FIVE

Friday, first session. She’d stayed away from the club this week. Not unusual for her, given that she’d only been going about once a month, and had gone hardly at all in the first year after Roy’s passing. But she wondered if Dale was there. Was he having sessions with Willow or other subs? How did she feel about that?

Did she have any right to feel anything about it? No matter what Dale had said, or her own conflicted feelings, she had initiated this like a session appointment, not a date. If she were being brutal with herself, their interludes might end up being little different from a therapy session. She wouldn’t wonder who else’s brain her psychiatrist was examining when he wasn’t with her, right?

She absolutely refused to revert to a high school girl’s naïveté, thinking a boy liked her when she was just his lab partner. Dale was a great fantasy. He was sexy, charismatic, fascinating. He was also insightful, kind, had a good sense of humor, and a missing leg that seemed no more impediment to him than a birthmark.

He was coming to her house for a session that he would be orchestrating, based on the notes she’d made. He’d given her no other instructions than that. Or so she thought, until the delivery van pulled up to her house on Friday morning.

She saw it from her office window. It was a private courier service. That wasn’t unusual, though she typically knew when to expect a package. Lynn came out to accept it, and then brought it up to Athena, her face wreathed in a smile.

“It’s from Mr. Rousseau.”

It was obvious Lynn already liked him, but what woman in her right mind wouldn’t? Picking up her letter opener, Athena slit the tape, noting the box was marked “fragile” and “keep cool.” Inside, it was lined with a disposable cooler. As she opened it, Lynn sidled up to her elbow. Belatedly, Athena realized she should have opened it in private, since Dale could have sent her something she might not want to share with her household staff. Fortunately, her lack of foresight didn’t result in embarrassment.

She lifted out the basket. It was an arrangement of yellow carnations on a bed of mint leaves. The carnations had been shaped in two mounded clusters, and black pipe cleaner and buttons for stripes and antennae turned them into bumblebees. White daisies with cheerful yellow centers were planted around them.

She remembered him in the potting shed, the variety of planting tools, the private courier. This wasn’t an order from a florist. He’d done this.

“Isn’t that a delightful, clever thing?” Her housekeeper’s crisp British accent mirrored her own feelings on the matter. “Oh, don’t forget your card.” Lynn pulled it out, laid it next to the basket. “Do you want me to take the box out of the way? You’ll want to keep the basket here so you can enjoy looking at it.”

Athena nodded. She laid her fingers on the card, stroking the mint leaves with her other hand. As the woman moved to the door, Athena cleared her throat. “Lynn? What did you think of him?”

It was a ridiculous question of course, given that Lynn had met him for only a few minutes. It also made Athena appear too vulnerable to her staff, but as she’d told Dale, Lynn was quite more than that.

The woman turned, gave her a look. “I think he’s the type of man that makes a woman’s heart beat faster and her cheeks flush when he looks at her. You deserve that, even if you only want it for a little while.” Lynn hesitated, her blue eyes kind in her lined face. “Sometimes that kind of man can get a woman’s heart started again, if you understand my meaning. All right, then?”

“Yes.” Athena squared her shoulders. “Thank you, Lynn.”

She opened the envelope. It contained a blue note card, with a header stamp showing a pair of dogs and EJDS, Inc. She puzzled over it, then her expression cleared. Eddie’s Junkyard and Dog Shelter. Was it a true nonprofit? Was there an Eddie? She’d heard more dogs barking elsewhere on the property, suggesting there was a main kennel area, so the “few” Dale had taken out for play and training weren’t the whole population. She didn’t know many people who could handle that many dogs at one time, but they’d been riveted on Dale like he was the pack leader. Who did the fund-raising?

Picking up her reading glasses, she smiled a little, seeing that his handwriting was a sprawling scrawl. Her gaze strayed to the carnation bees again, then went back to the note.

I’ll arrive at eight. Meet me at the door wearing a robe, something thin and silky. Nothing under it. I’ll be coming from the rec center so I’ll be hungry. Make me a good sandwich and have beer. See you then.

Well, a poet he wasn’t. But poetry wasn’t what she wanted. She could hear the command behind every word. There was nothing casual in this note. All the times in their life together she’d done things for Roy, poured him a drink, made him a sandwich, he’d always asked, never told her to do it.

Did he know you’re a submissive, Athena? As she reread the simple order, her pulse fluttered in her throat, the same jumpiness happening in her stomach.

I want to fuck you.

Her body had been wound up like a spring when Dale left that night, but her mind had been so muddled, her balance so off center, she hadn’t tried to do what he’d told her she could do, within the limits of his instructions. Her body had been on a low hum ever since, a state that became far worse at bedtime. Yet still she’d done nothing about it, hesitant to confront an arousal caused directly by Dale’s effect upon her.

As she held his instructions in her hand, her mind running away with imaginings of how the night was going to go, the hum of her body became an urgent purr.

