Interview with a Master (8 page)

I looked up hopefully. “Did that make sense?”

Leticia shook her head uncertainly. “I… I don’t know. Um… can I read it back over?”

I smiled. “Do that,” I said. “I need another drink.”

I sank back into the old leather chair and splashed whisky into the bottom of my glass. From the corner of my eye I watched Leticia with covert pleasure until suddenly she looked up from her notebook and swept a loose tendril of hair from her face with her fingers. She tucked the errant lock behind her ear and nodded.

“
I think it makes sense. It’s a lot more ‘normal’ than I expected. I had the impression a BDSM lifestyle was all about extremes. You know… ropes and whips and leather…” her voice trailed off into silence.

“It can be,” I agreed. “And for some people it is exactly as you imagine.
”

I sat forward and propped my elbows on the desktop. I studied her face carefully.
“Leticia, there are no rules – apart from the safe, sane and consensual requirements I have already mentioned. If those conditions are met, then a BDSM relationship can be as extreme or as borderline-vanilla as the people involved want it to be.”

She sat back and was thoughtful for a moment.
She seemed suddenly reluctant.

“You can ask me anything,” I prompted her gently.

She nodded. “I was just thinking back over what you said about BDSM relationships. It sounds all very nice, but it’s exactly opposite to what took place between you and Claire. The way you treated her once you found out about her husband was the exact opposite of what you now advocate.”

“You’re right,” I said honestly. “That’s because I was a young arrogant fool, obsessed with my own pleasure and my thirst for revenge. I was the poster-boy for dangerous selfish stupidity.”

“Oh,” she said softly. “I… I didn’t mean…”

“There is nothing to apologize for,” I said bluntly. “Jonah Noble at age nineteen was a self-obsessed
bastard. Jonah Noble at age twenty-five was still learning to understand women, and certainly not a worthy Master. It’s only now – fifteen years after I first met Claire – that I consider myself a decent man.”

“You’re very hard on yourself,”
Leticia made a face.

“I’m no saint, and I’m not trying to become on
e,” I confessed. “I’ve spent a lot of years learning about myself and learning about the women I have shared my life with. And it’s only now – after a lot of mistakes – that I’ve finally worked out who I am.”

There was a distant rumble of sound in the night and then a
spray of rain against the window. A gust of wind rattled the glass in its casement. I got out of the chair and twitched the curtains aside. The night was black, seeming to match my own sullen mood.

I watched raindrops spatter and dribble down the windowpane and then turned suddenly. “I want to know your
secret fantasy,” I said. “I want you to tell me the sexy things you lay awake at night thinking about.”

Leticia
glanced up at me in dismayed alarm, and then lowered her eyes shyly. “I don’t have a fantasy.”

“You’re lying,” I said. “Every woman has a fantasy.”

Leticia stared at me for fully ten seconds, and then a transformation slowly came over her. She got to her feet, set the notebook carefully down on the chair, and walked to the office door. She turned back, the space of the floor separating us, and she hugged her own shoulders as if suddenly she was cold.

“I… I used to wonder what it would be like to be blindfolded by a man,” she said. She looked across to where I stood and her gaze was solemn and enigmatic.

“That’s interesting,” I said carefully. “Tell me more.”

“What is there to tell?”

“I want to know exactly what happens in your fantasy, and how it makes you feel.”

Leticia
narrowed her eyes and chewed at her lip like she was making some kind of mental calculation. Then her eyelids fluttered and closed, and she stood with her back against the wall taking short shallow breaths as though preparing to face a firing squad.

“I’m standing in a candle-lit room,” she said, and her voice was so soft the words barely carried to me. “It’s a bedroom.
I am wearing red lingerie. There are hundreds of candles on the floor and hung from wrought iron candelabras along the walls. The light has a golden magical glow, and as I’m staring into the flickering lights I feel my lover’s warm breath on my neck, and then his strong hands on my shoulders. My skin tingles. I feel a delicious shudder run down the length of my spine. My breath hitches in my throat until at last I gasp.

“Does he say anything to you, this mystery lover?”

Leticia shook her head. Her eyes were still closed. She licked her lips. “He just reaches around and presses a silk blindfold over my eyes. He is gentle. He ties the knot tightly at the back of my head and then I sense he is no longer there – the heat of his body suddenly fades so that I feel like I am completely alone.

“I stand, not daring to move. My senses come alive. I can hear the soft sound of his footfalls and the faint scent of his cologne. And then I feel the brush of his fingers across the silk bottoms of my panties. I flinch. His touch is like electricity. I take a tiny step, and then I feel something ice-cold on my arm. I move again – just another small step, but as I do, I feel his soft wet lips on my neck and I start to tremble.

“Suddenly I realize I am lost – I don’t know where the door is anymore. I reach out with my hands and my fingers press against his chest. His body feels like it is on fire. I feel the beat of his heart, and then he steps away, and the sense of longing in me is so strong that I groan aloud.

“An instant later I feel the teasing kiss of a feather
on the tender flesh of my thigh. I feel myself clench, and then I turn and take one more step. Suddenly I feel the edge of the bed against the back of my knees and I begin to fall. He catches me, takes me in his arms, lays me down gently, and then covers my body with his own.”

Leticia
’s eyes opened and she blinked at me. A self-conscious little smile passed across her face. She looked away shyly as a crimson blush of color rose from beneath the collar of her blouse.

“What happens next?” I asked.

Leticia didn’t answer for long moments. She seemed still to be drifting amongst the lingering tendrils of her imagination. “Nothing,” she said at last. “That’s all there is. That’s all there has ever been.”

“You don’t have sex with this dream lover?”

“No.”

“He doesn’t undress you?”

“No,” she said again, more firmly this time.

