Warm fog swirled around the woman in the shower.
The forceful spray set the nerve-endings in her skin
tingling; the hot water coursing down her nude flesh
induced a feeling of hedonistic abandonment. Groping
for the control, she turned off the barrage of droplets,
and lathered her upper body with fragrant soap. Sudsy
rivulets coursed down smooth white skin, mimicking caressing
finger-strokes tracing sinuous curves. Beguiled into
dwelling on their slow, sensuous descent, Gabrielle
cupped a firm breast in one hand, and soaped the soft
skin beneath it. Her thumb inadvertently brushed the
nipple, sending tantalizing impulses racing down hypersensitive
nerves. A foam-finger insinuated itself between her
thighs, riveting her attention on the most intimate
part of herself.
Yielding to an irresistible urge, the bather slid
a palm between legs that without conscious volition,
she spread wide apart. Little gusts of breath hissed
between delicately bowed lips that parted to accommodate
their expulsion. Employing her right hand as her left
still cupped a breast and teased the nipple, she massaged
the clit swelling now with need, even as the image of
the man due to arrive shortly took surreally clear form
in her mind. Hot, sticky essence erupted into the cunt
into which three fingers avidly dipped before continuing
their vigorous manipulation of the now lavishly lubricated
organ of pleasure.
The masturbator’s sphincters loosened. She gained a
sense of opening, of spreading, of yielding, of abdicating
the last vestige of control over the body she imagined
to be fucked by the man she desperately wished would
care for her other than as a friend. Shivers, heat flooding
into quivering loins, waves of blissful tremors coursing
upwards from the rigid shaft protruding from the folds
of tender flesh which normally hooded it: that magical
combination of exquisite sensations led almost instantly
to climax. The paroxysm of internal contractions the
woman experienced as the epicenter from which wave after
shuddering wave of pleasure expanded relentlessly outwards.
Gratified by her success, she stood motionless for
a time, savoring the rush that ebbed all too soon, leaving
frustration at the aridity of her sexual life in its
wake. Sighing, she reached for the control, and set
the forceful spray scouring the last traces of foam
from her skin.
I owe Michael a major debt, Gabrielle reminded herself
as she dressed. I don’t know how I’d have coped last
week, but for his smooth handling of the funeral arrangements,
and his help with the tangled financial mess arising
from Richard’s dying right in the middle of the court
proceedings. Suing Richard for divorce took a dreadful
toll on my emotional balance, despite our living apart
this past six months—and then to have him die so suddenly,
in so ghastly a fashion! That drunk driver must have
been doing ninety when he ran that stop sign. Michael
assured me that Richard died instantly, but still...
Pain blended with an onslaught of guilt that the surviving
spouse knew to be irrational. Richard wasn’t even driving,
she reminded herself. Random happenstance, that triple
fatality. Evil luck. The hot desire we initially felt
for each other died long before the wreck: years ago.
Why he balked at letting me go, I’ll never figure out.
Does Michael know, I wonder? They were close associates
in a business sense...but were they good enough friends
that Richard might have confided in Michael? No. I doubt
that he ever unbent that far with any friend, however
close.
Clad now in a stylish black pantsuit which breathed
respectability without offering the least suggestion
of dowdiness, her perfectly coiffed short hair falling
in soft waves around a face devoid of makeup except
for a dusting of powder and a light application of rosy
lipstick, Gabrielle surveyed her image in the bedroom
mirror, and sighed again. No one would take you for
other than the scholar you are, she chided herself.
You look like the eminently respectable author of three
critically acclaimed commentaries on medieval history.
You project absolutely no blatant sexiness—none of the
exotic allure of the women Michael escorted to the annual
shareholders’ dinners, after Richard’s company undertook
to manufacture those unique electronic components Michael
invented. A different woman each time, each more striking
than the last.
Enigma, John Michael Rakoczy. Courtly, assured, urbane...but
unfathomable. Why did he do me so inestimable a favor
this past two weeks? Richard called him a recluse—couldn’t
believe he’d appear at those company dinners. But Michael
not only came, he lent a magical aura to the table we
four shared, and made me feel when we danced as if my
glass-shod feet trod on air, and my coach totally lacked
the power to turn back into a pumpkin.
