The Professor's Pet (A BDSM Romance Novel) (6 page)

I swept out before him; I could hear him chuckle as he followed me.

***

We were seated in a tiny little cantina; the kind that dotted much of the Bay area. Chip
s and salsa on the table; the tablecloths were laminated for easy wiping; dusty fake flowers sat in a white plastic vase in the center.

“Perhaps I should have picked the restaurant as well, if I’m making you pay for dinner,” I muttered wryly.

He grinned at me. “Oh, ye of little faith. These guys make the best pozole I’ve ever had.”

He was right. When the soup came out, I closed my eyes, breathed in the aroma of the food, then took a taste. It was amazing. I moaned involuntarily in pleasure.

He was watching me with a smirk. “Fine,” I grumbled. “You are right. It is delicious.”

***

We kept the conversation light during dinner; we chatted about Boston, the university, the people we knew in common. He gave me the mail that Colin had collected, which sent a stab of disappointment through me.

“Is that why we are having dinner?” I asked, keeping my voice steady with an effort. “So you can give me
my mail?”

He looked at me silently, not replying for a long moment. “No,” he said finally. Just the one word.

“So why are you here, Jake?”

“I’m here having dinner with a beautiful woman,” he replied. “Why are you here, Emily?”

I looked at him. My words were an echo of the words I’d spoken to him, so many months ago. “Because my pussy is wet, Professor Ballard,” I said softly.

***

His eyes had darkened slightly, his grip on his soup spoon tightened an infinitesimal amount, but other than that, he didn’t react in any obvious way.

“Do you want to come back to my hotel room?” he asked me.

I nodded.

“Do you want to have sex?”

I nodded again.

“Vanilla or
otherwise?”

“
Otherwise,” I whispered.

He looked at me. “In that case,” he said finally, “This time, we are going to try to do it the right way. Let’s talk first. Tell me, Emily, what do you want?”

***

Magic 8-ball,
I whispered to myself.
Dare I tell him what I want?

Concentrate and ask again
,
was the unhelpful reply.

***

To understand my answer, I’ll have to back up to the night I left Jake’s house, struggling with the way I had let myself respond to him. Struggling with the realization that I had enjoyed submitting to him. Struggling with the word ‘submissive’. And then, eventually, I’d made my peace with the label.

But dating had now become
complicated. I stood on the threshold of a new and exciting world, and I wanted a dominant who would teach me. But I had no idea how to go about finding one; I shuddered at the idea of doing this on the Internet, and was too afraid to go to a club.

And then, there was Jake. I knew I was attracted to him. He was attracted to me. The sex had been amazing. In the bar, I had started to wonder – could I ask him to do this for me? To show me the way?

The project ended in eight weeks; his visits would cease then. A time-bound experiment. For eight weeks, once a week, when he was in San Francisco, he’d act as my dominant.

I took a sip of my drink; gathered up my courage to ask for his help.

***

He had listened to my proposition in silence. I’d stammered my way through it, and now I waited for him to speak.

“There’s no standard handbook,” was all he said finally. “No rulebook that says – this is what every submissive needs to do. It’s a conversation, a back-and-forth. All I can show you is what I like in my submissives.”

“But it’ll help though, right?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Okay.” I drew a deep breath. “If you don’t want to do this…”

“I didn’t say that,” he interrupted. “I’m just trying to set expectations. There’s no magic formula; it really is all about communication.”

“What do you like in your submissives?” I asked.

He looked at me with a smile. “You did fine,” he said.

“Not what I asked,” I replied.

He chuckled. “See, that attitude is going to get you in trouble,” he warned. His eyes were laughing though.

I stilled. “Will it?” I asked. I couldn’t see myself being silent and obedient
all the time.

He noted the tension. “Relax, Emily,” he soothed. “Everyone’s different. But when I say that, I don’t mean it as a threat; it’s supposed to be a sexual thing. Pleasurable anticipation of a spanking.”

Every nerve ending in my body suddenly flared up at the memory of my last spanking, and my insides clenched. I wanted him to spank me.

He closed his eyes briefly at the heat that shone openly in mine. “Emily,” he groaned. “We really need to communicate if we are going to do anything longer than one night.”

“I’m communicating,” I said mildly. Involuntarily, I bit my lips, and his eyes darkened. Then he shook his head, and his lips curved into a smile. A smile that told me that he knew what games I was playing, but he wasn’t going to participate. Not yet.

“Okay. First
things first – the other night, that isn’t really how things should play out in general.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“A safeword might end a session, but it shouldn’t end the whole thing,” he said. He looked slightly shame-faced. “Sorry. I thought you’d run at the outset.”

“Did you want me to?” I asked.

He took a sip of his drink. “I’m going to answer your question in a somewhat roundabout way,” he said. “BDSM – in many ways, it’s a game. But like any game, the people that play it take it seriously. And then your Kindle was filled with fluff; the kind of books that trivialize and distort the games we play, and it bothered me.”

“It isn’t all fluff,” I said defensively.

He laughed. “To tell the truth, I didn’t look very much. I flipped through a couple of pages, and then made some snap judgements about who you were.” He sighed. “You surprised me when you knelt in the office; you shocked me when you showed up at my door. I wasn’t sure when you’d run, so if it was going to happen, I figured I’d get it out of the way early.”

“Did you want me to run?” I repeated the question.

“No.” His reply was firm. “But I’m not going to lie to you; it wouldn’t have bothered me hugely if you had.”

Ouch. My face must have fallen, because he reached out, touched my cheek gently. “Don’t take that the wrong way,” he said quietly. “We barely knew each other. But I’m enjoying dinner right now, and Emily, I’m very much looking forward to what comes next.”

