The Dollhouse Society: Felix (5 page)

“
So you have children?” I said when she told me about her and Ian’s three-year-old son, Hunter.

“
Just Hunter,” Evelyn said, grinning mischievously. “Ian wants more, but Hunter’s more than enough for me right now. He gets into
everything
. I call him danger baby.”

I thought about the Muslim couple I’d served at the theater earlier in the week, the tired looking mother of four, with another on the way. “He hasn’t insisted on more?”

“
Of course he insists!” She sipped her white wine and smiled a secret smile at me over the rim of her glass. “And he can
keep
insisting. That doesn’t mean he’ll be getting his way anytime soon.”

We giggled together at Evelyn’s rebellion. “So I take it he’s not in charge all the time? He doesn’t tell you what to do?”

“
Ian’s in charge when I choose he is,” Evelyn explained. “When he is, he’s my gentleman. And then sometimes we switch things up, and I’m in charge, but only because he allows me to be. That makes me the lady and him the courtier. In the Society, we’re known as switchers. Ian’s friend Margo and her courtier Robert are also switchers, although not all arrangements are like that. Some couples prefer a stable, unchanging relationship where there’s just one gentleman and one courtesan.” She bit back her secret smile. “It’s said that in the end, the real power lies in the bottom, not the top.”

I spent the next ten minutes making notes in the notebook I carried in my purse and trying to wrap my brain around the dynamics of Ian and Evelyn’s marriage.

Eventually, Mr. Ishikawa returned from drinks and conversation with his friend and stood beside the black leather sofa. “Felix,” he said, offering his hand.

I looked to Evelyn for instruction, but she said, “When you gentleman speaks, it’s proper etiquette to give him your full attention. No one else in the room should matter then.”

I bit my lip and took his hand. Mr. Ishikawa pulled me easily to my feet so we faced each other. “Strip.”

My heart started thudding again. “Excuse me?”

“
I won’t tell you again. Use your safeword and leave, or do as I tell you, Felix.”

I looked around, hoping for more advice from Evelyn, but she’d rejoined her husband. “I thought…we would be alone for that.”

“
We won’t be alone in the Dollhouse. Consider this part of your training, my courtesan.” He waited expectantly.

Again I looked to Evelyn, but soon realized there was no escape there. I had to decide how far I was willing to go tonight. I took a deep breath and reminded myself of how important the article was. With shaking fingers, I unzipped the red silk dress for Mr. Ishikawa. Soon—much too soon—I was standing naked in his penthouse, wearing only my stockings with their scalloped edges and my heels. The penthouse had been made warm, almost too warm. Now I knew why. The charged atmosphere made my bare skin feel electric. I didn’t look at anyone’s face; I just stared down at my feet and worked on not fidgeting and trying to cover myself up.

“
Hands at your sides.”

I let my hands drop to my sides. Mr. Ishikawa looked me up and down. When I dared look up, he said, “Eyes on the floor. I haven’t given you permission to face me as an equal yet, Felix.”

I stared at the floor. It was the first order I had no trouble following.

He moved in a tight circle around me, studying every naked inch of me. His fingers skimmed over my shoulders and down my back, raising the gooseflesh there. He cupped my breasts as if to weigh them and squeezed my nipples until I gasped. He fingered the cleft of my ass, squeezed my cheeks, and parted the folds of my labia to skim his fingers inside. First he inserted one finger, then two. He pushed up tight inside me and a low moan gathered in my throat. “Am I hurting you?” he asked in an intimate little whisper in my ear.

“
No, sir,” I told him. “I used to ride horses back in Texas.” I realized after a moment that my statement probably didn’t make much sense to him, so I added, “I tore my hymen long ago, when I was just a young girl.”

“
Ah.” He licked my wetness off his fingers.

When we were face to face once more, he captured my chin in his hand. The motion pulled me off balance in the heels and I wound up pressed against his suit. His dark eyes flashed beneath his winged brows. “You’re very pretty. I love the smell of your arousal and the feel of your body. I love how you respond to being touched.”

“
Th-thank you.”

He waited.

“
Thank you, sir.”

