Chapter Eleven

I arrived at Preston’s office in time to watch him shuffle through a pile of papers on his desk, sorting in silence. I figured that he was angry, fuming, so mad he didn’t know what to say and was simply calming himself. But, it didn’t feel that way. I’d been the benefactor of his anger before, and this was so completely passionless that it seemed eerie. Of course, I wanted him to address the “fucking issue” immediately. Get it out of the way, absolve my guilt and pay my penance. If he was going to send me packing, I wanted to know that too. I wanted answers, although I certainly wasn’t going to demand them. Maybe I could still salvage something from the awful mess I’d made. But as I watched him while suffering in the dreadful silence, I was doubtful I could ever redeem myself.

When he finally looked up, his face was as placid as usual, and typically cool, but no more so than normal.

“Tomorrow, Skye, you’ll be accompanying me on a project. The real estate development at Crystal Shores.”

I remembered the account, one of Joel’s, if I was correct. “You need a research assistant there?”

“I need you there.”

“And there’s where you’ll punish me?” I speculated aloud. My anxiety was just not content to wait for him to make a move on the matter of his recent discovery. But my question was another mistake.

“Where I choose to punish you, if I punish you, is my business. I need you at Crystal Shores to take accurate notes. You’re better than any of the office assistants at detail, so you get the nod. We’ll leave here by nine.”

“Yes, sir.”

I had no illusions about the day ahead. Preston wouldn’t let the matter of my screwing Roddy in the basement go unaddressed. He was just waiting for the perfect time. I had little doubt the development site would prove the right place to make me pay for my dim-witted blunder, but things certainly didn’t play out the way I imagined.

Preston drove his Audi to the jobsite, with me sitting next to him.

“Ass on the leather,” was the only instruction he gave me, and I quickly obeyed, letting the feel of leather on my bare behind pleasantly work its way through my crotch. It may be the only pleasant thing I would feel all day.

The drive was uneventful, just a pleasant ride in the country. It was a good twenty miles to the suburban housing development, a very upscale wooded setting of two-story houses under various stages of construction situated at generous intervals along a hilly terrain. Strangely, the scene was vacant of construction workers, obscenely silent when we arrived. As I looked into the partially complete houses, I didn’t see a soul.

“Day off?” I asked absently.

“There’s been some problems with financing the development and the construction has been briefly suspended.”

“Too bad. It’s beautiful.”

“Just a temporary glitch, I’m sure. That’s why Lloyd & Lockhart was hired.”

“Sell the sizzle. There’s lots of it.”

“I’m sure Joel has that angle well in hand.”

“Just look at that one,” I pointed to a house on an approaching rise, surrounded by trees, looking stately, even forbidding. The exterior was nearly complete, combining stone and siding in the current style, a many-gabled roof and large expanses of windows. Looking beyond the panes of glass, I could see that the inside walls were still missing, leaving a cobweb of bare framing. “What an amazing house!”

When Preston drove into the unpaved driveway of this particular house, I wondered if he’d read my mind. Strangely, the structure stood out from all the rest, which were presently bathed in sunshine. Over this one, a dark cloud hung like an omen, lending a spooky feel to the atmosphere, a certain mischief, an elegant mystery, enough to tickle the hairs on the back of my neck. Pulling as far as he dared onto the bare dirt, Preston parked the car carefully, making sure that he wouldn’t get stuck in the mud. It had rained two nights before, and the ground was soft.

Although the day was warm and sunny, cheery even for early spring, a foreboding feeling of gloom gnawed at me, as eerie as the empty jobsite. I remained intrigued. As we stepped from the car, I heard a hammer in the distance; had work suddenly started up again? But it fell silent, as if someone had ripped it from the worker’s hand. I shivered a little and moved forward, following Preston as he gingerly made his way to the front step. There, he pulled a key from his pants pockets and opened the door.

“Perfect,” he exclaimed on entering. I’m not sure what was ‘perfect’ about this house over the others, but I let his comment slide. After all, I’d chosen this house too for reasons I couldn’t figure out.

Except for that tiny instruction at the beginning of our ride, Preston had not made reference to our sexual relationship for the entire half hour. He gave me the impression that this trip was exactly what he described, a fact finding mission that would require my talent for observation and detail. I believed he was telling the truth, even when my gut kept shouting to me otherwise.

