Authors: Tara Crescent
Lisa:
Scrounging up some food had to be one of the understatements of the year. There was cheese, bread and fruit, pita and hummus as well as a bowl of olives that made me flash back to the memory of me sending him a dirty martini. I helped myself to food at Patrick’s wave, grabbed a glass of wine from him and took a seat at the kitchen table.
I looked at him. I was still basking in the aftermath of the sex, but my lust was at bay for the moment; and what flooded back was the memory of his effortless dominance during our play.
Even as we were having sex, a few moments ago, I would have sworn I was going to find out more about his familiarity with dominance. But now, as we sat and ate our cheese and drank our wine, I found myself surprisingly reluctant to broach the topic.
I didn’t want to open a Pandora’s Box. As much as his dominance was obvious in our naughty-doctor session, so was my submission. Any conversation we would have would eventually shift from him to me. And then, it would circle to Nick. How I rushed back from my shitty retail job every day, and took off my clothes, got naked, and knelt, with my knees spread open, waiting for Nick. Because that’s what I’d been told to do. We would talk about how I’d obeyed Nick without question. How I’d never tried to assert myself.
I didn’t want to have that conversation; relive my feelings of failure. It was best to just keep it all buried.
***
I looked around his kitchen. It was tired, and dated-looking, and oddly personality-free. His living room had been the same way. The designer in me winced a little as I surveyed it. I tried to keep a neutral expression as I took it in, but I didn’t think I succeeded when I heard him laugh.
“Yup, it’s a mess,” Patrick’s voice was relaxed. He’d been watching my gaze sweep over the room. “My ex-wife and I bought the place with the intention of fixing it up, but neither of us had much time to do anything with it.”
He’d been married before. I filed that bit of information away in my mind.
“It is a bit dated, I agree…” I was trying to be diplomatic.
He smiled at me; winked. Sexiest smile in the world, without a shadow of a doubt. We’d just had sex, and when he grinned at me, I wanted him to take me all over again. “What would you do to the place, Madam Designer?”
I dragged my mind out of the gutter, and back to the conversation. I looked around the room. “Better lighting, larger windows, more personality, all for a start,” I said. “But I’d remove the back wall here and replace it with patio doors, so you can walk out to the back yard. Is there a porch upstairs?”
“No,” Patrick said.
“I’d add one,” I said, with enthusiasm. “You are west-facing here; it’d be a great way to wind down in the evenings, with the sunlight streaming in…”
“Okay, give me a proposal and a quote…” he said.
I sat up, a little shocked. “I wasn’t pitching you,” I protested.
He laughed. “I know you weren’t,” he said. “Nonetheless, make me a proposal. I like your ideas, and I’ve neglected the place long enough.”
I looked at him. “I don’t really like mixing business with pleasure…” I said, warily.
“Lisa.” His voice was impatient now. “If you aren’t interested, say so.”
I was tempted. I could really transform the place, and it would look great on my portfolio. Plus, I’d see a lot of Patrick. But then again, perhaps that was a bad idea. After all, there was no indication that this was anything more than a couple of nights together, and it was best to separate work from pleasure.
“I’ll do up some preliminary sketches,” I said, “and let’s take it from there. Why don’t you swing by my office sometime next week, and we’ll talk some more?”
He nodded. “Sounds good. Now…” his voice changed, dropped into a caress. “Come here, kitten…” He held an olive in his fingers, his eyes were on my lips.
I couldn’t resist; I wanted him next to me. He fed me olives and slices of cheese from his fingers. I should have felt offended, but instead, I felt cherished; enveloped in his warmth. We didn’t talk much, just a sentence here and there; it wasn’t so much that we were lost in our own thoughts; it just felt companionable. I was mortified when I yawned in the middle of something he was telling me, but he laughed indulgently.
“Long afternoon, baby. Come to bed with me?”
I nodded. It was early, but the enema, the speculums, the gags and the sex had all contributed to me feeling utterly wiped out. We went up to his bedroom; he found me a new toothbrush; and after the hastiest of cleanings, I fell asleep, this time in his arms.
***
Patrick:
It had been a long time since a woman asked me for permission to orgasm.
I had gone still, for one imperceptible second when she had begged for permission, and I’d struggled to hold back the emotions. The pleasure of being asked, the sweet sense of control, but also the fear of what came next.
I stripped out the fear from my voice when I replied. We were in the throes of passion, and my fear did not belong there.
Novices that play submission games like to be tied up and spanked. Perhaps blindfolded. Sometimes, a bit more; one of those whips they sell at Victoria’s Secret; the fun-and-games special.
Asking for permission to orgasm when tied down is definitely from the advanced class. Someone taught her this; someone trained her to hold her pleasure back; someone showed her that she came when her dominant willed it, not before. A lesson that had been ingrained so thoroughly in her that I’m sure that she wasn’t even aware she’d asked me for permission to come.
“She isn’t Andrea,” I told myself firmly. My ex-wife would have never sent a guy a drink in a bar; she would have never told me she wanted me to play dirty doctor with her; she would have never laughed and told me to not masturbate.
Lisa was different; my instincts screamed that at me. So full of laughter, so vibrantly alive.
I could ask her. She would be honest. I didn’t want to ask her. I wanted to get to know her instead, slowly, in all the old-fashioned ways. I wanted her to bury her face in my chest as we watched a horror movie; I wanted our fingers to graze while we both reached for the popcorn. I wanted picnics in the park, and shared meals and pints at our favourite pubs; I wanted to hold her in my arms as she slept, and make coffee for her in the morning. I wanted to be the guy that made sure her car tires had air; that her wiper blades were changed for winter. I wanted more than sex.
But her submission struck fear in my heart, and I knew, if I wanted to avoid a repeat of the mess that was Andrea and me, I would need to ask. Sooner versus later.