She locked the office door before she went into the private bathroom. Laying the note on the counter, she glanced at herself in the mirror, seeing that telltale flush Lynn had mentioned. Sliding her hand beneath the waistband of her skirt, down into her panties, she found herself wet, where moments before she hadn’t been. One note from him, several almost-coarse commands—wear a robe, make a sandwich, have beer—had done that.

That was the power of a good Dominant. He could take a simple thing and create an explosion of response. It made her think of a couple who’d come to the club one night when she was there with Roy. It had been the woman’s first time, but her boyfriend, the Dom, had been highly experienced. When she was looking around nervously, he’d put a hand on her shoulder. Placement of his palm had been precise, the juncture of shoulder and throat, his forefinger against her carotid, the others wrapped firmly over her collarbone. He’d leaned in, murmured two words, delivered with a direct glance. “Sit down.”

Athena had been close enough to discern the words, but more importantly, she’d seen the look on the woman’s face. It was as if all those worries and doubts vanished, all the scattered threads suddenly twisted together into an arrow that pointed directly at him for everything she needed for things to be okay. Her face had eased, her gaze lowered, and she sat down on the couch, her ankles crossed like a proper lady, her hands folded in her lap, back straight, obviously a posture he required from her. He’d touched her hair, warm approval in his face. When she dared a glance up, Athena had seen adoration and joy in her expression. Surrender.

She sat down in the wicker chair in the corner of the large bathroom, bracing her feet on the garden tub. Caressing her labia, she moved her fingers up to her clit, tugged on it. That first touch made her suck in a breath, arch at the dense wave of sensations. But stoking her arousal and achieving a climax were different matters. It really was so much easier with her vibrator, and . . . oh crap, she was using her wrong hand. She switched, and that of course made it more awkward. She had to go slow, be more precise with her movements, but her body was eager, needy.

She thought of Dale’s expression when he’d told her she could give herself relief like this. She thought of him being here, watching her. He would sit on the edge of the tub, thighs spread in that casual male way, maybe a hand braced against one of them. He’d put himself between her spread legs so she had to spread them wider, so he could watch every movement of her fingers, the way her labia got slicker, how her cunt sucked on her fingers when she pushed them inside herself.

His gaze on her would be sharp as a laser. With Willow that night, he’d been thick and hard, the denim molded over that tempting bar of steel. Some of the Doms wore untucked shirts so as not to reveal their state to the sub. He had been deliciously unconcerned about it.

She thought about his arrival tonight, what he might wear, what they might do that would get him aroused like that. What he would do to her to make himself that way.

It was a titillating shift of perspective, and she responded to it, her hips lifting, the wicker emitting its quiet strawlike noise, which sounded loud as a squeaky door. There were two doors to the bathroom, one leading to the hallway. She’d locked it, but what if one of the staff came by, heard her doing this? But . . . oh God, it felt good. She played her fingers over her damp flesh, body quivering.

She imagined herself in the shoes of the nervous girlfriend, and Dale was the Master who’d told her to sit down. She kept rising up to her touch, getting closer, closer . . . Her gaze strayed to the clock. Six minutes already? Noooo. She was so close . . . she couldn’t help herself. She worried about going over his imposed time limit, and that worry grew as her fingers refused to stop. Would seven minutes really be so much worse than six? Oh . . .

The climax rocked her, a tiny, intense thing, not nearly satisfying enough, but enough to have her curling around her hand, pressed between her legs. She breathed hard through the aftershocks. “Oh . . . oh . . .” That syllable became a reassuring mantra while she rocked her body.

It took a little while for her to settle, but when she did, she rose unsteadily, returned to the note on the counter. The air-conditioning vent had tipped it into the thankfully dry sink. There was something written on the back. She squinted at it.

PS—if you bring yourself to climax today, don’t wash that hand unless absolutely necessary.

She brought her fingers to her face, inhaled the musky scent of her orgasm. Dominance and submission. She’d been a Domme and now she was trying out submission. It was merely an exercise to see how she liked it. An adventure, like a vacation, where there’d be a beginning and an end, and then she’d come home. Only she wouldn’t have pictures, except in her mind.

Why was she lying to herself? She heard Dale ask the question again. Did he know you’re a submissive? There’d been a tightness to his voice, as if he might have judged Roy in the wrong if her husband had known that about her. But there was no right or wrong to it. There’d only been love, a love she missed intensely, which conflicted with the strong, pulsing anxiety and need she felt toward tonight. She didn’t know how to reconcile it. A part of her knew she should call this off, that it would go badly in the end because she couldn’t manage her feelings, couldn’t get a proper hold on all of it. But she wouldn’t call it off. She wanted it too much.

Leaving the bathroom and returning to her desk, she fitted her hands-free to her ear and dialed her assistant at the office. “Ellen? I need you to do me a favor, when you have time. See what you can find out about Eddie’s Junkyard and Dog Shelter, Incorporated. It’s local. Not a first priority, but maybe look into it between tasks or next week. Just email me what you find out. Thanks.”