As I strolled inside the half-finished house, gazing into the rafters above, my mind tried picturing the finished house. I’d always been fascinated by style and form. And though I’d never want a home as ostentatious as this one would become, I could play with it in fantasy, like a child playing pretend.

“Skye.” His voice wasn’t unexpected as it lifted me out of my reverie.

“Nice place,” I said turning around. “At least I think it will be.” I smiled.

“No doubt,” he agreed, looking about the studs for a second. Then he looked back at me, while my own eyes were unexpectedly fixed on him. An intense shiver rose up through my body causing it to quake. The feeling fled in a second, but it left its message.

A breathtaking silence descended around us, as we stood frozen in place apparently unable to move forward. But then I broke the spell, having come to the obvious conclusion, “You are going to punish me, aren’t you?”

“Of course, I’m going to punish you, Skye,” he answered calmly, almost like a reprimanding father. “What did you expect? My only concern is how to deal with the mountain of offenses you’ve committed in the last forty-eight hours. It’s one thing to punish matters of civility with stern lectures and a good paddling on your ass; there’s no good explanation for your behavior in boardroom, except jealousy and spite. But then you complicate matters, disobeying the basic rule that makes our agreement work. Fucking Roddy Morgan in the company basement is not only a breach in company policy and a slap in the face of decency, for which you’ve been warned, it goes against the premise of what you and I are about.”

I knew that.

Assuming he wanted to make me feel six inches tall, he certainly did a fine job. He couldn’t have spelled out my crimes better, or tapped into my guilty feelings more effectively. I really wanted to cry and plead with him; my desperation was that great. But instead of going meek and humble, I did what I often do when faced with a tricky situation, wherein I feel the need for self-defense: I spit out the first thought that pops into my brain, regardless of the fact that it sounds like an attack.

“You mean you find fucking in the company basement a slap in the face of decency worse than the things you make me do every time it suits your sick, horny fantasy?” His logic seemed a little quirky and I just had to point that out. In the instant, my question seemed justified, even though I regretted it as soon as I said the words.

I think he handled it well. I expect he just wanted to haul off and slap me, which in master/slave circles, I no doubt deserved. I probably would have been strung from the ceiling of the house on North Street in short order.

“You aren’t very smart, Skye, if you haven’t figured out by now that there’s one set of rules for behavior at Lloyd & Lockhart, and an entirely different set of rules you and I have agreed to. Different logic, different rules, but we’ve agreed to both. It’s up to you to know when one set of rules applies and the other does not. What we do together may not make sense to the world that doesn’t enjoy our sexual inclinations, but as long as it works for you and me, then what the rest of the world thinks doesn’t matter. If I ask you to strip nude in front of a crowd of strangers, you do it, not because it’s proper behavior but because you want to, because it makes our relationship what it is. The rule is, however, I’m the only person who gets to make that kind of kinky decision for you. When you don’t have me telling you what to do, you behave according to the rules of common decency. This should be obvious, Skye.” He looked at my vacant face, wondering. “Or, are you impaired in your thinking?

I shook my head, “No, sir. I’m not impaired.” I’d had time enough to get things straight in my whacked out brain. I didn’t need the lecture to understand his point, I’d understood it with the first queasy feeling I had following my revenge on Susan, and the next queasy feeling I had letting Roddy fuck me. I’d simply ignored them both.

“That’s nice to hear,” he replied. “Now get undressed.”

I wasn’t shocked to hear his order, but I was petrified for what might come.

Like some weird movie, creepy sounds began to surface all around me. The sounds of hammers, car engines, saw blades and voices. The place was coming alive like it should have been on a Wednesday morning. The effect was bizarre and disturbing, as if the world had suddenly changes dimensions, for a time lost in that unpeopled place where only Preston and I existed. I was glad to be back in the land of the living, but it only made my impending punishment more frightening, to realize that any moment someone might discover me naked.

