Owning pita:
A Romance of Submission and Dominance

Is this the first chapter of a novel? The decision partly depends on the interest of readers like you who are willing to express your reaction in emails, PMs, or public comments.
The story is true. Some of it is factual. Thank you to pita, my submissive partner in D/s and crime, for helping me to live it, to write it, and to dig deeper into myself. Thank you to Sophia Jane, my partner in writing, for helping me to dig deeper into my characters. And thanks to you for reading it. – Joe


Prelude: What Will Be

On the front porch, a woman stands naked except for a collar and cuffs. She goes to her knees in the yellow mist of a Georgia morning before a naked man, somewhat older than she, who sits in a wicker chair. Neither of them preen nor hide from the other. They are comfortable in their nudity. Water dripping from leaves and branches makes the only sound a summer shower has left behind.

Her knees are spread and her hips rest against her heels. Her hands rest palm upward on her thighs. Her head tilts down as if it would be presumptuous to look up. She is not only at peace, she is stunningly beautiful to him. The way he looks at her is tender.

She waits. His voice is quiet, deep, and affectionate. “A beautiful morning,” he tells her.

“Yes, Sir,” the woman responds, and then adds, “I suppose ….”

“How can you doubt it, little one?”

“It is beautiful,” she admits, “but I hate having my new hairstyle caught in the rain.”

He is silent, regarding her carefully. Then he asks gently, “Is there something I should know?” Their conversation is a morning ritual, and he is watchful at any note of discontent in her.

She shakes her head slowly; her red hair catches the sun as it moves softly across her shoulders, and light sparkles off of her collar. “No. The day will be what it will be, Sir.”

His brow furrows. The creases in his forehead are deep and his eyes penetrate her. Like the gray wolf in a picture on the wall in their den, she finds this look omniscient and emotionless when she is fixed by it. Her head bows further, and her breath comes faster. She doesn’t always understand what makes him look at her this way.

“I think it is best if you spend a few minutes in your room, dear one.” His voice is low and friendly. “You are unsettled,” he explains. “I will call you in a bit.”

The woman rises gracefully, in a single, fluid motion and pads into the house with short, silent steps. She likes it that he sees into her heart so easily, but it is unsettling. She goes to a door off the living area that leads to a room, which once was a large closet but is now hers.

She has had such a room in every place they have lived. This one is painted pink. It has a pink rug, a chair that has been hers ever since she has been with the man, a white and pink rabbit, and is organized around a picture of a child ballerina who is looking wistfully out of a window. When the man gave her the picture years before, he told her it could tell her everything she needed to know. The child soon became comfort and inspiration to her.

On the porch, the man finishes a mug of chai she had brought to him. He stands and stretches in the yellow light, a lean and weathered body freeing itself from the gray night he carries from bed each morning now. He is thinking of her.

She is unsettled; he might guess part of the reason, but she is able to sometimes settle herself, and that is preferable; but when she can’t understand the problem, whether it is hers or his, she will ask him for help to find her focus and natural docility.

He moves easily and swiftly, arranging furniture so there is space around the large, white column at the corner of the porch. From there it is possible to see three counties. He quickly arranges loops, cuffs, and hooks that tinkle and rattle from heavy eye hooks at the top, middle, and base of the column. He goes indoors and returns with a black whip called a cat-o’-nine-tails. He brings a towel and a container of water with ice rattling against the sides and places a holder of straws next to it. Finally, he adjusts a clear path to the hammock suspended at the shady end of the porch.

When he is done, he goes in, knocks on the door to her little room and asks the woman to come out. When she re-enters the living room, her hands are fluttering like birds; she is anxious. She turns to him and, head down, asks if she may ask a favor.

“Of course,” he says with concern. “You know I am yours.”

She goes again to her knees. “It’s nothing serious, Master,” she says, speaking clearly. “I need help dealing with hormones and the crazy energy in me. I feel scattered and self-absorbed.”

The man bends down to take her hands in his. As he straightens, she raises her head to look into his eyes for the first time since she knelt before him on the porch.

“What do you want me to do?” he asks her.

The woman tells him what she wants, bowing her head again, and the man nods; he helps her to her feet and they walk, he a step behind her with his palm resting lightly on the cool skin just beneath her waist, back onto the porch. There, she goes to face the corner post he has prepared and takes a deep breath.

She adjusts the cuffs on her own wrists and ankles. He snaps a quick release latch from the ceiling through her outstretched wrists, gently spreads her ankles, and latches one end of the lower chain through the left “D” ring of her ankle cuff, and the other end through the right ring.

He moves up her body. He has designed restraints that allow her maximum sensation and some control over the feeling she receives. She has small rings through her nipples and each of her major labia; he hooks the small chain around the column at the height of her hips to the labial rings, and then the chain at chest height to the nipple rings. The woman is quiet, eyes closed, head tilted back and her lips slightly parted. She is waiting patiently for what will be. There is neither need nor desire in her to struggle.

When he is done, he stands by her and bends his head to kiss her open mouth. His sex stirs. He asks her if she is alright and ready to begin. She nods. He gives her a sip of the water and, when he sets the water back on the table, picks up the whip.

The knotted leather whispers through the quiet air of the Georgia morning. Against her shoulders it makes a snapping sound. At first, each time it lands the woman cries out and writhes against it. His motion is fluid, controlled, and he gradually moves the strokes lower on her body. He watches each stroke hit its target. Her bottom quickly becomes pink and then shows a series of crisscrossing welts. He is listening to her and after each stroke his eyes scan her body and her face for the signs of what she wants and needs from him.

