Chapter Four

My body and heart dwelt on the question KC raised, but I had no immediate answer. I did pull myself back together, treating my life less recklessly than I had in previous weeks. In the back of my thoughts I could feel his final commands helping me keep focused; but it was not enough—not stern, harsh or determined enough to answer my inner turmoil. After a few days, I found myself beginning to slip back…I needed KC more. Even though, I was reluctant to see him.

Sure that he’d be questioning me if I suddenly showed up at the theatre, I avoided returning. And yet, as before, the more I stayed away, the more the drive to see him increased. Two weeks after our last meeting, I caught the theatre review in the paper for his latest show. Acting on impulse, I decided to go. Maybe if I had no answers for him, just being in the theatre would jar something loose.

Sure that I didn’t want to see KC before the performance, I timed my arrival at curtain time; surprised to see that the theatre was nearly packed. I was lucky to get a seat. With the chairs nearly filled in the black box, I had to take one at the end of the last row, high on a riser above the show. It suited my purposes. Perhaps KC wouldn’t see me.

I watched the show listening to the impassioned dialogue, though I heard with just half my brain attentive, letting this series of one act shorts breeze by me thoughtlessly. My mind was in other places. The substance of these plays made me anxious. My sexual desires were rising fast, but they were also troubled. At intermission, I almost left. But unexpectedly finding KC standing at my back with his hand on my hip, I turned abruptly, flustered.

“You didn’t say you were coming,” he noted calmly.

“Spur of the moment,” I replied with a smile.

“I’m glad you’re here. Enjoying the show?”

“Yes, it’s wonderful.” That sounded canned and way too trite, but I figured he already sensed how distressed I was, so that the words I used really didn’t matter.

“You’ll like the second half even better.”

“I will?” This conversation made it hard to leave, and with the crowd between me and the entrance hallway blocking my exit, I ended up staying, retreating to my lofty corner to suffer through the pain of more unsatisfied arousal.

Rossi’s eyes took his submissive student elsewhere, into another plane of consciousness—an overtly sexual one. Every time she stared at him, locked on to his imperious gaze, she was struck inside her cunt, and in the folds and slips of intimate skin, and then on her reactive ass—which responded to the very smallest stimuli. She could be in the middle of his lecture, buried in the back row corner of the amphitheater, listening to the sound of his voice, and his eyes would suddenly snatch her focus. Her poise would fly out the window like a bird from its cage. For several seconds the two would remain unmoving as though they were the only ones in the room. Some days the entire room would be staring at them both, knowingly. They’d gossip about what happened behind their closed doors.

She heard his voice everywhere because it was always in her mind—whispering orders and dispensing truth about her inner nature. She believed everything thing he said. Sometimes she tested his theories about her reckless nature and her need for exacting discipline. But over time, she quit bothering. He was never wrong.

The play was much too real—the man of authority and the woman on stage crying after sex… seeing their argument, the emotion sweeping through me was the same as I experienced just after my ass had been spanked. I was quaking so nervously by the time the lights went out on this last play that I could hardly move. By the time I managed to stand, there were a dozen other people boxing me into my corner. It had been my plan to duck out immediately after the last play ended; but before I could reach the door, KC was on me again.

“We’re having a theatre party, nothing special, want to come? Maybe we could find some time to talk.”

“Oh! No,” I quickly answered. “I have to get home, mountains of work stacking up and I’m really trying to get back on track.”

He nodded. “Maybe you’re cured of your malaise,” he wondered aloud.

“Maybe,” I ventured, though I knew that wasn’t true. I’m sure KC did, too. I did have that mountain of work lying on my drafting table, though I was totally uninspired with the thought of spending the next four hours trying to find some vision to see it through. Even so, it made a great excuse to flee.

“Then I’ll see you soon,” KC said. He was saying goodbye, having taken my hand in his and giving it a squeeze.

Soon, yes, I wanted to see him, too. Just not now. Not now.

Slipping out the door, I tucked my head down in my coat to face the cold wind blowing on this miserable night. Heading toward my car, I suddenly realized that someone was at my side brushing against my elbow. I jerked, and looking up exclaimed, “Lavinia!” I hadn’t seen her in months.

“Weird plays, don’t you think?”

