Submission in Seattle (2 page)

It took six more
of the slashing strokes before she was truly flying high on a trip induced by a
cocktail of fantasy, emotions and natural biochemicals released by her bruised
flesh.  The powerful strokes slowly continued as she moaned and thrashed
against the table.  She was not struggling to free herself.  She was writhing
in ecstasy.

As on previous
visits, she was allowed to spend the night.  Her submission was absolute.  This
time, after satisfying his perverted sexual urges, she was forced to sleep on
the floor next to his bed.  She loved every minute of it and was happy to hand
him a slim envelope as she left the next morning.

Kristina knew that
she was just one woman among many in the unusual life of Howard Cole, but she
didn’t mind.  Her world felt complete.  She was deliciously satisfied and quite
proud at having taken twenty five strokes of the terrible cane.  She left his
house smiling, feeling the sexy soreness in her buttocks and vagina.  With any
luck, she thought, she would be reminded of her caning for two or three days as
she sat in her boring office cubicle.   Her breasts bounced a bit as she got
behind the wheel and her sore nipples peaked, reminding her of other pleasures.

She drove along
the conservative Sunday morning streets, observing the ordinary people living
their ordinary lives.  “If they only knew...” she speculated.  She grinned at
the thought of the secret she carried inside and wondered how long it would be
until she needed to contact him again.

As he watched her
go, Cole felt strangely alone.  He was pleased that Krissy believed she had
taken the full twenty five strokes, when he had actually stopped at nineteen. 
The little psychological games were all part of the service.  It had taken him
years of trial and error to learn how to weave a woman’s fantasy into a
practical reality.  He played the role well, very well, but he knew there must
be more.

Howard Cole placed
his glass of Willamette valley pinot noir on the desk next to the computer and
looked around the expensively furnished home office to clear his mind.  As was
his nightly custom, he powered up his computer to check his email.  He grinned
slightly as he recalled his session with Krissy the previous week.  He thought
briefly about how much more interesting his life had become in the years since
he had discovered organized BDSM and later, the internet. 

“Life certainly
has its surprises,” he said before taking a sip from the one glass of wine he
allowed himself.

While he waited
for the computer to complete the logon and download procedure, he recalled the
unlikely chain of events that led to his unusual lifestyle.

From his elegant
home in a heavily forested suburb of Seattle, Cole reached out into the shadowy
world of those who searched for satisfaction via the internet.  His occupation
as a patent broker allowed him ample time to pursue his true love, the sexual
domination of women. 

He enjoyed being
his own boss and was usually able to set his own hours.  His clients were major
universities and small research companies that needed to sell their patented
ideas to various industries.  They usually met with him at his office in
Bellevue where he shared a receptionist and secretarial staff with four other
businessmen.  None of them had the slightest understanding of his unusual
sexual tastes. 

Most of the
businessmen in his circle of friends brought their wives or girlfriends to
business related functions.  Cole usually showed up alone, which caused some
speculation that he might be gay.  In reality, he simply did not want to mix
his sex life with his work, for obvious reasons. 

He remembered that
on the rare occasions when he brought a woman friend, his colleagues and their
wives would spend the next few days trying to figure out what gave the woman
such a mysterious air of sexuality.  Ill equipped to understand sexual
submissiveness, they usually decided it was something mundane, like her
clothing or perfume.

He had no idea
what a strange direction his life would take when he graduated from a Southern
California law school in his late twenties with a profound distrust of the
adversarial legal system.  During his final year of school, he interned at a
law firm specializing in criminal defense and other trial work.  The things he
saw there convinced him that he could never participate in the courtroom games
that his classmates loved.  That was also when his wife announced that he
wasn’t the kind of man she wanted to be married to and demanded a divorce. 
Shortly thereafter, he discovered a talent for patent law and never looked
back.  According to his estimate, he could retire at age fifty and live very
nicely for the rest of his life.

When the monitor
finally displayed the list of incoming email, he snapped back from his self-analysis
and quickly focused on the messages.

