Curriculum Vitae

Dear Reader: Been having some writer's block on the big project, so here's more Amelie to keep me writing. Enjoy!

I woke the next morning throbbing from head to toe from the intensity of the previous night. I ached, everywhere, with the delicious reminder of him. The sun peeked through the curtains with a little beam of silver light. I checked the bedside table and found professor Maretti plugged my phone in some time during the night. It was seven o'clock. I didn't remember him waking, but his side of the bed was vacant and cool to the touch. I stretched my weary muscles and bones and settled back into the comfort of the pillows and soft, satin sheets that felt so breezy against my skin with every movement I made.

I must have nodded off again for a moment. When I opened my eyes next it was hard to breathe. Oberon sat squarely on my chest, looking down into my face quizzically as though to ask why I remained in bed wasting the day. The cat must have weighed twenty pounds as huge as he was -- not fat, but naturally larger due to his breed. I gave him some scratches behind the ears, which he appeared to like, and then urged him off of me as I tried to sit up.

The bedroom looked vastly different in the light of day. A massive dresser stood against the inside wall abutted to the door, with an equally impressive mirror above it. I rose to kneel on the mattress and look myself over, front and back. There were still teeth marks between my shoulder blades, and some light bruising on my otherwise creamy butt cheeks, but otherwise I appeared none the worse for wear.

Everything in the room from the accent chairs to the little drum table under one window opposite the bed appeared to be ancient, worn, and refinished at least once. Still, he had good taste, and everything fit together nicely. Warm wood tones, dark iron fittings, plush Persian rugs. I found it hard to imagine he could afford all of this on a teacher's salary, even at Princeton.

I slid out of bed, loving the way the sheets felt against my womanliness as I did. It reminded me of the hotel, when he'd run that sheaf of silk between my legs, and made me smile, giddy at the thought. There was the problem of clothes, but that didn't appear to be a problem at all. On one accent chair beside the window sat my bag and, folded neatly on the table, a silk kimono in black and green with silver trim. A note in his studious handwriting sat atop it where I would see it -- "Pour vous, Mme. Belladonna" -- that thankfully didn't stretch my rudimentary high school French too much. A glass of water waited for me, as well, and a blister pack of two extra strength ibuprofen -- how sweet. I put the robe on, gladly took the pills, and started down the stairs towards the smell of food.

It was the first time, I realized as I entered the kitchen, I really had the chance to see him from the back, and I liked what I saw. He hummed some song, singing softly under his breath as he fiddled with a spatula and frying pan. He wore a pair of compression shorts that barely covered more than his backside but no shirt, which gave me a view of his well defined shoulders and triceps, and the backs of his calves looked like upside down hearts with how defined the muscles were. I slipped my arms around his waist and felt his abs twitch as I pressed myself up against his back. "Good morning, daddy," I said and kissed his back just between his shoulders.

"Good morning, sleepy head," he said without missing a beat. "Rest well?"

"Like the dead," I said and let my hands wander in opposite directions -- one up to his chest and the other down beneath the taught fabric of his shorts. "Thank you for the pain meds this morning. My whole body feels what we did last night." I cupped my hand over his limp member, or at least I tried. The feeling of him twitch made me want more, but I was honestly unsure of what I could handle in that moment.

He cleared his throat and moved my hand slowly back up to his belly. "There'll be time enough for that later," he said. "For now, I need to feed you something other than cock. Besides," he went on, turning to loop his free arm around me as he continued moving things about with the spatula -- french toast in one pan and sausage in another -- and let my hand slip to his side, "cooking and hard-ons rarely go well together."

"That's fair," I said and smiled up at him. "Wouldn't want to get a grease burn down there, I guess."

"Preferably not. Also, we need to eat if we're to get cleaned up and on the road in time to make it to the shop for our appointed time. You did bring a change of clothes, right?"

"Yes. Coffee?"

