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  I set down the phone and sighed, made my face into an expression of admonishment. “Leticia, there is no point sugar-coating our intentions with this woman. We want her to join us, and to surrender to me for sexual submissive training while you watch each encounter. Right?”

  Leticia nodded like she no longer trusted her voice.

  I shrugged. “Then why try to mislead her, or bother to soften the reality of what we are asking? Do you want the woman to fly here all the way from Chicago without being crystal clear on what it is we expect from her?”

  Leticia wrung her hands. I could see the tortured confusion in her eyes. She took a deep despairing breath and re-read the numbers, her voice now echoing the doom of her despondency.

  I waited for the line to connect. Leticia was watching my face, trying to read my expression. At last I heard the soft sound of a woman’s voice on the line and I nodded to Leticia.

  “Hello, Cameron? This is Jason Luke calling you.”

  There was a long moment of stunned silence from the woman at the other end of the phone call. The torture of the call suddenly proved too much for Leticia. She scurried from the room as though the phone was a bomb about to explode.

  “Are you serious?” the woman asked, and by the tone of her voice I was sure she suspected a prank.

  “Yes,” I answered. “I am serious. I’m Jason Luke, the author. I wanted to phone you and thank you personally for your recent email of support.”

  More stunned silence. I heard muffled noises that sounded like gasps of panic before her voice became warm and friendly.

  “Hi,” she said brightly.

  “Do you prefer me to call you Cameron, or Cam?”

  “Cam,” the woman said and then the calm demeanor cracked wide open. “My God. It’s really you, isn’t it! I’m such a big fan of your writing. Your book is the best thing I ever read about relationships.”

  I smiled into the phone. “Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for taking the time to message me. I understand you have spoken to Leticia recently.”

  “Yes,” Cam’s voice brightened. “She’s adorable!”

  I held the smile. “I think so too,” I agreed. “In fact, Leticia is one of the reasons I decided to phone you.”

  The woman seemed suddenly curious. The tone of her voice rose to become a kind of question. “Oh?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Leticia has been filling me in on the conversation you two girls had. I understand that as well as being a fan, you’re genuinely interested in submission as a lifestyle.”

  “Yes,” Cam said without hesitating. “It’s one of the reasons I left my boyfriend. After I read your book I realized I was searching for something different.”

  I hesitated for an instant – but only an instant. “You do realize there is a difference between the fictionalized romance of an erotica novel and the reality of the BDSM lifestyle… don’t you?”

  The woman smiled. I heard it like a bright sound in her voice. “Of course!” she said. Some of the giddiness of her excitement was melting away now and I got the impression of a down-to-earth woman who had a clear understanding of her emotions. “I know that what I read in books – even books about relationships – can only be a single perspective… and opinion. I just so happen to share the same ideas that you wrote about – the same sense of yearning to submit that you shared in your book.”

  I took a breath. Over my shoulder, somewhere beyond sight, I could hear Leticia pacing the floor. I went towards the office door and swung it open. She was standing in the corridor, hugging her hands to her shoulders, walking back and forth with stiff impatient steps. She saw me, and wrenched her face into an expression that looked very much like a plea. I closed the office door again. If Leticia heard what I was about to say she might faint.

  I waited until Cam had finished explaining a little more about her feelings that had begun to emerge after reading my book. A lot of what she was saying sounded familiar. I had heard and read similar comments over the months since we had published, but those messages had all been second-hand. This was different – so intimate that it sounded like a heart’s desire confessed.

  “Cam, do you want to learn more about submission? Are you interested in being trained by a Master for a week to get a sense of how deep these feelings you have actually are?”

  “Yes,” she said adamantly, and then quickly qualified. “Provided I knew the man who was going to train me, and provided I knew he was suitable and experienced.”

  I let her comment hang in the air for a moment and waited in the silence until instinct told me the timing was right.

  “How about someone like me?” I asked at last.

  “What? Are you serious?”

  “Very,” I said calmly. “I am interested in training you as a submissive. I’d like you to come and live with Leticia and me for a week. That would give you enough experience to be able to decide if the lifestyle is something you would like to pursue further.”

  Cam went very quiet for long seconds – so long that I wondered if she had dropped the phone, or hung up. When she spoke at last her voice was quiet, almost fearful. “This isn’t a joke of some sort, is it?”

  “I don’t joke,” I said. “I don’t have a sense of humor. What I am offering is a genuine opportunity.”

  “What’s the catch?”

  “There isn’t one,” I said honestly. “But there is a condition.”

  “Uhuh…” Cam’s voice went dead, edged with wariness. “You mean I have to pay for this experience?”

  I almost laughed. I admired her cynicism. “No,” I said, still smiling to myself. “There is no cost, no charge. In fact we will pay for your accommodation at a nearby hotel, or you can stay with us. We will also cover all expenses, and the cost of airfares.”

  Cam sounded confused. “Then what’s the condition?”

  “I will train you and Leticia will watch each session,” I said simply.

  “You want your girlfriend to watch us?” Cam’s tone clearly suggested that she thought the idea was bizarre.

