When she knelt before me, naked, after stripping herself of the skirt and bra-no man could resist that. I bent and kissed her sweetly as I cupped her pussy and fondled between her legs. God, those soft moans. I'd wean all right. I'd tease her like I'd thought to. She wouldn't come, but neither would I. We'd both learn control.

"Obeisance," I croaked, pushing her down. I went behind and nestled my cock there in that moist valley, listened to the signs that told of her arousal, of her body readying itself for me. I fastened her to the floor with a palm on the small of her back and I squeezed my cock in slow.

If I didn't come, we were getting somewhere. I would not hurt her. I could hold that part of me back. I hissed and sucked my dick back out, just as slow as it went in. My hips shook like an earthquake was imminent.

No sadism. For three days.

My head would burst if I kept this up and didn't come. I withdrew, and stood. I tucked myself away, zipped myself up. There, was that not control?

"I can do this," I whispered. At the end of three days, we'd sit and we'd talk. I'd get her used to just being mine. With that as a basis, and her predilection for BDSM activities, we'd have a starting point. Like Moghul said-talk, find your common ground. The man knew more than I did about this, surely?

It was hard though. And Jodie didn't make it any easier. On the second day I went out for milk and bread. Opening the door I found her waiting for me like I'd told her to days before, and forgotten to rescind. She lay belly down, draped over the small hall table, naked, with her legs apart just enough for me to have a clear view of her vulva.

Heart thumping, I placed the plastic bag with the groceries on the floor, and I stepped up to her. The curves of her pale ass led the eye to her nude sex. The split there was cradled by the subtle ridges of her labia. A hint of dampness glistened. The opening gaped.

What man could resist? Slowly, I unzipped my pants. She had the side of her face on the table and at the sound of the zip, her eyelashes fluttered, her lips parted. Her ass swayed the tiniest amount. She'd put on bright red lipstick. New. Her own idea. Once upon a time, I'd told her how alluring that was.

Afterward, I wondered. Had I deliberately, subconsciously, known she would wait for me like that if I forgot to say don't? As penance, I made sure to tell Moghul that I...we wouldn't be coming to the play party he had arranged. We weren't ready for it. I hadn't even told her about it.

The third day, I was more restrained. One more day and this was over. One more day. Jesus. I gave her back her denim shorts and top, but I had to tell her to put on bra and underwear. The look she gave me was piercing. We both knew.

How did you end a capture fantasy documentary that had gone off the rails like this had? I sure as hell didn't know. My attraction for her hadn't lessened as I'd hoped. It had multiplied a thousand times and mutated. I had changed. Jodie had. She still wasn't talking to me, because I hadn't told her to. Interesting how she held to that.

Of course we couldn't keep on as we had. I'd known that, though I'd managed to keep myself from remembering ninety-nine percent of the time. And yet, I found myself looking at her, wondering...if.

But then, what would I be? She would be a prisoner of mine and I would be imprisoned by my own mind. I had to change this. It wasn't legal or right.

That night I would tell her she could speak. I'd thought and thought about how to do this. I hadn't touched the cameras, or the footage on the hard drive, or the kinky and fetish gear scattered about the house. But I had thought for ages, through the bleak cool hours of the night, head in hands, staring at her sleeping on my bed.

If I did this right, I could keep her. It was a mental thing. Obviously. Let things slip the wrong way and she'd feel she could get the upper hand. I needed to loosen the reins, but not by too much. What we'd had was untenable anyway. I couldn't have her blinded and gagged forever, could I? We could be partners, not equal, but partners.

I wanted a woman I could discuss things with. To live life with. It was natural to want that, and I did.

The other, though, wasn't a want, it was an obsessive need-my need to hurt, to dominate. Pandora's Box had been opened.

Needs could be controlled. It took determination, and patience, and made me feel like I was locked in a box with wet cement pouring in, but I could do this, even if the pressure burst my head.

Find a solution. There must be one.

Okay, I'd let my darkest desires out for a while. Now they could damn well go back into hiding until I called them again.

So I set up her little circular timber table in the garden, dusted it, and arranged the two wrought iron chairs, the candles, and the lacy white tablecloth that matched her flowing dress. I took five minutes to just breathe and still my trembling hands.

Then I brought her out.

At my gesture, she hesitantly sat, sweeping her dress from beneath her out of the way of the chair.

This Indonesian-style dress I'd found in the usual place except this one was demure and ended in a hem that sloped sideways from knee to calf. Gold stitching decorated the front. A row of cloth-covered white buttons closed it all the way to her waist. Her breasts threatened to burst from the scooped neckline if she inhaled too hard.

