Old-Fashioned Values (16 page)

Another part of the reason was what John heard about as soon as, having closed Rachel’s passenger-side door, he came around the car and slid into the driver’s seat. Before he could even start the car and pull out into traffic to head toward his house in the rural area just outside Mendon, Rachel said, “So, Sally and Mark… well, it seems like they had a great time last night.”

John glanced over at her and saw that she was blushing. “You said that they were spending the night at the Mendon Inn?”

Rachel nodded.

“And it was their first time spending the night together?”

She nodded again. Then she whispered, “Am I going to be spending the night at your house?”

“Would you like to?”

“Yes,” Rachel said with an artificial sort of firmness. John wondered whether she was trying to boost her confidence. He would have to pierce that false confidence, somehow; he couldn’t let her fool herself about what she was ready for.

Nothing more was said about Rachel’s ‘erotic needs’ until John had put the after-dinner cheese on the table, the dishes having been cleared away. Thinking that he probably couldn’t get into any trouble worse than he would already be in, he had served Rachel a glass of Burgundy with her coq au vin because it would have been criminal to let her eat it without the proper accompaniment. Now, with the cheese, he gave her a glass of port. She looked up at him wonderingly. “Is this port?” she asked.

“It is,” John said. “You might not like it, but you should certainly try it.”

Rachel sipped at it, then took a bite of cheese. Then her face broke out into an epicure’s smile so broad that it made John laugh.

“Oh my God, that’s amazing!” Rachel said, her mouth still rather full of cheese.

As soon as she had swallowed, John bent down over her and kissed her. He felt her body go tense, and then she yielded to the kiss an instant later. John began the kiss very tenderly, but when he felt Rachel giving herself over to him, he moved his lips dominantly over hers and, putting the bottle of port on the table, he took her face in his hands and firmly, but not forcefully, commanded her tongue with his own, until he heard her give a little whimper of arousal. She tasted of the goat cheese she had eaten and the port she had sipped, and John thought that that could very well be what the ancients had meant by ‘nectar and ambrosia.’

At the same time Rachel seemed to lose her bearings in space, swaying a bit, as if she might fall. John put his arm around her shoulders to steady her. He broke the kiss and gently set her upright in her chair again, as they looked into one another’s eyes. Then, silently, he went back around to the other side of the table and poured his own glass of port.

“Sir,” Rachel said quietly, “no one has ever kissed me like that.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised,” John said, and put a piece of Stilton on a cream cracker into his mouth.

“Please say you meant it about me staying the night.” Again her voice sounded slightly strained, as if she weren’t entirely sure she wanted what she thought she wanted.

“We’re going to talk about that and about other related things now,” John said, after another sip of port.

“Oh,” Rachel said, her ardor clearly fading a little.

“Do you remember when I said that I would spank you al a carte?”

“Yes,” Rachel replied, “but I’m still not sure I understand what you meant.”

“I meant that our relationship could be purely disciplinary. That works for some people, and I’m certainly willing to give it a try with you.”

“But—”

“But that’s not what either of us really wants. Exactly. We have to consider, though, the way this is going to look, and the effect that it’s going to have on us individually and as whatever sort of couple we form.”

“Oh, I mean… I guess I was thinking that this…” She took a sip of her port, and a bite of cheese, as if to give herself a moment to think. “Well, why does it have to be anyone’s business but our own?”

“Rachel, even if you weren’t still financially dependent on your parents, even if, let’s say, you had a full-time job and were living by yourself, me dating you could well have repercussions. People look askance at relationships between forty-year-olds and eighteen-year-olds, even when the eighteen-year-old isn’t a college freshman who’s going to go home to Wisconsin for Christmas, and will have to tell her parents what she’s been up to.”

Rachel’s face fell. “I wasn’t going to tell them,” she whispered.

“I figured that,” John said. “But that’s the problem. What we are proposing to embark upon isn’t that kind of secret sort of a thing. Look into your heart for a moment. I may sound like I’m flattering myself, but I’m not; I understand the kind of girl you are, Rachel, and I know that when you think about what you want me to mean to you, it’s something more important than that. I’m not saying it’s your parents’ business, because it’s absolutely not their business, in the most fundamental way. But you are your parents’ business, as you should be, and I would never enter into this relationship with you if I didn’t think you could see that my way.”

