“I’m open in here,” Mike said. “With you two, between us. But I don’t go around in leather bondage gear in public…”
“Do you have leather bondage gear?” Courtney said, involuntarily wriggling again.
“Some,” Mike said, frowning. “Not enough if we’re going to get… complicated. I can fix that in a day or so. The point is, this is ‘behind the bedroom door.’ Even out on the boat, in the middle of the Stream with nobody around to see, would be behind the bedroom door. And you can push it further, a bit, but you have to know when to stop, both as the dom and as the sub. Otherwise you really do get Nine and a Half Weeks.”
“Lost me again,” Pam said, frowning.
“It’s about the only major movie ever made about dom sub games and it was horrible,” Mike said, shrugging. “Basically a dom finds a newbie sub and completely takes over her life. You can do it. I could do it to you, two, probably. Slowly take away your will to resist, break every barrier, turn you into submissive sluts…”
“Are you trying to get me horny again?” Courtney said.
“A bit,” Mike admitted with a grin. “But… I sort of did that, accidentally, once. In the movie, the sub finally ran away from the relationship, broke the mental bond, which is way more important than the physical ones, and ran. That… rarely happens in real life when something like that occurs, and it does. And it didn’t happen in my relationship. I was young and just wanted to get laid and… be able to say ‘bend over’ whenever I wanted. And she… wasn’t quite right when I met her and fell, well, not in love but into total submission. And I used her. I knew I was using her, liked it and didn’t like it at the same time, she knew she was being used, liked it and didn’t like it at the same time. Finally, I broke up with her and told her to hold onto her soul. I couldn’t just… back away. It was too easy to just use her. My resistance, then, wasn’t that high. Young, dumb and full of cum. I had to simply… leave.”
“That must have been tough,” Pam said, frowning. “I mean a guy walking away from… you could do pretty much anything you wanted?”
“Anything,” Mike said, clicking his teeth. “Anytime, anywhere.”
“And you walked away,” Pam said.
“Had to,” Mike said with a shrug. “For her. I won’t say she took it well. But the point is, I can manage that, now. But, if you get into this… scene, it’s something that you have to look out for. There are other guys, like me, who won’t back away. Who won’t… let you go. There are predators in this subsection of the sex world, guys who will gladly hold onto you and break you, knowing what they’re doing and using you instead of…” He shrugged. “Instead of caring for you and wanting to simply have you enjoy yourselves and get their enjoyment as well. The ‘bedroom door’ is tricky. If you stay in the scene, get deeper in it, you might do full scenes, with other people watching…”
“Not on your life,” Courtney said, shaking her head.
“You’d be surprised,” Mike said. “Think about what you fantasize about when you masturbate.”
“Uh…” Courtney said, then paused.
“Yeah,” Mike said, nodding and working his jaw. “Or… hmm… going to a club in a miniskirt and no panties and sort of… sitting on your master’s lap, with his dick out through his zipper and… moving to the beat…”
“Okay,” Pam said, holding up her hand. “I can see what you mean by the bedroom door being tricky.”
“You also have to know when the scene ends,” Mike continued. “Firmly know when you’re… yourself again and the scene is over. Submissive means in sex play, not in ‘real life.’ That’s part of the dom’s job, to make it plain when the scene is over. In a way, I’ve made a mistake by leaving Courtney in nothing but a towel. It’s continuing the scene when we should really be out of scene. But I thought she’d sort of like it. Just a guess.”
“No comment,” Courtney said, pulling at the top of the towel.
“Here’s the question: When do you have to go back to Missouri?”
“That’s a big question,” Pam said carefully. “Not until classes start, I guess.”
“I’ve said it before, you can stay as long as you’d like,” Mike said, just as carefully. “If you’d like, we can just fish and dive — I’m a qualified SCUBA instructor by the way, so I can get you qualified on that if you want. Or we can fish and dive and… play. For as long as you’d like. Or, rather, until it’s time to go back to Missouri. Not forever.”
“Why not forever?” Courtney asked sharply. “Commitment issues?”
“Really complicated ones,” Mike answered, nodding. “Let’s put it this way, for reasons I won’t get into it would be a really bad idea for me to ever get married. Really bad. Having kids is out of the question.”
“Well, I wasn’t talking marriage,” Courtney said, shaking her head.
“Just leave it, if we can,” Mike said, shrugging. “But you can stay for a couple of days, or a week, or until it’s time to go back to Missouri. No strings at all. But. If we’re going to do scenes, we’re going to do it right. Full contract.”
“Contract?” Pam said, raising an eyebrow.
“Contract,” Mike answered, grinning.
“That sounds ominous,” Courtney muttered, pulling at her towel again.
“Not nearly as ominous as the actual contract,” Mike replied, grinning again. “Trust me, you’ll love it. Just doing the contract is a scene.”
Pam looked at Courtney, who shrugged and waggled her head.
“Okay,” Pam said carefully. “We’ll stay for… a bit longer.”
“Works,” Mike said, nodding. “Okay, we are very much out of scene at this point. Courtney, I’ve got a bunch of T-shirts that are going to be long enough to be a dress for you. Why don’t you grab one of those for the time being, or your suit. Maybe your suit under the shirt if you want. I’ll get the anchors in, we’ll head back to the marina and get your gear. Maybe do a little shopping unless you have more suits.”
“I’ve got one more,” Pam said.
“I don’t,” Courtney said. “I never used them for anything except sunning, really. I don’t swim much at home.”
“We’ll be swimming, and sunning, a lot,” Mike said, standing up. “And let me pay for the suits, okay? The proprietary amount I got in the buyout? Just say it was in excess of ten mil. I can afford bathing suits. Even very pretty, very expensive ones.”
“And anything else you’d want!” Courtney said, her eyes wide.
“No,” Mike said, pausing at the opening to the companionway and not turning around. “I can’t buy the very real pleasure I’m getting from your company. I don’t even mean the sex, which, by the way, was incredible in case I didn’t mention it. I mean the real honest pleasure I’m getting from just having the two of you around.”
Chapter Six
“Are we insane?” Pam said quietly, when the cabin door closed.
“If I am,” Courtney said, lying back on the couch and closing her eyes, “I don’t ever want to go back to sanity.”
“I think that’s the trap he was talking about,” Pam said, shaking her head. “I think I know what he means. I think if he told me to do… just about anything, I’d do it.”
“Yeah,” Courtney said, sitting up. “But… I trust him not to really hurt me. Except, maybe, break my heart,” she added sadly.
“He really hit the nail on the head with that one,” Pam admitted. “The M word.”
“I’d marry him in a heartbeat,” Courtney agreed, nodding. “And he says he can cook.”
“I’m a great cook,” Mike said, tossing her a brown T-shirt. “Sorry, I need to do laundry. It was all I had left clean.”