The whip hums and snaps through the morning air again and again. After awhile, the woman no longer cries out but softly moans and then, gradually, becomes silent. She has stopped writhing and she seems to be pushing into the strokes and pulling gently against the nipple and labial clamps.

A drop of spittle trickles from the corner of her mouth. His sex is hard with the energy he feels at owning her in this way. His rhythm never varies, and he sees small spots and streaks on her skin where blood has begun to seep.

He is watching her carefully still and begins to see the signs of what some call subspace, a trancelike euphoria where she is no longer capable of good judgment but is afloat on waves of sensation, like a hawk on high winds that soars and floats above sparkling trees and grasses far below. Her head rolls in circles from shoulder to shoulder. Subspace was, from the first, easily won, but still it is a prize they both cherish.

He allows her to remain in the place she loves, a head space free of the need to be locked in herself and her stresses, for as long as he feels he safely can.

Then he changes his rhythms, interrupts his strokes, pauses, gives rapid, staccato flourishes until he sees he is disrupting her stupor. He speaks her name and stops the flogging.

Now he moves as quickly as he has all morning and loosens her fastenings, beginning with her feet and ending with her hands, after he has turned her toward him and put his shoulder so that she can lean against him when he frees her.

He carries her to the hammock, gives her water to drink and unwraps a large piece of the dark chocolate she loves. While she nibbles on it, he spreads cool lotion on her welts and on abrasions left by the whip. He notices that the morning birds sing louder. Later he will help her apply an antibacterial cream.

For now, he climbs into the hammock and holds her to him, her face against his throat, and she cries with the release of the emotions that had been unsettling her. At first she cries sporadically, then with a burst she sobs and at last settles to a low, soft keening. He holds her continually and tells her she is his good girl.

After a time, she dozes. He continues to hold her and finds himself dozing off, too, grateful that his tired right arm no longer needs to be under constant control. He visits the place inside himself where darkness often hides and decides it has retreated once again, perhaps into the forest across the field. He feels the muscles begin to twitch in his triceps, and feels the ripples of muscle in her back as she, too, relaxes.

He listens to the birds and thinks “This is what the day should be” while the hammock barely moves. When she wakes, the sun is high. She is playful now and begins to touch his soft penis. As he begins to stir at her touch, he teases her “What’s a fatalist like you doing in a nice hammock like this?”

She is playful now. “I’ve told you, my submission is what I am, Sir.” But she is also intent. Her hand and fingertips bring him, quickly, to full erection. Her touch is magic, and his cock begins to twitch of its own accord.

She caresses him for a long time. Finally, she raises her head and asks: “Sir, will you come for me this beautiful morning?”

“No, pita,” the man says, smiling at her. “Your submission is beautiful, and you, and your lust … but I’ll give you that part some other day perhaps.”

“It’s a long day, Sir,” she says, “and it will be what we make of it.” But her fingers slow, and minutes later he becomes aware of a soft breeze at his loins. He has to think whether it is her breath or a lost breeze.

“I wonder,” she says quietly, “what Lexi’s new med student boyfriend is like.”

Her comments often sound irrelevant. “Are you concerned she isn’t ready to be submissive?” he asks.

“Oh, I still think she’ll be more of a domme.” She pauses, then thinks out loud. “I was just hoping my daughter finds someone who will fly a thousand miles to give her a pink rose.”

He listens to her breath as she drifts off into a deep sleep. Her shoulders rise and fall in rhythm with the slight motion of the hammock.

The man watches across the field where cottonwoods at the edge of the woods shimmer in the sun. Beyond them, from a tall, shadowy oak he sees a hawk leap forward and climb toward the sky where it will search for prey.

He smiles as he recalls, as he does every day, the woman who taught him to love, and he thinks, too, about the woman asleep on his shoulder who has brought him back to it.

From the line of trees, a mockingbird begins its list of songs. He knows there is darkness deep in the woods and imagines gray forms moving silently from shadow to shadow. He wonders what the wolf will be doing on such a beautiful morning.


Chapter 1: Touching Down


“Touch yourself. Sit where you are, pita, and lift your skirt.”

“I’m in the front hall. Someone …”

“Sit on the steps.”

“The guy next door is paint...”

“Pita, no one can see. Touch yourself.”

“Yes, Sir.” He heard her sigh but ignored it.

“You don’t have panties on, do you? Are you aroused?”

“No, Sir. And no, I’m not.”

“I want to tell you about your spanking bench…. I finished it.”

“Thank you …. Sir, what is that?”

“Yours is like a saw horse with leather cushions for the sides and top. The wood is cherry. There are shackles for your ankles and wrists and a collar.”

For a second he heard silence on the phone. “It sounds lovely, Sir. Will you punish me on it?”

“Probably not. It is for my pleasure, pita, but I think you’ll like it.”

“Why, Sir?”

“If I bend you over it, you can be spanked. If you straddle it, I can have your bottom or pussy, or I can use your face.”

“Sir….” She was quiet, but then from the back of her throat he heard heat rising. “How does it ....” She became quiet.

“A dildo is harnessed to the top. I can put a butterfly against your clit, and you can mount the bench and lower yourself onto them. They both have remote controls.”

“Yes, Sir….” Her voice was nearly a whisper. He smiled, imagining what was in her mind.

“Are you wet now?”

“A little. Sir.”

“Is your clit enjoying the spanking bench?”

“Sir, could I come today?” Her breath had become deeper, eager.

“I thought you weren’t aroused,” he teased, then spoke succinctly. “Am I your dominant, pita?”

“Yes, Sir, of course.”

“Then I’ll decide if you want to come. Isn’t that the way it works?