Ah, three
responses tonight, he noted.  They were replies to the personal ads that he had
placed systematically on various websites and newsgroups.  Each of his ads was slightly
different, but they all contained basically the same message.

Cole described
himself in the ads as a professional dominant for women only.  Although the ads
didn’t mention it, his fee was negotiable.  It would usually depend on what the
customer could afford.  He didn’t need the money, but it helped establish a
very important boundary.  It also created an atmosphere that allowed for some
intensely hot play sessions. 

When he first
considered this idea, he was told by his friends from the Seattle SM scene that
there was no such thing as a professional male dominant, unless you wanted to
dominate men, of course.  It was a simple case of supply and demand in the sex
industry.  The conventional wisdom also said that most, if not all, submissive
women were looking for a long term relationship.  After some research and
several experiments in advertising, he discovered that there was a small, but
significant market for his services.  Not enough to make a living, which he
didn’t need anyway, but enough to keep him busy with interesting new women. 

Once he had worked
out the system, there was a slow, but steady stream of women who answered his
internet ads.  Most of them lived too far away, didn’t have the money to travel
or were just too frightened to meet with a stranger for such an intimate and
dangerous activity.  Cole gently discouraged many others who did not meet his
personal standards for physical appearance or intelligence.   About two or
three times a year, he would arrange to meet with a new correspondent who
seemed to be a good potential customer.  In the back of his mind was always the
possibility that he might meet a woman who could become his permanent partner.

He discovered that
many submissive women didn’t feel like they could really give up control to a
man who was going to be a major part of their lives.  A professional dominant,
on the other hand, could do his job and vanish.  The woman could carry on
safely with her normal life, keeping only the treasured memories of her
submissive sexual experience.

Many of the women
he met were in situations that prevented them from seeking the kind of
relationship they truly desired.  Perhaps they were married and unable to
leave.  Perhaps their career or public image was at risk.  Others wished to safely
learn about their submissive feelings.  It seemed that each woman had her own
unique reason for seeking his services.

He dropped out of
the Seattle SM scene when he realized that he wasn’t finding what he needed
there.  By avoiding public gatherings of the SM community, it was also less
likely that his secret life would become known to his vanilla friends and
colleagues.

He would still
occasionally meet his kinky friends at Beyond the Edge Cafe, the unofficial
meeting place of the leather community.  Only a few of his most trusted scene
friends knew of his second occupation and they would occasionally send him a
woman who needed his services.

A meeting of the
local SM club had to be something special for him to attend these days.  He
might go if a nationally known figure was speaking.  Laura Antoniou had been at
the last one and Cole had enjoyed it greatly.  He sat in the back and waved
politely at old friends who recognized him.  After the meeting, instead of
joining the milling crowd of people eager to meet potential play partners, he
waited only long enough for Laura to autograph a set of her books for him. 
Then he quietly disappeared from the room.  

Now, staring
intently at the computer monitor, he quickly read and eliminated all three of
the responses.  Not my type, he sighed.  He sent each of them a polite reply
telling them that he was currently unavailable.  Then he answered a two day old
email from a previous customer who wanted to schedule another session.  Their
first two sessions had been in her home, but this time she was interested in
being “kidnapped” and taken away to be ravished by Cole.

He quickly typed
an email message:

“Dear Victoria,

I would be pleased
to provide you with a kidnapping scene on Sunday the 18th.  The usual rules
will apply, except that this time I will not specify a fee.  After you have had
a few days to think about the experience, simply send me whatever amount you
feel is appropriate.

I will need the
full details of your schedule that day.  Make certain that you are available
until at least 10 PM.”

Cole sent the
message and shut down the computer.

He thought about
the particular fondness he had for Victoria.  It wasn’t just the fact that she
had a very sexy, mature body.  Under her too perfect exterior and snobbish
attitude was a little girl who needed to be dominated.  He also had a great
deal of respect for her.  Victoria wasn’t a thrill seeking young SM player like
Kristina.  She was the mature female of the species, experienced and
formidable. 

