This little scene had never been a part of Jason’s fantasies. Simone stood next to him at his kitchen sink, wearing nothing but his shirt. They washed the dishes. Well, she washed. He dried.
In his mind he’d never gotten much further past the visions of a submissive beautiful woman kneeling in front of him or bent over his knee for a spanking or cropping. He really should have added the half-naked girl doing his dishes to the fantasy.
“You just can’t do it, can you?” Simone asked him, a little smile on her lips.
“Do what?”
“Sit and watch while a woman does your dishes for you? You have to help?”
“You don’t want me to help?” he asked.
“I like the help,” she said in that sweet little voice of hers. “But you cooked dinner. Only fair I do the dishes.”
“Spaghetti and toast isn’t that hard to cook,” he said.
“What’s the point of having your own personal slave if you don’t let her, you know, slave in the kitchen for you?”
Jason laughed softly. She asked a fair question.
“I’d be a dead man standing here if I ever got it in my head to sit and let a woman in my house wait on me hand and foot. Nothing infuriates Dad more than men being lazy while women work. If Mom or Aimee were working, so were we. Men don’t sit while women are still standing. House rules.”
“He sounds like a very interesting guy, your dad,” Simone said as she passed him a clean wet plate to dry.
“He’s a good man,” Jason said. “Just not always easy to get along with.” Jason put the plate in the cabinet. “I keep thinking how disappointed he’d be in me if he knew about…” Jason sighed. “All this.”
“None of his business,” Simone said.
“His kids are his business.”
“His kids are adults,” Simone said. “Once you’re out of the house and paying your own bills, it’s none of his business.” She passed him another plate. “For the record, I’m not disappointed in you. I’m pleased as punch.”
He smiled to himself. “You liked all that, did you?”
“You know I did. Sir.”
She blushed a little and he nearly threw her down on the kitchen table and had her again just at the sight of that blush.
“I’m not fishing for compliments,” he said. “I’ve never done anything like this before. Had no idea what I was doing up there.”
He felt weak admitting all that but it wasn’t like Simone didn’t already know he was new at this.
Simone shut off the water and dried her hands. She turned around and met his eyes.
“I canceled my flight and rebooked it for Thursday. You really think I’d do that if I wasn’t enjoying this with you?”
He smiled. “I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “But I…can I ask you something?”
“Of course,” she said. They’d finished all the dishes but Jason was in no hurry to leave the kitchen. He liked the sight of her in his shirt standing with her back to the sink. “Ask me anything.”
“Am I doing this right?”
“Doing what?”
He shrugged. “This? The master/slave whatever this is?”
“Does it not feel right to you?”
“You know that saying—‘This ain’t my first rodeo’?” he asked.
“Of course,” she said.
“This is my first rodeo,” Jason said. Simone laughed. “No, I mean it. I got no idea what I’m doing. So you tell me.”
“I’m a pro-sub,” Simone said. “I submit for an hour or two here and there to men who pay me. I know how to do a lot of kink, and I enjoy a lot of kink. I’ve dated kinky people and slept with kinky people, but I’ve never been the real slave of someone I was in a relationship with. I mean, not that you and I are in a relationship. I just…I mean, you’re not paying me.”
“Not enough money in the world to pay you for what you’re giving me.”
“This is what I think,” she said. “If you’re enjoying it and I’m enjoying it, then we’re doing it right.”
“I’m not enjoying it,” Jason said. “I’m loving every second of it.”
She walked over to him where he stood with his back to the counter. She put her hands on his shoulders and looked up into his eyes.
“What?” he asked.
“I was hoping if I stood within kissing distance, you’d kiss me,” she said. “You say something like that to a girl, and she’ll probably want to be kissed after.”
“Is that so?”
“It’s so.”
“Well, then,” he said. He pulled her to him and kissed her. He had a feeling he’d never get tired of kissing this girl. She knew exactly how to let a man lead in a kiss and all the right sounds to make him feel like a man. He lingered over her lips a good long time and when the kiss ended he couldn’t bring himself to let her go. He held her to him, arms wrapped around her back, her head against his chest right where it belonged.
