When in Rio (11 page)

Chapter Nine

It was fortunate that Jack arrived when he said he would, and that room service was not due until six. I had met two of his requirements, as I was nude and in bed when he got to the room.

However, I was also sound asleep under a sheet and only woke up when Jack sat on the edge of the bed and shook me a few times.

“Katie…you’ll miss dinner, little one.”

I was too drowsy even to be startled. It took me a minute just to remember how I’d gotten there.

“That must have been one hell of a massage.”

“I think there were
roofies
in the massage oil,” I said when I stopped yawning. Jack had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie. He looked just a little rumpled and almost magnetically attractive. Feeling too relaxed to move just yet, I smiled up at him in what I hoped was evident admiration and delight. “I had the best afternoon ever. Thank you
so
much.”

“Hmm. You’re welcome. I just thought my new pet needed some grooming. I like my things to look and feel their best.” He tugged the sheet from my shoulders, flinging it down toward the foot of the bed and running a possessive eye over me while I was still trying to interpret just what he meant when he’d said “my” pet, “my” things. I shifted my legs at his touch, parting them a little and feeling a lazy flicker of arousal at his open appreciation.

“Was the last session good?” I asked dutifully.

“About what you might expect,” he said. “Compliance workshop. There were some good ideas though. Let’s not talk shop, you’re
gonna
get all tense again. I wanted you limp and susceptible to my every whim.”

“I’m your rag doll, Sir,” I teased, but he shook his head and leaned in over me, guiding my hands away gently when I started to slip them around his neck.

“Don’t be a rag doll just yet. There’s still dinner to get through. And then afterward you can show your gratitude in a more appropriate way. Right now you’re just acting spoiled.” But he kissed me anyway, so perhaps he didn’t mind my being spoiled so very much. Although I realized there would be a price paid later for it, I found I was not dreading that prospect at all.

“
Mmm
. Sweet little Katie,” Jack murmured, trailing his hand under my neck and wrapping his fingers in my disastrously messy hair. “You really aren’t following directions very well at
all
, little one. First you don’t get up to the room as soon as you’re told. And now I wasn’t supposed to walk in and find you asleep under the covers, was I?”

“No Sir. I’m sorry, Sir,” I said, heart beating a little faster. It was a tricky moment. Did I wait for further orders, did I just start doing what I should’ve been doing in the first place…what?

“After dinner, I think some consequences will help you remember better next time. For right now, however—how was I
supposed
to find you, little one?”

Distracted by the thought of consequences, feeling myself begin to phase out a bit, I struggled to concentrate and remember just what he’d said and written. It didn’t help that although I loved hearing it from him, I hated repeating this sort of thing out loud. “Um. On the bed, naked and…playing with myself, Sir?”

“That’s right, little one. Show me please. Now.”

The “please” was filler, a courteous habit. It was clear he was telling, not asking. I moved my hands hesitantly…all the lights were on, the sun was still up. Yet this was hardly unexpected or a new situation for me. It was sort of a standard request, frankly. So why did I feel so nervous doing this for Jack?

It was the gleam in his eye as he watched my hand move downward that made me realize, that appreciative gleam, the smug little smile—I was nervous because I’d never wanted so badly to please anybody as I did Jack. It had nothing to do with him as a Dominant, I wanted his approval as a
person
. A person I respected, whose good opinion I craved even out of bed, and had for two years. I wanted to show I was good at this, this thing he valued, this odd hobby we shared…so he would be proud of me.

“Legs spread very wide, little Katie. Don’t make me tell you again,” he said gently, the threat almost disappearing in the effect of his voice on my body. He had moved off the bed and walked to the foot of it, arms crossed, eyeing me straight up and down. I could not have felt more exposed but it was starting to feel good now, and I knew I was wet before my fingers discovered the evidence.

“Yes Sir,” I whispered hoarsely, and slid my legs still farther apart, reveling in his hiss of approval when I used the fingers of one hand to spread my labia, blatantly displaying myself for his inspection.

