A Natural Born Submissive (13 page)

"You're a Level Two member now?"  Alice asked, astonished.

"Not yet.  But one of the perks of being a celebrity is that doors open for you."

"So you are comfortable with the BDSM lifestyle?"

"Still deciding for now; at this point I'm just dabbling.  And so are you."

"I have something else to tell you," Alice confessed.

"What?  Tell Mama Katt," she urged Alice.

"Ray came and got me last night.  He was the only one who answered his phone when I was trying to call someone, anyone.  I was crying too hard to drive.  He took me back home and we—we did it.  Then in the morning he made me breakfast.  He's doing good, Katt, keeping the house up, becoming more domestic.  It was really nice.  He wants us to get together for the holidays, all of us together in our house—for the girls sake."

Katt shook her head.  "So you are considering reuniting with your ex, whom you know cheats, and throwing over your boyfriend whom you aren't sure about?  Open your eyes, Alice—it's a ruse to get you back."

"But it would be nice for the girls to have a family Christmas back in their own home," Alice pointed out.

Katt looked appalled.  "You haven't told the girls about this idea, have you?"

Alice shook her head no.

"The cruelest thing you could do is give those kids false hope.  The hardest thing in a divorce is having parents who waver back and forth.  I speak from bitter experience; my folks split up when I was thirteen.  The kids will end up emotionally withdrawing from both of you for their own self preservation."

"I hadn't thought about that," Alice said.

"Alice, have you thought about therapy?  It's always nice to have someone to talk to who is paid to listen and will give sensible advice."  Alice looked uncertain at this, so Katt rummaged around in her purse and produced a business card.

"Her name is Violet Peterson.  She's wise and wonderful and very experienced.  Tell her Katt says 'hi'."

Alice smiled at her friend as she rose.

"And call Victor!  The man is absolutely frantic," she said as she turned to leave.

Alice walked her to the door and called to her as she headed down the staircase.  "Thanks Katt, thanks for everything."

Katt lifted her arm and waved without looking back.

Chapter Ten

It was evening by the time Alice was ready to answer one of Victor's many calls.  She steeled herself as she answered.

"Yes?" she asked, curtly.

"Alice?  This is Victor."  It was only four words, and yet she could hear the loving concern in his voice.

"Hello," she said.

"Are you all right?  I left you several messages," he chided.

"My phone has been dead.  I just recharged it."

"I was told that you came to the club last night, but you left before I saw you.  Were you unable to locate me?" Victor asked, sounding hurt.

"Oh, I found you all right.  I came up behind you as you were doing the scene with that young woman tied to the spanking bench." Alice replied, cringing as she realized how bitchy she sounded.

"If you had only waited a few minutes, Alice, I would have been free to spend some time with you, which I would have enjoyed very much."

Alice couldn't believe it.  He wasn't even trying to deny it.  "Victor, I don't know if I can do this.  I … you … were doing things to that girl, intimate things.  I couldn't bear to stay and watch.  It was too upsetting to me," she finished, trying not to cry.

"Alice, we need to talk." Victor answered calmly.  "Would you come over, please?"

"I don't know, Victor.  I need time to think." Somehow she managed to keep her voice from breaking.

"All I am asking for is half an hour of your time," Victor begged.  "Please give me that before you go off to think."

She sighed, looking at the clock.  It was still early.  She supposed she could at least go hear what he had to say.

"Are you at home?" she asked.

"Yes.  Please come now.  I'll be waiting."  He spoke softly into the phone and then the line went dead.

Alice sat on her bed for a moment, holding her phone.  Reluctantly she rose, going into the bathroom to freshen up.  She reapplied her eye makeup and donned a fuzzy pink sweater and her tight black jeans.  She looked at herself in the mirror as she ran a brush through her hair.  Within the next five to ten years, she would go through menopause.  Would she still have men competing for her attention?  She was really at a crossroad in her life.  Go left and return to her husband; go right and become more deeply involved with Victor, or stay on the straight and narrow and focus on her career and forget about men entirely.

