Submissive Desires (7 page)

She was already squirming in her chair, and they’d only been talking for less than five minutes.

The answer to that question was “no.” Part of submitting, to Elizabeth, was trusting her dom enough that, even if he had her doing something she detested, she would do it, out of respect – and possibly even love – for him. “Noooooooo . . .”

“Why doesn’t that answer reassure me very much, little girl?” he asked pointedly.

Elizabeth humphed into the phone. The man was too astute for his own good. “Well, I do retain my free will . . . “

“I’m not asking you to jump off a cliff, Elizabeth,” he replied with gentle reproach.

“I know that . . .” her voice was just shy of bratty.

“Well, then, I want you to take some time looking tomorrow and write me a comprehensive email the next day telling me what you’ve discovered.”

Her eyebrow rose. “You’re assigning me a term paper?”

“I’m giving you a chore to do,” he responded smoothly, “At least that’s how I know you’re going to approach it. I want to know what kind of classes they offer, how the ones you need could fit into your schedule, how much it’ll cost . . . everything.”

“I hate expository writing. I’d rather make it all up,” she almost whined, pretty much to herself.

His response was swift and sure. “That’ll get your bottom beat for sure when I check your references. I don’t mess around, Maura. Don’t be sloppy, and get your facts straight, or you’ll wish you had.”

Suddenly out of breath, she drew in a sharp lungful of air. “Yes, Sir.”

“I want it in my email no later than nine a.m. next Friday. And if it’s less than two thousand words, you’re going to be in serious trouble.”

Gulp. “Yes, Sir.”

True to the same form she’d had in high school, and what little of college she’d done, it was Wednesday night and she hadn’t written word one, nor had she so much as looked anything up so that she could write anything. She hadn’t heard from Simon all day, and was definitely out of sorts from the lack, pouting terribly in front of the computer, until an email showed up. Unexpected trip. No time to call. I’ll call you when I get back.

31

If she hadn’t known his email address, she might not have known who the heck it was from!! At first, she figured she had been granted a stay of execution, from having to execute that report. But as Thursday dragged on, she came to realize that he would never agree that his leaving had left her off the hook. He expected her to deliver that report by Friday, and from what she knew of the man, excuses and assumptions were not going to cut it, in any way, shape, or form.

Rolling her eyes all the way at what she’d gotten herself into, she began the awful thing, hating every ever-loving minute of it. The temptation to fill it out with occasional, negligible fictions was squashed every time she remembered what he’d said about the condition her bottom would be, and how if she didn’t get her facts straight, she’d wish she had.

That thought made her shiver from head to toe, but it also spurred her on, and, eventually, she was able to send off what she hoped with an inordinate fervor was what he would consider as a pretty good attempt. She hit send at eight-fifty-five a.m., and went to bed. When Simon got back from wherever it was that he'd gone, he called Maura first thing, sounding tired and worn out for the first time since she'd begun to talk to him.

"Are you okay?" she asked, a little worried.

"I'm wiped out, hon."

Elizabeth flushed. Simon rarely used endearments. "Then why don't you go to bed? I'll still be here when you get up."

She could hear him yawning loudly in the background, as if he'd turned his head away from the phone to do so. "I know. I just wanted to hear your voice. Chatting online doesn't cut it any more."

That was an interesting admission, she thought. And it went both ways. She nibbled her lip.

"Yeah. It doesn't, does it?"

He growled directly into the phone, and it sent a chill up Maura's spine; it was so blatantly male, so like how she'd come to think of him - uncompromisingly masculine. "I'd like for us to meet, whenever you're comfortable. I'll come up to you. I'm not trying to pressure you in any way, though. I just want you to know that that's where I 'm thinking we're heading in the relatively near future."

The idea of meeting him did two opposite things to her: it made her nervous in the extreme, and it made her privates clench. She was so caught up in the dichotomy of the feelings that she didn't say anything immediately.