“That’s very nice, pet. I do like looking at my toys. Thinking about how to play with them later…”

It was reflex that made me grab for the sheet at the knock on the door. Only because I was looking right at Jack just then did I catch the flash of displeasure that marred his features. Hoping against hope that he was annoyed at the timing of room service’s arrival, and not at my instinct to cover myself, I froze and waited for him to tell me what to do. I was too fuzzy just then to do much else.

“Damn them for being on time,” Jack said with a sigh, to my vast relief. “Go wait in the bathroom, little one. I’ll come get you when it’s safe to come out.”

Waiting in the bathroom was no chore. The one in Jack’s suite was huge and insanely well appointed, and had that fantastic view. After he’d sent the room service waiter away, he opened the door without knocking to find me perched on the back wall of the tub, watching the sunset over the beach.

“
Olly
olly
oxen free,” he said in a singsong, standing in the open doorway and leaning in, just his fingers on the doorjamb keeping him from falling. When I clambered over the tub’s side and walked to join him, he grinned at my multiple reflections in the several angled mirrors around the room. “Hey, it’s a room full of
Katies
. You really are gorgeous, you know. Come and eat, pet.”

He levered himself back out of the doorway with an athletic springiness and I was left with the room full of myself, momentarily stopping to see the effect I hadn’t noticed before. I didn’t see anything gorgeous, only my usual self.
Cute
, maybe, at the most. Not quite as rounded as I would like on top, a bit more rounded than I’d prefer on the bottom, although at least I was at my low weight right now which meant my waist was pretty slim. I considered it my best feature. But Jack, judging by the look in his eyes, evidently saw something else entirely when he looked at me. Shrugging, I padded into the bedroom to see him at the sofa in front of the wide window, removing covers from plates and arranging utensils.

“Tonight we’re having local cuisine, which means there will be meat and more meat. Come and sit.” He pointed his finger at the couch next to him and I sat with my legs curled under me, feeling a bit odd about eating dinner in the nude. Especially as Jack was still fully clothed, although obviously that was the point. “We have
picandinho
de
porco
, which is minced pork and
chourico
. That’s the same as
chorizo
in Mexican food. It’s pretty hot, so we also have a
bisteca
here, just a pork chop, if you’d prefer. You seemed to like the one you ordered last night and I didn’t know how you felt about spicy.”

“Spicy is wonderful, Sir.”

“Try this too.” He broke off a piece of a little brown, crumbling fried dumpling. “
Bolinhos
de
arroz
, just little fried rice balls. Wouldn’t normally have them with this particular dish, but I ordered some of everything for you to try.” He held the piece out and, when I started to reach for it, pulled it back with a
tsk
. “Open up, little one.”

I think I only opened my mouth to say something bratty, but once he popped the morsel between my lips I realized how hungry I was and no longer cared about anything but the incredible taste. It was heavenly, some savory concoction of onions and scallions and other things I couldn’t pinpoint, and calling it “just little fried rice balls” was slander.

“Now this,” Jack said, and offered me a piece of what appeared to be pork. Again I tried to grab it, but he scowled and withheld it until I opened my mouth obediently for him to feed it to me. And again, once I’d tasted it, I forgot to be annoyed, because it was just as delicious as the last thing.

It was all delicious, although I lost track of what everything was called and knew I’d have to do some research when I got back home if I ever hoped to remember what I’d eaten. After the third or fourth bite I just gave up and let Jack feed me by hand, as he seemed to enjoy doing, watching my face intently to see my reaction to each new piece of his adopted cuisine. He let me have just a few sips of the fairly decent red wine he’d ordered—a Portuguese red from Extremadura, not one I was familiar with but that complemented the spicy pork perfectly—but all the water I wanted. A bit less to eat overall than I would have taken on my own, especially less of the flan-like dessert that was just the right amount of bland to soothe my
overspiced
taste buds.

“I don’t want you too full, pet,” he said sternly when I begged for more. He was already covering the dishes back up and carrying them into the bar, where they fit neatly in the small refrigerator. “You wouldn’t thank me for it. Now, I need a shower. And I don’t know that I trust you to refrain from gorging yourself while I’m in there, so come and sit where I can see you.” He walked confidently toward the bathroom, obviously certain that I would follow, which I did.

