Man and Master by Jason Luke (2)

“I happen to think you are extremely attractive,” Joshua countered. “On a physical level, you have a beauty that not many other women in the world could compete with; a beautiful face, an alluring smile, and an exquisite figure…” he broke off like there was more to come; more he wanted to say.

“But…?”

Joshua shook his head. “No ‘but’,” he shrugged. “It’s just that physical beauty is often illusory. As a person, I see someone who is still too young to appreciate just how big and bad the real world can be. I see you as a young woman who doesn’t quite yet know the difference between a good idea and a bad idea. Consequently, your natural stubbornness compels you to hang onto the bad things in your life for much longer than you should,” Joshua wasn’t trying to be gentle in his appraisal. He knew that sometimes it was necessary to be cruel, in order to ultimately be kind.

“In the future, I hope you will be able to see things for what they really are, not for what you wish they would be. You can’t make a bad idea into a good one, Gabriele, no matter how hard you try… and no matter how long you persist.”

There was a thinly veiled message in Joshua’s words but before Gabriele could sift through to their meaning, Joshua began talking again.

“Now, tell me what kind of man you think I am,” he insisted.

Gabriele flinched. Why was Joshua asking all these questions?

She shuffled her shoes on the carpet and plucked nervously at the hem of her dress. Her eyes dropped to her lap like she was unwilling to speak. She licked her lips and then slowly lifted her chin until she was staring into the dark steady gaze of Joshua’s eyes.

“I believe you are a good man,” she said with absolute truth. “I believe you are well-intentioned and above all else, I know you are honorable.”

Joshua looked a little ruffled by the glowing adoration in Gabriele’s tone.

“How do you know I’m honorable?” he challenged her.

Gabriele’s smile was intuitively feminine with secret knowledge. “Because despite the nightly temptation of a willing young woman who comes to you near-naked and desperate to be dominated, you have so far refused to lay an unwarranted hand on me. You’ve seen my breasts and my pussy. You’ve had your mouth between my legs. You’ve been able to take advantage of me any time you wanted to… and heaven knows there have been plenty of times I prayed you would… but despite all that you have not once used me in a way that violated my trust. You’re scrupulously professional, and I also think you’re caring.”

With the words said, she felt the tension go from her body and she slumped back in the chair. She felt awkward, but relieved. Gabriele had never been one to freely speak her mind. She kept a lot of what she thought to herself because she had learned since being with Randall that it was often better to bite her tongue than speak her feelings. Joshua was teaching her that the reward for honesty was peace-of-mind.

“You call me professional,” Joshua countered, brutally critical of himself. “But then last night I kissed you.”

Gabriele smiled. “Yes, you did,” she sounded wistful. “And I’m glad. I’ve never been kissed like that before. It was a moment I will remember and dream about for the rest of my life.”

Joshua looked faintly embarrassed. He cleared his throat gruffly and bludgeoned the conversation back down a darker direction.

“You trust me?”

“Yes, I do,” Gabriele was emphatic.

“And you believe that I act with your best interests at heart when you are here with me, in my care?”

“Yes. That’s why I trust you.”

Joshua picked up the folder and slid it across the desk. The cardboard made a cruel hissing sound, like the noise of a snake. “Then you need to take a look at the contents of that file,” he said ominously.

Gabriele felt an ice-cold chill of dreadful premonition as she reached for the folder. She flipped open the cover. There were several black-and-white photos and an additional typed page of information that looked like the printed contents of an email conversation.

She picked up the first photograph, and her hand was shaking. She felt sickening nausea churn in her stomach. She stared at the image through eyes that were beginning to blur with scalding tears.

It was a grainy image of a young man striding along a hotel corridor. He had his arm around a blonde woman in a very short dress. The man was looking at the woman’s breasts and leering. The woman had a handbag slung over her shoulder and was wearing high heels. She was laughing.

The man in the photograph was Randall.

Gabriele let the photo slip through her fingers and picked up the next one. And then the next. They were all images of Randall with different women. They appeared to have been taken from security cameras. On some of the images Gabriele saw a cluster of digital numbers stamped into the corners. She put the last photo back into the folder and closed it. She sat back in the chair, very straight. She closed her eyes and a tear escaped to trickle down her face. Her cheeks were pale and washed of all color.

“You bastard,” Gabriele said through her pain.

“The truth hurts,” Joshua did not defend himself. “And this is the reality, Gabriele. Your boyfriend has been cheating on you – not once, but multiple times in seedy hotels and motels right around the country.”

“We’ve been separated,” Gabriele’s breath shuddered. “He can do what he wants just as I am doing with you.”

“Look again,” Joshua tore open the cover of the folder and thrust one of the photos under her nose. “Look at the date. This image was taken six weeks ago at a hotel in Denver. Some of the other photos date back many months. It’s not just a few days of fucking other women since he left you. The bastard has been doing it for months behind your back.”

“Why?” Gabriele asked in anguish and pain. “Why did you do this, Joshua?”

“Because you’re naïve. Because you need protecting from yourself… and because Randall fucking Waddingham was a bad idea that you have been clinging on to for much too long.”

Gabriele was shaking her head, weeping softly. She felt overwhelmed and betrayed on every level. “How did you find all this out?”

“I was Naval Intelligence,” Joshua reminded her. His voice was hollow. He felt filled with self-loathing. “And I still have some friends. One of the guys I used to work with now works in the police force. I asked him to do some checking.”

It was too much for Gabriele. She staggered to her feet, blinded by a sudden torrent of sobbing tears, and teetered down the hallway. She had to get away. She had to flee. Her whole world; her whole sense of purpose and self-worth, had just been torn apart in a single horrific moment. She blundered down the long passage towards the front door.

Joshua stood impotently behind his desk and watched her go. He hated himself. He despised his cruel need to shatter Gabriele’s hopes and dreams. He gulped down the tumbler of scotch and felt the punishing burn of the alcohol in his throat. It wasn’t penalty enough. He turned to the nearest wall and punched a hole in it, feeling the flesh around his knuckles torn apart and a blinding stab of pain leap along his forearm. It came to him through the numbing anesthetic of the alcohol. Gabriele’s heart-wrenching sobs tormented him and compounded his loathing guilt. He snatched up the folder off the desk and tore it into shreds, then went down the hallway, expecting to find the front door flung open and Gabriele gone into the night.

Gabriele was slumped in a corner of the foyer with her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms tightly hugging herself. She had her eyes screwed shut, her head thrown back against the wall, and her face a rictus of dreadful heartbroken pain.

Joshua went to her like he was approaching a timid forest animal.

“Gabriele… I’m so sorry,” he whispered.

She opened her eyes and turned her face to him. The agony and despair in her features plunged at his heart like a knife. “Just tell me why,” she begged him tearfully. “I need to know why.”

Joshua didn’t answer for a long time. He went down on his haunches beside her but his gaze was far, far away. “I told you because I wanted to protect you from yourself,” he said, knowing that it wasn’t a good enough reason for the pain he hand caused, and needing to justify the cruelty. “You were putting yourself through the hell of submission, trying to make yourself the woman that your boyfriend would want… when all the time he was undeserving of you and cheating behind your back.”

She began to sob again. Joshua knew there was only one true answer for what he had done, and he knew too that Gabriel needed to hear it. He drew a deep breath.

“And I did it because when I kissed you last night, I felt the exact same things that you felt. I’m starting to care for you too deeply, and I wanted to drive you away and make you hate me – before it was too late.”

 

 

 

Joshua sat in the darkness for a long time after Gabriele had left for the night. He was in his office, cast in deep shadow, staring out through the bay window, tormented and struggling to come to grips with his feelings.

He sighed into the silence. This was not a place he liked to visit – not a place he had come to often in the past three years. Analyzing and understanding his feelings was like pulling back the flesh of a tender wound and exposing himself to fresh pain.

Joshua shook his head, still struggling to understand how he had developed any feeling at all for Gabriele. She had come to him like so many other women in the past; bright-eyed and filled with a passion for the submissive lifestyle. He had trained too many other women even to remember their faces, let alone their names. And he had remained aloof, professional, and dispassionate with every one of them. None had even come close to the thick armor with which he guarded his heart.

What made Gabriele so different?

Yes, Joshua conceded, she was extremely attractive. She had the figure and features of a model, but below the exterior was a disarming charm because she didn’t realize she was so beautiful. That fact redeemed her from the vanity of so many other women and imbued her with something unique and irresistible.

And yes, he admitted grudgingly – she was brave. He had taught a lot of women, and many of them failed because their fear overwhelmed them. They could never make the gigantic leap across the abyss that required them to shed their own self-image and transform into someone new; someone servile and submissive with a focus on a person other than themselves. Many had fallen by the wayside in the midst of their training because he had challenged them and they had quailed and shrunk away in either embarrassment or humiliation. For many women the appeal of the lifestyle was little more than a passing fad that was found wanting under the first tests. But Gabriele had fought him, and herself. She had stood out from the others because of her resolve and her bravery. Her willingness had won through against every obstacle.

He wondered guiltily whether the kiss had been the moment that had changed everything.

He remembered it still; the softness of her lips and the firmness of her body. The gentle sounds of her passion and the silent scream of her desire for him. The memory was like a wafting scent of perfume forever attached to a significant moment and made unforgettable because of that fact.

Wearily, Joshua pushed himself out of the deep leather chair and made his way to the bathroom. His hand was still seeping blood. He bandaged the swollen, torn flesh… and then made the dreadful mistake of catching himself in the vanity mirror.

He looked like a stranger; the eyes deep set and haunted, the smears cross the ridge of his cheekbones like bruises. Lines around his mouth were cut deep into the flesh, like the freshly chiseled marks of a stonemason. He looked haggard and drawn.

Do you love her?

The question seemed to come from out of the shadowed corner of the room and flash across his consciousness. Joshua checked. He fixed his gaze on his reflection and clutched the edge of the basin as though staring himself down.

No. He didn’t love Gabriele. Not even close. He didn’t know if he would ever love again, but he knew for sure that he wasn’t ready yet.

But he cared about her… and it troubled him deeply. He knew that behind the armor he had shielded his emotions with, was a vulnerable chink. There was something so innocent and open about the woman that it triggered an instinctive protective reaction in Joshua that was ingrained in his nature. The way she had cried unashamedly and bared her soul tugged at an instinct of compassion he thought he had buried and abandoned.

Then another question came from out of the mist, shouted so loud in his mind that he could not ignore it.

What do you fear more than anything else?

Falling in love again.

With that realization, Joshua suddenly knew what he had to do. He had to protect his heart at all costs.

He had to save himself.

He had to end Gabriele’s training.

 

 

 

Gabriele lay on her bed and stared up at the ceiling, gazing blankly at the pattern of shadows made by the city lights through her window.

She didn’t know how to feel. Her thoughts seemed a whirl of emotions, each like a tendril of smoke that she could not cling to long enough to make sense of.

Her eyes were raw and red from crying; she had wept until there were no more tears. Now she felt hollow and somehow aged – as though tonight her youth and innocence had been torn away; torn to shreds.

Try as she might, she couldn’t find it in herself to grieve for the end of the relationship with Randall. The three years she had devoted to him seemed like a heinous sham. She felt betrayed. She felt used. She felt foolish for believing his lies, and for trying to bend herself into the accommodating dutiful girl he had wanted her to be. The effort and the constant eagerness to please him had all been for naught. She was angry that Randall had pushed her to the very brink of suicide. Gabriele shook her head in silent disgust.

Then her thoughts turned to Joshua and the image of his face elicited a whole new set of confused emotions.

His confession had rocked her to the core of her being; taking her by such surprise that all these hours later she was still reeling with the implications and the turmoil.

He had said that he was starting to care deeply for her.

That was what he had said.

She replayed the words in her mind, remembering every detail, from the drawn agonized look in his eyes to the grim set of his mouth. She remembered every inflection of his tone. Then she remembered the moment he had kissed her, and the tumbling sensations and emotions she had felt at that moment, helpless and hungry within the safety of his arms.

Joshua was an enigma she could not understand.

She recognized his reserve even though she could not comprehend his reasoning. And she realized that he was the kind of man who lived his life by a strict moral code, and that violating those rules with her had shaken him, perhaps even more deeply than she instinctively understood. Gabriele knew also that a fleeting casual relationship would never appeal to Joshua. He simply wasn’t superficial enough to surrender his standards in exchange for casual sex. Joshua was an ‘all-or-nothing’ man. Gabriele was sure he loved deeply, or not at all.

And Gabriele loved Joshua.

Even in her own mind, the admission sounded like a childish crush without substance. She had known him for such a short time, and yet she could not deny the attraction of the man. She was drawn to his wisdom, his stability, and his sense of right that seemed at such odds in a corrupted world. She was in love with Joshua’s thoughtfulness, and the way he treated her.

Gabriele had no such illusions that Joshua loved her back. He was too complex, too experienced at life to give his heart with the same willingness that compelled her. Joshua was the dark shifting shades of night that she was yet to fully understand, but somehow that made the attraction of him a fascinating mystery that she wanted desperately to unravel.

She was falling in love with a man, and all she could do to keep the flame of her feelings alive was to cling to Joshua, and not let go.

 

 

 

Joshua went upstairs to the big bedroom, the weight of his worry and anxiety hanging like a heavy burden around his neck. He stared at the huge empty bed with a twinge of regret.

It was after midnight, and beyond the twin windows that stood either side of the bed, a storm was gathering in the night sky. Joshua could see far off jags of lightning flicker like sparks of light on the far horizon. He undressed and climbed naked into the bed. His thoughts were jangled and inconsequential; he was restless and unable to find peace. He stared up at the ceiling and, unbidden, his mind filled with images of Gabriele. To distract himself he went naked downstairs to the kitchen and poured himself a large drink. The scotch seemed to seep through his body like a relaxing drug, smoothing away the tension so that he felt lethargic. He tumbled back into bed and dreamed the dreams of a man possessed.

 

Gabriele edged away from the desk and turned to face him. She smiled demurely. She was wearing tight denim jeans and a white t-shirt. Joshua took a long moment to admire her slim figure and appreciate the perfect form of her breasts beneath the stretched cotton of her top. Her nipples were hard. Even through the lace of her bra, he could see the press of them.

“What is your name?”

“Gabriele,” the young woman breathed. “And I am your destiny.”

“And you have come here to learn the art of sexual submission?”

“Yes.” She said the word like it was an ache in her heart.

Joshua walked a slow circle around Gabriele, inspecting her like she was a warrior’s prize won in the triumph of battle. She stood very still, feeling the heat of his gaze. Joshua saw the flesh along her forearms prickle with anxiety and the first tenuous signs of her arousal.

She stood with her legs together; her back straight. Joshua stepped close behind her and lightly ran his hands over her shoulders, his touch like an appreciative caress. Gabriele shuddered. Joshua heard a choked sob of breath, and her body swayed like a tree in a breeze. His touch glided down her back, feeling the ridges of her spine, playing her body like it was a beautiful musical instrument. Each fresh touch elicited a murmur, a groan, a sigh.

Joshua could feel his own arousal, tightening and clenching in his groin, and he explored her body through her clothes until his hands were sliding across her ass. Gabriele’s aloof composure began to waver. When Joshua wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back against his hard cock, she shivered deliciously.

He drew a soft kiss across her neck and inhaled the scent of her perfume. Then Joshua’s hand slid beneath the layer of her shirt and reached up possessively to cup one of her breasts. He could feel the hectic beat of her heart through the whorls of delicate lace that held her breasts.

“You are my property,” Joshua whispered tingling warm breath across her throat. “And you will obey me in every way.”

“Yes…” Gabriele whimpered. “…Master.”

Joshua turned her within his arms until they were facing each other. Her eyes were enormous, filled with a tumult of emotions. Joshua saw awe and wonder, desire and nervousness.

But he saw no fear.

She had her face lifted to his, her lips parted and glossy as ripe fruit. Joshua stared fixedly at her, asserting his authority and command through just the intensity of his gaze while beneath her shirt, his hand was busy on her breast, kneading the soft warm flesh of her through the cup of her bra. Her body felt like it was on fire.

“Undress,” Joshua commanded. He stepped back and Gabriele peeled off her t-shirt and dropped it at her feet. Her hectic irregular breathing made her breasts swell with every gasp. She had a peppering of soft freckles across her chest, flushed by the blush of her arousal, but between the cleavage of her bra the flesh was milky white and perfect.

Joshua’s eyes roamed like hungry hands across her body, devouring the exquisite delight of her. She had the flawless firm perfection of youth; her skin glowing and healthy and vital. When she reached for the button of her jeans and then slowly tugged down the zipper, he saw the flat of her abdomen and the top of her panties.

Gabriele hesitated with her thumbs hooked into the waistband of her jeans.

“I am your destiny,” she demurred softly.

“And I am your Master.”

Gabriele closed her eyes and her mouth moved silently as if she were surrendering herself over to some divine force of primal desire that was infinitely greater than her will to resist. She drew down her jeans and Joshua watched in silent appreciation until she stood in just her heels, panties and bra. Her eyes were still closed, her lips trembling. She seemed to cringe with fear of rejection.

She was wearing white lace panties that matched the pattern of her bra. Joshua could see the cleft of her pussy through the folds of gossamer fabric and realized her sex was shaved smooth. The air in the room filled with the raw and intoxicating scent of her musky desire, stronger than any perfume and intensely arousing.

“Take off the bra,” Joshua insisted. There was a husk of lust in the back of his throat. The room became tense and silent.

Gabriele reached behind herself and drew away her bra. Her breasts were firm, seeming too large for the narrowness of her shoulders and the petite lines of her frame. Her nipples were jutting rosy red beads.

The vision of her stole Joshua’s breath away. She was young and perfect.

“This dream could become our reality,” Gabriele’s voice was a call from the deep sea, like the siren song of a beautiful mermaid. “You need only claim me as your own and declare it to the world for all your desires to be made real…”

 

Joshua woke with a start and a choked cry in his throat. He sat upright in the bed, his face slick with sweat, his hair damp. His eyes were wide and haunted by the intensity of the dream. He searched the room, gasping for breath, his hands trembling.

Beyond the windows the storm had broken; rain spattered against the glass with a sound like thrown gravel, and the sky boiled with wind-driven clouds and flashes of lightning. Thunder rumbled above the vast house.