***
Lisa:
I woke up to an empty bed and the smell of coffee. I grabbed a shirt of Patrick’s that was on the floor and shrugged it on; followed the smell of the coffee downstairs; my eyes barely open. I wasn’t a morning person; I needed a couple of cups of coffee to wake me up and get me going.
“Hey,” I said, as I walked into the kitchen. It was weird how comfortable I was with Patrick.
He smiled at me when he saw me; the warmth radiating from his eyes. “I think that just became my new favourite shirt…” he said. “Coffee?”
I nodded. That warmth in his eyes was seductive; it made me feel like there was nothing else in the world that mattered, and that I was cherished by him. “Whoa there, Lisa,” I mumbled to myself inwardly. I was starting to care way too much way too fast.
He walked over with a cup of coffee, the perfect amount of milk and sugar added; set it on the counter next to me, and pulled me in to his body. I rested there in his arms for a few seconds; leaning my head against his chest; letting the heat from his body warm me up. His hands were stroking my hair, and I purred in pleasure.
“Coffee,” he said hoarsely; pulling away from me, but not before he kissed me briefly; possessively on my lips.
“Coffee…” I agreed, but I could hear the protest and need in my voice.
He smiled at me, recognising the need; I could see a similar need in his eyes. We couldn’t seem to keep our hands off each other; I was tempted to step into his arms again, let my hands roam all over his body, run them over his ass and draw his hips into me; rub my hands over his erection till he growled and threw me down on the dated, tired, kitchen island, and took me hard…
“Coffee…” I mumbled again, my cheeks flaming. Gods, I couldn’t seem to keep my mind on anything other than sex in his presence. I was acting like a horny teenager.
We sat down, drinking our coffee quietly. I was wishing I didn’t have to leave right away, but I did; the evenings I’d spent last week whipping my condo into shape were evenings I should have been working, and I had a backlog of paperwork and invoicing to deal with.
“So the medical fantasy…” he started, interrupting my thoughts.
I flushed beet-red, but forced myself to look into his eyes. “
Mmm,” I said.
“Was it good for you?” he asked.
I was genuinely surprised. “It wasn’t obvious how much fun I was having?” I asked, a question to answer his question.
“People get carried away in the moment sometimes,” he shrugged. There was something in his eyes when he said that; something unreadable, but a definite emotion. “Sometimes, it’s easier to discuss these things in the cool, clear light of day.”
“It was amazing,” I said honestly. “It was everything I wanted it to be, and more.” Then my lips twitched. “Definitely a Top 5 moment.”
“Top 5,” he repeated, outrage in his voice, but his lips quirked. My insides clenched unexpectedly with need. He was so sexy, as he sat there, trying not to laugh; the moment was so relaxed, yet so intimate, and I loved that I could laugh with him; joke with him about the sex and not worry about him getting annoyed.
“Wednesday night, 6pm” he said. His tone had changed; heat now filled his voice, as if he was responding to my need. “Follow-up exam. And baby, this time, I’m definitely shooting for a Top 3 spot.”
Patrick:
She had to leave; she had a ton of work to do. I nodded, called her a cab. I was a little distracted, because I was going to try something; push a little.
There was no getting away from it; I wasn’t an asshole, but I liked control. As much as I was trying to deny it, I loved when she submitted to me; it had warmed my heart when she’d asked for permission to orgasm, and I’d been filled with impossible need when she had let me tie her down and take her any way I wanted.
For a long time, since Andrea, I’d tried ignoring that. But Lisa’s willing submission had helped me see that I did crave that control.
This time though, I had more experience; more understanding of the ways things could go wrong. This time, I could handle the fire without getting burned. I was sure of it. I had to be. I was about to try something very, very risky. Something that straddled the edge of the game; something that connected us when we weren’t together.
My phone rang; the cab was outside. She grabbed her handbag; we both got up and headed outside. Now or never. I looked at her, brushed my thumb on her lower lip. “No masturbating when you get home, no masturbating till Wednesday,” I said, my eyes intent on hers.
“Yes, sir,” she said softly, in a voice I hadn’t heard before; a voice that was soft and compliant.
I smiled at her, but my heart was racing inside.
“Good girl,” I said, reaching forward to open the cab door for her.
***
Lisa:
Before Nick O’Malley, there was the scarred teenager with the bruising acne; held together only by my mother’s kindness and gentle understanding.
After Nick, Mandy and Monica had been my rocks; they had painstakingly put the shattered bits of me back together into something that resembled a functioning human being.
For months after, the only way I could survive was by building a shell over me. That shell had slowly taken on life, little by little, as the months went by, and eventually, I could function again; could even think of boys and sex without pain. But never love. That door was shut to me.
I couldn’t help but think that I was just a series of
Matryoshka dolls. Open up the capable business owner, and there was the girl who had rejected submission and love in favour of survival and self-respect. Open her up, and there was the barely healed welts of Nick O’Malley’s control. And underneath it all, the teenager scarred by acne and cruel, hurtful sneers.
When Patrick told me not to masturbate, my agreement had come from a place deep inside me. For many years, I had forced myself to forget the path to that place; I had pretended that the path didn’t exist anymore, that it had been overgrown with the thorns of my self-loathing. But then he had given me an order, and it turned out that the path was always there, and that it was as clear as it had always been.
In a way that I couldn’t understand, I had revealed that path to Patrick when he told me not to masturbate, and I had agreed. He could walk through my psyche if he desired; open each doll to reveal what lay underneath, till all that was left was the weak and frightened child I really was.
By submitting to his desire for control, I had laid myself bare before him. Naked. Trembling. Fearful. Oddly hopeful.
A line came to me that seemed fitting, from an old W.B. Yeats poem.
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.