Discipline and Punish Pt. 02

"For me," Benjamin murmured. "I want you to come for me."

For you, Benjamin, Mary Jane thought. She gave herself up to the rush of sensation. It shook her, reverberating through her muscles. He released her mouth, and she gasped the only words that seemed appropriate. "Thank you, Benjamin!"

In answer, he grinned at her and gave her a good-natured slap on the thigh. "Can I take a picture of you like this?"

She smiled, dazed from the orgasm. "Yes, Benjamin!"

He took a tissue from the tissue box and wiped his hand clean, then opened a drawer in his desk and took out a small polaroid camera. "Smile." She smiled up at the camera, eyes still wide and legs still shuddering. The camera clicked and lit up her body for a split second with its flash. He set it aside to develop. Then he returned to her, leaned over, and planted a long, lingering kiss on her lips.

"Good job thanking me for your orgasm," he commented. "Thanking me is the appropriate response," he informed her. "Because from now on, you will not come without my permission. Do you understand?" His tone was lighthearted, but firm.

"I...yes." Mary Jane considered this. "What if you aren't around?"

"Not unless I've given you my permission earlier."

She nodded, taking the information in. "Yes, Benjamin."

"This week," he informed her, "you do not have my permission to come when I am not with you. You will practice patience and wait for me."

"Yes, Benjamin."

He turned away from her and walked toward the coat rack next to the door. "Get up," he said, "and dry yourself off." She did so. When she had finished, she stood in front of the desk, waiting for him to turn back to her. He was rifling through the rack until he found something in a dry cleaners' bag. He handed it to her. "Put this on."

"Yes, Benjamin." She took the garment out of the bag. It was a straight cut dress, high necked, knee length, and black. She frowned. Her usual preference was for dresses that showed off her waist and her bust. This dress would do the exact opposite. It would highlight those features she did not wish to highlight while covering over those features that she usually liked to show off. And the color! She liked warm, bright, inviting colors. She hardly ever wore black.

"What do you think?" He was looking at her curiously.

"It's..." she tried to think of something nice to say. "Well, it's not my usual style."

"I know," he said.

She looked up at him. "You do?"

"That's why I bought it." He put a hand around her waist. "Remember our conversation earlier? About how you discipline yourself? What you wear, how you comport yourself?"

"Yes, of course."

"And I said, I want you to follow my discipline, not anyone else's."

Mary Jane understood. Benjamin wanted to dress her body in a way that she would never dress herself, to underscore that he, not she, was the superior judge of its beauty. To impress on her, perhaps, that the only eyes she needed to please were his. "You'd like to catch me off guard," she said.

He winked. "Put it on. I want you to go back to work wearing it."

"Can I have my bra and underwear?"

He stooped down to the floor and retrieved the garments from the pile. He handed her the underwear, but kept the brassiere. "The underwear yes. As for this...I think I'll hold onto it." His face was mischievous. "See how you fare without it for a day." She breathed in sharply. He noticed her concern. "Lots of women aren't wearing bras these days," he observed.

"Yes, but not me," she countered. "I'm not that kind of woman."

"Will you pretend, for me, then?" He glanced down at the dress, then said quickly, "It's okay if you say no. But I think if you let yourself say yes, you'll like it. That's my educated guess."

She looked at him steadily in the eyes. He reached out a hand and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. It was this small gesture of tenderness more than anything else that undid her. She felt the muscles in her face relax. She could see it in his eyes, feel it in his fingers: that he was taking care of her, that he cared about her. "I..." she took a deep breath in. "Alright then." She smiled up at him. "For you." She slipped on her underwear, then slipped the dress over her shoulders. It fell over her body in an unfamiliar way, loose around the waist but tight around the bust and hips. She looked down and was embarrassed by the way it made her stomach stick out, how the lack of a bra betrayed the slight unevenness in the size of her breasts, how her nipples showed through it.

He took a firm grasp on her hair once more and tilted her head to look up at him. "I like it," he said.

"Yes, Benjamin," she gasped.

"It pleases me," he went on. "Everything about it. How you look in it. How unfamiliar and uncomfortable it is for you. That you're wearing it for me." He let go of her hair and wrapped his arms around her in a tight embrace. His chin rested on the top of her head.

He retrieved the rest of her clothes and helped her put them away in her purse. "Can I walk you back to the library?"

"Yes, Benjamin!"

The two meandered across the campus toward the library together. Mary Jane, who prided herself on her deftness at the art of conversation, found that for once she was not sure what to say. What could she have to say to someone who only moments before had plumbed the depths of her innermost fantasies? What topics of conversation were appropriate?

"You're really smart, you know." Benjamin interrupted her thoughts.

"So I've been told." It had been said so often that Mary Jane felt somewhat immune to the compliment. "I'm every smart boy's ideal girl next door."

"Have you thought about applying to grad school?"

Mary Jane adjusted her new dress and tried to come up with the right response. Yes, of course she had thought about it. She had fantasized about it often. But it was not as easy a decision for her as it was for Benjamin. She had the expectations of her parents to consider, not to mention her desire to one day have a family of her own. Did he understand that the terms under which she negotiated her future were different than his? She sighed. "Yes, I've thought about it."

"And?"

"And what do you want me to say? That I have this burning passion inside me to live the life of the mind? That all I need is a man like you to tell me how smart I am?"

He gave an embarrassed chuckle. "I'm not gonna say the thought didn't cross my mind."

"I don't need a knight in shining armor."

He grinned and poked her shoulder. "No, what you need apparently is a wicked man to lock you up in a tower," he joked. "Or a French professor to correct your grammar."

She laughed, then the laugh faded into a despairing smile. "I'm not...I'm not hard enough for grad school. I care about what people think of me. I want them to like me. It's my weakness."

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and said with conviction, "It's not a weakness."

She blushed as she felt his fingers squeeze her upper arm. "You don't think so?"

"It's a different kind of strength." His voice was steady, certain. She got the impression that he was not only reassuring her but expressing a real conviction.

"Call me behind the times," she lamented. "My roommate certainly does. But I don't want too much conflict in my life. I want to be liked. I want to be loved. That's more important to me than getting some tenure track position."

They had reached the library. He stopped walking and looked her in the eyes. "I'd still like you. If you were in grad school." He gave a small laugh. "Even if it turned out you were smarter than me!"

She gave him a wry smile. "Men always say that."

"Well I mean it. And I'd like to ask you to believe me." His eyes flashed. "No, actually. I'd like to order you to believe me. Say 'Yes, Benjamin.'"

Mary Jane ducked her head. "Yes, Benjamin. I'll try." He embraced her once again and kissed her on the forehead. She gave him one final squeeze. "I'll be late for my shift if I don't go back now."

"Until next time?"

"Until next time!"