I swear it was reflex that made me take a sip of the coffee. Mostly reflex. I was also a little nervous, as I tend to be when meeting a new partner. Whatever the cause, I paid dearly for my action. The coffee was old and cold, bitter acid on my tongue and in my stomach. I simply sighed, shook my head, and accepted my punishment. My beverage of choice is tea. I consider coffee the ironic curse of a playful deity upon Type-A personalities and toadies. The only reason I had a cup of coffee in my hand was because they were out of tea, even the foul, mass-market 'stems in a bag' stuff, and I wanted the seat.
The seat was decent. Not particularly comfortable, but with a magnificent view of the terminal. In particular it allowed me to see the entrance from the tramway. Ella would emerge from the tunnels at this point and I would be able to see her from my perch. It seems somewhat predatory to think in these terms and that always pains me. I have no particular dislike of women. To the contrary, I think they are marvelous examples of the genius of the aforementioned deity. Proof positive of intelligent design. Surely nothing so lovely as the female form was formed by happenstance. I certainly intended no harm to Ms. Ella Spence and intended to labor long and hard to ensure that the next week was one she would remember fondly. No, my aim was not predation but, rather, control. It would not do at all, at all, to be waiting for her by the entrance. She must come to me.
Pretty damn ridiculous, isn't it? She flies a thousand plus miles at her own expense to visit me, and yet it's the last hundred meters that will establish the idea that she is coming to me. But that's the way it works. It also helps to give the appearance of being at ease. We would both be nervous, but she would be standing in front of me. Standing creates tension. Sitting allows for the release of tension. It also helps to have a 'servant'. In my case, Ivan. Ivan is just a limo driver, hired for the evening. But Ella wouldn't know that. Not that it would have mattered if she did. The principle remains sound. My servant meets her, the lesser servant, and escorts her to me. Little details do the most to shape our perceptions, and sex is largely something that happens in the mind.
She spotted Ivan, more precisely the little sign Ivan was holding, at the same time I spotted her. She walked over to him and they exchanged a few words, each assuring the other that they had found who they were looking for. Then he escorted her to the escalator up to my level and over to my table. I watched her as she walked, flat shoes, a simple sundress, a back-pack. So simple, and so elegant. I had her give her baggage claim check to Ivan and gave her a glass of water. We greeted each other and went through the paperwork to mutually verify identities, ages, health, etc... Oh so boring, and so very necessary. The real world must be accomodated before fantasy can begin. When we were done I called Ivan on my cell phone and had him bring the limo around.
The limo isn't anything special. It's large enough that two people can sit facing each other and has a partition between the passengers and the driver. That's all I need so that's all I rent. Ella sat facing me, back to the driver. I climbed in and turned on the video camera. The video camera is largely a gimmick. I don't keep the tapes. I use it because it makes my partner self-concious and the spotlight on the camera blinds them. Ella could see my body, but not my face; the camera sat on the window ledge behind me, the spotlight immediately next to my head. Ivan hates the glare it creates, but that's why I tip well.
We talked on the way to my home. The words were largely unimportant, they had all been said before, repeated in conversations via the electronic ether. My interest was in the emotions behind the words. Ella talked and I listened and observed. My partners always seem to expect a scene out of The Story of O or a limo-ravishing. But I want to build a deeper fantasy than this, so I take my time. A feast well prepared rather than a quick snack. I ordered Ella to keep her feet shoulder width apart, her knees separated, and her hands on the seat next to her. Nothing more. The position is not precisely chaste, but neither is it in any way vulgar. What it suggested was largely left to Ella's imagination and her musings would be far more powerful than any action I could take at that point. For my part, the simple act of having her obey my command accelerated my pulse. Is there anything more wonderful than an obedient woman carefully listening for your every command?
Her body language screamed nervous and whispered excited. She licked her lips, repeatedly, and I thought of five ways I wanted to enjoy them. Her leg muscles twitched, a slow nervous tick that she tried to repress. She struggled, oh so self-conciously, trying to become comfortable. First hunching her shoulders, then pressing them back, an action that lifted her breasts beneath the fabric of the dress. I thought of several things I wanted to do with those breasts. Her hands fidgeted, and she kept having to remind herself that she couldn't put them into her lap and fold herself into a protective shell. The body has a language all it's own. It's relatively simple to learn to read that language. But you can also use that language to manipulate people. Putting Ella into an open body posture, even one so innocous as that I had specified, made her feel exposed and defenseless before me.
We arrived outside my home well after 9pm. The timing is, of course, significant. Ella would be physically stressed over the next several hours. I wanted her tired and off balance to begin with. It's useful in so many different ways, and also because when she began to get more rest she would associate the feeling of increased well-being with me. It accelerates the trust process. Too, by arriving in the darkness, Ella was effectively blind. She had been staring into a bright light for 45 minutes and couldn't see anything more than a large vaguely shaped darkness with a poorly lit red door in the center of it. And I took her into that looming darkness through the red door in the wall. Or, rather, I ordered her in. Alone and carrying her suitcase and backpack she had to stumble into the unknown. I tipped Ivan, thanked him for his work and followed her.
I think of it as the reception room. It's stark and forbidding. It has the feel of a torture chamber, a primitive clinical atmosphere. Bare walls of natural earth, a floor covered in brown tile, an enormous old wardrobe, a long metal table, and a single light hanging from the ceiling to create an island of light surrounded by darkness. More than one partner has screamed at the sight, carried away by the buidling tension. I told Ella to empty her luggage and backpack onto the steel table and to remove her clothing. She was eager to obey and enthusiastically dumped the contents out by simply opening the bags and upending them. I gathered a string bag and a canvas sack from the wardrobe and walked back to the table. Ella was trying to avoid attempting to cover herself, sudden modesty overcoming her bravado of a moment before. I ignored her and sorted through her belongings. When I had pulled out everything I was going to permit her to keep, mostly personal hygiene objects, I told her to put the rest in the canvas sack. The sack and the luggage went into a space in the wardrobe that was padlocked. The padlock is meaningless, but every single one of my partners shudders when they hear the lock click shut. The string bag went on a hook next to the blue door, the second entrance to the room.
I took Ella by the arm and pulled her over to one side of the room, facing her to the wall a few feet away. I went back to the big cupboard, behind her, and pulled out everything we needed. Ella's ankles went into a pair of rubber cuffs, one to each ankle, which were then attached to rings in the floor, a little more than shoulder width apart. Her wrists went into rubber cuffs which attached to a rope running through a ring in the ceiling. I pulled the rope tight, slowly lifting her until she was resting on the balls of her feet, arms raised high above her head, and then secured it. A quick turn of the handle started the water falling out of the nozzle above her head. Cold water. Icy. She gasped in shock and lost her balance, fighting to regain it. I left the water running and filled a bucket half-full with powdered soap and hot water. Stirring it with a long-handled brush I returned to Ella.
