The Word Master (11 page)

I reached between April’s parted legs and brushed the soft sensitive skin high up on her inner leg, just an inch or two below the smoldering heat of her pussy. She sucked in a sharp hiss of breath and her hands bunched into tight fists. I felt a ripple of excitement run down through her body. She was whimpering.

“Now imagine my hand gliding higher – towards that place where you want me to touch you – towards your wet and wanting pussy. Fantasize about the caress of each finger as it presses and then slowly… very slowly… slides inside you.”

An important single beat of tense pause…

“Now touch yourself!” I insisted.

Everything I had said in the past twenty-five minutes had been carefully orchestrated to build simmering tension for this instant.

“Reach down and slide your fingers inside your pussy – do it to please your Master and think about the wicked thrill of having me watch you.”

Without hesitation, April reached down between her parted thighs. I saw her hand slip inside her panties and then the frantic movement of her fingers as she worked to bring herself off.

“Yes!” I hissed like a man delighting in the eroticism of the display. “Rub your hard little clit and then finger yourself. Your Master wants you to come tonight. I want to watch as you explode.”

April made soft grunting sounds in the back of her throat and her hips began to rock as she pleasured herself. I said nothing. I unplugged the mic from the console and went back to my chair. April was hunched over the desk, her body becoming rigid as each muscle tightened like a bow being drawn.

She cried out once – a sound that she had no power to control – and then her entire body seemed to flex and clench as her orgasm overwhelmed her in a series of waves.

I waited in silence while the soft strains of jazz played in the background. April lay slumped over the desk, soft as melted candle wax. Every breath was a ragged sob. She turned her head towards me and blinked as if waking from the grips of a spell. Her cheeks were flushed and there was a satin-like sheen of perspiration on her brow. She stood slowly. Her hand was still inside her panties but her fingers were still now.

I leaned in close to the microphone. “That was shattering,” I said. “Knowing that you came pleases your Master immensely,” I broadcast. “You have been good girls for me. Now, all that remains is for you to taste yourself…”

I let those words hang on the air for a moment.

“Put your fingers into your mouth, lick the taste of you, and inhale the scent of your pussy.”

I stole a glance beyond the articulated array of the boom mic. April had her hip against the desk as if she needed the support to remain upright. Her panties were awry, and one of her nipples was peeking above the lace cup of her bra. She didn’t seem to notice. I saw her turn her body away, and then her hand came up to her mouth and she flicked her tongue over her fingers.

The sub-club session was over.

Chapter 17.

By the end of Friday night’s program I was exhausted. My first week on the radio had been more strenuous, more mentally taxing than I could have ever anticipated. I was accustomed to a hard day’s work – physical labor that required skill and concentration. Radio was a whole new world entirely.

The demands, and the constant need for perfection were a strain. No mistake could be done over – once it went to air, the words could never be retrieved.

And I had never talked so much in my life. The calls – the endless phone enquiries from women across Boston who were looking for answers and understanding – were like a constant barrage of artillery fire, each one numbing and lulling the senses so that by the time we signed off for the week I was reeling on the verge of stupor.

I threw down the headphones and craned my neck, tilting my head from side to side to exercise stiff muscles. I caught sight of the clock on the wall. It was just past 4am.

Beyond the walls of the studio I could see Grover stabbing buttons on his keyboard as he shut his monitors down. His expression was clouded, his face crunched up into a scowl. He looked like he was in a hurry to be somewhere else.

“Well?” April sat back in her chair with a heavy sigh. “What did you think of your first week as a radio announcer?”

She looked fresh and alert. I guessed that came with time. For her it wasn’t 4am – it was like early evening because she was accustomed to sleeping through much of the day – a habit I was still struggling to develop.

“I’m beat,” I admitted. “I had no idea I would feel so drained. I thought talking to women about BDSM for a few hours a night sounded like the easiest work I’ve ever done. It isn’t.”

She laughed. “You will get used to it,” she said. “You’ll have to. The show is a fucking hit, Jericho. I’ve seen the numbers – they are going through the roof, and the calls coming into the station keep climbing.”

I nodded. I had been made aware by Nancy Collett that the station was pleased. There were new advertisers joining the show every night.

“I think the sub-club segment has been the game-breaker,” April said shaking her head slowly as though she was at a loss for words. “The way you run those sessions… I believe that’s what is bringing in the new listeners. It’s certainly been an eye-opener for me.”

