Favors 2

"Come on," Lisa prodded. "Do me a favor. I really need your help here."

"Yeah, I was kidding," Sarah reassured her. "Of course I'll help you out. Go do what you need to do and I'll take care of Mike's place."

The three of them, along with several hundred of their closest friends, worked together - IT software. Mike and Lisa were assigned to the same project. Sarah had teamed with Lisa in the past and knew her socially as well. She was less familiar with Mike, the shy, kind of cute, Obamaesque slender, slightly geeky programmer. He was on assignment out of town for the week and Lisa had offered to stop by his townhouse to collect mail and feed his cat and fish. But now that Lisa's sister back in Minneapolis was suffering a psychological crisis, Lisa was beholden to go to the rescue and was searching for someone to take over the responsibilities of Mike's place.

Lisa gave Sarah an appreciative peck on the cheek and handed over Mike's house-sitting instructions and keys. She rushed out, eager to attend to her own familial obligations.

Sarah wasn't all that put off by the house-checking chore. It was a slow week at work, Mike's townhouse wasn't that far from her own place and she liked cats. It was simply not that big a deal. Plus, in the times she'd been around Mike she found something naively charming and attractive about him. Fifteen years (at least) her junior (he was probably in his mid to late twenties), he was quirkily handsome and had this boyish appeal that she found fetching. Perhaps, upon learning that it was she who'd kept an eye on his place in her absence, he'd flatter her with some gratitude and attention. Flowers would be nice. Money's always good. Even a fine dinner would be okay. Any such reciprocity, Sarah mused, would be nice, appropriate and appreciated. Hell, she admitted to herself in a flashing moment of self-assurance, she expected it.

At the end of the workday, Sarah changed her normal driving route to accommodate her new destination. She found it easily enough, navigated the myriad townhouse numbers and found Mike's place. It was really quite respectable.

While Snickers, the Siamese cat, greeted her and rubbed his body against her ankles like affectionate cats do, she took measure of the place and, indirectly, of Mike. Not extravagant but nice. It would probably rent for, oh, somewhere between a quarter and a third of a decent monthly salary. Tastefully furnished and arranged with flair. "Maybe he's gay," she chuckled aloud, only to scold herself for being judgmental.

Expecting a goldfish bowl, she found instead a sizable and amazing aquarium that served to separate the dining area from the living room. It was imaginatively designed with a sunken pirate ship, scattered pirate bones, treasure chests, myriad underwater plants and colored lighting. The fish were exotic and varied. The gently bubbling tank established a soothing and almost meditative ambience for the room. Her focus moved to the lush, hanging plants thoughtfully placed in every room and then to the artwork on the walls and small sculptures on the tables. Very nice stuff - tasteful and intriguing pieces. "What an interesting guy," she mused. She picked up Snickers and wandered. He purred affectionately in her arms. He was a nice cat.

The more she saw the more impressed she was. She was surprised at how well kept it was. In her experience, most bachelors, especially those in their twenties, were not nearly so fastidious in housekeeping as Mike apparently was. Absent mindedly, she ran her finger over the top of a door jamb - clean. Wow! She probed a well laid out and inviting kitchen and nosily checked for dust on top of the refrigerator - clean again.

Sarah continued her exploration of the unit. Bathroom - restrained in décor but, once again, very clean and functional. She couldn't resist opening up the medicine cabinet. All was neatly arranged and nothing out of the ordinary. She made her way into the master bedroom. Tasteful and tidy once again. Those healthy, attractive plants adorned every room. Her admiration for young Mike grew. She found an office that featured two computers, both still on. That was the first strike against him - not energy conscious. And sloppy in terms of security. But, maybe it was one of those programming things where they leave their machines running 24/7. Worth noting but perhaps merely a passing thought. Beyond the technology, there were bookshelves laden with literature, history, philosophy as well as contemporary fiction. Could have been required college reading that he never got to and never got rid of. Or, maybe there was more to this guy than met the eye at work.

Having satiated her curiosity for the time being, Sarah went about the business of looking after the house. She fed Snickers, changed his water, checked the litter box, fed the fish and did one more walk through of the place. All was in order. She gave Snickers one last scratch under the chin and made her way out.