He gestured to a pot already made and waiting on the counter. "Mugs are right above," he added as he pulled a hot plate out of the oven and piled on the last of the finished food, of which he appeared to have made enough for four people. I poured myself a cup and, finding his mug, topped him off. "Merci," he said as he divvied up the french toast and sausage links onto two plates, a little heavier towards his side of things but not by much. I hoped he wouldn't be upset if I had leftovers. "Assiez-vous, sil-vous-plait." I had enough context to sit at the table where he gestured, next to him instead of across. "Did you study French in school?"

I nodded as I started cutting up my toast into little bite sized pieces. "A little. I liked German better."

"Makes sense," he said as he ate and then answered my wondering look. "The Old and Middle English texts you're so fond of reading are closer to German than they are to French, since they're pre-Norman invasion. So -- make sense. To me, anyway. I'm sort of surprised they didn't make you learn Italian, given your ancestry and, you know -- Catholic school."

"They tried," I said between mouthfuls, finding myself eating more than I thought I would. I took a sip of coffee -- that was not cheap coffee. "I still remember some of the swear words, but that's about it."

"Somehow, I doubt the staff at St. Andrew's taught you that part of the language."

I giggled and shook my head. "Definitely not. But, as you know, I am a curious kitten, so..." I speared an entire sausage link with my fork and bit at the tip diminutively. "Did you have to learn Italian? A name like Giovanni Maretti, I guess..."

"My parents were off-the-boat from Piedmont. I learned Italian, French, and German because I had to if I wanted to understand what was going on in the house. Sister Mary Francisco didn't have to teach me the swear words -- I taught them to the rest of class."

I laughed behind a hand to block the mouthful of french toast from falling out of me. "Bucking authority at a young age, I see?"

"Sort of," he said and quaffed a big gulp of coffee. "If you respect a figure in authority, following the rules comes naturally, as long as the rules make sense. I just seldom think many other people's rules make enough sense to internalize them."

"And yet, you have rules you expect others to follow."

"My rules make sense," he went on.

"Even the one about no emotional connections?"

He wiped his mouth and looked at me sidelong over the bridge of his nose. "Cameron told you about that, I see." I nodded and sipped my coffee. He settled his hands on the edge of the table. "If I am going to be your advisor or your teacher, I have to do that job dispassionately. That means I cannot let my opinions be colored by my feelings -- reason has to win the day. That doesn't mean I don't have feelings for my students -- I'm a teacher, first and foremost, and I make a personal investment in each of their success -- but if I go falling in love with every student I take under my wing, regardless how deeply under my wings they get, I risk compromising my integrity as a professor. Make sense?"

"Yes," I accepted between gulps of coffee.

"Besides, I try to make it a point not to get too attached to people or things anyway, especially students," he went on, almost done eating at that point. I asked him why, and he shrugged. "Everyone leaves in the end; one way or another."

"Sort of fatalistic, don't you think? I mean, I find it hard to believe someone who studies poetics and art so thoroughly doesn't see love as an important part of human connection."

"I believe love -- true love, anyway -- is like the Holy Grail in the Arthurian legends.," he said as he mopped up there rest of his plate with a final forkful of french toast.

"Something for poets to quibble over and probably doesn't exist?"

He shook his head. "Unable to be found by those vain enough to seek it or unworthy of its graces."

"So, you won't seek it because you think hunting for love will drive it away?" I, surprisingly, finished my plate -- full, but thankful for it.

Again, he shook his head. "I'm one of the unworthy." He wouldn't say any more on the matter that morning.

...

We showered together, one cleaning the other, and put the bench in the large standing stall to good use. Being still very sensitive from the night before, he let me take the lead and set the pace while he supported my weight. I liked riding him, especially with him being so strong, since I could lean back and really feel the head of his cock grinding into the soft, spongy flesh of my vaginal canal. I rubbed my clit in little circles as we went and came so easily that morning. I felt, for lack of a better word, high; like the world simply melted away when he fed my insatiable lust.