She was beautiful.

And I yearned to tear the dress from her. I bunched my fists.

Simmer down. Count. Count to fifty. Math came to my rescue. By fifty I still had a steel-hard erection but I was calmer.

Never had I had this problem before. I was set in my ways, I guess. A month of fucking her when I wanted, making her my slave, and I regarded her as property, to do with as I wanted.

"Stay there, please," I growled. Then I walked away.

We were barefoot, but I'd dressed in a button-down shirt and black pants. The Thai restaurant had done a great selection of food, and I dished it up and took it out to where I'd told her to sit-with her back to the sea and the clifftop twenty yards beyond. I poured the chilled white wine into the glass goblets. Dusk closed in as we ate. The candles blew out in the wind and the full moon shone down on us, bathing Jodie in silver.

Neither of us did more than nibble. Despite her attempts to beat me to it, I gathered the dishes, piled them. I stood there gripping the dirty plates and cutlery and said the words I'd held within for the last half an hour.

"When I return, we will talk. You...may talk."

The moon had risen enough that I could see how still she was, but with one hand she toyed with the white tablecloth, and with the other she turned her goblet like jerky clockwork.

When I returned, she remained mute. The chair under me crunched and settled in the sandy soil as I shifted my weight.

"You can talk," I said again, enunciating the words carefully, hoping she'd find something to say. Though her lips moved, she merely stared at the table then at me, as if I were something new and terrifying.

The answer dawned on me. I'd imagined this experience had forged a soul-deep bond between us.

But, this situation was so foreign, so out-there, that once exposed in the real world, it would shatter. I knew her from many past conversations, and she knew me. I could list how she took her coffee, what she liked doing on days off, her favorite sport and movies. And she could do the same for me. Yet we hadn't conversed for a month. I'd made myself her Master and her my slave and that had made us both strangers to each other despite our profound intimacy.

There must be a way to bridge the gap? Discussing the documentary would be so so wrong. Tomorrow, daytime, business-time, for that. This and now was personal.

I'd delved into, gloried in, my fantasies more than hers. I'd never asked her what she wanted since that first day.

"Jodie." I waited.

"Yes?"

"I want to know your fantasies. Tell me. Apart from your capture fantasies."

She made a small noise and shrugged in a way that spoke of uncertainty. I took her hand, marveling again at the delicacy of her bones and muscles when contrasted with mine. When she tried to pull away, I laid my other hand over the top. "Stay. Let me hold you." One last time? Perhaps.

I was scrambling for common ground. Tomorrow I might lose her. In the back of my head, a little part of me despaired. The contact of skin on skin calmed me though, and her too perhaps? Her shoulders lowered and she focused on how I enfolded her hand.

The worn groove of our Master-and-slave arrangement was proving difficult for both of us to escape from.

"Tell me. Tell me, now."

"Do I have to?" So quiet.

"Yes."

"Oh." She pouted then sucked in a deep breath. I wanted to shake her to get her to answer. I was good. I waited, and I waited, stroking her hand.

"Okay." Then she continued on in a quiet voice. "I guess apart from my capture fantasies I've always liked the idea of being tied up and at someone's mercy."

"That, we've done." Not, I've done to you. I was learning. Back to the real.

"Mmm."

"More?" I wondered, hoping to hear that she'd always dreamed of being flogged or spanked. "What else?"

"I guess, I suppose, if you're looking for one that's different..."

"I am."

"Okay, well, I used to dream of being taken by more than one person, of being shared. Even of being made to. It's just...hot." She shook her head. "Stupid. No one does that." Her voice caught on the last word. Our eyes met.

Laughable. After our month of debauchery, she could still say that?

"You think? Men or women?"

Another long pause. A very long one interspersed with much screwing up of mouth and eyebrows. This question was agonizing to her. Cute though. "Both? Maybe? I guess?"

Ah. Now that was hot. "Sometimes people do the things that no one seems to do."

Like the light of morning lining the horizon, I realized, this could be my solution.

Kink was alive and well, and I knew just where to get it. This was something that bridged that gap. I could let her explore, join her in this, and show yet again how this fascinated us both. Was this going too far? I pulled out my phone and held it hard enough to hurt my bones. No, it wasn't. I'd have to be careful, though. Doing anything in public daunted me too. Things could go wrong. I only knew Moghul.

Would anyone there know us?

Damn. Stop stalling.

