Phillip reappeared in the bedroom doorway, toweling his hair. Sarah loved to look at him. Strong shoulders that carried her when she was too exhausted to move, tapered down to a firm, flat stomach. Since he used his towel on his hair, she had a great view below his waist. Even though his cock wasn’t active right now, she still loved the sight of it, nestled in its thatch of dark hair. She knew how long it would grow and how the tip could turn a beautiful shade of red-purple when he was close to bursting. She loved the feel of it growing in her hand, the veins rising as she excited him. A wicked little grin raised the sides of her mouth.
“Oh, no, you little minx. Not this morning.” Phillip laughed as he turned away from her, rummaging in his drawers for his clothes. “We have errands to run today. Or did you forget we have a few wedding appointments to keep?”
Sarah glanced in panic at the clock. He was right. They had plenty of time but not if they dawdled for sex. “All right.” She knew disappointment colored her words but grinned to let him know she didn’t really mind. “I need to get into the shower, though.”
Holding her hands up to him, she waited as he retrieved the keys and removed the cuffs from her wrists and ankles. Obediently, she held up her hair while he also removed the heavy collar they used for play.
“Off to shower, then, minx.” Phillip glanced at the clock. “I’ll take you out for breakfast after we meet with the jeweler.”
“Sounds good!” Sarah bounced across the room, pausing for one last glance before she shut the door on the sight of his naked ass just being covered with dark slacks.
Phillip laid out the new clothes he’d bought for her during the week. He loved dressing her. He set the clothes on the bed, then stared at the bathroom door a moment as he thought about what life would be like when they married and she moved here full time. A snippet of song came from the shower and he smiled.
Obviously he couldn’t dress her every day. In some of his fantasies he thought of her as a real, live doll he could dress up and then play with. But in reality, she was an independent working woman with responsibilities of her own. He picked up one of the cuffs and stared at it, weighing his dream world against the truth. While having a woman to do his every bidding, to play with or put on the shelf—or in a cage—as he saw fit, certainly held a great deal of attraction, the responsibility that came with such control boggled his mind. Having any pet meant taking care of that pet’s needs often before his own. He’d had a dog for a few months once but had found a good home for it when the constant need to be walked, fed, petted and bathed just got to be too much.
Of course, he had just been starting up the business then and didn’t have a lot of extra time. Now that he was semi-retired and had made enough money to live on for the rest of his life, he had time on his hands.
But he didn’t want Sarah to become just a pet. Well, he did, if he was being honest. Only a pet that could bathe herself, except when he felt like bathing her. A pet he didn’t need to take for a walk, except when he felt like putting a leash on her. A pet he could do anything he wanted with, except when he was too tired to do anything at all. In other words, a woman who would be his slave-pet combination when he wanted her to be and be a normal wife at all other times.
Selfish
,
that
’
s what you are
, he chided himself.
You want it all
.
Companion
,
sex
-
slave
,
trophy to show off to your friends
.
But Sarah doesn
’
t seem to mind
, another part of his psyche chimed in.
She likes being controlled
.
You saw that with the stupid shoelace this morning
.
She
’
s not going to say no to you
.
To anything you want to do to her or any way you want to treat her
.
He chuckled. Okay, not the last. Although he’d been rough, he’d never been abusive and never would. There was a line there and if he crossed it, Sarah would be out the door in a heartbeat. And he wouldn’t blame her. Pushing limits was fun only until he pushed too far. He was determined not to let that happen.
The song and the water stopped. Phillip scooped up the cuffs and put them in the top drawer where they belonged when they weren’t being used. With a last look at the clothes on the bed, he sauntered out of the room to get things organized for their errand day.
The outfit on the bed took Sarah’s breath away. He had such exquisite taste, she should probably let him choose all her clothes.
Actually, from the waist down, the attire was fairly ordinary for a Saturday of errands. White socks, sneakers and a pair of low-rise jeans with no panties made her feel naughty without giving anything away. But the white demi-cup push-up bra was anything but normal for her. The push-up bra she’d worn for him before had covered her entire breast. This one left very little to the imagination.
The blouse, however, caught her eye. White-on-white embroidery traced a flowing design around the low-cut neckline. The long sleeves belled at the wrists, making her feel like a lady-in-waiting in a fairytale Camelot. She spent a moment preening in front of the long mirror in the bedroom before giving her wet hair a final combing and dancing out to the living room.
Turning a pirouette, she modeled the blouse for Phillip. “Thank you, Sir. This blouse is beautiful!” She flounced the sleeves.
Phillip grinned. “Glad you like it.” He tugged it lower on her shoulders, exposing her cleavage.
Sarah’s eyebrows rose at the amount of skin she was now showing and resisted the urge to pull the material back up. If Phillip wanted her showing her attributes like this, then show them she would. And proudly.
“I do have one more thing to make that outfit complete.” Phillip picked up a small box from the table at the end of the couch. “Something you and I understand but the rest of the world admires in a very different way.”
Sarah knew what was in the box. She’d worn it before. Obediently turning around and holding up her hair, she waited as he pulled out the thin strip of leather that was her “going-out” collar.
“I like this,” he told her as he tied the ends together. “It’s something that reminds you of your slavery but not in an overt way.”
Sarah blushed. “It’s wonderful.” Snug and comfortable, she knew she’d forget all about it after a while and then have its presence come flooding back when she would suddenly remember. The thought caused a minor flood somewhat lower in her body right now, as she was sure Phillip intended.