  “No,” I said patiently. “Leticia wants to watch, and I know you could understand that because you’re a woman too. We want you to have this opportunity, but naturally Leticia doesn’t want the training to cross the line between physical and emotional. You can understand that, can’t you?”

  “Yes,” Cam said, even before she realized she was agreeing because beside everything else, the request actually sounded reasonable.

  “What if I say yes?” Cam asked slowly. “What would happen then?”

  “We would fly you here for dinner,” I said. “And we would have a long conversation. If we’re compatible – and if we’re all comfortable – we can proceed as planned. If you feel reluctant or unwilling in any way, we will fly you back to Chicago. No questions asked. The decision will always be yours.”

  Silence – a long contemplative silence that I wielded like a weapon. To speak now would be to alter the course of the conversation, and blur the point of the proposition. Every good businessman knows that once you ask the question, you must shut up. The prospect needs to be the next person to speak.

  I waited.

  “When do I have to decide?” Cam asked.

  “Whenever you want,” I said lightly. “We have other ladies who have messaged, and they seem to echo the same sentiments as you. If you would rather not submit yourself to the training, we will reach out to them instead.”

  “Oh.” She lapsed back into deep thought. I glanced around the empty office and caught a shadow of movement under the crack of the door. Leticia was standing just outside the room, prowling impatiently.

  “How soon would you want me to do this?”

  “How soon can you be available? Can you take a week’s vacation?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  More silence, but this time I sensed the difference. Cameron was no longer wondering whether to proceed. She was calculating when.

  “How about this weekend?
” she asked softly. “I can finish work Friday afternoon. The company has been pushing me to take unused vacation time. I’m sure it wouldn’t be a problem,” she was talking out loud, solving her own problems as she met with each obstacle.

  “Friday would be fine,” I said smoothly. “I’ll ask Leticia to make contact with you again. You girls can sort out the details.”

  “Okay,” Cameron said and I sensed there was a trace of stunned shock in her voice. We were about to hang up when suddenly she blurted a final question.

  “Why did you choose me?” she asked, perhaps seeking reassurance, or the need to understand more.

  “I didn’t,” I said simply. “Leticia chose you.”

  * * *

  Leticia burst into the office just moments after I had hung up the phone, and though I suspected she had heard enough of the conversation, she still asked the question, her voice anxious.

  “Well? What did she say?”

  “She said yes.”

  Leticia looked startled, as though with my answer had come the realization that we were about to cross over the line from harmless fantasy and into a very different reality.

  “Really?”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Would I joke about something as important as this?”

  “No,” Leticia admitted. She gnawed on her lip. “When?”

  “When is she coming?”

  “Yes.”

  “Friday,” I said.

  Leticia blanched, and then her face contorted into an expression of terror.

  “This Friday?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Jonah, that’s too soon!” she began to panic. She looked like the walls of her world were closing in around her. “There’s no time to prepare. No time to…”

  “There is time,” I said calmly. “Because it’s all the time you have, Leticia. Cameron will be here in two days. I told her you would be in contact to finalize the arrangements.”

  Leticia whirled away, numbed and stunned. She drifted from the office in a sleepwalker’s daze and I let her go without further comment. I had some thinking of my own to do.

  * * *

  Arousal in a woman begins at a different place than it does in men. The stimulus for a man is much more immediate, and can range from the most simple, mundane observation of a pretty girl on the sidewalk to graphic images. Once the spark of arousal is ignited, it generally continues to burn until the desire is released. But for women, arousal begins in a more distant, more mysterious place, and desire tends to ebb and flow like smoke. It can drift away… or it can smolder.

  Arousal for women is more sensory – it can stem from emotion, touch, smell, sound… so many different sources that conquering a woman’s mind and heart is often at the core of being able to inspire and awaken their desire.

  However Cameron would be a quite different proposition. I imagined her in her home. Her mind would be a whirl of disbelief and surprise, but over the coming days her thoughts would surely begin to turn to Friday night. In her mind she would be playing out her own fantasies, her own erotic scenes so that – in a way – she would arrive in an already aroused state. The dilemma would be her inhibitions and her self-consciousness. Every woman – no matter how beautiful – is conscious of their body and their own perceived inadequacies. Imagined or not, these fears and doubts were going to curtail Cameron’s fantasies and hide them behind her natural nervousness.

  I needed a plan.

  * * *

  “I don’t know what you are expecting when Cameron arrives on Friday night,” I said to Leticia at dinner, “but I doubt whatever you are anticipating is going to match what I have planned.”

  Leticia looked up at me from across the dinner table. Her gaze seemed distracted.

  “What do you mean?” she asked warily.

  I set down my knife and fork and sat back in the chair.

  “Assuming we meet Cameron on Friday night, and assuming the conversation goes well and she feels comfortable,” I raised a finger to make a point. “And assuming I agree with your assessment that she has a genuinely submissive nature and a sincere interest in learning more about the lifestyle… what do you expect to happen then?”

  Leticia looked wide-eyed and innocent. “I haven’t thought about it?” she muttered.