Joshua drew a deep breath and closed his eyes – but the moment he did, the vision of Gabriele from the dream came flashing back into his mind. He saw her again, topless and standing before him with her bra in her hand, beckoning him to take her. He flung back the bed sheets and clutched for a dressing robe that hung draped over a chair.

Joshua went down the stairs in a hurry, flicking on lights through the house as he made his way to the office.

 

 

 

 

Chapter 8:

 

Joshua dialed Gabriele’s number from his office and felt a guilt-ridden moment of cowardly relief when the dial tone re-directed to her voicemail. He glanced at the time. It was after 2 am.

“Gabriele, I’m calling to let you know that there will be no more training. I’m very sorry.” Joshua said the words as stiffly as if he were reading them from a written script. “But I feel I am unable to help you in your goal to understand submission. I apologize for the inconvenience, and I hope you will be able to resume your studies under another Master. I have refunded the full payment of your tuition back into your account.” He paused, aware that the message was still recording awkward silence. “I wish you all the best,” he muttered at last, then hung up.

It was over.

He felt no elation. In fact, he felt an empty melancholy like despair. He had denied himself the pleasure of her body, the stimulation of her company, and the earnest eagerness of her desire to learn – all to protect his heart. It hurt. It ached. It felt wrong…

 

 

 

In the morning, when Joshua awoke, he lay in bed for a long moment with the same remorse that follows a hangover. He felt ashamed; Gabriele had deserved far better than a recorded phone message, but he doubted that he could have clung to his resolve if she had answered in the middle of the night.

How could he ever have explained his reasons and given them legitimacy when they were the dark shadows of his memory?

How could he ever have given his concerns substance when everything that balked him was his own fear of repeated tragedy and pain?

Gabriele would never have understood.

Joshua worked with rare dedication throughout the day, concentrating furiously on every chart and every graph that flashed upon the screen of his laptop. He read every stock report with minute attention and applied himself to the calculations with fanatical scrupulous attention. It was the only way he could block out thoughts of Gabriele; he could give her no space in his mind, for fear that to do so would dull him to debilitation.

After the markets closed, Joshua spent two more hours at his desk, monitoring the overseas currencies. Throughout the day, the wind and rain had been relentless, rattling through the trees and howling across the eaves. The lawn was scattered with the debris of leaves and small fallen branches. Joshua flicked on a desk lamp and turned in his chair for a bottle of scotch.

He started drinking at 6 pm – not with any desire to get drunk, but rather with the need to anesthetize himself against his demons that he knew would come lurking to fill the empty void now that he had nothing to occupy his mind. He drank steadily, idly staring out through the window as the storm crashed and roared across the sky, his mind starting to wander while he fought to keep it on course by calculating a dip in commodity prices and how it might reverberate across the market. Through the big windows the night was a pearlescent mist; an impressionist painting of soft hazy edges and blurred halos around the street lights.

Time crept by and gradually Joshua began to sink wearily deeper into the seat. The level of scotch in his glass ebbed and flowed like the tide with each refill. His head began to loll, and his eyes grew heavy.

Then there was a horrendous sound of splintering wood followed by an almighty crash of noise that jerked him wide awake. He sat bolt upright, the fatigue gone in a second. Instinct told him that the sound had come from somewhere near the front of the house. He snatched a glance at his wristwatch; it was after 9 pm.

Joshua strode purposefully down the hall, peering through undraped windows throughout the house as he passed. He could see a splintered tree-trunk on the opposite side of the road. He got to the foyer and stared out through the curtains. A large tree had been blown over by the storm, tearing up grass and roots and collapsing the trunk across a neighbor’s lawn. There were houselights on all along the street; enough that he could see there had been no damage to any homes or cars, although the concrete sidewalk had been ruptured as if heaved up by the energy of a small earthquake.

Joshua went to the front door and pulled it open. The wind was coming in gusts, spraying rain in misted swirling curtains. Joshua leaned out into the driving rain and the dark storm-filled night…

…and froze in appalled shock.

Kneeling on his doorstep, clad in nothing but a pink bra and lace panties, was Gabriele.

She was drenched, her long hair hanging in thick damp ropes down her shoulders, her makeup smudged and washed down her cheeks. She was shivering with the chilling cold, her eyes lifted to the door, looking as small and frail as a drowned kitten.

“What the fuck?” Joshua gasped the profanity; such was the measure of his shock.

Gabriele looked up at him with her bottom lip trembling.

“What are you doing?” Joshua rasped.

“I’m waiting for my Master.”

“Didn’t you get my message?”

“Yes,” Gabriele gave a petulant nod of her head, and then was gripped by a sudden spasm of shivers. “I ignored it.”

Joshua pressed his lips into a grim bloodless line. For an unholy moment he felt his rage simmer – and then just as quickly the emotion dissolved into impotent frustration. “You’re a stupid bloody fool!” He took her by the arm and hauled Gabriele to her feet. She was small and slender against him. He wrapped his arm around her, and she pressed herself against the warmth of him like he was shelter from the storm. “Get inside the house,” Joshua fumed.

In the warmth of the foyer, Joshua left Gabriele dripping on the floor and dashed down the hallway. He came back clutching two fluffy white towels. He tossed the first one to Gabriele, and she wrapped herself in it like it was a blanket. With the second towel, Joshua began to rub her dry, abrading her skin with coarse rough strokes to get her blood circulating and scrub heat into her cold flesh.

“How long have you been outside my door?” Joshua growled.

“Since before 8 pm,” Gabriele said reasonably.

Joshua fixed her with a withering glare. “Don’t you understand simple English when you hear it?” he didn’t know how to feel. On the surface he was stunned that Gabriele would defy him in such a selfless submissive way, but on a deeper level, he felt buoyed by her stubborn defiance. He had asked her silently once before to fight for her right to be trained. Tonight she had displayed more fight than Joshua had ever imagined.

“I made myself perfectly clear in the message I left on your phone, Gabriele. I can’t train you any more. Didn’t you get the message?”

Gabriele’s skin turned rosy red as the shivering cold was chased away by the towels. She unclasped her bra and shrugged it off, then stepped out of the wet panties and left the garments at her feet. Naked, she wrapped one of the thick towels under her armpits as if she had just emerged from a bathroom.

“I do understand simple English,” Gabriele’s tone carried an edge of belligerence. “But the man’s voice I heard on the message didn’t sound like the voice of my Master. It sounded like someone else entirely. In fact, it sounded like a man who was scared. I knew that couldn’t have been you because you’re my Master. You own my mind and body. So I ignored the message.”

Joshua’s face darkened again. He felt a renewed flush of temper burn on his cheeks. “You think I sounded scared?” the tone in his voice rang with ominous foreboding.

Gabriele seemed undaunted. “Frightened, actually,” she taunted.

Joshua laughed but it was a bitter, chilling sound. He felt affronted and it was an emotion he had never experienced before. The damned woman was challenging him, just as he had cajoled and challenged her every night he had trained her.

“You think I’m frightened of you, Gabriele?”

“No, not me,” she held his gaze although she felt her momentary bravado beginning to slip. Joshua was intimidating. She knew she couldn’t keep up the charade much longer. At any moment she was going to crumble into a mess of trembling tears. “I think you’re afraid of us. Of what’s happening between us. The connection… it frightens you.”

“Bullshit!” Joshua snarled, but the declaration lacked the teeth of any conviction. Gabriele was staring fixedly into his eyes as if trying to see beneath the carefully curated shell he shielded his heart beneath, and he couldn’t face the scrutiny.

He seized her by the elbow and escorted her up the stairs, his heavy feet stomping on every step to display his anger. Gabriele padded softly beside him like a scolded child about to be punished. When they reached the bedroom, instead of heading to the training room, Joshua escorted her to another door and turned her so she was leaning against the wall. He hung over her, like an avalanche of raw masculine power, his face inscrutable but his eyes flecked with fire. Gabriele felt small and quailing in his shadow… yet somehow thrilled by her own vulnerability. She was naked beneath the towel. Joshua had only to reach out and take her, for she would have given herself willingly.

“Take a shower,” Joshua said through clenched teeth. The pulse in the line of his jaw throbbed beneath the flesh like a ticking bomb to his temper. “You’ll be lucky if you don’t catch pneumonia after the stunt you just pulled.”

He pushed open the door, and Gabriele stepped into a luxurious bathroom that was wall-to-wall white tiles. There was a large shower recess and a deep bathtub. One entire wall of the room was covered in mirrors and there were more towels on a heated rack near the shower. “Take your time,” Joshua moderated his voice just a little, leaning just inside the doorway. “And keep the water as hot as you can stand it.”

Gabriele dropped the towel and paused for a moment, standing with indolent grace to remind Joshua of just how desirable and perfect her figure was. She caught his hot eyes upon her in the reflection of the mirror. He had his arms folded across his chest, attempting to look unmoved and still angry – but Gabriele knew better. She had seen the telltale look of lust in Joshua’s eyes before. She saw it again and stepped under a spray of hissing water, satisfied.

The room filled with tendrils of swirling steam, and Gabriele gave herself over to the luxury of the hot cascades of water. The heat chased away the last vestiges of chill that had burrowed into the marrow of her bones, and she emerged several minutes later with her skin bright red with new vigor.

She was alone.

Joshua was not in the doorway.

Gabriele toweled herself dry and combed her fingers through her hair in front of the dewed mirrors. Then suddenly she knew that he was back in the room with her before she saw him. She could smell the distinctive scent of his aftershave. Joshua seemed to emerge from the writhing steam like an apparition. He was holding a white dressing gown. He came up behind Gabriele, and she felt him press himself against the toned muscles of her bottom. Every nerve in Gabriele’s body drew tight. She sensed his cock was hard. Joshua stared at her through the reflections. Gabriele clutched the edge of the basin and moved her body with small shuffles until her legs were spread. Then she leaned forward a little, pressing her face closer to the mirror and arching her back in a slow voluptuous movement that was an unmistakably clear invitation to Joshua. He need only unzip his pants and she was there – wet and willing and available.

Joshua’s expression stayed fixed. He set the gown on the long vanity.

“Put this on,” he said.

Gabriele pursed her lips in secret disappointment. She reached for the dressing gown and turned. Joshua took a step back. Gabriele let the gown fall to the tiled bathroom floor and dropped to her knees, instinctively adopting the submissive pose Joshua had taught her with her hands clasped behind her back and her mouth wide open. Joshua’s cock, straining within the confines of his pants, was just an inch away from her lips. She couldn’t be any more blatant.

Joshua felt his body clench almost painfully with desire. Gabriele’s perfection was impossible to ignore. The steam swirled around them like a veil to hide their intimacy.

“Stand up and cover yourself,” Joshua’s voice was hoarse and thick with the effort. “I told you there would be no training tonight – no more training ever, Gabriele. You’re not my submissive.”

Gabriele looked up into Joshua’s stern face from where she was kneeling and at last the audacity that had carried her this far deserted her. She felt tears spill down her cheeks. Her eyes glistened, but she stayed kneeling.

“You have to continue training me,” she muttered.

“No,” Joshua shook his head. “I don’t. I told you, Gabriele. Your training is over.”

Gabriele cuffed at her tears. She felt her breath come in sobs. A sense of total devastation and despair began to overwhelm her. Her shoulders slumped.

“But I need your help to learn. I’m not yet trained. I’m not ready. I know I’m not. You have to finish what we started.”

“You don’t have to learn!” Joshua hissed cruelly, and then regretted his tone almost immediately. His words were cruel enough. “Your ex-boyfriend has been fucking other women for months behind your back, Gabriele. This whole time he has been lying and cheating on you. He’s not going to come back to you, so this whole exercise in learning to be submissive in order to win him back is now pointless. He’s not coming back. You don’t need to learn submission any more. This was all for him, remember? Well now it’s irrelevant.”

“No,” Gabriele shook her head vehemently. “It’s not irrelevant. Now it matters more than it ever has, because now I know Randall was lying to me and cheating on me, I have no one, Joshua. I’m alone – and it’s the thing I fear more than anything else. I’m alone! Now my best chance to find someone who will want me is to learn how to be a good submissive. If I can’t do that, I’m forever lost… and I don’t want to attract a Master and then disappoint him because I can’t sexually satisfy his every need.”

Joshua was shaking his head with rising frustration. He stared into Gabriele’s weeping eyes with incredulity.

“You don’t need to be submissive to attract a man. Hell, you don’t even need a man in your life, Gabriele. Being alone is not something to fear. For a lot of people it’s a choice.”

“Not for me,” Gabriele was adamant. “I want to be a submissive. The need for it aches in my heart. It’s the fragment I have been searching for that makes me feel complete. But it’s only any good if I can serve, Joshua. I need a Master, and you need to finish my training to make me worthy enough for a man to want to own… because that’s what I want. That’s how I want to feel. I want to feel owned and cherished and used… and complete.”

“You’re talking crazy.”

Gabriele shook her head. Through the mist of her tears her eyes flashed with real passion. “No,” she sniffed back the urge to cry again. “Not to me. It’s not crazy. It’s who I am. It’s what I feel.”

Joshua drew a deep breath. He couldn’t overcome Gabriele’s fiercely focused emotions with logic. He scraped his fingers through his hair and realized with a small shock, that his fingers were trembling.

“You’re responsible, Joshua,” Gabriele went on, hitting Joshua in his most tender, vulnerable place; his conscience and his sense of moral obligation. “You’re the one who insisted I disconnect my own feelings from my submissive self. You’re the one who demanded that I immerse myself in the lifestyle. You’re the one who opened the door on this lifestyle and let me get a taste of it,” she battered him with her sincerely. “Well I have. I did everything you asked of me. I overcame every obstacle. You showed me this life and now I know it’s where I belong. I love feeling this way. I love the thought of being owned, prized by a man. I understand myself now better than I ever have before. I am a submissive. That is who I am. It’s how I identify. And I’m determined to be good at it. It’s the only thing I want and the only chance I have. You can’t take that opportunity away from me. You can’t!”

Joshua felt punctured by the barbs of Gabriele’s accusations and her appeal. He didn’t know how to react. Anger and frustration overcame reason. He hauled her roughly to her feet, his fingers digging deep into the flesh of her arms like claws. He pulled her towards him so their faces were just inches apart.

“I can’t train you any more,” Joshua snapped in a thick shaken voice. “I can’t!”

Gabriele’s features collapsed in tortured desolation and a flood of fresh tears. The forlorn despair in her eyes cut and slashed at Joshua’s resolve.

“But you’re my only hope,” Gabriele whispered. “Please, Joshua. I beg you – don’t abandon me.”

Joshua felt trapped; suffocated. He pushed Gabriele from him and reeled away. “I told you last night why this can’t continue,” Joshua’s voice was etched with torment and pain. “I told you.”

“You told me you were starting to care too much for me,” Gabriele shot back, not understanding. She saw something move in Joshua’s eyes, and then a change in the set of his mouth that might have signaled guilt or doubt. But when he replied, his voice retained all its anger and vehemence.

“Yes! That’s why I sent you away, Gabriele. That’s why this has to end. Before it gets…”

“Before what?” Gabriele’s expression was creased with confusion. “Before you fall in love with me?”

Joshua stared at her and the silence between them was deafening. Behind his eyes, Joshua’s mind was twisted in dark torment. Gabriele was gazing at him, holding her breath.

Joshua looked down at his hands.

“Yes,” Joshua said. “It has to end before I begin to fall in love with you.”

The tension seemed to seep slowly from Gabriele now Joshua had been driven to confess his fear. She let out a shuddering gasp of breath and went to him, naked. “Why is that so wrong?” she reached for Joshua’s hands.

He snatched them away as if her touch were fire. “Because my heart’s not mine to give!”

Gabriele flinched in shock, frowning. Her mouth hung slack. Her gaze flicked away uncertainly, then came slowly back to Joshua.

“I don’t understand…” she said carefully, beseeching Joshua to open up to her. “Is it because of your code of honor, Joshua? Is that what this is about? You won’t permit yourself to fall in love with a student, and for that reason I’m being punished?”

Joshua was slowly shaking his head in mute denial. Gabriele took another step towards him, steeling herself with a conscious act of courage.

“You don’t even know what real love is, Gabriele,” there was contempt in Joshua’s voice, trying to push her away with the bitter derision woven into his words. “You think it’s the fantasy you have been brainwashed to believe in by books and television… but real love and real life isn’t filled with romantic gestures, hearts and flowers. Real love is raw. It hurts sometimes. It tests you. It challenges you. Sometimes it damned well defies you. It’s like mist; you can never hold it closely enough to know it will last.”

“Are you speaking from experience?” Gabriele narrowed her eyes. Her question could have been a challenge. It could have been an offer to listen.

Joshua shook his head dismissively, but Gabriele would not be denied.

“You think I don’t know what it is to love someone and be hurt by them?” her voice was incredulous. “After everything you know I have been through?” She started shaking her head as though she no longer recognized Joshua. “Maybe what I experienced with Randall wasn’t love by your definition. But it was real to me, Joshua. And it fucking hurt when he walked out on me. And it hurt even more when you told me that he was cheating on me. So don’t dismiss what I felt as being superficial just because I’m younger than you.” She was breathing deeply; her eyes slanted into bright little arrowheads of anger. “And I know this,” she thrust a finger at him. “What we shared last night… the kiss… that felt real to me too, Joshua. Real enough for me to want more.”

“This isn’t about you!” Joshua resisted, raising his voice. “This is about me, Gabriele. It’s my decision to end our training. It was my mistake that caused this whole fiasco. When I kissed you, I let my emotions show. I let what was secretly building within me to reveal itself in that moment. I know I can’t take that back… but I can end your training. I can send you away. I can get you out of my life.”

For long dangerous moments Joshua’s temper simmered on the edge of igniting like a short fuse surrounded by sparks. Gabriele’s instincts told her to be wary. Another confronting challenge would only drive him away from her forever.

That realization took the sting from her voice. Her features softened, and her voice dropped to a whisper.

“Who was it, Joshua?”

Joshua’s face turned blank and bloodless. “What are you talking about?” the snarl was dismissive but also uncertain.

“Who broke your heart?” Gabriele asked. “What was the name of the woman who made you into the man you are? What did she do to you to make you shut yourself off like this?”

Joshua’s features turned hard as stone. His eyes went black. The blood drained from his face. “Get out.”