As I hastily removed my clothes, I looked into the rafters and winced. Preston could have a field day with so many places to put me in bondage. I expected ropes, cuffs, all the necessary paraphernalia and I wasn’t disappointed. As I was undressing, Preston pulled a long length of black hemp from the satchel he’d brought with him. He proceeded to bind me in a rope-dress of intersecting, intertwining ropes, beginning at my neck, wrapping my torso and descending into my crotch, where an overhand knot rested intentionally over my clit. My arms and legs were free to move, but not without tugging at the ropes in reminder. The bondage was more than a physical thing… it worked like magic on my brain, tethering it to Preston with an invincible knot. Such care! Such strange affection! His attention to every perfect detail of the bondage dress seemed intimate, even loving. And the warmth of his hands as they skillfully worked produced a longing in me I’d never felt before. As he finished tying off the ends neatly at my thighs, I found myself craving him more than carnally. I wanted inside his brain, his body, his thoughts. I wanted to understand his soul… that remote, inaccessible place few would ever find. I knew I was about to be punished, but that didn’t matter. Whatever brought us together thrilled my heart—even if this scene had been created by my regrettably reckless behavior.

Unfortunately, like so many times before—and since—Preston altered reality to suit his fancy, not mine. Just as he finished the bondage, as if he’d choreographed the scene down to the last detail, I heard a car pull up in the drive. It wasn’t enough that the work site was suddenly teaming with activity and the fear of being discovered heightened every second, but into that explosive atmosphere, Preston added a spiteful twist.

I stared toward the front of the house, through an open window, and there, grinning and unmistakably malicious, was Susan stepping out of her car and coming up to the house. My entire body gasped, while I sighed aloud, “Oh, no!” trying to keep my feelings quiet but unable to.

He’d thrown our intimate games out the window and implemented a new one that I was sure to hate.

When Susan arrived, picking her way gingerly in high heels through the dust and mud, I knew I was doomed. The vile woman strode into through the door with an evil smirk on her face, just as Preston was tying my wrists to beams above. Throwing his heaviest rope over the thick rafters, he then wrapped my hands and wrists until the bondage was secure and I was unable to move.

“Keep your legs spread, or I’ll bind them apart,” he ordered. I took his message seriously, enduring the strain it placed on my thighs and my upper body. If I didn’t know before that this would be a trial to endure, I knew it then.

“Oh! How pretty we are,” Susan bleated sarcastically, as she suddenly turned her attention from an inspection of the room to me. Her eyes lit on me with a devilish glare. I swear she was Lucifer’s twin incarnate—Preston would assure me later that she was just an accidental witch. Her nails—long, precisely manicured and painted cherry red—picked delicately at the tight ropes binding my breasts, just to see how tightly they’d been tied. I jumped a little each time her nails bit into my skin. She ran a hand down my chest in front, to my pubis, then around my side and over my ass cheeks. I held my breath, waiting. Any second I expected her to strike with a nasty bite and devour my flesh. “Humm…” The hum was guttural, like a growling beast still caged. “You say she’s mine?”

“All yours, Susan.”

Why on earth I would utter a sound at that moment, I don’t know. I expected something as odious as this in punishment, but I couldn’t stop my ill-timed gasp of dismay, “Oh, Preston, please no! You can’t give me to her!”

My master moved so swiftly that even Susan was taken off guard and forced aside by his imperious wake. He slapped my cheek with a stinging shot, then grabbed my chin so that I was forced to look him in the eye. “Don’t argue with me, Skye. You’ll only make me hurt you more. This is just desserts for a reckless, self-indulgent and childish act. Susan has every right to punish you for what you did to her and I’m just giving her the chance. You’ll find she’s a skilled dominatrix. I trained her myself when she flunked submissive training.”

“Yes, I couldn’t stand the abuse,” she piped up.

“Or enjoy the surrender,” Preston added a bit cynically. “You should thankful I’m not the one meting out your punishment, because it would surely be worse.” Seeing the look on his face, I had no doubt he believed that to be true. I shuddered to my core. The strength in his voice and his clutching fingers transmitted power and desire, and—if I was not mistaken—a certain fondness for me. At least I wanted to believe that. Other couples might have sat down and talked about the incident in the boardroom in rational tones, discussing motives and apologies and sorting out reasons why to some logical end. Apparently, Preston and I would settle our quarrels in a different manner, adjusting an imbalance with physical reprimands and symbolic corporal acts of atonement. I understood the reasons why, but I would still despise the methods he used, no matter how perfect they really were. If Preston wanted to stop any future foolishness, this was certainly the way to do it.

