"Take your dress off, Helen."
Helen blinked.
She was leaning over in the middle of her living room, a can of watermelon seltzer in her left hand, a can of a local IPA in the other. She was in the process of putting each of the cans down on coasters, the beer in front of her husband, Rex, and the seltzer in front of his friend, Frank, who Rex had known since high school. She deposited the cans on the cork squares, and then straightened.
"Excuse me?" she asked.
"Take your dress off," Rex said, his voice calm and commanding.
Frank looked at her frankly. In dipping down, she had given both men a view down her cleavage. Rex had picked out the dress. He had also picked out the rest of her outfit: A lacy, see through black bra; a wisp of a black thong; garter belt; stockings; ridiculously high heels.
"As per yesterday's discussion," Rex said, as Helen hesitated.
She remembered the discussion.
"It won't go the way you expect, you know," Rex had said.
"I guess if it did it wouldn't be what I'm asking for," Helen had replied.
"I think you imagine it will be all whips and chains."
The books she loved to read were full of such things, and collars, clamps, rope, and the rest. More things than she ever would have imagined, before her friend Cherry had loaned her the first one. "If you wish," she said, a chill going up her spine at the thought. What would it be like to be chained to the bed, unable to resist him? Or to be whipped, stinging stripes across her back and ass while he laughed at her pain?
He smiled slightly. "Perhaps sometimes I shall."
She shuddered, a delicious, voluptuous shudder. "Yes," she said.
"Yes what?" he asked.
She wasn't sure what he wanted, so she temporized. "You haven't said if you'll do it, yet."
He advanced, smiling, reaching out to stroke her cheek. "Dominate you? Take control? Expect your unflinching submission, your obedience of my every command?"
They had been married for five years. Five years of studied equality, of kitchen-table negotiations, of care to make sure that they either both got what they want, or that they were both equally deprived if that was impossible. He had always been scrupulously fair, and she had always tried to be. She trusted him.
And yet the look in his eyes, right then, made her shudder again. She felt he could make her cum if he just kept looking at her like that.
"Yes," she breathed. "All that."
"I accept. Yes what?"
"Yes Master?" she offered, as a possibility.
"Seems trite," he said. "But it will do. You will obey me? Even in front of others? I don't want you embarrassing me."
"I won't," she said. In front of others? She hadn't given that much thought, but the idea of not caring what other people thought was freeing. The idea of not caring about the constant emanations from her own busy brain was freeing, too. To care about nothing but what Rex thought, because she wasn't so idealistic as to think that a world where no one thought at all would work.
She felt, in a way, sorry for Rex, that he would have to do all the thinking.
"You're trusting me with quite a lot."
"With everything," she said.
"I could never trust someone like that. I don't have it in me."
She smiled. "I would never ask to dominate you, Rex."
"I find it hard enough to trust what you're telling me right now."
"Then test me."
He stared at her, then raised his hand. Was he going to hit her, just like that, with an open handed slap? Where would it land? Her face? Her breasts? It moved, swiftly, and she tensed for a moment.
Then it landed, softly, deprived of all of its momentum, on the swell of her breast.
"You would let me," he said.
"Yes, Master."
"You're quite serious about this."
"Yes, Master."
"I was raised never to hit a woman," Rex said. "I don't know if I can do it."
She sighed, disappointed in a way. "You can. If you want to."
"I can do what I want to."
"Yes, Master."
"Anything."
"Yes, Master." She was pretty sure he understood the real limits of anything and would keep her safe.
"Just yes, from now on," he said. "I think that yes, master, might become grating after a while. Use if it you think I need reminding that I'm in charge, and not otherwise. This will all take some getting used to."
She smiled and said nothing.
"Get your clothes off," he said, and she's stripped.
They ended up on the bed, fucking, missionary position. It hadn't, in the end, been that much different than usual, although the talk beforehand had turned her on, and she thought had turned him on, too. Afterward he grabbed his book from the nightstand, and she, not sure what to do, read for a while too, until they both fell asleep. The morning had been normal, too. She wondered if he'd forgotten about it all, although that was ridiculous. How could he forget? But he did nothing. He hadn't tied her to the bed, hadn't spanked her, hadn't done any of the things she'd imagined.
Apparently, though, he hadn't forgotten after all.
Helen reached behind her, unzipped her dress, trying to focus on Rex but very aware of Frank out of the corner of her eye.
She'd wondered at Rex inviting Frank over. After all, she'd been quite clear that she'd do anything for him, and they had a chance of an evening alone, but instead he'd invited Frank to come over, with the timing such that he'd arrive right after dinner. She'd figured they'd end up gaming, and she'd read her books. Cherry had made some new suggestions, but maybe the way she felt she'd be better off reading some old classic,
Vanity Fair
or something, rather than getting all wound up and frustrated.
She didn't think she'd be reading
Vanity Fair
after all, now, and Frank's presence, rather than being an avoidance of what they'd talked about, was instead part of an escalation.
She let the dress fall to the floor. It was impossible to focus entirely on Rex, to sink completely into the submission to him she'd craved. For he'd seen it all before, and Frank had not. What did Frank think of her now? Frank's eyes were feasting on her curve of her breasts, perhaps straining to see her nipples through the sheer fabric. His eyes dropped to take in her skimpy panties and the gap between them and her stockings.
Rex pulled the tab on his beer, and the hoppy smell of the IPA wafted toward her. "Frank," Rex said. "Hasn't had a blowjob for fifteen years."
Oh my fucking god, thought Helen.
It won't go the way you expect