I shrugged. Each of the sub-club sessions had been a gradual step of progression where I had slowly led listeners a little further along the path of discovering the erotic and emotional thrills of submission and surrender. Each night I had been a little bolder, revealed a little more of the kinds of thrills a submissive might experience. April’s enthusiasm for her modeling role had surprised me, and in the days since we had begun this journey, her inhibitions had melted away like early morning mist. The bond of friendship we had developed had quickly taken on the added layer of intimacy. I had seen her in her most private, secret moments, seen her face twisted with raw passion in the instant of her orgasm – it changed things.

April got out of her chair and reached for her handbag – and then paused as though suddenly struck by a thought.

“Would you like to meet my girlfriend?”

I looked pointedly at the clock. “Now?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Why not?”

“Because it’s 4am…”

April shook her head. “Renata is an artist. She paints through the night. We’ve both adjusted our body clocks to work when it’s dark and sleep during the day. It wouldn’t be a problem… she will be waiting for me, and it would be nice for you to meet her.”

I nodded my head. “Sure,” I said without enthusiasm. All I wanted to do was get back to my apartment and crawl into bed, but the sudden glow of excitement on April’s face suggested this was important to her. “I guess I could visit for a while.”

She clapped like she had just won a prize at the fair, and then her hand dived into her bag. She swept hair from her face, pressed the phone to her ear and chatted excitedly for a few minutes while I stretched and yawned.

It had been a long week… and it
still
wasn’t over.

Chapter 18.

I followed April in my own car through the fog-thickened streets to her apartment. The roads were quiet, the streetlights haloed in drifting tendrils of mist. The buildings were all dark and silent, so that as we climbed the stairwell to her apartment, I instinctively felt myself creeping lest I wake anyone in the complex who was lucky enough to be asleep.

April fiddled with a jangle of keys and then pushed open the front door. Instantly I was overwhelmed by a clash of scents.

I could smell cooking and I could smell incense – and underpinning it all was the pungent odor of turpentine. April held the door open for me and I went through to a tiny foyer. I could see an open apartment with a narrow hallway. On the far side of the room where I stood was a kitchen area. The unit was small, and sparsely furnished. There were beanbags on the floor, open books littering the coffee table. The floor was polished boards, and I noticed several pairs of shoes neatly lined up inside the doorway. Instinctively I kicked off my boots.

April came in behind me like a mini cyclone, bursting into the room and hurling her handbag carelessly onto a corner chair. She was calling out to her girlfriend as she swept towards the kitchen. There was a stainless steel pot simmering on the stove. April hovered her face over the cooking and inhaled.

“Renata? Where are you, honey? Jericho is here.”

After a few seconds a tall slim woman emerged from a room at the end of the darkened hallway. She had a wad of dirty cloth in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. She was wearing an over-sized man’s shirt and nothing else. The shirt was daubed in a rainbow of smeared paint.

The woman went into the kitchen and smiled lovingly into April’s face. The two women kissed as though they were alone. They were very different people. April’s girlfriend had high cheekbones and Slavic features. Her skin was darker, her hair cropped short and blonde. She was an inch taller than April, her breasts smaller, but her body more athletic.

The women broke their kiss but remained embracing each other. They turned their faces towards me, and the blonde woman ran her eyes over me with disconcerting frankness that could have been interpreted as a silent challenge.

“So, you are the famous Jericho James,” she said. She had an accent, a sharp guttural sound that clipped her words and took the softness from them. Her hands slid from around April’s waist and she propped them on her hips. “Welcome to our home,” the woman said. “I have heard much about you from April.”

Bohemian – that was the best way to describe Renata Koenig. She was German, and had moved to America with her parents when she was a child, but had retained the inflections of her accent while growing up. She was a struggling artist who despised governments, the power of the banks, and anything else that restricted her right to express herself in any way she wanted. She was twenty-six, and at that age she still retained the fervent passion of her ideals.

The two women were an interesting couple. I could see domination and leadership traits in Renata, and I could see the way April acquiesced naturally in the smallest domestic matters. Renata had the qualities to make her a formidable Mistress… if April was willing to submit to her.

Renata lowered herself onto a beanbag in the living room, legs crossed, with no regard at all to her body, or modesty. The over-sized shirt she wore gaped open as she reached for a cigarette and then paused before lighting it.