“I never got this far in the fantasy,” he said. “I should’ve thought a little farther past the bedroom. You’re supposed to be my little slave and I’m supposed to be your big bad master. And yet I can’t even let you do my dishes for me. But I can’t see myself ordering you around every minute of the day, either.”
“There’s all different sorts of ways to be a master,” Simone said. “I’ve known nice ones and mean ones and silly ones and sexy ones. Ones who do it an hour or two a week and the ones who do it 24/7 because they can’t get off any other way…”
“So you don’t have to do it all the time?” Jason asked.
“My friend Mistress Nora, she’s the dominatrix I told you about. And her master, Mister S, he’s this guy.” She held out her arm to display the cross tattoo. “I’m close with them both. Anyway, the way she explained it was that for her, it was like being a surgeon.”
“A surgeon?”
“A surgeon isn’t always performing surgeries. But a really good surgeon is almost always on-call. So even if Doctor Surgeon is home with his kids or asleep or in the shower or on a date, if his pager goes off and he’s needed in the operating room to save someone’s life, then in a split second, he goes from being Dad back to being Doctor Surgeon. Like that.” Simone snapped her fingers. “And that’s how Nora said it worked for them. She wasn’t ‘on’ all the time, but she was ‘on-call’ all the time. When Mister S needed her or wanted her to serve him, she immediately dropped what she was doing and went and served him.”
“Yeah, but what if she couldn’t? What if she was in another state or working?”
“She said he respected her enough to not demand that she serve him when she had something really important going on. And even then, if she was, you know, in another state when he needed her, she’d call me, and I’d take care of business.”
“Take care of business?”
“He’s a sadist,” she said. “If he needed to whip somebody, well, he needed to whip somebody. And if he needed it bad enough, he wasn’t too picky about who that somebody was. That’s not true. He was really picky. He just happened to pick me,” she said with pride.
Jason laughed. “So you were the substitute slave?”
“I was. And you better believe I had a lot of competition for that job.”
“Good-looking guy, huh?”
“Not bad if you like incredibly handsome, six-foot-four blond men.”
“Not my type,” he said. “Guess he was yours if you got a tattoo for him.”
“Keep up the good work, sir, and you’ll earn some ink, too,” she said.
“Good to have a goal.” He pulled her closer to him.
“Of course…if you showed up at the club with your crop in your hand, there’d be a line around the block of subs, slaves, and masochists waiting their turn for you.”
“And what’s the address of this club of yours?” Jason asked.
She looked up at him, eyes narrowed and glaring.
“Oh, look at that—Spanky’s got a jealous streak,” he said. “I like that.”
“I saw you first,” she said, face scrunched up in determination.
“But you’re my slave. I’m not your slave. Right?”
“Yes, master,” she said, grinning.
“So I can play with anyone I want but you have to do everything I say?”
“No, master.” She shook her head.
“No? Did you tell me no? You’re going to get punished for that now.”
He grabbed the dish towel off the counter. It was damp enough that when he twirled it and smacked her thigh with it, she let out a yelp that probably spooked the horses.
“Oh, shit,” she said, laughing. “That stung like a bee.”
“What did I say about swearing?”
He swatted her with the damp towel again. She jumped a foot in the air, laughing and squealing at the same time.
“You keep doing that and I won’t need to get a tattoo for you. I’ll have a permanent scar,” she said, trying to snatch the towel from his hand. She was laughing but he wasn’t.
“Did I hit you too hard?” he asked, suddenly cold all over.
“What? No. I mean, it stung, but I’m okay.”
“You said I was going to leave a scar on you.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I was kidding.”
“Let me see it, Simone,” he said, his voice so stern it almost scared him.
She looked surprised, almost scared, but she did as he’d ordered. She turned and lifted his shirt up to show him her upper right thigh.
Jason knelt down behind her and looked at the red mark he’d left on her leg. It was an angry red welt an inch long with a little bit of blood rushing to the surface.
