Chapter 16

We piled into Lana’s car and got to the restaurant about ten minutes early. I helped Becky out of the backseat, using my body to block the view of her getting out of the car because the dress she was wearing rode up her thighs as she climbed out. Then I went around the car and opened Lana’s door, doing the same for her.

I was glad I had gotten the cane and it seemed to compliment the suit well. We stepped inside and I told the Maitre D that we were the Russell reservation of 6. We had to wait a few moments while they prepared the room for us, and were seated just before the reservation time. I held a chair for each of the girls so that they could sit on either side of me and I could face the door to the room.

“Nervous?” I asked them as I took my seat and they nodded.

“What if they don’t like us?” Lana asked.

“Then they aren’t right for us,” I said simply. “It’s up to them whether we’re right for them, but there’s no fault if it doesn’t work out. It’s just dinner. I’m more concerned that age is an issue rather than personality, but we’ll see.” I smiled at them softly. “You both look stunning,” I told them, taking their hands.

We were still holding hands, looking at each other adoringly when the door opened and our company was shown in. I stood and Donald made introductions. I smiled and told them that we were pleased to finally meet them. “I’ve heard some about you, but I’m sure it’s far from everything.” I came around to hold a chair for Tabitha while my father settled Colette and then we sat at opposite ends of the table.

They were clearly surprised by my age and probably the girls’ ages too. While guys couldn’t really tell much about the age of a girl at a glance, a woman seems to be able to calculate what time of day another girl was born, the exact date and how long their mother was in labor no matter what they try to do to disguise their age.

No one said anything for a long moment and I could feel the tension filling the room. I decided to see if I could cut it. “Clearly you were expecting someone taller,” I said lightly. “I have a few stamps left before I can cash in my ‘dirty old man’ certificate, but I’m working on it.”

That got a little laugh and it seemed like there was a little less awkwardness in the room.

“Let’s order dinner and then we can get to know each other while it’s prepared,” I suggested. There were menus set at each of our places and we all opened them. The first thing I noticed was that there were no prices on the items, so I made my selection and closed the menu, waiting on the rest of the guests to close theirs.

A waitress opened the door to check if we were ready to order and we each gave her our food and drink orders. Donald, Colette and Tabitha were having wine with their dinner. I ordered water and a half-glass of wine. I told the girls with a look that was acceptable, but not a drop more. They ordered the same and when she’d left, I saw Colette looking at me contemplatively and I thought she must have caught the look I’d given the girls.

We all chatted a bit and I asked some leading questions, to draw them out and to help introduce them to my girls. I’d read the emails Donald had sent me on them with barely a glance, still able to recall them with as much clarity as if they were still in front of me.

As we talked, Tabitha opened up grudgingly answering questions and then falling silent once she’d responded, engaging no one in conversation on her own. Colette was worse, dipping her head and hiding behind her honey-blonde hair and said as few words as possible. Still, I caught her shooting glances at me whenever I was speaking to Tabitha or Donald.

I could feel discomfort coming off them in waves that were almost palpable. I was coming to hate the mood in the room and decided to just get it out of the way. “I can tell that you came here expecting something far different than what you found when you walked through that door,” I said, addressing the elephant in the room. “Ask. I can see the questions in your eyes when you look across the table. Let’s have them out in the open. Donald asked us all here because the three of you need to find someone new now that Miranda is no longer with you. He’s discussed your situation with me. He hoped that I could assist in providing structure for you in the short term and either continue that support and make our association permanent or assist you in finding a home where you can find what you need. Ask what you want to know. Consider this an interview. I’m feeling you out, you should be doing the same.”

They looked at me, then at each other and finally at Donald. He nodded encouragingly. “How do you know Donald?” Tabitha asked.

I’d anticipated this question since there was no particular reason for a man his age to have friends my age. “He and my mother dated a number of years ago, before I was born,” I said smoothly, making Lana and Becky glance at me in shock, but they held their silence for the moment. I knew that wouldn’t last forever. Fortunately both girls were looking at me, so they didn’t see the barely suppressed laughter in Donald’s face.

“Are those collars really what I think they are?” Colette asked, her voice a whisper.

“Yes. These girls are mine,” I answered. “The collars are to remind them of me and their submission even when circumstance keeps us from being together. They’re a token of affection and a symbol of my ownership.”

Tabitha looked at the girls and her eyes widened a little. She’d missed the collars in her appraisal of the girls or hadn’t recognized them for what they were. “How old are you?” she blurted, then looked a little embarrassed that she’d said it.

I smiled at her and expected that she would be shocked when she found out. “Fourteen, as is Becky. Lana is sixteen.”

Her eyes bulged out of her head. Colette’s head had snapped up too and they both stared at the three of us disbelievingly.

