Vignettes of a Master (14 page)

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Mrs.
Hortez and Jonah in the kitchen.

Mrs.
Hortez folded her arms across her ample bosom and stood like a roadblock, barring the door to the kitchen.

“You not leave,” Mrs.
Hortez shook her head solemnly and stared at me. “You must eat something, Mr. Noble. You must eat good food or be very sick.”

Even in broken,
thickly-accented English, I got the meaning behind Mrs. Hortez’s defiant message.

Generally, I am my own man. I make my own decisions, and I
do as I like. I am brutally honest with people, and often I know I can come across as intimidating, and sometimes arrogant. I know my blunt opinions often cause people offense – but I don’t care.

Mrs.
Hortez, however, was intimidating in her own right.

She was the only woman who scared me.

I dragged a chair back and sat heavily at the table. Mrs. Hortez relaxed suddenly and an angelic smile spread across her face. She flapped her arms and scurried to the kitchen counter where plates had been prepared and were waiting for her to serve.

“Just a little, please, Mrs.
Hortez,” I surrendered. “I really am not very hungry, and I have a lot to do today.”

I might as well have been speaking to a wall. Mrs.
Hortez loaded my plate with food and then retook her position at the kitchen doorway like a guard on sentry duty. “You take your time, Mr. Noble. Everything else will wait until you eat good food.”

I s
ighed, and began to eat slowly.

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Jonah and Leticia in his office.

This was different.

Leticia was sitting in my big leather chair with a laptop before her, and I found myself in the unfamiliar role of being like a visitor on the other side of the desk. I crossed my legs. I had a cigar in my hand and I studied the feather of blue smoke as it rose towards the ceiling.

“What are you writing?”

Leticia looked up at me. “I’m writing about you,” she looked up from the computer screen. “I’m trying to describe you – I’m trying to capture the essence of Jonah Noble in just a few, short paragraphs.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I imagine that would be challenging…”

Leticia nodded. She had a distracted look on her face. She glanced at me, then bowed her head over the computer and tapped at the keys. I watched her intently. She was like an artist at an easel, glancing up at a subject, and then returning to the canvas to capture what she saw. I sat silently watching her and my eyes drifted across her body. She was wearing a
short sleeved shirt, open at the neck, with the top button straining under the press of her breasts. I imagined leaning across the desk and unfastening that button, so that I could see the silky, creamy flesh beneath. I imagined taking her breast in the palm of my hand and bowing my head to her nipple. I imagined Leticia leaning back in the chair, groaning softly and giving herself to me with a soft whimper of desire. I imagined tangling my hands in the whorls of her blonde hair and lifting her face to mine as I kissed her.

Leticia looked up at me quite suddenly with a frown. “You’re a complicated man, Jonah, but I feel like I know you so well now. Just by the expression on your face, I can tell that you are having deep, dark, serious thoughts – maybe about politics, or the meaning of life.”

I looked at Leticia and smiled. “Yes,” I said slowly. “Leticia, there is no doubt you can read me like a book.”

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Jonah reading some of the press speculation about him after the articles
have been published by Leticia.

“I know this is not a serious newspaper – not like the New York Times – but seriously, some of these letters to the editor about me are ridiculous. This is the stuff of bizarre tabloids, not some small community newspaper trying to be respectable.”

Leticia got defensive; as though she felt in someway I was attacking her for her paper’s editorial policy. I wasn’t. I knew Leticia had nothing to do with editorial comment or letters that were sent in by readers.

I folded the newspaper and thrust it out at Leticia. “Look at this letter,” I showed her one example. “Because this person has not seen a photo of me, they have jumped to the conclusion that I must be either a three foot tall hobbit, or a vampire. Surely these people cannot be serious.”

Leticia scanned the letter that had been published in the newspaper, and then glanced up at me. “Jonah, you cannot control what people think, but in fairness you haven’t made it any easier for yourself. Everyone wants to know what you look like. The fact that you are shunning the spotlight confuses people. We are a society who craves celebrity. And you are a celebrity who avoids attention. Naturally, people are going to speculate, and the more reclusive you are, the wilder their speculation will become.”

I threw the newspaper in the fire. There was a burst of bright sparks and then the paper caught alight in a fierce orange glow.

“Leticia, I never wanted to be a celebrity. All I ever wanted was to tell my story.”

Leticia shook her head defiantly. “Well you are a celebrity, so you need to accept that in a void of information, people will make up their own realities.”

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Leticia and Jonah having an argument.

“That kind of attitude is exactly the sort of thing I would expect a naïve, silly little girl to say,” I kept my voice calm, and my tone steady. I raised an eyebrow, taunting Leticia and it was too much for her to tolerate. She sprang at me, shaking with rage, and her lips a thin, white line. Her fingers were seized into claws that she flashed at my eyes. I drew my head away, recoiling like a snake, and seized her wrists in both my hands. Leticia’s growl of anger became a sudden start of fright as she realized my strength. I lifted her clear off the floor for an instant and then turned her around, pinning her arms behind her back.

“Bastard!” Leticia hissed.

I laughed. “That’s not very nice language,” I was condescending. “Naïve, little girls shouldn’t use words like that.”