The next evening, Sarah showed up again at Mike's place. Snickers again greeted her. Sarah felt guilty about merely dining and dashing. Snickers could use some companionship. So, she made herself comfortable in a living room chair, turned on the tube (a beautiful large screen HD unit with impressive surround sound and a killer sub-woofer) and surfed for a while. Snickers preferred her immediate company to dinner and nestled in to a comfy spot in her lap. He languished in her sweet talk and generous massage for a good fifteen minutes. Sarah lifted him off before she herself got too comfortable and left for the evening. Two house-calls down, three to go.

As Sarah drove to Mike's on the third evening, she decided that she'd stay a while longer. She stopped at the local bistro and got a Greek salad to go. She entered the apartment with greater familiarity. There was Snickers and she made baby talk with him as she tossed her purse and jacket aside and made her way to the kitchen. A before-dinner cocktail would be nice, she decided, and she embarked on an exploration of kitchen cabinets for liquor. Her intuition didn't let her down and the second most likely place for liquor was a bonanza. Pusser's Rum, Grey Goose vodka, MaCallan single malt scotch, Patron silver tequila, Crown Royal whiskey, all top shelf, along with an impressive stock of aperitifs and liqueurs. Epicurean that she was, her estimation of Mike grew once again.

She decided on a vodka martini and quickly located a shaker and martini glass. Her hopes for the perfect cocktail were realized when she found olives in the fridge. And stemmed martini glasses in a cupboard. "Ah...life is good," she thought, as she savored a healthy sip of an excellent Grey Goose martini, strewn with slivers of ice from a thorough shaking. She went about preparing her salad and the animals' dinners in the kitchen. Snickers was well aware of his upcoming repast and was doing circle eights between and around her legs, practically tripping her in his affection and anticipation. As the two, human and feline, performed their awkward dance, it was his fault that she stepped on his paw. A spontaneous and fearful "Goddammit!" poured out of Sarah's diaphragm. Snickers shrieked a caterwaul and sped out of the kitchen and into Mike's bedroom. "Shit," Sarah continued. "Snickers...Snickers...God, I'm so sorry!"

Convinced she'd broken the feline's foot, she raced after him to assess the damage. Into the bedroom she rushed, using her most alluring "kitty, kitty, kitty" voice. A quick visual search revealed nothing but she knew he was in the room. The bathroom door was closed. She checked the corners. Closet door closed. She crouched down on her knees, pulled up the bed skirt and peered under. There, between a couple boxes, were a pair of glowing cat eyes. "Come here, Snickers," she pleaded. She instinctively pulled out one box and shoved it out of the way. Snickers was barely out of her reach. She goaded him further. Slowly, ever so slowly, he made his way toward her. Moving with great deliberation, she cradled the back of the animal and pulled him out. She picked him up gently and sat down on the edge of the bed. "I'm so sorry Snickers. Are you okay?" She petted him, talked to him and searched for visible damage. There was none to see. Gingerly, she placed him on the floor. Snickers sauntered toward the box giving it a quick sniff, then sashayed back to Sarah. There were no signs of injury. It appeared that there was no damage.

"Thank God," Sarah muttered aloud, having flashed on emergency veterinary visits and tortured explanations of how she broke the cat's leg. Relieved, she decided to go back in time, enjoy her martini, and proceed with dinner for all residents. She pulled the box along the floor to stick it back under the bed. But she couldn't help reading the title of a piece of content. The item on top was irresistibly eye-catching. It was a glossy magazine whose cover featured a naked man standing with his hands clasped behind his neck. Two fully clothed women sat in front of him with wicked grins, one fondling his erect cock and the other tweaking his bare nipples. The title was "CFNM Humiliation."

Sarah just stared at the cover for several moments. But the chance of her sliding this stash of Mike's dirty magazines back under the bed without a perusal was zero. She lifted the CFNM volume. There was lots of "stuff" underneath too. But one thing at a time.

