Chapter 3: The Keys to the City

The door to my apartment banged against the door jamb, and Molly crashed through it like a wave hitting the beach. I was in the middle of slicing a log of mozzarella into rounds, so I set down the knife and wiped my hands on a dishtowel.

“Hi, Molly, it’s nice to see you again so soon.” We’d actually gotten together for dinner just a couple of weeks earlier, but it was just dinner. I knew her original pitch had been ‘sometimes’, not ‘all the time’, but I have to admit I was a little disappointed. That feeling quickly went away though, and ultimately it really was nice to just spend the evening like we used to: two old friends just talking the night away and getting caught up on each other’s lives. This was almost a record for back-to-back dinners so close together.

She gave me a big hug in greeting. “You got my email, right?”

“I did. Multi-course meal of small plates with one main, and don’t expect leftovers. Honestly, it’s one of the weirder sets of parameters you’ve ever put on dinner.”

“So what did you come up with?”

“Well, I figured I’d do a caprese salad, filet mignon for the main, and chocolate mousse for desert. The starter is a cold pea soup recipe that I’ve been trying to work out for a while. The soup and the mousse are in the fridge already because I made them last night. I’m just finishing up the salad and then I’ll need to sear the beef and stick it in the oven. Does that work for you?”

I could see her turning something over in her head, although I had no idea what. Eventually she smiled and nodded. “How long does the filet stay in the oven?”

“Not long, just five minutes or a little longer. Then it wants to rest for a bit before we eat it, so I’ll take it out before I serve the soup.”

“Great. And do you have to do anything to it while it’s resting?”

“No, though I might put a tent of aluminum— wait a second. Why are you suddenly so interested in all of these details?”

“Can’t a girl be interested in your kitchen skills?”

I arched an eyebrow suspiciously. “Of course. But we’ve been doing this for years and I’m pretty sure this is the first time you’ve ever asked me how long the steak is supposed to rest before we slice it.”

“Well, maybe I’m feeling inspired tonight. Aren’t you going to offer me a drink?”

“Split a cocktail with me?”

“I’d love to.”

She turned and walked into the living room, pulling out her phone as she did so. I fetched a pair of bottles from my liquor cabinet and two tumblers from my cabinets. I’d gotten hooked on two-ingredient cocktails several months prior, and I made one of my favorites, with equal parts mezcal and amaro. It was a simple, fun drink with a million varieties. I quickly put two drinks together and brought them to the living room, taking a seat across from Molly. She’d already changed the music, of course.

She took a healthy sip of her drink. “I see you’ve figured out my taste for agave spirits.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s delicious, which means it’s dangerous. Like a certain chef I’m fond of.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“You should.”

“Should I also take that to mean you’ve picked out a story for tonight?” I found myself getting a little bit excited, and a little bit hard, in anticipation.

“I have, but first I...” She sighed and looked down at her drink. “I owe you an apology.”

I blinked. “An apology? What for?”

“For using my safeword last time we played. I’m really sorry I did that, I just—”

“Molly! Don’t apologize for that. You don’t ever need to apologize for that.” I’m sure the look of confusion on my face wasn’t comforting, but it was such an alien concept to me I couldn’t help it.

“But I didn’t want to mess up the scene! You were so into it, and I- I had to...” She turned away from me, trying to hide the tears in her eyes.

“Hey. Hey. You didn’t mess up anything. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Molly wiped her eyes, then lifted her drink to her lips and drained the rest of it. The ice cube, still fully-formed, clinked in the glass when she put it back down. She turned back to me with a smile on her face, but it wasn’t genuine. “That’s really sweet of you to say, Nick. Thanks.”

“I don’t understand. Why did you apologize just now?”

“I told you, because I’m sorry I stopped the scene.”

“You had a good reason.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Sure you did. I was in the middle of c—”

“Don’t. Say. It.”

“Okay ... I won’t say it. But I was about to do something you didn’t want me to do.”

“It wasn’t that important.”

“It’s important enough that you just stopped me from saying it out loud.”

“Yeah, well, you couldn’t have known that.”

“Sure, and that’s why I’m glad you used your safeword.”

“You’re ... glad?”

“How else would I have known that you needed me not to do that thing?” A sudden thought occurred to me. “Is that the first time you’ve ever called your safeword?”

“Ha! Not even close.”

“Do you always apologize afterwards?”

She looked chagrined. “Yeah. Isn’t that what you were expecting?”

