Love, Honor, and Obey
Chapter Four. Bathysphere
Elle lay in bed, eyes closed, as long as she could, wrapping the memories of pleasure around herself like a blanket. It had been a great night. Louis had been so devoted—and so entranced—that he would have spent the entire night on the floor, kissing her shoes and sucking her heels, if she’d wanted. She’d enjoyed the attention and the submission for a while, then directed him to move up slowly—her ankles, her calves, her thighs . . .
Then: “Time for some vanilla ice cream, Louis”—and she taken his head firmly and directed it between her legs. His tongue had savored the taste, and Elle gave in to the pleasure as he slowly nibbled and licked until she threw her had back and came, gasping with pleasure.
“Good boy,” she’d said, then pushed him to the floor on his back. “Take off your pants now,” she’d said, and snapped her fingers; when Louis was naked from the waist down, she climbed astride him. He was aroused, and she lowered herself onto his erection. “Look at me, Louis,” she’d said as she began to move up and down. “Look at me. Don’t look away. You can’t look away. Look at me! What’s my name?”
“Elle,” Louis had gasped. His eyes were fixed on hers, glassy and fixed.
“Again,” she said.
“Elle!”
“Louder!”
“Elle!”
As she felt her orgasm building, she shouted, “What’s my name, bitch?”
“ELLE!”
“Come now, bitch!”
Louis had bucked underneath her. “Oh, God!” he cried, then fell back spent.
“Good boy,” she’d said, patting his head fondly. “You’ve done well. Now, when I snap my fingers, you’ll get up, clean off and undress, get into bed, and go to sleep. One—two-three—SNAP!”
She moved back. Still glassy-eyed, he rose from the floor. “The bathroom is back there, off the bedroom,” she said. “I’ll be in in a few minutes. You’ll be sound asleep, dreaming of me.”
Without a word, he’d walked in the direction she’d pointed.
After that, Elle had spent half an hour going through email. One of the disadvantages of her line of work was the number of panicked messages from women just learning how to handle the male of the species. She answered a few, then rose and went into the bedroom.
I should have told him to get under the covers, she thought. Louis was splayed out on the bedspread, sound asleep. She leaned over and rubbed the back of his hand gently with one finger. “Louis,” she said softly. “Listen to my voice but don’t wake up. You’re going to pull back the top sheet and get under it and then go ten times deeper, back into a sexy dream about me. One—two—three!”
Without opening his eyes, Louse sat up in bed and swung his legs over. he stood, pulled back the sheet, crawled under it, and then collapsed with a sigh. “Good boy,” she said. “Loose, limp, lazy—you’ll sleep until morning dreaming about me.”
Feeling luxurious and leisurely, she undressed, dressed in her favorite silk pajamas, and brushed her hair. By the time she was finally ready for bed, he was dead to the world, his breath sighing as softly as a child’s. He looked so sexy—young, unguarded, submissive. He would do anything she asked, quickly, without thought or hesitation. It was how she liked her men; beyond that, it was the place men ought to occupy in the world. Briefly she considered waking him to use him again; but he’d been such a good boy. She decided to let him sleep. She crawled into bed next to him and picked up My Voice Will Go With You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson. She enjoyed reading for half an hour or so before turning out the light; but the night had been such fun—the conquest so easy, the prize so delicious—that her eyes began to sag as soon as she crawled between the sheets.
She’d slept like a stone all night. Now she kept her eyes closed as long as she could. The truth was that this moment in her conquest of a new man was always the best, and she was in no hurry to move beyond it. Once a man was subdued, all that remained was the training and instruction. She would teach him exactly how to serve her—cook and serve, run her errands—and how to please her in bed.
Then soon enough she would grow tired of him. Men were useful, to be sure, and sometimes amusing. But they could become clingy and tiresome, and eventually she would have to send each new one away, or train him to be a non-sexual thrall, eager to do her favors but demanding nothing in return.