A musical chime sent the hostess conscious that her
heart fibrillated, hurrying to the entry of her quaintly
rustic townhouse. Throwing open the door, she smiled
warmly on the commanding figure standing on the threshold,
noting in a split-second appraisal the casual elegance
of the suit she unerringly judged to be costly, the
impeccably correct tie, the stylish shirt, the imported
shoes buffed to perfection. “Come in, Michael. Why,
thank you! Does this need to be refrigerated?”
“It’s at its best cool, not chilled. If you care to
sample it, I’ll open the bottle, Gabrielle. It’s more
pleasant before dinner, than after.”
“By all means, open it. Dinner’s in the Crock-Pot;
we can eat any time. I didn’t dare make a stab at choosing
wine for a connoisseur—figured on playing it safe by
whipping up a batch of whiskey sours.” Waving a hand
towards the small, well-stocked bar, Gabrielle let the
cosmopolite she knew to possess a most discerning taste
in wines serve his offering.
“Ahh! You do that with such ease!” she commended him.
“Comes with practice.”
The setting out of goblets, the popping of the cork
from the cobweb-streaked bottle deftly wrapped in a
towel, the careful pouring of the sparkling wine, seemed
to the hostess exquisitely aware of her guest’s raw
masculine appeal, a ritual fraught with sensual significance.
His voice, melodious, cultured, set up sympathetic vibrations
in some obscure receptor in her brain, causing her to
see him through superclear air. She experienced a heightened
awareness of the carnal urges still tormenting her,
despite her self-achieved respite. Seating herself in
a plush chair, she took the long-stemmed glass he proffered,
smiling with friendly warmth as he settled with fluid
grace onto the couch.
Raising his glass, Michael proposed a toast. “To your
future happiness, Gabrielle.”
Moved by the wish that came across as wholly sincere,
the widowed intellectual raised her own goblet, even
as her face betrayed doubt that the wish would be granted. “I thank you,” she responded softly. “Without your help
this past two weeks, I’d never have gotten through the
trauma.”
“You’d have coped, but I took pleasure in relieving
you of the need. Tantalizing bouquet, mm?”
“I’m no judge of wines, Michael, but if you served
this to a connoisseur whose palate equaled yours, he’d
genuflect before imbibing it, would he not?”
An appreciative laugh greeted that observation. An
unconstrained silence fell as hostess and guest sipped
slowly, savoring the costly vintage. During the silent
interval, Gabrielle filed her benefactor’s image in
a mind trained to observe and interpret minute details.
Lean hawk-features of no especial comeliness seemed
ageless to her.
Michael could be any age between forty and sixty, she
judged ruminatively. His face exhibits strong character
beneath that whimsical smile lacking the least hint
either of arrogance or condescension. He wears his hair
rather long, but beautifully styled. Brown hair...and
tawny brown eyes curiously flecked with yellow. Those
compelling eyes strike me as his most intriguing feature.
An arresting face, expressive, changeful, but one he
controls perfectly. Why did he go out of his way to
help a widow who’d proved herself implacably determined
to divorce a husband whose friendship Michael obviously
valued?
Gratitude prompted a smile that the shrewd beholder
correctly perceived as purely friendly—free of any subtle
overtone conveying sexual invitation. Musingly, the
guest studied the woman seated opposite, as if to etch
her beguiling image into his mental files. Dark hair
devoid of a single strand of gray framed a piquant face
characterized by an appealing vibrancy. Small, inoffensive
crinkles at the corners of liquid dark eyes—creases
most prominent when their owner laughed—accentuated
the uniform smoothness of high forehead, rose-tinted
cheeks, patrician nose, and dimpled chin. Dark brows
arched over those wide-set eyes shaded by long lashes,
in striking contrast to the creaminess of skin assiduously
shielded from the sun. Knowing Gabrielle to be forty-nine,
the connoisseur of more than wine admiringly acknowledged
that she looked no older than thirty-five.
Over the spicy dish of beef and vegetables served with
crusty homemade bread and a tasty salad, the hostess
chatted animatedly and wittily, as did the guest whose
business ventures resulted in his possessing intimate
knowledge of a score of foreign countries. At the conclusion
of the leisured meal, Michael smoothly insisted on tidying
the kitchen while the hostess loaded the dishwasher.
