Page 12 of Hard Discipline

My thumb hovers over the message, ready to delete it without even opening it, yet I find myself hitting open instead. It’s a photo. She’s on her knees, entirely naked. Her white-blonde hair cascades down around her shoulders, and far from being sleek like I’d imagined from her ponytail, it’s curly. She’s staring into the camera, her gray eyes steady. Her skin is pale, the nipples of her small breasts a delicate pink, and she has her hands on her knees, palms up, like an obedient sub should.

Above the photo are the words:I’m ready, Sir.

And all the blood in my body rushes down to my groin, my cock getting hard. The Dominant in me stirs restlessly, remembering that night and the intensity of her reaction to me. Her tears and her arousal, our battle of wills. The surprise and satisfaction I felt when she jerked her panties down and touched herself, even though she didn’t want to. The silvery glitter of fury in her eyes as I told her to leave…

Yes, she’s ready. She was ready back in that hotel room, and you knew it the moment she put her fingers on her pussy.

I grit my teeth, trying to force the desire down, deny those thoughts. She was crying and didn’t want to do what I told her to, so of course she wasn’t ready.

You’ve pushed other subs to that place before. It’s not about her readiness. It’s about yours.

I scrub a hand across my face, wanting to reject that idea yet not being able to. A weeping, emotional sub isn’t unusual for me, but being affected by one certainly is. That hasn’t happened to me before, and I can’t think why it did with Odette.

Was it only the lure of the forbidden? Her being Lucas’s girlfriend? Or was it something else?

Perhaps you should find out?

It’s impossible, of course. That would mean going back on what I told her, that she should find another Dominant. It also means allowing myself to be manipulated by that pretty photo.

She needs another lesson.

Fuck’s sake. She really does, but I don’t teach new subs and I don’t train them, no matter how badly they want to be taught or trained.

Christ, did she dump Lucas so she could message me? It that why she’sready?Not that it matters. Shewashis girlfriend and she’s so much younger than I am, and then there’s the attack that Lucas mentioned…

So many reasons why I should delete her message.

Yet I don’t. I stand by the windows, looking down at the photo, my cock hard while my Dominant side, impatient with my scruples, wants to set up the playdate already.

Are they scruples? Or are they lies?

I don’t want to think about it, because deep down I know the truth. Theyarelies. If I’d truly not wanted her, I’d have deleted her message and set up a playdate with one of the other subs. I wouldn’t be staring down at this photo of a lovely naked woman, thinking how good her tits would look with a pair of jeweled nipple clamps.

It’s wrong, especially considering the attack that Luc told me about. The very last thing she should want after that is a man being hard with her. Then again…I was hard with her three nights ago and even though she flinched, she didn’t back out. There was steel in her. And it’s not unprecedented for some subs to work through violence issues with a Dom. If that’s what she’s doing, she really needs to be with someone who knows how to assist with that…

Christ, perhaps it’s a lie I’m telling myself to make it okay, but I can’t let it go. There are good Dominants in The Club. They wouldn’t be there if they weren’t good— yet I still don’t like the idea of her going to someone else, someone who might not know what happened to her.

The nagging tightness in my groin is undeniable and I reach down to adjust myself. Fuck’s sake. It’s ridiculous to be hard for a woman who has no idea what she wants or what she’s getting into, and yet I am. So maybe that’s why I make my decision.

One night. One night only. That’s all she needs and that’s certainly all I need.

I hit reply and send her a message.

7

Odette

I’m shaking as the message appears in my inbox on The Club app and I have to sit down on my ratty old couch. I can’t believe he replied, and so quickly, because I was certain he wouldn’t. Especially after what he told me about topping from the bottom. That’s kind of what I was doing sending him that photo of me, so he’d be well within his rights to ignore me or issue a slap down. But he didn’t and it’s not a slap down. The message is a time, date, and an address, and thenMore instructions to follow .

I sit there, staring down at my phone, almost hyperventilating.

The night he sent me away, I went home nearly weeping with fury as thwarted desire coursed through me. I was severely tempted to finish myself off just to spite him, but in the end I didn’t. It felt like giving in or giving him power that I didn’t want him to have. Instead, I angrily cleaned my cramped apartment, then took a cold shower and went to bed.

Of course, I dreamed about him, which I was furious about. I didn’t want to dream of him. I didn’t want to think of him at all, and yet that’s all I found myself doing. He even invaded my thoughts at work and I nearly spilled hot coffee on someone.

I tried to push him aside. I shoved him and his fierce blue stare to the back of my mind and tried to go about my life as a semi-normal person. But he just wouldn’t leave. That night and he had gotten into my head and I couldn’t get him out again.

After the attack my life had gotten so small. I quit college, found the world’s tiniest apartment and I stayed in it. I didn’t go out. I had to get a job at a place near where I lived because I didn’t want to have to take the subway. Too many people, too many strangers. I read books and watched TV and ate takeout and didn’t go anywhere or do anything. I’d accepted that’s what my life was now, and it was kind of…gray. Like I’ve been sleeping, the world shrouded in cotton balls, muffling sounds and muting feelings.

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