Page 10 of After Dark
When she was satisfied that everything was up to his standards, Josette returned to stand before him, entirely naked. She let her hands fall open at her sides. She knew better than to look at him at this point.
“Eyes,” he said, after he took his time looking her over.
She lifted her gaze and gave herself to him. That was what it felt like in the intensity of his stare.
The cold steel from before was gone, replaced by that rainstorm that had always made her heart ache. Tonight was no different. Arlo sat in the chair, looking like some kind of ancient king. The sort that fought for his throne with his own hands and should more properly be festoonedin furs, perhaps. The skulls of his enemies. A scepter made of bone.
He was a warrior king, and she was his spoils, and she felt herself shiver slightly as she stood the way he liked her to stand. Thrusting her breasts out. Making sure her legs were slightly apart, so that her pussy was always visible.
“Turn,” he told her.
She did, giving him her back, knowing that his gaze traced the line of her spine, the swell of her ass.
“Turn again, and kneel,” Arlo ordered her in that dark, deliciously rough voice of his. “Hands behind your back, pussy nicely displayed, and your head up.”
She obeyed, sinking down to her knees before him once more and presenting herself to him.
“You’ve gained muscle,” he said after a moment.
Josette couldn’t tell if she heard a slightly reproving note in his voice, but if it was there, she imagined that was because he had always viewed her body as his property. But then, so did she. Meaning, among many other things, that she was not supposed to change it without his express permission.
Of course, if he was making a list of her transgressions, she doubted that would be the top of the list.
But there was definitely a list. She had no doubt about that.
“Yes, sir,” Josette said. When he gave her that head tilt again, she swallowed, though her throat felt rough. But she liked the roughness. It made her think of his cock surging deep, her gag reflex be damned. It reminded her that she was his. That despite these long, lonely eighteen months, she was his again. For now, anyway. “I started lifting weights at the gym.”
“After refusing when I asked you to, repeatedly?”Josette didn’t mistake that for a real question. Arlo made a considering sort of noise. “Interesting.”
Somewhere in his head, she saw that infraction added to that checklist of his.
“I like it,” he told her after a moment. “I like you strong, Josette. Not breakable. Or so fragile that anything might crack you in half.”
She did not pretend that she thought he was speaking only of her body.
“In an hour,” he said in the same very nearly friendly voice, with her favorite sort of steel beneath it, “I have a friend coming over. He has a brand-new submissive and wants to give her some training. He thinks she would benefit from some practice in deep throating and so what you will do is model perfection for her. You do take a cock in the mouth so well.” He paused, and there was a faint smile on his face when he continued. “You remember Frederick.”
Josette could not help the little prickle that went over her at that name. She did indeed remember Frederick Hill. He was such a hard ass that it was whispered that the partners in his fancy San Francisco law firm called himMastertoo. He was a good friend of Arlo’s and they had all played together many times.
Frederick was unyielding. He insisted on strict obedience, and had a cock like a battering ram.
Like Arlo, Frederick liked to share.
And one of the many terrible, wonderful things that Josette had learned was that she liked to be shared. Particularly when it pleased Arlo.
When it was for his pleasure, she could do almost anything.
Except that last bit of honest intimacy,a voice deep inside her reminded her.
She wasn’t blind to her own faults by any means. Josette was perfectly aware that there was a relationship between the way she could surrender to the sexual demands that pleased Arlo, but found it so much more difficult to match those with the intimacy that he demanded.
But then, he knew that as well as she did.
Just as he knew that she was a little bit afraid of Frederick. The right kind of afraid, because that man had a hard hand, a deeper relationship with sadism that Arlo did — which was saying something — and brooked absolutely no disobedience.
The shudder that overtook her then was part memory, part anticipation.
“I see that you do remember him,” Arlo said, sounding darkly satisfied. “What a delight, Josette, that you’ll be able to provide a shining example to Frederick’s new and untrained submissive. You will, of course, give her something to aspire to. An illustrative guide to total surrender.”