She ran downstairs.  Her Mom usually played Bingo on Sunday nights, and sure enough there was a bingo note on the fridge.  She locked the house and got in the car.  As she drove, she thought about Ray.  The last time they were together, he'd said all the right things.  But was his holiday plan part of a plot to win her back, as Katt suspected?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  By her mother's standards, Ray was a good man—as good as any other.  Should she hold on to what she apparently still had, give it another try, put up with his frailties and foibles?  He was the father of her children, and this gave him a huge advantage.  She envisioned the two of them still together as the grandchildren came along, all of them gathering together for huge holiday celebrations.

Would he cheat on her again though?  Once a cheater, always a cheater, the saying goes.  Why had his cheating come as such a shock to her?  She knew why.  They had once been in a restaurant for date night and spotted a man they knew from the school district dining with someone other than his wife.  Ray had been appalled, saying, "I would never do that."  He fancied himself to be a religious man; she'd believed in his basic goodness.

All the times he'd gone hunting or fishing or camping for the weekend with "the guys", she'd never once questioned it or checked up on him.  God knows where he'd really been or what he'd been up to.  Suddenly she recalled running into one of his friends' wives and saying something to her about the camping trip the men had just returned from—a two-week trip to Yellowstone.  The wife had given her the oddest look and then looked relieved when they'd been interrupted.  God, she was so stupid!  Clearly his cheating was known within their social circle.  Apparently, he hadn't even been discreet.  She had been so wounded; could she ever love again?  Alice liked to think she could, but the next time she'd keep her eyes wide open and know that anyone could cheat given the right set of circumstances.

She shook her head as if trying to shake off her depression over her failed marriage as she turned into the driveway of The Beaten Path.  The mansion looked so dark and forbidding on Sunday nights.  She saw a light in a window as she circled around to Victor's residence.  She turned the lights off and glided into a parking space, not wanting to alert him just yet that she'd arrived.  She sat in the car for a few minutes, thinking.  The man waiting inside for her was a very sexy, attractive man who could probably talk her into just about anything.  Maybe she should leave and give herself more time to get over her marriage before jumping into another relationship.  What was she thinking?

Suddenly she jumped as someone tapped on her window.  Sheepishly she rolled down the window and looked up at Victor.  Her heart leapt.  He looked so beautiful standing there in the moonlight, and then they both began to laugh, remembering the first night she'd come to the club and he'd found her sitting out in her car in the parking lot.

"Why were you outside, lurking in the darkness?" she asked teasingly, unnerved that he'd snuck up on her.

"I walk the grounds periodically after dark to check the perimeter—for security purposes," he patiently explained.  "We need to talk about transition time, little one," he teased, taking her by the hand and helping her out of the car.

"What is transition time?" she asked.

"The amount of time it takes someone to get from point A to point B."

"Like from the car into the house?"

"Exactly!" he said, pulling her to him and kissing her deeply.  Alice yielded at first, but then pushed him away.  He pulled away and looked deeply into her eyes.  "Oh, we definitely need to talk."  He took her by the hand, and together they walked to the house.

Once inside, Victor gave her a glass of wine.  She watched him moving about the kitchen.  He was a man who was aging beautifully, his face looking craggy but also strong and angular.  Finally, he was sitting across from her, fixing those stunning eyes on hers.

"Something is obviously wrong," he said.  "I need to know what it is."

Alice decided to get straight to the point.  "I really need to know what I saw in the club last night," she said.  "I should not have stopped by without warning, and maybe I deserved what I got for doing so."

Victor sat quietly, letting her talk, watching her carefully.

"I came up behind you," Alice continued.  "You had a young woman I've never seen before strapped to a spanking bench.  She was naked and you were striking her.  Then you were comforting her.  Then you seemed to claim her.  I couldn't see clearly but I saw her move forward, and she screamed.  That's when I ran for my car."

"Listen to me Alice, and think carefully.  Did you see me strike her?"

