Two Chapter Preview: Provocative

“I was just passing a delivery on to Rebecca.”


Bossman says nothing, which means he’s giving her one of those steeling gray-eyed stares of his that intimidate even the most confident a person, which Amanda is not. She’s too young and sweet, as well as without experience, for the likes of that man.

“I’ll just go watch the front desk.”

“See that you do,” he says.

She scrambles away and he appears in my doorway, and what can I say. He’s tall. He’s blonde. His gray eyes striking, hard. And he wears a custom suit better than any man who’s ever graced the pages of GQ. The problem is that he knows it. He owns it. And he owns everyone around him. He’s wanted to own me from the moment I came to work for the Gallery. A part of me wanted him too, as well. But after my recent submissive experience, I’ve learned that being owned, isn’t right for me. Oddly though I can say that the more I was owned outside my work, the harder “Bossman” Mark Compton found it to intimidate me as he does everyone else in the office.

And he knows that, too. I thought this would displease him, but another oddity. It doesn’t. He seems to in fact, be pleased by this new side of me. If that is even possible. Maybe I’m wrong. Whatever the case, Bossman stood there in my doorway, staring at me. Never once did he look at the package. Never once did he speak. He just stared at me and I stared at him, and tried, like I always try, to read his thoughts. To feel what he was feeling, but that isn’t something that happens, unless he allows it to happen. And I suspect, that in his workplace, that would never, ever happen. But still I try. Still I want to peel away some layer of this powerful man’s shell, to see inside his mind.

“What are we doing Ms. Mason?”

“Amanda brought me a package that I intend to open alone and at an appropriate time.”

“As it should be,” he approves, and with that, he’d disappeared back into the hallway.

I’d wanted that private moment to be then, right after he’d left, but when I’d stood to shut my door, to open the package, I’d changed my mind. I’d waited until I arrived home. And now it’s sitting here, beside me and I can’t seem to open it. For some reason, I just…can’t. I haven’t even written about what happened last night. But I know that this package is about just that. What happened. What I didn’t think could happen. What he didn’t think could happen and yet, it did.

And it changed us. I’m not sure he can handle that. Maybe I can’t either. Maybe we don’t know how to be anything but what we once were and that I can’t be that anymore. Maybe I’ve already lost him and he’s lost me. That scares me. Outright terrifies me. So the package. I think I’ll wait to open it.





June 2011

Monday, eleven pm



The gift he gave me is still sitting on the kitchen table unopened while I’m alone in my bed, writing this. I suppose most people would be going crazy, wanting to know what is inside the package. I suppose too that I’m really not different than most people. I do want to know what’s inside it. I simply dread what it might be more. Besides, I’ve never been big on gifts, but then, I’ve never had anyone to give me gifts, at least, not before him. My mother wanted to give me gifts. She wanted a lot of things that she never found, and I think her cigarettes became her drug of choice and as we all know, drugs kill, and her drug killed her. But they were the one joy she had in life. He’s my drug.

The problem though is that the first gift he ever gave me was a beautiful ring with a stunning rose on top of it. A ring I was to put on only if I signed the agreement to be his submissive. A ring I wore for two months and gave back to him when that role no longer suited me. Every gift he gave me since then was during that submissive period, and tied directly to something we’d shared when I was in that role. But I wasn’t his submissive Friday night. And he wasn’t the master he’d once been to me. Oh don’t get me wrong. He was sin, sex, and powerful, as I always expect from him, but the man beneath the master, I’d seen glimpses of in the past was there with me. And as I wrote before, I’d sworn not to have sex with him, but that didn’t work out.

Really though, considering how it happened. I don’t regret it. I regret nothing about that night. I’d opened the door and I’d been overwhelmed by not just the force of his presence but the way he’d looked at me, emotion he doesn’t allow anyone to see in his eyes. “Torment” is the word that had come to my mind. Wordless, I’d stepped into the hallway outside my apartment and before I could shut the door, he’d done the unthinkable. After he’d breathed out my name, he’d pulled me to him and kissed me, deeply, passionately, intensely. This is not a man who does such a thing. He builds tension. He makes you crave him and the kiss that might not ever come, even if his mouth finds it’s way to intimate parts of your body, which most assuredly it always did mine. But no. That night he just kissed me. And then there was this explosion of uncontrolled passion between us, that he has never allowed.

One minute we were in the hallway, and the next we are ripping off each others’ clothes – yes, he let me help him undress, which he never allows. He lets me touch him. And then we’re on my couch. I’m on top of him, and we are just crazy wild making love. Or having sex. I don’t know what it was. It was nothing I’d ever experienced in my life. I just know that there was this moment, where he twined fingers in my hair, and said, “I missed you,” that stole every breath I’ve ever owned. I know that sounds small, but it is not with him. Wild, crazy sex, and admissions of missing someone, missing me, does not fit the master I know. Nor does the desperation I’d tasted in his kisses.

And when it was over, he’d held me for long minutes, like he didn’t want to let me go, until finally he’d rolled me to my back and declared, “Don’t move,” and he walked to my bathroom and returning with a towel before, in all his naked glory, and let me tell you, that man naked is all about glory, he brings me my clothes. “I owe you dinner,” he said. “If you still want to go?”

“Of course I want to go,” I’d replied.

Approval had lit his eyes and I cannot explain how that look affects me, and even arouses me. I shouldn’t need a man’s approval, of course, but it’s really not about that. In that moment, I’d remembered how intensely erotic, and addictive being owned by this man can be. I’d almost changed my mind about dinner out of fear that this was headed right back where we’d once been: master and submissive. And I’d feared I couldn’t say no.