“Jesus, I broke your skin,” he said.
“So?”
“So?” he repeated. “Are you kidding me? You’re bleeding.”
She shrugged. “Happened before.”
“Not with me.”
“Yeah, but—”
“I have some antibiotic ointment and Band-Aids in the bathroom. I’ll go get it.”
He got up and left her in the kitchen. He heard her calling his name and ignored it. He nearly ran through his bedroom to get to the bathroom where he found his first aid kit. As he was heading back down he nearly ran into Simone coming up the steps.
“I got the stuff,” he said. “Let’s go in here and I’ll clean you up.”
She looked at him like he’d gone crazy but when he pointed at the door to the guest room, she went inside without a protest.
Simone lay on her stomach on the bed. Jason opened the first aid kit and set it up on the nightstand.
“I’ve got alcohol wipes,” he said. “It’ll sting a little.”
“I can handle it,” she said.
She didn’t wince or flinch when he started cleaning the bloody welt. He did, though. The whole area around the welt was bright red and he could already tell she was going to have a bruise.
“I’m not sure a band aid will stay on that part of your leg very well,” Jason said. “But we can try.”
“Is it still bleeding?”
“Looks like it’s stopped.”
“Then I don’t need a Band-Aid.”
“You’ll need some ice, though. I’ve got an ice pack around here—”
“Jason—”
“Or I can run to the drugstore for—”
“Jason.”
Simone turned over and sat up. She met his eyes and said nothing.
Jason tossed the antibiotic ointment tube back onto the nightstand.
Simone smiled at him. “I’ve had worse,” she said. “Way worse.”
“I know,” he said softly. “But I’ve…I’ve never done worse.”
She reached for his hand, and he went down on his knees in front of her and rested his head in her lap.
“Sorry, baby,” he said.
“It’s fine, Jason. It really is.”
Simone lightly scored his naked back and shoulders with her fingernails. He closed his eyes and tried to enjoy it. He hadn’t had a girlfriend since before his career-ending injury put him in the hospital for a month. And that was nearly eighteen months ago. Long time since he’d had a good backscratching.
“Can I tell you something about women?” Simone asked.
“Tell me anything you want,” he said.
“This might blow your mind a little, but I think you need to know the secret about us.”
“What’s the secret?”
“Here it is. It’s a big one. The secret about women is…they’re people.”
Jason looked up at her. “You don’t say.”
“I’m not kidding,” Simone said, not smiling. “We’re people just like men are people.”
“You know I know that, right?”
“I’m not sure you do,” she said. “I think your dad might think women are like, I don’t know, another species. A lot of men do. A lot of men think women are ‘women’ and men are people. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing bad about a father teaching a son not to hit women. Better than the opposite. But I’m not some ideal concept of ‘Woman,’” Simone said, putting “Woman” in finger quotes. “I’m a real, live flesh-and-blood woman. I’m Simone Levine. I’m from New Canaan, Connecticut. My dad’s an insurance exec. My mom’s a history professor. I have a sister five years older who owns a boutique organic pet food store. When I was eighteen, this hot young Wall Street punk I met at a coffee shop tried to shock me by taking me to a kink club on our first and only date. I shocked him by ignoring him the whole time to talk to the sexy French guy who owned the place. Two years later I was working at that club. Look, Jason,” Simone said, smiling down at him. “I think I could go crazy about you pretty fast, but I’m not going to get involved with a guy who treats women like they’ll break if you so much as breathe on them. If you want to respect women, respect the real woman in front of you, not some fake fantasy idea of what woman are supposed to be like. I’m a professional submissive and proud of it. Men—rich, important men—pay me two hundred dollars an hour to flog me, cane me, and whip me. I earn every penny and I love my job. I want you to treat me like your slave, but only if you can also treat me like an adult. You can call me ‘baby’ because it makes me wet. Don’t call me ‘baby’ because you think I’m a child. I’ve gotten hurt worse than this stepping on a Lego. So there.”