Alice thought for a moment.  She'd been staring at his cape, his curls.  The girl had fresh marks on her butt, and she was crying.  "N—no; I came up just as you'd finished.  You threw down the cane."

"Alice, the girl you saw last night is named Lorelei.  In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that she is a sub that I have occasionally dallied with in the past; however, last night she had a new Dom, and I feared he had taken her a little too far during that particular scene.  I took his cane from him and threw it down.  I then leaned against her to ascertain her level of distress.  When I realized that she was becoming hysterical, I then touched her as a means of calming her.  There was no sexual contact between us, unless you count rubbing her flanks in a soothing manner as sexual contact.  Her Dom was standing to my right, and he is the one who inserted his fingers inside of her, leading to the cry of release that you heard."

She looked at Victor, and his sincerity touched her.  It reminded her of the night he'd been concerned about Sierra's welfare under Katt's paddle.  "So you were helping her, not doing a scene with her?"

"That is correct.  I frequently step in when a scene is getting out of hand.  Only the dungeon masters and I are allowed to do so.  In the course of doing that, it may be necessary for me to have contact with the sub in question, including providing aftercare.  Do you know what aftercare is, Alice?"

"Is that when you hold me after we've been together and comfort me and make me tell you what I'm feeling?"

"Exactly, my dear.  It is a form of debriefing a sub and an important source of connection and comfort after such an intense physical experience.  And not only subs can require aftercare, but Doms as well.  Can you explain to me why that might be?"

Alice thought about it.  "Perhaps if a Dom had to take a sub further than the Dom was normally comfortable with because the sub required it?"

"That is exactly right, Alice, and very insightful," Victor said.  "Scenes take their tolls on both of the participants.  A new Dom may not have the skills to provide much aftercare at first, and that is also something I may step in and do if required for educational purposes.  But a result of that is that some of the subs or at times even the Doms may become quite attached to me after we have bonded in that manner.

Alice thought about this.  She wasn't sure she could ever be comfortable with that—Victor bonding with a Dom or sub he had to provide aftercare for.

She pushed away from the table and began to rise.  "Victor, look—you don't owe me an explanation.  I'm a big girl; I know that you do this, have done such things for a very long time.  I have no right to come into your life and start demanding that you change how you do things.  I—I just have to come to terms with whether I can deal with all of this or not."

"On the contrary, my dear, you have every right.  You are my new sub, and this relationship needs to be respected and nurtured, like any other.  Most of the regulars in the club are aware of your status.  Soon it will be apparent to all.  We will discuss at length what you are comfortable with and what displeases you, and I will strive to be respectful of that."

Alice sighed.  "Victor, I need to explain to you why I'm so sensitive about infidelity.  I've only been divorced for a year.  My husband was cheating.  When I found out about it, I left him.  It came as quite a shock.  Apparently it wasn't the first time.  I was completely clueless.  It was very painful."

"Is this man the father of your twins?"

"Yes, I married at nineteen, and we separated when the twins were sixteen; the divorce was finalized two years later."

"So you have been dealing with the end of your marriage for three years, rather than one year," Victor pointed out.

"Well, yes, that's true," Alice admitted.  "I hadn't thought about it like that."

"And how much more of your life are you going to give to this man, my dear?"

Tears sprang to Alice's eyes.  She hadn't thought about it like that, either.  The more she wavered and held herself back, the more time she was investing in that dead relationship.  Alice smiled through her tears at Victor.

"None!" she proclaimed, feeling like an immense weight had lifted off her shoulders.  Victor pulled his chair in closer to her and leaned forward.  His eyes softened from blue to blue-grey, as if he was remembering something painful. 

"Like all things, the loss of a partner for any reason takes a great deal of time to process, Alice.  I well understand that.  When my wife got sick and died, I was inconsolable for almost six years.  Even now, the scent of her perfume, a smile or hairstyle that brings her to mind can plunge me back into despair."

Now Alice found herself comforting Victor.  "I am so sorry you had to go through that.  Thank you for telling me about her.  I suspect you don't speak of her often."