“Different, yes.” My warm breath made a fog of steam around my face, while the cold air darted down my coat. I clutched the collar in my fist and held tight, watching Lavinia turn away from the biting wind.

“How about some brandy, pub up the street?” she suggested.

“Sure, anything to get out of this cold.”

Lavinia grabbed my free hand, and changing directions, facing into the wind we walked three blocks to a quaint and very busy roadhouse pub.

For the next two hours, I listened to Lavinia Somerset ramble about her last trip to Europe, her blue eyes lighting rapturously as she talked about the men she’d met. She was a bold, brash floozy with platinum hair, way too much cash in her pockets, and a willingness to open her thighs for just about any man. Traveling Europe seducing men was her favorite occupation. While she was a friend of my family, she’d long ago decided that I was much more interesting than either of my parents. Sometimes she’d run into them on her travels and tell me more about them than they offered me in their cryptic calls.

After running out of things to say, Lavinia began to rove the crowd with her eyes, looking for a man. When the late night music turned luridly sensuous, she began to dance, pulling me to the floor with her. Three brandies down, I was a little woozy for anything too vigorous, but you never said no to Lavinia. And she had her way with me this night. Well after midnight, I felt as though I were floating, moving in a sea of bodies nearly delirious. When the dance was slow, I’d find myself draped inside the arms of some handsome stranger while my groin moved erotically against his pants. I had the feeling I’d end up in bed with one of these lovely brutes. Would serve KC right, I thought disparagingly, letting me dangle alone in the middle of my sexual morass! My head filled with weird thoughts. And my feet just kept dancing on.

As the bar was about to close, I looked for Lavinia. I hadn’t seen her in some time. My car? I wasn’t sure where I’d parked in relation to this pub. But I had to get home. I was on my way out the door when a firm hand pulled me back inside.

“Know where you’re going?” It was KC’s voice.

“Home,” I said turning around. I was a little too befuddled by the hour to be surprised that he was there.

“You’re not driving,” he informed me.

“But I have to get home.” I tried to move beyond him.

“Then I’ll take you,” he insisted, as he grabbed my arm and led me into the cold night air.

“On the bike?” I laughed thinking the picture absurd.

“No, in your car.” We were halfway down the street, with me stumbling along at his side looking silly and undoubtedly drunk. The wind had kindly eased, the bite less vicious, though I wasn’t sure I could say the same for KC Gable.

Though the cold had almost cleared my head of its fog, I was forcefully guided up the steps to my loft and pushed beyond the door by KC’s firm hands as though I would have never made it on my own.

“Taking a break from your work?” he asked as I watched him glance at the unopened portfolio on my drafting table. “Or did you never make it home?”

“I ran into a friend,” I explained.

“Yeah, Lavinia Somerset is just the sort of friend you need when you’re trying to straighten out your life.”

“You know her?”

“Once, intimately.”

That announcement was a shock. “She got to you, too?”

“I got to her,” he turned the statement around which left me flustered

“Why did you lie, Gail?” he suddenly changed the conversation on a dime.

“Lie?” I shuddered seeing the way his brown eyes snapped at me.

“About tonight. About mountains of work and getting back on track. You’re no more “on track” than when you left me two weeks ago. And you show up in my theatre and then brush me off. What in hell is this about?”

“I don’t know,” I sputtered angrily. He was pushing hard, so I pushed back.

“Yes, you do,” he snapped.

“NO! I don’t!” I shouted.

I thought we’d fight, really fight. That it would feel good and clear the air, and I might be able to make sense of things by the time we were finished. But KC had something else in mind, and he was much more focused than I. He’d have his way, and I’d go along, finding myself, rudely pulled over his lap, once he sat on the edge of my sofa. My skirt was up, my panties were down and I was being spanked. Unlike the times before, I fought him. I kicked my legs and tried to wrench from his grip. In that battle, I learned how strong he was and what kind of physical power he could wield over me. I fought, but I didn’t want to fight. I cried, but I didn’t want to cry. I cursed and screamed and called him miserable names and he just kept going.

“Let go of me, bastard!” I was in a full-blown rebellion but he spanked me through every sassy retort and four-letter word. His steady gait maintained for what seemed like an hour, though it was probably just ten minutes. Then, having decided that he’d made his point, he brusquely stopped, stood me on my feet and rose himself.

