Three Sides of the Coin (Catherine I) (9 page)

             
He hesitated before answering.  "I know.  But maybe he needs cruel.  A lot of Catholic boys like him feel a lot more sexual release from being 'forced,'”  he said with air quotes. "You might even get off on that as well, if you can get past the societal constraints."

             
They both sat there for a bit.  The pizza was delivered and they dug in.  "I can't do it all at once," she said with a thoughtful sigh.   "I'll have to do it a little at a time.   Any ideas how I do that?"

             
"Are you asking a gay guy how a woman can turn her submissive husband on?"

             
"I suppose this is beyond your job description."

             
"Not at all, as a matter of fact.  You don't have to be a cow to know what milk is.  If I were you, I would go slow.  What do you wear to bed now?"

             
She blushed before she answered.  "Nothing."

             
He laughed.  "Well, if I looked like you, I would assume you can't improve on perfection, but actually you can.  The best gift in the world looks better with nice ribbons and bows.  In this case, if you wore some aggressive colors like red and black.  Leather, satin, rubber, lace...any fabrics would work.  But you just vary it to keep him off expectations.  Act first, be demanding, get on top!   All that kind of stuff should work."

             
"How do you know this stuff, Mike?  Do you do this with....?”  She let her words trail off as she did not know how to finish her question.

             
"I am a pretty vanilla guy.  Despite everything you might think of gay guys, it is not all whips and chains and leather and drag queens."

             
"I'm sorry." She said with a red face.

             
"Don't be." He laughed, "It was worth it to see you glow in the dark like that."

             
They finished their pizza and went to their hotel rooms and finished the week.  She found time to go to a Victoria Secret's and bought a couple of black and red outfits that did not stray far from her self-image.  It was a couple of weeks before she even wore one of them to bed, but she was amused at how much more responsive Steven became.  She vowed to slow play this, but a couple weeks later something happened to the two of them:  The S.E.E.

             
It was a weekend and the two of them were making some progress on the house.   Cat had found a couple of new fixtures to replace the original 1978 lights that hung over the bar.  The bar was a large affair, stretching the length of the kitchen and housing in its center on the north side, the cook top.   On the south side, four barstools allowed people to, though facing the kitchen instead of the pool and lake, watch other people work while preparing their food.  It seemed to fascinate many visitors.  The bar was below the highest peak, (of course), in the ceiling and as a result, in order to minimize the length of the ladder, Steven had put a board between the exposed truss beams and had propped one end of the extension ladder on it, and the other on the counter top.  His footing still, with all the tricks he could manage, would be seventeen feet above the counter.

This all worked pretty well for about five hours and Steven was completely finished with the first light, to both his and Catherine's satisfaction.   He had moved the ladder to the second light and was about three quarters done when Mike had called and Catherine asked if she could focus on the call and abandon her job of idly holding the bottom of the rock solid ladder.  The always accommodating Steven told her to go ahead, as he did not think she was value added for this particular task.

About ten minutes later, Catherine was deep into a discussion on the logistics of the following week's trip to Cleveland, when she heard a rattling sound and turned to see the ladder slide, in seeming slow motion, off the supporting board, twirl and cast Steven in the air where he fell like a sandbag.  She screamed into the phone, "Steven!" and dropped the phone abruptly.  By the time she got across the living room to him, Steven had managed to roll off his now broken arm and ribs and fall an additional three feet from the counter to the floor.   He raised himself to his feet and staggered away from the counter and fell to the carpet on his back.

She bent over him and asked, "Are you all right?"  He glanced at the bone sticking out of his arm and appraised his difficulty in breathing and rasped out, "You might want to call an ambulance."

She did that and in the next hour she dealt with half a dozen firemen, about four or five emergency technicians, all of who felt, as they rushed through the front door, obligated to yell at the top of their lungs: "No railing!" as they observed the open landing.  She suspected there was an OSHA rule that required all certified EMTs to follow that procedure.  They were all curious how Steven had gone so far from the landing following his fall.  When she explained that he hadn't fallen the ten feet from the landing, but seventeen feet from the ladder, their eyes got large and said, "He should be dead."  She didn't agree, but soon she found herself being quizzed by the investigating police officer, who wondered if she had done anything to help Steven in his fall.  This appeared to be standard operating procedure.   Catherine wondered how often this was necessary.   Apparently, she did not come off as a black widow and after a bumpy stretcher ride around the back and up the outside stairs, (The EMTs were terrified of the lack of railings on the landing and would not expose themselves to it anymore than they had to.) they took Steven via ambulance to the hospital .  She drove herself there alone.

When he went in for surgery for the broken arm, she called Mike back. 
“Some people will go to unbelievable extremes to avoid going to Cleveland." He declared after offering to take the meeting solo.

"It was a close call, but Steven thought it better to take one for the team, rather than expose me to the Lake Erie Flu."  She explained, but he did not believe her.  "You don't believe in the Lake Erie Flu?" she asked.

"No, I don't believe Steven took the fall on purpose.  If I did, I'd make you go to Cleveland as punishment.  But I wouldn't be surprised if he would do it.   He'd do anything for you.  You are a lucky woman.  Give me a call and let me know how everything goes, but I am glad to hear he’ll be okay.”

This went through Catherine's mind as she waited the two hours for Steven to clear surgery.   She thought about what her life would be like without Steven.   She thought about all the years they had spent together, how he always was careful to lift the toilet seat, and put it back down again.  She thought about him
washing dishes, opening doors and waiting while she changed outfits.   He adored her and it showed.