“I like it very much, Sir. Thank you.” She took his hand as they walked to the door, pausing at the small, gilt-framed mirror that hung beside the front door. With the blouse pulled off her shoulders, the choker made her neck look longer and more slender than it already was. “Definitely like this a lot,” she murmured, her fingers lightly brushing it as if to make sure it was real.
“I’m glad.” Phillip slipped his arms around her, examining her reflection in the mirror. “From now until the wedding, you’ll wear this every time you go out instead of just when we go out together on the weekends. Even when you’re going to work.”
Sarah turned a little so she could look up at him. “And at work, they’ll see it as a fashion statement.”
“And only you will know otherwise.”
She turned back to the mirror and leaned against the broad expanse of his chest, loving the strength and contentment she found there, her mind skipping ahead to Monday when she would walk in wearing a normal suit…and this collar. Her pussy twitched just thinking about it. “Oh, yes,” she sighed. “I am definitely going to love this.”
Sarah giggled as she slid into the passenger’s side of Phillip’s winter rat. He’d put the sexy black Corvette in storage for the snowy months and now he escorted her from place to place in an old, but still stylish, Saturn.
“We’re stopping so often…are we ever going to go?”
Phillip gave her an evil grin. “Tonight. Tonight we will go so far that you might wish we’d stopped earlier.”
She opened her mouth to make a retort but couldn’t think of one. Instead, she just narrowed her eyes and gave him a penetrating look as if trying to see through his plans.
Phillip laughed. “No use, slave. You’re not going to figure it out until we meet up with everyone.”
Sarah shook her head and sat back. “Where are we going now?”
As he drove, Phillip explained that Anberg’s had been making one-of-a-kind jewelry for over forty years and that the shop was located in a neighborhood that had seen better days. Sarah shook her head over the abandoned houses and empty storefronts that lined the streets in this part of the city. “Seems to me the city could do something about luring people back here.”
“Crime is the number one reason people moved away in the first place.”
“Is that why you moved away?”
Phillip shook his head, stopping at a traffic light. “Nah, I just wanted somewhere nice and private so I could bring women back to my place and torture them.”
Sarah snorted. “Some torture. Orgasm after orgasm after orgasm?” She gave a mock sigh. “It’s a tough life but someone has to do it.”
She loved to hear him laugh, his rich baritone rumbling in the car’s small space. As the car moved forward again, she gestured to a burnt-out house sitting in the middle of the next block. “Like that one there. And those…” She pointed to a collection of boarded-up houses, one of which had very little roof left and another with a sagging porch. “See those? They look tired. Have pity on them and tear them down and start all over. Maybe put in two houses where there were three. Redesign the entire block.” She sat back smugly, then shook her head in dismay. “We’re creating donuts out of our cities with everyone moving to the suburbs. People are moving out of the center and leaving great big holes where wonderful downtowns used to be. There’s only a finite amount of land and we’re wasting some of the best living spaces!”
“Okay,” answered Phillip, in his best devil’s advocate voice, “you create neighborhoods of bigger houses and more property, they’re going to cost more, right?”
Sarah conceded the point.
“And if all these neighborhoods in the city go upscale, then where do those who can’t afford the bigger houses go to live?”
Phillip loved the way her brow furrowed when she puzzled out a problem. “People take better care of property they own than property they rent. That’s a given.”
“Why do you think that?”
She shook her head. “Don’t distract me, now. They just do. Probably because they know they’ll just have to pay to repair something that breaks rather than call the landlord to deal with it. But my point is, you’d have to get the houses into the hands of people who care and the way to do that is through ownership rather than renting.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
She grinned. “I know. I’m stalling while I think up a really good answer.” She gazed at the postage stamp-sized yards with spaces between the houses no bigger than a single-car driveway. Finally she sighed. “I have no idea. There has to be a way to have all classes live side by side in peace and harmony.”
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, I’m sounding like a bad Christmas commercial. I don’t have a solution but I know there is one somewhere. Just ‘cause I haven’t stumbled on it yet doesn’t mean I won’t.”
He glanced at her, bemused. He hadn’t seen her so intense about a subject before. Apparently sexual passion wasn’t the only emotion she kept bottled up. Well, he’d begun unchaining her sexual desires… Briefly he wondered if he could help her channel her other energies and interests as well.
Phillip turned the corner and pulled up to a yellow brick building. Two shops stood side by side. The sign above the one on the right was cracked and peeled. Yellowed newspaper taped to the windows showed Sarah the store had been vacant since 1983.
The sidewalk in front of the jeweler on the left was freshly swept and the trim around the windows of his storefront had been freshly painted, though the bars on the windows were a testament to the changing times. Even though the awning over the door had faded in the sunlight, no rips or holes marred the stretched fabric. Phillip opened the door for her and a bell tinkled on the handle.
The narrow store stretched back only about twenty feet. To the left, a glass-topped counter ran the length of the store, the dark wooden case well-polished. Sarah peeked through the glass and her breath caught at the beauty of the silver pieces that gleamed up at her. Bracelets, necklaces, rings…all were displayed on artfully draped lengths of black velvet. Each piece was distinctive, yet a similar style pulled them all together. The artist was magnificent.
At the sound of the bell that signaled their entrance, a door quickly opened at the rear of the store and an elderly gentleman entered the shop. With his white hair and slow step, one might be tricked into thinking this was a feeble old man, but when his bright blue eyes lit up upon seeing them, Sarah saw an indomitable spirit that would not be cowed by the slow death of the surrounding neighborhood.
“Phillip, my dear boy! How good it is to see you.” He held out his hand to shake Phillip’s over the counter. Sarah had the distinct impression that they would have hugged if the glass display case hadn’t been between them.
“Hello, Uncle Irv. You’re looking great.”