“Is that so hard to digest?” I asked calmly, taking in their looks of bafflement. “I told you Donald dated my mother before I was born. He’s not THAT old. I’d have had to be talking about when he was twelve in order to be much older.”

Tabitha rounded on Donald angrily. “A KID!??! You asked us here to meet a kid? What the HELL?!!?”

“TABITHA!” I snapped sharply and despite her outrage, she bit off what she’d been about to say and turned to look at me. “Donald did not bring you here to meet a child. He asked you to share a table with an able and articulate Dominant because he’s concerned about you both. He knows that I will not accept him as mine, but that I will assist him in finding a place where he will be cared for and can provide service to a Mistress in a way that’s meaningful for him. He asked that I consider providing that same care to the two of you.” My eyes blazed and I realized that I was correcting her behavior, that she’d mistreated someone under submission to me and I was not happy.

“He suggested that he thought the environment I was providing to my girls was one that would appeal to one or both of you, but ultimately hoped that if not, I could locate a home that would allow the three of you to stay together and serve a new Mistress or Master. Donald has acted to try to provide for the two of you as best he can. He cannot lead you,” I pointed out reasonably, “and Miranda was the only one he knew that could until he became aware that I was capable of accepting submission from others. He has given me his submission and when I find a home that can provide for him, I will pass that on to a new Mistress who fulfills him in the ways he needs. I have no need for more girls. The two that I have are dutiful and obedient and see to every need I have. In turn, I provide them what they need. If you don’t feel this arrangement works for you, then perhaps you are not in as much of a need of a place to belong as I was led to believe.”

My father gave me a tiny nod, suggesting that I’d done it right.

We were quiet for another few minutes as we all stared at each other, waiting for the others to flinch like a Mexican Standoff. I looked at them impassively. What I’d said was true. I didn’t need them. This dinner was a favor and if they walked out of it without resolving anything, then that was really for them to decide.

La Salle’s is one of those small restaurants that prides itself on making everything to order, so I wasn’t worried about being interrupted. We all had water glasses and there was an end table behind me with two pitchers to refill them. I knew we wouldn’t be disturbed, so I could stretch out the silence, letting it hang in the air.

Colette looked scared and I knew that she would never leave this room without pledging herself. She was afraid of being sent away. I could almost feel her anxiety rise in her like bile. It was Tabitha that my girls wanted and it was Tabitha that I had to bend to my will to give my girls what they’d asked me for.

I focused my attention on her, knowing that everyone else in the room was already mine. She was the only question mark and I knew that as calm as she looked on the surface, she was still in turmoil. Her training wasn’t as deep or oppressive as Colette’s had been, but she had placed her submission in Miranda. It was something that was part of her. It all depended on how much of her submission was out of love for Miranda.

“I don’t believe you,” she said finally and folded her arms, defiantly. “Prove it. Order them to do something.”

Lana and Becky immediately looked to me, ready to leap to any task I named for them. “No,” I said instead, my face betraying boredom and a little disappointment. “You misunderstand how this works. You weren’t invited here to bark orders and make demands,” I chided her, realizing that this was part of the battle of wills. “Some indulgence can be made as your Mistress has recently died. Under normal circumstances, I’d have Miranda flogged for the shoddy training she’s clearly given you.” I picked up my water glass and took a sip, glancing at Colette. “She clearly spent much more attention on Colette’s indoctrination. Was your training incomplete or was she just lazy with you?”

She looked shocked and outraged by the comment, but my words had been a clear indictment not of her, but of the training she’d received.

“It was both,” Colette said quietly into the silence and we both looked at her. I gave her an encouraging smile and a little wink to let her know things weren’t as rough as they seemed. She blushed under the scrutiny, but continued. “I was with Miranda since before Donald and she paid a lot of attention to me in the beginning and even after she added him. By the time Tabby joined us, she wasn’t spending as much time with any of us. I think she had a new guy. I heard her talking to him on the phone once. I didn’t know what they were talking about, but she had been really mad when she thought I was listening.”

“You never told me that!” Tabitha said accusingly and Colette lowered her head. “She told me never to speak of it. I think she was going to leave us for him. She looked ... different when she was talking to him. In love, I guess.”

She looked sad and I felt for her. She’d given herself to this woman who used people and threw them away when she’d used them up and broken them. Both these women had been damaged to varying degrees and I was going to do what I could to help them if they’d let me.

I rose and walked around the table, aware of all the eyes on me as I approached Colette’s chair. I lifted her chin with a finger and she looked up at me, her eyes were a mix of emotions and I longed to put my arms around this girl, not to make love to her, but to soothe the hurts I saw in her eyes. She was saddened by Miranda’s death, but more so by the growing knowledge that her feelings for Miranda had not been returned. I saw how lost she felt and the hint of despair at the thought of finding her own way, but I also saw hope in them and a longing to belong. She was trembling slightly. No one would be able to see it, but I could feel the tremors in her as I held that one finger beneath her chin.

