Free Interview with a Master by Jason Luke Page A

important her trust and her physical and emotional needs are to his pleasure.”
    I looked up hopefully. “Did that make sense?”
    Leticia shook her head uncertainly. “I… I don’t know. Um… can I read it back over?”
    I smiled. “Do that,” I said. “I need another drink.”
    I sank back into the old leather chair and splashed whisky into the bottom of my glass. From the corner of my eye I watched Leticia with covert pleasure until suddenly she looked up from her notebook and swept a loose tendril of hair from her face with her fingers. She tucked the errant lock behind her ear and nodded.
    “ I think it makes sense. It’s a lot more ‘normal’ than I expected. I had the impression a BDSM lifestyle was all about extremes. You know… ropes and whips and leather…” her voice trailed off into silence.
    “It can be,” I agreed. “And for some people it is exactly as you imagine. ”
    I sat forward and propped my elbows on the desktop. I studied her face carefully. “Leticia, there are no rules – apart from the safe, sane and consensual requirements I have already mentioned. If those conditions are met, then a BDSM relationship can be as extreme or as borderline-vanilla as the people involved want it to be.”
    She sat back and was thoughtful for a moment. She seemed suddenly reluctant.
    “You can ask me anything,” I prompted her gently.
    She nodded. “I was just thinking back over what you said about BDSM relationships. It sounds all very nice, but it’s exactly opposite to what took place between you and Claire. The way you treated her once you found out about her husband was the exact opposite of what you now advocate.”
    “You’re right,” I said honestly. “That’s because I was a young arrogant fool, obsessed with my own pleasure and my thirst for revenge. I was the poster-boy for dangerous selfish stupidity.”
    “Oh,” she said softly. “I… I didn’t mean…”
    “There is nothing to apologize for,” I said bluntly. “Jonah Noble at age nineteen was a self-obsessed bastard. Jonah Noble at age twenty-five was still learning to understand women, and certainly not a worthy Master. It’s only now – fifteen years after I first met Claire – that I consider myself a decent man.”
    “You’re very hard on yourself,” Leticia made a face.
    “I’m no saint, and I’m not trying to become on e,” I confessed. “I’ve spent a lot of years learning about myself and learning about the women I have shared my life with. And it’s only now – after a lot of mistakes – that I’ve finally worked out who I am.”
    There was a distant rumble of sound in the night and then a spray of rain against the window. A gust of wind rattled the glass in its casement. I got out of the chair and twitched the curtains aside. The night was black, seeming to match my own sullen mood.
    I watched raindrops spatter and dribble down the windowpane and then turned suddenly. “I want to know your secret fantasy,” I said. “I want you to tell me the sexy things you lay awake at night thinking about.”
    Leticia glanced up at me in dismayed alarm, and then lowered her eyes shyly. “I don’t have a fantasy.”
    “You’re lying,” I said. “Every woman has a fantasy.”
    Leticia stared at me for fully ten seconds, and then a transformation slowly came over her. She got to her feet, set the notebook carefully down on the chair, and walked to the office door. She turned back, the space of the floor separating us, and she hugged her own shoulders as if suddenly she was cold.
    “I… I used to wonder what it would be like to be blindfolded by a man,” she said. She looked across to where I stood and her gaze was solemn and enigmatic.
    “That’s interesting,” I said carefully. “Tell me more.”
    “What is there to tell?”
    “I want to know exactly what happens in your fantasy, and how it makes you feel.”
    Leticia narrowed her eyes and chewed at her lip like she was making some kind of