Interview with a Master (25 page)

Finally, I started to get uncomfortable. Leticia was gazing at me with a fixed, fascinated expression that was becoming unnerving. I said, “Being a good Master, in my book, is much more than meets the eye, and it’s much more than people outside of the lifestyle seem to really understand.”

Leticia seemed to shudder, as though waking from a dream. Her eyes came into focus and grew wider. She blinked, and then stared down at her notes, reading back what I had said, silently mouthing each word.

I went on, and got back into the monotonous rhythm of pacing across the room.

“I slid my cock slowly across Caroline’s lips and into her open mouth. Her lipstick smudged as she wrapped tight around the length of my shaft and I eased myself back and forth across her t
ongue. She stared up at me with her eyes fixed on mine, and let me take my pleasure.

“I reached down and tangled my hands in her hair. I held her head steady and began to thrust more deeply with my hips. Caroline’s breathing became more feverish and ragged, but her body felt stiff and unwilling.

“I lost my patience at last. I withdrew my cock from her mouth and stalked across to the chair. I dragged it away from the table and sat. I glared at Caroline. I ordered her to bend over my lap.”

“You did what?”

“I ordered her over my lap,” I repeated, “and then I spanked her.”

Leticia recoiled. “Are you serious?”

“Very,” I said grimly. “Caroline came to me and she had tears welling up in her eyes. I told her to bend over my knee. She nodded and folded her body over mine so that her legs were stretched and parted out behind her, and she was supporting her weight on her extended arms, as if she were doing a push up. I felt the soft warm flesh of her breasts against the side of my thigh. I heard Caroline give a little grief-filled sob. I ignored her.

“I tugged the lace of her panties down her parted thighs and put one hand between her shoulder blades. I felt Caroline shudder. Then I cupped my hand and swatted one cheek of her bottom.”

“Hard?” Leticia was fascinated. She had edged her body forward on the sofa and was leaning towards me.

“Of course not,” I said. “I didn’t want to hurt her. Being spanked is more a psychological punishment than a physical one. I smacked her bottom half-a-dozen times until her flesh was glowing a soft crimson red and I could feel the heat radiating up through my hand. Caroline was sobbing softly, her whole body tensed, anticipating the next smack.

“‘Are you going to be a good girl from now on?’ I demanded. Caroline sniffed away tears and assured me she would. She promised she had learned her lesson. I slid my palm across the swell of her butt and then dipped my hand down into the molten heat between her parted thighs.

“She was wet, and her arousal had coated the lips of her pussy so that two of my fingers eased inside her. Caroline’s back seemed to heave. I felt her body clench tight to grip at me, and I left my fingers resting inside her pussy while she tried desperately to wriggle herself back on my hand to feel
my touch more deeply. I felt her body rubbing against the hardness of my cock. I told Caroline to remain still. She flinched, and then went limp across my knee. I withdrew my fingers and used them to strum across the swollen bud of her clit.

“Caroline moaned. It was a sound I knew well. She was creeping towards the point where she would be on the brink of coming. The sound was deep in the back of her throat, breathless and somehow urgent. I kept pla
ying my fingers across her clit in a steady rhythm. A few moments later she asked me in a timid voice if she had my permission to orgasm.”

“And…?” Leticia prompted.

“I told her she could – but that she would have to do it herself. I told her to lie across the table and spread her legs. I wanted to watch her. Caroline squealed. The idea of pleasuring herself while I watched appealed to her exhibitionist side. She kissed me impulsively and settled herself on her back, legs splayed wide apart so that I could see the wet open lips of her sex from where I sat.

“My cock was still hard. Caroline raised her head and looked down through the jutting rise of her breasts and between her parted thighs at me. She had a soft, secret smile on her lips. Once she was assured I was watching, she laid back on the tabletop and stretched out. Her hand snaked down between her legs and she coated the tips of her fingers with her own wet arousal. I watched her with interest. I watched the ways she touched herself, and how she cupped and teased her breasts with her free hand. I listened to the sound of her breathing and the way her hips began to undulate as she sped towards her release. She became frantic. Her breathing stopped,
then came again in great gulps. She tilted her pelvis and then arched her back.

“And then she
orgasmed.”

I stared off into space for a long moment, looking at the wall opposite but not really seeing it. I heard Leticia’s voice, seeming to come from far away.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

I blinked. “
I was wondering if you had any whisky.”

Leticia shook her head. “Sorry. I have water.”

“That will do.” I went to the kitchen, found a glass in a cupboard and filled it with tap water. As a rule I never drank the stuff. Fish have sex in water… think about that…

Leticia took a plastic jug of water from inside the refrigerator door and filled another glass. She sipped at it.

“Did it bother you when Caroline started to cry as you put her over your knee to be spanked, Jonah?” Leticia asked softly. “You don’t seem to be the kind of man who would take any pleasure from seeing a woman in tears.”

I smiled, kind of. “In normal circumstances it kills me to see a woman cry,” I admitted. “I don’t think there is anything sadder in the world.
In normal circumstances. But this wasn’t a normal circumstance. Caroline was just using a woman’s first defense to try to manipulate me and get her way.”

Leticia tensed
, suddenly wary. “A woman’s first defense? That is going to need some explaining. What do you mean by that?” she was instinctively guarded.

“Women have three defenses they use against a man to get their way,” I said. “The first defense is tears. The second defense is abuse, and the third defense is violence. If they cry, and still cannot get what they want, they become abusive – and if that doesn’t work, they become violent, or threaten violence. They throw plates, or threaten to throw things.” I shrugged.

“You sound sexist.”

