Free The Theory of Attraction by Delphine Dryden Page B

Sir,” I answered, keeping my head and shoulders down.
    “The next lesson is that you don’t get to have an orgasm unless I say so.”
    “As long as I do eventually get to have them, I’m cool with that, I guess. Um, Professor.”
    More rustling noises, and then a zipper. It sounded too long for pants, more like a bag being zipped up. Which turned out to be the case.
    Ivan appeared in front of me, his shoes right next to my forearm. “Kneel up, Camilla.”
    It felt strange to be upright, strange not to have my ladyparts on display. How quickly I’d adapted to that exposed position. I suspected that adaptation said things about me I hadn’t really considered before. Or at least not chosen to examine in detail.
    I was face-to-face with the bulge in Ivan’s pants, and although I had never been a tremendous fan of giving head, I found myself half hoping that was next on the menu. If I made him come, I supposed was my frustration-addled reasoning, he would return the favor. Instead, he just held out my capri pants and the shirt that had started us down this trail to insanity.
    “Get dressed. We can pick up where we left off at home.”
    No underwear, no bra. For about three seconds I looked for them, and even got as far as opening my mouth to ask where they were. Then I saw Ivan’s mouth twitch at the corner, invoking the dimple. And saw that he was now carrying his laptop bag, one hand resting possessively over the outer flap. He had confiscated my undies.
    “Get dressed.”
    * * *
     
    I had never been in Ivan’s bedroom before. It hadn’t really occurred to me, but it struck me as I stood in the doorway that he never invited anybody upstairs. Given that, I was happy not to see anything appalling, like severed heads of former lovers. Or half-eaten sandwiches lying around. Or a wall covered with news clippings, photos and deranged scribblings. The room was meticulously clean, like the rest of the apartment. Like everything in Ivan’s life, or so I had always thought.
    “When we’re in this room, you’ll be naked unless I tell you otherwise.” He nudged his shoes off his feet and picked them up to place them in his exceedingly tidy closet.
    We’d covered some basics in the car, the stuff that was necessary but annoying to have to talk about. Condoms would be used. I was not on the Pill. Neither of us was diseased. Neither of us had engaged in any high-risk behaviors like unprotected sex or sex with gay men. As for other stuff, I took Ivan at his word that he didn’t do anything hard-core, what he called edge play, or anything that might involve blood or other vectors for the transmission of disease. He always wore a condom, he said, and I believed it. He was too finicky and regimented about stuff not to be consistent with something that important. And I knew his stance on lying.
    But before my clothes came off again, I still needed a bit more information. Or maybe I could sense he was a little on edge, too, now that we were finally in his room. This seemed much more real, somehow, than the incident in the data lab.
    “How many other girls have you done this with?”
    He took a minute to answer. While he considered, he removed his shirt slowly, toying with the buttons as he ruminated. “It’s hard to say. I go to a club, usually, and I’ve had a lot of play partners there. About three I’ve played with more frequently over the past few years. But I’ve never brought any of them home with me. And you would be the first submissive I’ve trained for myself.”
    “I’m still not too sure about that,” I admitted. “That whole submissive thing.”
    “The label or the requirements?”
    His shirt came off, and my mind flew away for a moment. I really did wish I’d known much sooner what stellar shape Ivan was in. His abs were like something from a magazine.
    “Both, I guess? I don’t think of myself as submissive, and I don’t have rape fantasies. The whole alpha-male thing has never really had that