Maid For His Submission (16 page)

“But what did you expect me to do here?” Her voice was weak, but Tosh was beginning to find her strength.

“I expected you to do as you were told!”

“I did!” she shouted back at him. “I ate my breakfast and drank my coffee as I’ve done for the last two weeks, but then what? What do you expect me to do every day when you’re off at work?” Flames inside her broke free and for the first time in two weeks, Tosh realized how frustrating her existence had been, and she knew she was right in pursuing her own life. “I needed money, so I did what I should’ve done years ago. I got a job. You’re the one who told me I was more than a professional college student, so I finally proved that to myself, and I’ve been working these last two days. I’d hoped I could pay my cell phone bill before you knew that my service had been cancelled.

“When I got your fax this morning I knew I had no reason to wait around for you to arrive today, so I went to work.”

“Job?” Taken back, confusion clouded his anger for a moment. “But you have a job?”

“What are you talking about?”

“And what fax?” His question was lost to her while Tosh tried to make sense of what he had said prior.

“I’m working, and I talked to my professors about returning to school.”

“If you needed more money all you had to do was ask.”

“What are you talking about?” She felt sick to her stomach, trying to decipher what he was telling her. “Are you saying that you would have paid me for living here?”

“What kind of person do you think I am?” For a moment she thought he was going to retract his pay statement, but everything just got worse very quickly. “Of course I would.”

But she didn’t stand there for him to finish. Walking across the living room, Tosh retrieved her purse from where she had dropped it and tried to head for the door for fear of losing what little contents her stomach had. Since receiving the fax that morning, she had been unable to eat more than a couple bites of her lunch and now she could feel it start to come up.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he commanded.

Turning her head, she looked over her shoulder and spat back at him.

“I’m not your whore!”

“I never said that.” He defended, but he had already created too much damage from what he had said.

“You don’t pay me for living here and you sure as hell don’t pay me for being your little sex slave.” Tosh was losing control. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“That isn’t what I meant, but yes, you are on my payroll. You applied! Thomas hired you as my maid. What’s the problem?”

“No! We’ve been over this. You lied to me. Stephanie is your maid. I’m your sex thing!”

Letting the purse hang by its straps on her arm, she covered her ears with her hands and closed her eyes for a moment. She didn’t know what he had been saying, and she didn’t care. Overheated by pure rage, Tosh feared she was going to implode if she didn’t remove herself from his apartment right away.

Dropping her hands, she walked directly toward to the doors while Richard franticly reached into his pockets, pulling out a billfold.

“Here, if you need money, I have it. Please! It’s not payment for services rendered, just take it.” He was frantic, following her to the door, but Tosh didn’t stop. “Please, you can’t just leave.” But she did. “Just take the money. You said it yourself, you need money.”

Opening the glass door, she headed for the elevator when Richard tossed the contents of the billfold in the air, trying to make some of it land in the open elevator. To his disappointment, she didn’t move to pick up any off floor and let the sprinkling of $20s and $100s fall to the floor unwanted. Then the doors closed, and she was gone.

Thinking over the last five minutes, Tosh tried to understand what had just happened, but she couldn’t. Overwhelmed by the pain of it all, she tried to hold herself up long enough to make it down to the garage, but to her shame she did pick up two $100 bills for gas and a replacement work shirt. She would repay him once she was back on her feet, but for the time being she was going home to her mom and dad.

One month later...

The late afternoon crowd flowed in, frantically ordering their cappuccinos and mochas while they all fought for table space for their laptops. Hours of clicking and dings from the personal computers could drive anyone crazy. If Americans ever rediscover the joys of a home office half the coffee houses in America would go out of business.

One month had passed since she had walked out, and since then Tosh had worked hard to learn the recipes and lingo while she worked extra hard on her studies. Establishing herself as one of the group, she had managed to make friends at both work and in her Art history and Theory classes—something she had failed to do the first few weeks of class. Days and nights had passed and after a month she had managed to save up to move in with Jude. Her parents were happy to see Tosh motivated, but she had grown tired of them constantly asking how she was and if she had heard from her ex-boyfriend. Sad to say, after their parting and the things that he said, she now realized he had never been her boyfriend and that she had been nothing more than an employee to him. It all hurt more than she could measure, and she hoped and prayed that in time the pain would lesson, but for now she went day to day, trying her best to swallow it down and convince herself that she would survive.

Last week Tosh had finally mailed Richard the $200.00 she owed him, but it had been returned unopened to her labeled by the post office ‘Return to Sender,’ and a few days later an envelope was delivered by mail to her filled with a stack of bills. There was no return address, so Tosh redirected it toward Thomas via the club. Breaking away from Richard was almost more than she could bear and after a month, the pain of loss had only increased, but she couldn’t expect anything from him.