“What kind of book is your life?” she asked. She was staring at me, her expression frank and guileless.

“I beg your pardon?”

She waved the cigarette in the air with a flamboyant flick of her wrist. “It is a straightforward question,” she said. “I wanted to know what kind of book your life would be if it was ever written down.”

I still didn’t understand. April intercepted. She smiled at me. “My life would be a mystery story,” she said, “Because very few people know the real me – know that I am gay.”

Renata’s gaze stayed fixed on my face. “And my life story would be an epic struggle,” she decided with an elegant gesture. “One of those quest books where the heroine fights against evil and injustice.”

I nodded and hung a smile off the corner of my mouth. “Then I guess my life would be an adventure story,” I shrugged my shoulders. “One that doesn’t have a good ending – yet.”

Renata grunted. She reached out for my hands and turned them over. She held me by my wrists and her thumbs drew light tickling circles over my palms. She narrowed her eyes and her gaze became searching. For long seconds she said nothing. April was leaning in towards Renata, her lips slightly parted in fascination.

“You say adventure…” Renata’s accent seemed to thicken and her voice changed tone, “but I sense tragedy here too…”

I tried to cling to the smile but it slipped off my lips. I eased my hands away from her grip. “Your senses are wrong – sorry,” I said.

For long moments there was a bristle of tension in the air. Renata’s stare became speculative. Suddenly she flung my hands away as if she had been electrocuted. There was a flicker of disbelief and shock in her eyes, as if she had seen something that scared her. It lasted only a moment – and then it was gone.

“Renata does psychic readings,” April explained. “She’s very sensitive to the vibrations people give off. Sometimes she gets messages…”

“Really?” I shrugged my shoulders in a gesture of dismissal. “I’ve never been a believer in clairvoyants…”

“So, you fuck women who submit to your demands, yes?” Renata interrupted abruptly from the corner of her mouth, changing the subject with the kind of brusqueness that I was beginning to see as typical of her personality. The match flared, highlighting her wide penetrating gaze for an instant, and then she inhaled deeply and blew a plume of smoke at the ceiling.

She waved the match in the air until it went out, and April dutifully handed her an ashtray.

“I guess you could say that,” I conceded. “But that’s not how I would say it.”

“Oh,” Renata arched an intrigued eyebrow like she was interrogating me. “How would you say it then?”

I met her gaze steadily. “I treat those women who want to submit in a respectful manner that ensures we both benefit from each experience – sexually and emotionally,” I said. “Sexual domination – being a woman’s Master – is not a permission slip to be a brute or an abuser. A woman’s submission is a gift, and it’s something that must be handled carefully. It’s a fragile thing, built around trust. If you drop it even once, then the gift is shattered and can never be restored.”

Renata narrowed her eyes. She rolled the cigarette between her fingers. “You are talking about trust,” she said. “And by that you are really saying that submissives must be respected, yes?”

“Yes,” I said. I flashed a glance at April. She was sitting close to Renata, their shoulders touching. April had her head turned. She was watching the German girl with a rapt look of adoration lighting up her eyes.

I looked back at Renata. “If you are interested in the lifestyle, and if you wish to learn how to treat and train April as your submissive, you need to remember the relationship you have, and ensure it always remains more important than the roles you develop,” I said. “Don’t make the mistake of ever assuming April exists to serve you outside of the time you dedicate to sex play. That would be a mistake.”

Renata nodded. She crushed the cigarette out and shifted her weight in the beanbag so that I could see all the way up the length of her thighs. She wasn’t wearing panties.

“But some people live these lifestyles, correct?”

Everything she said ended with a question. Perhaps that was the German in her.

“Yes they do,” I agreed. “But those relationships often begin with that understanding. You are talking about taking an existing, loving relationship, and altering the balance of it. All I am saying is that you should be careful how you proceed. Don’t veer so far off course that what you already have is destroyed, or broken beyond repair.”

Renata nodded. Her gaze was cool, yet fascinated. She was intrigued in what I had to say, not interested in me. She nodded her head in thoughtful understanding for several seconds.

“Do you like art?’ she asked at last.

April cut in quickly, her words like the gush of a proud parent. “Renata is working on her first exhibition,” she explained. “A series of works that explore the emotion of agony.”

I looked blank. “Is it abstract art?”