  I gave her a withering glare and her eyes became hunted. She sighed and seemed to deflate a little. She licked her lips nervously under the intensity of my stare.

  “Okay,” she confessed. “I have thought about it. Damn it, Jonah, it’s about the only thing I can think about.” Leticia wasn’t enjoying this moment. She fidgeted in her chair and wrung her hands together. “I imagined we would go down to the bungalow and…”

  “And what – exactly?”

  “And you would begin to train her while I watched.”

  I leaned forward, my expression fixed. “No,” I said. “That’s exactly what is not going to happen.”

  Leticia blinked. The hot flush of awkward color that had risen on her cheeks slowly drained away. “Then what did you have in mind?”

  I explained my thoughts to Leticia – detailed the inhibitions that Cameron would be feeling. “So, assuming we get along and I am convinced she is suitable for training, I plan on spending the first night making love to her – having sex,” I said calmly. “You can certainly watch, but the lighting should be a little low, and there will be no BDSM training on the first night. It needs to be an evening of discovery and sex where she can begin to relax, deal with her nervousness and let down her guard. Without those elements, her training can never succeed because she will remain inhibited.”

  Leticia’s expression changed very slowly. Her eyes became darker and slanted. The powder of freckles across her nose began to glow like flakes of gold. She blinked slowly and I could see she was wrestling with a sudden flare of temper, or perhaps the instinct of jealousy.

  “Jonah, I don’t know…” she began cautiously, as though she still hadn’t had time to separate her emotions from the logic. “Amidst all the things I have fantasized about since the moment Cameron agreed to join us, watching the both of you in bed together – having sex – was not something I had ever considered. I thought your sessions with this woman would be about BDSM training. Somehow I imagined the whole process being more disconnected and dispassionate.”

  I nodded. “So did I,” I said, “until I thought about it.” I got up from the dining table and automatically began to pace across the floor, my hands thrust deep into my pockets. My head was bowed in careful thought for several seconds before I spoke again.

  “Put yourself in Cameron’s shoes,” I said reasonably. “We are complete strangers, and she is a young woman with no real experience in the BDSM lifestyle. It’s only natural that she is going to arrive here full of reluctant doubts. Taking her to bed – from a purely physical point of view – is the only possible way I can make her comfortable with her body, with me, with you watching… and with the environment we plan on introducing her to.”

  Leticia said nothing.

  * * *

  “I’m nervous,” Leticia said. She glanced at the clock again and then wrung her hands. She had a hectic look in her eyes. It was just after 6pm. The taxi bringing Cameron from her hotel in Groves Crossing would arrive in less than an hour.

  “That’s normal,” I assured her. She was standing in the bathroom, leaning close to the vanity mirror. She pressed at her hair for the thousandth time and then sighed as though defeated.

  “This is not your normal kind of nervous, Jonah,” Leticia’s voice sounded harsh – a measure of her rising anxiety. “This is your shit-scared kind of nervous. It’s your mother of all kinds of nervous.”

  I tried not to smile. Leticia was working herself up into a frantic kind of panic. She pursed her lips, peered close at her reflection to inspect her lipstick, and then turned around to face me. She was wearing just a bra and panties and in the late afternoon sunlight her skin was painted golden brown. The light through the window ma
de the highlights in her hair spark with white fire.

  “It’s not nerves,” I assured her. I took her gently by the shoulders and pulled her close so that I caught the scent of her perfume. “It’s sexual tension. You’re thinking too much about what might happen.”

  “Of course I am!” Leticia’s voice snapped like a trap. “I can’t stop playing these scenarios in my imagination.” She whirled away again, as though to look at me any longer was to reveal her darkest, deepest fantasies. “I keep seeing you and Cameron on that bed together…”

  “And it arouses you… or frightens you?”

  There was a long pause. This wasn’t the kind of silence that comes from careful thought. It was the emptiness of reticence.

  “It arouses me,” Leticia whispered at last. “So much so that I can barely function, and I just don’t know what to do about it.”

  I shrugged and stepped close behind her. I wrapped my arms around her waist and clasped my hands together so that my fingertips were tucked just inside the waistband of her panties. Leticia leaned back against me as though sheltering from a storm in the lee of a rocky boulder. I leaned my mouth close to her ear.

  “I have a saying that you might find helpful at a moment like this,” I offered. “Would you like to hear it?”

  “Will it help?” Leticia’s voice became soft and melting.

  “It will help you understand what you’re going through.”

  Another ratchet of tension seemed to seep from her body. I felt the stiffness seep from her neck and shoulders. She sighed.

  “Okay,” she said. “Tell me.”

  I brushed my lips against her neck and drew a line of soft sexy kisses up the length of her throat until I reached her ear.

  “Anticipation… is everything!”

  * * *

  The doorbell rang at a minute after 7pm. Leticia shot me a fearful glance. She looked rooted to the floor, her legs unable to move. In the background I could hear the discreet sounds of the caterers who were making the final preparations for dinner. Leticia’s glance was a beseeching plea.