Leticia kicked back with one of her legs, aiming from my groin. I bent one knee to block her heel, and then pushed her forward over the edge of the desk. Leticia let out a small shriek of alarm: she was bent at the waist with her face pressed to the polished table surface and both her arms pinned easily behind her back. I put one foot between her legs and kicked them wide apart.

“No!” Leticia grunted.

“Yes,” I said. “If you want to play rough, you have to accept the consequences.”

I gripped her wrists together and pinned her to the table with my weight, while my free hand slid up between her spread thighs, forcing her skirt to bunch high around her waist. Suddenly Leticia stopped squirming and her ragged breathing seized in her throat. The palm of my hand rubbed across the sheer silk of her panties and I could feel the heat and moistness of her arousal. “Are you going to play nice from now on?” I asked.

Leticia gasped and then sighed. I felt her knees bend, and realized she was forcing her pussy down against the flat of my hand. In an instant, being taken and pinned had changed her attitude so that her anger had fused into arousal
.

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Caroline’s thoughts while she is being trained by Jonah.

Caroline had never felt so overwhelmed – it was the man’s presence, his unshakable confidence. She found everything about the power of Jonah Noble to be an erotic aphrodisiac unlike anything she had ever experienced in the hands of any other man in her life.

He was an undeniable force – he was an iron wall that she could not resist, and nor did she want to. More than anything else, Caroline wanted to be completely owned by this man.

With him she had gone to sexual places, and reached erotic heights of arousal that she had never imagined possible. He made her feel weak, yet he made her feel safe. She wanted to surrender to him in every way. She wanted him to humiliate her, to use her with no consideration for her own body, but only for his pleasure and satisfaction.

In those times away from Jonah, she felt lost and alone – she felt like a leaf blown in the breeze. But with him, she felt a sense of inner purpose, as though giving herself to him was the deepest joy she could ever experience.

She lay on the big bed and spread her legs wide for him. She was completely naked, her wrists tied to the headboard and she stared up at him with a silent plea in her eyes for him to use her – so that she could feel complete.

His touch was like fire, his gaze enough to make her weak at the knees. When he stood above her, she felt a wild sense of abandonment and recklessness, and she knew without doubt she would willingly do anything – anything at all to
satisfy and please Jonah Noble.

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Jonah alone in a crowded bar.

Eye contact.

When a woman looks at a man and holds eye contact for more than a couple of seconds, I’d always believed it was a sign that the woman was expressing her interest. The way this woman looked at me left me in no doubt – her eyes met mine and then casually drifted over my body and then came back to my face and she raised one eyebrow slightly.

I was sitting alone in a sports bar. When I had arrived it was quiet, but now, an hour later it was full of office workers who had finished a long, hard day and had called in after work for a quiet drink before returning home to their lives. The air was smoky, and full of noise.

I sippe
d at my whisky and looked past the woman, idly glancing at the groups of young business professionals in their suits and ties and grey skirts and crisp, white blouses. They were gathered in little groups of earnest conversation whilst above them a bank of television monitors showed highlights of ballgames. I spun on my stool back to face the bar. The guy behind the counter gave me a nod and I nodded back. He came along the counter to me and refilled my glass.

The voice suddenly beside me was a breathy, little purr. I didn’t move. I felt a woman’s hand rest lightly on my shoulder, and then smelled the scent of expensive perfume.

“Hello there,” the woman said. “My name is Jessie.”

I turned on my chair slowly – it was the woman who had been looking at me from across the room. She was tall, with a carefully manicured pile of blonde hair atop a perfectly made up face, complete with cosmetic smile.

“Hello,” I said politely.

I felt the woman’s fingers grip more tightly on my shoulder and then move a little down my forearm. “I had to come and say hello,” the woman said. “I have been admiring you from across the room.”

I glanced up into the woman’s eyes. “Then go back there,” I said.

And now…

What follows is the first dramatic chapter of the sequel to
‘Interview with a Master’.

‘
In love with a Master’ will be published on Amazon in the coming months.

I hope you enjoy the first chapter of the new book.

Jason Luke

“In Love with a Master”

Interview with a Master 2

Jason Luke

Chapter 1.

The telephone rang, unnaturally loud and shrill in the darkened room – and I felt my nerves screw taut as I stared down at the desk.

The phone rang again. I watched it, sitting frozen in the big leather chair. The sound of the double note seemed somehow urgent and insistent in my ears. The telephone kept ringing until at last I leaned forward reluctantly and reached out for it.

The sound stopped abruptly as my hand hung over the receiver. I leaned back, relieved.

A few minutes later Mrs.
Hortez appeared timidly in the office doorway. She was wiping her hands on the tails of her apron. She knocked on the open door and ducked her head into the gloomy office.

“It was her again, Mr. Noble,” Mrs.
Hortez said in broken English, her voice almost apologetic. Then she held up the pudgy fingers of one hand. “That five times so far today.”

I nodded. The leather chair
creaked as I shifted my weight. I propped an elbow on the armrest, and cupped my chin thoughtfully in my hand. My fingers grazed across the unshaven stubble that bristled my cheeks.

