“My training,” she repeatedly softly, her eyes taking on a glitter Daniel would come to recognize as submissive desire.
“Yes. We’ll start now. Put away your things and strip. I’ll want to inspect you.”
“I’m sorry. What?”
“You heard me. I’ll give you a few minutes to put away your things and then I want you naked and waiting for me. It’s not as if I haven’t already seen your body,” he said with a lift of his brows. “That’s lesson number one, by the way. The first one I learned—there’s no room for modesty. If you want to learn to submit as you claim, the first rule is to let go of your own inhibitions. If your Master says strip, he means it. He doesn’t mean act all coy and cover yourself and blush and make excuses. He means strip. Got it?”
Without waiting for her to answer, Daniel turned and left the room, hoping she hadn’t seen the grin that snaked its way over his face. This was going to be fun.
~*~
Alex looked at herself in the full-length mirror that hung on the outside of the wardrobe. “You got yourself into this,” she whispered. She wasn’t especially shy about her body as Daniel seemed to think she was. She even considered herself something of an exhibitionist, in the right circumstances. She knew men admired her body and she’d used that to her advantage most of her life.
The jury was still out on Daniel however. She knew Liam found her attractive. She had seen the lust in his face after he’d nearly made her come. While they’d claimed Daniel was bisexual as well, she remained unconvinced. Not that it mattered, she told herself. She wasn’t here to have an affair with Daniel—she was here to be properly trained as a submissive.
The concept of being trained by another sub was an interesting one, and one she had to admit she found rather intriguing. It made sense after all. Who would know better than a sub what was expected?
She heard a noise in the hallway and quickly pulled open her suitcase, grabbing the contents and shoving them in the bureau drawers, all of which were empty. There would be time to arrange things properly later, she figured.
She unbuttoned and removed her sleeveless blouse, unzipped and stepped out of her short skirt and removed her bra and underwear as quickly as she could. Rummaging through her duffel bag, she found her perfume and gave a few strategic squirts on her neck, her thigh and her belly. Again glancing in the mirror, she fluffed her hair with her fingers, giving a rueful grin as it flopped back into her eyes.
Daniel still didn’t appear. Alex pushed her empty suitcase under the high bed. She took her makeup bag into the bathroom for a touchup. The room was small, its tub narrow, the toilet squeezed in beside the sink. She barely took in the details as she hurried back into the bedroom to wait for Daniel.
An old-fashioned pendulum clock hung on the wall near the door. She glanced at it. Surely five minutes had passed. Where was Daniel? She tried to think back. Had he said to wait standing or sitting? Would it matter? She shifted nervously from foot to foot and finally sat down on the bed. The mattress was firm beneath the soft, thick comforter. She lay back to test the pillows.
“So this is how you present yourself? Lying down like some princess? Get up. Stand at attention.” Daniel had appeared suddenly. Alex leapt up, startled and discomfited by his stealthy arrival.
“I’m sorry,” she said hurriedly. “I wasn’t sure how to wait. You took so long to return—”
“Lesson two,” he interrupted. “And this is probably the hardest lesson, at least it was for me. Patience. A good sub is patient. She waits until her Master is ready for her. Even if that takes minutes, hours or days. She doesn’t presume or push. She doesn’t ask when. She waits. What I should have found when I came back was you standing in the middle of the room, your hands behind your head, your legs spread, your eyes on the wall in front of you.”
“How was I supposed to know that?” Alex snapped, annoyed and embarrassed at already messing up in her first five minutes.
“Because I said I wanted to inspect you. That’s how you wait for an inspection. Liam will inspect you every morning before he goes to work. He likes his slaves meticulously groomed. But there’s more to it than that. It gets you in the proper submissive headspace to begin your day. As does his mark.” Absently he rubbed his ass through his shorts. Alex stared.
“His mark?” she whispered.
“Yes. If you’re lucky, that is. Liam marks me every morning, just to remind me who I belong to while he’s away. I prefer the single tail. It hurts like hell, but it’s fast and it leaves a beautiful welt. It never fails to give me an erection that lasts for at least a half-hour after he’s gone.”