“No, not at all. If somebody calls their safeword on me, it just means they needed me to stop what I was doing. I’ve had people call safeword because of a bad cramp, or because they really had to pee right that second, or because what I was doing was too intense and they needed me to back off. None of those are reasons to apologize though.”

“Weird.” She thought about it for a second. “Well, chalk up another reason not to trust that boyfriend, I guess.” She looked down into her empty glass, disgusted.

“You mean someone taught you to apologize for that?”

She took a deep breath. “Some of my exes didn’t exactly like me calling safeword on them.”

“‘Some of’? You’ve had more than one—”

“All right, it was mostly just the one guy.”

“Please tell me you dumped him immediately.”

“Well, no...”

“I’m sorry, but giving you a safeword and then telling you you’re not allowed to use it isn’t even remotely okay. That guy was an abusive asshole.”

“Wow, judgmental much? You don’t even know him.”

“Good, because if I did, I’d probably beat the shit out of him.”

“Ha! You wouldn’t have a chance. He’d have pressed you up against a wall and threatened to break your arm before you even laid a hand on him.”

That seemed awfully specific. My eyes narrowed. “Molly. Did he hurt you?”

“No. And this isn’t Beat Up On Molly’s Exes Time, so just drop it, okay?”

I sighed. I was getting angry on her behalf and didn’t really want to be convinced to drop it, but it really wasn’t my business. “All right, I’m sorry. But this bit is really important to me.” I set my drink down and went to kneel in front of her. “Calling your safeword was the best thing you could have done in that moment, and you have nothing to apologize for. On top of that, I need to know that you’re going to be able to stop me from doing something you don’t want. We’re just getting to know each other as play partners, and I don’t want to hurt you—”

“Funny, you seemed happy enough to be hurting me last time.”

“Ha ha, yeah, okay. But you know what I mean.”

“I guess. Why is this such a big deal for you? I’ve never seen you this worked up about something so trivial before.”

“Trivial? Molly, why do you think I made you pick a safeword?”

“I don’t know. Even at the time it seemed kind of dumb.”

“You still feel that way now that you’ve used it in-scene?”

“I said I was sorry.”

“And I said I don’t want you to apologize for that. For me, safewords are the foundation of trust. I trust you to use yours when you need to, and you trust me to respect it when you do. And vice versa. Without that contract, there’s no consent, and without consent, what the hell are we even doing here? All this crazy shit that we do, it can’t just be about what one person wants. It doesn’t matter that I’m the ‘top’ and you’re the ‘bottom’, there’s got to be some give and take to it. I was about to do something you really didn’t want me to do, and the only reason I know that is because you used your safeword to tell me. I don’t know why that was important—”

“Nick, I—”

“No, let me finish. I don’t know why that was important to you and I don’t need to know why. But I get the feeling that if I’d kept doing what I was doing, you would have had a really, really lousy time for the rest of the night. Is that basically true?”

She nodded.

“But instead, you stopped me, we fixed it, and then we got to finish our scene. And then ... I mean, I don’t have to tell you how much I enjoyed the rest of the night, right?” I might even have blushed a little, remembering the feeling of unloading all over Molly while she knelt in front of me. Molly caught it, too, and a smile crept slowly across her face. “That was incredible. If you hadn’t stopped me when you did, none of the rest of that would have happened. And I wouldn’t give that night back for the whole world, Molly. You have no idea what that meant to me. It was ... I can’t...”

And then I choked. It was my turn to run out of words at a crucial point in the conversation. Inside my head I was screaming, but I didn’t even know what I wanted to say. Molly sucks my dick for the first time, and suddenly I’m ready to profess my eternal love for her? Come on, Nick, don’t be that stupid boy.

It was like somebody had ripped the lid off the shoebox, and all the photographs and memories and papers inside were swirling around the room. I grabbed at anything that flew near me, but kept coming up empty-handed.

As my face fell and I knelt there, dumbstruck, Molly’s smile started to grow. The laughter started as a twitch of her abs, became a deep-throated chuckle, and then turned to the melodious laugh I’d heard many, many times in the past. She didn’t have a mean-spirited bone in her body and I couldn’t imagine she was actually laughing at me, but it sounded a lot like her “we’re done flirting now” laugh.

But she followed it by leaning down and touching my cheek, before sliding off the chair to join me on the floor and pressing her lips to mine. Suddenly Molly was in my lap, except instead of sitting on me she just kept coming forward until I was on my back and she was on her hands and knees on top of me, still kissing me. Her tongue darted into my mouth, and I closed my eyes and kissed her back with every ounce of affection in my body.