“For now, keep touching yourself.” His voice was a low growl, but he was smiling. Through his kitchen screen, he could hear crickets chirping and the motion of wind in maple leaves.

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Imagine you are in my house; the shirt I’ve had you wear is off. You have cuffs on your ankles and wrists, and the training collar is snug. You are being my good girl. You wear a butterfly and straddle the spanking bench, waiting, my pussy an inch above the dildo. Your open hands rest on your thighs.”

She hummed, “Yes, I await your pleasure.” He listened to her breathe.

“I will use you, pita. Someday soon. I promise.”

“You know I want that, Sir.”

“When I come into the room, I’ll blindfold you and lock your ankles to the bench and your wrists together. I’ll have you lower yourself gently until pussy’s lips touch the dildo. You will move your ass forward and back, so the dildo just slips past your lips and begins to open your cunt.

“Are you still wet, pita?”

“Yesssss. Sir.

“You will lower yourself slowly, dear one, onto the dildo, just an inch. Then come back up, and again down. Each time go deeper, until the dildo is buried and pussy is pressed against the leather.” Her breathing followed the motion he imagined; she inhaled as he described the dildo sinking into her, and she exhaled as he told her it withdrew.

“Ummm,” she sighed.

“Are you comfortable, pita? Your hands are on the bench?”

“Yes, Sir, for balance.”

“I’ll put a line through the rings in your cuffs to a ceiling shackle. If you put your weight against the rope and hang from it, your body can press against the butterfly and the dildo.”

He heard her moan, a little louder. His eyes were closed to imagine both the scene he was describing and the submissive on the other end of the phone as she touched herself.

“Think of the touch of the floggers, pita. Imagine the soft deerskin stroking your flesh, over your hips to your shoulders, and back down, caressing like warm night wind. I will heat your skin. Deerskin will pink your pale flesh quickly. And when I lash you hard, first your shoulders, then across your ass, you will begin to lean into the whips on each stroke.

“I know you are wet now. Feel the sweetness that will seep past the dildo. Are you wet, pita?”

“Ohhh.”

“I’ll turn on the butterfly so you can grind pussy against your bench. Hear the buzz as it boils up the orgasm in your clit. Does the vibration feel as delicious as you taste?”

“Yesss,” she hissed.

“And when I turn on the vibe in the dildo, feel it curve into your G-spot. You’ve been moving your hips to touch it harder.”

“Ohhhh, yes, Sir, yesss.” Her breathing was quick and shallow.

“You’re a good girl, pita. You’re getting turned on for me.”

He waited. She was quiet except for the soft cooing of her arousal. Then he heard a quiet, nearly silent whisper: “Please,” she said.

He ignored her. “You will be ready for the whip, pita. The blows will fall across your shoulders. Feel the heat, and in my opposite hand another flogger, this one rabbit fur. I will stroke it over your breasts, then slap them with it. How your nipples will stand out! What a pretty sight.”

He heard her say it again, louder: “Please, Sir.”

“Please what, pita?”

“I want to come,” she said. “Please, Sir.”

“No, pita,” he said, the growl back in his voice. “Wait.” He went on. “I want to whip your breasts and move my deerskin lashes down to your ass, and turn the butterfly and dildo to a higher speed. If you are my good girl, you will press down against them, and let your weight carry you so they will make you come, but not until I say you can.”

“Ohhhh,” she moaned, then “Yes, Sir.”

“Does it feel good, pita? Do you still want to come?”

“Ohhh, Sir, yes.”

“Can you ask, nicely, pita?”

“Please, Sir.”

“You don’t sound serious, pita. It doesn’t matter to me if you come. Maybe you would really want it if I made you suck on my cock. I’m very hard. If you really wanted to come, you’d beg me.”

“Oh, my Joe. Please let me come. I need to come so bad. Please Sir. Please my Joe, I want to come. Ohh, fuck, fuck.”

“Pita,” he said to her over her chant. “Pita ……” and he counted slowly to ten while she moaned, listening and straining against her own desire. Perhaps there was the sheen of sweat on her forehead.

He snarled: “Come hard, slut. Come for Me. Now. Right now. Come for me, be my slut.”

She erupted, her voice a shrill cry that fell to a squeal and became a soft keening.

Her voice was full of heat, even on the phone. She responded eagerly when he prodded her. And then she was catching her breath with no inkling of the effect she had on him.

What dragged him from the memory right now was not so clear. It could have been the pulse of his erection, or a stewardess’ voice, or the woman in the blue hat across the aisle who kept glancing his way. He wondered if his lust was obvious. But the woman was looking at his hand.

He was holding a snapshot. He knew he had been staring at the grainy, webcam photo of a girl-woman with a halo of red hair. He took a long breath. She had an angelic and mischievous look. She had sent him the .jpeg print one night with a note joking that her picture “is better than I usually look.” In it she was dressed for her job as chief hostess at “The Boheme,” the upscale restaurant for well-dressed dining and debauchery at the Orlando Westin Grand Bohemian. She stood erect, smiling, confident, and in control, charming, and beautiful; but her eyes seemed bottomless and wanting.

Part of her work was to manage the wait-staff. But she dismissed it as unwanted stress. She liked her job, she said, because she got to people-watch close up. “It’s given me a good crap detector,” she said, “they talk like I’m not there.”

After one bad night at work she said, “When I went there I guess I thought people would be nice because they’re supposed to have money. But they just know how to look nice. I’ve seen a lot of ugliness, and overheard worse.”