Rachel started to cry. “But they’re going to forbid me to see you. I just know it.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” John said. “But telling them, and listening to what they have to say, isn’t the same thing as letting them control your life inappropriately.”

“What?” Rachel’s face brightened by about a million lumens. John chuckled to see it, and smiled back. “You are eighteen, Rachel, and one thing I’m definitely not saying is that you have to do what your parents tell you.”

“But they’ll say they won’t pay for college, won’t they?” The frown returned to her face.

“It will quite possibly make things worse for some period of time, if that happens. But if they withdraw their support, I will pay your tuition, Rachel.”

“What? But what if we break up?”

“I pledge to you right now, that whether we are together when you graduate or not, if you need my support I will pay your full tuition.”

Rachel’s jaw dropped. “John… I mean, sir. You can’t say that!”

He replied, smiling, “Well, from both a physiological and a financial point of view, it’s not all that hard for me to say that. Emotionally, I’ll grant you, the thought that we might start this wonderful thing and not see it through, does give me pause.”

“So,” Rachel said after a few moments, and another sip, “we’re going ahead? I’m spending the night?”

“Not so fast, young lady. You’re going to have to make some assurances and some promises, and you’re going to have to give your full consent to me taking you in hand.”

“Okay,” Rachel said uncertainly. “Promises like what?”

“Here’s the way this is going to go,” John said. “I’m going to tell you what you’ll be promising. If you’re ready to make the promises I’m asking for, you’ll take off all your clothes, stand before me, and make them. Then I’ll give you a maintenance spanking. And after that you’ll start, let’s say, spending your first night with me.”

“Oh, God,” Rachel whispered. “Every time you say something like that, sir. I mean… I mean, is it… I suppose I just mean, am I dreaming? Because this has only ever been the kind of thing I dreamed about. When I first read stories about how it might actually happen, I still didn’t really believe it could happen to me.”

“It’s very real, Rachel,” John said seriously. “Are you ready to hear the promises?”

“I guess so?” There—the false confidence had gone. John couldn’t help feeling that in taking away Rachel’s attempt at brashness, he had moved their relationship forward very constructively. There was almost certainly trouble ahead, if not tonight then within a few weeks, but his chest felt full of happiness at the way he and Rachel had begun really to communicate.

Chapter Nineteen

“So,” Cassandra asked, popping out of her own door to ambush Sally as she walked through the common room on her way to Mark’s dorm, “did you get laid last night?”

Sally had thought that she would refuse categorically to answer any of Cassandra’s questions about the previous night. But she found she could not keep her promise to herself simply to turn her back and walk away. Frankly, she felt too proud to be able to tell herself, from moment to moment, that she belonged to Mark. And that feeling was so strong and new, as the memories of the way Mark had claimed her at the Mendon Inn kept pressing themselves in upon her imagination, that she felt she would be doing her lord—as she blushingly thought of him sometimes—a disservice not to declare openly how glad she was to have been deflowered by him less than twenty-four hours before.

“I may have,” she replied, smiling in what she hoped was a secretive way. She wanted to tell Cassandra that she had had sex, because maybe that would get Cassandra off her back a little bit. She had no intention of telling Cassandra that she had what she now, with Rachel’s help, always thought of as D/s sex. Cassandra had made it clear that she didn’t consider that kink, because Sally had demonstrated that she actually did look up to her boyfriend, and looking up to any man was not something Cassandra thought lay within the boundaries of mental stability.

“Did you do any of that spanking stuff?” Wow—Cassandra actually seemed mollified. She was grinning at Sally.

“We may have,” Sally admitted.

“I got Rajit to do that to me the other night.” Cassandra’s smile was like that of the cat that ate the canary. “And I kind of liked it.”

Sally laughed in disbelief. “Seriously?”

“Uh-huh. I told him I’d said a bad word and I needed a spanking, and it was pretty hot. I mean, as long as all that naughty-girl stuff is just a game, I guess it’s alright.” She gave a wave of benediction, and receded into her own room.