I sent a text, then waited for the reply, gave Moghul some more details in the next one. I sent another to Jon to check the whereabouts of his boat. Done. All good.

"We're going to a party."

"What?" A frown worked its way onto her forehead.

For this to work properly, I needed Jodie thinking as my slave yet again. If my subconscious laughed at my recent vow for that about-face, I smothered it. One last time.

Because maybe, if I showed her this was a two-way thing, that I could accommodate her needs too, she'd stay.

But that dress would never do, not as it was.

"Sit up straighter, Jodie, so I can see you."

"What?"

I added sternness. "Now." She blinked. I waited. Though she took longer than I'd have allowed her to without punishment a few days before, I let it go.

Finally, after one tremulous breath and a small amount of lip gnawing, she complied.

"Undo enough buttons so you can tuck the neckline under your breasts. Take off your bra. Cup your breasts so I can see them."

I stood, picking up and moving back the chair. While she undid the buttons, I took away the goblets and made the table top bare.

With the bodice opened enough, she put her hands under her breasts and lifted them, offering them to me. Bare breasted, areola showing against her pale skin, apart from that, Jodie was the picture of elegance. Mine to command. Heady. I zinged into Master mode like I'd never left.

I'd make that dress shorter. When we arrived, I'd bare her breasts like this and decorate her with the diamante nipple clamps and, I stepped behind the chair, there were more possibilities.

"Get up and lean over the table."

Oh yes. Like a good little doll, she draped her upper body over the table.

I took away her chair and I lifted the dress, rucked it up, slow, inch by inch. This was as heady as a slug of whiskey, revealing her intimate parts when she was dressed up and demure. White was innocence personified. I bared her whole ass and admired the contrast of white panties against skin. My lust barged in all impatient and almost throttled me.

"Whoa," I whispered. Her little moan spurred me on.

"Klaus-" she gasped out.

"Shh."

I'd missed doing this.

I wriggled her panties down her thighs so just the line of her sex showed and then clawed my fingers into her ass cheeks and separated them, thrilling at her whimpers. I'd been getting her ready for anal, but I hadn't done it yet. The medium plug at the party for starters. Yes. Then the biggest. Then me. Then perhaps whoever Moghul said was safe and who wanted to take her.

"Stay."

After wetting my finger with her slippery moisture, I pressed my fingertip to the rosette of her anus. Anal finger-fucking by moonlight. I smiled. It almost sounded romantic. I rotated my finger a little as I pushed it into her. After one squeak, she opened up more, groaning as I went in deeper, to the second knuckle.

With my finger still imbedded in her, I stepped back. The view was enough to turn my cock rock-hard. Jodie, ass-up over the table, dress flipped up and at the first stage of preparation for anal sex. I'd wanted this for so... Fucking. Long. I screwed my finger in farther, thrilling at her gasp and how she lifted herself into the thrust.

Lucky the neighbors couldn't see. A woman's derriere, as the French called it, was the best thing in nature. From the small of her back, to the subtle swell of her ass and the way it dipped down to the hollow at the juncture of her legs-so inviting. Even more so when my hand was buried there, when I could feel the heat and squeeze of her anal muscles and hear her gentle moans and trembles. The moment simmered. I leaned in, put my mouth to the dimple of her back, and kissed her.

What would it be like to watch another man fuck her? I knew it was something she wanted.

At the party, maybe I could do some spanking, hurt her a little if she seemed to like that too? This was my chance to cater to what she wanted. To find where we truly clicked.

Lightning hit. Holy crap. I was so stupid. When we'd started this weeks and weeks ago, when I'd had that epiphany about her documentary and told her how stupid she was, I'd listed all the things an evil man might do to her. This, sharing her with the man down the street, had been the last on that list. It wasn't quite the same, but damn near it. I had a feeling I'd gone and done most of those in between too, except attaching her nipples to bolts in the ceiling. Oh, yeah. That one I'd seen in my head. Came close.

My subconscious must have been writing that impromptu list.

My new epiphany turned creepy cold. Sharing hadn't been last on the list, killing her and burying her on the beach had been it. Christ. Thank God, I wasn't that man, but it made me wonder who I had become. I doubted I could change back.

I shook my head. I wasn't him. That was the important thing.

I left her there and went to find scissors to cut her dress, and all the toys, and to scan the medical tests we'd both had done before starting all this shit then email them to Moghul.

I was careful, gentle, driving us down to get the key from Jon.

Hard to imagine how this would be to her when she hadn't left the house in a month. Her dress was shorter, ripped to mid-thigh length, but decent. The buttons were done up again.