When his companion preceded him into the living room,
he caught up to her. Slipping his arms around her from
behind, he held her for a few seconds pressed against
his lean torso, calculatedly assessing her response.
When he turned her to face him, she congealed against
his chest, her guileless, upturned countenance nakedly
betraying hot need.
No trace of his fierce satisfaction did Michael let
show. Lifting her, he carried her to the couch, settling
her so that she sat in his lap with her head resting
on his shoulder. “You sorely needed what Richard failed
abysmally to give you, this past ten years, eh, little
staunch-heart?” he murmured in her ear, smiling knowingly
as she melted against him.
Succumbing to shock, Gabrielle stiffened. “I can’t
discuss...how did you...” Her normally assured voice
broke off abruptly, as the painful flush suffusing her
face deepened.
“He confided in me, one night, nine years ago, after
downing four shots of brandy on an empty stomach. The
liquor melted his habitual reserve—led him to reveal
that he suffered from periodic bouts of impotence,”
came the equable reply. “I urged him to consult a competent
medical specialist, and kept what he told me strictly
to myself. When your frustration finally drove you to
sue for divorce, you refused to use that wholly legitimate
leverage in court. Instead, you employed the far more
vague charge of irreconcilable differences, out of concern
for his feelings. You likewise refrained from demanding
the exorbitant share of his wealth that any other wife
divorcing a successful corporate founder would consider
her due.
“I admire your integrity, Gabrielle. Rest assured that
Richard’s secret’s as safe in my keeping as it is in
yours.” His mellifluous voice an aural caress, Michael
murmured cajolingly, “You’ve built up a backlog of excruciating
need, mm? Longed for a partner who knows better than
you do yourself, what will arouse you...what will lift
you to heights of rapture unparalleled in your experience?”
“Yes.” That bald admission came couched in a tremulous
whisper. Longing so intense as to equate with physical
pain rose out of depths in the widowed historian’s psyche
that she scarcely knew existed.
Accurately gauging the potency of that yearning, Michael
launched a campaign to engineer an outcome long envisioned,
but impossible to achieve until now. Not troubling to
hide his amusement, he laughed softly, cocking his head
as he spoke. “You’ll need to shed a burden of crippling
inhibitions, little innocent—violate some deeply ingrained
notions of propriety. I warn you, I possess tastes guaranteed
to shock you.”
Liquid doe-eyes widened, but no hint of wariness surfaced;
no fear flitted across the face in which nascent hope
dawned. “Perhaps they will. I’m dreadfully ignorant,”
came the spirited rebuttal. “I need to be shocked, Michael!”
A hearty laugh, not in the least derisive, greeted
that vehement admission. “So you do. Stand up, and face
me.”
Rising, Gabrielle obeyed, conscious of a loosening
in her loins paralleling that achieved earlier while
bathing. Color flooded her cheeks; delicately bowed
lips again parted.
“Strip to the buff,” her guest ordered in a lazy drawl,
seeming to the woman unhesitatingly obeying his directive
to be the epitome of debonair nonchalance.
The speed with which she complied provoked inward mirth
in the worldly sensualist well aware that her cultural
programming rendered her incapable of making on her
own initiative a brazen sexual overture even to a man
she passionately desired. When she stood naked, he commanded, “Clasp your hands behind your head, and make a full
turn.”
Flushing scarlet, Gabrielle complied, the tangible
impact of the glance tracing her every curve sending
galvanic impulses down nerves strung to their limit.
Feeling like a slave exhibited for sale to some languidly
critical Oriental potentate, she grew aware of the wetness
gushing into her cunt. Shivers raced across her abdomen;
her nipples hardened into a semblance of pink rocks.
Amber-flecked cat’s-eyes minutely examining a fine-boned,
delicately contoured feminine body observed with satisfaction
the absence of any excess fat, or any offensive flab.
Muscles kept firm by frequent exercise flowed easily
beneath unblemished skin. The rounded breasts and curvaceous
hips the intent observer saw to be no whiter than the
vividly expressive face, the shapely arms, the long-fingered
hands sporting no tan whatsoever. The ample breasts
lacked the uplift that undoubtedly characterized them
in Gabrielle’s youth, but the sight of that soft white
flesh set the beholder’s loins stirring. He noted that
she shaved her legs and armpits, but obviously never
dreamed that a lover might prefer that she dispense
with a thatch of crisply curling pussy-hair. “Come here,”
he ordered. “Lie on your back, with your ass-cheeks
in my lap.”