Then she’d be prowl again. She wasn’t looking forward to the process of losing Louis. But soon she couldn’t delay her waking any more. The day needed to begin. She’d wake him, put him to work, then send him away for the time being.
Sighing slightly, she opened her eyes to see him—not there?
What?
She knew that it was theoretically possible for a man to get out of her bed and escape. Her girlfriends had complained to her about this. They met a man, they seduced him, and then woke to find him gone, with a quick note—“I’ll call you later” or some other lie.
But it had never happened to her. Until now.
Nettled, unsettled, she pulled back the covers and got up. She would have to make her own coffee, which seemed vaguely wrong somehow. She walked into the kitchen—to see through the glass doors Louis, half-dressed, at the picnic table on the deck, hunched over some sheets of paper, scribbling frantically with a pencil.
“Louis?”
He started, as if he’d been somewhere else. “Elle! Hi! I didn’t see you there. Look! I had the most amazing dream last night, and I just turned it into a short story!”
She’d told him to dream about her. Had he written something about her? Part of her was alarmed—her secrets were not for publication—but part of her was, well, flattered. He might be just a man, but he was also a well known writer; a good writer, in fact. She really had liked his first book; what would it be like to be in a story by a real published author? But what if . . . .
What if he knew her secrets?
That was ridiculous. How could he? No one did.
”What is it about?”
He looked like an eight-year-old who’d just been to the movies, he was so excited, so open, so eager to tell her everything. It was sexy, she thought. She didn’t have to suggest submission; he was throwing himself at her feet without so much as a snap of her fingers. “It’s called ‘Bathysphere,’” he said. “It’s short. Can I—would it be okay—would you mind—if you have time—if I read it to you?”
“Sure. Let me pour us some coffee.”
When she was settled at the table with her cup, he began to read. He had a nice voice, she thought; soon enough, she got caught up in the story. It was about a marine biologist who took a dive into the Marianas Trench in a one-man bathysphere. He was going deeper than anyone had ever gone before; his only companion was the voice of mission control. The characters didn’t have names—the explorer was “he,” mission control was “she.” He told her what he was seeing in the ocean beyond the window; she reassured him that the sphere was functioning normally, that he had enough air, that he was safe. As the sphere descended past 10,000 meters, he began to describe extraordinary sea life—deep-sea creatures never before seen by any man. Long, strange jellyfish; odd globular puffer fish; shark-like predators so adapted to the deep ocean that they had no eyes, eels that lit the sea around them with a glow that exposed their internal organs; and behind them, in the shadowy depths, hints of other creatures, huge, unimaginable new forms of life, and through the microphones on the sphere’s exterior deep strange groans and hints of a haunting song of some wild sirens beyond the edge of madness . . . .
And then came the moment for the sphere to begin the ascent. But he didn’t ascend. In fact, he disabled the depth control. Her voice cautioned him: “If you don’t start the ascent now, you won’t have enough air to make it to the surface.”
“I’m not coming back,” he told her. Then he turned off the speaker.
For a moment all he heard was the beating of his own heart and the siren call of the deep. I am alone, he thought. Alone forever.
“You didn’t think you could get rid of me that easily?” her voice said.
She was with him there in the sphere. Her voice was part of him, and he was part of her. They would sail off into the deep unknown together.
His voice stopped. “And that’s the end,” he said. “Elle, are you okay?”
She felt flushed, a bit dizzy. Without realizing it, she realized, she had been touching her own nipple.
That story was the sexiest thing she’d ever heard.
“I’m fine,” she said. She was blushing. Usually she made men blush. But now she was looking down, embarrassed to meet his eyes.
“Would you like some breakfast?” he said. “If you have bread and eggs, I make great French toast.”
“That sounds great,” she said. “But let’s have French toast for dessert.”
“Dessert?” he said. “What’s the main course?”
“Well,” she said, tapping one finger against his wrist. “How do you feel about vanilla ice cream?”