Gabriele stood her ground but it was fear, not defiance that rooted her feet to the spot. Joshua’s sudden cold emotionless tone was so disconnected from the heat of their blazing argument that it frightened her. She swallowed down her panic and lifted her chin in silent defiance.

“I said get out!” Now the anger broke through the stony façade. Joshua’s voice rose sharp and barking. He went to the bathroom door and flung it crashing back on its hinges. “Get your clothes and get out of the house, Gabriele. Now!”

“I can’t,” Gabriele broke down in tears. She was shaking her head slowly from side to side.

Joshua was seething. Gabriele had dragged him to the darkest corner of his soul – a place where he didn’t want to be; a place that felt like Hell itself.

“Get out before I throw you out.” His face was stern, his jaw clenched tight, and his eyes were terrible.

Gabriele slowly shook her head. She was crying uncontrollably, her hand clamped across her mouth, her eyes dark wells of dread and stricken despair. She felt her knees go weak but she stood her ground, swayed before the storm of Joshua’s temper but unwilling to be driven away.

“Why are you angry at me?” she asked in the small voice of a confused and innocent victim.

“Because it’s easier!” Joshua snapped before he could bite back the impulsive admission. He was shaking with his anger, and it knotted the muscles in his jaw. “Because it’s easier to drive you away and to make you hate my guts than it is to open myself up to another chance to be hurt.”

“You want me to hate you?”

“Yes!” Joshua roared. His face was swollen red and mottled. “As much as I hate myself.”

His voice echoed in the sudden profound emptiness. Joshua seemed stunned by his own words, mortified into shock. For a long moment he stared angry-eyed into space, and then he threw back his head as though struck by a mortal blow. His face twisted into a mask of raw pain as his grief rose to the surface, and then he slumped against the nearest wall, numb. Slowly, very slowly, the expression on Joshua’s face began to alter. It turned neutral; blank. The life seemed to die in his eyes as his gaze turned inwards, back into the dark agonies of his past.

Gabriele waited in the silence, not daring to speak or even move. She watched Joshua fighting his own secret war in dreadful fascination and, though her heart went out to him, she knew she could only wait. She bit her lower lip between her teeth as the silence drew out.

The anger seemed to slowly seep from Joshua’s body. He closed his eyes. The tension went out of his shoulders and then the taut strain in his face softened until his features turned sad and wretched. He buried his hands deep into the pockets of his pants, braced against the bathroom wall as though he needed it for support.

“I gave up on love three years ago,” Joshua said at last. “On the day my wife disappeared.”

Gabriele went pale and cold with shock. “I… I didn’t even know you had been married.”

Joshua nodded his head, and his voice turned darker and heavy. “Her name was Jan. We got married when we were young, and we struggled like all couples do. But we were happy. I had just joined the Navy. Jan was studying to be a lawyer. We didn’t have much, but somehow that early adversity made us appreciate the little things even more.”

“And then she left you, Joshua?” Gabriele asked softly.

Joshua shook his head. “No.”

“But you said she disappeared…”

Joshua’s voice turned bitter in an instant. “She drowned,” he said as though the cruelty of it still could not be reconciled. “I was on the way back from a fleet operation. We lived near the naval base. Jan went to the beach one day with a girlfriend,” he shrugged in helplessness. “She went into the surf but didn’t come out.”

Gabriele clamped her hand over her mouth in gasping shock. “Oh, God. I’m so sorry.”

Joshua seemed not to even hear her. He was gazing into space, talking now in a flat monotone that was scrubbed of all emotion. “The local police swept the beach and helicopters flew a search for her body, but she was never found,” Joshua said. “When I got back to the base, I resigned from the service and spent the next three weeks walking that stretch of sand, hoping against hope that she would just suddenly turn up,” he shrugged as though in hindsight his actions had been pointless. “But she didn’t.”

Joshua pushed himself away from the bathroom wall, shoulders hunched, his head hung low with his grief. “I resigned my commission. Somehow I couldn’t bear the thought of being anywhere near the ocean again – not after it had taken Jan from me.”

“I understand,” Gabriele’s voice was small.

Joshua felt the prickle of tears at the corners of his eyes, and he blinked them away. He had wept with futility so many times over the years. Now he choked down the rising lump of emotion that was jammed in his throat and turned his eyes on to Gabriele.

“I couldn’t even mourn her loss properly,” he said lamely. “There was no body to bury, no gravesite to visit with flowers. No closure. The ocean took her from me and gave me nothing but photos to remember her by.”

Gabriele said nothing. She was wringing her hands, empathetic to Joshua’s pain.

“It broke me,” Joshua confessed. His eyes became hard and haunted, his features ravaged by his rising grief. “While I was pacing that beach, looking for Jan and hoping against all hope, I swore I wouldn’t make myself so vulnerable ever again, Gabriele. I swore I would never care for anyone or fall in love with anyone else – because I’d seen first-hand how painful loss can be. I decided I was going to harden my heart and keep people at a distance. I vowed that no one else would ever get so close that I would hurt if they left…. or were taken from me… because I never wanted to feel that agony of Jan’s loss again.”

“Is that when you became a Master?”

Joshua blinked, and with a supreme force of will, he pushed aside the despairing memories of his wife’s disappearance. His focus came forward into the more recent past.

He shrugged. “Jan and I had lived the lifestyle since our early days together. She was naturally submissive, and I guess I was instinctively dominant. We explored the roles with each other because you don’t just decide to be a Master. It takes a deep understanding of people, their thresholds and their emotional reactions to different situations. But I became good at it. It was natural. Jan let me make my mistakes on her,” he gave a wistful fond smile at some fleeting moment of distant joy. “So after retiring from the Navy, I began to train women because I imagined what might have happened to Jan if she had chosen the same life-path but hadn’t found me. I pictured her being punished into obedience at the hands of some fucking thug and that thought inspired me. It’s still why I do what I do.”

“Have you ever come close to…?” Gabriele found she couldn’t continue. She didn’t need to. Joshua sensed the direction of her question. His face turned hard.

“I was perfect for the role. I stayed cold, remote and detached. No one got past my guard. No woman was ever able to reach me on an emotional level. It was purely physical. Every woman was a body and mind to be trained, pleasured… and to please.”

“Until me?”

Joshua nodded guiltily. “Until that kiss.”

“And that’s why you…”

“It’s why you have to go,” Joshua’s mind came slamming back to the present like he had been awakened from a sad tormented nightmare. The brief glimpse that Gabriele had stolen through the door to his soul was hammered shut in an instant. She sensed the return of Joshua’s grim anger looming like a dark storm about to break.

“Please! Don’t shut me out, Joshua. Don’t blame me…”

“Get out, Gabriele. Now.”

Gabriele flinched, but didn’t move. She felt herself on the verge of more hopeless tears.

“Now!” Joshua shouted. It was a sound of mingled pain and anger.

Gabriele took short gasping gulps of breath She was trembling. The sudden transformation in Joshua had been terrifying. Against all her instincts; against her senses that screamed for her to flee down the stairs – Gabriele slowly lowered herself back to her knees, a silent plea in her huge tear-filled eyes as she defied Joshua’s command. “I’m sorry but I won’t go. I won’t give up.”

“Get out!” Joshua growled like he was hurting.

Gabriele lowered her head, submissively and clasped her hands behind her back. She was trembling, shivering. A tear rolled down her cheek and clung to the defiant line of her jaw.

“Get on your feet. Our arrangement is ended. Training is over.”

“No,” Gabriele shook her head slowly. “I’m your submissive, Joshua. You are my Master. You have made me yours. It was in your kiss. I just can’t leave and pretend it never happened because it did. And it changed me. I must finish my training.”

Joshua felt his rage become formless. He would never strike a woman in anger. It defied his moral code; it railed against everything he believed in as a man and a Master. But his sense of righteousness left him powerless to physically force Gabriele out of his home. His anger bloomed and then thrashed about the walls of his mind with no outlet for release. At last it reformed into bitter frustration.

“Damn you!” Joshua snarled. He had his fists bunched like hammers; the muscles in his chest and forearms swollen and strained. The thickly corded muscles in his neck bulging like rope. His eyes were red with his rage. “Fine! You want training, Gabriele? You want to experience submission tonight? Then that’s what you’re going to get,” he growled with menace and ominous threat. “Get into the training room, right now! I want you bent over the table waiting for me.”

Joshua stormed out of the room in a towering impotent rage, sweeping through the house like a tornado.

Gabriele got to her feet. She was overwrought and trembling, her knees barely able to support her weight. She clutched at the cold tiled wall for support and then walked to the training room like she was on her way to the gallows.

 

 

 

When Joshua came into the training room, Gabriele was folded over the tabletop, with her cheek turned to the cold wood so that she could see him in the doorway. She had her arms stretched out across the table, and her legs spread, feet flat on the floor. Joshua’s eyes were narrowed, his expression terrible. His hands were bunched into fists, clenching and re-clenching with the force of his pent-up frustration. He paused in the threshold for a long moment and the intensity of his gaze made Gabriele quail. There was no kindness in his features; no hint of compassion. Gabriele let out the breath she had been holding. She licked her lips. She could taste the salt of her own dried tears.

Joshua closed the door with a slam that made her flinch.

“Spread your legs wider, damn it!” His first words were an accusing snarl. “You’ve been shown the pose before. How many times does it take for you to learn?”

Gabriele widened her stance. Joshua circled her like a prowling lion. He passed out of her vision and instinctively she felt her whole body clench tight as if anticipating a blow from his hand.

Joshua snatched up a length of rope from the table and carried it in his hand like a whip. The cord was soft nylon, perhaps four feet long. He swished it lightly across Gabriele’s naked back like the flicking restless tail of a big jungle cat. She gasped from the unexpected sensation. Her shoulders were knotted with her tension, and the strain on her straightened legs was beginning to make them ache and tremble.

Joshua drew the length of rope across Gabriele’s back a second time, and then came to stand hard behind her. His hips thrust against her so forcefully that the table was pushed an inch forward. Without a word Joshua seized her hands and clamped them behind her back. He took the rope and quickly bound her wrists. Gabriele closed her eyes. Joshua’s knots were not tight. There was no pain or pinching of her flesh. She was bound and restrained but not too tightly that the flow of blood to her fingers was inhibited. He wanted her helpless… not hurting.

When the knot was secure, Joshua fisted his hand into the hair at the nape of Gabriele’s neck. She grimaced and squeezed her eyes tight. Joshua lifted her face off the table so that her neck was drawn taught. Gabriele’s mouth fell open.

“Listen to me,” Joshua said with menace. “No man is ever going to want you as their submissive until you learn to perform a lot better than you have. No Master needs some fucking stupid little girl for a slave. Any real Master is going to want a woman; a real woman who knows how to fuck and to suck, and to swallow. I don’t think you measure up.”

“I’ll try harder, Master,” Gabriele rasped obediently. The strain of her position made the words hoarse in her throat.

“Trying isn’t good enough,” Joshua sneered. “So you’re either going to have to abandon your submission, or else I’ll make you learn the art of sexual pleasure at the hands of strangers. Maybe I’ll start whoring you out on a street corner. Perhaps that way you can learn how to use your pussy for pleasure and your mouth properly. Maybe I’ll just invite random guys over here each night and let them take turns at fucking you until I think you’ve got enough skill to satisfy a Master,” he lied maliciously, desperate to find some weakness as a lever to frighten Gabriele away.

“Yes, Master,” Gabriele wheezed. “I’ll fuck as many strange men as you want to me to in order to learn how to please a man. I’ll do everything you ask of me to train my pussy and my mouth.”

Joshua let go of Gabriele’s hair and wheeled away, shaking his head with incredulous despair. He believed her.

Jesus!

Joshua had never encountered a woman with such a committed sense of purpose.

He tried again, fashioning another threat even more terrible, and through the lie he came to stand before her so he could watch her face and read her expression for the slightest sign of fear or panic.

“And after you’ve been fucked by a couple of hundred strangers and sucked so many cocks that you’ve lost count, I’ll start to make some money off you. I know there is demand for pretty whores, and I’m sure you could make a fortune for a clever Master by laying on your back at seedy hotel parties.”

“If that’s what I need to do to be properly trained, Master, I will do it willingly,” Gabriele said. Her face was somber, her eyes glistening with the passion of a zealot, her expression devoted and resolute. She knew in her heart that Joshua would never give her body to another man for training. He was simply too proud – too alpha – to ever consider such a notion.

Joshua felt her determination like a solid brick wall he was pounding himself hopelessly against. Her voice hadn’t faltered; her earnestness shone through undaunted.

He drifted out of her vision and wrung his hands in rising panic. Gabriele had enough commitment to carry them both through the rest of her training no matter how reluctant and reticent Joshua was to continue.

“Get on your knees!” Joshua snapped in desperation.

Gabriele slid off the table with her hands still bound and got awkwardly down on the carpet, struggling to keep her balance. Joshua stalked her.

“Knees wider, God damn it!”

Gabriele shuffled her knees apart dutifully.

“And straighten your back!”

Gabriele obeyed.

“Open your mouth wider.”

Gabriele tried.

“Wider!”

Gabriele tried harder. Her eyes were beginning to mist with tears. She sniffled bravely and kept her gaze fixed as a statue on the blank wall before her. Joshua stood to one side and reached down to clamp one of her breasts in his hand. He squeezed firmly until her nipple grew erect and pushed between his fingers.

“Tell me what you are,” Joshua barked.

“Your submissive.”

“And will you be a whore for me?”

“Yes. Anything you want.”

“Will you be a tight wet hole for me to fuck?”

“Yes. Gladly, Master. I’m completely yours.”

“But what if I don’t want you?”

“Then I’ll wait, Master. You own me.”

Joshua felt his shoulders slump. Gabriele began to sob. It wasn’t Joshua’s touch that brought her to tears, and it wasn’t that she was bound. It was the tone of his voice; the anger and suppressed rage that trembled his every word.

“I hate you,” Joshua lied. His voice broke.

“I love you, Master,” Gabriele didn’t believe him. The kiss spoke the truth.

“Don’t say that! I don’t want you,” Joshua muttered.

“It’s true. I love you, and you’re all I have.”

“I want you to leave,” the words were a whisper.

“I will be here to serve and obey you always.”

There was a light in Gabriele’s eyes; a look that was deep beyond Joshua’s understanding. She gazed at him in an adoring way that not even Jan had looked at him. He felt a thread in his mind unravel, the fabric of his resentment begin to fray. Gabriele’s face melted like wax and reformed into an image of Jan, then reformed as herself. It all happened in the blink of an eye; the single beat of his heart.

But the effect was profound.

Joshua stepped away and slumped against the nearest wall. He was breathing deeply as though he had run a great distance. He sighed in silent defeat.

“Come back tomorrow night,” he heard the dry rasp of his capitulation in his own ears. “I’ll train you until you are prepared and ready to find your own Master.”

 

 

 

 

Chapter 9:

 

Gabriele phoned in too ill for work again the next morning and spent the rest of the day in her apartment, preparing for the night with Joshua.

She was nervous; she knew that they had parted on tenuous terms the night before. It would take only one false move and Joshua would have the excuse he needed to break their agreement. She knew also that she had drawn him into emotionally deep water – and that Joshua was floundering and unsure how to navigate his way through the turmoil of his feelings.

Joshua was not the kind of hot-and-cold man who could turn his emotions off or on like a tap. The process was much more arduous for him. He was cursed by a loyalty that transcended even death, and that devotion restricted his freedom to feel for others. Gabriele had become a temptation that challenged him.

Would Joshua continue to resist his instincts through the awesome will of his discipline, or would he finally surrender to the basic desire that boiled in the blood of all men?

Gabriele didn’t know.

But she knew what she wanted and needed. She needed Joshua to take her; to fuck her, and thereby make an emotional and physical claim on her body. If she could draw him across that moral line, then the ground beneath him would crumble, and he would be unable to circle back behind the high wall he was hiding his heart behind. If the emotional and physical bond of sex did not bind them, then at least Joshua would be beyond the borders of his past; caught in a no-man’s land of new feelings.

Then Gabriele would have a fighting chance.

At the moment, Joshua’s memories of his dead wife and his vows to remain detached from her were stronger even than his instinctive desire for her body. She desperately had to change that. Somehow Gabriele had to find a way to encourage Joshua to fuck her… and then to make that experience so powerful and intense for him that he would feel compelled to unshackle himself from his past.

But how?

How could she tempt Joshua to take her; to throw her down on the ground and fuck her with all the restrained desire that she knew was churning inside of him? God knows she had tried! She had practically offered herself to him, panted for him, pleaded to him… and always his resolve and will had won the private war in his heart.

What else could she do?

She had bought the most expensive lingerie she could afford, and she had perfumed and powdered her body until it was scented and glowing with the glossy sheen of her youth. She had willed him with her mind, and she had stood naked and wet before him. She’d had her mouth an inch away from his hard cock, and her pussy also. Joshua had defied her every temptation.

Gabriele prowled around the apartment, her arms wrapped around her shoulders, hugging herself as she thought furiously. Perhaps if she had been more experienced with men, then she would know some feminine secret to make herself irresistible. Perhaps mature men like Joshua were so much harder to tempt than boys like Randall, who thought only with their cock, and thought only about their next fuck. Joshua wasn’t like that, and the realization frustrated her and fascinated her at the same time.

Joshua was a man who was immensely knowledgeable in the world, and highly experienced with women. Gabriele wondered how many other girls just like her had reached out to him for submissive training. A dozen? A hundred? Had Joshua fucked them all as a part of their training process? Had he forced them all to obediently suck his cock and learn to pleasure a man with their mouths, while he stood before them with his hands on his hips and his gaze clinical, feeling nothing?

Had he settled himself between their parted legs and licked them to the brink of orgasm, just as he had done to her?

The more Gabriele thought about Joshua’s submissive training, the more uncertain she became.

Why hadn’t he instructed her on how to suck his cock?

Why hadn’t he bent her over the table and fucked her?

What was wrong with her?

 Did Joshua not find her attractive and desirable? Were the other women he had trained more sexually skilled or more experienced with men? Did they present themselves to him more provocatively? Were they more overt in their desire to be fucked?

She threw herself down on her bed in a tantrum of frustration. After two days of rain, the sun was back, high in the sky. It burned through the glass of her window and painted warm bright light across her body. She was still wearing just the panties she had slept in. She clutched at a pillow. It smelled faintly of her shampoo.

