Page 4 of Jonah Noble - Anticipation Is Everything (Interview With a Master 2.5)

I realized this was her solution… and I lay awake, staring at the ceiling, my thoughts fraught and jittering, wondering if it was the answer.

* * *

The conversation the next morning at breakfast was stilted and desultory. Leticia was withdrawn, deep in thought so that even the most banal questions seemed to require an enormous effort for her attention. I sat and ate in silence, watching her across the table. There was an edge of embarrassed nervousness in the way she held herself, and in the darting flick of her eyes when she glanced at me.

Finally I pushed my chair back and stood. Outside the morning was bright and sunny, the sky a shattering shade of blue above the ragged peaks of the distant hills. Long shadows spilled into the kitchen from the big bay window and I went towards the glass doors that opened into the garden.

“Come with me,” I told Leticia.

She followed without question, her body seeming to move as if hypnotized.

The gardens were a manicured oasis, dotted with lush green trees that sprinkled shade across the lawns. Flower beds followed a cobblestoned path that meandered through the grounds, connecting the main house to the swimming pool and beyond – a hundred yards further from the house – a small bungalow that had once been a guesthouse.

Leticia followed me obediently. It was a beautiful clear day and already the approaching summer could be felt in the flare of the sun’s light. We reached the bungalow and I stood at the front door, waiting for Leticia.

“This is a lot like my father’s home,” I explained. “The house is not as grand, but there are elements of the layout that bring back memories,” I said. “It was one of the reasons I bought this property.”

After the orchestrated ‘death’ of Jonah Noble and the rise of Jason Luke, author, Leticia and I had relocated north, further away from the city. It was impossible for us to keep the old home, and I had given the property to Mrs. Hortez and her family. This home was one I had owned for many years. It was secluded, and isolated – yet still within a few hours drive of the nearest major city. It had also given Leticia the opportunity to make a home for us – for her to decorate without trying to cover over the ghosts and the memories of my earlier life.

Now I was going to re-ignite one of those memories. Deliberately.

I pushed open the front door to the bungalow and stood on the gloomy threshold for a long moment. The air was stale, the windows all shuttered so that it took several seconds for our eyes to adjust. We were staring at a small, neat living room area. On the far side of the room was a breakfast bar that divided the space into an adjoining kitchen. Leticia followed me inside and I went to one of the windows and drew back the heavy drapes. Dust motes hung thick in the air. Leticia wrinkled her nose.

“Why did you bring me here?” she asked softly.

I said nothing. I took her hand and led her down the short passageway to a bedroom and an adjoining bathroom.

“Remember when we first moved here? We talked about cleaning this bungalow up for guests.”

Leticia nodded dully.

“But we never have any guests,” I said with an ironic smile. “Because we’re not the kind of people to have close friends – not the kind of people who enjoy socializing.”

Again Leticia nodded. It was true. In all the time we had been living here, not a single visitor had come to the home.

“So I was thinking about this place – what to do with it… and then it occurred to me last night that it reminds me a great deal of the guest home on my father’s property… the place where I first spied on Claire Moreland all those years ago. I told you about her when you first interviewed me.”

“Yes,” Leticia said with sudden inflection in her voice. It was as if a spark had been ignited.

I said no more. I led Leticia into the small bathroom. “Around about there,” I pointed to a place on the wall above a shelf. “Would have been the spot I made my spy hole.” I shrugged. “The layout is not the same – there are differences in the design of these rooms… but I think you get the point.”

Leticia was frowning. “I don’t, actually,” she said. There was a tiny furrow on her brow because her imagination could not make the leap to the destination my thoughts had already arrived at.

“I was thinking this bungalow would make the perfect place to train a new submissive,” I spelled it out. “She would stay here, away from the main house, and I would train her how to submit to a Master. She would learn to pleasure me, and she would be pleasured when deserving of reward. She would learn submission and discipline… and you would be able to watch it all.”

It was out in the open now – the subject had been broached in the cold light of day and now it had to be discussed and dealt with. Leticia’s eyes became wide and fathomless for a moment, and then she drifted into the bedroom and dropped heavily onto the edge of the bed, her hands clasped between her thighs, her head hanging so that her hair obscured the expression on her face. I stood in the doorway with my arms folded.