"Am I moving too quickly for you?" he asked laconically, as if he really wasn't worried much about it. And he wasn't. Maura tended to be a little hesitant about things, but Simon felt that they were working on a nice bond, and if she was truly not interested in meeting yet, then he'd simply lay off for a while. He'd learned the art of patience the hard way - in various life or death situations. He could wait for her to trust him enough to meet him face to face.

Simon completely understood her reservations, too, and would honestly have been more concerned if she hadn't been as cautious. Any woman nowadays who met a stranger from the Internet without having first taken certain precautions was asking to get raped - or worse.

"No, not really. I'm just . . . nervous."

He could hear the truth of it in her voice. "Nervous is actually good, I'd say."

He'd managed to surprise her, as usual. "It is?"

Maura didn't often sound like she needed reassurance, but this was one of those times, he guessed. "Of course. As close as we've gotten over the past weeks - almost two months - you still don't really know me." Simon didn't add that she probably would never really know him, considering that he would only ever let someone see what he wanted them to see about him. But that was not something he wanted to get into with her. "I'm glad that you're not rushing headlong into meeting me. That's the smart approach to dating - whether you've met them at a church social or on the Internet."

"Thank you.” It sounded kind of funny to think of dating Simon, considering what they knew about each other – it was like they had completely skipped those tawdry preliminaries and gone straight to 32

the heart – or, rather, the genitals – of their relationship. “It's more than that - I'm naturally reticent about meeting anyone, but I like you, so I'm probably more nervous about meeting you than I would be about most other people - although I don't like meeting new people in general, anyway . . ."

Simon laughed softly. "And I had you pegged as pretty gregarious - "

"Gregarious but shy," Maura corrected ruefully, shrugging. "So I'm a bundle of contradictions."

"Yup - most women are."

Maura blew a big raspberry at the phone.

"Watch yourself there, little girl."

"Uh huh," she replied, not particularly chastened.

He sighed. "Well, I think, as much as I would love to stay awake and talk to you, that I'm fading fast and I need to crawl into bed.

An all-too-detailed, fantasy visual of him doing just that - stark naked, of course - flashed into Maura's mind, making her shiver loudly enough for him to hear.

"Are you okay?" he asked solicitously.

"Y-yeah. I'm fine." Her nipples were little spike-berries, and her panties were rapidly growing moister, but then that seemed to be nothing new in the way of her instantaneous response to him.

"You sure?" he sounded genuinely concerned, and Maura didn’t doubt that he was.

"Uh-huh. You go get some sleep. I'll talk to you later."

"Maura?"

"Yes, Simon?"

"I'm glad to be home - I missed talking to you."

Her body suffused with warmth at his compliment. Neither was Simon given to extravagant compliments. "I missed talking to you, too, although we certainly kept the email wires burning."

They had - chatting back and forth - as inefficient as that was. Every morning, there was a long email in her box from him, which she fired off an answer to before she even started her day. If he couldn't make their evening chats - and there were times when he couldn't; apparently he was in a very different time zone from home - he always let her know, and sent her an email that night when he could.

33

He was, thank the powers that be, quite happy with the results of her report, although he couldn’t resist needling her about being a writer and hating to write. Maura expected him to give her some sort of assignment to register, which she anticipated resisting quite fervently, but Simon could never be counted on to do the expected.

Besides, he was working on other things that he apparently considered much more important at the moment.

It took Simon another several weeks of asking occasionally, gently when she would be comfortable meeting him. He didn't want her to think that he'd forgotten about it, or that he somehow had decided he didn't want to; instead he settled for carefully noodging her whenever he could, but not enough to truly pester her.

Finally, he got a response in the affirmative - if, however, somewhat reluctant.

"Okay, yeah, I'll meet you. Where and when?"

They were on the phone, as usual. Simon paused, consciously giving her an opening in which she could retract her statement if she wanted to. "Are you sure?" He didn't want her to feel that she had no other choice. He could be as patient as he needed to be.

"Yeah, I'm sure." Maura crossed two freezing cold fingers as she spoke.

"Well, since I'm coming up there - "

"But I said I'd come down to you - "

"No. I'll come up. I don't want you feeling trapped or pressured in any way, even just by circumstances or the environment. As I was going to say before someone interrupted me . . ." he began pointedly.

