The Dominant Male

strangers, or not have discussed issues of consent – reality would inevitably replace fantasy, for which you had to try to leave a mental space, and hope the other person’s behaviour would allow you to, too.
    ‘Yeah,’ he replied, a look of dawning revelation on his face. ‘Boy, I’d never even thought of it that way. It’s like I get to stop a chess clock, I get to freeze-frame things almost, drink the moment in – one for the wank-bank, as the lads say.’ He’d paused as they’d chuckled, before resuming more quietly, returning with some resolve to what she’d thought of somewhat ruefully as his pet subject lately. Didn’t he have the decency to feel even somewhat like a pimp, continually pressuring her? ‘See? That’s exactly the kind of thinking that makes you right for writing a story for me.’
    Paul was an erotic writer and editor of many years’ standing. The fact had attracted her to him at first, until she realised it mostly meant he spent a lot of hours being self-absorbed, in cardigan and slippers, a box of man-size on one corner of his desk. Of course! She had laughed at herself – what had she girlishly expected? That they would gallivant around some Sadean chateau?
    Lately, he’d taken on too much. The advent of digital publishing had meant new markets for erotica, and several new start-ups had tracked him down with advantageous terms. Meanwhile, he was still busy fulfilling his regular contracts – a couple of print deals with the erotica imprints of major publishing houses – which would add kudos to the online stuff. The trouble was, he’d said, if you turned people down once, they formed the impression you didn’t need the work, and it was an uphill battle to interest them again after that, understandably enough, even for a writer known in the field. They may simply have filled their publishing schedules, for one thing, in which case their lack of interest couldn’t be helped. It was as well to get something in to them, and then they’d entertain you when you did have the time, he’d explained.
    For centuries, hundreds of thousands had probably been forced to sit somewhere they didn’t want to on a Sunday morning, but maybe never like this, thought Manda. Paul was seldom merely selfish. He must really feel that the exercise would be a revelation to her. Maybe, as he suspected, she really was gifted with superlative descriptive abilities. Bless him if he assumed she would necessarily care about that therefore. Unless the idea of compelling her to go the distance with something like this turned him on as much as getting her to do something filthy. Come to think of it, he’d been rock-hard that day he’d made her work out, her wrists bound to the rails of a walking machine as he’d controlled its speed, putting herself through her paces in ways he cheerfully admitted he couldn’t have managed himself, watching her breasts bounce and her sweat build, drinking her in before he’d bent her over the rails, her arms extended outwards along the one furthest from him, and spanked and fucked her like that until she’d seen herself as he’d seen her, the beauty defiled and deconstructed that he’d found so hard to approach when young.
    This morning to her utter consternation he seemed to have tricked her entirely, seducing her to his purposes – breakfasting her in bed then leading her, pampered and off-guard, to his reclaimed, recovered barber’s chair. A condom-clad, compact, remote-control vibrator in hand – he was nothing if not assiduous about hygiene – he had bade her sit. She had thought herself in line for a rewarding Sunday morning. A lapsed Catholic who had been schooled by the Sisters, Manda retained her taste for ritual. She still invested Sundays and Saints’ days with the weight of significance, as if she’d miss their sense of power if she really thought about it. As if some part of her mind still wondered if He would mind the fact that she no longer believed in His existence.
    At Paul’s command, she had donned her black satin waspie corset, the one that left her breasts exposed. Already tightly laced at the rear, it simply needed clipping together by its eyelets at the front as she held her breath, and as such would have horrified the purists. Still in a blissful, sensitised state from the night before, she had thrilled to imagine his turgid cock inside her as the stays constrained her belly and sides.
    He had watched her use the toilet, her