When the blue hat again turned his way, he raised his eyes – Mattie had once described his look as “penetrating” – and the woman turned away. If blue hat recalled him later, she would describe a man in his fifties, too tall for airline seats, perhaps handsome if not for acne scars on one side of his face – his famous “bad skin” – and black, wire-framed glasses. She might recall his conservative and neatly pressed suit, or the way he smiled briefly when he looked off into space. He had the look of a man used to standing before a board of directors, but surely such a man would travel first class. She perhaps noticed the deep lines at his eyes that gave him a look of grief.

His acquaintances, if she could have spoken with them, knew little more about his habits than she, except for the few who knew of his “exotic tastes.” His friends had been with him for years but seldom saw him. They had known Mattie and weren’t offended that he was rarely in public these days.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the hat turn as she looked again. She didn’t appear especially perceptive, but if his feelings were on his face, she might imagine him suddenly devouring the picture. He studied the delicate, little-girl image in his hand again.

Pita’s face was deceptively angelic. Sometimes his breath caught when he imagined her. But he did not want to commit himself to anyone again. If that happened, he needed to be sure he was done with the past and would not repeat it before he sank too much of himself into the sensuality in her voice: deep, soft, southern. Her laughter carried the sound of truth.

Months ago, only weeks after he met her on a forum where she asked for money advice after an “ugly” divorce, he had caught himself hoping the “relationship” would make it for longer than a week of exploration in a hotel. But he knew how dreams could be spoiled by reality….

Weeks later, a dream woke him with both lust and anticipation and left him eager and unsettled. In it she was not angelic, nor innocent. The next morning, the dream was vague. But he was certain he hadn’t been dreaming of Mattie. He felt relieved that he hadn’t waked up sweaty with fear again.

When pita got home late from work that night, he told her the bits he could remember. She listened closely and laughed when he told her about the fierce erection he had when he woke up.

The next night, he had the dream again. He woke, ill at ease and aroused again. So he told her again. This time she said “I know about it. I have it too.”

“That’s not possible,” he replied archly.

“I think I do,” she said, her voice confident. “It is my dream, too.”

He chuckled. “And what might it be, pita? Look deep in your crystal ball.”

Her voice was even when she spoke: “I’ll wait. Sir. If you figure it out, it won’t matter. If you don’t, I’ll tell you … at the right time.” She was not going to back down. He liked that, and her self-assurance intrigued him.

“How are you so sure, pita?”

“You are able to know my mind, Sir. I know yours just as well.”

He guessed that her strength came from caution learned through disappointment. She had been lied to and used, a phenomenon familiar to submissives. Each day she asked him if he was coming for her; she, too, was afraid to hope. He knew how she felt.

When he arrived, she would know he was serious. Real trust didn’t just leap into the heart. It took time, together. Once, she worried about her inexperience with BDSM. “I played with a flogger once,” she told him. “But it was just a toy Philip got at Spencer Gifts.”

“Did you like it?” he asked.

“Yes, but I wonder if it would be painful with a real one, enough that I would be frightened and ruin it.”

“It can be painful, and sensual. How you react depends a lot on how your top handles it,” he told her. “And fear is part of the experience and pleasure.”

“Sure,” she admitted. “But there’s fear, and then there’s panic. What would you do if I panicked? Or,” she added as an afterthought, “tried to fight you off.”

“The first times you have a safe word,” he said, “and I’d calm you if you started to panic.

“And resistance,” he told her, “can be fun. If I didn’t want you to resist, I could restrain you. But when you use your safe word, everything stops immediately.”

The banter was gone from her voice. “How would I know,” she asked, “that you would listen?”

“Pita,” he said, “At this point, you have to trust your instincts. I’ll challenge you, but I won’t push you too far … you will need to take a chance on me.”

“Oh, I know that.” Now she was animated again. “I want to believe it.”

Her words rushed. “It’s hard to believe the words men use with women. If my family life with my father and then Philip wasn’t enough, I constantly see men lying: waiters with insulting excuses, married customers who claim to be single to the women with them, who set off my crap detector while the silly girl on his arm thinks ‘this guy is different,’ not noticing he’s an obvious jerk who will leave her crying just because he can. It’s disgusting.”

He waited. She said: “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve all of that.”

“You needed to say it,” he said. “And I know I have to earn trust. I won’t lie to you, pita.”

“I don’t think you will,” she said. She paused and said sheepishly. “You look honest and I believe your face.”

Joe peered into the cam with a raised eyebrow – he knew how he was looking, and “honest” was not in his aging face – he reached for his glass of soda without comment and took a sip.

He said: “My question is whether you want submission and will obey.”

“And what sort of faith do you need to trust me?” she asked. She was not sarcastic.

“We both need actions, not more words.”

He was on a plane to her now because he needed her to take action toward trust. His plan was simple. She knew his flight number, and that he was eager… but she didn’t know where they were going.

He hadn’t told her they would stay in Orlando, but he had let her assume it. The fact was that she was ticketed to return to New England with him for the week.

She wouldn’t expect it; if she wanted an excuse to back out she would have one. But if she was willing to risk trusting him enough to step onto the plane … in that instant ... their lives could move ahead rather than trickle out into the dry streambeds of her desperate divorce and his empty heart.

They both needed to free themselves from the quiet despairs haunting them. Since Mattie’s death over two years earlier he had resisted his personality’s insistence that someone should be in submission to him. He called her as his plane reached the gate.

“Are you here, Sir?”

Doubt springs eternal. “You’re ready to leave? Dressed as I said?”

“Yes, my Joe.” Her voice was even softer than usual, and there was a quiver.

“You’re frightened, pita.”

“Not much, Sir.”

She took a breath. “I’m worried about work, I guess. And about Philip. A little, Sir.” She was afraid of her ex-husband, a self-absorbed bully who once threatened to “keep her.” There was a restraining order and he wouldn’t come to the house.