I frowned. The rain outside became a downpour so that I had to raise my voice above the hissing sound as it overflowed the guttering and spilled down the drainpipes.

“Did you ever act out this fantasy with your boyfriend?”

She shook her head.

“Did you ever try to talk to him about it?”

“A couple of times.”

“And…?”

“And nothing,”
Leticia said. “Dwayne dismissed the whole idea as a waste of time, and wondered why couldn’t I be satisfied with what we were doing in the bedroom.”

A
wicked flash of lightning ripped the dark night apart. Flickering stark light filled the room for a split second, and the echoing thunder sounded like the roar of artillery. The rain seemed to intensify, and a swirling gale of wind flung leaves and dust and debris against the window. I stared out into the storm-filled sky.

“You’re not going home tonight,” I decided.

Leticia recoiled. “What?”

“Yo
u’re staying here,” I said. I turned to confront her. “You’re not driving all the way back into the city in this storm. There are plenty of spare bedrooms. You can sleep here and go home in the morning.”

She
shot a speculative glance at me and started to protest. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

I waved her words away. “
Then sleep in the nude. It’s not safe to drive in this weather.”

Leticia
smiled at me graciously, and then lapsed into pensive silence.

* * *

The storm raged throughout the night. When Leticia came down from one of the empty upstairs bedrooms the next morning, driving horizontal rain still slammed against the windows, and the wind moaned and undulated through the swaying treetops.

Leticia
looked tired. She had her handbag on her shoulder. She came into the kitchen the way a cat walks into an unfamiliar room – her steps uncertain, her eyes everywhere at once.

I was sitting at the breakfast table.
Mrs. Hortez had extra places set on either side of me. She smiled at Leticia and shooed her to the chair beside me in a spatter of Spanish and nodding smiles. Leticia pushed at her hair and smoothed her hands down her skirt. She sat beside me and I could smell fresh perfume in the air.

“Sleep well?”

Leticia nodded. I slid coffee in front of her and she cupped her hands around the mug like it was the Holy Grail.

Over the rim of her mug I saw her eyes
settle on the third place setting. She set her coffee down but said nothing.

There was bacon, eggs, toast, and more eggs. The aroma of cooking drifted through the house.
Leticia seemed to slowly come awake and relax. She nibbled on a piece of toast and stared out through the big kitchen windows at the driving rain.

Footsteps echoed on the tiles in the hallway.
Leticia turned towards the sound, and I watched her eyes carefully. Trigg came into the kitchen from the room I had set up for her at the back of the house. The two women saw each other at the same instant. Trigg’s steps faltered for the briefest of seconds, and then she came to the table with a strained smile on her face.

“
Leticia Fall, this is Trigg Alexander,” I introduced the women and they nodded and smiled at each other.

“Trigg is an old friend,” I explained. “She’s staying here while her house in the city is being renovated.”

Trigg was an attractive woman. She was a little older than me. She had a slim figure and long dark hair, pulled back over her shoulder in a ponytail. Her eyes were clear and grey, and her manner exuded an air of no-nonsense competence and efficiency. Trigg poured herself coffee.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Fall. Did you stay the night?”

Leticia nodded, and I cut across the conversation.

“I wouldn’t let
her go home,” I explained to Trigg. “Not in this weather.”

There was a flash of something between the two women – some kind of intuitive assessment that was purely feminine and impossible for a man to understand.  It lasted only an instant – a split-second electric charge that peaked and then began to taper without ever quite disappearing.

I turned my attention back to the bacon and eggs that Mrs. Hortez had piled up on my plate, and while I ate I imagined Trigg and Leticia standing beside each other – the younger girl’s naïve, sweet innocence and gangling self-consciousness set against the poise and quiet confidence of a woman such as Trigg. Leticia would seem perhaps immature and girlish, and I wondered how much of Trigg’s smooth, perfectly presented appearance would suddenly appear contrived without the natural fresh-faced beauty that glowed upon Leticia’s skin.

There was a long silence. The only sounds were the sizzle of frying bacon a
nd the gentle clink of knives and forks.

“I understand you’re a journalist, Miss Fall,” Trigg spoke into the silence, and
Leticia smiled graciously and then her tone became self-effacing. “I’m just an intern,” she said. “I’ve got a twelve month trial with one of the newspapers in the city. Hopefully I’ll be good enough to make a career of it.”

More silence.
There seemed to be nothing more either woman wanted to offer or volunteer in the way of conversation. I didn’t spend too much time thinking about that.  I waited until Leticia had finished her slice of toast.

“It’s still too dangerous on the roads for you to go home.”

She looked sideways at me. “Mr. Noble, I have to go home. I need to change. I…”

I shook my head. “I saw your car in the driveway. It’s a little hatchback. A toy car like that would get blown off the road. You would end up in Kansas.”

She smiled, despite herself, and I went on. “If you leave here today, it will be with my driver, Tiny. In my car. He can pick you up later tonight and bring you back if you want to continue interviewing me. By tonight the storm will have passed.”

She thought about that like she had a choice. She didn’t.

“Okay,” Leticia nodded. “But before Tiny drives me home, I wanted to ask you a question that occurred to me last night, if I may.”

“Sure,” I shrugged. “I told you from the start – you can ask me anything about my life, or about my experiences in the BDSM lifestyle and I will
answer you honestly.”

Leticia
looked thoughtfully down into her coffee cup and when she had her question framed, she glanced up at me. “Why doesn’t the BDSM lifestyle work for more couples?” she asked. “From what I’ve read, and learned, it seems that lots of women want to experiment with the lifestyle, but their partners either are against the idea of trying anything new in the bedroom. Or – even worse – they give the concept a try and fail miserably.