I shrugged again.

“So, are you speaking as an expert, Mr. Noble?” Leticia’s tone had turned decidedly frosty.

“No,” I admitted. “I’m merely speaking as a man who has had enough arguments to recognize the pattern.”

Leticia said nothing for a long moment, and then shook her head as though I confounded her. “You’re such a contradiction, Jonah Noble,” she said softly. “You’re capable of expressing the most beautiful, profound ideas one moment, and the next, you’re… you’re a typical man.”

I changed the subject.
“Are you hungry?”

Leticia shrugged. “I could eat.”

“There’s a quaint little pizza place on Sixth Street. Do you know it?”

She nodded.

“I feel like pizza,” I said. “It will be my treat.”

* * *

‘Dino’s’
was one of those authentic-looking Italian pizza places that was actually run by a Chinese couple. A red, green and white awning that stretched out over the sidewalk shaded the shop front, and there were empty wine bottles on shelves displayed in the windows.

I pushed open the door and hel
d it for Leticia. A little bell attached to the frame tinkled, and an elderly Chinese gentleman came from a back room. He had an apron tied around his waist and a mouth full of gold teeth. He smiled at me. I smiled at him. He smiled at Leticia, and then we were shown to a booth in a gloomy corner at the back of the restaurant.

The menu was a folded card, wedged upright on the table between the sugar bowl and a ketchup bottle. I handed it to Leticia.

“Your choice,” I said.

She ordered pizza. The restaurant was quiet – it was too late for
the long lunch crowd to still be eating, and too early for the after work crowd. We stared out through the windows watching the world go by in a dull haze of smog and noise, until the pizza finally arrived on a wide wooden chopping board.

“What do you like to do in your spare time?” I asked. It wasn’t the most probing question I had ever asked a woman, but it felt a little like we were taking time out.

“I read,” Leticia said. She had a slice of pizza balanced delicately in one hand and a paper napkin in the other. “I like to read recipe books. I love cooking. What about you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t get a lot of spare time,” I said, “but when I do I like to read too. I have an interest in the fighter pilots and
planes that flew during the First World War.”

Leticia made a face like she was surprised. “That’s kind of random,” she said.

Was it? I didn’t know.

“My father had a collection of miniature models at the old estate. I brought them with me. They’re in my office,” I explained.

Leticia nodded. “I saw them,” she said. “I just didn’t figure they were of particular importance to you. Why the fascination?”

“I admire the bravery of those men,” I said. “They were called the ‘knights of the air’. They fought to the death in planes made from wood and canvas, but managed to remain chivalrous and honorable in the most grueling of circumstances. Their heroism in the face of impossible adversity is pretty inspirational.”

I heard the bell above the door ring and glanced over my shoulder. A man and a woman with a couple of young children in tow were waiting to be shown to a table. We finished our pizza and I left two twenty dollar bills on the counter.

We walked slowly back through the city, our bodies close but never quite touching. Leticia leaned in to me whenever she spoke, and clutched at my arm as we crossed the street. The sun was setting on the horizon as we stepped in through the front door of her apartment – golden light spilled
through the window in a long rectangular patch across the carpet and tinted the color of the walls. Leticia drew the heavy drapes and suddenly everything became gloomy. She switched on a couple of lamps and settled herself back on the sofa.

“Did you ever lose control with Caroline, Jonah?” Leticia asked. “She was clearly a feisty, independent wom
an. Surely there must have been times when you lost your temper with her.”

“Never.”

“Not even during sex, or when punishing her?”

“Never,” I said again.

Leticia arched a questioning eyebrow.

“Leticia there were certainly times with Caroline where the sex we shared was aggressive – times when I took her for my pleasure and the sex-play was more physical. But it was all an act. It was all part of the scene we were involved in. There is no excuse for a man to become violent with a woman, and even in the most passionate moments with Caroline, she knew that everything happening was part of the moment, not part of my personality.”

“How do you do that? How do you keep your control?”

I
had never considered the question. I thought for a moment. “Discipline, I guess. And always remembering that the person you are with is in your care, and is relying on you to keep them safe.”

“So how do you create those tempestuous, lust-filled moments without breaching your commitment to keep the woman you are with safe?”

I looked at Leticia with surprise. “Tempestuous?”

She smiled. “It’s called a vocabulary.”

I smiled back, and started to pace.

“More than anything else, every woman in the world wants to feel desirable, and desired,” I said. “Caroline was no different. She was sexy, she was smart, and s
he was confident, but she was also a woman, and every woman I have known comes with a suitcase full of insecurities. And although every woman’s suitcase is different, one thing always remains common – they want to know that they are attractive, even if it is only to the man in their life.

“Caroline needed that same reassurance, but it’s a little different in a BDSM relationship. So much of what happens sexually is structured and arranged. For instance I would summon a submissive to kneel before me and suck my cock, or I would order her to remove her panties and b
end over the edge of the table, and the woman would dutifully obey my instructions. Punishments, training sessions – everything tends to flow along organized lines.

“I found the best way to demonstrate to Caroline that she was desirable was
to throw the rule book out once in a while, and simply act spontaneously.”

“But not because you felt spontaneous?”

“No. That’s how I always remain in control. I
acted
spontaneous for Caroline’s sake.”

Leticia wrote everything down, but I could see she didn’t understand. It was like I was explaining English to a foreigner.

“One of my standing rules for submissives is that they are not permitted to wear panties when they are in the house, nor are they permitted to wear a bra. Under their clothes they are to be naked and available, and their pussy must always be shaved,” I explained. “Each Master you speak to will have different rules. Those were some of mine.”