Never Have I Ever (30 page)

Still, the entire trip was going to be complicated to delineate into categories. On the one hand, he told me he had plans for me in every city and by the time we returned to Los Angeles a good portion of my initial training would be completed. On the other hand, he expected the both of us to be able to set aside the sex for long enough to enjoy each other’s company outside the hotel room with the sights and experiences in each place.

His voice interrupted my thoughts. “Again, I don’t expect perfection.
Yet.
Hence the training.
Are you ready, sweetness?”

I passed the paper back to him and said, “Yes, Sir. I’m ready.”

Becoming his lady on his arm and his slut between the sheets was going to require substantial concentration and possibly complete exhaustion by the time summer ended. I couldn’t wait to get started.

“
Are you ready, my dear?” Noah asked. He was standing a hair’s breadth away from me in a foreign bedroom, though our bodies never touched.

Here I was, half way around the world, and I was about to submit to the first official night of training for him. I was grateful for the privacy of our rented Italian villa; I felt a little more comfortable without the fear of waking any neighbors a hotel would pose. And, after a good night’s rest and a day out in this glorious city, the jetlag faded away. My mind was clear.

I nodded subtly to him in acknowledgement of his question.

“Answer aloud and answer clearly,” he said. Since entering the villa his demeanor had changed. Privately, Noah held himself a little differently than he did in a public forum. He became more serious when he addressed me as his submissive. His voice melted into a warm resonance which demanded listening. “Remember; don’t be ashamed of what you are or who you belong to. You are tied to me in all things, my pet. You are mine to do with as I please in our sessions until such time as I release you or you ask to be released from service. Now, are you ready?”

I wished he would stop asking me that. I’d given no indication I was anything but absolutely enthralled with this and willing to do anything and everything he asked.

I raised my gaze back to him and replied, “I’m ready, Sir.”

“Undress,” he said. He stepped back to give me room. “Look at me while you do. Your attentions should always be focused on me.”

I crossed my arms in front of me and lifted my shirt up over my head slowly, folded it haphazardly, and set it on the desk beside me. My gaze never left his as I reached behind me to unclasp my bra. Watching his eyes wander down my body would never get tiresome, I felt. He looked at me as if I was the only woman in the world. The cold metal of my cuffs brushed against my skin for an instant as I pulled my bra off and set it on top of my shirt. I slipped off my shoes, wriggled out of my tight jeans and panties and also set them aside. The only thing that kept me from complete nudity was the pair of platinum chain link cuffs around my wrists.

“Kneel with your hands behind your back,” he said. As I knelt on the plush carpet beside the four-post bed, he went on, “Tonight will be the first of many nights of training on this trip. Some of it will be pleasant for you, some of it will not. This will put you another step closer to earning that collar, sweetness.”

“That’s exactly what I want, Sir.”

Noah smiled. “Good. Let’s begin.”

***

Over the course of the summer, Noah stayed true to his word. Each new country brought with it a set of training and challenges. The days we trained—the first full day in a new location before we enjoyed the sights—started with a shower and an inspection, the latter of which, he told me, was to make sure I remained healthy and up to the standards of grooming he preferred. He’d run his hands across my shoulders, down my rib cage and between my legs. I fought off a small gasp when his fingers found the sensitive skin there each and every time.

In Milan, he began at the top of the list with different postures and positions that I’d be expected to memorize. I never knew there were so many different ways to kneel. Through that lesson and each one following, Noah never lost his composure. He never raised his voice more than he needed to in order to get the point across and, since a trip around the world required so much luggage and we needed all the space we could get, the only tools he brought with him were a couple of gags—ball and ring, a flogger, a short coil of rope and a small riding crop. The crop was used mostly to guide my posture into place rather than enforce any kind of punishment. Though, if I begged well enough, he indulged me with a smack or two on my ass.

I got my first wax in Milan, as well.

It was by far the most uncomfortable and painful experience of my entire life up to that point. There are just certain types of pain that a person should never have to deal with. A bikini wax is one of them. The relaxing massage and pampering of my body afterwards more than compensated for the discomfort, however. I even went so far as to ask the stylist at the salon to fulfill another Never on my list: dying my hair an unnatural color. She was elated to give me my wish; a deep crimson dye was added to the lower layers of my hair so that it just peeked through the strawberry blonde when it was down and provided a stark light and dark contrast when pulled up.

Noah said that the change suited me. He was right to a degree. It suited the new me, the adventurous and slowly-coming-out-of-my-shell me. It made the statement that I was tired of living in the background of life. I was ready to take center stage in my own world.

And so it went, from city to city a new training session was held. It became all things pleasure and torment. And I learned; about what I was capable of, about what Noah wanted to mold me into. Of the list of things he wanted to train me in, muscle and orgasm control were among my weakest subjects.

The problem with staving off an orgasm was, once the moment was lost, I wasn’t the sort of woman who could immediately reach the edge again just because I was told to. It took serious effort to keep myself from going over the top while standing on the fine, razor-sharp line of eroticism. How others were capable of doing it with such ease was beyond me. I endured many a night with a red ass for that one, and continued to struggle with it for a long time afterward.

Pain or pleasure, I was happy to be touched by Noah.

Sensuality, another bullet point on the list of training, was not an adjective I identified with myself. For him, however, it felt less complicated. I discovered it was all in attitude and body language. A woman proud of who she is holds herself aloft quite differently than one who feels they are not worth the effort.

“You’re a successful, sexy woman, Piper,” he told me at one time, “and you need to start acting like it.”