Upon examination of the first volume, it turns out that "CFNM" stood for "Clothed Females Naked Men," and this particular compilation featured one, two and sometimes three dressed women humiliating a naked man, through good-natured scolding, forced worship, some light bondage and lots of handjobs. Sarah got the picture pretty fast after getting over the initial shock of the sordid porn she had discovered. "Mikey, you perv!" she actually exclaimed aloud. With great curiosity, she dug deeper. Other magazine titles bore a theme. ("Domin 8 Me" was next in line, followed by "Subby Hubby" and "Femdom Worship.") All were explicit in capturing various women - secretaries, librarians, next door neighbors, co-workers - who subdued and dominated male victims. On the light end it was playful (the CFNM magazine). Others featured picture stories that were quite stern (the "Domin 8 Me" volume especially). Men were hogtied, gagged and spanked in that one. In virtually all the magazines, the men kissed and licked lots of boots. In the fringe magazines some of the women sported strap-on dildoes that the guys were forced to suck and even take up the ass from their dominant mistresses. Several times Sarah exclaimed aloud, "Holy shit!" She probed further into the box and found about a dozen DVDs and half a dozen novels.

Sarah wasn't totally taken aback. After all, she was forty-five years old, and worldly - she had been up past midnight on Saturday night a time or two. She once had a boyfriend, Sam, who was into this stuff. He wanted her to handcuff him and blindfold him. They played that game and she was actually just getting comfortable in her role when she met her to-be second husband and fell in love with him. But as a going away / break-up present to Sam she bound him to his bed and gave him a good spanking for not living up to her dreams of the perfect man. She jerked him off after spanking him, while he was still tied up. He told her afterwards that she had a superb talent for domination. And that was the last time she'd dabbled in the realm of domination and submission. All those memories flashed back in an instant.

But in the next instant, she got back on her knees and pulled out the second box from under the bed. In it she discovered many accoutrements complimenting the themes of box #1 - a riding crop, a paddle, handcuffs, a blindfold, several collars, a ball gag, some nipple clamps, dildoes of various sizes, one hooked up to a harness - similar to the strap-on featured in the edgy pictorials. Mike was well-stocked in the tools of the trade, as it were.

Sarah just sat on the edge of the bed and stared for a while at the two boxes. Mike, the slightly geeky but attractive bachelor with the beautifully kept-up apartment had a secret. It was a raunchy and perverse little secret. And she now knew what it was. She wondered how many others knew. She wondered if he was a closet sub or if he actually dabbled in "the scene." She wasn't sure what her awareness portended, but she shoved the boxes back under the bed and resumed her cocktail and dinner. When she was done she hugged Snickers, tapped a goodbye on the fish tank glass and departed for the evening. Three down and two to go.

After thinking about it frequently at work the next day, Sarah simply couldn't resist probing deeper into Mike's secret life. Upon her night four visit, she dragged out Mike's boxes and perused even more carefully. She pulled out a couple DVDs and simply couldn't resist playing them on his home theater system. The big screen and dynamic sound gave her new appreciation for the power of visual pornography. The first one was "MILF Trainers." She'd heard the term "MILF" but it was now clarified for her. "MILF," she learned, is an acronym for "Moms I'd Like to Fuck." Simply, they were older, more mature women, in this film from their mid 30s to mid 40s. At forty-five, that put Sarah on the outskirts of even that mature, salacious cohort. As she fast-forwarded and spot-checked the videos she couldn't help but stack herself up against the porn actresses in the film - and Sarah felt she could compete with any of them for looks (preferring her natural breasts to the overblown balloons among the actresses) and bragged to herself that she could probably out-compete them in theatrical performances. At any rate, the theme of the film was that these MILFs hit on younger men, (lawnboys, friends of college-age sons, male secretaries at the office). The MILFs would come on to them and get them all excited, only to turn the tables and turn them into sex toys whom they then trained to service their own libidinous desires. These young male sex slaves spent a lot of time crawling around on their hands and knees, eating a lot of pussy and even licking some MILF ass. This was dirty shit. She zoomed through many chapters fairly quickly and in short order got a good sense of the video's content.

The next one she inserted was entitled "TILF Magic." Turns out that TILF stands for "Teachers I'd Like to Fuck." Same theme as the first - mature female teachers and college professors hit on their young male students and turned them into fetish sex slaves. The recurring theme in Mike's taste in porn, both from his magazines and his videos, was unmistakable. Older woman seduces younger man. Younger man gets all excited. Older woman changes the rules of the game and demands ever more homage, obedience and compliance. Every scene ended up with a dominant woman dictating to a younger submissive man - boot licking, scolding, spanking, some humiliation and lots of handjobs performed on helpless guys.