Joe just assumed that pita was not only wondering about Philip but about himself, too. It would be strange if she didn’t wonder if he was just another belligerent and ego-centered tormentor who wanted to keep her weak.

They would have to learn to trust. But they could do only one thing at a time.

He reviewed the call forwarding for her phone with her. He made her hang up and then called her house so she could see it would forward to the cell phone he had sent. He reassured her. He told her to meet him and to park in the long term lot; when she started to ask why, he interrupted: “Because you trust me, pita. It’s what I want you to do.”

She was to meet him at the Southwest ticket counter, traffic willing, in forty-five minutes, where he would locate her. “Call me if you can’t be on time,” he said. “Now that I’m here I’m feeling responsible.” She laughed nervously. He could hear her breathe. She was not hanging up.

“I want you, pita,” he said and talked to her. He felt her relax and was smiling when he closed the phone and clipped it to his belt.

He walked down the concourse to the terminal area for Southwest. He spoke with a skycap, a small black man who was eager to please, and who became even more obliging when Joe handed him two twenty-dollar bills along with a plain, white envelope. The skycap’s eyes were attentive as Joe gave instructions. The black man nodded enthusiastically.

The little man’s eagerness had Joe smiling when he turned to look for the bartender in the VIP lounge. This time, he passed three twenties to the pretty Asian woman as he related his instructions. He pointed to a table with a chair facing the large windows looking out on the concourse. When he left the lounge, he took an escalator to the mezzanine where he could look down on the main floor to wait for the nervous submissive to arrive. He saw the bartender put a “reserved” sign on the table he had pointed out to her.

He watched the travelers. For as long as he had been aware of his attraction to BDSM, Joe H-for-Harrison Wilson had played with people-watching to guess which were in “the life” or might want to be. He knew it was a pointless excuse to watch for women who would like life beneath the whip. Mattie had often teased him about it. When a tall redhead walked into the terminal, his heart spiked, but then he realized she was all wrong. She walked up to a young man and embraced him; when they separated, the man stroked her bottom, but she stiffened, obviously not approving his possessive touch.

Joe recalled awkward moments with pita. She was thrilled by fantasies she had enjoyed privately for years but never discussed; the idea of realizing them made her insecure. “Do I have to give up all of my limits?” she wondered to him.

“I want to know your hard limits,” he said, “and I want to know what you think are soft limits. What I won’t accept is the idea of no-limit play. That might come later, or never.”

Her constant fear wasn’t pain. She was self-conscious about nakedness. He reassured her. She sent pictures. He reassured her again.

She said, “I worry about you seeing me naked. You say you think I’m beautiful, but I don’t feel beautiful, I feel fat.”

He pushed a little: “Since this is so important for you, maybe I should challenge you when we meet.” She laughed, as if he were joking.

“You are beautiful. If you are collared, it will be because you accept what I see.”

But even when she was frightened, she wanted to submit. “I want to accept what you want from me,” she told him one night, late enough that the crickets had become quiet outside his window. When he asked her about her fear of exhibition and public play, she told him: “I don’t want to give you a list. I want you to help me break down my limits and beat my defenses.

“My fantasies and fears control me now; I don’t want them to limit me anymore.”

Unlike many, who had a list of “requirements” they brought out even before they showed they had a desirable service to offer, pita never tried to “interview” him. She planned, she said, to offer “complete submission, ownership, and obedience, if you offer me your collar and teach me. I mean if,” she added, “I love you once we’re together, and accept the collar.”

“If I offer it, little one,” he had said, “the collar will be temporary. We need time before we make a collar permanent.…

“But the ‘love’ part isn’t necessary. It will be enough for me to own you, and for you to obey.”

His fear, though he hadn’t talked about it, concerned her drinking, which seemed to occur a couple of nights a week. One night when she was tipsy, she said she didn’t like it.

He asked, “So why do you do it?”

“What are you like when you drink?” she asked him, avoiding his question.

“Other than a little wine with a meal, I rarely drink,” he said, and she changed the subject. He had dealt with alcoholism and, even more than love, it was nothing he wanted to try again.

Joe abruptly returned his attention to the crowd moving beneath the mezzanine, and this time he saw pita, directly in front of the Southwest ticket counter. He gripped the railing as his breath caught. She was tall, her red hair a light to his desire, stunning. She looked confident, intimidating to men who preferred “perky” women or waifs. She did not look submissive, whatever that meant; in fact, on occasion he’d heard the ferocity in her beauty and called her “little red tiger.”

But beneath the bravado, her core was vulnerable and pure. Right now she was looking for him. She didn’t notice, or ignored, the glances and outright stares she excited from men, and from some women, around her.

He had told her to wear the dark green dress he’d sent. The skirt swirled silk each time her body turned right or left to look for him. Every few seconds she touched her choker, black cords with a heart-shaped padlock and a tubular sterling pendant engraved in script with her name: “pita.” He had sent it months earlier.

The eager skycap hurried up to her. He handed pita the envelope Joe had given him. He said something, hopefully what Joe had told him to say: “your Sir wants you to read this.” She looked confused. As the little man scurried away, she opened the note and caught the plane ticket as it fell out. Pita read the note, then looked around frantically.

She was thoroughly surprised and confused and looked ready to cry. Joe pressed the speed dial, then her cell phone was ringing, and she pressed her bag against her stomach so she could get at it, her hair getting in her way. She nearly dropped the phone.

“Hello pita,” he said, his voice calm and steady.