With him by my side and a little concentration on my own behalf, it became second nature. A light, feathery touch here or a seductive glance there lit him up so bright I’d be surprised if they couldn’t see him from orbit on the ISS.

Among the lessons learned, I began to understand who Noah was.

When first I met Noah I brought to his attention the myriad of faces he appeared to wear depending upon the situation he found himself in. As we traveled from place to place, I began to realize he wasn’t at all presenting those masks to the people around him on purpose. In fact, they weren’t really even masks at all. They were simply Noah. And Noah was the epitome of the human chameleon. Whatever circumstances we were presented with, he managed to act in the most appropriate manner to connect with the people.

In Kyoto, while we ate from the overabundance of food trucks just to taste unique local dishes, he dropped the pretenses of multi-million dollar business owner for long enough to pose as the Gaijin he was for a group of giggling school girls. He wasn’t fluent in Japanese, but knew enough to get us by. And apparently he flirted poorly in that particular language. The girls walked off laughing even harder, at him more than with him, than they were when we arrived on the scene.

This was not only true for Kyoto, but also for Dubai and Beijing and Amsterdam and even Glasgow. On a dime he could flip the switch from being straight-laced executive to a twenty-nine-year-old teenager; especially when he was trying to hide his excitement over something. He was capable of becoming the sly wit of a group or the wise giver of advice depending on the company we kept. And he was ready for anything. If I suggested it, he agreed to it. We found a way to make anything and everything work because, hey, you only live once, and we had no idea when next we’d have the opportunity to pack so many Nevers into one season.

We visited cathedrals older than our country, watched street-performers live their roles, ate the best and worst local dishes, got lost in the chaos of Dubai, found ourselves in the eclectic markets of Beijing and danced to the best goddamned bagpipes I ever heard in my life in Glasgow. The Scottish group we hooked up with liked me so much they even joked that they would let me stay when they discovered I was from Irish descent. How sweet.

About the only thing I couldn’t get Noah to do while we were out on our adventures was sing karaoke. I didn’t hold that against him.

In all the whirlwind of excitement I never once forgot that Noah was still training me as his sub. After some time I started to glimpse the differences in the way he acted behind closed doors and in public. I learned what he meant when he said he wanted me to be a lady on his arm. He treated me with the utmost respect outside of our sexual affairs; it was as if he were showing me in no uncertain terms that my agreement to be his submissive was an honor he dared not squander.

Every so often, even in the thick of the most carefree day of our journey, he’d flash me a look. It was subtle, discrete in its intensity to settle somewhere between a smolder and a mischievous smile. And it reminded me every single instant that I belonged to him. It was the cue I learned, without any words spoken between us, that he wanted me. Not always for a training session, either. Sometimes, when that look came from out of the blue, there were no ropes, crops, cuffs or tests involved.

On one such occasion, the two of us had been invited to a cocktail party in a hotel neighboring ours by one of Noah’s associates in Beijing. I was standing in the hotel bar having a decent conversation in English with a slightly older Chinese gentleman in a sharp suit about the recent Higgs Boson discovery while Noah lounged in an armchair around a small table, rubbing elbows with potential new clients. For just a moment, I glanced over to him. He’d tuned out the discussion around him, however briefly, and was staring at me from half way across the room in a manner that undressed me with his gaze.

I excused myself from my conversation as politely as possible and wandered over to him through the thin crowd. The jade floor-length gown I wore that night hugged my curves. There was a slit down the left side which afforded a peek of my bare leg up to my thigh, and it was strapless to show off my collarbone and neck. I pulled my hair up that night, as well. A few curls of strawberry blonde and dark crimson fell down the back.

I walked behind Noah’s chair, placed my fingertips on his shoulders and let them slide down the front of his suit jacket as I bent at my waist until my lips were poised at his ear.

“Did you want something from me, Sir?” I asked softly.

He took my hand from half way down his torso and kissed it. “You learned quickly, my pet. Go out to the lobby, I will meet you there shortly.”

“Yes, Sir.”

I slid back and straightened up, giving a small smile to the men relaxing around the table before I made my exit. Stealing their thought processes while I walked past them brought a sense of pride.

I wasn’t sure exactly how much time passed, though it wasn’t as long as I thought it might be. Noah emerged from the dimly lit bar into the stark contrast of the grand hotel’s lobby.

He approached me and held out his arm for me to take. I slipped mine around his and, without asking where we were going, allowed him to guide me as we walked slowly through the room towards a back hallway.

As we walked, he said, “You have become quite the little starlet. Every man in the bar watched you with lustful eyes as you walked out.”

“What can I say; you’re training me well.”

Noah gave a short laugh that bordered on a guffaw. “If only I could take credit. That wasn’t training; that was you owning your beauty. All I did was make you see it. You’re the one who embraced it.”

“Then thank you for opening my eyes in the very least.”

The lobby disappeared behind us as we turned down a back hallway which consisted of conference rooms and offices for large conventions. Scarcely a sole passed us by on our walkabout. All the while he seemed to be searching for something. As we passed by each door he would tap at the handle. Most of them were locked. When he found one that clicked open, I watched his eyes light up. He glanced up one side of the hallway and down the other, then took hold of my wrist and jerked me to him for a deep, possessive kiss while he backed us into the darkened room.

I loved the way Noah kissed me. He managed to find the perfect medium in every motion. That perfect medium didn’t cast aside his passion in the slightest. His lips, soft and warm in their fierceness to acquire mine, abated the flicker of doubt that he wouldn’t always want to take his pleasure from me and me alone.