He let go of my chin and stepped away, still keeping a fixed eye on mine.

“She won’t give you any trouble,” he stated plainly to both Susan and me.

“I’m sure she won’t,” Susan chimed in immediately, contentedly, with the same self-satisfied smirk she wore on her face when she arrived.

She turned me, toying again with the ropes, tugging and pulling a bit, while she thought out her plan. If I’d been her, I would have had it all in mind in advance. But she seemed to prefer the spontaneity, and—I learned, much to my dismay—was certainly not short on creative ways to abuse me.

“Let her down, Preston. Before I whip her, I’d like to see her show off for me.”

Like he was sub and she was Dom, Preston complied with her wishes and loosened the ropes that bound my wrists. I stood before her with my hands at my side, while her smirk seemed to broaden into a wider grin. I could see the wheels in her mind cranking out her devious plots en masse. “Hold out your hand,” she said.

I did, taking from her a string of five golf ball-sized beads with about three inches of string between them.

“Put them in your ass.”

I must have looked at her dazed, because she had to repeat the order.

“In your ass. Get on your knees, bend over and put them up your butt.” What was sexually seductive about her with men abruptly turned ice cold with me under her control. Afraid of the icy bitch, I dropped to my knees on a wooden floor that felt like concrete. Then I leaned forward with every intention of following her instructions. Unfortunately, the first ball was not slick enough to insert into my rectum.

“Spit on it!” she suggested the cure, which worked with the first ball, but not the others, since they were all attached. “Use your fingers to swath the path,” she recommended then.

I liberally covered my fingers with spit, and coated my anus, then shoved another of the beads into my ass. The first two were the most difficult, as the strain, the humiliation and the need to prove myself conspired against my efforts. But once I felt a pleasant fullness in the body cavity, my lust kicked in. I hardly cared where I was or who was forcing me to abuse myself. I nearly forgot my surroundings completely—if anything the unlikely locale for my punishment just heightened my arousal more.

Susan stood over me, the cold, dictatorial bitch that she was, but I didn’t care any longer that I hated her. More exciting to me was my master to my left, leaning on a sawhorse, casually watching the show, attentive, but with an air of cool indifference—like a referee perhaps.

“Hmmm. . . . very good,” Susan purred as I pushed the third bead inside and followed it with the fourth. By then, my insides felt puffed up and about to explode. There were two beads yet to go and I couldn’t imagine more pressure, but I wasn’t about to hesitate. This was as much a matter of principle as anything. I refused to look bad in front of Preston, or weak, or unsure, or rebellious. Even if it killed me to do it, I wouldn’t let the woman have the satisfaction of besting me. I’m sure that’s what she planned on.

With a little more effort and deep breath, I shoved the fifth bead into my ass, and moved on to the sixth. I couldn’t believe that there’d be room to fit that one too, but with my determination driving me forward, I managed to insert the last. I felt it hit the one next to it as it settled inside. This was a demanding physical bondage of a sort I’d never experienced. I sucked in my breath and held on with all my might, while the urge to push the beads out threatened my hard-earned victory.

“Let’s not see you panic now, Skye,” Preston urged me from the sidelines. His comment made me believe that he was in charge, not Susan, though that was a short-lived thought.

“She needs the aggravation, Preston. Conniving trollops deserve to suffer.” She kicked my ass with the toe of her high-heel.

I was getting used to the foreign objects in my ass, and the threat of voiding the six beads faded. Still hanging from my rectum was the string end attached to the beads. At the very end of that was a ring to tug… or, in this case, a place to attach a leash. Once Susan snapped the clamp shut tight, she walked about the downstairs of the house with me following on hands and knees—backwards. “Careful you don’t make me pull out the beads. If you do, you’ll regret it.”

I was glad that someone had swept the place free of loose nails and lumber, which would have made the parade more difficult. Even so, negotiating doorways backwards was tricky, tricky too keeping up with Susan’s steady gait. “C’mon, slut, let’s keep moving,” she ordered, while stopping long enough to whack my ass a few times with a piece of wooden molding she’d found. I hated the sting, but I’d never let her know that. I held in my loathing and continued moving, urged by the gentle tug to my ass. I was destined to fail this exercise—Susan had that all figured out and so did I. It was only a matter of time before she’d tug just a little too hard and the sixth bead would exit accidentally.

