Interview with a Master (17 page)

“
Denella was watching me with huge, dazed eyes. Her fingers were glistening wet with her own juices and the lips of her sex were flared wide and open. She was tugging and pinching at her nipples with her right hand, and crying out softly in frustration. Her expression was ravenous.

“I felt myself beginning to thrill. My cock became impossibly hard. I felt the urge to explode become almost
irresistible, and at the very last moment, I stopped thrusting and held myself still, deep inside Sherry. I felt a sudden pulse – a white-hot surge – and Sherry’s pussy seemed to clamp tight around me as though trying to draw me deeper inside her. I screwed my eyes tightly shut and the room became suddenly quiet – like the calm before the storm. I was sweating. Beads of perspiration clung in my hair and trickled down my temple. I dug my fingers into the milky white flesh of Sherry’s shoulders and she made a throaty sensuous sound. She was trembling. Her breathing was short and shallow little gasps. Denella had thrown one leg over the armrest of my chair so I could see the wet pink opening of her, glistening with the slick juice of her excitement.

“
I waited for the moment to pass –maybe ten seconds – and then I thrust back into Sherry. The force of my lunge took her by surprise. Her legs buckled. I felt the strength go from her knees so that she lay like a rag doll, and I covered her body with mine so that my weight pressed her against the tabletop.

“
Denella threw her head back suddenly and her mouth fell open. She was panting. Her fingers between her legs were a blur. Her whole body seemed drawn and tense. I could see the strain in her neck and the soft swell of her throat as she gulped and gasped.

“I forced myself faster and harder into Sherry’s prone body. She was limp beneath me, totally passive and pliant. I clawed my way back to the brink of orgasm quickly and I clenched my jaw and hissed at the girls to come.

“Then it didn’t matter. Then nothing mattered. My whole body seemed to catch fire and I felt the force of my orgasm erupt.”

A couple of birds dropped down out of the trees and perched themselves on the edge of the park bench, like maybe they expected Leticia to feed them. I glanced away.
It looked like the young couple sitting on the blanket were squabbling. The guy sat upright and gave a brusque shake of his head. The woman started cramming food back into the basket.

“Did Sherry and
Denella… did they climax?” Leticia asked.

I turned back. “Sherry did, but not
Denella. I asked her if she wanted help, but she seemed perfectly satisfied to be left frustrated – if that makes sense.

“I told the girls to dress and
then sent them home.”

Leticia tucked her notebook into her bag, and then asked me as an afterthought, “Did
Denella join you and Sherry again after that first time? Did she become another submissive for you?”

“No,” I said. “I never saw
Denella again. In fact I was only at the newspaper for another couple of months, before I was forced to hand the day-to-day running of the business onto a manager.”

“Oh? Why?” She started to reach for her notebook again.

“That was the time when I found out my father was ill,” I explained. “I had to fly back home and become more involved with the overall business. We didn’t know how much longer he would live.”

“So you left Sherry behind?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ever think about her?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you ever wish you had stayed in contact, or maybe brought her back here with you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

That was a good question. I had asked myself the same thing a thousand times in the ensuing years.

“Because part of what made the time with Sherry special was the unspoken understanding between us that it would never be anything more than sex,” I said. “There was never any talk of a relationship, and certainly never any talk about her becoming a full-time submissive to me. We just enjoyed the times we had
together, and the roles we fell into. There was never a plan, and never a desire to commit – from me, or from her. It was what it was,” I said simply, “and that’s all it ever could have been.”

* * *

We walked slowly back to Leticia’s apartment and stood outside on the sidewalk in the afternoon sun. Traffic had thinned, but still the sounds of the city were a constant buzzing drone in the background. Leticia started towards the sliding glass doors, and then realized I wasn’t beside her. She turned back to me and frowned.

“You aren’t coming upstairs?”

I shook my head, staring at her with my hands thrust deep into the pockets of my jeans. “I want you to come to my place tonight,” I said. “Eight o’clock.”

Leticia arched her eyebrow and raised her chin in a little gesture of defiance. “And what if I have plans? It’s Saturday night.”

“Break them,” I said, and my expression was serious. “There are some things I want to show you.”

* * *

Trigg was waiting for me when I walked through the door. She stood in the foyer, her expression dark and brooding. Her eyes were slanted and narrowed into bright little blades, snapping with suppressed anger. I brushed past her. Her mouth was drawn into a grim line and words seemed to boil on her lips.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Trigg’s voice was low and quivering.

I stopped in mid-stride. “It’s not your concern,” I said. “Let it be.”

She followed me, light on her feet as a dancer, the sound of her heels on the tiles echoing against the high ceiling. She was dressed in black pants and a pink silk blouse. I could see
a flush of angry color rise from beneath the shimmering fabric to her throat, and sense her bitterness.

Trigg caught her breath with a frustrated little hiss. “It’s wrong, Jonah. You can’t lead
that young woman on like this.”

I turned on her then, my voice crackled like breaking ice. “Don’t tell me what to do,” I warned. “It is none of your business,” I said. “None.”

Trigg took a startled step back. I stared into her eyes, a direct trail of strength. She dropped her gaze, and I went on while the anger still simmered and fizzed in my blood.