I dressed in skinny jeans with a tank top and wore my shoes from the night before. He showed me a quick trick to polish the scuff marks out of the leather and they were right as rain before we left the house in his SUV. He had a printed packet for me to go over and some reading material for me in the form of some online articles he sent via text message. My basis for understanding the life I was about to enter, he said, should be broader than a few fantasy books. And if I were to understand what he wanted in its entirety, I needed to come to intellectual terms with the ideas of power, submission, consent, and so on. "You and I started out in a way that is getting dangerously ahead of ourselves," he said. "That's my fault; not yours. You're inexperienced in this area, and it's my responsibility as your daddy to make certain you're informed and able to consent to what goes on between us. I want this," he made a wide circle with his finger as we entered the highway, "to be a safe place for you to play and experiment -- which means I need to make sure I understand you as well as I can and that you understand what it is you're getting into."

"So, we're going to play twenty questions?" I asked, which I understood to be reductive, but hoped he appreciated my levity.

"More like one hundred and twenty questions," he said and tapped the paper. I brought the pen I received the night before with me -- I hadn't used a fountain pen since I tried my hand at calligraphy ages ago, so this would be a learning experience. There were several sheets in the packet lined with different fetishes and a rating scale -- Free Use ("I don't need to ask your consent each time we engage in the activity; it will be presumed to be okay unless or until you say otherwise or use a predetermined safe-word (baseball)"), Scene Specific ("You're okay with it in certain contexts, but we would need to discuss it before engaging"), Soft Limit ("You're not okay with it at the moment, but could be convinced"), and Hard Limit ("Under no circumstances whatsoever; do not pass 'Go'; do not collection $200"). Each item had some space beneath it to write out my feelings, concerns, my experience level, and ask questions to be answered later.

"Define 'scene' for me?" I asked.

"Anything, really; the circumstances of play. We could plan an elaborate scene that involves several locations or one, or involves an entire day worth of activities." He gestured around. "Today's excursion could be a scene for us -- the whole daddy/little girl motif might be something you're not comfortable playing out during our shopping trip, and that is fine. Last night could have been a scene," he went on and I gave him a knowing look, "you could have objected to the way we played during the last part of dinner and I would have been obligated to stop."

I nodded my understanding and then elected to take the SAT method of answering the worksheet -- scanning through to answer the ones I knew for sure about. I put little hearts around the Free Use boxes for anal play, PIV ("What does PIV stand for?"; "Penis in Vagina."; "Oh, yes, please."), sensory play, bondage, oral sex ("Fuck my throat, daddy" I wrote under this one, with a little heart beside it), breath play, and spanking, just in case he needed to be completely clear how good I was with them; checked the Scene Specific box for audiences, public sex, hard impact play, and, after a moment, of thought, fisting (anal and vaginal, with the note that I would need extensive training on these). Degradation made the Soft Limit list along with a few other items I wasn't very sure on.

He must have found the form online, because he'd already checked Hard Limit under scat play and water sports. "Not my thing. No judgment on anyone else's kink, but I don't participate or intend to observe any of that. I have my limits, too." I agreed.

We talked through some of the list as he drove. "What kind of piercing are we talking about?" I asked on my second round through the worksheet.

"Different kinds -- safety pins that are temporary through the skin, usually along the spine or shoulders; suspension hooks," he went on, and I made a face. "Yeah, not my favorite, either, honestly. Then there are permanent piercings -- I could do your belly button, your septum, your clitoral hood."

"You've done those before?" I asked, more than a little surprised.

"When I was in undergrad, I made my fun money working part time as a piercing technician at a tattoo parlor. I still have all my medical grade kit from back in the day, and it's been used recently. I keep up on my certifications."

My mouth was wide open at this point as I tried and failed to see him, Dr. Dress Shirts, in a tattoo parlor putting a ring in some strange woman's clitoris. Or, worse yet, installing a Prince Albert on some bulky biker. I laughed out loud as that idea crossed my mind and then checked Scene Specific for that, with a note that I would only be okay with safety pins and permanent piercings. "Scarring?" I continued down the list.

"Use of surgical blades to cut the skin and then treat them in a specific way to leave patterns of scar tissue."

"How did that not make your immediate Hard Limit list?" I asked, shocked.