Nothing in her prior experience of callow lovers taken
at infrequent intervals during her university days,
or of the husband who gained her lasting affection but
failed nine times out of ten to lift her to orgasm,
prepared Gabrielle for the impact to her sensibilities
delivered by this near-stranger who cast so powerfully
erotic a spell. Disposing her body as he desired, she
obeyed his peremptory directive to spread her legs.
Lying along the couch, her arms thrown back over her
head, her legs thrust wide apart, so that one hung down
over the front of the seat, she quivered visibly. Hot
shivers rippled through her abdominal area. Her clit,
engorged, protruding from its folds, formed the focal
point of the raw lust befogging her mind: a primal craving
which the scholar found herself graphically comparing
to that experienced by a bitch-dog in heat. The emission
produced by that compelling carnal urge dribbled onto
her outthrust thighs as she consciously willed the man
minutely scrutinizing her most private parts to thrust
his cock into her. Her breath coming now in explosive
little bursts, she all but begged aloud that he take
her to bed.
“Vulnerable, you are, in your need, eh, little hedonist?”
he inquired lazily, his amusement patent to the woman
longing for the touch of his forefinger on her stiff
clit. “Well...so am I, in mine. You want a lover who’ll
drive his prick up your hot, wet cunt, and lift you
to ecstasy for a night, or perhaps only for the span
of an hour, after which he’ll obligingly leave. You
envision a gallant admirer who’ll court you exactly
as did your late husband, fourteen years ago: take you
to dinner, to the theater, to concerts, or whatever,
and perhaps, at some future point, beg you to marry
him. You’ve no notion whatsoever that any other course
lies open to either of us. But what I want falls in
that latter category. Shall I outline what I want—what
I’ll demand, if you don’t rise up in wrath at this pivotal
juncture, and order me out of your house?”
Frozen into paralysis by that wholly unexpected challenge,
Gabrielle went taut as she digested it. Suppressing
an instinctive impulse to leap up in acute disarray
and clutch at the clothing scattered about the rug,
she succumbed to the magnetic, mocking smile wreathing
the face of the man whose monumental self-assurance
amazed her. “Tell me,” she breathed, as the tension
abruptly drained from the body draped over the lap of
the guest whose elegant attire exhibited no rumpling
whatsoever.
“I want a slave, Gabrielle. A submissive, obedient
slave who offers herself unreservedly to a demanding
master who’ll use her lovely body exactly as he wishes.
A pliant, yielding slave not only willing, but eager
to undergo the rigorous training he’ll conduct, so as
to mold her into a partner perfect for him. A passionate,
uninhibited slave who gives herself with total abandon
when he deigns to prove himself a master of erotic art.”
Shock so great that it impaired Gabrielle’s ability
to reason momentarily deprived her of speech. Her ability
to employ logic shattered, she reacted on a basis of
raw emotion originating in her nonverbal, intuitive
right brain. A startling sense that she wanted to submit
to this man so utterly unlike any she had ever known—a
bemused realization that the word “slave” resonated
uncannily on some subliminal level with an elemental,
inchoate, intense yearning—took firm hold in her diminished
consciousness.
Stifling an urge to rear up and confront the impudent
autocrat making that outrageous proposal, she instead
relinquished all control of the body that melted over
Michael’s lap like a flow of honey spilled on a slope.
“You didn’t exaggerate when you said I’d find your tastes
shocking,” she rasped hoarsely. “But I want what I suspect
you’ll give me...eventually. I need it...far more than
I realized, all these years. I offer myself as your...slave.”
Fiercely exultant at having gained what he half expected
would elude him, the guest raked the nude body arched
across his thighs, with eyes gone dark with passion.
No other evidence of the emotion gripping him showed
on the mobile face so perfectly obedient to his will. “Mm. Easy to say—even to think, little adventuress.
But before I’ll consider initiating you into a mode
of living totally foreign to your experience, you’ll
pass a test designed to assess the strength of the resolution
you just made. So.”
