Page 7 of Jonah Noble - Anticipation Is Everything (Interview With a Master 2.5)

“She said yes.”

Leticia looked startled, as though with my answer had come the realization that we were about to cross over the line from harmless fantasy and into a very different reality.

“Really?”

I arched an eyebrow. “Would I joke about something as important as this?”

“No,” Leticia admitted. She gnawed on her lip. “When?”

“When is she coming?”

“Yes.”

“Friday,” I said.

Leticia blanched, and then her face contorted into an expression of terror.

“This Friday?”

“Yes.”

“But Jonah, that’s too soon!” she began to panic. She looked like the walls of her world were closing in around her. “There’s no time to prepare. No time to…”

“There is time,” I said calmly. “Because it’s all the time you have, Leticia. Cameron will be here in two days. I told her you would be in contact to finalize the arrangements.”

Leticia whirled away, numbed and stunned. She drifted from the office in a sleepwalker’s daze and I let her go without further comment. I had some thinking of my own to do.

* * *

Arousal in a woman begins at a different place than it does in men. The stimulus for a man is much more immediate, and can range from the most simple, mundane observation of a pretty girl on the sidewalk to graphic images. Once the spark of arousal is ignited, it generally continues to burn until the desire is released. But for women, arousal begins in a more distant, more mysterious place, and desire tends to ebb and flow like smoke. It can drift away… or it can smolder.

Arousal for women is more sensory – it can stem from emotion, touch, smell, sound… so many different sources that conquering a woman’s mind and heart is often at the core of being able to inspire and awaken their desire.

However Cameron would be a quite different proposition. I imagined her in her home. Her mind would be a whirl of disbelief and surprise, but over the coming days her thoughts would surely begin to turn to Friday night. In her mind she would be playing out her own fantasies, her own erotic scenes so that – in a way – she would arrive in an already aroused state. The dilemma would be her inhibitions and her self-consciousness. Every woman – no matter how beautiful – is conscious of their body and their own perceived inadequacies. Imagined or not, these fears and doubts were going to curtail Cameron’s fantasies and hide them behind her natural nervousness.

I needed a plan.

* * *

“I don’t know what you are expecting when Cameron arrives on Friday night,” I said to Leticia at dinner, “but I doubt whatever you are anticipating is going to match what I have planned.”

Leticia looked up at me from across the dinner table. Her gaze seemed distracted.

“What do you mean?” she asked warily.

I set down my knife and fork and sat back in the chair.

“Assuming we meet Cameron on Friday night, and assuming the conversation goes well and she feels comfortable,” I raised a finger to make a point. “And assuming I agree with your assessment that she has a genuinely submissive nature and a sincere interest in learning more about the lifestyle… what do you expect to happen then?”

Leticia looked wide-eyed and innocent. “I haven’t thought about it?” she muttered.

I gave her a withering glare and her eyes became hunted. She sighed and seemed to deflate a little. She licked her lips nervously under the intensity of my stare.

“Okay,” she confessed. “I have thought about it. Damn it, Jonah, it’s about the only thing I can think about.” Leticia wasn’t enjoying this moment. She fidgeted in her chair and wrung her hands together. “I imagined we would go down to the bungalow and…”

“And what – exactly?”

“And you would begin to train her while I watched.”

I leaned forward, my expression fixed. “No,” I said. “That’s exactly what is not going to happen.”

Leticia blinked. The hot flush of awkward color that had risen on her cheeks slowly drained away. “Then what did you have in mind?”

I explained my thoughts to Leticia – detailed the inhibitions that Cameron would be feeling. “So, assuming we get along and I am convinced she is suitable for training, I plan on spending the first night making love to her – having sex,” I said calmly. “You can certainly watch, but the lighting should be a little low, and there will be no BDSM training on the first night. It needs to be an evening of discovery and sex where she can begin to relax, deal with her nervousness and let down her guard. Without those elements, her training can never succeed because she will remain inhibited.”