She didn’t even try to disguise her plan. Suddenly, pulling me way too fast for my ability to move, she had, not just the sixth, but the fifth bead popping free. A rush of energy flooded that place, and all my careful containment threatened to vanish. My bottom felt like it would explode.

“Oh, my, she slipped,” Susan quipped for the benefit of Preston. Then, using the sharply honed edge, she whacked me a dozen times or more with the molding, scorching heated lines of pain across my ass. “Put them back!” she demanded, her voice icy with contempt.

I quickly obeyed, slobbering my spit over the round orbs and insisting they fit in my rectum again. At last successful, my perilous journey began again, this time up the stairs of the house moving forward. The leash lay across my spine loosely, while she charmed me with sweet-talk fit for a beast of burden or her toy poodle. “That’s it, just a little ways more, just a little more,” she tugged lightly as she spoke. I mounted the stairs on my sore hands and knees, doing double duty to keep my entrails full and my mind focused on the chore.

“Throw me the cuffs and rope,” she called down to Preston.

He didn’t throw them; instead he ambled up the stairs to join us. Strangely, it was some comfort having him close enough to see because I was performing for him, rather than Susan, a fact I found erotically pleasing at the moment of my greatest humiliation.

We moved to the back of the house, into another of many framed but unfinished rooms, to where a large window that looked out on a forest of trees.

“On your feet, slut,” she said, after having unleashed me.

My hands were cuffed and strung up high into the ceiling beams, then Susan tied me to the window jambs on either side, from my shoulders to my ankles, using, when possible, the rope-dress Preston fashioned for me earlier. While my ankles were tightly anchored, she purposely left some slack in the torso ropes, so I’d be able to move within the spider web of rope.

“Now lean out the window, slut,” she ordered. This wasn’t easy, but I complied, hoping that she had in mind a plan to secure the position. Once I arched my back, jutted my ass back into the room and leaned forward, she shoved a sawhorse in front of my legs. It hit where my legs and thighs meet, but powerfully held me in place as the ropes tightened and held me fast.

Until that time, I felt safe enough in the house to think we could keep this activity private, just between the three of us. But my privacy immediately vanished with my naked tits hanging out the window like two bobbing balloons. I could look to either side of me and see into the neighboring backyards where hammers and saws were being put to use by tough, tanned construction workers.

“Oh, how nice,” was Susan’s first comment, seeing me spread wide with my back arched and my ass pushed out. She moved around me stroking my tautly contained body, venturing a squeeze or pinch if that pleased her. She plucked my right nipple and twisted it so hard, I was sure it would tear away. Noting that I wouldn’t howl, no matter how hard she squeezed and twisted, she let go. “Impressive. But then, we’re just getting started. It’s been along time since I’ve had a body like yours to torture, and I will enjoy every minute, until you finally surrender.”

Surrender! To her? Only when hell freezes! I silently told myself.

There was not a muscle in me that didn’t ache, that didn’t scream for relief. But the only relief I would know was through the long steady shower of pain that rained down on me from the wooden slat and then a conductor’s baton she found in Preston’s satchel. She whipped my ass and shoulders soundly, waiting for me to let loose with a scream. I wouldn’t give her that thrill, but bit my lips, sucked in and made the pain arouse me. When I wouldn’t cry, she changed her target and paddled my tits with the molding. She thwacked them hard on top and from the bottom with dozens of stinging, white-hot smacks. The pain continued relentlessly, tearing at me anew with each blow that landed.

When that wasn’t enough, she started in on my pubis, reaching underneath with first the baton, then the slat of wood, whipping and spanking the flesh until it was as hot as a fiery oven, blistered and swollen. I refused to cry and she didn’t like that.

“You’re not enjoying this, are you?”

“Should I be?” My tone was a bit defiant and she didn’t like that either.

“Maybe I should march you in front of the brutes next door and let them have at your ass.”

Maybe you should, I barked at her silently, although I shuddered from the embarrassment that would bring me, and shuddered even more with the thrill I might give those men.