Escaping from behind the register, Tosh picked up a damp, folded bar towel to wipe down a couple of sticky tables. Making her way around the room, she kept a fake smile plastered as a shield to hide the hole in her heart. A pair of eyes that had been focused on her for some time followed Tosh around the coffee house, studying every move she made and focusing in on the curve of her black skirt over her round hips that have grown a luscious half a size in the last month. Sitting alone in a corner with an untouched espresso sitting on the table, a man sat hidden behind an unfolded Wall Street Journal. His brown hair and matching dark eyes peeked out over the top and stayed focused on her every move. Despite the scene that this would make to anyone else, Tosh felt safe in his presence and almost welcomed the knowledge that he was there watching her.

Wiping down a table, Tosh paused to look up and their eyes met. Suddenly there was no more hustle of orders and noisy mild steamers or click, click, click of the commuters. Instead, there was just him and her. Giving him a half smile, she stood upright and playfully opened her arms to present her work uniform with the new white shirt she had purchased with his discarded cash. A small head nod and one wink was all the answer she was given to tell her that he not only approved, but was happy for her.

Folding his paper and abandoning his espresso, he rose from his seat and gave her one last longing look. One last flash of dark chocolate. Tosh could see sadness and regret in his eyes, but before she could say anything or move to him, he left through the door and was gone. Tosh didn’t know what to think or feel in that moment.

“I was wondering if he would come back,” Jude interrupted Tosh’s thoughts, coming up behind her.

“Pardon?” she asked, turning away from the door to look at her new friend.

“Mr. Wall Street.” Gesturing toward the abandoned demitasse cup and saucer, Jude flashed Tosh a quizzical look. “He came in the last two days asking about you, but I told him it was your day off and that you were in school. When I told him the first day what your next day in would be, he still showed up yesterday to see you.” Crossing over to pick up Richard's abandoned drink, Jude set it in a plastic bin filled with used mugs and dessert plates. “Tell you the truth, I was wondering if I needed to call the cops when you did come in. I wasn’t sure if he was a stalker or what?"

Tosh picked up the tub of dishes and made her way back to the kitchen.

“He’s harmless. Just my old boss.” She made her way back to the kitchen, but praying with every step that she would see him again tomorrow.

SNEAK PEEK AT A

June Pasadena California

The flyer sat crumpled on Richard’s passenger seat like an unwanted intruder in his life. After Thomas had left the flyer in their Odyssey office, he had been unable to decipher his feelings and decided to just snatch it up and storm out without saying goodbye. Thomas had stepped over a boundary and he knew it. It had been clear to him what his friend had intended by leaving the flyer centered on his desk blotter without anything else to distract from it.

In the months since Tosh had left, Thomas had made it clear his feelings regarding Richard’s loss. But no matter how much he’d tried to display the obvious regret he had for what occurred between him and Tosh, Richard refused to give his friend the satisfaction of showing him how dark he truly felt.

Canceling out the tormenting silence, he reached out to the center divider of his car for the high tech radio control. Bringing up his favorite oldies station, the vehicle’s interior soon rang with the same sweet haunting sound of an angelic chorus humming along to a strumming guitar, only to be topped off with Frankie Avalon’s teenage serenade to his dream girl, Venus. The song always made him feel like a love sick fool and reminded him how close he had come to thinking he’d found the one woman who would never leave him.

Turning his silver Camaro north off busy Foothill Blvd, he headed home, slowing enough when he crossed the city limits to avoid the local speed traps. Swerving up the foothills, Richard soon found himself under the soothing canopy of trees shielding his driveway from the hot summer sun.

Built on concrete columns, his sanctuary looked like an arrowhead shooting out of the hillside, a modern architectural feat among Green and Green craftsmen cabins. Perhaps it was a modern eyesore among all the classic homes, but the trees framing his long driveway protected his neighbors from seeing his late twentieth century sanctuary.

Pulling in under his front decking, Richard killed the engine, cutting the last chorus of the song off. For a few moments, he sat there listening to the silence in his car. In the three months since he’d flown home form New York, Richard lived here, not returning to the penthouse that they’d happily shared for such a short time. He never expected her to stay with him, but he also never expected her to make an escape so soon.

“Pathetic,” he criticized himself, releasing his seatbelt and opening the door to slide out.

Richard knew he’d lost himself since she left and he couldn’t bear to think of how he’d deteriorated during this time, but there was nothing he could do. For the last two months he had spent a couple days a week visiting Tosh at the coffee bar where she worked. They never spoke and only exchanged a look on occasion, but every time he walked out of the bar, Richard imagined that she watched him leave with regret.