Leticia’s expression changed very slowly. Her eyes became darker and slanted. The powder of freckles across her nose began to glow like flakes of gold. She blinked slowly and I could see she was wrestling with a sudden flare of temper, or perhaps the instinct of jealousy.

“Jonah, I don’t know…” she began cautiously, as though she still hadn’t had time to separate her emotions from the logic. “Amidst all the things I have fantasized about since the moment Cameron agreed to join us, watching the both of you in bed together – having sex – was not something I had ever considered. I thought your sessions with this woman would be about BDSM training. Somehow I imagined the whole process being more disconnected and dispassionate.”

I nodded. “So did I,” I said, “until I thought about it.” I got up from the dining table and automatically began to pace across the floor, my hands thrust deep into my pockets. My head was bowed in careful thought for several seconds before I spoke again.

“Put yourself in Cameron’s shoes,” I said reasonably. “We are complete strangers, and she is a young woman with no real experience in the BDSM lifestyle. It’s only natural that she is going to arrive here full of reluctant doubts. Taking her to bed – from a purely physical point of view – is the only possible way I can make her comfortable with her body, with me, with you watching… and with the environment we plan on introducing her to.”

Leticia said nothing.

* * *

“I’m nervous,” Leticia said. She glanced at the clock again and then wrung her hands. She had a hectic look in her eyes. It was just after 6pm. The taxi bringing Cameron from her hotel in Groves Crossing would arrive in less than an hour.

“That’s normal,” I assured her. She was standing in the bathroom, leaning close to the vanity mirror. She pressed at her hair for the thousandth time and then sighed as though defeated.

“This is not your normal kind of nervous, Jonah,” Leticia’s voice sounded harsh – a measure of her rising anxiety. “This is your shit-scared kind of nervous. It’s your mother of all kinds of nervous.”

I tried not to smile. Leticia was working herself up into a frantic kind of panic. She pursed her lips, peered close at her reflection to inspect her lipstick, and then turned around to face me. She was wearing just a bra and panties and in the late afternoon sunlight her skin was painted golden brown. The light through the window ma

de the highlights in her hair spark with white fire.

“It’s not nerves,” I assured her. I took her gently by the shoulders and pulled her close so that I caught the scent of her perfume. “It’s sexual tension. You’re thinking too much about what might happen.”

“Of course I am!” Leticia’s voice snapped like a trap. “I can’t stop playing these scenarios in my imagination.” She whirled away again, as though to look at me any longer was to reveal her darkest, deepest fantasies. “I keep seeing you and Cameron on that bed together…”

“And it arouses you… or frightens you?”

There was a long pause. This wasn’t the kind of silence that comes from careful thought. It was the emptiness of reticence.

“It arouses me,” Leticia whispered at last. “So much so that I can barely function, and I just don’t know what to do about it.”

I shrugged and stepped close behind her. I wrapped my arms around her waist and clasped my hands together so that my fingertips were tucked just inside the waistband of her panties. Leticia leaned back against me as though sheltering from a storm in the lee of a rocky boulder. I leaned my mouth close to her ear.

“I have a saying that you might find helpful at a moment like this,” I offered. “Would you like to hear it?”

“Will it help?” Leticia’s voice became soft and melting.

“It will help you understand what you’re going through.”

Another ratchet of tension seemed to seep from her body. I felt the stiffness seep from her neck and shoulders. She sighed.

“Okay,” she said. “Tell me.”

I brushed my lips against her neck and drew a line of soft sexy kisses up the length of her throat until I reached her ear.

“Anticipation… is everything!”

* * *

The doorbell rang at a minute after 7pm. Leticia shot me a fearful glance. She looked rooted to the floor, her legs unable to move. In the background I could hear the discreet sounds of the caterers who were making the final preparations for dinner. Leticia’s glance was a beseeching plea.

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