“Leticia is coming here tonight. She will arrive at eight o’clock. You will not be here. I don’t care where you go for the evening, and I don’t care what you do. But you will not be here. Do I make myself clear?”

Trigg nodded, suddenly uncertain. I left her standing alone, staring down at the floor, and stalked off towards the stairs.

* * *

The afternoon passed quickly. I sat at the big desk in my office and tried to concentrate. There was business to attend to. Muffled sounds from downstairs distracted me, and I went to the office door and found myself listening to Trigg’s voice, talking on the telephone as she strode back and forth across the tiled floor.

I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but I didn’t need to. The tone in her voice was bitter and frustrated.

At six o’clock Mrs. Hortez brought a silver tray and left it on a small side-table just inside the door. We made polite, awkward conversation for a few seconds and then she left for the evening.

I
returned my attention to the paperwork littered across the desk, but still I could not concentrate. I pushed the chair back and began to pace the floor, stopping once to listen to the crunch of tires and the steady burble of a car engine in the driveway. I went to the window and saw Trigg’s convertible pulling out through the gates, the headlights bobbing and dipping as the vehicle merged into traffic and raced away into the darkening night.

I was alone.
The house was eerie and silent.

Alone
…

I began to pace
once more, and suddenly it occurred to me that I was lonely. The realization was so shocking and disturbing that it stopped me in my tracks.

Being alone was something that I had always been comfortable with. I liked answering to no one. I enjoyed the freedom that came from remaining removed from emotional attachment. I had lived my life as my own man.

My world. My way.

It was the Jonah Noble
battle-cry. But now, as I prowled back and forth across the floor, it struck me suddenly that I wasn’t merely alone.

I was lonely.

Things: property and possessions surrounded me – and that had included the many women who had passed through my life; they had all been property to own, or possessions to entertain and arouse.

I went to the desk and swept all the paperwork into a drawer. I poured whisky into a glass and dropped into the big chair. The leather creaked and groaned around me.

I sat staring moodily at the darkened walls and wondered whether I had been playing the game of life to win, or merely not to get hurt from losing.

* * *

Leticia arrived a few minutes before eight o’clock. I had changed my t-shirt for a dress shirt, and my hair was still wet from a shower.

I pulled the front door open and she stood on the step wearing a short black skirt, heels and a soft grey blouse that buttoned down the front and was cut low enough
to reveal a hint of tight cleavage. She smiled up at me, and I was enveloped in a soft subtle cloud of her perfume.

“You’re right on time
,” I said.

She came through the door and stood in the foyer. I noticed she had changed handbags.

“Did you bring your notebook?”

She nodded.
She looked around, as though she expected furniture to have been moved, or the house re-decorated. “It’s very quiet,” Leticia said. “Are we alone?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s just you and me.”

There was a moment of heavy silence, as though those words were significant. Leticia turned so that we were standing close to each other.

“You intrigued me today,” she said
softly. “The way you spoke in front of the apartment. It was all very mysterious.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t mean it to be,” I said. “It’s just that there are things you need to be shown so you can write the full story. Up until now I have told you about a couple of women from my distant past that
helped shape my attitude towards the BDSM lifestyle. I figured now it was time to talk about my more recent past – and in order to do that, I need to show you a room.”

“A room?”

I nodded. “The one next to my bedroom upstairs.”

Leticia seemed to shiver. Her eye
s were wide and unblinking. “Lead the way,” she said breathlessly.

* * *

I unlocked the door and pushed it open. Leticia stepped across the threshold, and the disappointment on her face and in her body language was almost comical. She turned back and looked a puzzled question at me.

“This is the room you wanted to show me?”

“Yes.”

It was a normal room, with an adjoining internal door that connected it to my own bedroom and a window set into the far wall. The room was sparsely furnished; there was an antique chest of drawers on one side, and an old dressing table next to it, with a large oval mirror. On the back wall  – on either side of the window –
were a couple of waist-high wooden shelves, and in the middle of the carpeted floor was a table and a chair.

The light in the ceiling was shaded, and there was a dimmer switch on the doorframe. I turned the dial to make the room a little brighter.

“This is it?” Leticia asked again.

“Yes,” I said simply.

She let the strap of her handbag slip from her shoulder and walked towards the table. She set the handbag down on the floor beside the chair and walked a slow circuit of the room, the sound of her footsteps the only noise in the house.

She went to the window and drew the drapes apart. There was a view that stretched back into the distant hills, but all she saw was darkness. She let the drapes fall back into place and turned.

“What makes this room so special?”

“It’s where I punish, discipline and train my
submissives.”

Leticia almost chuckled. “You’re joking – right?”

I didn’t move. “Look at my face, Leticia. Do I look like I’m joking?”

I was deadly serious.

Leticia frowned. “I’m sorry, Jonah, but I… well I expected something totally different. I mean, you’re
Jonah Noble
, for heaven’s sake. Shouldn’t you have some dark gloomy dungeon in the basement, with whips and chains? Shouldn’t there be wicked looking torture devices and lots of leather harnesses – things like that? This room… well it looks so
ordinary!”