There. She could do something with that. A little more settled, she took a breath, sat back down at her desk. Thinking, she opened a drawer, looked at a pair of thin gloves she kept there. Roy had given them to her to wear in the wintertime indoors, when her hands became cold and achy. She wore them to type at her computer. She slipped one on her left hand, a reminder not to wash it. Now she could touch other things, but she’d also retain the scent for Dale. For her Master.

She backed away from the startling thought like an electric shock. What was she doing?

—

Time didn’t help settle nerves the way some people thought. In certain situations, the wait made it worse. Throughout the week she’d alternated between a pleasurable kind of excitement and uncertain anxiety. By seven, the latter had taken over. She prepared as he’d ordered, taking off all her clothes, sliding on a robe, brushing out her hair. Athena threaded her fingers through the thick strands, tightened the belt of the robe. It was green with a soft satiny feel, and it clung to her curves. It was also short, just past midthigh. It was something she’d bought herself some time ago for whatever reason. When she’d pulled it out of the closet, it still had tags.

Seven fifty-five. When she removed the glove, she found she’d been correct. She could still smell the lingering scent of her climax on her fingers, the unmistakable scent of her sex. The dampness of her palm intensified it.

The security chime in the lobby told her a vehicle had turned into the drive. She opened and closed those moist palms, and went downstairs. Opening the front door, she left the storm door unlatched. Now she sat down on the padded bench in the foyer. Her folded stationery, displaying the list of things he’d told her to write down, was next to her. In hindsight, the few pages she’d written didn’t feel like enough to start. Not enough structures and rules to keep things moving as slow as they should, but it was too late to change it now. She hadn’t brought a pen down with her, so she couldn’t scribble a caveat: “All the above are null and void if I completely freak out, like I’m about to do now.”

She shook her head at herself and focused what she could see through the open front door. There’d been an old beater truck by the office at the shelter, so this must be his personal use vehicle. He drove a dark blue Ford that looked shiny and less than a couple of years old. She didn’t know how much it paid, working as caretaker at a combination junkyard and dog rescue shelter. She assumed he received a pension of some kind from being a SEAL. Whatever the sources of his income, it was apparently enough, but then she’d also seen his place. He kept it clean and neat, but he didn’t spend a lot of money on obvious things, and that kind of person usually made a dollar go further than most. Maybe he did floral arrangement as well.

In truth, she knew almost nothing about him. Except that he’d been a SEAL, and that he’d mesmerized her with the way he’d taken over Willow, enough to invite him to her home and ask him to do the same to her.

Maybe this was a midlife crisis, exacerbated by Roy’s death. Everyone knew how well midlife crises went. At best, a person looked back on them with chronic embarrassment. At worst, they could destroy lives.

She remembered waking up in Dale’s house. She could trust this man. If it went terribly wrong, embarrassment would be her worst punishment. Which simply meant she’d never return to the club, and she’d close this chapter of her life. She could do that.

Her throbbing pulse, her shortness of breath as his door opened, told her that might not be the case. Which escalated her to near panic. She could bolt up from her seat, lock the door and run back up to her room. There was still time.

Her, Athena Francesca Summers, running away from anything? Really? What would Dale do if she did such a thing? She had a vision of him kicking the door down, pursuing her up to her room, pushing her down on the bed, ready to punish, to claim . . .

Okay, she’d just shifted straight to the fantasy of the pirate captain ravishing the beautiful heiress. It didn’t help that she could easily imagine him in tight black trousers, shiny boots and a billowing white shirt unlaced at the neck. Technically, he already had the peg leg.

There was a structure for all of this. Controls and safe words. So why did she feel like a bug in a jar?

He’d stepped out of the truck and pulled a tote bag out of the back. After shutting the door, he circled around the grille, coming toward the front stoop. Like the night with Willow, he wore belted dark jeans, snug black T-shirt and his boots. The T-shirt was tucked into the jeans. Unpretentious yet severe, suggesting functional intent.

He saw her through the storm door. What did he see in her face? She wasn’t sure herself. He came up onto the porch, stood in front of the glass door. He nodded to the latch.

“Open the door, Athena.”

It was unlocked, but she expected he knew that. He was making a point, one that her subconscious understood well. She rose, smoothing the robe over her thighs. She thought of the first board meetings she’d chaired when Roy became sick enough he had to step down. She’d gone from vice chairperson to overseeing the board solo. She’d been nervous then, too. A part of her had wanted to run, to avoid the significance of what standing at the head of that table meant.

If she’d decided it was all too much, turned it over to someone else, board members like Mel would have been happy to step into that gap, take over the company Roy and she had built. But she hadn’t run. Even at her lowest moments, she’d known she would take responsibility, be strong. That was who she was.