We lay there, making out on the floor of my living room, until she came up for air.

“We should probably finish putting dinner together, huh?”

I snickered. “You hungry, or something?”

“No, but I bet you are.”

“You’re not...?”

“All part of the plan,” she said, booping me on the nose with her finger. “Can I give you a hand?”

Finishing the rest of dinner prep didn’t take too long. Molly, meanwhile, disappeared into the bathroom “to change.” That was also a first, but I assumed that it had something to do with her choice of story and it would become clear to me once she’d returned and we’d sat down to dinner. Just as I put the steak in the oven, my phone chirped with an incoming text message.

“u done?”

Why Molly was sending me text messages from my own bathroom, I couldn’t possibly fathom. My apartment wasn’t that big; she was less than fifteen feet away from me. She could have yelled and I would have easily heard her. But I responded in kind anyway.

“all set”

“cool make another drink and go sit. brt”

This really didn’t make any sense. But I mixed myself another small cocktail, went to the dining room, and sat down in my usual chair, sipping my drink and running through my mental catalog of stories, trying to guess what Molly was up to.

I heard her before I saw her. From the sound of her footsteps in the kitchen, she was wearing heels. But when she came around the corner to the dining room, her shoes were not the first thing I noticed.

Molly had done her makeup, and was wearing heavier eyeshadow than before along with some light powder on her face and bright red lipstick. It wasn’t overdone but it was definitely striking. A narrow lace choker circled her neck. Her arms were decked out in a pair of long, black opera gloves that ended above the elbow. She was carrying the opened bottle of wine in one hand and a single wineglass in the other, but it was the cupless demi-bra that really grabbed my attention. That, and the gold chain connecting two loops that gently captured her nipples, keeping them stiff and pointed.

She stepped slowly into the dining room with a model’s walk, putting one foot in front of the other to get maximum sway from her hips. Black stockings ran the length of her legs over a pair of short heels, and were held in place with a garter belt. Or, at least, I assumed there was a garter belt around her hips, because I could see the straps pinning the stockings up. But the gleam of a stainless steel chastity belt locked snugly in place around her waist and running between her legs was the kicker on the entire outfit.

I’m pretty sure my jaw hit the floor. But I still managed to squeak out “The Keys to the City? Holy shit, Molly.”

“I hope you’re now looking forward to dinner as much as I am. I know the chef worked really hard on it. Wine?” she said, stepping around to my right shoulder and setting the glass down just above my dinner plate, then tilting the bottle forward and pouring a splash of wine into my glass.

One of the perils of working in the restaurant industry is that sometimes your instincts kick in even when you really ought to be focused on something more interesting. I subconsciously recognized the wine-tasting protocol and reached for the glass, swirling the red liquid around and then inhaling deeply to capture the scent before tasting the wine. There was no point; I’d bought this same bottle dozens of times before, it wasn’t exactly expensive, and even if it had turned, what was I going to do, send it back to my own kitchen? But, as I said, instincts.

Molly stood obediently off my right shoulder, holding the bottle at a slight angle for my inspection and waiting for my approval. I turned to look at the bottle and nodded, setting my glass back down for her to fill. That meant leaning slightly over the table, and that meant that gold chain swung ever-so-slightly forward and caught my eye.

I went from nearly zero to rock-hard in an instant. My hand drifted up towards the chain to tug on it, but before I could get there she slapped my hand away. “Look but don’t touch,” she admonished.

Okay, so that was tonight’s rule. Got it.

Molly disappeared behind me, taking my empty cocktail glass with her and leaving the bottle of wine behind. I sat up straight in my chair and adjusted my dick through my slacks. I heard her open the oven and take the filet out, followed by the sound of a sheet of aluminum foil tearing. Clever girl – she really had been paying close attention.

Keys was a series of vignettes about a high-protocol formal dinner run by a “secret society” of powerful people, with a bunch of tops sitting around a fancy dining room telling stories about their prior conquests while being served by scantily-clad submissives of all types. Naturally Molly had taken the description of one of the female server’s outfits and copied it perfectly, all the way down to the nipple chain and the chastity belt. Which, if she’d gone that far to recreate the outfit from the story – and I had gotten the sense that she had – then it was likely she was also wearing at least a vibrating toy in her pussy. I hadn’t heard the telltale hum though, so either it wasn’t on, or it was too quiet to be heard over the music.