“You never told me she was a pain slut,” she told Preston.

“I don’t think she is,” I heard him reply.

Because he was standing directly behind me, I couldn’t see him from where I hung between the framing 2x4s. But I could sense his presence, the fierceness of his being, and the irrevocable connection between us. Even Susan couldn’t sever that.

“Not a pain slut, and still not a whimper?”

“Keep going, the day’s not done,” he told her.

“Of course, it’s not.”

She leveled me then with a series of quick repeated smacks to my ass, all in one tender spot and so many that I thought she’d never let up. Then she moved her aim from side to side, targeting one cheek and then the other, but hardly missing a beat. I struggled hard to maintain my silence but it was crumbling away with no relief at all. Unwittingly, I began to moan my distress, something Susan didn’t seem to realize right off, but then, even while I tried to stuff it in again, there was enough anguish surfacing, enough plaintive garbled sound for her to finally realize how much I hurt.

She was like a demon after that, pinching my labia between her fingernails, so hard I was gasping audibly again. “Can’t take it, can you?”

“Yes, I can,” I maintained despite what I knew was true.

She liked defiance, and the fact that she would prove me wrong. She resumed her torture, digging her nails into my other labia. I held on then, but when she began to pinch my clitoris outright, what little of me could move and shake, tried to shake her off. I attempted vainly to let the pain arouse me, as it had many times. But this was beyond my level of tolerance.

“Ahhh… please!” I finally heard myself cry.

“Please what?”

“Please!” I screwed up my face in a pained grimace.

“Please what? Answer me, bitch!” she yanked my hair back and nailed my clit with the other hand in the same instant.

“Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaauch! Stop, please. I can’t take anymore.”

She let up only reluctantly. I could feel her fighting to continue. Later, much later, I would suspect that there was some unspoken agreement between Susan and Preston that prevented her from going further. That saved me. I would have been screaming in my loudest voice unable to stop myself if she’d gone on much longer.

Susan gathered my sex juice from my cunt and presented it to my mouth. “Lick it, bitch.” There was a weird gleam in her greenish eyes, the glitter of the sadistic mad woman that lurked behind her polished exterior.

Between the sound of Susan striking me and my internal screaming—just as the pain was the worst—I thought I heard creaking sounds like was someone coming up the stairs. I didn’t dare look behind me; the thought of having a bigger audience was too much for my overloaded senses. But once Susan’s viciousness had its say, as her vengeance was satisfied, I became aware that there were others in the half-made room, two construction workers—big brawny fellows—with their eyes glued to the sight of me bound, strung up, ass out, tits sporting nipples fired by their recent onslaught.

“Nice ass, huh?” Susan mocked me to the voyeuring men. “If one of you will yank that string hanging from her ass, while the other one finger-fucks her cunt, I’ll bet she’ll come.”

I didn’t try to see the snicker on her face, I knew it was there just hearing the tone of her voice. I heard retreating footsteps as her high heels hit each stair on her way down to the first floor. I guess she’d had enough of me. I’d certainly had enough of her.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have much time to let my thoughts linger or my body rest. I felt one hand at my cunt and another on my ass, tugging at the end of the string. The man at my side began to fuck my pussy with his hand, and soon the other one gave the beads a healthy yank.

As the first bead exited my ass, my body exploded in orgasm. Then as each of the next beads were yanked free, sharp pains rocked my insides with more spasmodic waves of climax.

“No! No! No more!” I cried out from the senseless oblivion that followed. I couldn’t take any more… not that fast. But the men ignored my pleas. The one behind kept jerking the string, while the one at my cunt continued fucking me with his hand. I rocked back and forth and from side to side in my spider web prison, weeping softly as the next bead was painfully jerked away and the climactic sensations were revived. When the last bead popped free, I nearly passed out.

“Damn, what a slut!” I heard one of the men say. I didn’t want to open my eyes; my embarrassment was that profound. “She a good fuck?”

I suppose he was asking Preston, and though I didn’t hear his reply, the answer was obvious. Moments later, a prick was stuffed in my rear and I had more reason to scream. I managed to contain myself, however. Knowing any sound might draw attention to the open window, I was sane enough to keep my agony to myself. The second man’s prick followed the first, and by then, I was oblivious to pleasure or pain, simply hanging on until the man had spent himself inside me.