Crossing to the door, she pushed it open. She took it further, stepping outside, gesturing to him to precede her into her home. An instinctive decision. His gaze swept her and then he stepped in. But he turned to hold the door open for her and draw her into the recesses of the house, a different kind of gesture. One that almost made her smile except the working of her face muscles felt painful.

He closed the main door, flipped the deadbolt. “Athena.”

“Sir.” Thinking about the others she’d seen at the club, and considering it an attempt to calm her nerves through emulation, she sank to her knees on the marble floor. Looking up the length of his body, she thought he appeared so strong and confident, so sure of himself. Those blue-green eyes were watching everything she was doing, and probably reading her like a manual. Only men didn’t read manuals, did they? They proceeded based on mechanical aptitude, an instinctive understanding of how things worked, of what things to tighten, which to loosen.

“I told you I’d be hungry,” he said.

She nodded. “I have a plate ready for you. Where would you like to eat?”

“Kitchen.” Noticing the pages she’d left on the bench, he picked them up, glancing over her handwriting. “Take me there.”

She rose, leading him to the kitchen. As she passed the pictures hung in the foyer, she saw her and Roy’s wedding picture, Roy’s parents. Why was she doing this?

Because kneeling at his feet hadn’t had anything to do with copying the actions of other subs. It had been as natural to her as breathing. She was padding across the floor barefoot. She never went barefoot in the house. Even at night, she wore slippers.

As they entered the kitchen, she gestured to the stools arranged at the island, and then pulled the plate out of the oven. She’d kept the heat on low so the turkey sub she’d made him would stay warm. A side of sliced and fried potatoes went with it. She added a sprig of mint from the arrangement he’d given her, which had a prominent display position on the counter.

“Thank you for the carnations.” She turned toward the refrigerator, retrieved a beer. At his house, he’d had Bud Light, so that was what she’d bought, adding a couple more varieties from the wet bar in case he wanted something else. “You didn’t have to send me flowers.”

After opening the beer, she found a napkin to wrap around the base. He’d placed the bag on the floor next to the island. When he nodded to the counter next to his plate, she put the beer there. He laid his hand on her wrist, holding her. “Did you follow my instructions about writing these? And the other commands I left you?”

She flashed to the memory of being in the bathroom. “Yes. No. I . . . we need to talk about this more.” She drew her hand away. “I’m not sure this is going to work. I need things more defined.”

He grunted. “Like a car race on a closed track, where the circles are predictable, and when you hit the finish line, the race is over?”

“Don’t judge me,” she snapped.

Where had that come from? She nearly clapped her hand over her mouth like a cartoon character. She needed to steady her nerves. She needed to . . .

At the shift in his expression, she almost took a step back. “I wouldn’t suggest using that tone with me,” he said pleasantly. “I’m likely to react exactly as you’re hoping I will.”

A giant bunny leap of adrenaline from her stomach into her chest made it hard to determine if she was reacting to that with dread or anticipation. With effort—though she was pretty sure she was losing her mind—she found her dignity and laced her fingers together before her. “I apologize for the outburst, Dale. I’m just . . . This is all very new to me.”

“I know that. I’ll address your concerns, Athena. Right now, I’m eating. Sit here.” He pointed to the floor next to him. “And be quiet. I’m going to read your notes.”

She hesitated, then closed the distance between them. He hadn’t chosen a stool, but was instead standing at a clear spot in front of the island. Sinking to her knees felt like what she was supposed to do. Structure. Order. She was beside his left leg, the one where half of it was missing. She found it hard to wrap her mind around that. He’d shown her the prosthesis, yes, but the man seemed so solid, it was inconceivable that any part of him was absent.

Her gaze slid up to his knee, noticed the difference between the stretch of the denim around that area and the other one. The left was somewhat thicker, she expected because of whatever socket held the knee. She’d looked up some things about it on the Internet, and knew a removal below the knee was called a transtibial amputation. Those sites said that was better than above the knee, because below the knee had far better prosthesis options, ones that caused less strain on joints and muscles.

She was scrolling down the recalled computer page like an automaton. It was a nervous, bug-in-the-jar reaction again, so she shifted her focus back to Dale. His scent, his nearness, what he was doing.

He was looking down at her notes, but he made an appreciative noise when he took his first bite of the sandwich. The incoherent compliment cracked open a tiny ball of warmth in her stomach. He ate while standing, wiping his fingers on the napkin she provided before he turned each page, reading the back, switching to the next page. His obvious intention to dive straight into the reason he was here tonight tangled more anxious things around that ball of warmth.

Like a session, not a date. What she wanted, yes?