Too bad her
obsession with her looks and her society lifestyle were so annoying, he
thought.  Still, she had responded very nicely during their sessions and he
felt like there was potential for more good play.  Unlike some of his
customers, she didn’t seem to mind marks and bruises, as long as they could be
covered by her clothing.  In fact, she had indicated that she would like it a
lot rougher if possible.  Cole grinned at the thought.

At that moment, in
the elegant ladies' room of a historic hotel in downtown Seattle, Victoria
Windham-Jenkins checked her make up for the fourth time.  She was forty two
years old, but looked like she was thirty.  “A young thirty,” she said to
herself as she reshaped the outline of her slightly too bright lipstick.   It
made her feel better after her exchange of insults with a snobbish couple in
the grand dining room a few minutes earlier.

She was aware that
both her mood and her behavior had been gradually deteriorating in recent
weeks.  I’m getting to be such a bitch, she thought, it reminds me of that
weird movie I watched last week. What was that Navajo word for
life-out-of-balance?  Koyaanisqatsi or something?

She tried to
remember exactly how long it had been since her last session with Howard Cole. 
Was it four months ago or five, she wondered?   Her secretary had jokingly
pointed out one of Cole’s internet ads last year and Victoria had since
experienced two successful sessions with the professional dominant.

Victoria’s wealthy
husband had died a decade before, leaving her with a company that controlled
two hundred thousand acres of prime timber land and two world class paper
mills.  There was more money than she could possibly spend.  She still missed
the old bastard, though.  He was so deliciously rough and he always seemed to
know when she needed it.  She constantly tested him and she could still
remember how his big hand would bruise her bare bottom when she pushed him too
far.  Actually, she thought, I could use a little bit of that right now.

Although she was
technically the Chairman of the Board, her presence was rarely required at
company headquarters.  A veritable army of managers and accountants took care
of things quite nicely without her.  When she was not attending society
functions she spent her time in the gym and at various health spas being
wrapped in odd substances guaranteed to preserve one’s youthful skin tone.  As
yet, she had avoided the plastic surgeon.  It was a matter of pride, which she
had in abundance. 

She paid a small
fortune to keep a hairdresser on call at all times to maintain her elaborate
bleached blonde hairstyle.  She copied it from Farrah Fawcett almost twenty
years ago, but she thought of it as her trademark and would never consider
changing it.  Looking in the mirror one last time, she admired her bright green
eyes, then patted her hair and smoothed the low cut velvet gown around her
womanly curves.

As she left the
ladies' room, she cheered herself with the thought that men were always in
plentiful supply.  They would compete among themselves to see who could serve
her most sincerely.  She remembered a recent art gallery opening, where she had
counted four attractive men of various ages who swarmed around her offering
flutes of champagne, crab cocktails and radishes that were carved into perfect
little flowers.

To intimidate the
other women that night, she had worn a tight red evening dress that displayed
her large breasts and narrow waist.  That sexy Italian artist told me I looked
like Marilyn Monroe, she recalled with a smug little smile.  She remembered how
she took the lucky fellow home with her that night and discarded him the next
morning as if he were an empty wine bottle.

Her memories ended
as she returned to the party and surveyed the crowd.  Tonight she had her eye
on a handsome young doctor.  She watched him show a mouth full of perfect white
teeth when he grinned at a joke.  “He’ll do nicely,” she thought while moving
in for the kill and trying unsuccessfully to suppress a shark-like grin.  The
result was never in doubt. They left the party early and her chauffeur drove
them both to her place.  The poor doctor was used and sent home by midnight. 

Afterwards lying
alone in her gigantic bed, she thought of her late husband, Eric, and wished
that he was there to give her what she really needed.  Fast and easy sex was
better than nothing, she figured, but she could still feel a tension within her
that would be impossible to describe to anyone else.  She reflected briefly on
her arrangement with Howard Cole and thought, I guess I do have something to
look forward to, if I can just hold out till next week.