Eight

I STOOD OUTSIDE Wendy’s door trying to get a handle on what I knew would be waiting for me on the other side. As soon as I’d made my initial proposal, the conversation and planning had been taken away and I didn’t get another word in. And I wasn’t finished.

Wendy and I worked out a signal when she needed special time together. With my three other wives chatting and planning their solo weeks with me, she’d silently tapped the stone at her throat. I could see a range of emotions flick across her face—fear, sorrow, love.

I opened the door and stepped in.

Candles were lit on the vanity, reflected in the mirror. The room was pristinely clean, the bed turned down with satin sheets reflecting a subtle sheen. Beside the bed, Wendy knelt on the floor, naked save the silver collar with its tiger-eye stone at her throat. Her knees were shoulder width apart, her hands clasped behind her back and her mouth slight open as she stared straight ahead.

I hated this.

No, not hated. I loved Wendy, but when she went into this ultra-submissive state, it was almost more than I could handle. It was such an open, unconditional willingness to please me in any way she could that it made me feel unworthy. It didn’t happen often, but it always gave me chills when she simply waited on her knees for me.

I’d even gone with Wendy to one of her therapy sessions and with her permission had seen her therapist, Sheila Garvey, a few times, by myself. It had helped me understand that Wendy simply needed to surrender her will on occasion and let someone else be completely responsible for her. It allowed her mind to purge itself of emotions, memories, and responsibility that threatened all the time to overwhelm her. I understood this intellectually. But I thought it was just too kinky.

“Tell me, Tony,” Sheila said as we chatted. “Exactly how is Wendy’s need for submission kinkier than your need for four wives?”

“I don’t need four wives,” I sputtered. “They just kind of gathered around me.” I suddenly noted that she’d included Wendy as one of my wives. Had I thought that as well?

“But picture yourself now with just one of them. Who would it be and where would the others be? How happy would you be?”

Shit! It wasn’t possible for me to imagine life without even one of the four, Wendy included, without feeling a desperate sense of loss. Maybe I did need four wives.

“I would be very unhappy,” I said.

“You’d function, though?”

“Yes. And I’d love the one I was with. There would be an empty space where the others had been. I don’t know if I could get over it.”

“Think of Wendy’s need as that empty space. She functions in the real world, but there is an inner longing to let go—something that is always there, but which she controls except in those intimate moments that she entrusts to you. Those moments of complete surrender are possibly even more intimate than the moments you share with Lissa, Melody, and Kate.”

I knew from experience that Wendy would not move from this position or change her eye focus until I’d satisfied her need to submit. Once I had tried to release her from her submissive posture by ordering her to tell me what she wanted, but the answer was simply ‘to serve.’ I would have to take control before we could get past this stage to talk about what was really on her mind.

“Tiger, help me undress, please.”

“Yes, Master.” She immediately rose and helped me out of my clothes, carefully folding them and putting them in the closet as she went. She took much better care of my jeans and T-shirts than I did. She was so good at moving around the house unnoticed that she had begun slipping into the master bedroom to gather our laundry, wash it, fold it, and put it away. When I was naked, she led me to the bed.