What was next? Would they allow her to finish her tea and then send her on her way?
A part of her wanted to go—to be alone to process the astonishing experience—but another part of her never wanted to leave.
“We need to talk, Shea,” Sir Stephen said. So she was Shea now, no longer S. That made sense, she supposed, since the session was presumably over. But talk? Talk about what? The next session? Well, yes, that made sense.
“We do, Sir?” she said, just to say something.
“We do.” He angled his body so he was facing her. “You mentioned you’ve never had an orgasm at the hands of another.”
Shea felt the heat began to rise beneath her skin. “Oh, well,” she said. “It was—I’m a, I mean…” She trailed off, uncertain what to say, how much to admit. If they knew how sexually inexperienced she actually was, would they both go running for the hills?
“It’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Zach said from her other side. “A lot of women have a hard time climaxing, especially women like you who’ve only been with vanilla guys. People who are hardwired like we are need that little something extra.”
“The right kind of erotic suffering and stimulation to take you where you need to go,” Sir Stephen clarified.
“Yes!” Shea cried, looking from one guy to the other. “That’s it exactly. That’s what I’ve been missing.”
“So, is Zach correct in assuming you’ve only been with vanilla guys?” Sir Stephen persisted.
Shea opened her mouth, the lie ready on her lips. All she had to do was say, “Yes, they’ve all been vanilla.” But Master Zach’s words from the initial interview came back to her— “If you want to get anything out of this training, rigorous honesty is absolutely essential. Remember, we don’t judge you.”
Praying that was true, she girded herself for her admission. After all, she would have to tell them sometime. They had the right to know. Her eyes down, she blew out a breath and then admitted, “I’ve never been with a man at all.”
“I’m sorry, what?” Sir Stephen said.
Unable to look up, Shea repeated in a louder voice, “I’ve never been with a man at all.”
Both men stiffened, and she could only imagine the looks they were exchanging over her head as she stared doggedly down into her mug, her face on fire. Was this when they kicked her out?
“You’re a…virgin?” Master Zach said the word as if it were on par with serial killer or child molester.
Deeply embarrassed now, Shea retorted, “I suppose I’m not a virgin in the technical sense. I probably lost my hymen riding my bike when I was eight years old.” She was aware of her icy tone but was somehow unable to stop herself. Maybe the ice would melt some of the heat in her face. “What’s the big deal about virginity anyway? Why is it that vaginal intercourse is defined as the be-all and end-all? I don’t even like the word vagina.” She was babbling but was unable to stop. “Did you know that the word vagina is Latin for sheath or scabbard? How sexist is that? Defining the birth canal in relation to how it can serve the penis of a man. And just because—”
Sir Stephen placed two fingers over Shea’s lips, startling her into silence.
“Shea, stop. Calm down. It’s okay. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the fact that you’re a virgin. We’re just surprised, is all. You seem so sexually aware, so in touch with your masochistic and erotic feelings that we just naturally assumed you’d been in a relationship.”
“Oh,” Shea said, barking a short, embarrassed laugh. “Don’t even get me started on relationships. I watch all my girlfriends mooning over these guys, finally going out with them, getting embroiled in all their nonsense and dysfunction, and then breaking up. Or worse, they marry them anyway and then get divorced two years later.” She shook her head. “I mean, what’s the point? Who needs all that drama? Not me, I can tell you.”
“I hear you on that one,” Zach said. “And I agree. Who needs the drama? I’m perfectly happy without a girlfriend.”
Shea glanced from Zach to Steve. Steve’s lips were pressed into a thin line, his expression difficult to read. After a moment, he slowly shook his head, his lips lifting into a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. In a quiet voice, he said, “How about you, Shea? Are you happy being alone?”
“Who, me?” Shea replied stupidly. “I’m totally happy.” Then, to her shocked dismay, she burst into tears.
Chapter 6
Steve instinctively reached to comfort Shea, while Zach, on her other side, did the same. They found themselves staring at each other as Shea leaped to her feet. Whirling to face them, she wiped away her tears with one hand while clutching the blanket around her shoulders with the other.
She smiled a brittle smile through the tears and forced a laugh. “Ha, just ignore me. I do this sometimes.” She sniffed loudly. “It doesn’t mean anything.” She clutched the blanket tighter. “I should just go now. Yes, I need to go. It’s late and—”
“And we haven’t had our post-session coffee and pie,” Zach interrupted as he rose from the couch.
Startled, Shea echoed, “Pie?”
Steve, who had been about to launch into a lecture about processing feelings, closed his mouth and flashed a grateful smile at his friend. Zach had a wonderful way of cutting to the heart of the matter without making people feel stupid or shutting them down. And he was right—no way could they let her go like this.
“There’s a great little place not five minutes from here,” Steve said, continuing the thread as he got to his feet. “Mama Mae’s House of Pies.”
“They have forty different kinds of pie,” Zach said enthusiastically. “Each one better than the last.”
“And he should know,” Steve added with a laugh. “He’s had every single one of them.”