Sarah returned all the "goodies" to the boxes, as closely as she could remember to their original organizational state, returned them to their hiding place and resolved to forget about Mike's peculiar tastes. But as she dozed restlessly that night, she experienced vivid and recurring dreams of the video scenes she'd watched. In her dreams, she was the actress in charge and anonymous young men knelt in front of her. There were phantasmal episodes of her scolding them for insubordination. She sported a strap-on in one reverie and used it in the most humiliating ways. And she hovered over prostrate men and impaled herself on erect cocks. She woke up in a sweat and breathing heavily, disturbed that the perverse images from the videos had affected her in this way. She was no pervert. Yet there she was, panting excitedly as she recalled how she'd demeaned and used the young men in her subconscious fantasy.

She showed up for her last call on Friday night. Tomorrow Mike would return. She'd vowed merely to stop and take care of business. But as she waited for Snickers to eat and as she watched the fish feed, she caved in to a growing obsession. She couldn't resist one last foray into Mike's boxes. Though she had entered the apartment that evening determined not to, she suddenly felt compelled to see more. She pulled them both out and this time grabbed a couple novels. She sat in Mikes' office chair and perused the pages. Same stuff. Seemingly innocent housewives, clerks and secretaries transformed into sexual aggressors of their male prey

After about ten minutes of browsing she activated the computer screen in front of her. Mike was logged on and his desktop appeared in front of her. With almost obsessive curiosity now, she delved into his "Favorites" and dug deeper and deeper into his documents and his pictures. Yes, she was really being tacky at this point - way worse than nosing into someone's medicine cabinet, worse than sneaking peeks into their dresser drawers, even sneakier than snooping under their beds. But she really hadn't tried to intrude earlier. It just happened. It had all been accidental. Now she was on the offensive.

And, predictably, she found more digital manifestations of Mike's personal fetish. He'd stored pictures of subjugated males, cowering before dominant females. He'd written secret tributes to some of the women he worked with and fantasized about how he yearned to service them in the most demeaning ways. Sarah got the distinct impression that this was just a fantasy world for Mike, that he didn't actually satiate his longings, that they didn't come to fruition with the other ladies in the office. She read with prurient interests his fantasies with officemates. Most obscene! Strangely, she was a tad insulted when she realized she was not among them, but then surmised that he didn't know her well enough to recognize her looks and charms. She navigated further. His favorite websites included the predictable keywords - femdom, CFNM, bondage fetish, MILFs, male submission.

If she were making a case against Mike, she had extraordinarily detailed evidence to prove that he was a male submissive who yearned to succumb to a dominant female; preferably an older woman who would take the young man for a ride, as it were. Sarah realized with irony that she was somewhere around seventeen to nineteen years his senior (she'd begun piecing together age clues from his abode). She could be his mother. In that sense it was untoward to fancy herself as a paramour of his. Yet the images from the magazines, in his novels, from the videos and his box of toys crept persistently into her consciousness. And she imagined what it would be like to lord it over the young man, to bring his fantasies to life. She wondered just how far she'd go in that role. Her discovery was becoming her own fixation. She left Snickers and the fish that night unsure if she were bidding a final adieu to Mike's private world.

The following Monday things returned to normal at work. Sarah was done with her pet-sitting, Lisa was back from her sisterly rescue mission and Mike had returned Saturday past from his out of town assignment. Sarah caught up with Lisa and got the low-down on her counseling adventure and she reassured Lisa that everything went fine with Mike's place. Early in the afternoon Mike approached Sarah.

"I'm sorry to interrupt. I don't mean to bother you. I'm Mike. Lisa tells me that it's you I have to thank for watching my cat and the fish and everything while I was gone," he ventured, almost apologetically.

Sarah studied him carefully. It amazed her how private information about someone's sexual proclivities could change the observer's perception. She saw the same polite, boyish programmer from the past, but irresistibly envisioned him kneeling before her naked while she tugged on two leashes, one attached to a cock ring and the other to a neck collar, just like in his private pictures. "It's a good thing we can't read each others' thoughts," she mused to herself before speaking.