Damn you Joshua! Gabriele pounded the pillow into shape with a bitter thump from her fist. Her frustration began to change form; twisting and writhing like smoke until it became like the scratching irritation of insects crawling beneath her skin. Her thoughts drifted away from the dilemma of her uncertainty, and when they re-formed, they were sexual. She fantasized about Joshua with other women; kissing them, sucking on their breasts. Then she saw the vision of Joshua with a beautiful blonde girl. The woman in her mind was the same age as Gabriele, her skin tanned the color of honey, her eyes dazzling blue. She was on her knees before Joshua in the training room, sucking his cock and humming contentedly to herself as her head bobbed back and forth along his thick glistening shaft. Joshua had his head thrown back and his eyes squeezed shut. The blonde girl in Gabriele’s fantasy was calm and composed, pleasuring Joshua with secrets she had learned from the men she had known before him.

Gabriele groaned. She needed to cum, but Joshua still hadn’t given her permission. She slipped a hand down inside her panties anyhow; she was very wet. She could feel the ache and the heat of herself, and just the merest touch of her pussy set aflame the dormant ashes of a fire that had been left untended for far too long.

Gabriele rolled onto her back on the bed and spread her legs. The sun was warm across her breasts. She toyed with her nipples, plucking at them with her fingertips and reveling in the delicious tingles that filtered down into her abdomen.

Her eyes were shut. The vision of the blonde woman filled her mind. The blonde was smiling as she sucked Joshua’s cock, playing the length of his shaft like a skilled musician, and Gabriele hated her; hated her for the sexual skill and ability that she herself lacked. Joshua was groaning, gasping for fresh breath to fill his lungs. Then the blonde let his cock slip from between her perfectly painted lips and turned her head to stare directly at Gabriele.

“A girl will never win this man,” the imaginary blonde confided to Gabriele in a whisper. “He needs a real woman.”

The vision shattered; the blonde faded into swirling blackness. Gabriele opened her eyes. Her hand was deep inside her panties, one finger teasing her clit. She withdrew her hand with a soft sob of aching regret and sat up on the bed, startled.

 

 

 

When Gabriele arrived at Joshua’s home just before 8 pm, she saw lights burning in the upstairs bedroom. She paid off the cab driver and straightened her clothes. She was wearing the black dress again; it clung to her figure and was so short that it had ridden high up her thigh during the journey out from the city. She stood on the sidewalk and tugged at the hem, then went quickly up the driveway to the front door.

Gabriele settled herself on her knees at the front door just as she saw the bedroom light turned off and the interior of the house seemingly plunged into darkness. She heard Joshua’s footsteps echoing through the house, coming towards the foyer.

Gabriele clasped her hands obediently behind her back and opened her mouth. Joshua swung the door open and stared down at her.

He was wearing faded blue jeans that were fitted tight to his muscled thighs and grimy from outdoor work. His shirt was sweat-stained under the armpits and clung damp against his chest. There was a wind-swept tousle to his hair and a shadow of gunmetal blue stubble on his chin and jaw.

“Hello, Master,” Gabriele said softly, her face lifted to his gaze.

Gabriele had spent a fastidious hour on her hair and makeup. She knew she looked as perfect as she could make herself. The dress accentuated every curve and contour, and the white lingerie she wore beneath the garment was sheer and brief.

“Come inside,” Joshua’s face was a mask.

Gabriele rose to her feet and stepped into the warmth of the house on a cloud of intoxicating perfume.

In the foyer she stood silent and waiting. She saw Joshua’s eyes roaming over her body, and she felt secretly thrilled for the attention. She waited with her back straight, feet together like she was standing at attention. At last Joshua nodded his approval, and she let out the breath she had been holding.

She had fretted about these first moments. She had feared that Joshua would reject her; worried that he would be remorseful about agreeing to continue to train her. But Joshua seemed slightly distracted and unprepared. It wasn’t like him at all. Her fear of being sent away was replaced by a little tilt of uncertainty.

“Shall I undress for your inspection, Master?” Gabriele asked with polite indifference – even though his answer mattered very much to her.

Joshua – ruled by his discipline and conventions – nodded his head curtly. Gabriele saw that his hands were raw and scratched.

She unbuttoned the front of the dress and shrugged it off her shoulders then shimmied her hips to let the garment fall in a pool about her feet. She turned to face him, clad in just brief white lace panties and a half-cup bra that lifted her breasts high and exposed her hard nipples.

Despite himself, Joshua’s eyes blazed, and Gabriele delighted in the little victory that showed as smoldering lust in Joshua’s expression.

Joshua ran his eyes over Gabriele’s body, soaking in every inch of her exquisite perfection. She had her legs slightly parted, displaying the enticing gap between her thighs and the soft mound of her sex beneath the gauzy lace. Joshua fought against the hypnotizing allure of her.

“Very good,” he said abruptly. “You have made an effort for tonight. I can see that in your preparation. I am pleased.”

Gabriele bobbed her head. “Thank you, Master. I always like it when you admire me.”

There seemed nothing more to say and they lapsed into a brief awkward silence. Joshua was frowning and Gabriele became bothered. Joshua seemed to have no clear intention for her night’s training.

He seemed to come alert suddenly, like waking from a dream. He ran his hands through his hair. “I’ve been working in the yard all day,” he looked down at his clothes as though in explanation. “There was a lot of damage from the storm that needed to be cleaned up. I’ve only just finished thirty minutes ago.”

“Do you wish me to do something, Master?” Gabriele asked.

“No,” Joshua shook his head. “I’m going up to take a shower. While I’m cleaning up, I want you to spend the time practicing your positions in the training room.”

Gabriele nodded her obedience. “Yes, Master.”

 

 

 

From the training room, Gabriele could hear the soft sound of running water through the walls. The bathroom was on the other side of Joshua’s grand bedroom. She lowered herself to her knees and clasped her hands behind her back.

She knew it was the time when she should be training her mind to stillness, directing all her attention on to the pleasure of her Master. But the sound of the shower was a maddening torment. Gabriele knew what it meant, and the harder she tried to block out the distraction the more dominant it became in her mind.

She was tormented by the fact that just a few yards away from her, Joshua was now stripped naked, standing under the scalding spray of hot water. Gabriele saw the bathroom in her mind’s eye; imagined the pile of Joshua’s sweaty clothes discarded on the floor while he lathered his naked body under suds and spray behind the frosted screen of the shower door. She tried to visualize what he would look like; she knew he was toned and broad chested. And she knew that his arms were muscled. She had seen and brushed her fingers across the flat of his abdomen…

Her good intentions of obedience dissolved into a hot flustered mess of wicked fantasies.

She began to fidget in her position, moving her knees wider apart and then restlessly gripping and releasing the grasp of her hands. She could hear the drumming of her heart in her chest and the soft rasp of her breath. She recognized the sound; it was a dull panting of her own desire.

The sound of running water intensified. Gabriele clenched her teeth and closed her eyes, lifting her face to the ceiling as though beseeching some unknown force for strength. Her prayers went unanswered. The urge to steal a glimpse of Joshua naked was so irresistible that she recklessly surrendered herself to it.

Quiet as a thief, she crept out of the training room and crossed the bedroom to the bathroom door. It was ajar. She pressed her eye to the crack in the door. She could see soft tendrils of steam and hear the hissing water from the shower. She imagined she could see the faintest outline of a dark figure behind the frosted glass, but knew it was merely a fantasy of her wild imagination.

She had to get closer.

She edged open the door, her teeth gritted against every slight sound. When it was barely wide enough for her to slip through, Gabriele crept into the bathroom, crouched and poised with the stealth of a cat.

The bathroom mirrors were a fogged blur. Steam boiled from over the top of the shower recess. Gabriele felt a lump of anxiety and keen desire in her throat. She felt herself beginning to perspire. The bathroom was humid with the heat.

On the floor, emerging from the swirling mist, she saw Joshua’s crumpled shirt. She licked her lips. She took another stalking step towards the shower. Her heart was pounding in her chest, loud as a beating drum.

“Find what you were looking for?” Joshua asked calmly. He was standing behind her – concealed behind the ajar bathroom door, with his arms folded across his naked chest, arms bulging, and his face hard as stone.

Gabriele shrieked with fright and spun on her heel. She felt the blood drain in horror and panic from her face and her mouth fell open on the hinge of her jaw in shock.

She stood, frozen and gasping, caught red-handed.

“Master,” she flustered in wild panic. “I… I thought I heard you call my name. I came in response.”

Joshua arched a mocking eyebrow in disbelief. His eyes were hard, and his mouth was wrenched into an attitude of strict disapproval.

“You’re lying.”

Gabriele lowered her head in shame. The lie had been an impulsive mistake. Now she regretted it and feared the terrible consequences.

“Yes, Master.”

Joshua was leaning back against the wall, but the nonchalant pose betrayed his stern attitude. He drew his eyes over Gabriele’s body again, this time with such blatant sexual lust that Gabriele felt herself shiver. Then, quick as a striking cobra, Joshua’s hand lashed out and caught Gabriele around the throat. His touch was incredibly light, deliberately gentle – but the power behind the gesture made her eyes flash wide.

Joshua pinned Gabriele against the wall, and the set of his face changed from disapproval to leering lust.

“What did you hope to see?” Joshua growled.

Gabriele swallowed hard. Joshua’s fingers around her throat were like nothing more than a loose collar. She felt no pressure; no restriction. He was not choking her. She was choking herself on her own panic.

“Your body, Master,” she confessed. “I wanted to see you naked. You’ve never let me see you before.”

Despite the flutters of her fear, Gabriele was writhing in acute arousal. She could feel her pussy clenching fiercely between her legs and the rush of blood from her head to her loins had left her giddy. The wetness between her clenched thighs felt like a molted flood that soaked through the sheer lace of her panties.

Joshua dominated her by his presence. He was like an avalanche of raw power and muscle, poised over her. Gabriele stood like a beautiful butterfly pinned to a taxidermy board.

“You wanted to see me naked?”

“Yes!” Gabriele blushed. Absently, she noticed a faded tattoo on Joshua’s right bicep. It was the image of an American flag, and below it were printed letters and numbers.

“You wanted to see my cock?”

Gabriele’s eyes dissolved into dark pools of writhing desire. “Yes, Master!” she gushed.

Joshua stood back and reached for the buckle of his belt. Gabriele’s eyes swam with her need. Joshua’s torso undulated with the ripples of his abdomen muscles. He unbuttoned his jeans and hooked his hands into the belt loops. Then he stared fixedly at Gabriele.

“So that itch between your legs is driving you crazy, is it, Gabriele? You’re so fixated with the need to have your mouth and pussy filled with my cock that it’s driving you to distraction?”

“Yes,” Gabriele felt suddenly ashamed.

“After just a few days without an orgasm, you’re twitching between the legs and desperate for sex?”

“Yes,” she sobbed. Somehow she felt like a failure. Her desperate sexual need had driven her to this place, like a drug addict denied the lure of a fix for far too long, she was frenzied by the temptation that had stubbornly remained out of her reach; out of her control to seize.

“You’re weak.”

“Yes,” she hung her head.

Joshua still had his thumbs hooked into the waistband of his jeans. The zipper had been drawn down, and Gabriele realized with a throbbing shock that beneath the denim, Joshua wore no underwear. She could see the pale flesh of his groin and the dark whorls of hair that nested between his legs.

Gabriele was holding her breath with lewd fascination.

Joshua drew down his jeans, and his hard cock sprang from between the denim.

Gabriele widened her eyes and gasped, “Oh, dear God!”

Joshua’s cock was as hard as an iron bar; thicker and longer than she had ever seen on a man before. The shaft was like a brutal weapon, though amazingly beautiful to her – like a great prize to be won. The length of him was ridged and veined, the crown swollen. Possessed by a fascinated spell, Gabriele reached tentatively out for him. Her fingers could not entirely wrap around his thickness.

Joshua felt like fire in her hand; the flesh of his cock so hot that it seemed to burn her fingers. Gabriele licked her lips. Her eyes were huge and hectic.

Joshua clamped his grip around her wrist and lifted it away from his cock. Gabriele groaned a pained whimper of frustration.

“Go back to the training room,” Joshua’s own voice had become thick, the look on his face acutely strained. “I’ll deal with your disobedience when I have finished showering.”

 

 

 

Despite the impending cloud of retribution that hung over her like a guillotine blade poised to fall, Gabriele knelt on the training room floor replaying in minute fascinated detail every brief moment she had spent caressing Joshua’s hard cock in the bathroom.

She remembered how hard he had been, and it gave her a swelling uplift of hope. His hardness had been a measure of his desire for her, and that reassured her. The heat of him had shocked her – but not so much as the sheer size and thickness of his cock. She could see it clearly in her mind, and she obsessed over it as though it were something to be adored.

She licked her lips and imagined Joshua sliding himself into her mouth; the battering ram of him forcing and stretching her as he pushed himself across her tongue and against the back of her throat. Her mouth filled with saliva, just as her pussy swam with wetness at the fantasy of him fucking her. She could only guess at the thrill of those sensations as she opened herself wide to him, and his insistent demand that she give him even more. She tried to capture the sensations of having him deep between her spread legs, and the wonder of feeling gloriously stretched around his shaft as the first tremors of orgasm gripped her. The fantasy made Gabriele tremble and shudder with voluptuous anticipation.

 

 

 

Joshua toweled himself dry and stood for long moments naked and uncertain while the steam in the bathroom slowly began to dissipate. He thought about Gabriele waiting for him in the training room, and he thought too about the softness of her fleeting touch along the length of his cock. Her fingers had been a salve to the fire of his desire; not enough to take away the ache for her, but enough to cool his ardor – for the moment.

But what should he do now?

Joshua had planned a session of dull-but-necessary instructional lectures; a way to gradually overcome the lingering brittle tension of the previous night, and ease them back towards being comfortable and trusting in each other’s presence. Gabriele’s impulsive entry into the bathroom had derailed his plans entirely.

He was still conflicted about what had happened. He had admonished himself in the shower for exposing himself… but he was man enough, and realistic enough, to know that it had been inevitable. He had concealed that certainty from himself for days, but now it was upon him, there seemed no alternative but to move Gabriele’s training to a sexual level. That realization troubled Joshua deeply. His resolve was melting like wax against the flame of his sexual attraction to her.

Joshua’s thoughts lost all coherence as his mind veered off into fantasy. He wanted Gabriele with a fierce hunger that was growing impossible to reject or conceal. He was sure it blazed in his eyes every time she met his gaze. He was sure too, that his lust was primal and selfish – yet it was undeniable. To resist it was counter to every virile fiber of his being. He was a man; she was a woman. The attraction between them was mutual.

His conflicted emotions and moral code were the only barriers, and oh, how Gabriele had shaken the foundations of every defense he had buttressed himself behind!

She seemed to sense his weaknesses and his desires, subverting every one of his elaborate emotional defenses with her innocence, her earnestness, and her guileless childlike honesty. She was so lacking in cunning, so devoid of sexual art that Joshua found her fascinatingly irresistible.

She was his for the taking, and yet still he fought the trapping snares as though to surrender without a greater fight would somehow betray Jan’s memory, and diminish all that they once had.

 

 

 

Gabriele went rigid with tension when Joshua came into the training room. She had been fantasizing still about the thrill of seeing him naked. His sudden appearance in the door chased those visions away and brought her attention slamming back to the consequences of her actions.

Joshua had changed into clean jeans and a pale blue shirt. “Spread your knees wider,” Joshua’s tone was brusque and no-nonsense.

Gabriele scurried to obey.

“And straighten your back.”

Gabriele blocked out everything she had been thinking, and forced her mind into empty space. She closed her eyes, pulled back her shoulders and opened her mouth. After a moment – recalling the size and thickness of Joshua’s cock with an unbidden interrupted flash across her mind – she widened her mouth until her jaw ached.

“Better,” Joshua gruffed.

He walked a slow circle around her and finally crouched down on his haunches beside where she knelt. Gabriele opened her eyes but didn’t dare turn her head. She stared fixedly in front of her. Joshua was close. With absolute authority he reached between Gabriele’s legs and swiped the palm of his hand across the mound of her sex through the fabric of her panties.

“Your tight little pussy is going to get you into trouble,” Joshua warned her. “First, because you can’t control your urges, and second because you don’t know how to use it properly.” In the silence after he spoke, he began to tease the lips of her sex. Gabriele’s panties were damp and warm with her juices. His fingers slid across the slippery folds, pressing the wet fabric into the natural deep creases of her body. Gabriele gave a little gasp. Her eyes fluttered. She clamped her lips tight together to stifle a moan.

“Do you understand what I am saying?” Joshua’s question sounded like a taunt.

“Yes, Master,” Gabriele whispered.

“Until you know how to fuck properly… why you’re fucking… and when you should be ready to fuck – you know nothing at all,” Joshua’s voice was rising as he let a little of his anger bubble to the surface. “Just spreading your legs and laying on a bed like a dead body isn’t going to please any Master, let alone any man,” Joshua went on. “You’ve got to learn the skills of giving pleasure, and everything that goes on in a man’s mind. It’s the only way you’re going to be worthwhile in the bedroom.”

“I understand, Master,” Gabriele responded.

Joshua got to his feet. “I hope your little bathroom stunt was worth it…” his tone turned ominous, “…because it’s going to cost you a full month without an orgasm.”

Despite herself, Gabriele’s head shot around, and her eyes went wide at the dreadful severity of the punishment. “A month?”

“Yes,” Joshua growled. “Another thirty days without coming, and while I have you here, I’m going to ensure that every minute is such a sexual torture that you’ll be climbing the walls with frustration.”

“But Master!” Gabriele was truly fearful. She couldn’t last much longer without the relief of an orgasm. It had only been a few days, but already she was irritable and frustrated. The punishment was crueler than she had ever expected. She sulked.

“Can you whip me instead, Master? I’ll take lashes from a riding crop, or even a length of rope. Please, Sir,” she begged. “I can’t endure a month without an orgasm. I honestly can’t.”

Joshua arched an eyebrow, then waved away her offer dismissively. “I have told you repeatedly that discipline and obedience are the cornerstones of a successful Master-submissive relationship. And yet you choose to defy me time and time again. You ignore my wishes and my instructions, and you take it upon yourself to act as if you know best. You don’t – and you need to learn that fact – quickly.”

Gabriele was distraught. A month without coming, driven to sexual distraction by Joshua throughout every night of their training, would break her.

