Shelter, Incorporated. It's local. Not a first priority, but maybe look into it between tasks or next week. Just email me what you find out. Thanks."
There. She could do something with that. A little more settled, she took a breath, sat back down at her desk. Thinking, she opened a drawer, looked at a pair of thin gloves she kept there. Roy had given them to her to wear in the wintertime indoors, when her hands became cold and achy. She wore them to type at her computer. She slipped one on her left hand, a reminder not to wash it. Now she could touch other things, but she'd also retain the scent for Dale. For her Master.
She backed away from the startling thought like an electric shock. What was she doing?
--
Time didn't help settle nerves the way some people thought. In certain situations, the wait made it worse. Throughout the week she'd alternated between a pleasurable kind of excitement and uncertain anxiety. By seven, the latter had taken over. She prepared as he'd ordered, taking off all her clothes, sliding on a robe, brushing out her hair. Athena threaded her fingers through the thick strands, tightened the belt of the robe. It was green with a soft satiny feel, and it clung to her curves. It was also short, just past midthigh. It was something she'd bought herself some time ago for whatever reason. When she'd pulled it out of the closet, it still had tags.
Seven fifty-five. When she removed the glove, she found she'd been correct. She could still smell the lingering scent of her climax on her fingers, the unmistakable scent of her sex. The dampness of her palm intensified it.
The security chime in the lobby told her a vehicle had turned into the drive. She opened and closed those moist palms, and went downstairs. Opening the front door, she left the storm door unlatched. Now she sat down on the padded bench in the foyer. Her
folded stationery, displaying the list of things he'd told her to write down, was next to her. In hindsight, the few pages she'd written didn't feel like enough to start. Not enough structures and rules to keep things moving as slow as they should, but it was too late to change it now. She hadn't brought a pen down with her, so she couldn't scribble a caveat: "All the above are null and void if I completely freak out, like I'm about to do now."
She shook her head at herself and focused what she could see through the open front door. There'd been an old beater truck by the office at the shelter, so this must be his personal use vehicle. He drove a dark blue Ford that looked shiny and less than a couple of years old. She didn't know how much it paid, working as caretaker at a combination junkyard and dog rescue shelter. She assumed he received a pension of some kind from being a SEAL. Whatever the sources of his income, it was apparently enough, but then she'd also seen his place. He kept it clean and neat, but he didn't spend a lot of money on obvious things, and that kind of person usually made a dollar go further than most. Maybe he did floral arrangement as well.
In truth, she knew almost nothing about him. Except that he'd been a SEAL, and that he'd mesmerized her with the way he'd taken over Willow, enough to invite him to her home and ask him to do the same to her.
Maybe this was a midlife crisis, exacerbated by Roy's death. Everyone knew how well midlife crises went. At best, a person looked back on them with chronic embarrassment. At worst, they could destroy lives.
She remembered waking up in Dale's house. She could trust this man. If it went terribly wrong, embarrassment would be her worst punishment. Which simply meant she'd never return to the club, and she'd close this chapter of her life. She could do that.
Her throbbing pulse, her shortness of breath as his door opened, told her that might not be the case. Which escalated her to near panic. She could bolt up from her seat, lock the door and run back up to her room. There was still time.
Her, Athena Francesca Summers, running away from anything? Really? What would Dale do if she did such a thing? She had a vision of him kicking the door down, pursuing her up to her room, pushing her down on the bed, ready to punish, to claim . . .
Okay, she'd just shifted straight to the fantasy of the pirate captain ravishing the beautiful heiress. It didn't help that she could easily imagine him in tight black trousers, shiny boots and a billowing white shirt unlaced at the neck. Technically, he already had the peg leg.
There was a structure for all of this. Controls and safe words. So why did she feel like a bug in a jar?
He'd stepped out of the truck and pulled a tote bag out of the back. After shutting the door, he circled around the grille, coming toward the front stoop. Like the night with Willow, he wore belted dark jeans, snug black T-shirt and his boots. The T-shirt was tucked into the jeans. Unpretentious yet severe, suggesting functional intent.
He saw her through the storm door. What did he see in her face? She wasn't sure herself. He came up onto the porch, stood in front of the glass door. He nodded to the latch.
"Open the door, Athena."
It was unlocked, but she expected he knew that. He was making a point, one that her subconscious understood well. She rose, smoothing the robe over her thighs. She thought of the first board meetings she'd chaired when Roy became sick enough he had to step down. She'd gone from vice chairperson to overseeing the board solo. She'd been nervous then, too. A part of her had wanted to run, to avoid the significance of what standing at the head of that table meant.
If she'd decided it was all too much, turned it over to someone else, board members like Mel would have been happy to step into that gap, take over the company Roy and she had built. But she hadn't run. Even at her lowest moments, she'd known she would take responsibility, be strong. That was who she was.
Crossing to the door, she pushed it open. She took it further, stepping outside, gesturing to him to precede her into her home. An instinctive decision. His gaze swept her and then he stepped in. But he turned to hold the door open for her and draw her into the recesses of the house, a different kind of gesture. One that almost made her smile except the working of her face muscles felt painful.
He closed the main door, flipped the deadbolt. "Athena."