In his hospital room as he lay sleeping, she looked at him and held his hand.  She loved his hands, how gentle they were with her, how powerful they could be, but yet gentle with her.  She pressed her lips to his hand and he stirred.   He turned his head and opened his eyes just a little.  "Am I in heaven?" 

"No," She said, "You are here with me."

"What's the difference?" He mumbled and drifted off to sleep.

It was this Significant Emotional Event that led Catherine on her quest to become the perfect sadist.   Perhaps that is a bit extreme.   If sadism is cruelty for the sake of seeing someone else suffer to one's own delight, then strictly speaking, Catherine was not of that ilk.   However, if sadism can spring from an effort to give someone else solace by making them suffer for their own quest of contentment, leading one to find a streak of joy in seeing someone they love endure the pain they dole out, then Catherine definitely fit.

It may seem like splitting hairs, but here is the difference.  Catherine never enjoyed seeing small animals or children, or even innocent adults suffer pain, and often would go out of her way to reduce that suffering.   She even managed to make Richard, the Dick, stop along a busy Houston freeway to pickup, adopt and mend an injured and abandoned dog.   And she would never have enjoyed torturing even the
vilest of prisoners.  However, for Steven, she realized she would be willing to put away her queasy feelings and find it in her heart to abuse him, as he wished.

But Catherine was seldom impulsive, despite evidence to the contrary.  Times where she seemed to act rashly were either founded on ideas and concepts that she had thought over many times in advance, or fit the philosophies of her life.   "What's the worst that could happen?" 
Was often the last statement before flinging herself into taking on a new project, like opening a wall to install a window, or pulling all the sheetrock off a surface.  

"What are they going to do?  Steal your lunch money or come to your door and
take your kids?" would precede asking for a deep discount on some product or service.

So it was a change of philosophy that occurred here.  She loved Steven deeply and knew him to be a good man and realized that his wants were not unreasonable, merely unconventional.  All that was left
now was her research.  And research meant reading books and articles and asking questions.  So, with all things ticklish at this point of her life, it meant asking Mike.

The following week found her talking long distance each day with Mike
, between trips to the hospital to first look into the rapidly mending Steven, taking him home, then to various therapies, follow-on doctor visits, x-rays and pharmacies, and then trips to bookstores for books on "Loving Domination," and all things Anne Rice.   She also got Steven to admit to a stash of porn that Mike insisted she would be able to find, "They all have fantasies and every fantasy has a picture.  People get rich making visual aids for these hidden fantasies.  Women may get off on thinking about hugging, but men get off on pictures.   You'll learn a lot about him by seeing what pictures he enjoys looking at."

Here is where it started to change so much for her.  Steven not only had pictures of imperious women looking down on bound men, whips in their long fingered hands, red lipstick looking erotic and yet, unattainable
; but he had stories and letters to the magazines, torn out and stapled, long since dog eared.    And here she found herself easily standing in those high heels, red, occasionally, but mostly black lingerie or leather, or rubber.   The red stripes across the men's backsides got her sexually aroused.   The letters that seemed most dog eared were letters where the women would 'force' the men to dress in emasculating female garb and force him to prove himself to the female domme.   It struck her as impressive that the men who wrote these letters were invariably in love with their spouse and found their lives improved by the actions.   And the more rare, but fairly frequent letters, written by the women who now controlled their husband’s sex lives, were equally loyal and delighted.  

It was also fascinating to her, that there were so many different iterations on the theme of female domination.   She quizzed her captive audience on his preferences, making it clear that she was going to consider his likes, but it would all be up to her.   Because these inquisitions that she performed were with his private bits open to her manipulations, there was no doubt to what excited him.   It was if she had her own Wonder Woman Golden Lariat of
Truth.   She found herself enjoying this power and found he was open to cross dressing, but not publicly; that he was desirous of humiliation, but only in private and only with her; that he fantasized about being bound, and spanked, but he did not know how far he was willing to go.   She began to form ideas of how this was all to fit their lives.   She realized that they would need to fill contrasting lifestyles.   She always knew that he would come through in the clutch, be the man of the family, always providing; and that she would always be the one to make sure the little things would be done around the house.  But now she knew that he would have to sometimes feel helpless and gain the release that came with that; and that she would have to have him pamper her and allow him to serve her and do household chores that she would normally take on.   So she started to plan on buying him a sissy maid outfit and imagine him on his knees washing floors, or swirling around the house vacuuming.    Since these were tasks that she dreaded, this would work out nicely.   And as a bonus, she found herself getting wet, thinking about taking a crop to his backside if he did not vacuum to her satisfaction.   This could work out very nicely, thank you!

C
hapter 6:  Mike-3

              I was surprised how quickly Catherine took me into her confidence and how open she became with me.   I regard this as a flaw in my judgment.   In retrospect, the clues were all there.

             
One of the first times we went out for lunch, she did something that absolutely stunned me.  Now Catherine is non-malicious and as gracious a person as you will find anywhere.   That comes across straight away.   However, at this particular meal, Catherine embarrassed  the waitress, a young girl with braces, obviously nervous about them as she smiled quickly and suffered from a forced close mouth in order to do so, as she took our order.  Catherine looked up, about to order a salad of some sort and asked, "How long have you had your braces?"

             
"Six months," was the nervous, startled reply.  Catherine looked back down at the menu and ordered her salad and handed the menu to the flustered girl.  I ordered a sandwich, paying a lot more attention to the poor girl, who nevertheless dropped my menu, aggravating her embarrassment.