“Jonah,” Leticia looked up at me with a fraught expression on her face. “I… I just don’t know…” she began, biting on each word. “This whole idea of me watching you with another woman, training someone to submit and surrender to you… it might end up being a crown of thorns, disguised as a garland of roses.”

I blinked. Leticia’s eloquent analogy startled me. I nodded my head slowly, conceding the truth of it.

“Yes,” I said. “From a practical point of view I see no real problems, but from an emotional point of view… well that is only something you can answer.”

Leticia lapsed into long silence. She had her bottom lip trapped between her teeth.

“It might be too much,” she said at last. She glanced up at me like she was trying to search for the answers by reading my expression. “Fantasy is one thing… now we’re talking about the very real possibility of making this a reality.”

“We are,” I said. “At last. I wished we had had this conversation sooner. I wished you had talked to me rather than contemplating breaking us apart.”

“But it might still come to that!” Leticia’s voice filled with alarm and warning and fear. She shook her head. Her face was very pale, her eyes dark and impossible to read. “If we do this – if we find another woman for you to train in sex and submission – it might be more than I can stand.”

“Yes,” I said.

Leticia stared. “Doesn’t that scare you?”

“Yes,” I said, and I meant it. “It terrifies me, Leticia. But there is truth in what you said last night. I do feel restless. I do miss the lifestyle, and we are different people with different sexual interests. If we can make this work successfully, it will be the solution to our particular relationship’s needs. If we can’t make it work – if you can’t separate the physical from the emotional – what have we lost that you weren’t contemplating destroying anyhow?”

Again, Leticia lapsed into thoughtful silence. I watched her expression change and then change again as she wrestled with the consequences of what we were contemplating.

“What if you fall in love with the woman you are training?”

I actually laughed. Leticia looked offended, as though I was dismissing the question without giving it consideration.

“Leticia, you are the only woman I have loved – the only woman I will ever love. I lived with Caroline for three years, trained her, shared a house… but I never fell in love with her. Never. I have a lot of experience at being dispassionate and disconnected. Training a woman to submit is a challenge for me, and a mental and emotional experience for them. For me it’s a matter of discipline and control – and they are things I excel at. Love doesn’t factor into the equation.”

Leticia was watching me carefully, listening to my voice and searching my eyes. “We would need to establish some ground rules,” she said softly.

“Yes.”

“Lots of rules.”

I inclined my head. “What did you have in mind?”

“I… I’m not sure…”

I frowned. “I don’t believe you,” I said flatly. “I don’t believe you have been considering an idea such as this for some time, and still not thought about guidelines.”

Leticia shrugged and a wan smile slipped off the corner of her mouth. “Maybe I have one or two ideas…”

I waited. Said nothing. Leticia suddenly seemed to become aware of the bed she was sitting on, as though the realization that one day soon I might be on this bed with another woman. She stood up and brushed dust from her hands.

“You have to promise you won’t fall in love,” Leticia waggled a finger at me like a menacing threat.

“I promise,” I clamped my hand over my heart. “And I think you should find the woman. I think it should be someone you select, not me.”

“Find a woman?” Leticia arched an eyebrow and propped her hands on her hips. “Jonah I don’t need to find a woman, I simply need to choose one.”

I frowned again. “Meaning?”

“Meaning Jason Luke gets a hundred emails a week from women wanting to learn submission from you – pleading for you to train them. They’ve all read the book – and they all want you to train them.”

I blinked. “I get emails?”

Leticia shook her head in a kind of wonder. “Yes,” she said. “I have a folder of women who have contacted you.”

I narrowed my eyes a little. It was another measure of how long Leticia had been contemplating this idea.

I shrugged. “Okay, so select a woman,” I said. “It doesn’t matter to me who you choose physically, but I will need to interview them and make sure they are emotionally and mentally suitable. I need to know they are truly submissive in nature, and not just caught up in the BDSM phenomenon because it’s popular.”

Leticia nodded. “What else?”

“You tell me.”

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