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“Your dreams are not reality,” Joshua said flatly. “The notions promoted in fiction novels are created to titillate readers, Gabriele. Those stories can’t accurately detail the sacrifice, the time, and the perseverance that it takes a man or woman to learn true sexual surrender. You’re worshipping a false god.”
Gabriele frowned. “Excuse me?”
“You’re like a child who still believes in the Santa Claus story of Christmas, swept up in the romance of fiction. The adult reality is far less glorified… but far more intense.”
“I want to learn,” Gabriele’s voice took on an edge of defiance that hinted at her deeper desperation.
Joshua’s own expression turned blank. “I don’t think you know what you’re getting yourself in for,” he said. His voice had changed completely. It was flat and bleak. “You probably believe that you can be fully trained as a submissive in ten sessions, but as I clearly state in my advertisement, what I am offering is merely an introduction to the lifestyle, Gabby. It’s not the kind of training that comes with a diploma at the end. It’s a chance for women to step beyond the threshold of fictional fantasy and to glimpse what life might be like if they decide to immerse themselves in submission. I get the sense that you’re looking for some quick fix to a different problem.”
Joshua’s words seemed to pound at her, relentlessly battering her will and resolve. She admitted to herself that he was right; she had mistakenly thought the training would be a quick fix to winning Randall back – but she couldn’t admit that, ever.
“I really want to do this. I need you to train me,” she said instead, hearing her voice quaver with emotion and hating herself for it.
“Then tell me why.”
“I… I have my reasons,” Gabriele was trembling. “But they’re personal.”
Behind the big antique desk, Joshua was shaking his head. “That’s not how I do business, I’m afraid. You expect me to train you without telling me your true motivation. I won’t do it,” he thrust an accusing finger at her. “And this is why.”
He got up out of the deep leather chair and stood with his bunched fists on the desk, leaning over the polished tabletop to make his point. His face was hard, his eyes turned dark. “This course is intense, even though it serves only as an introduction. We’re going to spend a lot of time together, and during those sessions you will be naked, or dressed in lingerie, offering me your mind and body and soul unconditionally. You will cry, Gabby, and you will experience mild pain. You will be frustrated, and you will weep with despair. You will be made to discover the edge of your own limits and then encouraged to go further. And the only way you will emerge at the other end of the course is if you are totally honest with me, and brutally honest with yourself. Anything less than that can only lead to failure.”
She lowered her eyes like a chastised schoolgirl before the withering ridicule of a headmaster. She felt tears well in her eyes and then splash down her cheeks. Her face and throat were flushed with heat.
“I’m very sorry,” Joshua’s voice lost its sting and softened sympathetically. “But if you can’t be completely honest, you can’t be well trained. I think it’s best if you leave.”
He came around the desk and stood resolutely in the doorway. Gabriele got to her feet and followed him like a woman on the way to the gallows.
Joshua’s thoughts were in their own hectic turmoil. He was attracted to the woman, beyond the physical appeal of her looks. She intrigued him, and stirred disquieting emotions he hadn’t felt for years…
Come on, Gabby! He urged her, his mind silently screaming as they drew closer to the front door of the house. Show me that you want it. Fight for it!
He reached the door at last and held it open with a sad sigh. Gabriele faltered, her quivering lip between her teeth, her breath coming in ragged shudders… and then stepped, forlorn, out into the night.
Joshua closed the door.
He was well down the long corridor when he heard the defiant knock echo through the walls. He balked, frowned, then turned on his heel and went back. When he pulled the front door open, Gabriele was still standing on his porch beneath the haloed glow of the light.
She looked like a sad waif, with tear-streaked makeup and a face as white as paper.
“The truth is that when I called you two nights ago, it was because my boyfriend and I were having troubles in our relationship... with our sex life,” Gabriele bared her soul in a voice that was empty of all emotion. “He wanted me to be more submissive. I called you because I thought that if I got training I could hold things together and learn to please him. But he left me this morning. He walked out.”
“So…?”
Gabriele lifted her face to his at last, her chin thrust in the little jut of defiance and determination he had already learned to recognize.
“So now I want to win him back.”
