Another way

Copyright

Published by

Dreamspinner Press

382 NE 191st Street #88329

Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Another Way

Copyright © 2011 by Anna Martin

Cover Design by Taria Reed    [email protected]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 382 NE 191st Street #88329, Miami, FL 33179-3899, USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

ISBN: 978-1-61372-160-5

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

September 2011

eBook edition available

eBook ISBN: 978-1-61372-161-2

Dedication

To Jennifer and Kira, who guided me through when the words wouldn’t come and forgave me for my kinks.

And to John, who unknowingly supplied the soundtrack.

Tied up and twisted, the way I’d like to be,

For you, for me, come crash into me.

“Crash Into Me”

Dave Matthews Band

Chapter One

I
T
WAS
4 p.m. on a Friday, and I was at work when my phone chimed with a familiar tune. The message was simple, and gave me no idea of what sort of mood he might be in.

Will: 7 p.m.

That was it. Three characters, but they told me all I needed to know. For the next hour I itched to leave my job in a downtown independent bookstore, and I practically ran from the building when the clock ticked over to five o’clock.

As was our routine every Friday, I got into the house just as Adele was leaving. I gave her a quick kiss as she trotted out of the door in a black pencil skirt and a white blouse, her long, red hair bouncing in her ponytail. She loved her job as a front of house manager in a nice French restaurant in the city; it was a pretty small place, and she was almost as famous there as the food was. It was Adele who practically kidnapped a chef when she was living in France a few years ago and convinced him to relocate to America. She now ran his restaurant, while Theo got to cook the food he grew up with. Everyone was happy.

Although… I had my secrets. As soon as Adele left, I went down to the basement and spent twenty minutes on the treadmill, followed by twenty minutes of a boxing program to loosen up my muscles and warm up, so to speak, for the evening ahead. When that was done, I went up to our bedroom and set out some nice clothes—in case I went out after—and took a shower, making sure I was perfectly scrubbed all over.

He didn’t like it when I wore strong-smelling deodorants or aftershave, so I used a scent-free antiperspirant and dressed in loose clothing. This routine was familiar to me too. I left the house with twenty minutes to spare in order to travel the ten minutes to his house.

After I’d parked outside, I went around to the back of the house and let myself in, making sure to lock the door behind me, and went straight up the back staircase to the attic, where I undressed and piled all of my clothes neatly by the door.

Then I sat back on my heels, laced my fingers behind my neck, dropped my head, and waited.

“Good evening, Jesse,” he said from behind me, and I heard the door click shut. He must have been waiting for me to get into position. It was nice to think that he was as anxious to start our session as I was.

“Good evening, Master,” I said softly, and I felt him come up behind me.

“I’ve missed you,” he said simply and ran his fingers through my hair. I decided to break position and lean into his touch, just with my head, as he lightly scratched my scalp and tugged on the roots of my hair. This was my way of saying
I missed you too.

It had been about two weeks since we saw each other last—circumstances and family commitments had gotten in the way of our relationship. It wasn’t the longest we’d ever gone without seeing each other, but it was pushing the boundaries of how long we could cope. I needed him more frequently than once every two weeks. If we got our way, it was usually two sessions a week.

“What shall we do with you tonight, I wonder?” he asked as he let go of my hair and walked to the stereo. Both Master and I were fond of persistent rock music playing in the background—something rough and edgy that created an atmosphere up here.

I kept my eyes glued on the floor, even as I felt him come up behind me with two padded cuffs and attach each of my wrists to the opposite elbow.

“Test them,” Master said, and I obediently tugged on the restraints. I wasn’t going anywhere.

These cuffs were familiar to me; they were a light tan leather with white sheepskin lining. They were my favorites because Master bought them for me, and would never use them on anyone else. I caught sight of him as he moved, and I couldn’t help the rush of blood that went straight to my cock. He was wearing dark brown leather pants and a T-shirt that might once have been the color of milky tea but had been washed out to the point where it was so thin you could see straight through it.

His hair was long and messy, as always, and through the windows that were set in the ceiling, it shone all sorts of shades of red and mahogany in the evening light. Master Will had a lean, athletic build that he’d earned snowboarding in the Canadian mountains visible from his Seattle home—through the windows in the ceiling, in fact, if one was standing at them.

