You Can Always Say No Ch. 01

I have always considered myself a liberated woman. Rising through the business ranks to become a Vice-President at a major media consulting agency was just one of many goals I set, then met. I don't see any conflict between that and being a 'girly-girl'. I'm not ashamed to admit; I have used my raven-haired beauty and generous natural charms to advance my career, not to mention my private life. Earlier in my career, an aging 'sugar daddy' I had met through work left me a nice bequest in his will; not enough to retire and live lavishly on, but more than enough to provide a nice hedge against the future. The confidence I gained, knowing the conduct of my life wasn't enslaved to my next paycheck, allowed me to take chances and opportunities I might not ordinarily have done. I went to night school, got an MBA, then began to voice my ideas and opinions to my supervisors and others. My ideas were good ones and began to get noticed, then adopted. My star has been on the rise ever since.

At the time I met Alan Ames, he was a rising star in the avionics company that employed him. I had gotten jaded about relationships in general and wasn't looking for one at the time. Alan changed all that in an instant. Talk about love at first sight! Those liquid blue eyes and sandy blonde hair, pert nose and sensual lips had me before "hello". So what if, at five-foot-seven, he was my height? He didn't have a problem with me towering over him in heels and I didn't, either! Did somebody say shoes? Oh, God; they're like an instant orgasm for me – and Alan understood that implicitly. If he was something less than Mr. Olympia in the muscles department, he more than made up for it with one muscle in particular. As the months went by, the passion only got stronger. When he finally asked me to marry him, I didn't say yes; I said Hell, Yes!

I had never before met a man who had such an uncanny knack for gifting me with exactly the right clothing, lingerie and shoes, in exactly the right sizes and colors, which made me feel like the hottest sex bomb on Earth. Being out on his arm, dressed the way that made me feel like a million bucks, seeing all the other guys drool over me, made me ooze. Alan knew; I loved to show off, be a flirt. He wasn't threatened by my career success, or the 'games' I sometimes had to play for my job, even when we were together. He understood, better than any man I had ever known before: I came with him, I left with him; whatever happened in-between was strictly politics. Before Alan, I had never even considered having sex in public places. With Alan, there were times I just couldn't wait 'til we got home – and didn't.

About a month before our wedding, I discovered his taste in women's clothing came from wearing it, rather than just admiring it. The subject had come up often in the past, with casual, light-hearted references to 'sissies' and 'girly boys' chuckled at by both of us. The frequency with which these references kept cropping up aroused my suspicions. We were living together in my sumptuous four-bedroom home by then, so I did a little nosing around - okay, a lot of nosing around - in his private things, on his computer, even with the aid of a detective agency planting hidden surveillance cameras, until my suspicions were confirmed. My hubby-to-be possessed a small stash of his own feminine things and had been secretly dressing up in my lingerie, dresses and heels, even experimenting with my makeup.

I confronted him with my discovery one day, surprising him with a homemade DVD of one of his dress-up sessions for our private entertainment while we sat together on the sofa. The coup de grace was lining up the lingerie, stockings and heels he had worn that day on the coffee table before us. The deer-in-the-headlights expression on his face was the stuff Ambush Journalism and Reality TV thrives on. He broke down in tears, confessing his lifelong mania for feminine things and feelings, how he had tried to purge himself of such thoughts, but just couldn't do it. He begged my forgiveness for his deception over and over, certain I must think him a pervert.

He could have still have attempted some lame denial, despite the overwhelming weight of evidence arrayed before him. I have read of countless others who have done just that. He didn't. It must have taken a boatload of courage for him to 'come out' to me; perhaps the single most courageous act of his life to that point. We both knew other women might have bitten his head off and stormed out of his life, then ruined him out of spite. I am not 'other women'. Still I had a role to play.

"I don't know, Alan," I replied crossly. "I just don't know. Were you ever going to tell me if I hadn't found out for myself? Would you have just married me and kept this little perversion to yourself, leaving me to live in blissful ignorance while you carried on your secret life behind my back? That doesn't seem like love to me, Alan. That seems like you using me as your 'beard', to make people believe you lead a normal, respectable life. I feel like I have been cheated on – and the 'other woman' is you! What other little surprises are still out there for me to discover? How do I get back the trust I used to have in you?"

I was fingering my engagement ring as I spoke. I'm sure he was expecting me to whip it off my finger and toss it on top of that damning evidence – as I intended him to. He knelt before me, tears staining his cheeks.

"I love you with all my heart, Donna Lynn Peterson," he avowed. "I hid what I did for fear of losing you and no other reason. How do I admit to the woman who has become my reason for living, I am not the man she thought I was? Hiding it was wrong; I admit it. Never seeing those violet eyes, feeling your touch, or hearing the sound of your voice again is a horror I couldn't face.