Smiling into eyes that for the first time betrayed
fear, Michael slipped a hand into the pocket of his
suit-coat. Gabrielle stared apprehensively at the small
item he held up for her perusal: a wafer-thin golden
disc, which he pressed against her pussy-hair. The slightly
convex object adhered to her mound as if it had grown
there. Even as she involuntarily tensed, her self-styled
master slipped two thin, flat, golden rings over her
nipples. The metal clung to her aureoles, held by some
mysterious attractive force.
Placing a fingertip on each pink nubbin, Michael vibrated
the ultrasensitive flesh, causing the nipples to stiffen,
and protrude from the rings.
That sensuous touch electrified the woman whose lust
surged back with primitive force. “Ohhh...that feels
so good,” she breathed. Newly generated fear swiftly
subsided.
The nipples remained tautly erect after the massage
ceased. A hand laid itself flat on the firm flesh of
the novice’s abdomen. “This device—one I invented—clings
by electrostatic force: attraction generated by an electrical
charge opposite to that occurring on your skin,” her
guest informed her, his melodious voice detached, almost
clinical in tone. “When I activate the shield, it’ll
excite local nerve-endings in your skin, sending electronic
impulses coursing down your nerves. That stimulation
your mind will interpret as pain. The contact causes
no injury, no scarring, no harm whatsoever, however
intense the sensation. Because the nerves thus excited
most often transmit pleasurable impulses, they’ll strive
to function normally. You’ll grow conscious of a most
intriguing erotic overtone blending with the pain that
you’ll welcome purely because I derive pleasure from
inflicting it.
“If you flinch, or stiffen, or writhe, or utter the
slightest sound, you’ll fail this initial test of your
willingness to please. If that happens, I’ll tuck you
into your bed, and take my departure, Gabrielle—cease
intruding myself into the even tenor of days as free
now of stress as of sexual satisfaction. So. Go pliant,
little probationer. That’s right. Stay relaxed.”
Fear, not of impending pain, but of failing to please
this self-proclaimed sadist, and thereby forfeiting
any hope of enlarging her meager experience of sensual
pleasure, contended in Gabrielle’s clouded awareness
with shock generated by his revelation. Fear rose uppermost,
as a formerly stern sense of propriety ceased to operate.
One clear concept held prominence in a mind gone chaotic:
a frantic determination to avoid at any cost, failing
this crucial test.
A long forefinger touched a rough spot on the gleaming
metal shield. Pain exploded into the cognizance of the
candidate braced for its onset: an agonizing stimulus
unlike any in her prior experience. Waves of intense
sensation radiated outward from the quivering pussy
to which the shield adhered, from the tormented nipples,
from the softly mounded flesh of breasts shot through
with pain. Somehow, the sufferer avoided any convulsive
tensing of her gut as she bit back the moan fighting
for utterance.
“Ahhh...hurts, hm? Relax, little braveheart. Investigate
the pain. Explore it; savor it; enjoy it. Think of the
pain as the opposite side of a single sensation: the
dark half without which the pleasure I’ll give you would
seem incomplete. Submit, little neophyte. Offer yourself
with abandon.”
The incisive commands sliced through the fog of emotion
afflicting the woman striving gamely neither to stiffen,
nor to writhe. “Significant, but bearable, the pain,
eh?” The richly musical voice exerted irresistibly hypnotic
force. “You project a most appealing innocence, Gabrielle—a
most astonishing ingenuousness, for so capable a businesswoman,
and so competent a scholar. You’re a natural submissive:
a slave only now assuming the role for which nature
designed her. That’s right. Let the pain loosen you,
open you, set your juices flowing. Strive to please
me, little wood sprite.”
Even as those diabolically persuasive injunctions fell
on ears hypersensitive now to the mesmeric power of
the man issuing them, the hearer’s sphincters went utterly
slack. Flaps of tender flesh swelled and parted as her
cunt opened to the worldly sensualist inflicting what
amounted to agony. Her clit throbbed, more from need
than from the pain suffusing it. Wetness ran down the
thighs spread wide.
Controlling his hard erection with an ease born of
rigorous self-training, Michael fingered the stiff little
shaft, bestowing the touch the sensually deprived widow
had so desperately longed for earlier. Idly, unhurriedly,
he traced the circumference of the tip, noting the rapt
expression overspreading the face that until now had
mirrored only the distress caused by the electronic
stimulus.