A middle-aged businessman walking past noticed her cleavage, kept on going but looked back at her. Joe saw the lace on the merry widow in the plunge of her dress, and he knew pale green garters were holding up her lacy stockings. She looked delicious.

“Sir, where are you?” Her voice was bordering on shrill.

“I’m here, pita. Don’t be frightened. I’ll take care of you.” The familiar phrases settled her voice a little.

“Sir, I can’t leave ….”

He interrupted her gently. “Be still, pita. Listen to me.” He could see her fidget and then bite a fingernail. “Take a deep breath and let it out, pita.

“Are you listening?”

“Yes,” she said, “Sir.”

He felt his own tension. “You want to belong to me,” he said. “To please me.”

“Sir, this is crazy. I have work and Lexi. Someone could recognize ….” Her voice fell off.

“OK, pita. I have made arrangements for your daughter with Dawn. And leaving with me isn’t as dangerous as staying here. If we remain here, someone you know will be likely to see you.” He took a breath. “You know I’m thorough, so I’m done explaining. You have a choice to make.

“On the left side of the ticket counter there is a door to a VIP lounge. Go in. Sit down, and I’ll call. You can decide then.”

“Yes, Sir,” she said and started to close the phone.

“And pita,” he caught her. “You look fantastic.”

“Thank you, Sir.”

“Do you have a bra or panties on?”

“Just the corset, Sir, like you told me.”

“Quit chewing your fingernails, pita.”

Through the large windows along the concourse, Joe could see into the VIP lounge. The only two people there were businessmen in love with their cell phones. When she entered and went to a table, one, a tall blonde man, watched her closely. She fidgeted in her chair, with her hair, nibbled at a fingernail. Joe waited for the bartender.

She was skittish, full of spirit and intelligence, easily bored and needing constant challenge to keep her attention and interest. She was challenged now.

Pita stood up quickly and walked toward the bathrooms. The watchful businessman’s eyes followed her high heels and the dark seams of her stockings across the hard floor. Joe’s pulse followed the sway and flip of her dress hem and, knowing she wore nothing beneath but a seafoam green corset and the stockings, his breath caught again. He had an urge to be waiting as she came from the restroom, to catch her by surprise … to grasp her hands and hold them hard against the wall above her head, to grind his mouth against hers, to push his tongue between her lips. He took a step.

A dark door in the back of his mind opened, and the dream he had told her about, which he had not been able to recall, fell into the light of awareness with a rush of detail. He stopped where he was, imagery surging. He was behind her, reaching for her arm and spinning her around. He was closing his arm tight around her waist. Strangers were rushing by. She looked up at him, her mouth silently shaping words. He grabbed her arms and clamped them to her sides and pulled her against him.

Impassioned and aggressive, she leaned into him, pressing her mound against his thigh, and her hand suddenly cupped him. He knew he was hard, and startled. She whispered into his mouth: “Please Sir. I need you to fuck pita.”

The surge of images and emotions stopped Joe in his tracks. When his head cleared, pita was out of the bathroom and nearly back to her seat. He watched the bartender approach and steer her to the table he had selected where he would be able to see her. The pretty Asian woman placed a napkin in front of pita and offered to bring a drink. Pita nodded and held two fingers out, parallel to the table top.

Joe cringed. The gesture was the same Mattie had used to order doubles. The last time he had seen the gesture, he had told her to quit drinking for the night. She became wildly angry and rushed out the kitchen door. Anger and fear surged in him, then pulled back. It hadn’t been his fault.

Pita was settled, her cell phone next to her hand on the table, and the bartender brought her order, tall and dark in the glass, likely her favorite Pepsi and Cap’n Morgan’s. Pita reached for her purse and looked surprised when she did not have to pay. Two years had passed since the last night with Mattie. He would only consider this pita, he had told himself a hundred times. Dominance was one thing, and love was another.

Pita finished rummaging in her purse and put it aside. The blonde businessman approached, smiling broadly. When she noticed him, she smiled back but then shook her head enchantingly at whatever he said. Self-consciously she raised her left hand to the choker and Joe quickly understood the gesture was a retreat to a touchstone, a talisman of comfort. His heart warmed. The businessman smiled some more and left.

He called her. She had the phone in her hand and answered it immediately. “Where are you, Sir? I’m frightened.”

“Nothing bad will happen, pita. Be patient.”

“I don’t feel so well, Sir.”

“Breathe deep and slow, pita. Say your mantra, three times, slow.” He could hear her reciting the poem and saying his name.

When she finished, she said: “Where are you, Sir?”

“Who was the man you were talking to, pita?”

“Please let me see you, Sir.”

He didn’t answer. After a pause, she said: “I think he liked me, Sir.” She was not so frightened that she forgot to tease him as usual. He could feel a smile in her voice. “He wanted me to go to lunch.”

“Did you want to?” She needed to be distracted.

“You know I don’t ….” Her tone was serious now.

“All of this stress and teasing. Are you aroused, pita?”

She was silent, and he watched her shift in her chair. “A little bit, Sir.” She drew a breath. “I want you, Sir.”

He took a breath of his own. “Let me answer some of your questions, pita –

“You won’t need many clothes, but I’ve brought things for you. If I forgot something, I will buy it later.

“I’ve spoken with Stephen at the restaurant. He is prepared for you to be gone a week or more.

“At eighteen, Lexi probably doesn’t really need any one, but Dawn has agreed she can stay with her. She is picking her up at the high school today.

“Are you listening, pita?”

She was quiet for a heart beat. “Sir, it’s amazing.”

“Pita, if you want, you can turn around to go back home. That way your fantasies remain imaginary. Or you can get on the plane with me. If you use the ticket, you trust me with your safety, but your dreams have a chance.

