Page 23 of Man and Master
Gabriele pursed her lips in secret disappointment. She reached for the dressing gown and turned. Joshua took a step back. Gabriele let the gown fall to the tiled bathroom floor and dropped to her knees, instinctively adopting the submissive pose Joshua had taught her with her hands clasped behind her back and her mouth wide open. Joshua’s cock, straining within the confines of his pants, was just an inch away from her lips. She couldn’t be any more blatant.
Joshua felt his body clench almost painfully with desire. Gabriele’s perfection was impossible to ignore. The steam swirled around them like a veil to hide their intimacy.
“Stand up and cover yourself,” Joshua’s voice was hoarse and thick with the effort. “I told you there would be no training tonight – no more training ever, Gabriele. You’re not my submissive.”
Gabriele looked up into Joshua’s stern face from where she was kneeling and at last the audacity that had carried her this far deserted her. She felt tears spill down her cheeks. Her eyes glistened, but she stayed kneeling.
“You have to continue training me,” she muttered.
“No,” Joshua shook his head. “I don’t. I told you, Gabriele. Your training is over.”
Gabriele cuffed at her tears. She felt her breath come in sobs. A sense of total devastation and despair began to overwhelm her. Her shoulders slumped.
“But I need your help to learn. I’m not yet trained. I’m not ready. I know I’m not. You have to finish what we started.”
“You don’t have to learn!” Joshua hissed cruelly, and then regretted his tone almost immediately. His words were cruel enough. “Your ex-boyfriend has been fucking other women for months behind your back, Gabriele. This whole time he has been lying and cheating on you. He’s not going to come back to you, so this whole exercise in learning to be submissive in order to win him back is now pointless. He’s not coming back. You don’t need to learn submission any more. This was all for him, remember? Well now it’s irrelevant.”
“No,” Gabriele shook her head vehemently. “It’s not irrelevant. Now it matters more than it ever has, because now I know Randall was lying to me and cheating on me, I have no one, Joshua. I’m alone – and it’s the thing I fear more than anything else. I’m alone! Now my best chance to find someone who will want me is to learn how to be a good submissive. If I can’t do that, I’m forever lost… and I don’t want to attract a Master and then disappoint him because I can’t sexually satisfy his every need.”
Joshua was shaking his head with rising frustration. He stared into Gabriele’s weeping eyes with incredulity.
“You don’t need to be submissive to attract a man. Hell, you don’t even need a man in your life, Gabriele. Being alone is not something to fear. For a lot of people it’s a choice.”
“Not for me,” Gabriele was adamant. “I want to be a submissive. The need for it aches in my heart. It’s the fragment I have been searching for that makes me feel complete. But it’s only any good if I can serve, Joshua. I need a Master, and you need to finish my training to make me worthy enough for a man to want to own… because that’s what I want. That’s how I want to feel. I want to feel owned and cherished and used… and complete.”
“You’re talking crazy.”
Gabriele shook her head. Through the mist of her tears her eyes flashed with real passion. “No,” she sniffed back the urge to cry again. “Not to me. It’s not crazy. It’s who I am. It’s what I feel.”
Joshua drew a deep breath. He couldn’t overcome Gabriele’s fiercely focused emotions with logic. He scraped his fingers through his hair and realized with a small shock, that his fingers were trembling.
“You’re responsible, Joshua,” Gabriele went on, hitting Joshua in his most tender, vulnerable place; his conscience and his sense of moral obligation. “You’re the one who insisted I disconnect my own feelings from my submissive self. You’re the one who demanded that I immerse myself in the lifestyle. You’re the one who opened the door on this lifestyle and let me get a taste of it,” she battered him with her sincerely. “Well I have. I did everything you asked of me. I overcame every obstacle. You showed me this life and now I know it’s where I belong. I love feeling this way. I love the thought of being owned, prized by a man. I understand myself now better than I ever have before. I am a submissive. That is who I am. It’s how I identify. And I’m determined to be good at it. It’s the only thing I want and the only chance I have. You can’t take that opportunity away from me. You can’t!”