There were no words. She looked up at me, her emotions raw and her soul bared to me in her eyes. I gazed down at her and poured my strength into those eyes, quenching the despair and replacing it with promise. I moved my finger and slipped my hand to her neck, leaving my thumb under her chin, tilting her head back as my fingers held her throat. She moaned with need that had little to do with sex. I held her eyes as I inclined my head once in acceptance of the question she’d pleaded with her eyes.

It was like I’d flipped a switch in her head with that nod. She sobbed with relief and suddenly tears were streaming from the corners of her eyes. She threw her arms around my waist and sagged against me, sobbing and crying against my stomach with relief and grief at the same time as she let go of Miranda for the last time, replacing her with a new Master. I wrapped my arms around her and comforted her while she cried and told her softly that she was home at last.

If anything, that made her cry harder and her arms tightened reflexively. A moment later, we were in the middle of a larger hug. Lana and Beck had both come to welcome her. I was so proud of my girls. They were everything I could have hoped for in life and far from jealousy, they were at my side, welcoming Colette like a sister they hadn’t seen in years.

We had just calmed Colette down and retaken our seats when dinner arrived. I waited until dinner was laid out for each of us and we were alone once again before picking up my fork. I looked around and saw everyone looking to me. “Please, eat,” I urged them. “We’ll have time to talk more when we’re all a little less hungry.” Everyone except Tabitha immediately dug into their dishes and she fixed me with a look of confusion. I gave her a rueful shrug and turned my attention to my own food, finding the food sensational. Donald had picked the restaurant and had picked it well. The girls were all loud in their appreciation of their meals. They started sharing bites back and forth among the three of them, Lana and Becky treating Colette like a sister right away. Of course the blending of our families had made them take a somewhat elastic attitude toward family dynamics.

I sat back and ate slowly, letting each of the girls taste from my plate and accepted bites from each of their forks. Donald gave me a very pleased look, clearly approving of the way I’d handled Colette and enjoying the sight of the four of us bonding over dinner. Tabitha’s expression was unreadable and I knew her mind must be racing behind those eyes. I waited her out, losing myself in the meal and the girls and the moment, but I’d still catch her shooting glances at me from time to time. Mostly, she looked at Colette and the change in her since the six of us had been seated together.

Finally we all pushed our plates away and felt comfortably full. I was looking at Tabitha when she looked up and saw me watching her. I didn’t look away, but held eye contact. “You have even more questions now,” I said softly and the banter from the girls cut off like a knife. I spread my hands welcomingly. “I am at your disposal,” I told her.

“How?” she said softly, clearly confused. “How did a fourteen year old end up knowing enough to take someone’s submission without saying a word?” She gestured to Colette. “I mean, Collie’s a sweetheart and well-trained, but seriously! I’ve never seen that. Never even heard of something like that. Have you?” she asked Donald and he shrugged and then shook his head. “See?!!?” she said, as if that proved some point she was trying to make.

“Perhaps it will help you to know a little more of how I know Donald and how he came to know that I could be counted on to take a lost girl and give her direction.”

I paused and ordered my thoughts. I hadn’t told this story. Not all of it. It was an important tale and I knew it told a lot about who I was and who I’d become. So I started telling the tale by introducing myself. “My name is Matthew Anthony Russell. Donald dated my mother long before I was born as I said, but they fell in love, married and had children together before the light flickered and died between them.”

Colette and Tabitha listened raptly, their eyes going wide at the news that I was Donald’s son and at different parts of my story. I poured it out without emotion or hesitation. I paused only when servers came to offer desserts and coffee or tea. When we all had a cup and a cake in front of us, I explained how I’d spent nearly a decade searching for answers beyond understanding, my anguish at the loss of my family, Miranda’s machinations to use us as human shields and how I’d had to learn lessons in dominance out of necessity to wrest my father from her control and fight her for my family’s life.

“She didn’t really commit suicide, did she?” Tabitha asked slowly.

“Yes, she did” I told her. “She took her own life the second she crossed my family. She just didn’t realize it yet. I protect my family. My girls, their parents, my parents, we were all in danger because of her. I suspect you were too since Colette suspects that she was planning on leaving you behind.”

“So you learned because of Miranda?” she asked, still trying to catch up.

I shook my head. “I learned because I absorbed everything I could find about relationships and love and life from the time I was five. When I started finding bondage materials in my father’s pornography collection, I followed those links, read the stories, learned the dynamics and committed them to memory. I had to develop those lessons into skills in a hurry when it became clear that my father had been convinced to do things that would lead to our deaths.”

He put his head down and I threw him a lifeline. “When he realized what Miranda was, what she’d manipulated him into doing and what he’d become, that’s when he gave me his submission. I took it gladly then because I needed it and him to save my family. I’ll hold onto it until I can find him a place where he can belong.”