Shea was staring at them, the tears no longer falling. Steve put his arm around her shoulders. “Seriously, Shea, let’s go get a cup of coffee and talk a little more before we call it a night, okay? You handled a whole lot during this session. Part of the process is talking things through afterward.”
She opened her mouth as if to protest, but, as he stared into her unusual, gold-rimmed blue eyes, she seemed to reconsider. With a small nod, she said, “Okay. Pie and coffee.”
Zach handed Shea her pile of clothing. “There’s a bathroom just outside the dungeon, right by the washer and dryer. Get dressed, wash up, whatever you need to do. We’ll wait for you upstairs, okay?”
The three of them drove together in Steve’s car to Mama Mae’s. Though it was after ten, the place was crowded, as always. They found an empty table near the back and took their seats. The table was already set with silverware, glasses and coffee mugs. Four large, laminated menus stood erect in a metal holder on the center of the table.
A plump, middle-aged waitress appeared a moment later, pad and pencil in her hand. “Evening,” she said. She wore a white uniform and wedged white shoes, looking more like a nurse than a waitress. “Can I get you all something to drink?”
“Coffee,” Zach said. “And water, too, please.”
The waitress nodded brusquely and moved away.
Shea reached for a menu, which was covered in bright photographs of various pies alongside the lengthy list of selections. “Wow,” she said as she scanned the pages. “You weren’t kidding.” She eyed the menu carefully. “I wonder if they cook the crust correctly on the coconut custard,” she mused. “I hate it when it’s soggy underneath.”
“They cook it to perfection,” Zach said, as Steve had known he would. “Light, flaky, the perfect vehicle for the custard.”
Shea flashed a sweet, dimpled smile. “That’s what I want then. Coconut custard pie.”
The waitress appeared with two carafes—one of ice water and one of coffee—and set them directly on the table. She took their orders—the coconut custard for Shea, blueberry for Steve and apple with a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top for Zach.
Once she had gone, Zach poured them each a cup of coffee from th
e carafe. As they added sugar and cream, Steve said, “Let’s talk a little about what happened back in the dungeon. Most people don’t follow the statement, ‘I’m totally happy’ by bursting into tears. Can you tell us what that was about?”
“Oh.” Shea waved a hand dismissively. “I told you—sometimes I’m just a little emotional. It doesn’t mean anything. Please”—she fixed him with a suddenly pleading gaze—“can’t we just let it go at that?”
Clearly there was more to the story, but Steve decided not to push it. “For now,” he said aloud.
The waitress appeared with their plates, which she set in front of them. When she had gone again, and after taking a huge bite of his pie and following it with a big slurp of coffee, Zach said, “So, Steve and I were talking a little while you were getting dressed. We definitely want to keep going with your training. We’re thinking at least three sessions a week, if that works for you.”
“Yes,” Shea said at once. “That’s great. Absolutely.” She smiled shyly, her eyes sparkling.
Steve had to squelch a crazy desire to take her into his arms. “You haven’t touched your pie,” he said, as much to distract himself as anything.
She looked down at her plate, as if surprised to find it there in front of her. She lifted her fork and took a bite, her eyes fluttering shut as she chewed. “Mmmm,” she moaned appreciatively. Swallowing, she opened her eyes and focused on Zach, adding, “Perfect. Just like you said.”
“Told you,” Zach, who had nearly finished his, said with satisfaction.
“While you’re not with us,” Steve said, returning the focus to her training, “we’ll give you a series of assignments and a set of rules you must observe if you’re serious about your training.”
“Okay,” Shea said, her eyes fixed on his face.
“First rule,” Steve continued, “is that you are never, ever, to touch yourself sexually without our express direction and permission.”
Shea frowned. “Never?”
“That’s right. Your body and your orgasms now belong to us.”
Her frown melted away, her face softening with what Steve recognized as a submissive glow. How had this girl gone twenty-eight years without exploring her true nature? And what really lay behind those sudden tears?
“We’ll send you an email each morning,” Zach added as Steve took a bite of his pie, “with your specific assignments for the day. You’ll report to us at the end of each day via email as to how it went. We’ll want to know about your feelings and reactions—what you liked about the assignment, what you didn’t like, how it made you feel—things like that. The information you provide will help us tailor your training as we move forward.”
“Yes, Master Zach,” Shea said softly, and for an odd moment Steve found himself wishing he was alone with Shea and that she had eyes only for him.
Shaking away the irrational feeling, he focused instead on expectations and goals going forward, as well as practical matters like Shea’s email address and work schedule.
Zach ordered a second piece of pie—pecan this time—and after he’d wolfed it down, they left money on top of the bill and headed out into the parking lot.
As Steve drove them back to the house, Zach, who sat in the back with Shea, handed her the training duffel they’d put together for her while she was changing. “You’ll find various items in the bag that will aid in your training,” Zach explained. “Feel free to examine them, but don’t use any of them until we give you explicit direction.”
Steve glanced in the rearview mirror as Shea accepted the tote, a dubious expression on her face. “Yes, Sir,” she said quietly.
Steve pulled his Audi into the garage and the three of them climbed out. They walked Shea to her car, an old Ford Taurus. Zach opened her car door for her, and she slipped into the driver’s seat, setting the canvas bag on the seat beside her.