I was spared the humiliation of having to face the two; they quickly disappeared down the stairs as I recovered my senses. I heard them leave the house, and then in the steamy quiet that followed, I waited for Preston to speak.

The silence made me quiver—even the noise from the other jobsites had tapered off, just a distant hammer or the quick squall of a saw. And then there was nothing—must have been lunchtime. I never did understand why the housing development had been vacant of workers when we first arrived—explained away by Preston as a temporary work stoppage—and then was suddenly busy with activity no more than a half hour later. I guess it really doesn’t matter if I have an explanation; part of surrender is accepting the situation for what it is.

As I waited to be released, I sensed him close. I sensed his cool and calculated manner, and felt the fire from his eyes even though I couldn’t see them. I expected him to speak, but he maintained the brutal silence. I suppose that is only natural for him and I should have accepted the fact that I had a reticent master. Part of his reserve was what I loved, since it was so much the opposite of me. I always thought of myself as a bubbling-over brew of emotions, visions, quirky thoughts and fantasy, with an endless supply of questions traveling through my brain cells.

Unlike so many times before when I waited for my master to act, I sensed some strong emotion beneath his quiet exterior. He seemed curiously anxious. Was this the ripple in his smooth veneer that I’d noted months before? Anxiety? Reluctance? A steamy fire of passionate lust? Was all that there? Or was it just my just imagining running away in fantasy?

My shoulders shivered for the hundredth time that day, then I felt his hand reach out—hot, firm and curiously tender. I thought I would melt into a puddle of happy feelings—joy, relief, contentedness and love. How could I love him? Why would I? He’d never given me reason to take our relationship into that unstable territory. Was he, maybe, doing that now? It surprised me how much I hoped for that.

As he carefully began to remove me from the web of rope, his hands would graze my skin as if he intended to soothe me. When he stood close, I felt a deep pulse in his crotch, body heat, cock heat and more. Once I was down to the ropy garment, removed from the window and safely back inside the privacy of that upstairs room, there was no mistaking the affection pouring out on me. He stood behind me and kissed my back with tenderness. This wasn’t an adoring kiss, but a thank you, a gesture a master would give his property for a session fittingly carried out.

“Remember what this was about, Skye,” he whispered in my ear. “I have charge of you always. I’ll give you to whomever I choose. Whether you enjoy their treatment of you is not an issue. It arouses me to see you challenged by the things you hate. Because I know that what you hate, you really love. Your eyes open to a larger world beyond your narrow vision, and I can mold you into the woman I desire you to be, the woman you are begging to become.”

Oh, yes, that was exactly what he’d done.

“Every bit of you belongs to me, Skye, every minute, hour, day, thought and feeling.”

All true.

He turned me around in his hands so I had to face him, look him in the eye and confront the reason I’d been brought here in the first place. He stood close, inches away and held me at the shoulders as a father disciplining a naughty teenager. His voice was stern, but loving. And his eyes, less critical, less cold, but still imperative. This was essential stuff he was talking about, and a twist in our relationship, I loved but was equally scared of. I understood… he wanted more of me than just a series of hot sex scenes. I wanted that too, but never counted on it happening. I never expected him to be talking to me this way. I suddenly had the urge to push him off, it scared me so.

“If you wish to remain my property, you’ll learn to be more gracious with the choices I make for you, and you’ll end your jealousy now. Your status doesn’t entitle you to make statements regarding my behavior. I own you. You serve me. I’ll take my pleasure from whatever slut I choose, whatever woman, whatever liaison, serious or inconsequential. Don’t have a problem with that because it speaks to the essential difference between you and me. I give up my liberty to no woman, especially one as trivial are you are. This is the arrangement you agreed to. Don’t think you can change it; it’s not within your rights. Remember who you are.”

Incredible as it seems, I viewed this lecture as a sign that we were closer, more entangled than ever—and in a new, deeper and more intimate way. But I did believe that was true. In my mind, it brought me closer to him and essentially gave me more power.

That is a paradox, I know, especially since he was seizing from me any last vestige of power that I was still trying to claim.

