For Her Pleasure
Kyoko Church
Table of Contents
Prologue
‘Sweet –’ Mistress started. But he saw her flinch. And his heart died a little. ‘Paul, there’s no such thing as truth,’ she said.
He didn’t disagree. He remembered, now, his place. He kept his subbie mouth shut.
This is what she’d been teaching him. In the human psyche there is no such thing as truth, only perspective. She understood that a person can have a secret, something he thinks is ugly. So he hides it from view, tucks it away, only visits it in secret, on weekends and then only to torture himself, like picking at a scab. But she saw the glimmer of it. So she plucked it out, dusted it off. Turned it a hair to the left. And stood back for him to see. Waited for him to realise: the thing he most hated, he could actually love.
She taught him that. She gave him that gift.
And then he betrayed her.
‘Take these keys and unlock that cabinet.’ Her emerald eyes flashed with a thousand storms behind them. Only yesterday they shone with her laughter. That he was responsible made him want to crumble to the floor.
Obediently he took the keys. The cabinet she was motioning to was in the corner, mahogany to match the other furniture in her office. He’d never noticed it before.
He opened it. And gasped. But then he knew. And suddenly, unaccountably, shockingly he was consumed with want, with need. A new need. A dark one.
‘You pick which one –’ her voice, coming from behind him, was taut with barely contained rage ‘– slut. And bring it to me.’
Knees trembling, he chose a wooden paddle. Its wood was also dark and polished to a high sheen. It looked like an oar with most of the handle cut off. There was a leather tie running through a hole in the top of the short handle from which it hung in the cabinet next to other tools.
When he was naked, when he was prostrated over her desk, when he felt the first blow come down on his bare ass, heard the smack, felt the wind rush up as her arm was raised again for a second one and the heat and pain sprang from his reddening skin as the breath was sucked out of him, only then did the hammering of his breaking heart begin to still, to slow. He turned slightly to see her face. It was a mask of calm. But for the glassy sheen of tears welling in her eyes.
And he willed her: harder. Hit me harder. It’s not enough. It will never be enough.
Chapter 1
‘A typical victim of sexual harassment,’ he was saying confidently, just before the madness began, ‘is someone in a subordinate position. Perhaps an immigrant or someone in a first job.’
A noise in the back of the room, the sound of the door to the conference room opening and closing, caused his colleagues to turn around. They all watched as she entered and the air in the room changed.
‘I sincerely apologise for being tardy,’ she said, a warm, wide smile on her face. ‘There was an accident on the highway that detained me unavoidably.’ She walked to the front of the room. ‘I’m glad you were able to get started in my absence.’
He knew nothing about women’s fashion but he recognised quality and elegance in a woman’s business suit when he saw them. That she could combine those characteristics with complete professionalism and not-a-hair-out-of-place fastidiousness in her grooming was his first indication of who she was. There was more there too, right from the beginning. A heat. The way the suit glided snugly over her curves, like she could have made the decision to go a little bigger but then the material wouldn’t pull in just the slightest way, suggesting as it did that her luscious figure could barely be contained, that it was waiting, like a predatory animal, to spring out at a moment’s notice. But he shoved that out of his mind like the completely wrong thought at the completely wrong time that it was.
He felt the slightest stirring of unease for a millisecond as she put out her hand to introduce herself. He was not usually intimidated by beautiful women. But something about her – glossy auburn hair all swept up in a surprisingly old-fashioned chignon away from emerald eyes that seemed to look right into his brain; gorgeous, flawless ivory skin over cheekbones so exquisite – made him unusually ashamed of his own geekiness. Normally he wore his geekdom like a badge of honour. But in the face of her perfection he was briefly transported back to high school, aware of his average clothes, his average shoes, his average hair. She was not even the kind of woman he was normally attracted to. He usually went for the petite blonde type. She was all curves, very Marilyn Monroe, but with that hair the colour of fire. Embarrassingly the phrase ‘va va voom’ ran through his head.
But then he took her hand, slim and soft in his own, and the way she smiled so easily at him made his unease flutter away, swept off like threatening clouds blown by an easy wind on a summer day.
‘I can take