She started her engine, but before backing down the driveway, she rolled down her window and said, “Thanks for the pie and for”—she paused, a pink flush moving over her cheeks—“for everything.”
~*~
As soon as she got home, Shea rushed into her bedroom. Pushing aside the discarded outfits from earlier that evening, she dumped the contents of the small duffel bag onto her bed. Inside she found a slim, black butt plug in its original shrink-wrap, along with a pair of alligator nipple clamps, a tube of lubricant, a ruler, a pair of black leather wrist cuffs with clips attached and a purple butterfly contraption with elastic straps and a remote control, the words Wireless Venus Butterfly Erotic Novelty written in large letters on the outside of the packaging.
Though she was exhausted—not only physically but mentally—from the extraordinary evening, she hurried to the kitchen and rummaged through the junk drawer to find a pair of scissors. Returning to the bedroom, she cut away the wrapping on the various toys. She was especially fascinated by the butterfly, which whirred appealingly against her palm as she turned on the small bullet-shaped remote control that came with it. She very nearly disregarded her trainers’ mandate not to use any of the toys until directed by them—after all, who would know?
You would know.
Placing the items in the pouches that came with them and stowing them in the duffel, she went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. She hadn’t thought she would sleep that night, her mind still teeming with details of the session, her body still tingling from the powerful orgasm, but the next thing she knew, her phone alarm was chiming beside her, the sun rising over the windowsill.
After turning off the alarm, she went at once to her email account, a jolt of excitement hurtling through her as she saw the message from Hartman-Wilder-Trainers. The message was short, and she instantly memorized its contents:
Good morning, S
Before you leave for work, insert the butt plug into your ass. You will leave the plug in place until your lunchtime, when you will go into the bathroom and remove it. You will masturbate at that time, but you are not to orgasm. Instead, when you are nearing orgasm, you will strike your vulva with your ruler until the urge to climax subsides. You will repeat this exercise of stimulating yourself nearly to orgasm and then hitting your cunt with the ruler two more times. You will not come during this exercise.
Later that morning as Shea stirred cream into her coffee mug at the break room counter, Harold, one of the other chemists in her lab, said, “Hey there, Shea. Sit down and try a piece of my wife’s strudel. She made enough for an army and then didn’t want it lying around the house.”
Shea opened her mouth to automatically refuse—she never joined the others for their coffee break, usually too focused on whatever she was working on to take the time. But as she turned to see the group of guys—Harold, Denny, Aaron and even the ever-annoying Jeff—she found herself smiling. “Okay, sure. Thanks.”
As she slid into the offered chair, she adjusted herself carefully to accommodate the slim butt plug she’d finally managed to insert that morning, using nearly half the tube of lubricant in the process.
To her surprise, save for a moment at the end of the insertion where the base of the plug flared a little, it hadn’t hurt. She had been thrilled with herself for her accomplishment and had wanted to tell someone about it—but who? All her girlfriends were as vanilla as the blandest instant pudding, and they would be horrified if they knew what she was up to.
Then she had remembered her trainers’ instruction to record her feelings in an email. Opening the email app on her phone, she had quickly typed her experience and feelings, not trying to censor any of it, but just letting it flow. Somehow, that had helped her to move on with her morning, and she’d dressed, eaten her cereal and headed out to work, with no one the wiser as to what was hidden inside her, or the wild fantasies playing out in her head.
As she had struggled to concentrate on her work that morning, she had shifted repeatedly on her stool in order to feel the plug lodged deep in her rectum, and she had had to press her thighs together in an effort to ease the cons
tant throb of lust between her legs.
In spite of the erotic discomfort, or perhaps partially because of it, she felt incredibly alive—her awareness of everything around her heightened, as if the focus knob on her view of the world had suddenly been sharpened.
Sitting now at the table with her colleagues, she tried to follow the various threads of conversation taking place—Denny’s new baby, Jeff’s complaints about the secretarial pool, Harold’s detailed description of the movie he and his wife had seen the previous weekend. She smiled and nodded, appropriately cooing over Denny’s baby photos on his cell phone and even commiserating with Jeff on turnaround time.
“Something’s different about you,” Aaron said, staring at her intently. “Did you change your hair or something? Are you wearing makeup? You seem, I don’t know”—he shrugged, still eying her intently—“all sparkly or something.”
Shea, who still wore her hair clipped back at the nape of her neck to keep it out of her experiments and was wearing the same minimal makeup as always, felt the heat rise in her face, but she just shook her head with a smile. “I’m still the same old me,” she lied.
Jeannie, Mr. Carroll’s secretary, had entered the break room at the start of this interchange and now turned from the refrigerator where she was retrieving her snack. “Come on, guys, it’s obvious. Shea’s in love. It’s written all over her face.”
Before Shea could deny the ridiculous assertion, Jeff burst into obnoxious laughter, braying like a donkey. “Shea O’Connor in love? She doesn’t even date, for Christ’s sake. Underneath that lab coat, she wears a nun’s habit.”
Shea didn’t rise to the bait, instead freezing Jeff mid-bray with an icy stare.