Once I was secured, Master came around to my front and braced his hands against my naked chest, helping me rise to my feet. Now that I was secured, he cupped my face in his hands and brought his lips to mine.

The feel of his lips and his hot tongue probing my mouth was almost too much for me. I rose up onto my toes to close the small gap that was created by the height distance between us—he was wearing boots and I was barefoot. My cock, which was hard already, began to ache in another familiar way, and I wanted more. With him, there was always more.

“I would like to collar you tonight, Jesse. Would that be okay?” he asked as he broke our kiss.

I nodded silently; he hadn’t given me permission to speak.

“Thank you,” Master said, accepting the gift of my submission. He walked to the wall and selected a slim, tan leather collar—it matched the two restraining my wrists.

When he was in front of me again, I dropped my head. We stood like this, two equals until the moment that piece of leather wrapped around my neck, and he buckled it at the back, gently smoothing my hair out of the way of the catch. Then, until he decided to take it off again, I belonged to him.

This was a ritual that we’d developed. In the early days of our relationship, I wasn’t comfortable with everything that our sessions entailed. So Will had set up a few sessions where I wasn’t collared and I referred to him by his given name or “Sir” and we worked on finding out our mutual limits. These days, I rarely—if ever—denied his offer of collaring me, but he still gave me the choice, and I appreciated that. It made my handing over of control to him even more profound.

The collar helped me lose myself and go deeper into “subspace,” a state of mind where I was more willing to hand over all control to my Master. I was pulled into another kiss, but this time he held me steady and forced me to bend backward, bend to his will as he dominated my mouth. I lived for these kisses, the ones that forced me to accept my place in the hierarchy of the room, pushed me into accepting the role I’d chosen. Because it surely wasn’t an easy one.

Master carefully helped me back down to my knees, and when I was settled, he opened the front of those amazing brown leather pants and withdrew his long, hard cock. It only took him raising one eyebrow at me and my mouth was on him in an instant, sucking him into my mouth and licking around the head, desperate for the taste and smell of him. Once I’d sucked off all his flavor, I wanted his scent, and I took a deep breath, relaxing my throat and leaning in to take him all the way into my mouth until my nose was buried in his short hairs and his balls were tickling my chin. I used my tongue to lave him with attention until he made that low sound in the back of his throat that I lived for, half moan and half grunt—a warning.

He liked to come before we got deep into the session. I had asked him about it once, and he said it helped him to stay in control if he’d already had one orgasm. That made sense.

“Swallow,” he commanded, not that the word was really necessary. There was no way I could escape his strong fingers in my hair, holding me in place as his cock throbbed and shot his come straight into the back of my throat. I was enthralled by the sensation and swallowed happily around him.

He softened in my mouth, and I licked him clean, then sat back on my heels as he tucked himself away. There were no words of praise for my efforts; instead, Master turned and went to prepare something else behind me. I appreciated the moment. It gave me time to think.

I
BECAME
a submissive when I was still in college and in the process of discovering my sexuality. One wild night at a BDSM-themed club got me intrigued, and a few weeks, later I ran into one of the girls from the club in a coffee house. She was a Domme, and after a few dates where words like “hard limit” and “pain threshold” and “safeword” became part of my vocabulary, we agreed to start a relationship.

Laura was only a few years older than me, but she held herself with a grace that reminded me of the old movie stars of the early part of the century. She was a lady in the truest sense of the word. She also prided herself on finding the darkest recesses of someone’s soul and turning them over for inspection, poking and prodding deep into their psyche and using that information to her advantage. She never really hurt me, not even when she was lashing my skin with a crop or a whip or a multi-tailed flogger. Not once did I ever use my safeword with her, although she truly pushed me to the edge of my comfort zone, always backing off before I screamed for her to stop.

It was pretty Laura who twisted my sexuality to become a fluid thing, not a fixed label that is so often either black or white. She helped me to define myself as pansexual, heteroflexible, and willing to contemplate a relationship with another man. Our D/s relationship was tested when she got engaged and pushed when she got married, although we continued to pursue our connection with her new husband’s blessing, on the condition that we never partook in sexual intercourse. That was fine. I could count on my fingers the number of times I’d actually fucked Laura.