‘I –, I –’ He let out a quick breath and collected himself. ‘No, I understand perfectly well, Ed,’ he said as his racing pulse started returning to normal. ‘I’ll make sure everything’s rock solid.’ Like his cock at the thought of being at a conference with her. That is what this was, right?
‘Good man,’ Canavan said, clapping his shoulder and walking back behind his desk. ‘I’ll make sure your clients are taken care of and that you’re compensated. I don’t want you to worry about that. I appreciate you taking this on for us.’
He had turned to walk out when Ed said, ‘Damn, my watch stopped. Do you have the time?’
Automatically he looked at his wrist.
Stopwatch.
My cock belongs to Mistress.
‘I actually –’ he floundered. Ed stared at him. Then at the obvious fact that he did have what appeared to be a watch on his wrist. ‘Huh, funny thing, mine’s not working either! How’d ya like that?’
He backed out the door. And fled.
* * *
Did he know when his phone rang as soon as he returned to his office that it would be her? Not then. But he would become accustomed to her almost spooky ability to predict his actions.
‘Hi, sweetie. Did you have a good meeting with Mr Canavan?’ Her voice coming through the phone was like ribbons of silk weaving around his body.
‘I did,’ he said.
‘I did, what?’ she demanded.
‘Uh, sorry! I did, Mistress.’
‘The next time you forget, we’ll have to do something drastic to make sure you remember. You don’t want that, do you, sweetie?’
‘Er, no, Mistress,’ he said, although he wasn’t altogether sure.
‘Good. We have two weeks until the conference. We should take this time to get to know each other better. I don’t like to travel with strangers.’
‘Yes, Mistress.’
‘So I have some questions,’ she said, and then he could hear her, in crisp neat tones to someone in the room with her, presumably her assistant, requesting coffee and some statistic reports. ‘You have time, don’t you, sweetie? For me?’
He glanced down at his full calendar.
‘Of course, Mistress.’
She chuckled. ‘Good!’ He heard her assistant come back with coffee. Then the sound of the door closing. He heard her take a sip. ‘So, sweetie,’ she said. ‘Ed tells me you’re married …’
* * *
So many questions. They kept coming, more and more. And yes, there were questions like what books did he read, what TV shows did he watch, who was he going to vote for in the upcoming primaries. But then came questions that could have been filed under the title ‘Inappropriate Questions That Are Surely Sexual Harassment’. Questions about habits with his wife. Oh, he thought about Anne, his dainty little Anne with her fair skin and pale-blonde hair, her petite, almost boy-like figure that he had always adored. The things Mistress asked, her giggling tone, the almost belittling way she spoke of his beloved wife. God, part of him wanted to gasp in horror, slam the phone down, run home and throw his arms around Anne, cover her body up with his like a shield. Why, oh, why then did he do nothing of the sort? Why did he not only submit to her questions, but also feel himself getting hard over them, as though divulging the most intimate details of his relationship with his wife, such a depraved and disloyal act, were in fact the most intoxicating aphrodisiac? Mistress’s desire to learn about him was voracious, like she was eating him alive. He felt that. Or that in answering her he was ripping himself open and laying his insides out for her to casually peruse and then choose something to examine.
He dutifully responded to everything.
And then she named him. His name was not Paul. But she named him SubPaul. He could not help but wonder if it was because it sounded like ‘sub par’.
Chapter 4
‘We’ve got a lot of time to kill here,’ Mistress said. ‘Let’s play twenty questions!’ Mischief and cheekiness radiated from her beautiful face like warmth from the glow of a fire. ‘Tell me how you feel about spanking.’
Sitting next to her, he could barely endure the sweet torturous mixture of arousal and struggle he always felt in her presence. In combination these two polarising impulses seemed to converge, conflict and compel the feelings to multiply in a seemingly never-ending vortex of lust and desperation.
‘What’s the matter, sweetie? You’re so quiet! Are you not excited about our trip?’ she chirped, opening a blanket and spreading it over them. He was by the window, she the aisle. She lifted the arm-rest between them and snuggled demurely into his side, making his heart-rate elevate as he simultaneously caught a faint whiff of her gloriously unique feminine scent and a flash of cleavage from her low-cut dress. Following his gaze she giggled and whispered, ‘I never wear a bra on a long flight. Too uncomfortable. Especially on a red-eye like this.’ He smiled wanly. Well endowed as she was, he had never seen her go bra-less in public. But the dress she wore was tight and seemed to hold her in. The effect was mind-blowing and now he understood why his eyes had been drawn to her as if by magnets. He’d been even more mesmerised than usual by her figure, her breasts, as he’d watched her while they were waiting in the terminal. No bra. No bra lines. Nothing between his arm, which her chest now pressed against, and those exquisite mounds of flesh he so coveted; nothing but the soft fabric of her royal-blue dress. She often wore green; it was probably her best colour, contrasting so strikingly with her crimson hair. But today it was blue and it gave her a lovely quality of the elements: fire and water.
‘Anyway, I asked you a question, love. Do you like to be spanked?’ she asked, a little too loudly.
‘No, Mistress,’ he murmured, eyeing the other passengers. ‘I never really understood the appeal.’
‘Is that right?’ she said. And smiled. The way she smiled melted him down. A smile that made his heart keen and his cock drip. It was a smile that said she could see all the way into his psyche, back to his lonely childhood, down to his core, a smile that made him feel small and helpless and cared for, all at the same time. A smile that made him, above all, desperate to please her.
‘Well, we’ll just see, won’t we?’ And she arched one gorgeously manicured eyebrow.
Laughter across the aisle drew their attention. They both glanced back to the centre seats one row behind, which were a mass of giggling, hair and perfume that wafted over to where they sat. An entranced young male flight attendant stood in the aisle proffering bottles of wine and little bags of snacks like sacrifices to the goddesses of cool. ‘I am predicting we might have trouble getting any attention on our side of the aisle tonight,’ Mistress said. ‘Then again –’ she leaned back over to him, giving him another peek down her dress ‘– you might like it better if less people see what we get up to,’ she purred into his ear.
His prick had been growing steadily since she first pressed her soft curves against him. Now heat warmed his face as it continued to grow. His mind, like the needle on a skipping record, could not fit in a groove to play out what plans she might have in store for him on this five-hour flight. He couldn’t seem to form any thoughts; his brain just spun and spun on the sights she flashed him, the words she fed into his brain. He could only swallow and sit in patient torment.
Watching him try to work things out, she reached over and rumpled his hair. ‘Sweetie, you’re so cute when you’re horny and petrified!’ She drew her hand down the side of his face, gazing into his brown eyes with her jade-green