“I have to do this with Rufus sometimes, if I don’t want to put him in the garage and I don’t have time to clean the kitchen. I just remembered…you’ve met Rufus, haven’t you?”

“Yes Sir. He’s wonderful.” Indeed I had met him, and hoped to meet him again. Rufus was the giant, goofy Golden Retriever I’d played with at Jack’s Christmas party. I’d found him in the garage, where I went in search of a place to hide and regroup after humiliating myself with the Wine and Cork Floor Incident. He was an all-American sort of dog, barely more than an overgrown pup, all
waggy
tail and doggy smiles. After taking care to pin me to the wall with his enormous paws, sniff me thoroughly and slobber all over the parts he liked best, he had brought me a quite disgusting squeaky plush toy. Jack’s three-car garage had only one car in it, so we had plenty of room for a fun ten minutes of fetch before Jack himself had come in to get something from the garage refrigerator and found us out.

“He liked you quite a lot, little one. Of course, he likes just about everyone, it’s true. That dog’s a total slut. But most people freak out when he stands up and licks them in the face. And he doesn’t bring just everyone the bun-bun to play with.”

Bun-bun?

“Now…” Jack was positioning a thick bathmat in the center of the bathroom with a great deal of earnest care, which I found amusing and endearing. With a mock expression of great somberness, he squared the mat to the tiles precisely and then pointed me toward it, angling me gently by the shoulders. “Now sit and stay. Find a position you can live with for a while, because I don’t want you moving around while I’m busy.”

He punctuated his last few words with a gentle tap on the top of my head and then proceeded to undress, spend a few minutes doing what seemed to be a half-assed cleaning job on his electric shaver and finally duck into the shower, largely ignoring me the entire time. He petted my head a few times in passing and I couldn’t resist arching a little bit into his hand, but each time he just chuckled and moved on.

The odd thing about a time like that is, it’s not as boring as one might suppose. A
subby
friend once told me that the mindset of a submissive was a form of meditation, and that the act of giving oneself over was just part of the routine required to drop into the meditative state. No different, really, than folding one’s legs and repeating a mantra over and over, except that the presence of a Dominant person was required to complete the process. The Dominant was just a sort of facilitator or catalyst. I wasn’t sure how far I believed much of this philosophical justification for it all—for me, after all, the main thing was that I enjoyed it, and didn’t always want to analyze it too much—but the thing about meditation made sense to me.

There could be times of great tension, of course. When you were in the wrong kind of pain, when the Dom didn’t make his expectations clear, when you felt the “discipline” this sort of relationship necessarily involved was being handled ineptly or unjustly, but you felt unable to express that in the given situation. Or when the Dom was simply not very good or not very suited to you, which had fortunately only happened to me in a big way once. Once was enough. I had decided to become even more scrupulously picky after that, and it had actually been over a year now since that last encounter.
Well
over a year, I realized. More like two years. I wondered how long it had been for Jack. Kendra had mentioned him not being “seriously involved” for years, but what, exactly, did that mean?

We would have to have that talk, of course, at some point. Really, we should have already had it, tiresome though it always was. But we already knew each other so well. It was throwing me off and, I suspected, throwing Jack off as well.
Because
we knew each other, we felt almost shy about asking for information we would have long since demanded from anyone else before getting this far. On the other hand, we knew just enough of one another’s histories to know that nothing wildly unsavory lay in the past.

For now, however, I could hear Jack splashing in the shower, could feel the slight sheen of moisture forming on my body from the humidity and felt the surreal calm that came with knowing my only job at the moment was to wait for Jack to come out and tell me what to do next. That was all. So simple. Like heaven, really.

I’d heard that one common subtype of submissive was comprised of people who were intelligent but thought too much, who relied too much on their brains in their day-to-day lives, who over-thought everything. They needed a way to escape from all that thinking. To reduce things to the point of manageable simplicity. And
that
I knew to be the absolute truth, at least for me.