“Before we get started, I want to make some things very clear to you,” Joshua said. They were back in the office at the end of the corridor, and Gabriele was sitting quiet and attentive, the tears now dried on her face. She sat small and hunched, as though to make herself insignificant, lest Joshua change his mind.
“Your training can only succeed if you are completely honest with me. I will accept nothing less. I need to know your every feeling, your every desire, and your every emotion, Gabby. Every time you address me or answer me it will be preceded or followed by, ‘Sir’, as a measure of your position. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Sir,” Gabriele nodded meekly.
“If I think you are lying at any time, or if I believe you are holding anything of yourself back, I will terminate your training immediately,” Joshua warned. He paused for a moment with his eyes far away and gazing as though lost in a moment of memory or abstract thought. Gabriele waited in silence. At last, Joshua’s eyes came back to hers, and he went on as if he had never paused. “A Master-submissive relationship is built on trust, but it works both ways. Emphasis is always placed on the Master gaining the submissive’s trust in order for her to fully relax and accept her training. But there is another side to that coin. The Master must be able to trust his submissive. I have to be confident that you are answering everything I ask you truthfully.”
She nodded.
Joshua waved his hand in a dismissive conceptual gesture. “Everything I tell you relates to male and female submissives. These rules are not gender related, they’re role related. If I talk in specifics, I trust you can translate them to the general roles. Don’t get all sexist and offended with me.”
Gabriele smiled for the first time, a faltering cautious little thing that touched at the corner of her lips for just a moment.
“I won’t, Sir. I understand that you’re talking in terms of our relationship, but that the roles aren’t specific to a female submissive and a man as the Master.”
Joshua grunted broodily. “These days everything can be misconstrued by those who wish to do so.” It was enough for him to lapse back into unsettling silence and ultimately he had to push himself out of the big leather chair to break the spell of melancholy and force his thoughts back on track. He began to prowl around the room, suddenly restless with energy.
“I also expect you to be open to all aspects of your training and willing to attempt them without hesitation. Naturally we will talk in detail about your specific interests and any hard limits you set will be honored scrupulously. But part of your training is about stretching yourself and developing a deeper personal understanding of who you really are. You must have an open mind to all I say.”
She nodded. He looked hard at her. A silent nod wasn’t enough.
“I will, Sir. I promise.”
Joshua grunted.
“Obedience and discipline,” Joshua intoned gravely. “They’re the bedrock of the lifestyle for a submissive.” He went to one of the long bookcases and stared, frowning, at the titles on the shelves. His hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jeans; his shoulders hunched as if in deep c
oncentration of his will.
Gabriele watched him with covert fascination. Joshua radiated a kind of raw force that aroused her like a powerful aphrodisiac. It was the sum of him; the physique and handsome looks, but also the presence he projected; the simmering sexual energy that lay restrained just below the surface. It pulled her towards him like the irresistible attraction of a magnetic field.
“May I ask a question, Sir?” she spoke timidly into the bristling silence of his thoughts.
Joshua turned, eyebrows arched with curiosity.
“When you punish me,” she heard her voice faltering in her own ears, “will you use a whip to beat me, or do you slap my face…?”
Joshua frowned, and for a moment his expression turned to horror before he smoothed his features back to neutrality.
“Why do you ask?” He asked carefully. Behind his eyes he studied Gabriele with serious concern.
She shrugged her shoulders, not quite sure how to go on. She was wringing her hands uncomfortably in her lap. She tried to hide the next words behind a kind of dismissive smile. “I… Randall can be rough with me sometimes. Not just the physical punishment if I don’t do what he wants, but also… also in the things he says. I… I didn’t know if you would be the same, or whether different Masters have different ways of punishing their submissives when they’ve been disappointed.”
Joshua crossed the room and perched himself on the edge of the desk with his arms folded. His eyes were darkly troubled.
“In your fantasies – the sexual ones you play out in your mind when you are alone,” he began, seeming to go off at a tangent, “does the Master in your imaginings ever use physical pain to punish you?”
“No,” Gabriele shook her head emphatically.
“Does he ever abuse you with cruel words for failing to please him?”
“No, Sir.”
“Why?”