"Now it's up to you. I'm willing to fight for you to prove my love. You could kick me to the curb right now, but I won't go willingly. If I need to do 'penance' for my sins, I will – within reason."

"Within reason," I repeated. "Within reason? I caught you red-handed in a lie, even if it was one of omission. I have discovered a side of you which fundamentally changes the nature of our relationship, less than a month before we walk down the aisle. I will lose a ton of money if I cancel the wedding now…"

"We will lose a ton of money," he corrected.

"Don't talk to me about we," I spat. "Why should I care about what you have to lose? You obviously didn't care about me! By rights, I should already be ordering you out of my house. You say you love me with all your heart and are willing to prove it – and then you have the gall to set conditions?"

"That isn't what I meant," he growled.

"That is the way it sounded!" I retorted shrilly.

"Hysteria doesn't become you, Donna," he intoned solemnly.

"Lecturing me about what is or is not becoming doesn't become you, you little faggot!" I shrieked.

Something in his face changed; the cast of his eyes, the set of his jaw. He rose to his feet, turned, and headed for the bedroom.

"Don't you walk away from me!" I barked. "Where do you think you are going?"

"To pack," he replied quietly.

"So, Mister 'I will fight for your love'," I chided, "Mister 'I won't go willingly'; those were all lies, too?"

"We've had our fight," he responded with maddening calm. "Now I'm leaving."

I ran towards him, planting myself between him and the door.

"Give me one good reason," I commanded.

"For?" he asked.

"Allowing you to stay," I finished.

He stared at me as though I were from another planet.

"I think 'you little faggot' is one good reason to leave," he observed. "If you need another, I told you I loved you with all my heart. You didn't say that back."

"I could ruin your life," I hissed.

He pondered that a moment, looking towards the ceiling, then re-focused his eyes directly on me.

"Yes, you could," he admitted truthfully, "just like any other stupid…"

He finished the sentence with the "C" word. Alan never, ever uses the "C" word in my presence, much less call me one. He knows the "C" word just… makes… me… go… berserk….

The slap was reflexive. I was stunned when he intercepted my wrist with his hand before the blow landed. He just held it there, staring into my eyes impassively as I struggled to break free. He made his point; I ceased struggling.

"Are we calmer now?" he questioned evenly, then released my wrist. "I could knock you into next week - and lose my freedom. I could sit here while you call me every petty, mean-spirited name your vanity can devise – and lose my self-respect. Since we seem to be stuck on stupid over the 'real man' thing, I choose to do what a real man would; walk away, allow each other to recover our respective dignity, and move on. Now, if you will excuse me…."

He walked around me, down the hallway towards the Master Bedroom. After a minute or two, I could hear faint sounds of drawers opening and closing. Is there anything more maddening than a man who won't sit still for a perfectly good argument?

This wasn't the way it was supposed to turn out. The fact was, I wasn't anywhere near as upset about Alan's cross-dressing as I let on. Oh, I was stunned when I first found out, but that was for a different reason. What I hadn't told Alan was, along with my discovery of his cross-dressing, I had also found a wealth of downloaded stories from the Internet on his laptop computer. They were ripe with themes not only of cross-dressing, but female supremacy, forced feminization, humiliation and cuckoldry. I read one story, then another, then another, and still another, until I had devoured them all. I then followed the links from his History file to the source web sites and read more. I learned a lot about my lover, his fetish – and myself.

For a long time, I had had a fantasy; to be the dominant partner in a relationship. I had had such a relationship, with strong BDSM overtones, with a female roommate in college. I had seduced her, first into the relationship itself, then into becoming my sweet submissive slave. I can still picture Deidre kneeling on our coffee table, forehead resting on the smooth wooden surface. Her wrists were cuffed together behind her thighs; her ankles were similarly secured. I adored the thrill of strutting confidently around her in extreme high-heeled pumps or boots, dressed in leather (sometimes latex), makeup flawlessly applied, not a hair out of place, a long, nasty riding crop in my gloved right hand, flicking menacingly against my left palm. Her naked, upturned butt had been so enticing, the scene so sexually-charged, my pussy had wept its juices freely.

I had ever-so-gently smoothed my leather-clad left hand across the exposed flesh. The whisper of butter-soft hide against her skin, a prelude to what was to follow, caused her to tremble uncontrollably.

"So, My Love," I had purred, "are you ready to accept this token of my affection?"

"Are you offering me a choice, Mistress?" she had replied.

"Choice?" I echoed, the corners of my crimson lips twitching into a bemused smile.

Thwack!

"Of course, My Love," I had continued. "You can always say 'no'…."

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

"… I'll just have to come up with stronger methods of persuasion."

