Master Me (23 page)

“Elizabeth, I hope you understand now how much you mean to me. I want you to be the last thing I see before I fall asleep, and the first when I wake. I want to give you the space to fly free, knowing you will always come back to me afterwards. I want you to be my slave, my toy, my pet. But most of all I want you to be the love of my life.”

All she could reply was, “Yes, master. Oh, yes.”

A single tear of gratitude trickled down her cheek, and Neil wiped it away, holding her and grounding her in herself once more.

“So what happens now?” she asked, once she had fully regained control of her emotions.

“Now?” Neil smiled. “Now we have an interview to conduct, I believe.” He reached for the phone. “But not on an empty stomach. I’m going to order in pizza. Margarita with fresh green chillies and anchovies for both of us.”

It sounded like an odd combination, but Liz was sure it was a taste she would come to appreciate. She still had so much to learn about the amazing man who was now dropping a couple of words of Italian into the conversation with whoever was on the other end of the phone. Every day would bring fresh revelations, new challenges and endless ways to find an excuse to be punished. A wicked grin spread across her face as she wondered whether surreptitiously picking the anchovies off her pizza would be a good place to start.

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Elizabeth Coldwell is the author of numerous short stories and two full-length novels, ‘Calendar Girl’ and ‘Playing The Field’. Her stories have appeared in the best-selling ‘Best Women’s Erotica’ series and Black Lace’s popular ‘Wicked Words’ collections. Formerly the editor of the UK edition of Forum magazine, she also contributed a spicy monthly column, ‘The Cougar Chronicles’, to its pages. When she is not busy writing, she is an avid supporter of Rotherham United Football Club and can be regularly found on the terraces at weekends, cheering her boys to victory (hopefully!).

Email: [email protected].

Elizabeth loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at www.total-e-bound.com.

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The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

YouTube: Goggle Inc.

Fight Club: Chuck Palahniuk

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The email looked like nothing at all, really. No fancy fonts, no exclamation points—red or otherwise—nothing with any urgency in the subject line. Just the words,
‘for your attention
,’ without a capital letter amongst them.

Followed by a few abrupt sentences about nothing in particular. Molly Hunt had read a thousand like it before, and never batted an eye.

But she batted an eye for this one. Oh, she batted an eye, all right. Mainly because of the last line, which at first glance, didn’t seem like anything at all.

I would be deliciously pleased if you could rectify this issue.

Until she looked back, and found that, yes, this person really had, in fact, included the word “deliciously,” right in front of “pleased.” And whoever it was had used the word “pleased,” too, instead of something far more innocuous, like grateful. As though the email sender derived the greatest possible satisfaction from the idea of her filing her forms in the exact precise place.

Because that’s what the rest of the email had been about. Filing. This person had noticed that she’d filed something in the red box, instead of the green box, and he’d be
deliciously pleased
if she managed to rectify said filing mishap, as soon as possible.

Then he’d signed it not with a name she could search out, or a company ID she could unearth, but his initials…E.U. Like the conglomeration of European countries, only smaller, and hopefully a person. Even his email address looked to be an outside one, and said little more than those two letters—[email protected].

He could have been anybody—maybe it wasn’t even a
he
she was dealing with. Maybe it was Louisa in accounting who had a fetish for the word deliciously and hated bad filing. Maybe it was all just a mistake, some overzealous punching at the keyboard and somehow the word deliciously just fumbled its way in there, elbowing past more sane word choices to sit proudly amidst an otherwise normal email.

She’d had similar brain farts herself, though usually they involved typing the word
butt
when she’d meant
but
, as in that notorious email to the head of marketing. The one that had somehow ended up suggesting he use his
ass
instead of premium stock white card.

These things happened. So she wasn’t sure, exactly, why she was still thinking about it hours later. The word grew huge and curling behind her eyes, like something enchanted out of a genie’s bottle. It danced, and wriggled its hips, and said disturbing things like,
if you reply, use a similarly incongruous word. Make it really out there like, “I’m so glad you caught my sexy error. I’d be only too happy to stroke it to correction.”

She wasn’t even sure what
stroke it to correction
meant, but God it sounded wrong and possibly filthy. Had he meant it in a filthy way? Probably not. Maybe he’d just intended it to sound sweet and about food. Perhaps he’d seen her eating a sandwich, and wanted to reassure her that it was okay to spill most of it down her front.

She liked him already. He deserved an email in reply, even if doing so made her heart beat a little faster and her mind say,
yeah, he meant it in the filthy way. He meant it like “your bum is delicious.” He meant it like, “I just want to take a big bite out of each cheek.” Reply and he’ll get the wrong idea, and start saying even ruder things to you
.

But her mind didn’t know what it was talking about, because first of all, no one in the office even remotely looked at her that way—she was invisible, and knew it. And second of all, some pretty mysterious parts of her woke up, apparently, at the words “bite” and “cheek” and “ruder things.”

The cobwebs all over her libido didn’t mind the idea of ruder things. Not at all.

Though none of that was the reason for her responding email, oh no, no, no. No, she just wanted to be polite, and show that she was a good filer, a careful employee—the sort of employee that always did things right. He deserved to know that, because he was obviously the type of men who appreciated someone who did things by the book, and that was rare in this day and age.

So she typed…

Dear E.U.,

I promise, in future, to always do what I’m supposed to.

Sincerely,

Molly Hunt

Which had almost no rude connotations. She was sure it didn’t. If anything, on reflection, it sounded a little sarcastic or snide, as though she thought he was being petty and wanted to stick it to him. The idea made her panic, slightly, and want to write another email to say she hadn’t meant the first—it had come out all wrong, and she’d actually found his initial message really polite and diligent in a way the men in the office usually weren’t, and how it was nice to hear from someone so…delicious.