Renata nodded her head. “Yes,” she said. As she answered, her hand absently reached across and rested high up on April’s thigh. It was a possessive thing – a reflex – but I noticed.

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand abstract. I’m a simple guy.”

Renata gave me the hint of a mocking smile. “Then tell me simply what I must do to give April the same submissive experiences she shares with you. No abstract answers,” she insisted. “Just tell me.”

I could see Renata offending a lot of Americans. Her nature and the language she used was curt and abrupt. It was almost confronting. It was something I was accustomed to – Australians can be pretty blunt in expressing themselves – but I imagined it made her hard to like as a friend.

“Tease her,” I said. “That would be a start. Make her
want
to give herself to you. You can’t just stand over her and demand submission. You need to weaken her will to resist, in the nicest possible way, and then reward her generously when she does.”

Renata frowned in thought and then uncurled her long legs and got to her feet. She unbuttoned the shirt and stood shamelessly naked in the middle of the living room. Her pussy was shaved smooth, her breasts pert and firm. She stood still for a moment and then sauntered to the far corner of the room. She dropped into the chair and spread her legs wide.

“Come!” she snapped her fingers at April. “Lick my pussy.” She reached down between her parted thighs and pulled the soft lips of her sex open. April crawled across the floor and dipped her head dutifully between Renata’s legs. Renata sucked in a sharp breath and looked across the room at me with a smug smile of satisfaction.

“Yes?” she asked.

“No.” I said.

Renata’s expression turned dark and confused in an instant. She sat upright and clamped her thighs together. April sat back, frowning.

Renata got to her feet and her hands went to her hips. “What was wrong? She did as I told her.”

“Yes,” I said, “but you forgot the most important part of the process – you forgot your submissive.”

Renata looked incredulous and I got the impression she was unaccustomed to being told she was wrong. There was the petulant air of a spoiled child about the way she pursed her lips.

“Show me,” she demanded.

Normally at this point I would have told anyone who spoke to me like that to
fuck off
… and the words leaped quickly to my lips, before I caught the bewildered plea on April’s face. I choked back the words and got to my feet.

I turned to April. “You will need to strip down to your underwear.”

“Do it,
Liebling,”
Renata insisted.

April undressed quietly, and when she was in her bra and panties I ordered her to her knees in the position we had been practicing during the sub-club sessions.

I turned to Renata. “What you just did was no different to a guy who just wants his cock sucked,” I said. “You wanted your pleasure so you ordered April to satisfy you. That might be fine in a few months time when you have established your roles and you demonstrate that her satisfaction matters to you. But right now, it was selfish. Nothing more.”

“But she did it!” Renata said with a theatrical flourish of her hands. “She obeyed me.”

“Out of duty, not out of desire,” I said. “It’s like a couple that has been married for twenty years who have sex once a week. The woman rolls onto her back and the man grunts above her until he comes. The woman does that out of duty to the relationship. Desire is something else entirely.”

Renata saw my point, but didn’t admit it. I saw the understanding in her eyes but she was too arrogant to concede her mistake.

I went towards where April was kneeling. “Open your mouth,” I said. It was a command and April obeyed me instinctively. I stepped closer and pressed the bulge in my jeans against her face. “Feel me,” I said, softening my voice so that it was thick with passion. “Feel how hard my cock is through my jeans. Use your mouth and your hands. I want you to rub me until I’m aroused.”

April’s hands came from behind her back and she pressed her palms against the swelling length of me. Through the thick denim I could feel the teasing exploration of her fingers. Then she pressed her mouth against my jeans and her hot breath radiated through the fabric.

“I’m going to fuck you tonight,” I said, my voice deep and commanding. “I’m going to fill you with my cock, but I need you to be ready for me. I want you wet and mad with desire before I bend you over and take you. Do you understand?”

April lifted her face to mine. Her eyes were enormous, glazed with desire. Her lips were parted, and she was panting softly. She nodded her head.

“Good girl,” I purred. I dropped down to my haunches and ran my hand possessively over her breasts, cupping each one through the lace of her bra, and then reaching down inside the waistband of her panties until the tips of my fingers were just an inch away from the bud of her clit. April sucked in a deep breath so her whole belly concaved. Her eyes were screwed tightly shut and she swayed as though she were teetering on the verge of a precipice – praying she would be carried over the abyss.