He’d been so matter-of-fact about it, ordering her to kneel next to him. She hadn’t really said anything in her notes about the degree of subjugation she wanted. She expected she was okay with what she’d seen him do with Willow, so she hadn’t felt the need to spell it out, but maybe he’d tailored his intensity to that specific sub. While Willow was pretty hardcore, maybe Dale’s preferences were even more so. She hadn’t witnessed his aftercare process. Had he attached a leash to her collar, led her to a booth and had her sit by his knee, idly stroking her hair while he talked to other Doms? She liked that vision, imagined herself there, exhausted, thrilled, sated. Athena wished she could jump to that relaxed, somnolent state. But another part of her didn’t want to miss the journey to it. Bug in a jar, bug in a jar . . .

She really wanted to lean against his leg, stroke it with her fingertips. Could she do that on this side? She laid her fingers above his knee, finding the firm, heated flesh that was Dale, then slid down over what she realized was the sleeve for the socket and then the socket. All of it was part of him.

He turned over another page. “Did I give you permission to touch me, Athena?”

“No sir.” She withdrew her hand.

“Untie the robe and take it off your shoulders so I can see your breasts. Spread your knees.”

Her stomach knocked against her rib cage this time, her breasts prickling with heat, nipples tightening. Was she going to do this? She put her fingers to the tie, but she couldn’t make them move. “Dale . . . I . . . I don’t think I can. Maybe it’s too soon.”

She was going to ruin it before anything started. But before she could scramble to her feet, withdraw, he set aside the pages and slid onto a stool at last. Stretching his leg out to one side of her, he bent the right one to brace himself. “Come here.”

As she rose on her knees, he pinched the lapel of her robe between two fingers, a little tug to bring her to her feet. When she was standing between his thighs, he had his hands on her waist, holding and steadying her.

“Close your eyes, but keep your head up.” His voice was low, firm, but not unkind.

Once she complied, he drew her closer. He captured her jaw with one hand, holding her face still. “Moisten your lips for me.”

She did so, and began to shake. “Dale . . .”

“Shh. We’re just going on a boat ride, Athena. It’s a lazy, sunny day, and you’re lying in the bottom of the boat. The sun is so warm and bright, your eyes are closed, and you feel the heat on your skin, the breeze.” His breath touched her. Her heart was battering her ribs, her stomach tight and uncertain.

“I’m controlling the direction, the speed. The oars are dipping in the water in that easy rhythm. You have a pillow resting on my feet so you can put your head there and I can give you shade by leaning over you when the sun is too bright for your eyes. I’m taking care of you. Do you feel safe in the boat with me?”

“Yes.” She whispered it.

“Good.” He made a humming noise in his throat, as if he were singing to her. She imagined the boat rocking on the current, the unobtrusive noise of the oars. She could turn her head, brush against his leg, reach up and curve her hand around his calf . . .

The world steadied. She wanted to do this. The main reason she was so unsettled about it was exactly because of how much she wanted to do this.

His touch dropped, and he was untying the robe. He pushed it off her shoulders, but since his grip dropped to her elbows, keeping those held against her sides, it stopped there, the fabric pooling on her hips and lower back. “All right. Kneel on the floor the way I ordered. Knees spread shoulder-width apart. But Athena?”

She lifted her lashes to find his intent gaze so close she couldn’t help imagining him closing the distance for a kiss. She wasn’t sure she was ready for that, but that wasn’t his purpose.

“When your eyes are closed, it’s me touching you. Doing this to you. Not Roy. You understand? I can be a mean son of a bitch when it comes to things like that. When we’re together, you’re mine. I’m not a surrogate. Got it?”

She shook her head, but not to deny him. “Roy never would have done this to me,” she said. She couldn’t even imagine it.

It was a simple, honest answer, but one that seemed to satisfy him. Enough that his change in expression sent that thrill through her vitals again. She knew this was just a session, that she couldn’t extrapolate from that, but she remembered her latent desire to see that sense of ownership in a man’s eyes. She saw it clearly in Dale’s.

“All right. Kneel the way I told you.”

As she sank back down, his grip made sure it was a controlled descent. When she reached the floor, she adjusted her thighs as he described. Looking down, she could see the heavy weight of her breasts. Through their cleft, she saw the robe had parted so her inner thighs and shaved sex were revealed.

He touched her hair. “Lift your head, stare straight ahead. You’re interfering with my view.”

She obeyed, swallowing on a dry throat. The moisture in her body seemed to be collecting in one key part of her. She was still shaking a little. The first couple of times, Roy had shook. Maybe that was part of a sub’s journey.

He’d gone back to reading the notes. He’d commanded her not to reread them, but since he’d told her she couldn’t change anything, she hadn’t known why that would matter. However, she’d only managed to get through one front and back page and part of the next before she was cringing. She’d stopped reading, but a pounding urge to toss all of it had followed her around most of the week. The only thing that prevented that was imagining Dale asking her if she’d followed his directions exactly. She couldn’t lie to him. Lies disrespected the Dom and, more than that, undermined what was being built between Dom and sub in every session. Absolute trust.

Then there was the pride issue. Explaining why she’d destroyed previous versions would have been too difficult to articulate, too mortifying for an exercise she was already unable to review without acute embarrassment.

