“You won’t leave marks on me?”
“I won’t leave any marks that won’t fade. But I’ll mark you, yes. I like doing that. I marked you that night at the club, you remember.”
Yes, she remembered. She’d stared at those marks, caressed them, masturbated over them for two days. She’d been disappointed when they started to fade.
“I promise you, it won’t ever be too much,” he said. “We’ll have agreements on how far to go. We’ll use safewords.”
“Safewords?”
“Yes, we’ll have a safeword that will stop me when you feel I’m going too far. I’m not into making you miserable. I won’t force you to do anything you really don’t want to do.”
“But I know you’ll want more than I do.
He chuckled. “I don’t think you know how much you want yet. How much you’ll love what I’m going to do to you. You don’t have any idea yet, but you’ll see. You’ll want much more than you think.”
“So what… How much… How hard…?” Her imagination was stuck in overdrive. She was sure her unease was reflected in the expression on her face.
He took her hand across the table. “Kat, I’m not really into pushing envelopes. Would you like to know what I’d expect from you, more or less? In general terms, to soothe your nerves?”
“Yes,” she breathed on a sigh.
“Obedience and submission.”
“That’s it?”
“That comprises a lot of things. You’ll have a lot to learn. Sometimes things will be stringent, sometimes relaxed. You’ll figure it out. You’ll come to understand exactly what I want and when, and you’ll get good at giving it to me.”
“Because if I don’t…”
“I’ll punish you. Real punishment. Discipline. That’s part of the dynamic, the turn-on. For me and for you.”
She blushed because what he said was true. It would turn her on terribly for him to discipline her, no matter how much it hurt. She looked up at him. He must have known that her panties, by now, were soaked.
“All of this…you know… I don’t know. My mother says I should be trying to find a husband, settle down and have kids.”
“Hmm. Probably.”
“That’s what all my sisters have done.”
“I don’t think you’re much like your sisters. I don’t think you want to be. I think that’s why life is so hard for you.”
“So…” she said slowly, the wheels turning. She had to admit she was actually considering his suggestions. But she thought he was overestimating how happy he’d be with her. “Here’s the thing. I’m not really… I don’t… I’ve only just had sex, you know, regular sex. I’m not really good at…the extra stuff.”
“Anal sex?”
The casual way he said it made blood rush to her face. “Yeah. Or even stuff like…blowjobs.”
She fell silent. He looked shocked.
“All those guys you went home with, you never…?”
“I just had them fuck me and then I left.”
“No foreplay, no playing around?”
“Sometimes they wanted to go down on me, but I didn’t want them to, and I’ve never even tried to give a blowjob,” she admitted, not quite able to meet his eyes. “I mean, why would I? I didn’t like them anyway. We never even kissed.”
He made a soft sound. “I see now. You took what you wanted. You used them. Well, Kat, it will be different with me.”
She swallowed nervously. “Yes, I’m sensing that. If you even still want me now that I’ve told you I’m not good in bed.”
“You let me worry about that. I have no doubt I can train you to satisfy me, if you’re willing to be trained.” He leaned his elbows on the table, looked right at her with a serious expression on his face. “So are you willing or not?”
“Willing to what?”
“Give it a try. Sexual training. Submission and obedience.”
She drew in her breath. Yes, yes, I want to start training this instant.
“If I say yes, then what happens?” she asked, her heart in her throat.
“If you say yes then you come to my place tomorrow night for Lesson Number One.”
“Lesson Number One?”
“I think it’s high time, Kat, that you learned to suck cock.”
* * * * *
He took her out to dinner first. He didn’t want her to mistake their fledgling relationship for one of the emotionless hookups she was used to, especially since they were going to be having a lot of sex. Ryan always had a lot of sex but he was after more here. There was more at stake.
He texted her and told her to be ready at seven. He’d made reservations at an intimate gourmet restaurant near his place in Cambridge. He wasn’t on call this weekend so there was no chance of the seduction being interrupted. And he did plan a seduction. A girl didn’t reach the age of twenty-eight completely blowjob-free if she felt positive about them. He hoped he could change her mind.
When he arrived to pick her up she wasn’t quite ready, so he made small talk with Elena and Dmitri and watched the sisters pass around the fussy baby. Yuri or Sergei or something. He could never keep the names straight. If they were English names he could have, but they were names like Rada and Varvara and Zinaida, and then their husbands would call them pet names like Radya and Varvusha and Zinoushka until he was completely lost and content to just soak up the family vibe. He would love for his children to grow up with an extended family like Kat’s. A doting grandma like Elena, ten smiling aunties and uncles coming and going and too many cousins to count. He was just smiling over what his own parents’ reaction might be to the bedlam in the Argounov household when she came down the stairs.
The noise and