“It’s time to decide.”

She let silence hang between them.

Her answer came slowly and thoughtfully. “I want you, Sir. I want to be owned, possessed, cared for. By you. And I want to serve.”

He found he’d been holding his breath. He let it go. “In ten minutes go through security, and go to gate B5. You are in the “A” group. Stand by that sign when you get to the gate. Take a seat in the back of the plane and save the aisle seat for me.”

She didn’t say anything. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir,” she said.

“Does thinking of the next week excite you?”

“Yes,” she breathed, “Sir.”

“Check with your fingers, pita. Are your nipples hard?”

“Here, Sir?”

“Now, pita.”

She looked quickly around the room and raised her free hand to one breast and then to the other. From the mezzanine he could see the green silk momentarily wrinkle. He could hear her inhale through the phone.

“Yes, Sir.”

“Do you want me to come to you?”

“Oh, yes Sir, I do.”

“Do you have any questions, pita?”

There was a pause. “Where am I going?”

“With me, pita.” He closed his phone and went down the escalator so he could follow her.

Pita’s body relaxed as she walked. She touched the choker, and he could feel his pulse throb with hers. She looked for him in the crowd as she drew glances from men. At gate B5, sunlight flooded the waiting area, and her auburn hair glowed in the late-morning sun through the windows.

He still was not at all sure pita would come with him – or, if she did, that she would stay. Joe felt his heart steel. He wanted her to come, but without promises, without softening the magnitude of what they were doing and what he wanted of her. He wanted her to come, not because she thought she was in love with him but because she wanted to find out about herself, and him, and if she had the heart of a slave.

He stood across the concourse. She looked over her shoulder, right and left. A teenage boy maneuvered behind her, transparently adjusting his angle for a close-up glimpse of her breast pressing against the side of her dress.

When the boarding began, she moved toward the entrance, and he felt his heart leap. He hadn’t realized how uncertain he had been. He went to a kiosk and bought a pink rose, then moved forward to board at the end of the line.

He had to bend to keep from hitting his head. When he got close to her seat, he first saw the auburn sheen of her hair and a glint of sun off her choker. His hands felt clammy gripping the flower. He smiled grimly and whispered, “Here we go, pita.” She had been looking down sadly at the ground crew, but she glanced up and knew him immediately. Her face went momentarily pale, tears came to her eyes, and she staggered to get out of her seat.

“Oh Sir, I thought you weren’t coming.” He reached down, put the rose in her outstretched hand, closed his fingers over hers tightly, and gently pressed her back into her seat. She didn’t look at the flower.

“Let me put my bag up and I’ll hold you.” She was smiling and on the verge of tears. Joe folded his jacket to fit in the overhead and took a blanket. He lifted the chair arm between their seats and put his arm around her. She tilted her head eagerly and kissed him.

The energy he felt in her lips was her tension letting go: fear, joy, waiting, fantasy, and planning came together in her kiss. He tasted the salt of her tears. Gradually her lips relaxed, and her cool palm, damp from nerves, came up against his cheek.

When he drew back, she looked down at the rose and unclenched her fingers; she had been gripping it tightly, and the thorns had punctured her fingers. Three tiny drops of blood were gathered. “It’s pretty,” she said.

Joe plucked a petal from the flower to wipe away the specks of blood.

“Even the thorns,” he said.

She began to babble, embarrassed, gesturing with her hands. Her eyes were full. The stewardess stopped beside them: “Are you alright, Ma’am?”

Pita looked up, surprised to see someone there. “Yes, she’s fine,” Joe reassured the stewardess. “We’re just excited.”

Pita began to giggle, then said “May I have something, Sir?” He nodded and placed a drink order. The stewardess gave her professional smile. Joe unfolded the blanket and spread it across pita, pulling it up to her breasts. She was chattering, replaying everything as if he hadn’t been watching.

Beneath the blanket he held the inside of her wrist. “Hush, pita,” he said in her ear. Then, “Be quiet, pita,” as she continued to babble, and finally he gripped firmly and said “Shut up.” She jumped but was quiet. He took the rose and inserted it in the seatback pouch in front of her.

“Put your head on my shoulder, pita. Whisper your mantra.”

He heard her recite with her soft, southern lilt close to his ear. He felt her breath settle against his cheek and felt a familiar, direct connection between her voice and his sex, but for the first time in person.

“When you’re calm, tell me anything you’d like. But since you haven’t flown lately, maybe you’d like to look out for the takeoff.” He rotated his thumb slowly over the quick pulse in her wrist, then down into the palm of her hand, continuing the slow stroke that would calm her.

When she was breathing evenly against the side of his throat, he moved his hand onto her leg beneath the blanket and began to stroke her stocking. He moved his fingertips in small, slow circles.

When the plane taxied and lunged into the air, they were pressed back into their seats, but he continued to demand her attention and moved his hand up her leg. Joe felt her thigh twitch, as if she was surprised. But her eyes were shut and she was focused on his touch.

“You didn’t get to see the take off,” he said.

“Your hand is cold,” she whispered. “Put it between my legs.” He felt the lace on her stocking and the garter. She didn’t move her head from his shoulder but went back to slowly whispering the mantra, her hot breath on his skin, sometimes repeating a line as her mind got lost.

When he lifted the hem of her skirt and drew it up, she tensed. He took it to her waist. Beneath the blanket, her sex was bare, and she must have felt vulnerable, but pita did not question him and settled against his arm. He felt the hardness between his legs.