"Sorry, Sir," she apologized not-quite meekly.

"Mmmmm," he murmured. "Since it's your town, why don't you think on the place, and let me know. I'm available the rest of the month - and if something happens to change that, I'll let you know as soon as I can. You take a look at your own calendar and decide where and just let me know. I'll be there with bells on.” Maura chuckled at the idea of Simon wearing bells. They just didn’t go along with what she knew of his personality.

When to meet was the easy part - they both worked at their own businesses, and their time was largely their own as far as scheduling things. So Maura picked the next weekend, and asked him if lunch was okay. It was great as far as he was concerned. He had absolutely no illusions that he was going to get her to lie down for him on their first meeting. He would have thought less of her if she had, honestly, and he told her as much when she mentioned exactly that to him - that regardless of how well the meeting went, they would not end up in bed.

The place was more of a problem. It had to have good food, and be a place where she was comfortable, and that wasn't so crowded at lunchtime that they couldn't hear each other over the din.

Frankly, Maura was still at that early point in a relationship where didn't want to miss a word he said.

So they settled on lunch at Les Oeufs - a restaurant that Maura frequented with her girlfriends.

Its atmosphere was almost European. They served breakfast, lunch, and dinner all day, and diners were encouraged to relax and dawdle over their meals. Maura loved the place, and she thought that Simon might like it also. It was just popular enough that they could discuss whatever they wanted without calling attention to themselves, but not so busy that they wouldn't be able to hear themselves think.

And, but it was busy enough that she would be surrounded by people the whole time - in the parking lot as well as the restaurant proper. Maura tried to follow as many rules about meeting someone 34

on the Internet as she possibly could, and, to her surprise, Simon was mandating that she do exactly the same the same thing – even more so.

The night before they were to meet, he drilled her. "Now. Someone knows where you're going to be?"

Maura, who had already heard this lecture several hundred times by now, was rolling her eyes.

Good thing he couldn't see her – but she was having a hard time keeping the exaggerated patience out of her voice. "Yes."

"And there's someone who is going to expect a phone call from you at a specified time this afternoon?"

"Yes."

"And you're bringing your cell phone?"

"Yes." She couldn't help it. Sarcasm was definitely creeping into her tone.

"Stop sounding like you're placating me, Maura," he chided sternly.

Maura gulped. "Yes, Sir,” she replied dutifully, but with an irrepressible aura of humor.

“Grrrrr,” he growled, letting her know that he wasn’t really angry. “This is all for your protection, you know. I could be a serial killer or a psychopath – “

“Aren’t those the same thing?” she interrupted, musing out loud. “Can one be a serial killer without being a psychopath, or vice versa?”

His heavy sigh made her straighten up in her seat. “Maura Boardman, you are pushing it – you’ll be lucky if I don’t bring my paddle with me tomorrow – “ he threatened, not playfully enough to let her know that he wouldn’t.

“No!” she shrieked, right on cue.

“Well, then, you’d better straighten up and fly right, hadn’t you?”

“Yes, Sir.” Her pout was visible from miles away.

“Okay, well, tomorrow at eleven-thirty, we’ll meet in the parking lot. You have a cute little sky blue Celica, and I have a big black Chevy truck.”

“How phallic.”

“Maura!”

“Well . . . Sorry. But it’s true!”

Simon actually laughed. One of the few times she’d heard that rare sound. “You definitely need to be spanked. Hard. And repeatedly.”

Maura squirmed in her chair. “Do not.”

“Ooooooh yes you do. And that bill is coming due. Sooner than you think.”

“Is not!”

Another small chuckle. Maura loved that she could make him respond in that simple way. “Before you descend any further into childhood than you already are, I think I’ll say goodnight.” He listened to her huff and puff and humph in the background. “After all, we’ll be seeing each other tomorrow.”

Maura’s heart and stomach clenched tightly, making her feel mildly high and mildly nauseous at the same time. “I know.”