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Why couldn't he reassure her, say something that acknowledged she was just playing at this role? Why did he have to treat her like she actually was a sub?
Because that was the point of the training. She knew that. It didn't work if it didn't feel real and Tyler had integrity. He wouldn't let her just skim through the basics. She'd talked to Lisbeth about her session. The woman had seemed so calm about it, like she'd been able to maintain some sense of. . . not detachment, but had actually enjoyed the experience of understanding what her subs felt. All Marguerite felt was a frightening sense of going down a dark tunnel where she wasn't sure what would grab her. What might reach for her in the dark, a hand covering her mouth. . .
"Hey. " Tyler's voice, like the warming heat of a summer sun, reached through the cold and found her. His hands were on her face again, his eyes close. Those beautiful brown and gold eyes. The tiger. Taigaa, in Japanese, though the word that came to mind was mouko. Fierce tiger. Afraid of nothing. Willing to do anything to keep her feeling safe forever.
"You can do this, Marguerite. Slow, easy steps. Let me hear that beautiful voice of yours. "
"I'm okay. I'm fine. "
She was trembling under his touch. Tyler took a firmer grip on her cold hands, drew her over the threshold, stopped. Rubbed his hands along her upper arms. "See?
Small steps. Just take it one thing at a time and you'll be fine. Angel, I'm not going to hurt you. You know that, right? Can you nod for me? Breathe a little?" Tender humor mixed with the concern in his face could undo her. And give her reassurance. She was rather amazed at the combination. When she managed a nod, he put an arm around her waist, guiding her forward.
To her left was a sunken living room with a widescreen television, a white sectional sofa and a black glass center table. An alabaster statue of Isis rested on the table next to a small water bowl with floating fresh gardenias. Over the fireplace was an oill painting, a tall ship of the line plowing through a stormy sea. As he took her through the house, she noted that every room on the first level seemed to have windows and more windows affording the inhabitants panoramic views of the Gulf. There was absolute privacy here. The last neighbor she'd passed had been a few miles away, so it was easy to imagine him walking into his kitchen in his underwear to get his morning coffee, his eyes sleepy, a shadow on his jawline. All those wonderful muscles on display that she had felt under his clothes when she was pressed up against him.
She hadn't expected to feel desire rush in so suddenly on top of fear but inside hi
s house, his touch and the sense of sanctuary that the comfort of his home suggested allowed it to happen. She'd have preferred the fear of her training to this - fearing the emotions he evoked, how he made her think these intimate things about him. The sky was now a violet blaze, night settling in. He had the gas logs going at a low setting in a cozy sitting room. He paused in there a moment, stopping her in front of its warmth.
"Sarah will have us a small meal in about an hour. You probably haven't eaten yet. "
She shook her head. "I'm not really hungry. "
"You'll eat, because I'm going to be requiring a lot of you. " His voice was the erotic touch of warm oill on bare skin. "And it's my job to care for you. As much as it is for you to follow my direction for your benefit. "
Get a grip, Marguerite. They're just words. Words have no power to change who you are.
It was just the way the game was played. That's all it meant, though the focused way he watched her very movement, heard every word she spoke, made her stomach do a funny dip. Was this the way it was for subs? Every reaction of approval or disapproval from the Master ratcheting up the tension as well as the arousal another notch? And was it this easy to slip into the way a sub might feel? He hadn't even demanded she address him formally as Master but she'd felt the new relationship settle onto her shoulders like a staggering weight the moment she'd crossed the threshold.
She'd always been a Mistress. It never occurred to her that the states of mind could be so easily tried on.
The foyer was a hallway that extended the length of the house. When he took her up a staircase to the second floor and turned her onto a catwalk that connected the two sides of the second level, she could look at the view of the Gulf out of the two-story-high window that framed the rear entry and rose high above it in an arc, a wall of glass.
The water moved calmly under the rose sky which was beginning to be jeweled with early faint stars that would grow more ornate as the night deepened.
"This is an amazing home," she said out of politeness, sincerity and an awkward inability to come up with anything to say. He glanced down at her, reminding her again of their height difference before he tugged her to sit down with him on the catwalk. The slats of the railings were wide enough that he could slide his legs through them. When he directed her to do the same, they sat like two children, their feet dangling over the open space below. He put her hand on his thigh, his own hand curled over it.
"Here's one of my rules, Marguerite. You speak only when I ask you a question or if you want to say something, in which case you ask my permission to speak first. " His thumb moved over her knuckles one at a time, tracing the bumps of bone, the veins running across them. "Do you understand why I would have that rule?"
"Because you're an egotistical male who doesn't want any competition with the sound of his own voice?"
He tightened his grip. "Marguerite, focus. Quit building up your defenses and think. "
The admonition stung, mainly because he'd seen so easily through her tartness, more easily than she had. Closing her mouth, she tried to think beyond his touch. He'd turned her hand over now and was running his fingers over her palm, down toward her wrist. She wanted to pull away, to make him stop doing things that were creating taut arousal in her lower abdomen. She could handle this. She could. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to her sternum just below the pocket of her collarbone, inside the vee of the blouse. Her breath expelled sharply from her, her nipples instantly reacting. Her thighs wanted to press together, to contain the response between them, but of course her legs were between the slats and could not close. Her chin brushed his hair. Looking at his other hand braced on the railing just in front of her, she could imagine how easy it would be for him to let go of the railing and cup her between the legs of the slacks.
"I'm waiting for an answer to my question, Marguerite," he said against her skin.
"Because. . . " She swallowed, closing her eyes, wishing his tongue wasn't so warm and clever, able to make her heart pound beneath it. His chin rubbed the top of her breast, an innocent touch. "What. . . why are you doing that?"
"Because a Master is able to enjoy the gifts of his slave at any time he chooses.
Answer the question. Or am I making it too difficult for you to think?" The teasing, the arrogant implication, stiffened her resolve as she was sure he'd intended. However, she was learning that being able to identify the strategy did not make her any more immune to it.
A Mistress of incomparable experience and yet his lightest touch was making her react like an innocent, unused to sensual pleasures. Tyler wondered what she would think if she knew how powerfully that unexpected discovery affected him.
Her voice came out strained, her brow furrowed like a student puzzling out a difficult math problem. He smiled against her skin.
"A slave who doesn't have to make. . . conversation will focus on. . . things. "