“Master,” she made her eyes sorrowful and pleading. “Is there anything I can do to have the punishment commuted?”

“Lessened?”

Gabriele nodded her head vehemently.

Joshua frowned and looked thoughtful. “I’ll always reward exemplary behavior. I told you this also on a previous occasion.” Then he waggled a threatening finger at her. “But you get nothing for being obedient or performing your tasks in a satisfactory manner,” he laid down his law. “That’s not exemplary… it’s expected.”

 

 

 

The air was still brittle with tension when Joshua took Gabriele from the training room and led her – frowning with puzzlement – down into the kitchen.

The area was large and open, with natural timber cupboards, a long L-shaped countertop made of grey marble, and in a corner of the slate tiled floor, a wooden table with four chairs. Hanging over the table was an elaborate brass chandelier. Joshua flicked on the light switch and the room filled with a warm cozy glow.

Joshua led Gabriele to the table and ordered her to sit. Then he began pacing across the floor with his hands clasped behind his back, like a military general briefing his troops on the eve of a major offensive.

“During your life as a submissive you must learn to understand that every rule of the lifestyle has its exceptions and variations,” Joshua began speaking, clinical and detached. “Not every Master is the same, and neither is every submissive. And although people share an interest in the lifestyle, the depth of their interest and their particular fascinations will vary greatly. BDSM relationships are just as brittle as traditional relationships. There can be infidelity, lies, and deception… even though the general lifestyle rules might be broader and more accepting than most typical relationships.”

Gabriele was frowning, puzzled by Joshua’s words, but she was also confused about their location. Never before had Joshua brought her into the kitchen.

“I don’t understand,” Gabriele ventured in the silence after Joshua had finished speaking. “Infidelity happens in a Master-submissive relationship?”

“It certainly can,” Joshua was adamant. He stopped pacing for a moment and leaned his weight against the kitchen counter. “Just because the Master is in control, doesn’t mean he can do whatever he wants, with whomever he chooses. That’s the sort of thing a couple in the lifestyle must talk about and reach an understanding on before the relationship builds. In some cases the Master might be at liberty to fuck any submissive he wants. In other relationships that might cross a line the submissive has set as a term of her agreement to serve. Clearly, if the Master goes off and fucks another submissive… or if he brings another woman home to fuck in front of the submissive who currently serves him… she would have every right to feel she is being betrayed; cheated on.”

“I thought a Master would take whoever he wants…” Gabriele said lamely. “I didn’t think a submissive who was owned by a Master had any right to protest.”

Joshua shook his head. “Owning a submissive for some Masters is like owning a piece of property. Some Masters will value that submissive above all else. Other Masters will not take care of their property, nor treat it with the value it deserves… just like a car,” Joshua shrugged. The analogy didn’t seem very fitting.

He changed the subject obliquely. “Masters should be able to remain aloof and detached from an emotional connection with their submissive. That’s my personal opinion – but I believe it is fundamental to a solid relationship.”

“Why?”

“Because crossing those emotional boundaries come with great peril,” Joshua shot back. “The Master should always stay removed and controlled. They need emotional distance from a submissive. Forming a deep attachment can impair a submissive’s training because the Master’s judgment then is clouded by his feelings for the person. In a perfect world he would deliver a punishment based on common sense and what is best for the submissive’s learning and development. If he is emotionally involved with the submissive, he is at risk of having that judgment compromised by weighing in emotional factors.”

“You said peril,” Gabriele challenged Joshua. “What’s the danger?”

“The danger is that the Master-submissive relationship will transcend into deeper feelings that make maintaining discipline and strict control virtually impossible.”

Gabriele nodded. She licked her lips and thought carefully before her next words. “You’re saying there is a risk of the Master and the submissive falling in love – that’s what you really mean by emotional involvement, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re saying that love between a Master and his submissive is a threat to the lifestyle arrangement they have because the Master might start changing the way he treats his submissive and therefore diminish the value of her training.”

“Exactly.”

Gabriele shrugged. “What happens in those situations?” she asked with genuine interest. “When a Master falls in love with the woman he is training, does it always collapse?”

Joshua paused for a very long time. “I don’t know,” he admitted at last. “It’s something I’ve never experienced. That’s what makes it perilous.”

Gabriele looked troubled. She bit her lip, but couldn’t hold the question back.

“But you said you and your wife had a lifestyle relationship…”

Joshua’s eyes darkened, but he nodded. “Yes, but it didn’t start out that way. We fell in love and we got married. We were happy for several years. Our mutual interest in the BDSM lifestyle only developed after we had been married for some time. It was never a strict understanding, and we never lived the lifestyle completely. Jan allowed me to learn the craft of domination – I made my mistakes on her.”

Gabriele’s own peril became apparent. The mention of Joshua’s lost wife had cast a grey shadow over his eyes, and she sensed instinctively that he was on the verge of disconnecting from her. She couldn’t let that happen.

“What are some of the differences between Masters?” she asked in the hope that it would keep Joshua’s attention from brooding on the dark memories and hold him in the here-and-now.

Joshua sighed because the subject was exhaustive. He buried his hands in his pockets and stared down at the slate floor for long moments, gathering his thoughts into some kind of logical order. Finally he made a face that suggested everything he was about to say would be inadequate.

“There are as many different types of Masters as there are different kinds of submissives,” Joshua began. “The difficulty is always about finding a partner that serves your own purposes and inclinations. Some Masters will place an emphasis on sex. As a result, most of their training will be centered around using the submissive’s body to derive sexual pleasure; it’s the emphasis of their thinking and the reason they discovered the lifestyle. Other Masters are more focused on discipline and obedience with a punishment aspect that is at the foundation of their desires. Understand so far?”

Gabriele gave a silent nod.

“Another type of Master is looking for a domestic kind of submissive. They’re seeking someone to be trained in performing household tasks. In those instances, discipline and sex are used as punishments and reward for the household tasks the submissive is set. But most of these categories are not clearly defined,” Joshua offered a word of caution. “Often a submissive is sought for more than one purpose and her duties are quite broad… although the emphasis of her submission is usually focused on one aspect more than others.”

“How do I find out what kind of submissive I am?” Gabriele worried suddenly. “I know I’m not very good in the bedroom,” she confessed. “I’ve been told that a thousand times. And I’m not very experienced. My ex-boyfriend was my first and only sexual partner, so I don’t have a secret set of skills I can impress a man with…” she broke off the train of her thought as something more jarring flashed like an alarm across her mind. She sought out Joshua’s eyes and fixed her gaze on his, frowning. “If I discover that I’m most suited to domestic submission… does that mean I’m going to have to settle for an obese old Master who will expect me to cook restaurant quality food every day?”

Joshua looked bemused. He made a broad gesture with his hands that took in the entire room. “Can you cook? I mean, that’s why I brought you down here.”

“No,” Gabriele admitted her shortcoming. “And I’m not very good at cleaning either…”

“Then if you don’t have any of the required skills that a Master might find desirable… you’re going to need to take a crash course in cooking, cleaning… or fucking.”

Gabriele was nodding seriously, her brow creased in considered thought. She pursed her lips, then seemed to reach her decision.

“I want to be a sex submissive,” she announced. “I’m a naturally sexual person – even though I’m not much use to a man. And I think I could learn to give pleasure more easily. I know there are millions of videos I can watch online, and a million books too, I suppose,” she shrugged her shoulders and the gesture made her breasts move in the half-cups of her bra.

Joshua held up his hand like a cop stopping traffic. “Not so fast,” he said. “Remember that your role in any Master-submissive relationship will be strict obedience. That means you need to learn to please your particular Master.”

“But I don’t have one,” Gabriele felt like she was being lead down one dead-end after another. “After you finish training me, I’ll need to find one. How can I possibly prepare for a man I have never even met?”

“You can’t,” Joshua agreed. “So instead you need to prepare yourself. Your emphasis can’t be on learning how to become an amazing sex partner. Your emphasis should be on learning how to detach your own feelings from your physical body. To sexually satisfy your Master won’t require experience or secret skills; it will require you to be ravenously willing to obey. His pleasure will come from the use of your body… not because you can deep-throat him. Just learn to obey every instruction, and to always act with desire. It can’t be substituted by any skills. Wanton willingness is the most powerful aphrodisiac to a man.”

“Detach my feelings from my physical body…” Gabriele repeated Joshua’s words back to him, pondering their true significance. “So I should learn to act with willing sexual desire at any suggestion my Master makes, regardless of how I feel personally?”

Joshua nodded.

Gabriele’s frown deepened and then her features crumbled into confusion. But behind her expression, she was thinking furiously.

“The whole dynamic confuses me,” she said at last in slow measured words like she was groping for understanding. “You said that a sexual submissive would be required just to give pleasure, right?”

“Not just pleasure,” Joshua said. “Sometimes she would be challenged to perform tasks, but those challenges would be based on sexual situations.”

Gabriele was still shaking her head, mimicking confusion. She wondered cunningly if Joshua had seen her trap.  “Can you give me a practical example?”

Joshua narrowed his eyes warily. From somewhere in the dark recesses of his subconscious an alarm bell rang a dull warning. He studied Gabriele’s innocent expression and then shrugged his shoulders.

“Come here to me.”

Gabriele got out of the chair and glided to the kitchen counter where Joshua stood. “Yes, Master?” she asked in a syrupy-sweet voice. She lowered her eyes dutifully, lest Joshua see the mischief there.

“Undress me.”

Despite herself, Gabriele blinked. She balked for an instant, but Joshua was suddenly impatient. “Immediately,” he demanded, “but do not touch my skin with your hands. If you do, you will be denied orgasms for another ten days.”

Gabriele’s blood began to rush. Quickly she unfastened the top button of his shirt. Through the fabric she could feel the hard strata of Joshua’s chest muscles and the beat of his heart. Her mouth turned dry, and her fingers began to tremble. She was holding her breath as though the act was some delicate and dangerous surgery. When the first button was unfastened and she could see the first whorls of Joshua’s hairy chest, she gasped and drew fresh air into her lungs.

“This is an example of a sexual challenge that a submissive might be set,” Joshua explained in a calm voice as Gabriele deftly unfastened two more of Joshua’s shirt buttons. “The situation is clearly of a sexual nature. You have been ordered to remove your Master’s clothes. And yet the task is made into a challenge by the strict conditions you must perform the task under. You cannot touch my skin with yours for fear of punishment. In ways like this a Master can challenge his submissive.”

Gabriele nodded her head. She was trembling with a delicious excitement that she found almost impossible to control. She tugged the tail of Joshua’s shirt from the waistband of his jeans and concentrated fiercely on the lowest buttons. The tremors that had started in her fingers had coursed all the way through her body. She could feel her legs shaking and there was a nervous quiver in her lips that she could not stop. Joshua kept talking in a manner that was almost icy.

“A domestic slave might be given similar tests that challenge their cooking ability. It all depends on the Master and the levels of his creativity and experience.”

“Does a Master’s experience make a difference?” Gabriele whispered through a tremulous breath. She unfastened another button and exhaled with tense relief.

“Certainly,” Joshua said. “In this situation, for example, I would be reluctant to punish you too severely for any error because I would be planning on using your body for sex once I had been undressed.”

“You would…?” Gabriele’s voice rose in a small lift of hope.

“If I was your Master…”

Gabriele reached the last button of Joshua’s shirt and stopped herself suddenly. She bit down on her lip. “If you were my Master, would you use me as a domestic slave?”

“No,” Joshua was adamant. “You would be trained in sexual submission.”

“But I’m not very good in bed,” Gabriele reminded him.

“That’s not the case at all. You’re just not confident in bed. And as I have just explained to you, skill is something that needs to be acquired. It comes with learning the specific needs of a Master’s mind and imagination. But willingness and eagerness are traits that are instinctive. You have those attributes already.”

Gabriele dedicated herself to the task of unfastening the last button on Joshua’s shirt. It came free at last, and she gasped a deep breath of relief. The shirt gaped open and once again she gave Joshua’s muscled torso a lingering caress with slanted, sensual eyes. She unfastened both sleeve buttons and moved behind Joshua to draw the shirt off his shoulders. She let it fall to the ground at his feet, and inhaled the musky man-scent of him like it was oxygen.

Gabriele ran her smoldering gaze across the broad of Joshua’s back and shoulders, and she ached with the need to touch him; to press her face against the hard resilient warmth of his body and wrap her arms around his chest. She felt it like a throbbing pulse deep within her burning body. She felt herself cramp with the force of her wanting and stole a secret touch of herself through her panties. Her pussy was swollen and so sensitive to her touch that even the lace of the fabric was a painful abrasion.

“Now the jeans,” Joshua said thickly.

Gabriele came and knelt before him. Her lips were parted and glossy, and her hands as she reached for his belt shook feverishly.

“Remember,” Joshua whispered the warning to remind Gabriele of the dire consequences of failure. “Ten more days without an orgasm…”

Gabriele didn’t need to be reminded. Joshua’s ominous recap only served to ratchet up her desperation and tension another notch.

She said nothing, but instead focused all her effort into the careful movement of her fingers while Joshua stood before her like a statue.

He was hard. He looked down at Gabriele’s bowed head and felt her hands tugging at the leather belt and buckle. Her knuckles grazed across the bulge in his pants, sending a tingle of flickering flame down the length of his cock. He closed his eyes.

When Gabriele had the belt unbuckled, she set herself for the challenge of the big brass button at the front of the jeans. She needed both hands, squeezing the two flaps of the fabric close together with painstaking care, and then forcing the edge of the button through the eyehole. The jeans gaped open. Gabriele sat back on her haunches and exhaled a deep breath of melting relief.

Joshua’s jeans were held together only by the zipper. Gabriele swallowed another deep breath of air and held it. Slowly – very slowly – she began to unzip Joshua’s pants.

His cock was too hard, too large to be contained any longer. As the zipper drew down, it pushed through the gaping denim. Gabriele gasped with the same awe that had struck her to numbness in the bathroom.

“Stop!” Joshua snapped.

Gabriele gaped in crestfallen despair. She looked up into Joshua’s eyes with her features filled by confusion and devastation.

“But I did it, Master,” she protested. “I passed the task you set me.”

“Yes,” Joshua said as he began to step back from her. His breathing was hoarse and strained with his own tension. “And you have earned yourself five days of reprieve from your orgasm denial punishment. Now the task is over.”

Gabriele swallowed down her bitter sense of rejection like it was poison. Then a mad and reckless impulse overtook her. She hesitated for just an instant, as fearful of the consequences as she was of the impetuous action.

Take the chance!

Suddenly she leaned forward and engulfed the swollen throbbing head of Joshua’s cock between her wide open lips, and at the same time wrapped her arms around the thick muscles of his thigh to hold him. She felt the thrill of Joshua’s cock press against her tongue and her whole body melted with intense satisfaction. A warm flood of wanting desire filled her panties.

“What are you doing?” Joshua growled. He fisted his hands tightly into Gabriele’s hair to pull her away, but she clung to him with her mouth, sucking his shaft deeply down her throat, painting it with the wet warmth of her drooling saliva. She felt Joshua’s instinctive primal reaction; the pulsing leap of his cock against the roof of her mouth, and it thrilled her like nothing she had ever experienced before. She was groaning, gasping. The pain of her pulled hair brought tears to her eyes, but she clung to Joshua and clawed her nails into the back of his legs with her desperation.

Damn the consequences!

Temptation had drawn Gabriele far beyond the edge of obedience. Now there was only this that mattered.

And it was everything to her!

Joshua grunted and reached down to painfully squeeze Gabriele’s breast, pinching the skin with his fingers and feeling it swell beneath his touch. He felt her flinch and recoil, but still her lips stayed locked around the length of his cock. She was swirling her tongue around the engorged head, plucking at the thick veined length with determined clenches of her lips. Joshua felt an unholy shudder of desire break over him like a flood of water that breaches a straining dam wall.

He staggered back and the edge of the kitchen counter pressed into the small of his back to support him. His hand fell away from Gabriele’s breast. The other hand changed its grip in her hair. Now he was pulling her forward, deeper onto his cock. He grunted, his features twisted into a mask of both pain and pleasure.

Gabriele recognized the exact instant when Joshua’s resistance broke into incoherent abandon, and her heart filled with exultation and triumph. She was swooning on his cock, devouring every inch of the long shaft that she could physically take into her mouth. She was ravenous. This was so different to the way she had timidly allowed Randall to get himself off when he had insisted. Now Gabriele felt strangely empowered by her submission and the realization seemed incredible to her. It had taken complete surrender to find her true feminine power! She lavished Joshua’s cock with adoring kisses and long sensuous licks with the flat of her tongue. Then she daringly brought her hand to his shaft, wrapping her fingers tight at the base, within the nest of springy hair, and gently stroking him through the slick coating of her drool in time with the sucking tempo of her lips.

Every hissed groan and grunt through Joshua’s clenched teeth was like music to Gabriele’s ears; ringing like encouragement as she compensated for a lack of technique with raw passion and desire. Incredibly, she could feel Joshua beginning to thicken further within the tight ring of her lips, stretching her mouth wonderfully, flinching and throbbing as she concentrated on the most sensitive few inches of his cock. She was rocking from her hips, bobbing her head back and forth and gliding her lips over the thick corded veins along the underside of his shaft. Her eyes were closed but all her other senses were heightened. It was like being blindfolded again; her skin tingled, her pussy clenched, her ears heard every sound, and the scent of her own musky arousal seemed to fill and flare in her nostrils. Gabriele had never felt so alive – so immersed and engaged in a sex act.

At last there was a tangy taste across her tongue; a leak of Joshua’s pre-cum, like a single drop of dew. Gabriele’s lips were puffed and swollen, her jaw numbed by the enduring strain. Her tongue felt weary, but she was too eager to let the fatigue slow her efforts. She arched her back to change the height and angle of her mouth and began to suck harder, concaving her cheeks around the top of Joshua’s cock as if she could draw his orgasm from him by her will and desire alone.

Joshua felt the strain of holding himself back burn into the tensed muscles of his thighs and then cramp all the way up to his chest. He was flexed rigid to hold himself in check. Every sinew in his body began to seize. He had his head thrown back, and when at last he reached the threshold of no-return, he instinctively clamped his hands into Gabriele’s hair to hold her face still and began to buck his hips.