“Thank you, Mrs.
Hortez,” I said quietly. “Did you tell her that I was unavailable?”

“Si,” Mrs.
Hortez nodded heavily, like she was somehow saddened. “But she clever girl, Mr. Noble. She no believe me.”

The silence drew out. I said nothing. After maybe another minute, Mrs.
Hortez ghosted from the room, pulling the door quietly closed behind her.

I sat alone in the dark. Outside my window a grey blanket of clouds hung low over the distant mountains. I could see the faint wink of far
away lights like pinpricks in the night. Scudding mist hung like a shroud, smearing away the mountain peaks and wrapping the twilight sky in a heavy grey gloom.

My eyes drifted back over the darkening shapes of my desk: files, paperwork,
a dust-covered statue of the Egyptian deity, Horus. I closed my eyes and sat back wearily in the chair.

Dust to dust…

Leticia Fall would make it as a journalist – of that I had no doubt. She had the raw talent, and she had the persistence to hunt down a story lead and pursue it with the tenacity of a bloodhound given the scent.

Today she had phoned f
ive times. Yesterday it had been the same. Even across the weekend she had made repeated calls to the house.

I had avoided her for two weeks, but I knew I could not avoid her forever.

It had been exactly forty-one days since I had sent her away – almost six weeks since I had told her I was dying, and watched her walk, crushed and broken, to her car… watched her drive out of my life.

Not a minute passed that I didn’t think of her; recall the brilliant, disarming flash of her smile, or the innocent beauty of her features, or the quizzical way she tilted her head and watched me as I
had paced the room telling my story.

Not a minute passed where the pain in my chest and the ache in
my heart did not threaten to well up tight and strangle me.

Sometimes doing the right thing can feel so very wrong.

Would that line be my epitaph?

I mus
ed darkly. Would that noble sentiment be the words carved into my headstone – the phrase the world would remember me by?

I muttered the line out loud, and the words jagged in the back of my throat like broken shards of glass.

I didn’t want to be gallant.

I wanted to live.

Nobility, honor… how much had my moral code cost me? How high the price I had paid?

The phone rang again,
the sound jarring in the tomb-like darkness of the office. My hand reached out for it instinctively – then I snatched it away at the last instance as though scalded.

Abruptly
the sound was cut off.

I waited.

Mrs. Hortez knocked on the office door then pushed it open a few inches, looking harried and sounding out of breath.

I sighed.
“Was it Leticia Fall again?”

Mrs.
Hortez shook her head. She looked disturbed. “No, it is someone else. He sound important.”

She gestured with her head that I should pick up the extension. My hand stretched out slowly.

“This is Jonah Noble.”

There was the sound of milling voices in the background and a
bove it all a man’s voice, gravelly and somber. I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of doom. I clutched at the edge of the desk.

“Mr
. Noble, this is the Hampson Valley Hospital. I’m calling about an employee of yours named Travis Dickson.”

Tiny – my driver.
My best friend.

I felt a
n ice-cold fist of dread deep in my chest. I felt a sudden dizzy sense of vertigo, and my eyes lost focus. Everything in the gloomy room became suddenly dark. My hands became hot and clammy. The blood drained away from my face and an icy sweat broke out across my forehead. I leaned forward in the chair with a sudden sense of foreboding and jammed the phone’s receiver hard against my ear.

“I regret to tell you, Mr. Noble, that Travis was fatally injured in a car accident an hour ago. He was rushed by paramedics to the hospital, but passed away soon after on the operating table.”

A loud roar – a surging, pounding rush of noise seemed to hiss in my ears. The shock of it made me flinch. The silence drew out until it became deafening, and I felt the searing sting of tears well up in my eyes.

“Can you tell me how it happened?” I choked the words out.

There was a brief pause. “It appears as though the car that Travis was driving went off the road on a bend,” the man said. “The police are still investigating.”

“Was anyone else hurt?”

“No. The authorities still do not know if there were any other vehicles that might have been involved in the incident.” 

I clung tightly to the receiver feeling the blood drain from my fingers and knuckles. I felt my entire world tilt off its axis.

“Thank you for calling,” I said numbly. “I will come to the hospital.”

I threw the phone down. It clattered across the desk. The clenching fist in my chest
uncoiled like a serpent and then wrapped itself around my heart. The pain of it came suddenly like a plunging blade that ripped at my very soul.

Tiny – the one man I trusted. Tiny – the one man who had been a loyal friend for so many years, was dead.

An unbidden image of the man’s big smiling face played across my imagination. It came wavering from beyond the shadows, taking on detail until it was so real, so true that I blinked in disbelief. I tried to hold that picture in my mind, tried to cling to it and keep it alive, but it drifted and then faded away as a dark shutter flickered over my vision.

Cold, numb despair seeped into my bones.
I felt suddenly very old and forsaken, drained and withered. I slumped back in the big chair and stared, desolate, at the ceiling. Tears spilled down my cheeks. I slowly lifted my fingers and touched at my face, vaguely surprised to feel that the skin there was not as brittle and dusty as old parchment.

I closed my eyes,
and my grief swept me away to the only place that was safe… the darkness.