Page 24 of Ward

“I don’t want to see you outside this room again tonight,” I tell her.

She bows her head. “Yes, Sir.”

God help me.

Concentration is hopeless at my desk the next morning. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about Grace since I left her in her room.

Thankfully, Jen is there to direct my attention like a teacher guiding a restless student back to his workbook. She showed up bright and early, ahead of the cleanup crew, overflowing with apologies for having missed Grace’s text message.

“I still can’t believe I turned my phone off,” Jen says.

I glance at her, seated across from my desk, and remind her, “I told you to take the night off.”

“I should’ve at least checked my messages before going to bed. I hope Grace’s unexpected arrival didn’t...disrupt the evening.”

Disrupt doesn’t begin to describe it. Her presence sent a shockwave throughout my meticulously compartmentalized world. What she saw last night, the desires she confessed... It’s changed everything.

I didn’t play with anyone for the rest of the night after I left Grace’s room. I didn’t want to, which is odd considering I’d gone so long without that kind of release.

After the last of the catering staff had cleared out and the house fell silent, I took a shower, crawled into bed, and tried in vain to let the oblivion of sleep distract me from the only other soul in the house. My mind refused to be chained to the bed. It wandered down corridors, into Grace’s room, where the memory of her on her knees was still fresh.

The fantasy should’ve stopped there. It shouldn’t even have started, but it sure as hell shouldn’t have progressed to envisioning her wearing my cuffs, or on the receiving end of my flogger, my crop, my hand coming down hard on her bare ass. Her lithe ballet-honed body twitching and writhing, crying out for more...

Before I knew it, I was humping the mattress like a boy in his childhood bed. It was as if I’d convinced myself that by not touching my cock, I wasn’t really jacking off to the memory of Grace all but begging me to claim her.

I don’t fuck my submissives, but she doesn’t know that. These past few weeks, she’s been researching the lifestyle, assuming that I’m like the Doms in her movies and books. Doms who follow up a hard beating with an even harder fuck.

Grace’s interest in BDSM isn’t the problem. It’s her age and inexperience, her innate naïveté.

What happened with my son’s mother was the result of my own ignorance. You can take every precaution you can think of, and still end up irreparably harming someone in ways you didn’t intend. And negligence aside, there’s no shortage of devils out there. Predators posing as Doms, looking to exploit innocent flesh.

The thought of Grace getting involved with a careless or outright abusive Dom festers like rotten meat in the pit of my stomach. It churns, whipping up anger and dread until I’m physically ill.

I won’t let anything like that happen to her.

A knock sounds on my office door.

My muscles tense. She’s up earlier than usual this morning, because of course she is.

“Let her in,” I say to Jen.

Jen eyes me curiously, then gets up to answer the door.

“Grace, darling,” she says kindly. “Do come in.”

My ward steps into the room, her gaze immediately drawn to mine. She smiles nervously. Her cream-colored dress fits loosely and ends just above her knees. My gaze maps the exposed terrain of her skin, her toned calves and shoulders. The shallow valley between her breasts, left bare by the vee-shaped neckline, is begging to be caressed by hot wax.

“Shall I fix you both a cup of tea?” Jen asks.

I close my laptop and get up from behind my desk.

“That won’t be necessary,” I tell Jen. “Give us a few minutes.”

“Of course.” My assistant pats Grace’s shoulder on her way out of the office.

Grace hits me with another shy smile. “Good morning.”

“Close the door,” I say, and she barely skips a beat before doing as she’s told. I gesture to the sitting area where we first sat together the day she arrived at my home. “Take a seat.”

---