The stewardess returned with iced tea and rum in Pepsi for her. Only his tray was lowered, so pita filled his cup while he continued to stroke her. He let his hand wander, trailing light touches from the inside of her knee over her smooth stocking and her taut garter to the softness of skin he couldn’t see. The occasional spasm of muscles continued; he decided it was a sexual response.

She shifted her body down in the seat and spread her legs. She spoke rarely, and slowly, and when his hand neared her sex, she shifted her body toward his touch. She moaned softly with almost every stroke and pushed herself to his fingers.

He turned his head and whispered into her forehead. “Tell me, pita.”

“Sir,” she said, haltingly, “I want you.”

He continued the maddening strokes. She was trying to move onto his fingers. She cooed, “Sir … Sir … Sir, please.” Her muscles jumped again.

“Tell me, pita.”

“Sir, touch me. Please, I’m so turned on.”

His voice was a growl: “Tell me what you want.”

Her breath was choppy in his ear. For a few seconds she didn’t answer. Her thigh flinched again. Then finally in a rush she said: “Touch me … my clit, o god, my, everywhere, go inside. Make me come.”

He stopped.

“Sir, for god’s sake, please, Sir.”

He breathed passionately into her mouth. “When I touch my pussy, I want you to come. I’m going to fuck you with my fingers right now and for the next week with my cock. We will see if you can learn to be Mine.”

He touched her intimate, slick flesh, and her entire body jerked and pressed against his hand. He pushed, and his finger slid easily between her wet lips and found moisture. Her clit was small, slick, and rigid. As it passed beneath his touch, pita jerked. He approached her entrance and placed the tip of his finger just inside.

Joe adjusted his posture. He drifted his fingers over her perineum and stroked the soft, damp skin. He wondered if her skirt would be wet when she stood.

He took a handkerchief from his pocket and moved it beneath the blanket and gently wiped her sex. Even the soft cloth seemed to shock her into greater arousal. He relished her eager sexuality. He pressed the piece of cloth between her legs and slowly swirled his finger back up her slit.

She laid her hand on his thigh, then tightened her grip. Her other hand clenched the armrest of her seat. The bright light of the sky outside the plane fell across her wrist and showed her knuckles white from her tight grip.

He returned to her clitoris and rested his finger on it for a slow count of ten. Pita turned to whisper in his ear: “Sir, please. Let me come. Touch me, Sir.” And he began to tap, maddeningly, against her clit, bringing her lust up another level. Each time his finger tapped, she mewled softly “oh, ohh, ohhh, oh….” and her muscles clenched.

She pressed her pussy forward again, and this time he pressed down on her mound. He wanted her to come to relax her, if he could, but he had heard her abandonment before, and he didn’t want her to be embarrassed.

The pressure was enough, and when he slowly rotated his finger over her clit, her orgasm released, intense but silent. He watched her bite down on her lower lip, heard her inhale hard, and watched her breasts lift as she swallowed air to stay on top of her come. When she let it out, she slumped against him; he lifted his finger. Joe took the handkerchief from between her legs.

In a moment she said, “Sir…”

She stopped. “Yes?” he asked.

“You’re already training me, aren’t you?”

“The week will be short,” he said.

“I’m thinking,” she paused, “that was very public and I’ve never done that. I’m wondering how hard you’ll beat me. And if you’ll decide to give me to a Dom.”

“You mean you wonder if I’ll respect the limits we talked about?”

“Yes, Sir,” she said quietly.

“Changing from online to real life opens everything up, doesn’t it?” he said. “When limits are online, they are like fantasy. In life it’s all real.

“It’s my job,” he whispered, “to challenge you and your limits … to see if you want to grow and submit, not just in fantasies. Listen,” Joe said, turning so he could look into her eyes and hold her hands, “in a sense we’re starting over, but I remember what you said.

“I remember that exhibitionism was a soft limit, something you would accept because it pleases me,” he said. “And I love to share your beauty, so I will challenge you with it.

“But you said giving you to another dominant was a hard limit, and so that is simply not possible under any circumstances – not necessarily because I wouldn’t want it but because it is a limit – until you change your mind. As for flogging, each scene is different, and I have to decide each time how much is enough.”

“What if I can’t handle it?” she asked.

“You find it hard to believe me, don’t you? If you safeword, I will stop whatever we are doing. We will deal with the problem.”

She was quiet, looking in his eyes for what was ahead.

He continued, “I won’t tell you everything. I won’t ask for permission.”

“What if I don’t like it?” she asked quietly.

“Depends on what you mean by ‘it.’ We’ll deal with it then.”

“How do you know what to do?” she asked.

He settled back into his seat and closed his eyes. “It’s in the Dom’s Manual,” he smiled. “It’s all there. Now relax, pita. Get some sleep.”

Pita rested her head on Joe’s shoulder. He wondered if her orgasm had stirred her up so much she wouldn’t be able to relax. But a moment later he felt her head grow heavy, and her breath lengthened. The stress of getting here had been intense, and she had done well. He reminded himself not to hope for too much too soon.

Masturbation on a plane isn’t BDSM, and a little exhibitionism under the drive of passion isn’t submission, no matter how shy she thought she was.

Pita wanted love; Joe couldn’t trust it. The challenge of D/s was enough. When he thought of love, images of Mattie flooded his mind, ghastly and frozen, saying “I love you” over breakfast … then darkness with blue lights and radios rasping and chill night air settling on his sweating skin.

He closed his eyes and put his head back. He put the handkerchief to his face. If the woman in the blue hat were still across the aisle, she would have thought he was wiping his nose. He inhaled pita’s scent. He knew that before they landed he had to settle the turmoil that rippled through his body. His breath was shaky, and he put the handkerchief back in his pocket. He felt the plane enter its long descent.

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