[Author's note: if you don't like to read about female domination, please skip to the next story, or check out my
other stories
for something that's more to your taste.
Through a series of counselling session with Cassie, his therapist, Quinn is trying to come to terms with how his wife Alena managed to transform him from her assured, overbearing husband into her willing slave. He has related a night at the Lost and Found where she turned him into club property to service a stream of women, but now he comes back to the day it all started]
---
A SIMPLE PROPOSITION
"Ismay," Cassie said, "Tell me about your nightmares."
The two women faced each other across the grey carpet. In the intervening silence, Cassie shifted slightly, adjusting the fall of her skirt as she crossed her legs, waiting. Ismay began to talk, opening up about what see saw in her dreams and how it made her feel. Cassie tapped away at her keyboard, taking notes.
It took nearly an hour, but by the end Ismay was slumped in the big comfortable armchair in tears. Cassie had nodded, prompted, taken notes and now that they were done, she offered her patient a little box of tissues. Cassie let her recover, watched her go through the usual process: blowing her nose, wiping her eyes, taking in a deep, shuddering breath until at last her distress gave way to an accepting calm. Finally, Cassie sat up a little straighter in her chair, closing her laptop and putting it to the side. She watched her patient sit up, raising her chin and folding her hands in her lap.
It was always a good sign when they mirrored her. It meant they had a rapport, that Cassie was trusted. Cassie paused, clearing her throat. Ismay watched her expectantly.
"I think we have two ways we can go here," Cassie began, "Both approaches try to deal with the issue in different ways and we can switch if we find one approach isn't working."
She paused, letting her words sink in.
"The first is a programme of cognitive behavioural therapy. We talk through what your triggers are and how they affect you, and we can begin to give you mechanisms to cope with the responses so that you don't dive down the path that leads you to the feelings that you're finding problematic."
Ismay nodded, her attention focused, waiting as Cassie delivered her judgement.
"Option two is a medical intervention. We can try and stabilise the moods through a regimen of medication. Initially, we'd try a low dose of an anti-depressant to try and even things out, and then see how we go from there."
Cassie leaned back in her chair. Ismay followed her, relaxing into the armchair.
"Any questions or thoughts?"
They talked for another few minutes. Cassie was conscious that they had gotten to the end of the hour, but she understood that her patient needed to ask all her questions. Eventually they settled on option two. Cassie wrote out a prescription and handed it to the other woman, rising from her chair to see Ismay to the door.
Afterwards, she sat down at her desk to tidy up her notes, but the little screen couldn't hold her attention. Instead, she found herself staring out of the window at the way the sun cast shadows across the monolithic glass surfaces of the marching ranks of high-rise buildings.
It was always the same: option two. Cassie finished her notes and stretched, massaging her scalp with her long fingers before pulling her sweep of expensively-styled blonde hair back and smoothing it into a neat ponytail, ready for her next appointment. Instead of calling out to reception, though, she stood up and crossed over to the window, feeling the ache in her feet from a day of wearing heels.
Option two was a good choice. The drugs almost always worked, and popping a pill to not feel the emptiness every morning was a lot easier than option one. Option two also kept a roof over her head: the patients dutifully booked a session with her every month for a check-in and more importantly a prescription renewal. She would very likely be seeing Ismay for years.
Still, Cassie would have liked to try option one and, just for once, take the opportunity to instil real change. She would have enjoyed the opportunity to reshape her patient's thought processes, to tackle the root behavioural issues. It would have been nice to put her years of clinical experience to use, just for once.
Cassie clasped her hands behind her back, arching her slim frame and trying to rid herself of a feeling of stiffness. She wandered out to reception to collect her next patient. The stiffness hadn't gone away, but she hadn't expected it to. It was deeper than muscle, deeper than tension in her neck and back. The underlying causes were more difficult to deal with.
Quinn was standing by the reception desk, waiting. For some reason, he never chose to sit. Something about him always radiated a restlessness, a nervous energy. Today, he was in jeans and a long-sleeved black sweatshirt covering his sparse frame. Cassie was conscious of the way he towered over her when she approached and saw how he immediately began to stoop. A reflex, learned over his time with his wife and now projected onto the female in front of him. Cassie headed it off with a quick smile.
"How are you, Quinn?" she opened, with enthusiasm.
He seemed to relax at her warm greeting, and took her hand as she offered it. They shook.
"I never know whether to shake your hand or kiss it."
"Shake. Always shake. But good, we're making progress on the separation of the two."
Quinn shrugged. "Yeah, I suppose we are."
Cassie began to walk and Quinn fell into step next to her.
"How are you though?"
"Normal. Or, at least I'm doing normal. Or at least, I'm doing normal more often."
