"I don't usually eat meals with my subs, but I enjoy looking after them."
"Why?" I asked as he spooned some rice pilaf into my mouth. "Why don't you eat with them?"
"The relationship is just about sex."
"Eating is too personal?"
He nodded. "But I like taking care of a sub's needs. All of them. It also reinforces my dominance, which is necessary for submission to work. A sub needs to feel totally cared for, totally safe and cherished if she's going to submit completely. That, your complete submission, is what I want."
I let him feed me, enjoying the look of pleasure on his face as he did.
"Have you figured out why you want a woman's complete submission?" I said and watched him eat. "I imagine, given your training, you'd have some theories..."
He shrugged a shoulder and cut up some fish, picked a piece and held the fork up to me. "I need control. I love having a woman completely under my control."
"What does that control give you?"
"When she's tied up completely, willingly, waiting for me to do what I want to her, I am," he said and paused, taking in a deep breath. "Completely satisfied. It also makes me incredibly hard. Hearing her moans of pleasure, seeing her response to my touch, my words? Nothing else can get me off as well. But it's that she wants it, that she chooses it, that she trusts me completely to have her under my control that gets me off."
"Lara said she taught you to top someone. You can't get off if the woman takes control?"
He chewed his food for a moment, his head tilted to one side.
"I can, and di
d when Lara topped me. I actually tried out pain, but it did nothing for me personally, either giving or receiving. Lara even got me subs who were painsluts to see if I enjoyed it, but it did nothing for me. I always felt bad for damaging such lovely flesh. A surgeon is used to cutting into the body, but it’s always to heal, fix, improve. We create wounds, yes, but the patient never feels pain while we do it and we pride ourselves on a patient who experiences the least pain possible post-op. I'm curious about sadists and masochists, but in an entirely clinical way, not sexual."
He stopped and looked at me pointedly. "You don't have to worry. There isn't a sadist hiding inside of me, waiting to get out. I had ample opportunity to see if there was, and no."
"I'm not worried."
"Good. Don’t ever be."
I sighed. If only Dawn could understand…
"What was that sigh about?"
I shook my head. "I just wish this person could understand, Drake. I can't see that they ever will. They had a very traumatic experience and that's made them unable to understand. You and I? We can want each other and be good for each other, satisfy each other's kinks, but this will always be dangerous for you. You have to really think seriously about this. We'll have to really be extremely careful if we carry on when we get back to Manhattan."
"If we carry on? You mean, when we carry on back in Manhattan. I'm not giving up on you that easily. I have yet to plumb your depths, Kate. I want to plumb them. See how deep you go."
That made me very warm, the thought he wanted to take me as far as I could go.
We finished up the meal and I felt perfectly satisfied.
"Let's go for a walk along the beach now that the sun is down," Drake said.
I put on my sandals and we went out to the beach, the last rays of the sun orange-yellow on the ocean waves. The air was markedly cooler and it felt good on my sunburnt skin.
We walked along and he told me about his band.
"Just a bunch of guys from college," he said, his arm around my shoulder. "We started to play during our Junior year and never stopped. We found our niche and even though we're older than most bands, we enjoy playing."
"I'd like to hear you some day, or is that also off-limits for your subs?"
He said nothing for a moment, watching the ocean as we stood in an embrace.
"You may not like our music."