Chapter Nine: Part Four
Now Kate’s powers of speech deserted her. A man who already felt to her like a lifelong crush just set everything out in the open, and offered her simple acceptance. Her mouth opened and closed like that of a landed fish.
Rick held his silence, waiting to let her finish her thoughts. Why the hell are you all so bloody perfect, and what the hell do I do now? Kate heard Carrie’s question again. First response, Katie. What do you want in your bones?
She grabbed his shoulders firmly, squaring him to her, stood on her tiptoes and wrapped her arms around him, feeling the wide, muscular hardness of his back and shoulders. After a moment, she felt Rick hug back, hunching slightly to tuck her head under his chin. They started giggling again, still locked in their embrace. The kiss that followed was natural and spontaneous. It was a very long kiss.
‘Damn it! Damn you. Dammit!’ Kate cursed at Rick, pounding on his chest with her fists. ‘Do you have any idea how many times I promised myself I would not do that? You just smile, and all my good intentions evaporate.’
Laughing happily at her faux rage, Rick asked her, ‘Would you take it back?’
She stopped and looked at him. ‘No. I have wanted to kiss you pretty much from the first moment I saw you.’ She pounded her fists playfully onto his chest, feeling again how wonderfully solid he was. ‘You went and ruined every single good intention. I feel like you have already ravished my mind, and I loved every second of it. I am going to step back now and we are going to have lunch.’
They sat back on opposite sides of the table and started sharing their lunch in total silence, broken by long looks and an occasional giggle. Something clicked and Kate asked, ‘You said, ‘we’ before. Who is, ‘we’?’
‘Dominique and Natalie, they trained me.’ Seeing the shocked expression on Kate’s face, he added quickly, ‘Nothing between us!’
‘Go on,’ Kate said, failing miserably at trying not to think about the two men with one woman.
‘During a sweat lodge, I was nineteen or so, we were talking about things and the subject came up. The women have their own lodge. We rarely combine sexes for sweat lodges, it keeps the egos out.’
Understanding, Kate nodded, encouraging him to continue as she nibbled a piece of toasted corn bread after dipping it into a delicious and spicy vegetable dip.
‘We were talking about a recent heartache of mine. Dom recognised what was happening with me. He talked about how he felt about things before and described his own sexual dominance kink. I immediately recognised what he was saying. Edison and Dad were there, JC too, although he was too young to catch what was being said. Dom suggested that I train with him and Natalie, and we literally held classes. Sometimes it was just Dom talking to me about things, sometimes just Natalie and me, doing visualisation exercises and learning NLP basics. Larissa was being helped by Natalie to explore her submissive kink, so later on we learned together.’
The question on Kate’s face made the response natural. ‘Nat is a switch. That means she likes both dominant and submissive roles. Dom is the only male I have known her to be submissive to. To answer your next question, she is openly bisexual.’
‘Anyhow,’ he said, plunging on after a slight pause to gather his next thoughts, ‘our first session was very much like the one you vicariously experienced today, watching only, except with breaks for question and answer sessions. Kate, I trust Dom and Nat. I trust everyone here on Alegria without reservation. It was a case of Dom and Nat having the skill set to teach me how to constructively express my innate nature. There was never anything sexual during the training, if that helps?’
‘How? How could there not be anything sexual?’
‘For us, I mean. The men. Dom and Nat wanted me to focus on the lessons.’
‘Tough!’
‘Very. By the way, I’m glad you didn’t say, hard.’ They both laughed as they browsed on their lunch. Although their topic of conversation was unorthodox for two people who had only just met, neither Kate nor Rick felt like they’d just met. They were both pleasantly surprised at the level of intimate comfort that they shared.
‘Kate, I was just a young man, I thought I had a good handle on sex and masculinity, but damn, I was a babe in the woods. Natalie taught me about the D-s experience from both sides. Dom is a man we all look up to, and he is still a hero to me, as are all of the men on the Big End, even JC. I dare say that he would say the same. Dom taught me about myself. He helped me to understand and re-frame my concepts of manhood, of chivalry, and a lot about my own self-image and personal code of conduct.
‘All the self-help weekends keep telling men to explore their feminine aspects; God, Kate, that is what women are for. Dom and Nat showed me how to constructively explore and express the higher octaves of my masculinity. Both of them taught me about a woman’s body. It was training that could not have happened without the love and trust we share, and I am profoundly grateful to them for it. You know, in a strange way, you could not have had a better introduction to these concepts than your experience this morning.’
‘I kind of understand, but I still need to get my head around all of it.’
‘Of course.’ Rick thought for a moment and added, ‘Kate, I would be greatly surprised if all this was something you could process immediately, but it is like the scene you witnessed earlier today. Until you experienced the reality of it, it was far beyond where you imagined your boundaries to be. Their teaching me was a pragmatic solution to an otherwise challenging situation. That our love and trust was strong enough to discuss it openly is proof of that love and trust.’
They sat quietly for a few moments before his eyes examined her intently. ‘Kate, please answer only if you want to… did you climax while you were watching them or imagining yourself receiving what you saw, afterwards?’
Oh shit! Shit, shit, triple shit! Kate’s mind raced. Red light, dammit! A realisation hit her. I thought ‘red light’. Okay, honesty it is.
‘Yes – to the second one, and it was huge. Rick, you are taking me places I don’t go with anyone. Well, I didn’t, until now. I’m…’
‘We should stop this line of discussion then.’
‘For now? Yellow only?’ Kate added. She needed to let him know the subject wasn’t closed, but that she had experienced about all the surprises and revelations she could handle for one morning.
Rick’s smile melted her again as he spread a little more double-brie on a cracker and added a grape before offering it to her. A warm breeze wafted in through the wide open sliding doors, and he looked at her brightly. ‘How about a swim? I need the exertion, and I dare say you could use some physical release as well?’ He was rewarded by a very cheeky smile as she acknowledged his obvious double meaning.
‘You could be right, Rick. Somehow, I just know that there is going to be a costume that fits me perfectly in that wardrobe, isn’t there?’
‘You know,’ he said, ‘there just might be. Personally, I hope there is only a very tiny one in there. Shall we? If you are finished with the food, of course.’
‘I am, thank you. Do you mind if I run back there myself and meet you back here in twenty or thirty minutes?’
‘I shall count the seconds,’ he said, flourishing a ridiculously deep bow. ‘Why don’t you head off now, I am quite happy to clear this little bit away. There will be towels at the beach and there is sunscreen in the bathroom cabinet.’
‘Thank you, Rick,’ Kate said, recognising and appreciating his chivalrous respect. Bouncing out the door, Kate almost skipped up the ring road and into her cabin. Dom saw the spring in her step from the overgrown entrance of his cabin, but Kate was too distracted to notice him.
He turned his attention back to a small falcon circling over the trees above him. He flung a small piece of meat high into the air and the raptor dived, easily catching his offering as it reached the top of its arc. He smiled, looking back towards where he’d seen Kate, silently wishing them well.
~~~~~