It was primitive; primal. It was raw animal desire overcoming all sense of reason and restraint. Joshua growled a thick grunt of lust and drove himself deeper into the pliant opening of Gabriele’s gasping mouth. He came up onto the balls of his feet, and the muscles in his ass were like a hammer driving the long nail of his cock. He felt a rash of sweat break out across his brow. It ran stinging into his eyes and down to his jaw. His chest swelled with a long last lungful of air… and then finally he felt himself cumming.

Joshua gasped with the force of his release. The air whooshed from him like vicious punch to the guts. The orgasm erupted as white-hot lava. He felt his toes curl and then his back arched. His cock pulsed once, then again, and one final time. Bright pinwheels of dazzling light flashed behind his eyes as he reeled gasping and staggering. He clutched desperately at the counter’s edge to hold himself upright.

Gabriele took the rush of Joshua’s cum across her tongue. It broke like a flash flood, filling her mouth. She swallowed just in time to capture the second pulse. She could taste the salty tang and the thick creaminess of Joshua’s essence. She gasped for breath and felt a third pulse splash against her bottom lip. It was warm on her chin. She caught the spill on the tip of her finger and sucked it greedily into her mouth. She was panting for breath, giddy from the effort and the intense glow of satisfaction that washed over her.

Gabriele stole a glance up into Joshua’s face. His eyes were screwed shut, and his mouth wrenched in a tight clenched line. His cock was still hard, still swollen, though drained of all its desperate energy. She took it lovingly back between her lips, humming with content as it slowly began to soften.

After a very long time, Joshua reached down and drew Gabriele to her feet. She was shaky; her knees felt weak. Joshua’s eyes were strange; they flickered with a strange glimmer, like the first tenuous light breaking through the aftermath of a terrible storm.

“I wanted to know the real you,” Gabriele whispered in timid apology. “I wanted you to show me how you feel.”

The look in Joshua’s eyes snatched her breath away.

“I know what I feel,” he growled. And then he kissed her.

There was anger and frustration and remorse and despair in the way Joshua savagely took Gabriele’s mouth. Through his lips she understood everything he felt; his guilty sense of betrayal to his lost wife, his fierce sexual desire for her… even his desperate need to break free of the chains that fettered him to his grieving past. Gabriele clung to him while Joshua’s emotions broke like storm surf upon the rocks until at last he was shaking from the raw intensity of the moment.

They came apart at last, Gabriele still clinging to Joshua, never wanting to leave his side.

“I know what I feel…” Joshua said again slowly. His voice was unsteady and his breathing ragged. “I just don’t understand how you make me feel it.”

 

 

 

 

Chapter 10:

 

 At sunrise the next morning, Joshua backed the black sports car out of his garage, and headed north.

He bypassed the outskirts of the city and drove towards the coast. When he picked up the highway, the traffic was flowing in a steady stream. He idled along – in no hurry – heading relentlessly towards his past.

The naval base loomed low on the horizon two hours later; grey buildings and high antennae masts against a hazed horizon. Joshua smiled to himself with a twinge of recollection, then turned off the highway onto a long stretch of blacktop that ran like an arrow towards the skyline. He flattened the gas pedal, and the big engine under the hood snarled like a wounded beast. The scent of salty air filled Joshua’s nostrils. The memories came crashing in then, thick as cobwebs. He opened the windows and let the buffeting air through the car sweep them away.

He recognized familiar signposts and slowed the car. A turnoff leaped out at him from behind a thick grove of bushes that had grown wild to the verge of the roadside. Joshua stomped on the brakes and the car’s engine snarled in protest. He turned off the road into a small sand-swept parking lot, bordered by an undulating wall of great golden dunes.

There were more signs and a low log fence. Joshua licked his lips with a nervous kind of apprehension. The day was clear and cloudless, the sun warm on his back through the fabric of his shirt. He kicked off his shoes and rolled up the legs of his denim jeans until they were below his knees.

Barefoot, he went across the parking lot and followed a path in the sand that was defined by the log fence. He could hear the distant restless rush of the ocean as it pounded on the shore.

The high surrounding wall of dunes was like a mirror, reflecting and amplifying the heat. Joshua was sweating lightly when the path suddenly veered to the left. The sand dunes seemed to melt into the beach before him.

He was here.

He was at the beach where Jan had drowned three years before.

The terrible pain of loss draped itself around him.

He stood on the fringe of the beach, his feet squelching in the hot sand, and ran his eye along the ribbon of yellow shore. To the north he could see a craggy promontory of rock, jutting out into the blue ocean like an accusing finger. The headland was overgrown with trees and scrub, the base of the rocky outcrop laced in the white foam of breaking waves. To his south, the beach curved like a slice of moon, ending in another natural break wall of ground. It was a low flat escarpment, and perched atop it were expensive cliff-side houses behind facades of full-length windows.

Joshua felt his shoulders slump. The salty air was carried by a light offshore breeze that curled the rolling waves over upon themselves as they broached the shallow sandbars beyond the tide line.

Joshua walked slowly down to the water’s edge. There was a thick suffocating cramp in his chest; a tightening like his heart was wrapped in steel bands. His breathing became short and shallow. The beach was deserted. He stood in the ice-cold shallow water and heard the bubbling hiss as each spent wave lapped around his feet before being sucked back into the depths.

High overhead, gulls were wheeling on the breeze. It reminded Joshua of the dreadful day that Jan had drowned. Then it had been helicopters; two of them that flew low overhead, beating the ocean flat with their giant throbbing rotor blades as the pilots frantically searched for her body.

Joshua stood in the ankle-deep water for long moments, staring out at the sunlight as it glinted like cut diamond shards on the ocean’s surface. Somewhere out there, past the pale blue of the shallow water line, Jan had drowned. She had died alone, overcome with helpless panic. Those had been her last moments. Joshua prayed fervently – as he had a million times since – that his dead wife was now resting in peace.

He lowered his head to say a silent prayer, and then drew his eyes towards the heavens.

“Honey, I’m sorry it’s been so long,” he apologized haltingly. There was a lump of emotion rising hard in his throat that he couldn’t quite choke out of his voice.

“You know that not a day has gone past that I haven’t grieved for you, and until the end of time, I’ll always remember you, Jan. But… but I know in my heart that you’re never coming back. I know that I have to cherish our memories, but also make new ones.

“It’s been three years, Jan. Three sad and lonely years in the dark of despair, but finally I’m finding my way out of the pain. I’ve met someone, Jan. She reminds me of you in as many ways as you are both different. She’s feisty and she’s passionate. Her name is Gabby. I think you’d like her…”

Joshua paused for a moment struggling to find the words to go on. He felt guilty, but he sensed too that Jan would be happy for him. He clung to that belief as he stepped back out of the water, back onto dry sand.

“I’m going to do my best to make the relationship with Gabby work,” he explained to the sky. “I’m ready to let myself feel again. I… I hope you will give us your blessing, my love.”

As if in a heavenly sign, one of the gulls swooped over Joshua’s head and then came to land on the sand by his feet. Boldly the bird waddled close to Joshua’s side, unafraid. Joshua held out his hand, and the gull fluttered its wings and perched timidly on his forearm. Joshua blinked, and then felt an enormous rush of relief sweep over him. The gull took to flight a moment later, seeming to carry the weight of Joshua’s guilt and burden away on its wings.

Joshua felt hot tears fill his eyes. He cuffed them away with the back of his hand and sniffed. His bottom lip was trembling as he blubbered the last few words.

“I’m a different man now to the one you fell in love with. I’ve turned into a hard cold shadow… but there is something special about Gabby that has drawn me back into the light. I think I need to start living and loving again, Jan – even though the prospect scares me. I know you’ll understand…

“I won’t come back to this beach again, but please know that I will always remember you, and always remember how precious your love was.”

Joshua lowered his eyes, and settled them back on the far blue horizon where the blue sky smudged into the dark steely shade of the deep ocean.

“Goodbye, Jan…”

 

 

 

 

Chapter 11:

 

Joshua wrapped the small box carefully and slipped it into the pocket of his jacket, then glanced at his watch. He had fifteen minutes before Gabriele was due to arrive for her nightly training session. Joshua took the time to rehearse the words he would say, making sure to get the tone and their meaning just right. He was surprised when he realized he felt strangely anxious and apprehensive.

When the doorbell rang, he was waiting impatiently in the foyer.

Gabriele was kneeling on his doorstep. She was dressed in a strapless white cocktail dress that hugged her figure and then flared at the hips. Beneath the hem of the dress Joshua could see her tanned brown knees on the concrete step.

She was looking up into his face, her hands obediently clasped behind her back. The position emphasized the flawless perfection of her skin and the narrowness of her shoulders. The dress was scalloped and lacy around her breasts. Gabriele had spent an hour on her makeup. Under the porch light her face glowed and her hair shone like a black shimmering wave down her back.

Joshua held out his hand. “Come inside.”

Gabriele used Joshua’s grip to draw herself elegantly to her feet. She had a small white clutch purse in her free hand. The outfit looked brand new to Joshua, and he wondered how much she had spent. Whatever the cost, it had been worth the investment. Gabriele looked stunning.

“I know tonight is a training session, but that will have to wait,” Joshua began, “because I’m taking you to dinner.”

Gabriele’s expression filled with a light of excitement and surprise. “To a restaurant?”

“Yes. The ‘Sandhurst’. It’s the new restaurant at the Charlsten Hotel.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Gabriele went quiet with awe. The ‘Sandhurst’ was one of the finest establishments in the city. 

“We have a reservation for 9 pm.” Joshua checked his watch again.

 “Will we return here afterwards for training, Master?”

 “Yes,” Joshua nodded. “But the dinner itself is more than just a meal, Gabriele. This will be your first public outing with your Master… apart from the night in the restaurant parking lot. I hope you remember the lessons you learned on that occasion. I expect your behavior tonight to be exemplary.”

She nodded her head. She felt a small thrill of delight at the prospect of being seen on Joshua’s arm.

“I have learned a great deal since that night, Master.”

Joshua grunted. He had car keys jangling in his pocket. He led her through the house towards the garage and Gabriele followed him obediently, her heels clip-clopping on the floor and echoing throughout the empty house.

Joshua held the passenger door of the car open for her and Gabriele slid into the seat, deliberately giving Joshua a flirtatious look all the way up to her white lace panties as she splayed her legs to settle herself comfortably.

Joshua noticed, though his face remained impassive.

The car’s engine started with a throaty rumble of anticipation. Joshua nosed the vehicle out of the garage and steered towards the distant lights of the city.

 

 

 

In the soft muted glow of the car’s dashboard lights, they were isolated and insulated from the rest of the world. Cars streamed past, and the lights of the distant city seemed to beckon them. Shopping malls, apartment complexes, and housing suburbs drifted by beneath the throaty hum of the engine.

Gabriele was curled up in the deep leather of the bucket seat, staring down the beams of the headlights. Her mind was locked in its own turmoil of apprehension and excitement even though she knew she was making a mistake by allowing any emotion to interfere with Joshua’s plans for the evening. She had been trained to disconnect her own feelings, and to immerse herself instinctively in submission.

But her excitement and apprehension were powerful distractions. She sat in the silence and pursed her lips, becoming withdrawn by the grips of her internal struggle.

Joshua was driving unhurriedly, his own mind focused on his plans for the night. Each time he flicked his eyes from the road to study Gabriele’s profile, he saw the frown on her brow. The next time he checked, she was gnawing at her lip and her hands were clenched tight in her lap.

He sensed her anxiety.

“You will stroke my cock while I drive,” Joshua commanded, slicing across Gabriele’s thoughts and dragging her suddenly alert.

“Master?” she wasn’t sure she had heard Joshua correctly. He was staring through the windshield at the surrounding traffic, watching the taillights of the car ahead as they flared red.

“You heard me,” he said.

Gabriele set aside her purse and reached across the center console of the car. She put her hand in Joshua’s lap and felt the heat of his body through the fabric of his pants. Although her touch was on his thigh, she could already sense he was hardening. She walked her fingers slowly towards the tenting bulge in Joshua’s crotch. She scratched her nail across the material, and Joshua felt the sensation as a thousand tiny jolts of electricity. His cock twitched instinctively, thickening and swelling like an uncoiling python.

Gabriele licked her lips. Her gaze became dreamy. Suddenly all her doubts and anxiety melted away into nothingness. Now she had a focus for her attention. Her mouth curled into a croon of melting desire and anticipation.

She unzipped Joshua’s pants and reached inside the folds of the material. She felt his cock immediately; it was straining and hot as molten steel. She drew it through the open flap, and it thrust hard and accusing at the roof of the car. Gabriele felt her pulse quicken. She caressed Joshua’s cock with loving light strokes of her hand until it had swollen to its full length. She had slumped a little in her seat to reach him comfortably. Now – with an impulse – she unclipped her seatbelt and tucked her knees beneath herself so that she was leaning across the car, with one elbow supporting her weight on the top of the console and her other hand free to work diligently up and down the length of Joshua’s cock.

Her knees were on her seat, her ass in the air. One of her breasts slipped out of the scalloped top of her dress but she didn’t notice. All her attention was devoted to pleasuring Joshua.

He was driving sedately, both hands loose on the wheel. The nearer to the city they drew the denser the traffic around them became. The car hit the first in a series of traffic lights, and Joshua eased to a halt. The vehicles in the lanes on either side of them were indistinct in the night. The dark tinting on the windows turned the cockpit of the sports car into a private secret place.

With her elbow on the console, Gabriele realized she could use that hand to grip the base of Joshua’s cock. She held him tight, her knuckles brushing across the whorls of his pubic hair. Her other hand wrapped itself around the swollen head of Joshua’s cock. Gabriele saw Joshua’s face flicker with the fresh fire of the sensation.

“Does that please you, Master?” she asked in a sweet, delicious voice.

“Yes,” Joshua’s voice was thick.

Gabriele wanted him in her mouth, but the position was just too difficult with the car constantly moving. She took her hand from the top of his cock and licked her palm, making a sexy show of the action. When she took hold of him again, the wetness coated his hot flesh, and her hand slid up and down his shaft like a piston.

Joshua kept his face impassive, but the tiny signs of rising strain were there in the set of his mouth and the narrowing of his eyes. Gabriele’s hand was a wonder of sensations; squeezing, stroking and teasing him until he could feel himself beginning to clench like a slow squeezing fist.

They were in the heart of the city now; all around them on every side loomed tall skyscrapers, clawing up into the darkness of night. Joshua turned at a set of traffic lights and then turned again.

He turned his head a little and caught the intense concentration in Gabriele’s face. Her lips were parted, glossy and wet as ripe fruit, and her brow was furrowed. Her eyes were fixed on the swelling head of Joshua’s cock. He could smell the scent of her perfume and almost feel her hungry anticipation as she stroked him. The milky firm flesh of her exposed breast swayed and jiggled with the movement from her shoulder and the swaying motion of the car. Joshua turned his attention back to the road as Gabriele bit on her bottom lip and flicked a glance out through the windshield. She seemed startled to realize they were almost at the hotel. For an instant she was alarmed. Joshua was hard and straining, but not yet on the edge of coming.

Gabriele redoubled her efforts, her hand on the head of Joshua’s cock suddenly frantic with her efforts. She licked her palm and made it slick again, wishing desperately that she could just reach with her mouth. They were turning once more. Gabriele felt the car slow to jounce over a speed bump in the road. Then suddenly they were descending down some kind of a ramp. She sensed the light around them change and become muted. She stole another worried peek through the window. They had pulled into a parking garage.

“Stop,” Joshua commanded her. He was still driving, turning through a tight corner at crawling speed. Gabriele let out a petulant sigh of frustration and reluctantly loosened her grip on Joshua’s cock.

“But Master, I haven’t finished.”

“You have,” Joshua said sternly. He nosed the car to a darkened corner of the underground parking station, far away from the banks of fluorescent lights that hung from the grey concrete ceiling. This section of the lot was deserted. He parked by a wall with a red fire hose box attached to the concrete and switched off the burbling engine.

For a long moment they sat in silence while the big engine ticked and cooled. Gabriele was still on her hands and knees across the center console. Joshua reached down and tucked his straining cock back into his pants. He struggled with the zip for a moment. Gabriele felt like she had failed him – again – by her lack of sexual skills. The disappointment crushed down on her. She adjusted the cups of her dress, resetting her breast within the garment and sat back in her seat. She stared darkly out through the windshield, fuming with her own ineptness.

“I’m sorry, Master,” she said meekly. “I’m just not skilled enough to please a man the way you need, and deserve.”

Joshua said nothing. Instead he let his hands drop from the steering wheel, and unbuckled his seatbelt. He was shaking. Gabriele had teased him to the very brink of exploding – despite his dour determination not to orgasm at her touch. It had taken every trick he knew, and every ounce of grim resolve to hold back the release that she had almost wrung from him. Now he was trembling, relieved that he had somehow managed to endure.

Focusing Gabriele’s attention on a sexual task had been nothing more than a ploy by Joshua to distract her during the journey into the city, and to lure her away from the panic he sensed within her His plan had so very nearly backfired. Gabriele’s touch on his cock had been cunning, and far more intuitive than Joshua had ever anticipated.

“You will play with yourself,” Joshua said, giving her the order and ignoring her apology to cover his own turmoil. In his own ears, his voice sounded still thick with the lust she had stirred.

Gabriele froze for a split-second, and hated herself for the instant that she used to check the parking lot for passers-by who might see her. “Yes, Master,” she tried to camouflage the hesitation by shifting her weight in the bucket seat.

“Now.” Joshua gave the order like he was impatient.

Gabriele reclined her seat until she was almost laying flat and then lifted her skirt around her waist and tucked the loose fabric against her body. Then she spread her legs as wide as she could and raised her knees slightly. She was wearing skimpy white lace panties, and her flesh was the color of burnt honey in the gloomy light – a stark and tantalizing contrast.

Joshua turned in his seat to watch. His cock was still uncomfortably hard. He checked the time. It was 8:45 pm.

Gabriele reached inside her panties with both hands, using two fingers of her left hand to push inside her pussy while her right hand began to draw quick circles over her clit. She sucked in a deep breath. Joshua saw the muscles of her abdomen undulate.

With a groan, Gabriele felt for the aching, needful places of her body, and her right hand on her clit began a blur. She felt the fingers of her left slide inside herself to the second joint, and she held them there, manipulating her touch with practiced understanding.