Cassie laughed, a genuine reaction. Behind it all, she had begun to see a quick witted, intelligent man in Quinn. Was this a hint of the man who existed before Alena, or the one who existed with Alena?
She opened the door to their meeting space and invited him in, then closed the door softly behind them.
"Make yourself at home Quinn," Cassie said.
"Thanks."
Quinn remained standing.
"Anything the problem?"
"No. Um, yes. I'm...."
His words petered out.
"Whatever is on your mind, you can say it."
Quinn flopped into a chair.
"I guess I know what I want to talk about today."
"That's good."
"No, not really. I want to try and tell you how it all started. I'm... I've been thinking a lot about it, trying to work out how to say it so you would understand."
"Just let it flow. If it doesn't make sense, we can work through it until it does. That's what these sessions are all about."
"Oh, it all makes sense. It's all crystal clear in my head. I just need to make sure you understand, so you can help me with some questions I have."
"Why don't you tell me the questions up front then as I listen, I can work on that?"
Quinn ran a hand through his short-cropped hair. His warm brown eyes met hers. She could see the conflict in him.
"It's deeply personal," he said.
"This is all deeply personal. If you're able, I'd like to know."
Quinn exhaled a long, slow breath.
"Okay," he began, "Here's what it is. I think I know why she did what she did to me, but I guess now we'll never know for sure. I want to know why I let her do all those things to me. Why did I let her turn me into that?"
He leaned forward in his chair, making tiny stabbing motions with his hands.
"I want to get into that. What was it in me that needed her to do all that to me? When we started out, it was a million miles away from where I thought we were going."
"You expected to be in charge?"
"Yes. I thought I was the dominant one. I was always the one making the decisions. I mean, in court, of course, that's the job, holding your line in front of the jury. Also, at home though. When I started all this, I expected Alena to go through with it, to fall into line."
"And that didn't happen."
"No, it didn't. Instead, it was, I don't know how to describe it. It's like we fell through the ice."
---
I made dinner that night, the night it started. Alena had been flat out on a grant proposal and I'd just come off a case, so I was happy to take up the slack. Normally, Alena cooks. It just sort of fits, given that when she isn't at the university she's working from home, writing papers or preparing lecture notes. If she's away at a conference, or building up to that, I might take up the slack but generally I work longer hours with my job. We always tried to make it balance out, but in the end, we had a nice house and it came with a big mortgage, and well, university life never has paid very well.
So that night, I had done a Coq au Vin and opened a bottle of the good red from the wine cellar. I'd almost gone as far as candles, but honestly, she's never been that type.
When she came through the door, I could just tell from the way she was walking that she hadn't had a good day. I headed her off in the hallway with a glass of wine. I wrapped my arms around her.
"Smells nice," she said.
"Should be. I've been slaving away."
Alena delivered a quick kiss.
"You? My slave? I'd never have that luck."
"Well, I did for this. Come through and sit down."
Alena followed me through to the dining room. We had an actual dining room, separated from the kitchen and living areas. There was a solid wooden table and a candelabra. We'd spent several weekends finding that perfect light fitting to go above it, trying to make the room look just right. The intention was to have sophisticated dinner parties with our witty and interesting friends every weekend, but you know how it goes. It's a lot of work. Plus, they have kids and we didn't.
We got through the meal making small talk and catching up each other's news. Alena had a promising new research collaboration on the horizon with a team from Japan. I was about to launch into some case that I thought was big at the time. Looking back now, all that stuff seemed so important. The real things that ended up shaping our lives were not even on our radar.
I had bought a banoffee pie, but an expensive one. I whipped the cream myself. While I served it up, I got around to the subject at hand.
"So, ready to discuss the list?"
Alena looked at me, blinking, and I realised there and then she hadn't really been thinking about it, which disappointed me. I'd come up with the idea a week ago, after a lot of trawling the internet looking for ten ways to reboot your love life, or whatever those clickbait headlines say. We were both tasked to come up with a list of things we wanted to try in the bedroom. I put it into a spreadsheet, and showed her just how extensive the list was. She had given it a lukewarm reception, but had at least promised to look at it and get back to me a week later.
"Ah, is that what this is all about?"
"What do you mean?"
"The cooking, the dessert. Like you're buttering me up."
I sat back down and began to munch a forkful of pie. I was also trying to pick the best approach. One thing they don't really teach you in law school, but you find out pretty quickly when you're standing there in front of the jury, is that you need plans A to D and the ability to switch between them at speed if something isn't working. Fortune favours the prepared.
"I meant, we agreed to look at the list and fill it in, then compare notes. I thought you'd done that."