But I understood the paradox in my gut, if not my brain. Never in the months of our arrangement had he spoken to me with such attention, such intensity, and yes, such passion. Hot passion. This was coming from his loins, not his calculating mind. I swear his cock was driving him as much as my cunt had driven me every day since that first email. And this was the difference, the change. All that Preston Lockhart was—the haughty executive with the twisted sexual inclinations, with the need to control, the need to dominant, to wreak his prurient sadistic vision on a surrendering woman—was at that moment fueled by a sensuously compelling energy I’d never sensed in him before.

I knew why he spoke to me this way. He had to come down on me hard to keep the right balance between us, because there, in the midst of his very pointed comments, there quaking beneath his seemingly unshakable stolid surface—back to that ripple of vulnerability again—I saw that vulnerability shimmering like a mirage between us. He was making these statements to remind me about the difference between master and submissive, because on one level he worried that the barrier would crumble, that I’d see where he was weak, his Achilles heel, where he was empty, where he hurt, places he was unfamiliar with, behaviors that were uncomfortable. We both had a lot at stake. He was right, I’d better not toy with him. If the important barrier between us crumbled, the fantasy would vanish as so much silliness, so much foolish game-playing… and sexual thrill would go with it.

I didn’t completely understand all this while we stood eye to eye in the upper room of that vacant, half-built house—that would take time, distance and thoughtfulness. But my conclusions were confirmed, when, to my utter astonishment, Preston kissed me. His lips moved on me with such breathless tenderness that only love could pour out from me to him. I had never been so profoundly satisfied with anything as I was with that kiss.

He kissed me more, without taking me in his arms, with one hand touching my chin lightly and his other at his side. He wouldn’t siphon off the meaning with a canned romantic clench. It was merely his lips touching mine, pulling at mine a bit, tugging as I surrendered and allowed him to lead. The kiss, and those that followed, lingered like perfectly prepared food lingers with a delicious aftertaste for hours, in sensuous reminder of the feast. This was that feeds the soul. He fed my soul with those kisses, and in the process, thoroughly frightened me.

The kisses beginning to end were very Preston. Preston perfect.

When he backed off, my head was still inclined a bit, and my lips were parted with an anxious unwillingness to sever the mood. Would he ever do that again? Though I begged him silently to return, I knew he was finished. As much as I wanted those seconds to linger, if I’d devised it myself, I couldn’t have added anything to make the moment better. Some things don’t get better being bigger or more than what they are. This was one.

The remaining ropes fell silently away as Preston stripped them from me with very little effort.

“Your clothes are downstairs. Go get dressed,” he told me quietly.

I padded down the stairs, swept up in an aura I wanted to relish forever.

“Well, now, look at you,” I heard Susan’s voice cut sarcastically through my happy musings. I looked her way, as she puffed on a half-finished cigarette, as its ash fluttered in the air and settled to the floor. Hearing her voice, my insides clenched as if someone had just socked me in the solar plexus.

“Let me see your ass,” she said.

I wasn’t sure how to answer her, but being so completely witless and submissive, I let her look at the marks she’d made on my behind. Even when she asked me to bend over so she could inspect me further, I didn’t hesitate.

“I thought I told you to get dressed, Skye,” I heard Preston as he was coming down the stairs with his gear in hand.

“Sorry, sir.” I shot up and scrambled to my pile of clothes. While I hurriedly put them on, Preston spoke to Susan.

“You have places to go?” he asked her.

“I thought we could have lunch,” she locked her arm under his and looked up a little plaintively.

“Sounds good. I have to drop Skye at the office.” He looked at me. “You ready?”

“Yes, sir.”

I sat beside him as we rode back to the office, with Susan following in her car.

We rode in silence for a time, until my curiosity got the better of me, and timidly asked, “So you have no interest in Susan?”

“Interested in Susan? No. She’s no more than a friend. Oh, we tried once, but the relationship was pretty laughable.” He looked toward me, chuckling softly, “But then she was certainly good for baiting you. I couldn’t have planned the whole incident better if I’d tried.”

“No, I suppose he couldn’t.”

“Handle your jealousy, Skye.”

“Yes, sir.”

When me dropped me off, I rushed into the building, while Susan parked in the company garage and took my place next to Preston.