She had submitted, of course. She always did. Deidre was a natural-born submissive; I had sensed that in her when we first met. Still, the threat of stronger 'persuasion' had not been an idle one. Her tender flesh had tasted the thin, split-ended bamboo cane before. She knew it to be infinitely worse than the crop.

It had been immensely satisfying – for a time. I came to realize there was some indescribable… something missing from the mix. I eventually broke the relationship off and it hadn't ended well. Other, similar trysts ended even faster and more disastrously. I had even attempted a few, more traditional relationships with men, sans bondage, in which I became the 'little woman'. Dirty clothes strewn about. Trash and empty beer bottles littering every surface and underfoot. Whiskers in the sink. Monday Night Football – every day of the week. That had been unspeakably bad. After that, I had enjoyed flirting with men and occasionally fucking them to get what I wanted – but a relationship with one? Uh-uh. Then, Alan had come into my life….

As I read Alan's stories about strong women who took control of their relationships and transformed their men into 'girly-boys', my clit throbbed with desire. Those stories were so hot! If I had been honest with myself, I would have admitted that was why I had been so strongly attracted to a smallish, slender, surreally-pretty boy, instead of a more manly man. When I inserted myself and Alan into one or another of those stories, I went through a lot of batteries in my vibrating dildo.

I had done everything right. I had confronted my sissy with his 'perversion', insulted him, belittled him, humiliated him, then threatened him with banishment from my life and exposure to his family and peers, just like in the stories. He was supposed to cave in, offer his throat to me. I would then mouth his offered flesh like the benevolent alpha female and take possession of what was rightfully mine. That hadn't happened. Instead, he had stood up to me, both figuratively and literally, and walked away. In desperation, sensing my control of the situation slipping away, I had resorted to petty name-calling, then base physical abuse. At each turn, he had called me on my boorish behavior, exposing it for what it was. I remembered one previous relationship where my then-boyfriend battered me. He is still in prison. I remember what the judge had told him at his sentencing: Violence is the last resort of the incompetent. And I was a Vice-President? I hadn't just played my hand badly; I may have burned down the casino.

What was it Alan had said about recovering our dignity? He had it in spades. Here was a guy with a strong submissive streak (I longed to find out how strong), but hadn't lost sight of the fact he was still a human being, his own person. He wanted me, wanted to be with me. I knew, with every fiber of my being, he wanted the kind of relationship we had both read about in those stories. I wanted to be the dominant partner in that relationship, wanted Alan to submit to me - wanted it so badly, I could taste it.

There was a difference this time; within reason. I think I understood it, at last. It's about choice; real choice. I had mouthed the words to Deidre, and others, but it hadn't been true. They submitted, period, end of discussion – and I had tired of them. I couldn't live with a doormat, anymore than I could be one. For the first time in my life, I faced the prospect of a relationship of equals, where Alan would submit to me, not because he had to, but because he chose to. That is so hot!

This would be terra incognita for me. Was I up to the task? Perhaps what I needed to do was have Alan give me lessons on how to be a real man. I had a pretty good idea where to start….

He exited his closet and approached the open suitcase, a stack of crisp, white dress shirts in his hands; I stood in his way. Without a word, I gently removed the stack from his hand and tossed it on the bed, then took his hands in mine and sat down, pulling him down with me.

"Hi," I began, "I'm Donna. I do love you with all my heart and you are not a little faggot."

"Hi Donna," he responded. "I'm Alan. I still love you with all my heart and you… nah, we aren't going there again."

I laughed. He did, too. It felt really good, really right, as it always had.

"So," he continued earnestly. "Where do we go from here?"

"You," I responded, kissing him softly on the lips, "aren't going anywhere…"

I released one hand and reached behind me on the bed. Picking up the stack of folded lingerie, stockings and heels, I placed it in his hands.

"… except to the bathroom – to change."

He looked at me questioningly.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

I could already feel the wetness soaking my panties.

"Oh, yeah, I murmured emphatically. "I have never been more sure of anything in my life."

"What if I don't want to?" he queried.

"You could always say 'no'," I suggested, flicking my eyes towards the bedroom door – and freedom, "but I would just have to come up with stronger methods of… persuasion."

My hand gently caressed his inner thigh. I could already feel the stirrings of his stiffness.

"What's in it for me if I say 'yes'?" he continued.

That one was easy.

"Me," I breathed softly, bussing his nose, then cheeks, "us, this."

"What's in it for you?" he demanded playfully.

That one was easiest of all.

"Silly girl," I chided, devouring his mouth with my own.

***

We were married in a beautiful church ceremony with our families and friends in attendance. At my direction, the groom wore white - a lacy padded bra with silicone enhancers, camisole, garter belt and stockings - under his tuxedo. The cut of the tux was such that only I could tell his femmy finery was there – and believe me, I checked at the altar to make certain it was. If it hadn't been…