Molly returned from the kitchen with the first course. Given how turned on I was just watching her walk in and out of the room, it was going to take some effort to get through a four-course meal without really laying my hands on her. Again circling around to my right shoulder, she set the fancy glass with the pea soup on the plate in front of me along with a spoon. When she disappeared behind me again, it occurred to me that she hadn’t brought any food for herself. Then I remembered that she said she wasn’t hungry, earlier. She must have eaten before she came over, planning to serve me dinner like this.

I looked up as she quickly returned from the living room, bringing a throw pillow from my couch. She laid it down to the left of my chair and knelt down on it, crossing her hands in her lap with her knees together and looking up at me with soft eyes and a lovely smile.

I nearly came in my pants.

Instead, I tried to focus on dinner. There was something slightly odd about being served my own cooking like this, but at least I’d done a pretty good job with the soup. I wasn’t totally happy with the texture, and I took a couple of mental notes for the next time I made it before turning to the pretty girl at my side.

“Does ‘no touching’ mean I also shouldn’t pay any attention to you, or feed you any of this?”

“No. It’s probably in both of our best interests for you to feed me, anyway. You know what your cooking does to me.”

I laughed, and drew another spoonful of soup. Cupping my left hand under the spoon to make sure I didn’t spill any, I leaned over and fed it to Molly. She shut her eyes and gently closed her mouth around the spoon, swallowing the soup before looking back up at me with a throaty purr.

Yeah, this was going to be a challenge.

We managed to make it through the soup course without either of us orgasming. I fed Molly several more times, and at some point I realized that she’d brought more soup than the glass was supposed to hold. Given her attention to detail on everything else, it seemed like that couldn’t have been an accident. So she was expecting to eat, or at least taste everything, even if it was less than a full portion.

I definitely stared at her ass, clad only in the metal belt and the black straps of her garter belt, as she brought the empty vessel into the kitchen. A moment later she sashayed back into the dining room with the plate of salad, setting it down perfectly in front of me. I reached for my napkin where I’d left it on the table, but Molly quickly snatched it up, unfolded and refolded it into a triangle, and laid it in my lap. That brought her face near my shoulder, and she breathed softly into my ear as I felt her hand stroke right down the center of the napkin, up and over my cock.

“Wouldn’t want you to make a mess of these nice slacks, Sir, now would we.”

I groaned, and she chuckled softly as she retreated to her pillow. She really didn’t need to do anything to tease me except just sit there; having an impeccably (un)dressed server next to me while I ate was plenty enough to keep me warm and interested, if not exactly on edge. Although hearing her calling me ‘Sir’ sent a surge through my cock just for good measure.

The salad course passed without any further ado, although I was extra-careful about dripping balsamic vinegar everywhere as I fed Molly bites of basil, cheese, and tomato. And again, I was treated to the lovely view of her leaving the dining room with the empty dishes and returning with the next course. It was hard to decide which view was better, but at the end of the day I was a man of simple tastes: good food and a lovely pair of breasts with pert nipples won out over stockings with straight seams and a delightful ass.

Okay, yes, I’m complimenting my own cooking as much as I am Molly’s outfit, but that’s because the filet came out perfectly. My own special spice blend, a good sear on both sides, well rested, and excellently juicy when I sliced into it.

I took my time with the main course, enjoying the wine and offering bites of steak to Molly. At one point I leaned over to her with a piece on my fork. I rushed a bit when I saw some juice about to fall, and managed to get the steak into her mouth but dripped the juice onto her lips, where a drop ran down onto her chin. Molly was too busy enjoying the flavor of the meat – I swear she really did get actively turned on by my cooking – so she didn’t notice me reaching for her face to wipe up the drop until I’d touched her cheek with my fingers and slowly but firmly wiped her chin with my thumb. I captured the drip and ran my thumb up and over her lower lip. She gasped, and I slipped my thumb into her open mouth, letting her suck it clean as I withdrew my hand.

Her eyes met mine with a slightly glazed look. “Thank you ... Sir.”

I chuckled and reached for my wineglass.

The filet was so good I almost sent Molly back into the kitchen for the second piece, but I was starting to get full and I wanted to do justice to the chocolate mousse. I resigned myself to a truly ridiculous steak-and-eggs breakfast the next morning instead. Or maybe I’d send Molly home with the extra, even though she’d said ‘no leftovers’.