Never wishing her ill, Richard wanted to see Tosh happy in life and despite the pain of seeing her move on without him, he was proud of her. It took little effort to discover that she’d not only returned to college, but that she was also working part time for one of her art professors and would be graduating by the end of this term. She’d come a long way from the dependent out-of-work student he had first met. True, when he’d heard that she was twenty-four and still in school, he had labeled her as a non-starter in life, but she’d proved him wrong quickly.

Only Richard had hoped for the opportunity to share these successes with her.

Now, Tosh was planning her first big art show upstairs from where she worked and he wouldn’t be there at her side. He missed the woman he had hired to train as his sexually submissive domestic. She had quickly fallen into step with what he demanded of her and rarely questioned his intent - and then he’d pushed her too far.

Climbing the long stretch of stairs to his hillside retreat, he ignored the overstuffed mail box and looked past the deck furniture that sat one floor above his car. Days of empty beer bottles were deposited in the wicker waste bin with the chicken take-out containers that now attracted a swarming army of ants. Neighbors had begun to post warnings of bear sightings in the area, fearful that his mess might attract them, but being mauled to death was not what bothered Richard at this particular moment.

Pressing the tip of his index finger to a little nub under the deadbolt key hole, the glass security door popped open with a click. The front door had a bit more of a high tech locking system with a slide-away cover concealing both a key pad and a thumb print pad. The stainless steel handle underneath was pointless and only a formality. Once the door was unlocked by his thumb print, the door automatically popped open just as the security door had. There was little in his getaway home to protect. But in Richard’s opinion, if these contraptions and equipment were available - why not use them? And so he did.

His footsteps echoing on the hardwood floors and naked walls, he walked from the grand entryway, depositing the paper bag of imported beer and fast food bucket of fried chicken on the pale green granite kitchen counter. Once he’d had an iron will, never letting saturated fat touch his lips. But that was someone else who lived in a penthouse, spending his nights indulging in every carnal taboo that could be written down.

She had broken him.

As he walked through the door, he flipped a switch on a metal wall panel covered in nobs and sliders. The panel was a control center for his getaway. Pulling his phone from his pants pocket, Richard selected the same Bobby Darin classic that he’d been listening to before. Turning on the Blue-tooth function of his cell, the song disappeared from his phone and played instead through the house, filling the multi-million dollar dwelling, kicking off another crooning marathon for the night. 

Disappearing into his bedroom, Richard left a trail of discarded clothing, starting with his coat and ending with Tosh’s favorite black boxers. In their short time together, he had purchased several of the same style, knowing that she enjoyed seeing him dressed in them. Pulling up a pair of pajama bottoms, he walked away with his overpriced tailor-made suit on the floor for Stephanie to pick up for the dry cleaners tomorrow.

Retrieving the beer and chicken from the kitchen counter, he ignored the clean dishes that Stephanie had put away and moved his dinner to the couch. The bottles rattled in the cardboard carrier when he placed them on the coffee table next to the bucket which had made a hollow when he’d set it down earlier. In all his years living in the penthouse, Richard could not recall a night he hadn’t enjoyed a beer from a frosted glass. He kept the bar fridge stocked and on the rare occasion he chose to indulge in takeout, he always indulged himself with a decent presentation of plating his food.

But things change.

She had ruined him, broken him and left nothing that he found worthwhile. With every swig of the imported beer, he enjoyed the deep rich flavor. The chicken was greasy, but he liked the crunch of the fatty batter and skin. Despite all of the positive observations concerning his dinner, Richard couldn’t truly relax and enjoy himself.

Pausing the music, he silenced the ringer and dropped it on the table with a clatter. As he had every night for the last three months, Richard fell back on the couch with his beer in one hand and the TV remote in the other, muting the rest of his life for the night. He was aware of the change in him and knew that he painted a pathetic picture of his former self. There was no more motivation or drive to be the man he used to be.

Drawing out a long swig of the warm beer, he paused, enjoying the feel of the bottle rim against his bottom lip. The cool smooth glass gave him a sensation of touch. Reaching a new low in his solitary confinement was the discovery that he could go far longer than he’d thought without experiencing any physical contact with a person. Only at the office did he ever shake hands with clients and associates, but any other ways of contact had been eliminated from his life.

Slowly dipping his tongue into the bottle, Richard closed his eyes and allowed his mind to drift to his ongoing torment. The narrow tubed neck of the glass would never serve as a good comparison of Tosh’s sweet tight pussy, but after three beers he wasn’t thinking much about practicality or details, only about what he was now missing.

“Fuck.” He exhaled, letting his head fall on the back of the couch, the beer bottle held to his side. He knew he was a pathetic picture of himself, but there was nothing he could do to try and gain a footing on his depression. Life was completely stripped of all meaning.