Gabrielle found it harder to stifle moans of pleasure
than groans induced by agony. Skilled fingers marched
on wet flesh, manipulating the clit the guest deftly
moistened with its owner’s essence. Expertly, Michael
caressed the swollen pussy-lips, and massaged the cunt
gulping like a beached fish. While continuing that delectable
teasing with his left hand, he thrust three fingers
of the other into the orifice dribbling wetness, and
moved them provocatively, thereby conferring pleasure
that blended seamlessly with the pain still radiating
through breasts and loins.
The invading fingers unerringly targeting an exquisitely
sensitive site all but wrung a cry from the woman savaging
her lip with her teeth so as to obey the command that
she utter no sound. The rhythmic, steady thrusts providing
heady pleasure changed abruptly to penetrations far
swifter, and more forceful. Heat suffused Gabrielle’s
inner thighs, flooding the love-tunnel so deliciously
stimulated by the novel combination of stimuli. Her
ass-cheeks grew hot; her thighs burned.
The fingers quickened their tempo. The heel of Michael’s
hand pressed against the golden disc, causing shuddering
waves of pain to ripple outward from the intensely stimulated
mound. Working the heel of the hand against the non-shifting
shield, he caused the flesh beneath the pussy-hair to
rock back and forth, and then rotate even as two lavishly
lubricated fingers rubbed along the sides of the engorged
clit.
As her mind narrowed its focus to dwell exclusively
on those indescribably erotic dual sensations, Gabrielle
without conscious volition arched her back, and lifted
her ass. Within the circlets of metal, the nipples thrusting
upwards grew rock-hard. The intense pleasure-pain totally
absorbing her, set her pulse pounding. When she came,
the contractions convulsing the cunt awash in a flood
of juice stretched on and on. When the white heat of
culmination ebbed, its passing left her barely cognizant
of her surroundings.
A long finger again touched the shield, causing the
pain gripping loins and breasts to die away as if it
had never existed.
Only dimly aware of the strong arms lifting her slack,
spent body, Gabrielle yielded to their pressure. Her
head lolled on her guest’s shoulder. Smiling knowingly
to himself, he held her close.
When at length she stirred, he raised her to a sitting
position. “You passed the test I set you, little stalwart—the
first of many,” he assured her, the welcome implication
prompting her to heave a sigh of pure relief. “Listen,
now. I’ll tuck you into bed, shortly—leave you to weigh
with exceeding care the proposal I’m about to make you.
I want a slave who holds nothing back, if and when I
accept her as such. In the harsh light of morning, you
may well shrink from the bare idea of undergoing an
initiation which I warn you, will probe the upper limits
of your tolerance for pain, and put to a severe test
that unstudied submissiveness which so enchants me.”
Still enveloped in the afterglow of an orgasm more
fulfilling than any ever achieved with Richard, Gabrielle
shivered as she digested that blunt warning, but her
relief lost none of its force. “I doubt that,” she demurred.
“Will you come back for me tomorrow?”
“If you wake, bathe, dress, and eat a hearty breakfast
without faltering in your resolve to offer yourself
as my slave, you’ll drive to the park at the end of
this street. Bring nothing but a small purse in which
you’ll put your automobile registration, and any medications
you take daily. On the stroke of eight, you’ll pull
up alongside the fountain, where you’ll see me sitting
on the bench. When I reach the driver’s side of your
Buick, you’ll signify that you consent to let me spirit
you off to a private retreat, by handing me the keys,
and sliding over to the passenger side. If at the last
minute you flinch from relinquishing every iota of the
firm control you habitually maintain over your life,
we’ll part friends, Gabrielle, but we’ll part—cease
seeing each other.”
That somber warning served only to stiffen the sensually
deprived widow’s determination. “I won’t back out,” she assured him stoutly, intuitively refraining from
asking how long her initiation would last.
Michael’s next words set her wondering whether he possessed
the power to read her mind. “From the moment when I
utilize the keys, until the time when I end the short
but indefinite span of your initiation, you’ll not know
from one minute to the next how this open-ended experiment
geared to altering your perception of your role as a
sexual partner will proceed, or how it will end. I give
you only two firm guarantees. First: you’ll incur no
significant injury—take no permanent harm—however intense
the pain I inflict. Second, you’ll run no risk whatsoever
of contracting any sexually transmitted disease.”