What if it’s not a game, though?
Sally wondered.

* * *

When Mark let her into the room, the hungry look in his eye frightened her a little even as it made her knees go weak. She blushed instantly, remembering that he had had that same look when she had emerged from the shower the evening before, at around 7:00. They had not had dinner until 8:00, because Sally had been ordered back into bed, and Mark had gone down on her until she had screamed herself to three orgasms. Then he had taken her, hard and fast, and this time he had lasted much longer, though Sally was sore, and the pleasure was still not the way she could already tell it would be, very soon: a bubble of physical joy that could lift her to the heavens in an instant.

Very soon. Tonight?

Mark hugged her. “I love you,” he murmured.

His voice was full of affection, but also, Sally could tell, full of stress.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Oh, just my stupid thesis. I have a draft chapter due tomorrow and the words just aren’t flowing.”

Sally got a wicked idea. With her cheek against his chest, she said quietly, “I know something else that’s flowing.”

Mark laughed. “Naughty.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I don’t think I should. I, um, well, I’m so frustrated right now… I think I’d probably be really rough with you.”

“Oh, God, Mark… do you even realize how much more I, you know, flow… when you say that? Take out that stress on me.”

Mark’s muscular arms tightened around her. He seemed to think for a moment, and then he said, in a completely different voice—a stern, hungry voice, “Take off your clothes.”

The voice frightened Sally. She couldn’t deny it. Suddenly she didn’t know whether she should have told him to take it out on her.

“Wait,” she said. “I-I mean, can’t we…”

“No. Take off your clothes. I’m stressed out from working on my thesis, and I need some pussy.”

She thought, very hard, about saying ‘yellow.’ Part of her knew that he was still playing, but she could also see that she had given him permission to be serious about that play, to let out a side of him that perhaps she had only ever glimpsed before. This Mark was big and dominant, and he needed pussy. Sally belonged to him: her pussy belonged to him, now. When Mark Weaver needed pussy, Sally Lanchester had to put out.

Trembling, Sally started to obey. She took off her shirt, then her jeans, and laid them on top of Mark’s dresser.

“I want you bent over at the foot of the bed, with your hands on the bed. I’m going to fuck you doggy-style.”

“Oh, Mark, no, please.”

“Call me ‘sir’, Sally. You just earned a spanking. Don’t make it a whipping.”

She looked into his eyes. Her conversation with Cassandra played over inside her mind. Was this a game, or did she really have to do what he said, be fucked as he wanted to fuck her? And she had
asked
for this: she had asked to see this side of him, that in his loving discipline of her and the sex lessons he had given her so far he had barely even shown her, and never given into.

She swallowed. Mark said, “Get that bra and those panties off, Sal.”

Sally still hesitated. Mark started to take off his belt. In his eyes, Sally saw a look that made her reach to unhook her bra. Her loving boyfriend had a beast inside him: a dominant animal who took what he wanted, and the most important of the things he wanted was his girlfriend’s obedience, and the pussy that obedience would provide.

But though the bra fell to the floor as she shrugged it off, hardly knowing what she was doing in the mixture of her fear and her arousal, Sally still stood frozen in shock at what she had unleashed in him. Mark reached out and took her by her upper right arm. He spun her around roughly, bent her over his bed, and started to whip her with his belt.

The word ‘yellow’ played again at Sally’s lips, but she couldn’t say it. She belonged to this man; she had asked him to take out his stress on her.

“You. Will. Obey. Me,” Mark growled. “When I want to fuck you, you will get yourself. Ready. For. Fucking.”

“Mark… sir… please. Please stop!” Sally was sobbing, but that only seemed to make Mark whip her harder and faster.

Then, suddenly, she felt him ripping her panties down to her knees, and she heard his jeans drop to the floor. His cock pressed against her pussy, which was so much wetter than it had been before Mark’s beast had come out, and then, because he had opened her the day before, he was inside, fucking very hard, and she was coming, because there was no way at all she could help it, even for the moment it would have taken to ask permission.