“I hope so.”
She took a sip of her coffee while staring thoughtfully into the space just over my shoulder. I watched her for a moment then picked up the paper again and unfolded it.
“Black, maybe?” I offered as I began to scan the cartoons.
“Black what?” she asked.
“Black skirt,” I replied. “Understated, professional. And, black goes with everything, right?”
“So you think I should change, then?”
“No, but you do. I can tell by the way you’re staring off into space.”
“I’m going to go change.”
“What a surprise,” I mumbled.
She didn’t reply to my last comment. Instead, she simply placed her coffee cup on the counter then turned and headed out of the kitchen. Her footsteps hadn’t even faded around the corner when the dogs began barking in the back yard. The chime of the doorbell followed quickly, as if to add urgent punctuation to their ruckus.
“I’ll get it,” Felicity called out.
I heard her as she shuffled quickly to change direction, and that was soon followed by a click when she unlatched the deadbolt on the door. Before I had a chance to find where I had left off on the comics page, however, a somewhat disturbing noise hit my ears, and it took the form of my wife’s voice wrapped in an altogether annoyed tone.
“Damnu!” she exclaimed. “I thought I told you to leave me alone!”
I had already tossed the paper onto the counter and was out of my seat when I called out to her. “Felicity? What’s wrong?”
I hadn’t even taken my first step when I heard a heavy thud on the floor along with a muffled male voice. Both of these new sounds caused my heart to jump in my chest, and I darted out of the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find, but my brain was so conditioned to the horrific that a sense of semi-contained panic had already set in. In a fraction of a second, it had taken it upon itself to fill in the blanks with all manner of possible unpleasantness.
What I did see when I rounded the corner, however, was the last thing I had imagined, and it gave me enough pause to stop me dead in my tracks. My wife was still fully upright and was trying to back away from the now open door. Unfortunately, her ability to affect the maneuver was being severely hindered by an altogether familiar looking man who was bowed down in front of her, arms locked around her ankles as he murmured half intelligible praises in between each fervent kiss he bestowed upon her feet and shoes.
“What are you doing?!” Felicity barked as she tried to pull her foot out of his grasp. “Stop it!”
My initial fear for her safety immediately shifted to annoyance. Brad Lewis, the man currently molesting my wife’s feet, was the same individual she had almost trampled to death while under Miranda’s control. Fortunately, he hadn’t pressed charges over his injuries, primarily because he was beyond just your average submissive fetishist who got a thrill from the abuse. So far beyond in fact, that by all indications, he was psychologically addicted to it.
Unfortunately, however, that which saved Felicity from both criminal charges and a civil lawsuit had quickly turned into a very different sort of problem. Lewis had fixated on her, and for a period of several days made a major nuisance of himself with repeated telephone calls. She had finally stopped trying to reason with him and took advantage of her repressed persona along with his desire to serve a Domme by literally ordering him to stop calling. The tactic had seemed to work, as the unwanted contact stopped cold following that one-sided conversation.
Until now, that is.
Calls were one thing, but this was a whole new dimension. Prior to this point, he hadn’t been bold enough to actually come to the house-at least not that we knew of. Now, not only was this frightening in a sense, it made me angry.
My momentary bewilderment wore off, and I started forward, but Felicity was already taking her own measures to deal with the groveling stalker.
“Damnu! Get… Off… Me!” she shrieked, yanking one foot free as he was focusing his attention on the other.
Squatting quickly, she grabbed a handful of his hair and began pulling his head upward as she stood. Given the burning glare in her eyes, if I hadn’t been as angry about his intrusion as was she, I would have almost felt sorry for him.
Before I covered the few steps between us, she had him back up into a kneeling position in front of her with his head held back so that his face was upturned. In a flash the open palm of her free hand struck his cheek with a loud crack. I was just grabbing him by the shirt collar when she slapped him hard again.
“Felicity!” I barked. “Don’t you think that might just be encouraging him?!”
“Is cuma liom sa diabhal! ” she shouted. “I’m pissed off!”
The spate of Gaelic was a new one on me, so I wasn’t entirely sure what she had said. However, the English portion of the sentence left nothing to the imagination, not that her actions hadn’t already spoken volumes.
“All right, get out!” I demanded as I hooked one hand under his arm while keeping the other twisted into the back of his collar. I was trying to pull him toward the door, but Felicity still hadn’t let go of his hair.
“But, Mistress…” he whined.
“Dun do bheal! ”
He was obviously completely unfamiliar with Gaelic as he half whimpered again, “But, Mistress…”
“I am not your Top!” my wife shouted back into his face. “I thought I made that clear!”
“B…b…but, last night…” he stammered.
“Ta tu glan as do mheabhair! ”
That one I knew, and it roughly translated into something about him being crazy.
“She’s right. You’re delusional,” I growled then glanced at Felicity. “I think it might be time for a restraining order. I’ll hold him. You call the police.”
“But… Last night… At The Whine Cellar… Where we met… You were there. Don’t you remember?”
“Aye, now I know you’ve lost your mind,” she harrumphed, finally letting go of his hair and stepping back.
“But you were!” he insisted. The whimper in his voice was starting to fade and now even seemed to be taking on a bit of agitation.
“She was here all night,” I countered. “She never left the house.”
I quickly repositioned my grip on him for a better hold. I was beginning to worry that his mental state was going to make this a bigger problem than it already was, and I wanted to be prepared if this became any more physical than it already had.
I shot Felicity a firm glance and said with emphasis, “Honey, I really think you’d better call the police now.”
“You marked me!” Lewis contended. “You said I was yours… That I could serve you… You said that you loved me!”
“I did what?”
His free hand started to move, so I immediately let go of his collar and did the only thing I could think to do. I slipped my arm around his neck, placing him in a headlock. From looking at him, he definitely appeared to be in better shape than me, so I felt I needed every advantage I could get where leverage was concerned.
Even with my tightening grip, however, he didn’t stop. But, instead of reaching for my wife, as I had feared he was about to do, he grasped the front of his own shirt through the wide opening in his jacket and ripped hard.
Buttons bounced across the floor with a sharp, plastic clatter, and I heard Felicity gasp. From my present angle I couldn’t see what she was staring at, but the look on her face told me it couldn’t be good.
“What?” I asked her. “What?”
Instead of answering, she brought her hand up to her mouth and closed her eyes as she took another step backward. Since he was no longer struggling against me, I loosened my grip just enough to peer over his shoulder.
Even though it was upside down and less than perfectly scribed, the design was unmistakable. The welts were an angry red and were scabbed over in the places where blood had seeped out of the deeper scrapes. The