Or not delicious, exactly. Some other word that didn’t sound as if she got turned on by filing.

She wasn’t surprised to find that she then fretted about the whole thing, all day. Fretting was her usual state, and said state continued all through lunch and the meeting about sales targets, right up until five-thirty, by which time he still hadn’t replied. Of course he hadn’t! He probably enjoyed her fretting, which was why he’d used the odd word in the first place.

Or at least she kind of thought so, until an email appeared—just as she was putting on her coat. Only by that point, all the thinking about it and wondering made that little bolded subject line too big. Too big, and possibly angry looking. The whole thing had swelled to something too important in her mind, and opening it while sweaty-palmed and vaguely excited would only give credence to the hold it had over her.

So she clicked casually. Not really interested in the contents. Why, she couldn’t have cared less—the buttons on her coat were far more intriguing.

Until she read the damned thing, naturally.

Dear Molly,

Stop worrying. I’m not mad. I could never be mad at you. You know, I think you worry a little too much. I expect you to stop, immediately.

Sincerely,

E.U.

She attempted not to answer immediately. She attempted to, but failed, miserably.

Dear E.U.,

And if I don’t?

Molly

This time he emailed back almost straight away, any pretence at patience gone. She wondered again if he’d dangled that word, that single little word—
deliciously
—as some sort of bait. Just waiting for her to catch it and respond in a very particular sort of way. She wasn’t sure if this was anything like the sort of way he’d imagined, but his next reply seemed to suggest it got close.

There wasn’t even a, “dear Molly.” It just plunged right into the subtext that had probably been there all along.

I don’t know. “I’ll punish you,” sounds so cliched.

She found her breath stopped, and didn’t know why. It wasn’t as though he was
promising
to punish her, or even that she’d like something so patently ridiculous. When had she ever gotten excited over the idea of a man punishing her?

Never. And she especially refused to when the man was anonymous, and clearly spying on her. He couldn’t have found out about her fretting any other way, after all. Obviously, he had to be watching her over the top of his cubicle, or lurking by the vending machines in order to catch her wiping her sweaty palms on her skirt.

She mentally ticked off the potential men who could have seen her, during the day—that idiot from human resources, or the assistant manager, Gregson. Bullish and frankly gorgeous Walsh, from sales—it couldn’t possibly be him. Benjamin somebody who did something in IT and finally—her boss. Her boss, Mr. Davidson, who was almost as bullish as Walsh, and who seemed to absolutely love giving out orders.

Because that was probably the criteria, wasn’t it? This guy obviously enjoyed…telling people what to do. Maybe he even thought she was really into that, and found the idea of “punishing” her very exciting.

Well. She had news for him.

I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.

A shame, really, that it came out sounding like the words of an eighteenth-century schoolmarm. Plus he just came back with something even worse, as though he wanted her to know exactly how eighteenth century and schoolmarm-ish she looked, saying stuff like that.

I mean—stop thinking about me spanking you, for worrying too much.

She thought two things, then. One was—
but I’ve never thought about anything like that
, while her body went hot and cold all over, at the same time. The other was—
I bet he’s just as nervous as me, typing words like those
.

And somehow it was the latter, that really pushed her over the edge from “weird hot and cold feeling” to actually, possibly, really aroused. She pictured him biting the edge of one nail, tapping his free hand on the keyboard, waiting. Waiting for her to reply with something angry or mean, threatening sexual harassment suits or similar—anything but what she found herself replying.

You wouldn’t.

Then she was the one biting the edge of her nail, tapping her keyboard and waiting.

Are you really so sure? Maybe you should test me, and find out

This guy was unbelievable! It had to be Walsh, from sales, even if he was far too handsome to be making suggestive comments to her. She could just see that shark’s grin of his in her mind’s eye, and those big hands, itching to get at her…well, her ass. Not to mention those broad shoulders of his—God. He’d swing one hell of a hard smack. And if he said things like that while he did it—just that hint of wryness behind the words, she felt—she couldn’t imagine feeling anything other than arousal.

It was arousing. Why deny it? She’d never thought about being spanked, before, or having someone boss her around, but there was something about the flavour of his cheeky little messages, just trying their luck…and so out of the blue, too.

Who did things like that? No one. Crazy people. Crazy people who chose other, much more attractive and fascinating women to do said things with. People never chose her to do this sort of stuff—not even her actual boyfriends.

All right. Tell me something to do, and let’s see if I do it

It seemed like an crazy thing to say. She realised after typing and sending it, that she’d given him carte blanche to respond with absolutely anything. Maybe he was a maniac, and would ask her to do something so gross, so vile and horrendous, she’d pass out just on seeing the words. Then he’d come and find her unconscious body, and put his penis in her ear hole.

She wasn’t sure why it was her ear hole. But who knew, really, what maniacs were into these days?

Like knickers, for example. Or more to the point, a
lack
of knickers.

Tomorrow, come to work without any underwear on. You can wear trousers if you like, but I think a better effect would be achieved if you wore a skirt.

There could be no denying it. He almost definitely
was
a maniac.

If he honestly thought she was going to do something like that, he was crazy. There was just no way. She wasn’t that sort of girl, and even if she had been, all of her skirts were just too damned flippy. The slightest breeze sent them skywards, and what then? The entire world would get to see her bottom, or her front bottom, or the fact that she’d awkwardly waxed the hair down there so it looked kind of like a question mark.