It didn’t take long for desire to flood over her. She rolled her head to the side and her mouth fell wide open. Her eyes were closed. Joshua took two of his own fingers and pressed them against Gabriele’s bottom lip. She groaned with desperation and sucked Joshua’s fingers into her mouth while she continued to pleasure herself.

She was gasping and groaning. Her tongue swirled over Joshua’s fingers like she wished they were his cock instead. The scent of Gabriele’s perfume mingled with the new, stronger aroma of her fragrant pussy juices.

Gabriele was incredibly aroused. Her pussy made wet suckling sounds as her fingers began to plunge in and out of herself. She opened her eyes and saw Joshua leaning over her. She looked up at him with an impassioned plea.

“Can I cum, Master?” she panted.

Joshua took his fingers from her mouth and clamped his hand around her throat. “Not yet,” he demurred. “Keep yourself on edge.”

Gabriele gulped. She stared up at the roof of the car and the muscles in her neck began to strain. Her nipples felt hard as pebbles and incredibly sensitive against the fabric of her dress. She gasped and gulped. Her hand over her clit had slowed lest she lose the control to hold herself on the edge. Now her body seemed drawn as tight as a bow and she could feel her wetness soaking into the crotch of her panties.

“Please, Master!” Gabriele strained. She was shuddering. She wiggled the two fingers inside her pussy, and the pressure against the internal wall of her body sent her into a spasm. Her legs were shaking as if she had run a frantic race. “Please!”

“You need to beg me for an orgasm,” Joshua’s voice was dispassionate and clinical. He brushed her hand aside from her clit and ran his fingers across her pussy. They came away warm and sticky. Joshua smeared Gabriele’s own juices across her lips like it was lipstick.

She tasted herself and her eyes rolled suddenly up into the back of her head. Her back arched and she gave a long low groan that was carried on the expended breath of her lungs.

“Stop.” Joshua said suddenly, and pinched one of her nipples through the dress. “You are not permitted to cum. Stop immediately.”

Gabriele was not entirely shocked, though the depth of her disappointment left her shattered. With an effort, she eased her fingers from her pussy and drew her other hand from her panties. She was shivering; trembling. Her breath sawed across her throat. For a long moment she just lay still, feeling the tremors of her arousal gradually sink back below the surface; subdued, but far from quenched. She had kept her legs spread wide, her dress still bunched around her waist. Her hips were stirring rhythmically as if she were in the midst of a slow sensual dance. Joshua reached down and rubbed the palm of his hand boldly across her pussy. Gabriele flinched with shock and then rekindled passion. She caught her lip between her teeth and bit down to stifle a groan.

“You’re still being punished for disobedience, remember?” Joshua’s eyes were alight, but his face was a mask.

“Yes, Master,” Gabriele sighed, crestfallen.

“But if you be a very good girl for me tonight, I may still reward you.”

Gabriele shuddered. Joshua’s fingers were pressing into the hot mess of her panties and squishing the damp fabric against her pussy. Finally the torture of his teasing ended. He took his hand away and suddenly became brisk and business like. It was like he had flipped a mental switch. One moment he was leaning over Gabriele’s lithe beautiful body, inhaling the scent of her sex and fingering her pussy through her panties. The next moment he was the business man again; stern and aloof, controlled and rational.

“Straighten your clothes,” Joshua said to Gabriele as he snatched the car keys from the ignition. He adjusted his tie and then reached for the car door. “Our table will be waiting for us.”

 

 

 

 

Chapter 12:

 

The restaurant was located through double glass doors on one side of the hotel’s foyer. Joshua strode purposefully to the front desk where a well-groomed young man in a dark suit was waiting, holding a menu in one of his hands. Gabriele stood a pace back from the counter while Joshua spoke to the man, and she took the time to stare at the luxurious décor.

The restaurant was lit with overhead lights above each table, and more subdued lighting on the exposed brick walls. The windows that faced the busy street beyond were all shuttered making the interior cozy and intimate. Between the tables, waiters glided silently amidst the darkness.

The tone was hushed, and the tables well spaced, so that each one seemed secluded.

The waiter led Joshua and Gabriele to a corner of the restaurant and drew back Gabriele’s chair for her to sit. Joshua sat back in the shadows while the young man fussed over Gabriele. She was smiling; her eyes glittering, and her face aglow. At last the waiter set menus on the table, and then disappeared in a waft of cologne. Joshua felt into his coat pocket, and his fingers brushed against the wrapped package he had brought with him.

But before he could present the box to Gabriele, she suddenly pushed her chair back and her face was apologetic. “I’m sorry, Master. But I need to visit the bathroom to powder my nose after what we did in the car…” she didn’t need to say more. Joshua understood. He imagined that Gabriele’s tight young pussy was still a wet mess of agitation. He inclined his head.

“There are bathrooms just outside the glass doors in the hotel lobby,” he said. “While you’re gone, I will order for you.”

Gabriele nodded obediently and got to her feet. She snatched up her purse. She could feel her pussy still slowly throbbing, and her panties were now soaked and cold against her inner thigh. She needed to take them off.

Joshua watched Gabriele weave her way between the tables, admiring the way she walked, and the sensual sway of her hips. When she finally disappeared through the glass doors into the hotel foyer, he set the small box down in the middle of the table and hailed a waiter.

Champagne would be required.

 

 

 

The lobby of the hotel was packed with milling groups of people. By the reception desk stood knots of weary travelers amidst nests of luggage, while other groups clustered around the chairs and sofas that had been dispersed along the walls. Through the frenetic bustling activity, Gabriele saw the bathroom doors. She weaved her way through the crowd, oblivious to the faces all around her until suddenly one voice cut through the hubbub of background noise and stopped her dead in her tracks.

“Gabriele? Jesus!”

Gabriele froze. An ice chill ran down her spine. There were three young men in a group around a grey sofa. They were gathered about a young blonde woman who wore a provocatively short skirt and a low cut top. The woman was perched on the edge of her seat with her knees pressed demurely together, though it was clear to Gabriele, through a flash of feminine intuition, that the blonde was enjoying the attention that the men’s money could buy.

One of the men had noticed her and then done a double take of shock. He came towards her like a dying man in a desert who has sighted an oasis.

It was Randall.

He was unshaven; the hair on his chin and cheeks growing in scraggly tufts, and his jacket was rumpled as though he had slept in it the night before. His eyes were bleary, but glittering with sudden wolfish avarice.

“You look fucking sensational,” Randall pushed into her way, so she could not pass. His eyes crawled all over her body like grubby little fingers. Gabriele felt her breath catch in her throat. She suppressed a shudder but could not conceal the contempt of her expression. She stared at Randall with stone cold eyes.

He seemed not to notice. He was undressing her with his gaze.

“What do you want, Randall?”

He looked affronted. His face registered a pantomime of hurt. “Is that any way to greet your boyfriend?”

“Ex-boyfriend,” Gabriele reminded him. There was steel in her voice.

“Well at least I deserve a kiss.”

“No,” Gabriele said. “You don’t. You deserve everything you get… and you won’t be getting anywhere near me.”

She started to walk on, but Randall sidestepped like a bully in a school corridor, blocking her and leering. He reached out to stroke her arm as though the physical contact might sooth her, but Gabriele twitched away. This time she made no attempt to conceal her revulsion.

“Don’t you dare…” Gabriele gritted her teeth.

Randall arched his eyebrows. He looked back at the blonde and his buddies. He was smiling but there was menace in his expression that made Gabriele suddenly wary. “What if I do dare, Gabby?” Randall challenged her.

“If you lay a finger on me Randall, I’ll call the police.”

He laughed. “Really. Is that the best you can do? The cops would call it a lover’s tiff.” He arched his eyebrows and ran his tongue lasciviously between his teeth and inside the lips of his mouth. It was the most lewdly revolting gesture that Gabriele had ever seen.

“No, it’s not the best I can do,” she forced a wintery smile. “I can do something better.”

She turned on her heel and walked back towards the glass doors of the restaurant, knowing that Randall would follow her. She pointed through the door to where Joshua sat.

“See that gorgeous man?” she asked. “The one with the broad shoulders, the dangerous eyes, the square, determined jaw, and the muscled arms?”

“Yeah. So what?” Randall could smell Gabriele’s perfume and some other vaguely familiar aroma that was maddening him. His cock was hard in his pants, and all he could think about was reaching a hand under the hem of Gabriele’s short dress and fingering her pussy.

“That man – who happens to be ex-Navy – is my Master, Randall. I’m his submissive little slut.”

Randall’s face seemed to drain of all color. “Bullshit!” he gasped.

Gabriele met his gaze steadily. He knew then that it was the truth.

“You’re a fucking submissive for some guy? After all the fucking time I tried to get you to submit?” His anger came upon him like a hot rush of wind.

“That’s right, Randall,” Gabriele rubbed salt in the open wound of Randall’s ego. “And God, does that man know how to make a woman want to get on her knees and beg for his cock. I know I have on countless occasions. I just can’t get enough of him in my mouth…”

Randall’s eyes turned to dark dangerous specks. “Then why were you never like that for me, bitch?” he spat the last word with venom.

Gabriele stayed ice cold. The smile on her face was a provocative taunt that left Randall seething with futility.

“It takes a man like him to bring out the woman in me, Randall.” Gabriele ran her own eyes up and down Randall’s body, her lip curled in revolted disapproval. “And you were never man enough.”

The wind seemed to gush from Randall like he had taken a heavy blow. Gabriele saw the arrogant confidence drain from his eyes. She strode confidently past him towards the bathrooms and his shoulders slumped like a collapsing empty shell.

Gabriele reached the bathroom shaking from the confrontation, but puffed with satisfaction. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her face was flushed, and there was a touch of hectic mayhem still in her eyes that was the after-effect of her shock. She dabbed at her lipstick and then went into a stall. Her panties were like a wet washcloth. She peeled them down over her thighs and stepped out of them. She felt a wicked thrill of mischief to be out in public and not wearing underwear. Somehow she sensed it perfectly suited her newfound self.

Gabriele scrunched the lace panties into a tight ball and was going to stuff them into her purse. Then another devilish idea struck her.

 

 

 

Gabriele came out of the ladies bathroom and pressed into the milling throng of hotel visitors. Randall was leaning sullenly against a wall, standing over the blonde on the sofa, while his two companions sat either side of her, each with a casual hand in her lap.

Gabriele strode across to them.

“I hope you’re being well paid,” Gabriele bore the woman no malice. In fact, she felt sympathetic. “Because this one,” she gestured to Randall with a nod of her head that shook her lustrous mane of black hair across her shoulder, “is a real disappointment.”

She turned on her heel. Randall came after her, just as Gabriele knew he would. His face was swollen with impotent embarrassment. He snatched at Gabriele’s arm and she turned on him, snarling like a big jungle cat.

“Here,” she stuffed the damp panties into Randall’s grimy palm, whispering her venom. “This is the closest you’ll ever get to me. I figure you’re going to be spending a lot of nights alone with your hand while my Master is repeatedly fucking me. He did this to me in the parking lot, Randall. I hope these remind you of how inadequate you are in bed.”

 

 

 

The restaurant lighting was so subdued after the bright sterile glare of the lobby that it took Gabriele’s eyes several seconds to adjust. It was like stepping back into a movie theater after returning from the candy counter.

She stood just inside the glass doors, light with relief at how she had left Randall mute and gawking. Her heart was still fluttering in her chest, but she felt a sense of closure. It broadened the smile on her lips as she peered through the spot lit tables, seeking Joshua.

He was sitting back in his chair… and there was a very tall and willowy woman standing beside him. She had her hair up in a bun, and Gabriele could see the dark band of a leather collar clasped around her swan-like neck. Gabriele watched in slow uncomprehending horror as the woman smiled sexily into Joshua’s eyes and then leaned across the table. She was wearing a long shimmering red dress, cut low at the neck so that her cleavage bulged. Gabriele felt a slow creeping sense of despair wrap its tentacles around her heart and begin to relentlessly squeeze.

Joshua was smiling up into the woman’s sparkling eyes. She looked to be Gabriele’s age. She carried herself with elegant grace, her weight on one long leg and the fabric of her dress drawn tight and revealing across her ass. She wasn’t wearing underwear.

Gabriele heard the woman laugh and the sound was a flirtatious tinkle, like the sound from a delicate crystal bell. Then she reached into her purse and handed Joshua some kind of a card – or perhaps it was the keys to her hotel room.

Gabriele closed her eyes, feeling dread and despair drain the blood from her face. Her heart stopped beating, and she made a gasping sound of pain as she clutched to cover her mouth with her hand.

Joshua saw her, and knew instantly the expression on her face. He came out of his chair, dismissing the woman beside him without another glance. His mouth was open, his eyebrows knitted together in concern and alarm. As he rose to his feet, Gabriele turned and burst through the restaurant doors. She was crying, and gasping for breath. Her heart ached with a pain greater than she had ever known before. She felt betrayed. She felt foolish.

She ran across the lobby and saw the front doors gliding open. A cool breeze and a snarl of traffic noise washed across the room.

Gabriele turned towards it and ran out of the hotel, down the steps, and onto the crowded city sidewalk.

 

 

 

Joshua came out of the hotel, and ran into a crush of bustling pedestrians. He couldn’t see Gabriele. There was a throng of people at the next corner, waiting on traffic lights. He pushed into the tide of bodies, looking for a beautiful woman in a short white dress. Most people were dressed against the chill of the night, their coats drab dark colors. They stood with their eyes fixed on the blinking traffic lights with bovine patience.

“Gabriele!” Joshua cried out.

No one even turned their heads.

The street was crushed with traffic across every lane; cars speeding up to get through the intersection while the light stayed green. Joshua could hear the angry snarl of car horns above the undertone of revving engines.

He stood on the corner and turned his head in every direction, his eyes narrowed like a hunter seeking elusive prey. Overhead, there was a rumble of thunder, and then a soft spatter of rain. The crowd at the lights turned their faces to the sky and then turned up the collars of their coats as the traffic lights suddenly turned red. The crowd moved across the intersection in a dark mass. A rent of lightning lit up the sky, jagging electric blue between the skyscrapers.

“Gabriele!” The sound of Joshua’s voice was snatched away by a gust of wind and a long rumble of thunder. The breeze lifted litter off the sidewalk and carried the smell of smog to Joshua. He cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed again.

“Gabriele!”

Instinct told him to follow the crowd crossing the intersection before the lights changed again, and he turned to go that way when he caught a flash of white from the corner of his eye. He snapped his head around and saw a figure running along the sidewalk, parallel to the hotel block. It was Gabriele. Joshua felt a lift of relief, and then grim determination. He started to run.

The traffic was moving in a steady stream again, sweeping through the intersection and turning onto the street Gabriele had fled along. Joshua ran alongside the traffic, trapped on the opposite side of the road. Another jag of lightning tore across the dark sky, and then the wind came like a slap across the face with an ice-cold hand. It buffeted Joshua so he staggered for a moment. He stared across the street and saw Gabriele again. She had her heels in her hand, and she was running blindly. Then she disappeared into a dark alley.

Joshua dashed onto the street, and the passing drivers pounded on their horns and shouted abuse through their windows. There was the loud screech of brakes, the scream of rubber on the blacktop. Joshua ignored it all. His eyes were fixed on the dark mouth of the alley where Gabriele had disappeared. He zig-zagged through the cars and finally reached the opposite sidewalk. He was panting. He ran headlong into the entrance of the alley and heard Gabriele’s pounding feet against the pavement somewhere just ahead. He started to run again, then caught a flash of Gabriele’s white dress as she turned a sharp corner.

“Gabriele!”

He reached the corner of the alley and found Gabriele standing, exhausted, on the sidewalk. She was leaning against a set of apartment block steps. She was bent over and gasping. She was sobbing. Joshua could hear the painful rasp of her every shuddering breath. Her head was bowed, her hair hanging like a veil across her face. Her whole body was shaking.

“Gabriele…?” Joshua slowed, then stopped just a few feet away from her, fearful that if he even reached out to touch her, she would break into flight again. His voice was a soft question. “Are you okay?”

“Stupid!” Gabriele sobbed. “I’m so stupid!”

Joshua’s face showed his own agony and bewilderment. “Why? Why did you run?”

Gabriele shook her head. She wouldn’t look at Joshua. Her eyes were down on the cracked pavement. It began to rain.

“I have been so stupid,” Gabriele’s voice was low, like she was admonishing herself. “I became so wrapped up in… I let myself get swept away… I thought we…”

Joshua reached for her at last. He put his hand on her arm. Gabriele was cold and wet and shivering. She flinched to his touch, then seemed to go soft and unresisting.

“Say it,” Joshua insisted.

Gabriele looked up into Joshua’s eyes at last. Her makeup was smudged, her eyes hollow and haunted. Her hair was wet and hanging in ropes. “I thought that we might… that you might want me…” she choked off the words and her frustration came back to overwhelm her. She hooked her hands into claws and began to tug at the dress. “But I was so stupid! You’re right, Joshua. I am naïve, and I do have a head full of silly, stupid romantic notions. I can’t believe how I let myself…”

“What?” Joshua insisted. “Tell me.”

Gabriele threw back her head, and the rain splashed into her face. “I’ve fallen in love with you,” she said. “And I thought that maybe – after the night we kissed – that your feelings for me might grow to become something more if I could just keep you interested in me. I thought that… that maybe you would want me as your submissive, and that one day you might even love me back. See! See how stupid I am!” The torture of her pain was raw and wretched on Gabriele’s face. “But I forgot what you do with your time. I forgot about all the other women who want you to train them to submit – women just like that one back at the restaurant who will all beg you to touch them and lick them and fuck them!” Gabriele shook her head in deep despair. She felt nauseous. She felt like the whole world was off balance and that she must surely fall at any moment. Her legs beneath her buckled, but she clung to the wrought iron railing of the apartment steps.

“I can’t compete with beautiful women like the one who was propositioning you tonight, Joshua. I can’t. I’m not beautiful enough. I’m not sexy enough… and I know I’m not skilled in bed enough to stand the comparison. And after Randall betrayed me… I know… I just know in my heart that my jealousy would tear me apart. I’d be forever scared of losing you to their charms, their seduction… their bodies. Every time a new woman came to you for training, a piece of me would die a slow agonizing death.”

Gabriele fell silent at last, shivering with the cold, and deeply shaken by her fear and her anguish. Joshua seized her by the shoulders and fixed her with the steel of his gaze.

