Chapter 4: Romantic Composers

Interlude: 25th Anniversary

Cindy:

The first date was dinner and a concert. Funny, they always say concert and dinner. Every year, for the 21 years I have known them, they go out for Italian food that night.

Sean:

I had a date. I had not had a real date in a decade. All my events were functional, involving business or politics. While I could have left everything to George and Helen, and eventually I did that, this was not the usual state of things. I wanted exacting control of every detail.

Helen’s discrete inquiries had turned up something a bit surprising. Cynthia did indeed sign things with her lips, but they were not photographs. She marked beaten flesh with a lipstick kiss and sold pictures with the kiss in situ. It had to be a sweet set-up. The security cameras did all the work. All she needed to do was choose the shot and crop it. From what I could see, her eye was flawless.

Everything pointed to a devoted audience, considerable discretion, and the lash being in her hand. I had to admire the business acumen. The national fitness chain provided excellent camouflage. Her client book could be completely open since clients employed her as a fitness coach instead of as an erotic disciplinarian. In the gym, she cracked a different sort of whip, but the control was the same.

Yet, here we stood. The kiss was on my work. The lash was in my hand. I made the date to the symphony. It was my car and my driver. Why did I feel so out of control?

Then I thought, how long has it been since her last date?

Sheila:

Friday’s were always busy. It gave me something to keep my mind off The Date. It was dawning on me that this was my cherry. I had never had a date unless you count group events. In school, I had been too busy preparing to be the next Broadway star. Afterward, I was working two jobs, and taking clients on the side. Then I owned my own business, and I had no time to sleep, much less date.

So I worked my morning clients on their exercise machines and free weights. I worked out over the lunch hour. All afternoon it was Little Miss Perfectionist, and the flogger rose and fell til the arm holding it was close to falling off. I had plenty of red skin to kiss, and I had a secret smile as I applied the lipstick.

Friday is also picture day. I had hours of video sorted and cropped, but the clients still needed to make selections. Over and over I expanded and centered the imprint of my lips on various pieces of blushing pink flesh. The laser printer chugged through stacks of Kodak’s best paper. Boxes of acid-free liners and rigid folders filtered out the door as the money came in. Who knew my lips would become so famous?

By 6:00 I was exhausted. I locked the door and changed into my workouts. When I thought about Sean even those peeled off. Stepping to the mirror, I slowly pulled the pins and comb out of my hair. Sean had noticed those. I was sure of it. He had also gotten too good a look at the bushes. I could trim those shortly. For music, I chose Tchaikovsky’s 5th Symphony, 2nd movement. You have to love Russians. Even the Andante orchestral music has ballet in its heart.

As the first low notes poured out, I presented to the bar. In time with the slow beat, I stretched out my leg, then reached forward and grasped the bar firmly with both hands. I waited for the trill of the flute, head pressed to my knee. As the music expanded, I opened from the closed posture. Turning to the right I extended up and back, reaching full extension when the tympani first echoed. Closing down again, I shifted the leg on the bar. I pressed while the woodwinds chatted. Opening again, this time to the right, I reached full extension as the drums boomed and the brass thundered. Then closing again and twice more through the cycle. The second movement is 6 minutes 28 seconds, but I was drenched when the last oboe finally faded away.

Grabbing a towel, I started toward the showers. My eye fell on the handcuffs I had worn three days earlier. Handcuffs are very bad to wear during orgasm. Jerking is involuntary, and bruising is inevitable. I had some from these cuffs, and Sean had not even pushed matters. Still, it made me think of using them in bed or possibly rope. All too easily came a vision of being spread out, hands and feet tied to the corners, blindfolded and waiting for that first touch. I shivered despite my workout. I needed a cold shower.

An hour later, sitting in comfortable baggy clothes, I watched my tapes for the third time. He had played me, no doubt. But I knew this business. Once I had gotten past the shock of the event, I could read my signs, just as he had. I could see the near frantic eagerness, the need to release. I could also see the glint of moisture in my pubic hair. That much I could fix. Grabbing some rubbing oil, I went back to the showers. First, I shaved off all but a thin strip of my curly hair. Then, using the coconut oil, I frigged myself into three explosive orgasms.

It was after10:00 PM when I got home to my computer:

Biofeedback vibrator

Programmable dildo

Time released locks

Self-bondage safety

I was up late.

Sean:

It was ironic that Cynthia coached discipline because my discipline was strained to the breaking point. Saturday is usually my day to catch up since the phone doesn’t ring. I forced myself to try it again and it worked for some definitions of work. Four hours made a visible dent in the stack of paper in my inbox and a smaller pile in Helen’s box.

In a mood of penance, I visited the vault. Everything was exactly as it needed to be, except the part about telling people it was here. Gah. I checked the log at the door. As I expected, several items were checked out this morning, so I was not the only one trying to work through frustration. Maybe we would get lucky. Maybe someone would read my mind and tell me what I wanted. Perhaps, I could hire Cynthia to do it.

After that thought, my day went much better. In retrospect, it is amusing how life-changing decisions can go unnoticed.

One of the advantages of living near good colleges is that they have good performance venues, into which you get good visiting orchestras. I had never heard the one playing tonight, but it had good reviews. Considering my escort, I could not have chosen a better program. It was a sampler of Russian composers.

I did not know Cynthia well, but I knew she had dance in her blood. Shostakovitch, Glinka, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov all cut their teeth on dance music, particularly Shostakovitch. Headlining was a Prokofiev piano concerto. There was a last-minute change from the stately first movement of the 2nd concerto to the bouncy and rushing 3rd. I might have to scrape her out of her chair.

George, as usual, had the car in pristine condition. I was using the Mercedes since we had a long drive. The Duesenberg is impressive and the BMW is flashy, but the Mercedes is both reliable and comfortable, and I wanted no chance of mechanical failure. The Porsche would have worked but I would have to drive myself. Wait a month, when we could put the top down on the 503. I chuckled as I got into the car. German cars, Russian composers, the promise of Italian food, and sure enough, George had stocked French wine. The evening was a tour of Europe.