He’d told her to be quiet, but she needed to say it. “I disobeyed your instructions. Twice.”

“How?”

When she didn’t immediately respond, he lifted his head from his reading. Though she was staring straight ahead, which gave her a view of his hip and length of thigh where he sat on the stool, she could feel that inexorable gaze pinned on her.

“I started to reread the notes. I only read . . . I read three pages and then stopped. And . . . I used my hand for seven minutes, not five.”

“When?”

“Today. A few hours ago. I didn’t wash it . . . like you said.”

He lowered his hand, snapped his fingers and then opened his palm, a clear directive. She laid the offending hand in it, which quivered as his thumb swept over her palm, her wrist pulse, his other fingers closing around her arm. He tugged her back up to her knees and she bit her lip as he brought the hand up to his face. He pressed his nose briefly into her palm, then rubbed his jaw over it, turning his head so her fingers passed over his lips. He kissed her fingertips, squeezed her hand, then used the same hold on her wrist to compel her back into a kneeling position.

“Hmm.” He returned to reading the notes. Since he said nothing further, she remained silent as ordered. He pushed them away, finishing up the sandwich. He didn’t speak again until he was done with his plate and had wiped his mouth. “Did you make this or Lynn?”

“I did.”

“Good girl.” Rising, he moved to the sink, washed his hands, dried them. Then he reached over and plucked the pancake spatula out of the pottery vase where it resided with all of Lynn’s other kitchen implements. He twirled it, smacked it against his hand. Now as before, it made Athena jump, though her backside tingled in uneasy anticipation this time.

“I punish for a couple of reasons, Athena. One is for mutual pleasure. One is for discipline. You’ve earned the discipline side, which means this waits for another day.” Putting the spatula back in its spot, he came back to the island, sliding a hip onto the stool.

“From reading your notes, I can tell you’re not quite sure what you want, but you have the fever to the point you don’t want to rule anything out. That’s pretty normal. So we’re going to let this evolve organically. Your safe word is griffin. Use it only if you want me to stop. I’m not going to give you an interim safe word yet, something to slow things down, because when you’re all over the map like that, you need a tighter circle to decide if something is a hard or soft limit. Knowing what I already do about your personality, your determination and courage, I know that having a stop-go safe word will accomplish that.”

She was looking at her hands, clasped and twisting around each other. He touched her shoulder, a firm tap reminding her to bring her chin up again. “Back straight, hands at your sides. Keep your thighs open. What do you think The Choice means? The bronze in your garden.”

Athena was glad he added the clarification, though she had to struggle to catch up with the change in direction. Fortunately, she’d mulled on the piece’s meaning enough in the past to have a formed opinion. “I think it represents every person’s struggle to choose between fantasy and reality, what they wish for life to be and what it is. The man in the suit, holding the sword, is deciding whether he’ll slay the fantasy, his dreams and wishes . . . or choose otherwise.”

“What other choice does he have? Getting lost in the dreams?” Dale had shifted so his legs were stretched out on either side of her. He seemed to like doing that, hemming her in. She liked it, too. She wanted to put her hands on his knees, look up into his face. He’d been close enough to kiss her earlier, but he hadn’t. Maybe he’d felt her uncertainty about that or, like the spatula, he was just really good at putting an image in her head, then taking it away, keeping her guessing—and anticipating.

“I like to think we live in a world where both can exist. When you hold on to your fantasies and dreams, your perception of the real world is transformed by them. Whether you achieve them or not, holding on to that magic gives you a different way of viewing everything. A better way, I think.”

Dale twined a lock of her hair around his hand, knuckles brushing her face. He was good at that, mixing tender gestures with sensual threats. One moment talking about punishment and ordering her to silence, the next helping her visualize a lazy boat ride to calm her down. What had he thought of her admission about breaking his rules? What kind of discipline was he considering? The fantasy versus reality of that was elevating her heart rate. Or maybe that was simply his touch. He cradled her jaw, stroking his thumb over her bottom lip.

“We tend to limit our vision of ourselves, don’t we?” he mused. “We decide what we are, all the things we can be. We think we have to be one thing or another, never realizing how many things we simply are. Like you. I’ve seen all the articles about your business, your fund-raisers. Even the personal stuff in the society columns. I saw the one about you and Roy taking his father out to the theater. He lived here, and the two of you cared for him until he died.”

“Yes.” Athena tried to wrap her mind around another subject change, though she had an inkling they were all related in some way. She was just too scattered to figure out how. “He was a good man. Roy’s mother was a good person as well, though she was a little more difficult at times.”

She and Elaine had had a cordial relationship, though Elaine saw Athena as competition for her only son’s affections. On the other hand, Robert was so much like Roy, the obvious evidence of it when they’d both lived under this roof had amused her.

“During the tour of this place, two places spoke to me,” Dale said. “One was your reading room. That’s your breathing space, the place where you go just to be. Right?”

