The Training

the gown. It was a delicate green and not overly sexy or revealing; I’d feel like a queen wearing it.

Since I had plenty of time before I needed to be in the library, I took a quick shower, allowing the warm water to run over my still sensitive skin. After slipping the gown on, I discovered even more of a surprise: the cool satin swept against the warmth of my skin. It gently brushed the slight sting left by our evening, so that even from the opposite side of the house, I felt my master’s touch.

I stopped just outside the door of my room.

My master.

It was the first time I thought of him as my master instead of Nathaniel. I didn’t dwell on it for too long, but hurried down the stairs, anxious to be near him again.

He waited for me in the library, standing near the table of decanters. His eyes traveled over me as I entered.

“The gown looks beautiful on you, Abigail,” he said.

Abigail. A reminder that, even though this was my library, it was still a weekend, I still wore his collar, and I was to behave as such.

He wore his tan cotton drawstring pants and didn’t look half bad himself. I dropped my gaze to the tops of my toes. Watched them wiggle. “Thank you, sir.”

“Look at me when we’re in the library,” he said.

I looked up and met his eyes. They shone darkly with emotion.

“Remember,” he said softly. “This is your space.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Last week, he told me I could use sir in the library or at the kitchen table. Any other place during our weekends, he expected me to call him master.

“How does it feel?” he asked, and then quickly added, “The gown, I mean.”

“Delightful.” I swung my hips, and the satin brushed once again across the dull ache of my backside.

He smiled as if he knew exactly what I felt. Who knew? He probably did. Everything he did was calculated.

“Come on in,” he said, waving me farther into the library. He held up a wineglass. “Red?”

“Yes, please.”

He motioned to the floor in front of the empty fireplace. Piles of pillows lay scattered about with fluffy blankets among them, forming an inviting place to sit down. I took a tentative seat on a large pillow.

He joined me seconds later and passed me a glass of red wine. I noticed he didn’t have one. Not too much of a shock, considering what he’ d told me days earlier.

“You probably thought I was being melodramatic the night of Jackson and Felicia’s party,” he said, as we sat on his leather couch on Tuesday night after dinner. “When I told you that your leaving almost killed me.”

“I did,” I admitted. “I never thought of you as being one for dramatics.”

“I was bad after you left,” he said. “It started as soon as I returned from following you home.”

I wasn’t sure where he was going with this. Talking about that time in our lives wasn’t something I enjoyed. Certainly, he felt the same.

He frowned. “I’m not sure how much I drank that day, but when Jackson found me, I was trying to burn down the library.”

“You what?” I asked.

His eyes closed. “I don’t remember it very well. Don’t remember parts of it at all. I just . . .” He trailed off momentarily. “I just needed to tell you. It felt important, somehow.”

“You could have died,” I said, shocked at the nonchalant way he talked about burning his house down.

“Probably not,” he said. “I was too drunk to do much of anything. At least, that’s what I tell myself. It’s not like I had a death wish. I didn’t want to die. I just wanted . . .”

“To burn your house down?” I volunteered.

“No.” He shook his head. “Just the library.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I argued. “You can’t burn just the library. The entire house would go up.”

“I know,” he said. “I’m sure it made sense to me at the time. All I really remember is pain, emptiness, and despair.”

I took his hand and stroked it. “No wonder.”

He kissed my knuckles. “No wonder what?”

“No wonder Jackson felt the way he did.”

His lips stopped their kissing. “Did he say something to you? I swear, if he did, I’ll kick his ass.”

I hushed him with a finger. “No. He never said anything. Now, Felicia . . .” I laughed, remembering her outburst the day she came home with a ring. “Felicia ripped into me something awful. It makes sense now. She’d heard Jackson talk about how my leaving affected you.”

“He came by my house every day for a long time,” he mused. “I worried the entire family sick. I told him, eventually, that your leaving was my fault. That it wasn’t you.”

My hand rested on his knee, and I squeezed him gently. “Must be why he hugged me the night of the party. I noticed a change in him that night.”

“I’m sorry if he ever treated you like our breakup was your fault.” He sighed, a sad, regretful sound. “So much I should have told you.”

“Which is why from now on, we’re going to talk,” I said. “A lot. And about everything.”

Talk a lot about everything. Probably what he had in mind for the library.

He held out a plate. “I know you had an early dinner. Are you hungry?”

My stomach let out a growl in reply, and he smiled. Why hadn’t I realized I was hungry before?

Cheese and crackers, almonds, grapes, and dried cherries covered the plate. He set it down between us, and I took a block of cheddar cheese. When that was gone, I grabbed a handful of almonds and ate those as well. He munched on a few grapes and a cube of Gruyere cheese.

The snack was nice and welcome, but surely he had another reason for asking me to the library. We could have gone on to bed. He could have told me to grab a snack in the kitchen. Why would he want to meet in the library?

You could ask him, I told myself. Even though I knew this was my library, it still felt odd to just address him like I would during the week.

I was beginning to see what he meant about talking.

We hadn’t done a lot of it the last time I was collared.

But what should I say? Thank you for the amazing orgasm?

He cleared his throat. “I won’t do this every night, but I thought it would be a good idea to come together and talk about how the evening went.” He smiled at me. “Since it was our first night. And only your second time in the playroom.”

I traced the golden filigree design on the plate.

“I need for this to be a two-way conversation,” he said.

“I know,” I said finally. “It’s just . . . odd.”

“Maybe talking about the oddness will help.”

We both reached for a grape at the same time and our fingers touched. I jerked mine back.

“See?” he asked, voice heavy with emotion. “What was that for?”

I took a deep breath. “Just trying to keep the weekday Nat . . . I mean, man, separate from the weekend one.” I glanced down at the plate. “It’s harder than I thought it would be.”

He lifted my head so our eyes met. “Why?”