As He Preferred
by Nightguy

There were bars on the window. Thick steel bars, painted black and joined with a more delicate looking scrollwork. But bars all the same. Designed to keep out intruders, they also performed quite well the task of keeping someone in.

She lay quietly, looking through the bars at the world outside, half curled up on the small table set level with the sill.

Her skin glowed gold with sunlight, her nude body almost shining in the otherwise darkened room. Only the glint of chain was brighter, a silver trail leading from her neck and curling down beside her body before falling from the sun into the shadows. A chain that, like the bars, was both decorative and completely secure.

Her life was on the end of that chain, as it had been for several weeks now...as he preferred.

She sighed, and shifted position slightly on the hard wood surface, but didn't take her eyes from the window. She was watching the garden outside, a beautiful day. Blue sky, a gentle breeze, warm and inviting and full of life. She smiled as a red squirrel chirped in anger at a couple of starlings feeding at a bird feeder, and thought to herself how nice it would be to feel the open air again. It had been such a long time, but it was…as he preferred.

“Mary?” asked a voice behind her, and she turned to the door, a little startled to see him standing there looking at her. Her heart quickened a little at being discovered, a guilty conscious making her shake even though she knew she had done nothing wrong.

“Mary,” he said again, “have you done all your chores?”

“Yes, Sir,” she replied, not looking him in the face yet speaking the truth.

He took a step into the room, his eyes never leaving her, before ordering her to stand.

Mary slipped gracefully from the tabletop, uncurling in a way that always made his heart skip a beat, until she stood before him, hands at her side, face bowed down…as he preferred.

He moved slowly toward her, taking her in completely. And to Mary, it was like he was looking deep into her soul, seeing more than her nude body. She had no secrets from him, over time she had given up all she had to this man, and now her physical nakedness was nothing compared to the nakedness of her mind. He seemed to know everything, all that she thought, all that she felt, and the freedom of not being able to hide anything from this man was only now becoming something she could accept with grace rather than fear.

Yet there still was fear, that would never leave her. But it was an intoxicating fear that both aroused and amazed her. He scared her in ways she could never describe, yet a part of her couldn’t get enough of it. And he knew it too, never letting her lose that fear of him…as he preferred.

She trembled now as she stood before him, her mind desperately searching for some reason he might be displeased with her. But she had completed her list of chores, double checking everything. Arranging his clothes, cleaning the kitchen, tidying his den. Everything to his exact specifications, his home in order…as he preferred.

She wanted to please him, she had to please him. To not do so made him look at her in a different way, and she couldn’t bear that. Her fear grew more real when that happened. So she stood silent and waited, feeling nothing but the carpet under her bare feet, and the chain about her neck falling to the floor along one side of her body…and his eyes, looking right through her.

What could he see that even she couldn’t?

His breath on her bare shoulder…so close it made her close her eyes. Her breathing quickened slightly, her heart thumping so loud she knew she could hear it. Yet she didn’t dare move, for this was her position until he said otherwise…as he preferred.

“Mary,” he whispered, lips so close to her ear that they brushed ever so lightly as he spoke, sending shivers down her lovely body. “Mary, I love you.”

She let out a breath and turned to face him, knowing it was now okay to do so, her relief so strong it almost pushed her over, and she wrapped her arms around him as he bent low to kiss her.

For a long moment the couple shared their love for one another with this simple act of intimacy, before pulling apart and gazing into each other’s eyes.

“I love you too, my husband,” Mary said quietly, meaning it with all her heart.

He smiled, and such a smile it was, filled with warmth and love, before reaching for the long chain that encircled her neck and kept her from leaving their new home.

He pulled gently but firmly on the chain while watching her eyes, and when he saw the Mary he knew lay deep inside her, he bent low to whisper in her ear.

“I’ll never let you go, Mary.”

Mary closed her eyes, head bowed once more, before saying her last words of the day. “I hope you never do…Master.”

He smiled once more and released the chain before moving to the door.

Mary watched him leave the room, a smile on her face and in her newly wed heart. And she took the chain that had been locked about her neck since coming home from their wedding, and slipped back onto the table joyful in knowing that he loved her and that she loved him…as she preferred.

The End