“Yes.”

“Whenever I’m doing something that unsettles you, Athena, I want you to go to that place in your head and think it through, before you put up a shield. Understand?”

The words tweaked her subconscious, telling her that at some subliminal level she did. So she nodded. He stroked her hair behind her ear, teasing the tender area beneath. Sliding along the side of her throat, he caressed her nape.

“Let’s practice it. When you watched me at the club, how does it connect to what you want here? Go to that space in your head, think it through, then answer me.”

Closing her eyes, she remembered the last book she’d been reading in her easy chair. It was a book she’d read as a child. She’d found it when she was helping set up a thrift store for the women’s shelter. A story about a horse . . . Blaze. That was it. When she was a child, she’d read it on a rainy afternoon, falling asleep curled in her father’s recliner. Her mother’s hand, stroking her hair, had woken her for dinner. A different kind of stroking from Dale’s, but with that same protective, reassuring element.

“When I was watching you,” she said slowly, “I had a feeling, a need. I don’t know, I’ve never been on that end of things, you understand? I just felt a desire for what you were doing to Willow, how you made her step out of her head. You were whipping her, and you drove everything out.”

“Do you think you want that level of pain?”

“I don’t know. I just knew what you were doing felt like what I wanted, but I can’t explain how.” She stopped, feeling foolish. “I’m so used to being decisive, Dale. I think the reason I’m trying to keep you at arm’s length, make this a more businesslike arrangement, is the fear that if you become too personal to me . . .”

“I’ll become one of the expectations. Something you have to be a certain way around. I’ll want more from you and you’ll have to take on another role. Good girl. Really good girl. See, it’s there, just waiting under all the storm clouds.”

She felt absurdly pleased by the praise. She couldn’t have this conversation with someone who’d known her as a Domme. But he had no history with her, no perspective from which to judge her. No expectations. So she kept talking. “Anyone else would assume I’m still a Domme, that it’s a temporary switch, a change of pace. It’s not unheard of.”

“But that’s not how you see it, do you?”

She shook her head. But as ill fitting as the Domme coat was, she’d made it fit. Taking on a role had a certainty to it, a safety. With the duality that seemed to be attending every step of this, she was torn between the security it provided and wanting to shed it forever.

He touched her chin, bringing her eyes up to him. “All right. I have a couple boundaries of my own, different from these.” He glanced toward her list, then shifted his attention back to her face. “First, within the boundaries I set, you have the freedom to be whatever you need to be. You’re not going to be ashamed of anything you say and feel around me. I’m in control, so you don’t have to be. All right?”

She nodded. He tugged her hair lightly. “I expect a yes or no to a question.”

“Yes.”

His gaze intensified. “I do want something from you, Athena. And what I want will likely expand and grow. But I have only one expectation. For you to be exactly who you are. If who you are, who you become, doesn’t have a need for me in your life, then you tell me and our arrangement ends. For my part of things, I’m here because you fascinate me, I like you and I’m attracted to you. The thing you can expect from me, at all times, is honesty.”

He wanted things from her. For a single, insane moment, it made her want to give him everything.

“When in session, you address me as sir or Master,” he added. “Those are your two choices.”

She pressed her lips together under his touch. “What if I want to call you that outside of session?”

“Let’s start with in session,” he said. “Remember what I said about a sub getting overwhelmed by her feelings at first? Containing them to a certain extent helps settle you down, helps you decide if you really want to expand the D/s behavior beyond play and into lifestyle. That balance between fantasy and reality.”

He tapped her cheek, drawing her attention to the color flooding there. “You’re already breaking my first rule, Athena. Nothing you say to me should cause you embarrassment. I’m in control, you’re not. It’s clear you’re going to need some discipline to recognize that.”

When she’d snapped at him and he’d cut his eyes at her, he’d given her every reason to believe there’d be consequences for bad behavior. It had thrilled as much as terrified her.

“I’m not used to that.”

“What? Giving up control?”

“No,” she said. “Having someone to whom I can give it.” Had she ever? When do you relinquish control, Athena? Perhaps the better question was, was she capable of relinquishing control?

She kept her eyes down, unable to meet his gaze after such a personal admission. His fingers grazed her hair.

“All right, then.” He stood up. “You read three pages you weren’t supposed to read and went two minutes over the limit I set for you to masturbate to climax. Did you climax?”

She nodded.

“You’re just adding to the punishment, Athena.”

Her spine snapped up straight. “Yes sir.”

“The climax makes the infraction more severe. While I was reading, you also spoke when I told you to be quiet. You could have told me about your disobedience when I gave you permission to speak. Then there’s breaking my first boundary rule and the rule about addressing me. So, eight for the individual infractions, and four for the climax.”