Joshua felt punctured by the barbs of Gabriele’s accusations and her appeal. He didn’t know how to react. Anger and frustration overcame reason. He hauled her roughly to her feet, his fingers digging deep into the flesh of her arms like claws. He pulled her towards him so their faces were just inches apart.
“I can’t train you any more,” Joshua snapped in a thick shaken voice. “I can’t!”
Gabriele’s features collapsed in tortured desolation and a flood of fresh tears. The forlorn despair in her eyes cut and slashed at Joshua’s resolve.
“But you’re my only hope,” Gabriele whispered. “Please, Joshua. I beg you – don’t abandon me.”
Joshua felt trapped; suffocated. He pushed Gabriele from him and reeled away. “I told you last night why this can’t continue,” Joshua’s voice was etched with torment and pain. “I told you.”
“You told me you were starting to care too much for me,” Gabriele shot back, not understanding. She saw something move in Joshua’s eyes, and then a change in the set of his mouth that might have signaled guilt or doubt. But when he replied, his voice retained all its anger and vehemence.
“Yes! That’s why I sent you away, Gabriele. That’s why this has to end. Before it gets…”
“Before what?” Gabriele’s expression was creased with confusion. “Before you fall in love with me?”
Joshua stared at her and the silence between them was deafening. Behind his eyes, Joshua’s mind was twisted in dark torment. Gabriele was gazing at him, holding her breath.
Joshua looked down at his hands.
“Yes,” Joshua said. “It has to end before I begin to fall in love with you.”
The tension seemed to seep slowly from Gabriele now Joshua had been driven to confess his fear. She let out a shuddering gasp of breath and went to him, naked. “Why is that so wrong?” she reached for Joshua’s hands.
He snatched them away as if her touch were fire. “Because my heart’s not mine to give!”
Gabriele flinched in shock, frowning. Her mouth hung slack. Her gaze flicked away uncertainly, then came slowly back to Joshua.
“I don’t understand…” she said carefully, beseeching Joshua to open up to her. “Is it because of your code of honor, Joshua? Is that what this is about? You won’t
permit yourself to fall in love with a student, and for that reason I’m being punished?”
Joshua was slowly shaking his head in mute denial. Gabriele took another step towards him, steeling herself with a conscious act of courage.
“You don’t even know what real love is, Gabriele,” there was contempt in Joshua’s voice, trying to push her away with the bitter derision woven into his words. “You think it’s the fantasy you have been brainwashed to believe in by books and television… but real love and real life isn’t filled with romantic gestures, hearts and flowers. Real love is raw. It hurts sometimes. It tests you. It challenges you. Sometimes it damned well defies you. It’s like mist; you can never hold it closely enough to know it will last.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” Gabriele narrowed her eyes. Her question could have been a challenge. It could have been an offer to listen.
Joshua shook his head dismissively, but Gabriele would not be denied.
“You think I don’t know what it is to love someone and be hurt by them?” her voice was incredulous. “After everything you know I have been through?” She started shaking her head as though she no longer recognized Joshua. “Maybe what I experienced with Randall wasn’t love by your definition. But it was real to me, Joshua. And it fucking hurt when he walked out on me. And it hurt even more when you told me that he was cheating on me. So don’t dismiss what I felt as being superficial just because I’m younger than you.” She was breathing deeply; her eyes slanted into bright little arrowheads of anger. “And I know this,” she thrust a finger at him. “What we shared last night… the kiss… that felt real to me too, Joshua. Real enough for me to want more.”
“This isn’t about you!” Joshua resisted, raising his voice. “This is about me, Gabriele. It’s my decision to end our training. It was my mistake that caused this whole fiasco. When I kissed you, I let my emotions show. I let what was secretly building within me to reveal itself in that moment. I know I can’t take that back… but I can end your training. I can send you away. I can get you out of my life.”