Slipping a hand into his inside breast pocket, the
guest withdrew a sheaf of folded papers. “Tomorrow morning,
you’ll read these results of my recent, comprehensive
physical examination so as to set your mind at ease
on that score. You’d have let me impregnate you tonight
without using any form of protection, mm? Without stopping
to reflect that I’ve undoubtedly fucked scores of women
since you’ve known me?” Mockery tinged the voice chiding
the widow flayed by her consciousness of the justice
of Michael’s reproof, and scalded by shame at the intensity
of the animal lust shown nakedly to this sadist who
exhibited such admirable control over his own passion.
“I own to being culpably reckless,” she admitted, flushing
hotly. “Michael...I can’t offer you similar reassurance.
I’ll need to make an appointment...”
Tipping up her chin so that she perforce met his eyes,
the advocate of safe sex correctly interpreted the bitter
pain mirrored in hers. “You never indulged in any adulterous
liaison, did you?” he asked, knowing the answer.
“No! Not ever! But...”
“Nor did Richard,” Michael asserted as if certain,
as indeed he was. “Fourteen years of monogamy I consider
an adequate safeguard. So. Bed for you, Gabrielle.”
With that, he rose, and bore the woman torn between
hope and fear, up the stair, and into the bedroom. Having
deposited her slack, nude body in the welcoming depths
of her double bed, he kissed her lightly on the forehead,
murmuring, “I’ll let myself out, little voluptuary.” A few minutes later, the hostess bemused by a sexual
encounter as fulfilling as it was extraordinary, heard
the door close behind her departing guest.
Out of a welter of conflicting emotions, one rose to
prominence: sheer, overmastering joy. Floating in a
luminous bubble of euphoria, Gabrielle savored the knowledge
that Michael desired her, until other considerations
intruded, to dampen her spirits.
Grown hyperconscious of the touch of cool percale sheets
on her bare, satiated body, she reviewed the unsettling
proposal tossed into her lap by the benefactor who alleviated
one thorny difficulty only to generate another. The
lethargy induced by carnal release fled. Scenes from
her life with Richard flashed by as if fast-forwarded,
on the screen of her inner vision. Nights when she obeyed
his urging to tell him what she wanted in bed, only
to find that his efforts to please her generated such
anxiety in him that he failed to come himself. Nights
when she coaxed him into confiding what he wanted, and
then strove to give it to him, with the result that
he ejaculated before she grew sufficiently aroused to
achieve orgasm. Nights when he experienced one of his
recurring bouts of impotence. Nights when his fear of
impotence proved a self-fulfilling prophecy. Rare nights
when he and she lay clasped in each other’s arms, simply
enjoying the closeness, and unexpectedly grew aroused
enough to achieve mutual satisfaction.
Sexual intercourse with Richard, the widow reflected
bleakly, always included an element of nervous dread—of
failing to please, of enduring frustration, of hurting
sensitive feelings, of being hurt that way.
I’m utterly fed up with battling frustration! the surviving
spouse railed as her discontent with her present life
rose to smite her. Tired to the bone of struggling to
please a dysfunctional partner—weary of the emotional
strain of making crucial, painful decisions! But do
I truly want to become the slave of a fascinating but
cruel master? Why does that radical notion hold such
insidiously beguiling appeal?
I don’t know, but it does. The very sound of his voice
makes me melt. The pain he inflicted tonight intensified
the marvelous pleasure the mere touch of his fingers
conferred. I want Michael’s cock in me! I want his mouth
on mine, his tongue on my clit, his hands on my breasts!
I want to be his slave—want him to control every aspect
of my life! Why does that idea make me cream? Why? Am
I temporarily deranged—unbalanced by the shock of Richard’s
dying so horribly?
No. Admit the truth, woman. You dribbled hot jizz every
damned time you danced with Michael. He’s haunted your
dreams for years. You’re incapable of cheating on a
husband—of sneaking a one-night stand behind the back
of a man you knew would never cheat on you. Soiled,
you’d have felt. That’s why you finally pursued the
only honorable course, despite your knowing how grievously
your rejecting Richard would hurt him. But now you’re
free. Richard’s passed beyond suffering, and Michael
wants you.
For how long?
The fear that lanced through the widowed intellectual
slowly succumbing to emotional and physical exhaustion
colored the unsettling dreams she failed to remember
on waking. |