"Sir." Thinking about the others she'd seen at the club, and considering it an attempt to calm her nerves through emulation, she sank to her knees on the marble floor. Looking up the length of his body, she thought he appeared so strong and confident, so sure of himself. Those blue-green eyes were watching everything she was doing, and probably reading her like a manual. Only men didn't read manuals, did they? They proceeded based on mechanical aptitude, an instinctive understanding of how things worked, of what things to tighten, which to loosen.
"I told you I'd be hungry," he said.
She nodded. "I have a plate ready for you. Where would you like to eat?"
"Kitchen." Noticing the pages she'd left on the bench, he picked them up, glancing over her handwriting. "Take me there."
She rose, leading him to the kitchen. As she passed the pictures hung in the foyer, she saw her and Roy's wedding picture, Roy's parents. Why was she doing this?
Because kneeling at his feet hadn't had anything to do with copying the actions of other subs. It had been as natural to her as breathing. She was padding across the floor barefoot. She never went barefoot in the house. Even at night, she wore slippers.
As they entered the kitchen, she gestured to the stools arranged at the island, and then pulled the plate out of the oven. She'd kept the heat on low so the turkey sub she'd made him would stay warm. A side of sliced and fried potatoes went with it. She added a sprig of mint from the arrangement he'd given her, which had a prominent display position on the counter.
"Thank you for the carnations." She turned toward the refrigerator, retrieved a beer. At his house, he'd had Bud Light, so that was what she'd bought, adding a couple more varieties from the wet bar in case he wanted something else. "You didn't have to send me flowers."
After opening the beer, she found a napkin to wrap around the base. He'd placed the bag on the floor next to the island. When he nodded to the counter next to his plate, she put the beer there. He laid his hand on her wrist, holding her. "Did you follow my instructions about writing these? And the other commands I left you?"
She flashed to the memory of being in the bathroom. "Yes. No. I . . . we need to talk about this more." She drew her hand away. "I'm not sure this is going to work. I need things more defined."
He grunted. "Like a car race on a closed track, where the circles are predictable, and when you hit the finish line, the race is over?"
"Don't judge me," she snapped.
Where had that come from? She nearly clapped her hand over her mouth like a cartoon character. She needed to steady her nerves. She needed to . . .
At the shift in his expression, she almost took a step back. "I wouldn't suggest using that tone with me," he said pleasantly. "I'm likely to react exactly as you're hoping I will."
A giant bunny leap of adrenaline from her stomach into her chest made it hard to determine if she was reacting to that with dread or anticipation. With effort--though she was pretty sure she was losing her mind--she found her dignity and laced her fingers together before her. "I apologize for the outburst, Dale. I'm just . . . This is all very new to me."
"I know that. I'll address your concerns, Athena. Right now, I'm eating. Sit here." He pointed to the floor next to him. "And be quiet. I'm going to read your notes."
She hesitated, then closed the distance between them. He hadn't chosen a stool, but was instead standing at a clear spot in front of the island. Sinking to her knees felt like what she was supposed to do. Structure. Order. She was beside his left leg, the one where half of it was missing. She found it hard to wrap her mind around that. He'd shown her the prosthesis, yes, but the man seemed so solid, it was inconceivable that any part of him was absent.
Her gaze slid up to his knee, noticed the diffe
rence between the stretch of the denim around that area and the other one. The left was somewhat thicker, she expected because of whatever socket held the knee. She'd looked up some things about it on the Internet, and knew a removal below the knee was called a transtibial amputation. Those sites said that was better than above the knee, because below the knee had far better prosthesis options, ones that caused less strain on joints and muscles.
She was scrolling down the recalled computer page like an automaton. It was a nervous, bug-in-the-jar reaction again, so she shifted her focus back to Dale. His scent, his nearness, what he was doing.
He was looking down at her notes, but he made an appreciative noise when he took his first bite of the sandwich. The incoherent compliment cracked open a tiny ball of warmth in her stomach. He ate while standing, wiping his fingers on the napkin she provided before he turned each page, reading the back, switching to the next page. His obvious intention to dive straight into the reason he was here tonight tangled more anxious things around that ball of warmth.
Like a session, not a date. What she wanted, yes?
He'd been so matter-of-fact about it, ordering her to kneel next to him. She hadn't really said anything in her notes about the degree of subjugation she wanted. She expected she was okay with what she'd seen him do with Willow, so she hadn't felt the need to spell it out, but maybe he'd tailored his intensity to that specific sub. While Willow was pretty hardcore, maybe Dale's preferences were even more so. She hadn't witnessed his aftercare process. Had he attached a leash to her collar, led her to a booth and had her sit by his knee, idly stroking her hair while he talked to other Doms? She liked that vision, imagined herself there, exhausted, thrilled, sated. Athena wished she could jump to that relaxed, somnolent state. But another part of her didn't want to miss the journey to it. Bug in a jar, bug in a jar . . .
She really wanted to lean against his leg, stroke it with her fingertips. Could she do that on this side? She laid her fingers above his knee, finding the firm, heated flesh that was Dale, then slid down over what she realized was the sleeve for the socket and then the socket. All of it was part of him.