Though my bare ass was throbbing from the skirmish, I resisted the urge to nurse it with my hand. It must have been beet red. My only consolation was that KC’s hand must be smarting, too.

Peering into my face, just inches from his, KC wagged his finger…“I want you at the theatre tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, not a minute later. Think you can make it?

“Yes, yes, I will,” I managed limply.

“We’re going to talk it out, you’re going to give me answers, and there will be no argument this time. And, if you think I’m leaving you hanging, walking away without the sex your pussy cries for, well, you’ve been doing the same thing to me, bitch—leaving me hanging. It’s time we faced this head on. Understand?”

“Yes, yes, I do,” I whispered while I tried to back away.

“I’ll see you then, now get some sleep.”

He turned on his heel and walked out the door, scowling, his anger still billowing like a cloud of dust. So much for serenity and calm and keen intuition. Trouble was, I wasn’t sure if this side of KC Gable didn’t excite me as much as his more reasonable one. My ass was still hurting when he left, and my sexual arousal was about to explode. Yes, twice now he’d left me hanging with all this internal energy with nowhere to go. And he was glad about it, too!

***

I hardly slept that night, having already ruined a good night’s sleep with my evening’s antics. Even so, I had no problem rising early so I could make my appointment with KC.

I wasn’t sure what this meeting would accomplish, but I knew something had to get us out of neutral. I’d tell him something, make it up if I had to, anything to keep him around. I’d let him have me the way Rossi had, if that’s what would get us to bed. I’d been teased, taunted and turned on, but not fulfilled. He wanted something more of me than I thought I could give him, but that didn’t matter now. If I had to go down the old roads, I’d do that, too.

Everything that KC did just pushed me more firmly in his direction.

For the first time in years I really hungered for a man—hungered of the power and the forcefulness, the demands and the bliss of sexual thirst. I would have rejected any man in a business suit—a colleague, friend, and especially a professor. KC was an acceptable package. With him, my mind roved free taking lust outside the lines where my favorite fantasies began and ended. KC wasn’t Rossi. He wasn’t even close. And that’s exactly what I needed.

Regardless of my determined resolve to see him, my poor bones were once again rattling with fear by the time I pulled in front of the theatre. Dread kept me in my car for several minutes as the startling reality of my last three weeks suddenly smacked me in the face as though I’d run into the warehouse wall. I wasn’t drunk anymore, or in some mindless, sober stupor, acting out of obsession—at least not now. I was conscious, realizing how crazy I must look trying to play in KC Gable’s unfamiliar world.

What the hell was I doing? This wasn’t me. Not Gail Henry? I didn’t play with fire—not anymore—I never stepped over the lines of decency—except maybe in the comfort of my own tiny loft where I could nurse my misery by myself. I didn’t spend my time in squalid neighborhoods, consorting with the fringes of society. I didn’t talk to strangers about the weather, let alone have them spank my ass and fuck my wasted cunt.

Most importantly, I didn’t allow myself to be ruled by my cunt the way men are ruled by their erections. My rules were fixed and certain. At least that’s what I thought.

I didn’t recognize myself, not the woman I’d been since meeting KC. But that didn’t seem to matter now. I went ahead—opened the door of the Mercedes and casually waltzed to the door of the theatre trying to forget the weird debacle of the previous night.

My excitement swelled and my cunt began to panic, clenching and tightening anticipating KC inside it again—even though I had no assurance that would happen—and probably more assurance that it would not given his frame of mind and past experience.

Anxious and excited, I tried the door, surprised to find it locked. I panicked. Flustered, I was unsure what to do. A back door perhaps? He just failed to unlock the front? Seized by fear, I tried to figure out what to do, when in the middle of my fearful musings, I finally spotted a note slipped in the crack of the door. At first glance, I assumed it was just a scrap of paper, on second glance, as it conveniently flapped in the breeze, I realized that it bore my name clearly printed on the outside. With a gentle tug, I had it free.

“I’m sorry, Gail. This was an avoidable emergency. I tried calling, but you’d already left. Come tomorrow.” KC

What?!

Was this real? After all the passion of the night before, he was leaving me with this… this scrap of paper! The bottom dropped out of my newly manufactured world ten seconds later as I determined that KC, his theatre, and running back to my old fantasies had been a horrible mistake. I left. I knew right then I wouldn’t be coming back.