He inhaled the fragrance of my hair, the side of my neck. He went to one knee before me like some prince in a fairy tale, but instead of proposing marriage, he sniffed down the front of my body, boldly parted the folds of my labia, and drank in my scent there. Oh god, I felt my entire body melting around him, for him. “Don’t come,” he said and thumbed back the hood of my clitoris and blew gently upon my swollen bud. “A good courtesan puts her gentleman’s needs before her own.”

I gripped his shoulders to keep my balance, but my hips jerked reflexively at the sudden, unexpected pleasure of his tongue flickering out, tasting me. A small mewling noise escaped up my throat as I climaxed, suddenly and unexpectedly, and gushed my come against his mouth.

He licked my juices from his lips, staring up at me in such a powerfully hungry way it made my knees shake. Then he slapped my pussy, hard, which made me shriek like he’d scalded me. The pain made me want him both more and less. Ian and Evelyn looked on with interest but did not interfere. “A good courtesan knows to see to her gentleman’s needs
before
her own,” he repeated in a steel-edged voice that made the Lorikeets scream in their cage. “You know this because it was in my instructions. You know because I just told you, Felix. I want to see you on your knees, sucking my cock like the courtesan you are until you understand your place.”

Suddenly, within a matter of seconds, he’d gone from lover to taskmaster. “Please,” I told him, pleading. “I can’t…” I couldn’t, not in front of these strange people.

Ian chuckled from across the room. “I think you have your work cut out for yourself, Alex.”

“
You may be right, Ian.” He stood up, cupped my chin in his big hand, and dragged me forward so I was forced on tiptoe. He looked me in the eyes, truly angry for once. “It’s time you learn the consequences of failing your gentleman, Felix. If Ian was your gentleman, he’d likely cut you some slack as a novice. As it is, I’m not that type of gentleman.”

“
No, it’s obvious you’re a control freak.”

His eyes flared. “I want you bent over the back of the sofa, ass in the air. You need to learn to submit properly to a man.”

I started saying, “You must be fucking kidding me.” It was
he
who’d teased me, wrung the climax from my body. But I quickly realized he wasn’t kidding at all. At first, our safeword jumped to my lips, but then I bit it back. Everyone here was acting so casual about everything, like this was just the way things were. It made me feel like what I was—a naïve redneck from the east of Texas. He didn’t say it, but I knew what he was thinking:
Safeword and leave or do as you’re told
. I swallowed hard. I knew that, ultimately, the choice was mine.

It’s not worth it
, I told myself. Even an article that could make me world famous wasn’t enough incentive to submit to this kind of humiliation, to let him bend me to his will, bend me naked over his couch and fuck me like some animal. I saw myself spitting out the safeword, gathering my clothes, and leaving. I knew that was prudent. Wise. Probably safer. And, yet, something inside rebelled at the idea of giving up. I’d never given up on anything in my life, no matter how hard it had become. I closed my eyes and centered myself the way I did when I did pilate class, which wasn’t often enough. I took a deep breath and asked myself if I could do this. I told myself that yes, I could, if I really wanted to.

I jerked myself free of him and walked to the sofa with as much dignity as I could muster. The looks of admiration on Ian and Evelyn’s faces were almost worth it. I leaned over it and balanced my open palms on the black pleather cushions, which left me feeling more exposed and vulnerable than ever before.
You really do have a death wish, Felix
, I thought to myself even as I felt Mr. Ishikawa come up behind me, very close.

“
Good girl,” he said in a tone that made me even more ashamed because it filled me with a kind of pride, and set his hands on my hips. His fingers dug in and he adjusted my position so I was tipped a little more forward, almost but not quite off-balance in my heels. “You were late for our date. That was your first offense. You also refused your gentleman’s cock. That was your second. I’m going to use my belt on you for both offenses. Six punishments for the first, six for the second. Do you understand, Felix?”

I swallowed around the boulder in my throat and my whole body vibrated with a combination of fear and excitement. No one had ever spanked me before, not even my dad. “Y-yes.” My voice was so soft he had to ask me again to give my consent. Once I did, he reminded me I could use the safeword at any time to stop our play if things became too much. I could also leave at anytime.