"You wouldn't be the first one I did it to, but I am very scene specific on that one. That was a rarer ask at the tattoo parlor; some people had exotic tastes. And there was one other person, but we don't need to get into that," he said.

"Hard pass," I said and checked the box. I asked questions when I had them. He had an encyclopedic knowledge of kinks that made me a little more turned on than I wanted to admit. I watched my fair share of internet pornography, but that list presented some rabbit holes I had not yet explored. Some of which I never would.

I signed my name at the end of the list, and then read through a section labeled "Discipline, Punishment, & Rewards" that read closer to a contract than anything else. It detailed specific situations where disciplinary actions would be taken, including dereliction of assigned responsibilities and tasks, issues surrounding academic integrity, unauthorized disclosure, and so on. There was even a section on the No Emotional Attachments statement -- an entire clause. "Did you have an actual lawyer write this?" I asked.

"Yes," he said. "One of my friends from the scene in New York City. He was in law school at John Jay while I worked on my post-graduate work at Columbia -- doesn't necessarily specialize in these sorts of things, but we had other intersecting interests. He helped me draft that part of the document to make sure it was as explicit as possible."

"That seems pretty serious," I said as I signed the statement and closed up the packet.

"It is. Informed consent is what separates a lot of what's covered in that list from abuse. Some people get scared off in this world because of bad experiences. They get a dominant that's too green and unwilling to learn or someone who doesn't care about consent, and it ruins what could and should have been a pleasurable experience for them." We came to some Saturday morning traffic outside the city that slowed us down and he turned to me with a serious expression. "If at any time any of this stops being okay for you, I need you to tell me. I like you, little girl," he said and it made me smile, "but I know your type -- that curious streak of yours is a mile wide. You take risks you maybe shouldn't some times, and if I don't corral you, you're bound to go off seeking adventure somewhere with someone who won't put the same care and effort into this whole thing."

"Well, then thank you for being so thorough, daddy," I said. "This place we're going shopping. You said it caters to a specific crowd. Will you be my daddy there?"

He nodded. "If you're comfortable with that. Angelique is an old friend and sort of a magnate in the New York scene," he said. "She will keep copies of that form for us as a sort of registration, and her boutique is exclusively by invitation only. We'll be safe to play there. Just be sure to call her 'Ma'am' unless she tells you otherwise, okay? It's an honorific you should use with dominants who aren't yours -- Ma'am for those presenting as female, Sir for those presenting as male, unless otherwise indicated. If you're unsure what to call someone, ask. No one will bite your head off for being cautious -- and if they do, you tell me, and I will put them in their place. But you only have one daddy."

I read through the articles quickly but carefully. Some were brief thumbnails on the different levels of dynamics. Some were more academic pieces on the nature of power and consent. Michel Foucault was mentioned a number of times; I made a mental note to read more on him later. "So we would be a Dominant/submissive archetype?" I asked and he nodded his agreement. "What level of submission?"

"Up to you," he said, "and up for negotiation as our exchange continues and grows. You may find you want to be dominated less -- like Cameron when she started seeing her fiancee seriously -- and relegate what we have to a more mentorship-based exchange. I am, so you know, okay with you seeing other people, as long as you are being safe and getting yourself checked out regularly. But if you decide to take on a serious coupling, we will immediately drop to a mentor-based relationship. Hard stop. Understand?"

I understood. I just didn't see myself spending much time on dating at that moment. What I had started with Professor Maretti was a fun learning experience -- and fun and learning were what I was after in college -- with someone who would actually focus me on my studies and not try to pull me away from them. I didn't really know how to discuss this, though, so I left it be for the moment. We talked about school for the rest of the trip -- which other classes I was taking, what classes I tested out of thanks to AP credits from high school, and how I planned out my strategy for completing credits in courses I actually wanted to take. He asked me about my daily routines, to which I gave vague answers. I did a lot of things in the morning, but on auto-pilot. He promised to set some time aside on Sunday to help me put together a schedule to keep me on task and allot time for self-care. I found his genuine interest endearing. I never really had boyfriends; I wondered if this was at all what it was like? Probably not from how some of my friends described it.