Had she really been that bad? Summed up like that, it made it seem so. She was never bad. He put his hand under her elbow, brought her to her feet. With a perfunctory motion, he pulled the robe all the way off her body and tossed it on the stool, leaving her completely naked. Just like that, all her physical imperfections exposed. She was in good shape, but there was a difference between showing that off in the right kind of clothes and having nothing to sculpt or mold things into more appealing lines.

Shouldering his bag, he took her elbow again. “Come with me.”

He was all business now, which actually helped her self-consciousness. He remembered the layout of her home, moving with purpose down the wide hallway to the indoor rec room, where there was an array of comfortable furniture, a large flatscreen, music system and pool table. Roy had often played pool while he listened to the news and grumbled about how many idiots there were in the world.

Dropping his bag on the floor, Dale took her to the padded footrest in front of a large cushioned chair. “Put your stomach on the footrest, breasts just over the end, palms flat on the floor. Your knees aren’t going to reach the floor on the back end, so rest your thighs against the cushion and press your toes into the floor. Are you familiar with yoga?”

“Yes sir.”

“Like a down dog, only your stomach will be on the cushion, so your knees will be bent.”

It was still a precarious position, vulnerable, made more so when his tone sharpened. “Legs spread. Anytime I punish you, unless I say otherwise, you spread your legs. Shoulder width. I’ll tell you if I want them wider.”

Now that she was facing the reality, emotions were starting to roil in her stomach. “Dale . . .”

“Shh.” He helped steady her stance, then stroked a hand over her hair. “Have you ever been disciplined, Athena? Punished for being bad?”

“No.” Her voice was nearly a whisper, entirely unlike herself.

He let his knuckles glide down her back. “Then you’re giving me a gift. Sweet as a virgin offering up her innocence. All this gorgeous, baby-soft skin. Count it off for me, and breathe.”

She put her palms onto the Berber carpet, her toes digging into it on the other side of the footrest. In this position, her ass was lifted and, with her legs spread, she was as exposed to him as she could be. No clothes, no robe, nothing. He ran a hand down her back again. Cool air followed his touch on her buttocks, the flesh between her legs.

“Slick and swollen. This excites you, Athena. Your pretty cunt looks ready for whatever your Master wants.”

She’d seen this done, but having it done to her was very different. Her breath started to rasp in her throat when, in her peripheral vision, she saw him put his hand to his belt, unbuckle it and slide it free. He doubled it over. “Count them,” he reminded her.

The first strike was a lick of fire across her hindquarters. The last time she’d had her backside blistered, she’d been a child. Since being well behaved was the result of such prudently administered corporal punishment, it had rarely been required. The burn made her jump, her nerves scream in shock. Her brain demanded that she move away, turn, stop him. Instead, she dug her fingers into the carpet. “One.”

Then came the next, and the next. The pain intensified. When she began to squirm on strike five, he put his hand on her back, pressing her to the cushion, showing how easily he could hold her down. She was panting, tears swimming in her eyes. “It hurts . . . hurts.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet it does. It’s making your ass a beautiful shade of red. Keep counting. Six to go. Was that extra two minutes worth it? The climax?”

Oh God, no. It had been a tiny, pitiful thing next to this. To deliver the last strokes, he banded an arm around her waist to keep her backside in the air and her body in place. She was struggling involuntarily now, but his powerful grip held her fast.

“Nine.” God . . . “Ten!”

The tears had spilled forth, and she was hooked to the carpet like a cat with claws. When the last blow landed, it had all become one fiery burn across her buttocks. He kept that strong arm around her as she sniffled. He steadied her, a warning that he was about to let go and he expected her to hold the position he’d mandated. When he released her, he moved behind her. Putting his hands on her buttocks, he settled his thumbs in the crease between labia and the pocket of her thigh. With no preamble, he dropped to a knee behind her and closed his mouth over her sex.

Her pussy was juicy as a peach slice, and when his tongue thrust inside of her, she came apart. He gripped her hips, holding her in place even though she was wheelbarrowing on the other side of the footrest, bleating and screaming as his relentless sucking and flicking of her clit catapulted her to a hard, fast climax. One far more intense than her infraction and far more desirable, because it was him making it happen.

She scrabbled for purchase on the carpet. He kept suckling her past the aftershocks, when she was jerking from the sensitivity, but he didn’t stop until he was good and ready, even when she was making pleading noises in her throat. It wasn’t until she quieted, accepting the crazy mix of discomfort and pleasure as part of her punishment, that he stopped.

He eased her down so she was draped limply on the footrest. The unease and emotional turmoil she’d felt since he’d arrived had mostly vanished. Was it possible her agitated state had been as much about violent arousal as uncertain feelings? His punishment and the cleverness of his mouth seemed to have cut her concern about the latter tenfold.

He drew her to an upright position on her knees, brought her to her feet. She was unsteady, but it didn’t matter. Shouldering the bag he’d brought from the kitchen, he scooped her up in his arms. “That takes care of your punishment. Now let’s get to your session.”