***

I’d taken the shuttle to work, so I didn’t have a car I needed to return to. We rode to his hotel in silence, lost in our thoughts. When he pulled into the parking garage, he gave me a wry look. “Ready?” he asked.

“I think so,” I replied.

“I think so, Professor Ballard,” he corrected me.

“Can I ask a question first, please?” He nodded. “Why the Professor Ballard bit?”

He got out of the car, swung around to open my door for me. I climbed out, silently noticing the chivalry. He’d done it when I’d stepped in and out of the car earlier as well. Jake Ballard was a weird mix of harsh orders and polite manners.

“It’s a marker,” he replied, as we wandered to the lobby, and he pressed the elevator button. “It sets boundaries. It helps keep the play separate from everything else.”

“Is that why you called me pet? As a marker for you?” I asked.

He winced. “I was being a bit snide,” he confessed. As close to an apology as I was going to get. “But that’s the general intent of it.”

“I didn’t like it,” I said.

“That was rather obvious,” he replied, his lips twitching. “Is there a word you’d prefer? Emily’s fine as well.”

The elevator doors opened, we stepped in.
“I don’t know,” I replied. We were alone in the elevator; the conversation could continue.

“Let’s stick with Emily for the moment, then,” he muttered.

***

He had a suite; not fancy, but equipped with a kitchenette and a separate living room. He opened the refrigerator, grabbed a beer. “I stocked up,” he said, with a smirk. “Want one?”

“Please,” I said. I eyed the bottle he handed me appreciatively. California craft brew, not some mass-produced junk. It was good.

He came and sat next to me. “
Ready?” he asked me again.

“Yes, Professor Ballard,” I said softly.

He leaned forward, kissed me. His kiss was unexpectedly tender, and I felt my lips part, needing to feel him even closer to me. Pleasure filled me as we kissed, and I luxuriated in the feel of his arms, one hand cupping my face, the other, at my waist, pulling me in towards him. “Mmm,” I moaned, helpless already, unable to resist the feel of him, the fire of his body; the heat of his lips.

He pulled away first; ran his hands through his hair, tousling it all over the place. “There’s a discussion of hard limits and soft limits that we’ll need to have,” he growled.

“Later,” I pleaded. I needed to feel him inside of me.

“Is your safeword still Magic 8-ball?” he asked me. I nodded; pleasure rising in me as I realized that he’d remembered my safe word.

“Okay. If I do anything that makes you uncomfortable, tell me.”

I nodded.

“Use your words, Emily,” he drawled.

“Yes, Professor Ballard, I will tell you if you do anything that makes me uncomfortable.”

“That’s a good girl, Emily. Do you want to be good?”

“Sometimes,” I said. He laughed.

“Try being good tonight,” he urged softly.

***

I was still fully clothed; as was he. It was casual Friday at the office; I was wearing a pair of jeans and a chunky cream sweater. He was dressed more formally; he was wearing a white shirt and dress pants.

He helped me out of my clothes with a minimum of fuss, then took his shirt off.

“Being submissive,” he said, “is an attitude, Emily. Ask yourself, do you want to be here?”

“I do.”

“Then, no resentment flaring in your pretty eyes, please. Submit with grace. I will push you; if it’s beyond your ability to bear, you can stop me by invoking your safeword.”

It was good and useful advice. I nodded.
“Yes, Professor Ballard,” I muttered. I took a deep breath; nudged myself towards serenity and grace.

“Good girl,” he said softly. He leaned forward and kissed me again. “In most dom
inant-submissive relationships, you behave, you get a reward. Don’t, and you get punished.” He kissed me again. “That was your reward.” He said it wryly, with a healthy dose of self-deprecation.

I leaned forward and kissed him back. “Seems like a pretty good reward to me,” I muttered.

He laughed.

“Don’t initiate,” he said mildly. “Do as you are told; nothing more, nothing less. The pleasure is in watching you obey, watching you fall apart in pleas
ure as a response to my actions.”

I gulped. He moved closer to me, his mouth at my ear, his breath tickling my face.

“And as an extension of that,” he said quietly, “climaxing without permission is very, very bad. Same reason – I want you to fall apart with pleasure at the pinnacle, not before. The more you control it, hold back, the more it builds in intensity, till it reaches a fever pitch and you can’t think or act or breathe without the fear of breaking into a million pieces; that’s when you can orgasm. Not a second sooner.”

I swallowed hard. Jake’s words set my entire body ablaze; his quiet
tone sparking a flame in me that threatened already to consume me. My pussy was dripping in response; my entire body was covered in goose bumps; my nipples hardened in arousal.

He noticed; he just smiled, traced a finger around my right nipple.

“Kneel,” he said, giving me my next order. “Let me show you something.” He walked me through postures and positions; I learned how to kneel the perfectly submissive way, with my knees spread and my hands linked behind my back, breasts jutting out for his pleasure. His touch was light as he repositioned me to his satisfaction, but the air was charged with erotic possibility. 

I wanted him to unzip his trousers and stuff his cock down my throat. I wanted to take him in my mouth and
bring him pleasure. He wouldn’t let me though; my role tonight wasn’t to initiate, it was to accept. I sat on my haunches and awaited my next instruction.

He circled me slowly, I kept my eyes lowered. “Eye-contact preferences tend to vary,” he said. “I prefer eye contact.” I nodded; raised my eyes to meet his.

He surveyed me; I could almost hear the wheels churning in his head as he contemplated what to do next with me.

“Get up,” he said finally. He reached forward to steady me as I rose, then stepped back. “Get on the bed, get on your hands and knees.”