He rubbed the tense muscles of my ass, slowly, soothingly, until I relaxed, then undid his belt. I rested the crown of my head against the cushions and worked on not having a panic attack. I tried to center myself, to mentally armor myself against what was coming, but it wasn’t enough. The first slap of the belt against my ass left me screaming bloody murder. Admittedly, my reaction was a bit much. The first slap hadn’t even hurt all that much, but it was the humiliation of being paddled like a child in front of strangers that tore the cry from my throat. The second and third slaps, placed strategically above and below the first two, just left me screaming even louder.

I screamed and the Lorikeets screamed with me. Ian and Evelyn looked on like they were watching some avant-garde art performance in Central Park on a Sunday afternoon—interesting if a bit overdone.  

By the time I’d been belted six times and we were halfway done, I felt like my ass cheeks were on fire and I was cursing and scratching at the once-pristine pleather cushions. Mr. Ishikawa stopped to ask me if I was all right.

“
Yes,” I panted out. “Yes,
sir
.” The French manicure I’d gotten for tonight was broken and ragged. I was shaking with rage and humiliation, and it took everything I had not to break down in tears or else swear him up and down.

“
I dislike your tone, my courtesan,” Mr. Ishikawa told me calmly. There was no anger in his voice. “We’ll start from the beginning again.”

I nearly screamed

The slap of the doubled up leather belt stung like a sonofabitch on my already smarting ass, but for the next six rounds I’m proud to say I didn’t scream. I counted the last six with him, grunting each time the leather connected with my ass. He was careful none of the metal parts touched me, and he stopped periodically to ask if I was well. By the end of it, I felt stronger, more in control, surprisingly. I was no longer afraid of the pain.

He cupped and rubbed at my burning ass, his touch surprisingly gentle. “You did well, Felix. Did you learn anything from this experience?”

I gritted my teeth.

“
Felix?”

I searched my mind for a suitable response. I decided to echo what he’d written to me when he had passed along his instructions on being a courtesan. “A courtesan obeys her gentleman. A courtesan puts the needs of her gentleman above those of her own.”

“
Do you agree with that?”

“
None of this is helping with your case against the article, you know,” I reminded him.

“
I mean to give you a real education. You should feel privileged I’m showing you the inside of the Society. I’m teaching you how a proper courtesan should act and respond to her gentleman. I’m not sugarcoating anything, my dear.”

“
Obviously not.” I let out my breath in a huff. “Can I get up now?”

“
No. It’s obvious to me you still don’t know your place, and until you do, we cannot proceed.”

I groaned.

A moment later I heard him unzip himself. Oh god…

His cock was hard against the crack of my ass. I felt him slide it along my moist folds, parting them with his swollen head but going no further. He felt huge against me and I started to worry that he would split me apart. I grunted again and started to pant, ashamed by how wet I was, how ready.

He rubbed gently but persistently, in and out, tight and wet against me, and the feel of him sent a frantic surge of pure, unrelenting lust through me unlike anything I’d ever felt before. I closed my eyes and thrust my ass against him, hoping to take him into me, but he just stroked back and forth in a maddening rhythm, wetting the insides of my thighs but offering me no release, no satisfaction. Given a choice, this is
not
how I would have shed my virginity, bent over a couch with my face in a cushion as my lover cock-teased me into insanity. In the past, I’d had perhaps overly romantic notions of how it would happen, on a bed by moonlight, covered in rose petals, blah, blah, but now I realized this was reality, and this was what I wanted, here, now…

“
Felix…”

“
God…fuck me,” I bit out, surprisingly myself.

He grunted a response and his fingers dug into my hipbones once more, anchoring me tight so he could impale me with one great upward thrust, sheathing all that hot, quivering hardness deep inside my body. I jerked and cried out in shock at the sudden, unfamiliar pressure. At first, it was nothing like I’d anticipated, and my body instinctively tried to shirk away from the invading presence filling me so completely, stretching the walls of my cunt to their limit, pounding against me, but there was nowhere for me to go. Suddenly my brain turned off the panic and I felt my body responding to him on a wholly primal level.