“That woman you saw in the restaurant tonight was an old student of mine,” Joshua explained. “I trained her to submit over a year ago. She approached me at the restaurant to thank me, Gabriele. Nothing more than that. She has a Master. She was dining with him in the restaurant. She came to our table to thank me for connecting her to the man she serves.”

Gabriele was frowning, but also slowly shaking her head. “I saw her give you her hotel room key…”

A small smile tugged at the corner of Joshua’s mouth. “No, you saw her give me her Master’s business card. He works as a broker for a big Wall Street firm. He wanted to do some business.”

Gabriele bit on her bottom lip. “But there will be other women, Joshua.”

“No,” he shook his head. “There won’t. I told that woman the same thing I wanted to tell you over dinner. I’m done with training submissives, Gabriele. I’m retiring. There will not be any more women – ever.”

“You were going to tell me that?” Gabriele’s voice was as small as an innocent child’s.

“If you had come back to the table,” Joshua’s smile widened a little.

“Why?”

“So you and I might… might have that chance you want so much, Gabriele,” Joshua said the words. “So that we can have the time to find out if what I feel for you is enough for us to build a future on.”

Gabriele choked back a last sob, and swallowed hard. She sniffed, and then scraped her hand through her hair. Her eyes were huge; her face a smudged mask of make-up that glowed from beneath with a glimmer of hope.

“Really?”

“Really,” Joshua promised her.

He took her in his arms, and she went willingly. Gabriele’s body seemed to melt against Joshua’s chest, and her arms went around the back of his neck with a passion and ferocity that promised she would never let him go. Joshua hugged her back, feeling the heat of her through the damp clinging clothes. She was shivering like a frightened baby animal. He kissed her lips and they were cold with the rain and made salty by all her tears.

“Do you want to become my submissive?” Joshua looked deeply into Gabriele’s eyes.

She sobbed and then choked on her relief. “With all my heart,” Gabriele vowed. “I want that more than anything else in the world.”

 

 

 

Joshua took Gabriele back to the car and then returned to the restaurant just long enough to settle the bill, and to collect the small wrapped parcel he had left on the table. When he got back to the underground parking garage, the windows of the sports car were fogged from the cold and damp of Gabriele’s clothes.

“I’m taking you home,” Joshua said as he settled himself behind the steering wheel. “Tomorrow I’ll phone a moving company, and instruct them to clean out your apartment. You’re going to live with me from now on.”

Gabriele’s eyes were soulful, brimming with deep and burning devotion. “Yes, Master!” she said.

 

 

 

 

 Chapter 13:

 

Gabriele knelt naked in the training room, and she could not stop herself from trembling. She was not cold; she had chased away the chill of the rain and her soaked clothes. And she was not scared; she had found that place in her mind where submission was pure peace.

She was nervous and excited.

Joshua stood before her, holding a small parcel wrapped in paper. He held it in both hands, somehow making it seem more precious; more valuable.

Gabriele looked up into his face and saw the solemn expression in his eyes.

She was warm and she was wet. Her nipples were naturally hard because she seemed in a permanent state of arousal. And she was wet between her thighs because that arousal had become a deep, desperate state of craving and hunger for Joshua’s cock.

“This is a gift for you,” Joshua said gravely. “It is a reward, and it is an offer. Open it.”

He handed the parcel to Gabriele. She shed the wrapping carefully to reveal a slim box, the same shape as a paperback novel. Gabriele slowly lifted the lid and saw a slim black leather collar sitting on a bed of white silk. With reverence, she took the collar from the jewelry box and caressed it with her fingers.

The collar was half-an-inch thick and made of soft glossy black leather. It felt like velvet in the palm of her hand. Fastened to the collar, near the buckle, was a shiny silver ring.

She was struck by the simple elegance of the piece, but also the profound significance of what it represented. It was the greatest of all prizes – a reward as valuable as a king’s treasure.

“By accepting this collar, you are accepting me as your Master, along with all the terms and conditions of your obedience,” Joshua cautioned her. There were brimming tears of happiness in Gabriele’s eyes. She let them cascade down her silken cheeks. “Once it is fastened around your neck, you will be binding your self to me in every aspect; mind, body and soul. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, Master,” Gabriele said softly. She licked her lips. She could taste her own tears.

“As my submissive you will be expected to be devoted and obedient to me at all times. Do you accept that?”

“Yes, Master.”

“And you will be expected to follow my every instruction without question or hesitation. I’m giving you this collar to claim you as my property, but in return you must give to me your trust for the maintenance of your welfare and wellbeing.”

“I understand, Master.”

“As my submissive you will be used for my sexual pleasure and you will be expected to engage in serious study in the art of pleasing a man. I will use you at any time I so desire, and you will keep yourself in a state of readiness and preparedness. You must be completely available to me to use for my satisfaction when I order it so. From now on you will also dress and behave in a manner I expect from you. I will choose your clothes and undergarments.”

“Yes, Master.”

“You will also be expected to resign from your work and serve me in our home full-time. The work you do is unworthy of you. Instead you will dedicate your free time to education. I will pay for all university studies. You may choose any path that is your passion.”

“Quit my job?” Gabriele looked momentarily alarmed.

Joshua arched a quizzical eyebrow. “Do you like the work you do?”

“No,” Gabriele said sourly. “I hate it with a passion, but…”

“From now on, I will pay for all your needs, and you will live here with me. You will have your own room and only share my bed when I want you for my sexual pleasure. If you have a passion, you will be able to pursue it.”

Gabriele nodded. The prospect of quitting her work at the accounting firm and pursing a university degree thrilled her on an entirely new level. “I understand, Master.”

“But do you agree and accept every one of my conditions?”

“Yes, Master.” Gabriele smiled through the mist of joyous tears. “I accept it all.”

“Very well,” Joshua wanted to smile his own pleasure, but the ceremony was not yet concluded. He stepped forward and took the collar from Gabriele’s hands. “Bow your head.”

Joshua wrapped the collar around Gabriele’s neck and fastened the buckle so that it sat loosely around her throat. “You are my submissive,” he said. “And by collaring you, I take you as my property to care for and protect, to train and instruct. Those things are my pledge to you.”

With the collar around her neck, Gabriele felt uplifted by a sense of spiritual satisfaction that swelled and resonated from somewhere deep in her soul. A quiet calm wrapped around her.

Serenity.

At last Gabriele felt she had found a sense of place and purpose. The path of submission that stretched ahead filled her with daunting trepidation, but also excitement.

“Stand,” Joshua said.

Gabriele came to her feet. She spread her legs, clasped her hands behind her back and lowered her eyes. Joshua came to her and brushed the back of his hand across one of her breasts. A jolt of electricity made Gabriele flinch and gasp. Her nipples ached.

Joshua circled Gabriele until he was standing close behind her. He ran his hungry eyes up her legs, across the tight clenched mounds of her butt, and the inviting gap between her thighs. Then his gaze drifted up the small of her back, following the faint ridges of her spine through her flesh, until he was staring at her neck. Gabriele’s hair hung over one shoulder so he could see the black band of the collar about her throat. He leaned close, inhaling the floral scent of her body, and then kissed the soft flesh just below her ear.

Gabriele felt herself melt. Her mouth fell open and a gasp escaped her lips.

“It is the custom for the Master and his submissive to share their first night together as merely man and woman,” Joshua made up the tale as he was going. “That means we get this one night together before you begin serving and obeying me tomorrow morning. It’s going to be your first and only chance to be unrestrained…” he let that thought bloom in Gabriele’s frenzied imagination before he continued. “So I suggest we make the most of it.”

Gabriele nodded eagerly, then stopped herself. She turned to Joshua, her expression bereft. “But I’m being punished…” she said. “You won’t let me cum.”

Joshua winked. “My submissive is very definitely punished,” the look on his face turned wolfish and sexy. “But you’re not that woman until tomorrow.”

 

 

 

They went together into the bedroom, and Joshua perched himself on the edge of the mattress with Gabriele still standing naked beside him. She was tingling with the wild thrill of anticipation. Every piece of her body that Joshua touched caught fire.

He drew her to him and kissed the flat of her stomach. Gabriele had her weight on one leg, and her other knee slightly raised. Joshua pressed his lips to her abdomen and then kissed his way around to her hip. One of his hands went deftly between her legs as she turned and swayed her body for him to give him access. Gabriele clawed her fingers into Joshua’s hair to hold him against her. Joshua’s lips were hot and hungry.

When his kissed dropped to her thigh, she gasped and clenched her teeth in a shudder of delicious delight. His mouth was just inches away from her pussy, and her hands in his hair became frantic. She turned again for him to steer his mouth towards the aching core of her sex, and then ran the palm of her hand across her own breast. She trapped the nipple between her own fingers and groaned. Joshua’s hand between her legs found the hot dampness of her pussy, and he rubbed his fingers across the slick juices, teasing her but never dipping his touch deep inside where she wanted it.

Gabriele licked her lips and shuffled her feet even wider. She was writhing and undulating her body like a model, displaying herself for him and inviting his touch. Joshua came to his feet and sucked her breasts. His mouth was everywhere – never settling in any one place for long. Only his fingers between Gabriele’s legs were a constant.

She groaned and cupped her breast, presenting it to him like it was a gift. Joshua licked the nipple, then sucked her warm flesh deep into his mouth. Gabriele felt her lower body flood with new warmth.

“Yes!” she gasped. She threw back her head, and her hair cascaded over her shoulder like a shimmering black veil. Her eyes were fixed to the ceiling, her mind a turmoil of hunger and white-hot wanting. Joshua was devouring her with his mouth.

He guided her onto the bed and Gabriele rolled instinctively onto her back, spreading her legs wide and reaching up for him. Joshua knelt beside her and covered her mouth with his in a long sizzling kiss that seemed to last an eternity. His tongue flicked between her lips, and she sucked on it hungrily while one hand reached for the back of his head, and her free hand groped along his thigh in search of Joshua’s cock. He had his hand back between her legs again, driving Gabriele to a frenzy. Her kisses became more passionate and more desperate. Joshua teased the wet lips of her pussy apart with the tip of his finger and Gabriele arched her back and then raised her hips off the bed. She was sobbing for breath between kisses, panting and groaning on the brink of madness.

“Please!” she croaked. “Oh, God, please!”

Her hand had found Joshua’s cock. She rubbed his crotch through the material of his pants. He was already hard. Gabriele wanted him in her mouth but she was helpless on her back, pinned by Joshua’s hand that mercilessly teased her.

At last he pressed a finger deep inside her and her eyes flew open and her mouth gaped for more breath. Her pussy went into a series of frenetic spasms. The dam of her seeping juices broke, and a warm rush of her wet desire coated Joshua’s palm.

“Oh, God!” Gabriele gasped again. She stirred her hips to push Joshua’s pressing finger against those parts deep inside her that ached the most, and let the hand that was guiding his head fall to her side. Joshua’s kisses broke from her lips and chased a thrill down her throat.

“I need you inside me,” Gabriele’s voice was hoarse. “I’ve waited for so long.”

Joshua slipped his finger from her pussy and held it to her lips. Gabriele sucked at the taste of herself greedily and then rolled onto her side, sharing the sweetness of herself with Joshua in another lingering kiss, while her hands determinedly reached for the buckle of his pants. Joshua went with the momentum of her until he was lying on his back.

Gabriele pounced on him.

With her long legs splayed, she crouched over Joshua like he was prey for her to feast upon. She tore at the buttons of his shirt, and they flew like confetti across the room. Her mouth traced wet lines over his chest while her fingers tugged at his zipper. As soon as his cock was free, she hunted it with her lips, drawing his cock deep into her throat and bathing it in the warm wetness of her mouth.

Gabriele sucked him like she was ravenous. One hand gently cupped the heavy weight of his balls while the other grabbed the base of his cock, pointing it into her open mouth like it was a weapon to be aimed. She swirled her tongue across the swollen head and then took his as deeply as she could. When her eyes began to water and she could feel him nudging against the back of her throat, she eased her mouth away reluctantly, gasping for breath and panting for more.

Joshua had his eyes shut, breathing deeply. With one of his hands he found Gabriele’s thigh and he followed the warm firm flesh of her until he sensed the heat of her pussy. He felt for it, found it – and rubbed Gabriele’s clit with his thumb while her head bobbed up and down relentlessly on his cock.

Gabriele felt a familiar glow begin to spread through her body, like the first smoky tendrils of something that would soon become a raging furnace. She didn’t want to waste the orgasm.

Impulsively she moved, straddling Joshua with her thighs and then reaching back to rub the glistening bulb of his cock along the wetness of her slit. She was teasing herself. Joshua’s cock was a hard iron bar in her hand. She drew a deep breath and bit down on her lip. She fixed Joshua with a look of sheer sizzling lust… and then took the first inch of him inside herself.

“Oooooh!” she groaned. It was a sound of pure desire, drawn from somewhere so deep inside herself that it sounded on her lips like a low throaty moan. She felt her toes curl and her whole body tense. Joshua lay very still beneath her. Gabriele felt another inch of him slide inside her pussy; delicately balancing herself to adjust to the thickness that felt like it was tearing her asunder and setting her on fire.

She closed her eyes and set her jaw determinedly. She had her hands flat on Joshua’s chest now; her breasts hanging for his touch while she lowered herself tentatively further onto his cock. Joshua was touching places inside of her that Gabriele had never known existed – never known could be so sensitive to the filling pressure of such a long thick cock. Every new inch of his length inside of her brought Gabriele fresh wonder and closer to an orgasm that felt like swelling pressure in the pit of her stomach.

When she had most of his hardness inside herself, she threw back her head and groaned. Joshua was squeezing her breasts. The base of his cock was coated in the juices of Gabriele’s sex. He saw the blissful look on her face, and it looked to him like she was floating on a cloud of astonishment. He clenched his muscles, and his cock flexed inside her. Gabriele’s eyes flashed wide open and her lips parted in new awe.

“Do that again!” she begged.

Joshua clenched himself once more, and inside her pussy, the length of his cock swelled and pushed against the inner walls of Gabriele’s body. She swayed on his cock and then let herself fall forward so her breasts were crushed against Joshua’s chest. Joshua wrapped his arms around her, tightening his grip until it felt to Gabriele that she was clamped in the warm embrace of a vice. Joshua kissed her deeply, and Gabriele moaned helplessly into his mouth.

Then Joshua bucked his hips and Gabriele went stiff in the sudden moment he drove all the way inside her. She felt pleasantly impaled as though she were skewered to Joshua for all eternity. He bucked again and she felt his heavy balls slap against her. She started breathing in short ragged pants. Joshua dug his heels into the mattress and thrust himself into her again and again. Gabriele began to whimper, but it turned into a wail of raw sexual ecstasy as the orgasm that had burned in her body for so long suddenly erupted in a thrashing, flailing explosion. She cried out at the top of her lungs; her eyes wide and uncomprehending. The muscles in her neck strained like steel rods. Her whole back arched as she stared unseeing at the head of the bed… and then everything began to collapse in upon itself and she felt herself falling; falling into a deep dark void that was a pleasure unlike anything she had ever known before.

Joshua waited patiently as Gabriele lay, languid and satiated over him, her breathing deep and relaxed, her body still shuddering through the tingling after-effects of her release. He was still hard and in need. Gabriele seemed to come alert like she was waking from a deep blissful dream. She moved in his arms, suddenly pliant. Joshua rolled her onto her back, still with his cock deep inside her.

She lay limp and exhausted, and he used her for his pleasure, driving himself deep inside her with his arms braced either side of her shoulders to support his weight, gazing into her eyes. Gabriele felt like some sacred sacrifice. She was offering herself to her god; giving her body for his pleasure, and it filled her with a heartfelt sense of sanctity.

“Yes,” she murmured as Joshua drove his cock faster and faster into her. Each thrust stretched her, but she welcomed the sensation for it re-stoked the fire of her own desire to be used this way. “Yes!” she urged him on in timid whispers, wanting him to fuck her hard and make her his own forever.

Joshua’s face was frowned in concentration. Gabriele’s pussy was like a tight fist around his cock, squeezing and coaxing intense sensations from every single lunge. His body felt bathed in a sheen of glistening sweat. His breath rasped from his lungs like a bellows.

He sensed the exact moment that his orgasm was triggered; the moment that it ceased to be sex and became something deeper and profound. It was when Gabriele reached a loving hand up to his face and caressed his cheek. He didn’t see it – his eyes were closed. But he felt her touch and when his eyes flew open, he stared down and saw the love and the wanting in her eyes. It was an expression of supreme tenderness and satisfaction. It tipped Joshua over the edge.

His orgasm started as a flash of sharp seizing muscles and then bloomed like some impossibly bright fire, burning in his balls and along the length of his cock. He felt his arms buckle and his vision blur. His heart pounded against the cage of his ribs. He felt himself straining, and then his cock seemed to swell to twice its thickness. It could not last.

Joshua clenched himself one last time and then let himself go. He loosed the leash on his restraint, and the orgasm ran rampant through his body, erupting in a white-hot pulse of energy that seemed to be drawn from reserves that he didn’t know he had. It drained him completely of everything that was his essence, and left him gasping and reeling.

They lay entwined and exhausted for long minutes. Gabriele was still on her back with Joshua lying collapsed beside her. Now his hand roamed lightly up and down Gabriele’s body, and she shuddered involuntarily as his fingers found sensual places that she hadn’t known existed.

“We have until sunrise,” Joshua murmured, “so if you want to sleep for an hour…”

While he had been talking, his fingers had dipped between Gabriele’s spread thighs once more. She was overflowing with their warm juices.

“I’m not tired,” Gabriele whispered. She felt tender and softly, deeply bruised, but it was a wonderfully feminine feeling that felt like a badge of honor. She had satisfied Joshua, and the realization filled her with liberating pride. “And I want more of what we just did,” she demurred in a throaty voice.

Joshua leaned over her and kissed Gabriele tenderly, then with growing desire. Gabriele gasped around his lips. One of Joshua’s hands cupped her chin to hold her mouth still for him to plunder with fresh kisses.

“Very well,” he smiled sexily. “But you should be warned – tomorrow morning you will start your advanced training… and it’s going to be a very, very long day.”

“I’m ready,” Gabriele murmured, knowing in her heart that it was true. “Ready for anything and everything you ask of me, Master.”