“The moment you start to tongue a beer, you’re a lost cause.”

Condemning himself, he closed his eyes. Reaching into the right pocket of his pajama bottoms, Richard felt the soft curl from the tail end of her ribbon. He’d pulled it from one of her uniforms. It was his favorite. Black and silky, it had lost her smell some time ago, but he held it tight as a reminder of her.

Unbuttoning the front of his bottoms, Richard reached in and pulled out his half erect cock. Just the thought of her was enough to wake up his natural needs. No woman had ever left him in a constant state of madness like she had. Four slow long pumps of his shaft and he could feel the blood start to rush to the base. For three months, no pussy had touched his shaft and only the memory of her could bring any response out of him.

Unraveling the black ribbon over his crotch, he let it touch him. It was wrinkled and soft. This ribbon had been well loved in the last three months. Holding one end, he bunched the rest in the palm of his other hand and made the first wrap around his balls. Heavy and hard. Two tight wraps left them suspended in a constant state of flux and then he moved on to his shaft. Starting at the base, he wrapped the ribbon up to the tip then back down to the base. With a gasp, he tied the two ends together and closed his eyes, letting his body fall into the madness of his unsatisfied need and want for the woman he’d chased away.

*  *  *

“Don’t wipe a hole through the counter.”

Jude’s voice woke Tosh up from her day dreaming. Since seeing Richard leave from his weekly visit to the coffee shop, Tosh had been unable to think of anything else. Every coffee she served customers reminded her of the exquisite way he would always have a cup of velvety perfection made for her every morning. 

“Jude?” Trying not to make her voice sound so tragic, Tosh tried to add a smile to her question but it resulted in a pathetic broken grin. “Do you mind if I cut out early tonight? The guys are almost done with the dishes and everything has been wrapped up and tagged out.”

Smoothing back her black and blond streaked hair, Jude let out a deep breath to pair with her questioning look. She looked like a bohemian rebel, but was a well-organized manager of the coffee house and had become an instant friend to Tosh. “Alright. You’re no good to me tonight.”

Watching Tosh slip into the back to remove her apron and grab her backpack, Jude grabbed the envelope labeled for Tosh. “Here’s your tips.” But she didn’t release it right away when Tosh grabbed it. Holding the envelope tight, she stared into Tosh’s eyes. “Do yourself a favor and give Mr. Wall Street your number. It’s obvious you two have chemistry and you’re a mess on days when he’s here.”

Releasing the envelope, Jude picked up the washcloth that Tosh had abandoned and tossed it into the linen sack behind the counter. She could see in Tosh’s eyes that there was much unsaid about Tosh and Mr. Wall Street, as they’d nicknamed him. He always attempted to read the paper on Tuesdays and Thursdays while he watched Tosh work. Teasing Tosh about him had only led to a break-down in communication, but Jude didn’t want to ignore the fact that there was something there and hoped her friend would come to her if she needed help.

“There is more to that drama than you could imagine and I think it’s better to call that one a knock out than get back up for round three.” Tosh sighed.

“Three?” This was more information about the two of them than Jude had managed to finagle out of Tosh in the last three months. “Sounds like you’ve been holding out on me, but if you’re going to leave, you’d better do it or I’ll be forced to tie you down and make you tell me everything.”

The friends exchanged a giggle with their goodbyes. Standing at the locked front door, Tosh waited while Jude walked over with her keys to let her out.

“Are you going to finish up that dark one tonight?” Jude asked, referring to a recent painting of Tosh’s that she was working on for her first art show one week from the following night.

“The Master, you mean.” Tosh corrected her, feeling a flutter of butterflies in her stomach at the thought of the dark image.

“That’s it. I don't know if I’d want to fall at his feet or run for my life.”

‘Neither do I,’ Tosh thought to herself.

“Night.” A bell hanging over the door rang out her exit into the warm night.

*  *  *

Dropping her keys onto the small table, Tosh closed the door to her home, a large studio apartment that she’d been lucky to locate which was within walking distance to school and a short drive to work. This was a downgrade from Richard’s penthouse or her parent’s large childhood home, but this was hers and for the first time in her life she had financial freedom… be it a small finance.

Opening the fridge, she pulled out a two dollar bottle of buck-chuck white wine and a chilled glass from her freezer before she returned to the living area of the open space. Couch, fridge, bed, dining set and TV were all thanks to her parents donating extra items. She had tried to respectfully refuse the offer, but her mother was excited for the chance to redecorate their home and her father couldn’t let his daughter move into her first home outside of school dorms without some hand-me-downs from mom and dad.