“Was that a snort, Abigail?” Nathaniel asked.
It was probably a rhetorical question. After all, it really didn’t sound like anything other than a snort and even if I tried to pass it off as something else, there were three men other than Nathaniel in the room and they’d certainly heard it.
“Yes, Master. It was a snort.”
“Would you care to explain why you snorted?”
“Well, I was sitting here on the couch, trying to be good and not let the glasses fall and after a while I just got bored. Then I tried to imagine what I’d write on the blog about the last hour. I imagined an entry I would call, I was a coffee table. Probably wouldn’t get a lot of hits. Seriously, what’s hot about a coffee table?”
“I assume you’re getting to the part soon where you snorted instead of all this babbling?” he said.
“Right, the snort. It was just hearing you say it was time for the fun to begin. I thought, ‘Hell, anything would be more fun than this.’ ”
“Is that all?”
“I may have also thought, ‘About damn time.’ ”
“I see,” he said. “So I was boring you?”
At that moment I realized I’d stepped in over my head. “You weren’t boring me, Master. It was the coffee table part.”
“Nice of you to finally call me ‘Master.’ Now let me get this straight: you snorted not because I was boring you, but because what I chose to have you do was boring?”
“And it’d make a bad blog post,” I hastened to add so he’d see it wasn’t all me.
“Right. No one wants to read about a coffee table.”
In the silence that followed, the air shifted around me as he came to stand before me. He put one hand lightly around my neck. Nothing restrictive; it was just there.
His voice was cold. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I don’t give a fuck what would make a good blog post. I do what I do because I want to, not because of what makes your readers happy. The day our relationship becomes all about your blog is the day the blog and the job stop. Understand?”
I cringed at the way it sounded coming from his point of view. My heart pounded in my throat. He probably felt it. “Yes, Master.”
“As for being bored, I thought you’d already learned this lesson, but apparently you haven’t.” He moved his hand. “Would you gentlemen be so kind as to tell my submissive what we were discussing over drinks?”
The unknown man coughed. “I mentioned how lovely you were sitting on the couch. The light from the window crossing your body right below your breasts. Would be a gorgeous photo.”
“I told your Master how impressed I was that you remained so still,” Jeff said. “Then I suggested he fondle those perky tits to see if he could make you drop a glass.”
That left the man Nathaniel called S. “I was a bit more explicit than these two,” he said. “I told your Master he should fuck you while you struggled to keep the glasses in place. See if you can be still with a cock plundering your pussy.”
“Thank you,” Nathaniel said. “Were any of you bored at all watching Abigail on the couch?”
They all three replied negatively.
“So you see, Abigail,” Nathaniel said. “While you may have been bored acting like our table, we were having a drink and enjoying the sight of you. It pleases me to show you off and if I decide to have you be a coffee table for everyone to enjoy, what should your mind-set be?”
“That I am here for my Master’s pleasure.”
“Yes, and sometimes that doesn’t mean pleasure for you. Sometimes it means being a coffee table. But you do it anyway because that is what pleases me.”
“I understand, Master.”
“That might well be the case, but just to make sure, no release for you today.”
He took his glass from my leg. “Take the other one and offer it to S.”
I held up the glass, and S came over and took it. “Too damn bad about no releasing. I was looking forward to watching you come. Maybe another time.”
I no longer felt bored. I felt disappointed. Disappointed in myself for not having the right mind frame. For putting my blog first.
“On your knees in the middle of the room,” Nathaniel said. “I’ll direct you verbally and I want you to crawl.”
Ever so slowly, I made it down off the couch and following Nathaniel’s commands made it to where he wanted me. It had to be one of the most ungraceful crawls ever, but I did it because he’d asked me to. Once in place, I knelt with my head down.