Masters of restraint, p.1
Masters of Restraint, page 1
Masters of Restraint
Her Masters Book 1
Ines Johnson
Those Johnson Girls
Copyright © 2021, Ines Johnson. All rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the author.
Edited by Kasi Alexander
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition September 2021
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue
Also by Ines Johnson
Chapter One
"We just got slammed."
With a flat palm, I slammed down the top of my computer screen. But not before a last sigh of pleasure escaped the speakers. Luckily, my earbuds were in, and I was the only person who could hear the orgasmic sigh of Little Morningstar as Master Xfinity tied her arms tightly behind her back in an intricate pattern of knots which she couldn't escape.
My heart raced to think that I'd been caught at work looking at porn. Though to call shibari porn was a mistake. The beautiful art of tying people up in knots was, well, art.
It was meditative to watch a human of free will give over complete control of their body. The world fell away as they closed their eyes and got lost in the rigger's ties and the rope. Freedom was all over their relaxed features. The only decision they had to make was whether to sigh or moan their ecstasy.
It looked like perfect heaven.
But, yeah, it became porn when Master Xfinity pulled his cock out and shoved it into Little Morningstar's dripping wet cunt. He'd taken over an hour to tie her up in their demonstration. She and I both were squirming with anticipation for what was to come.
"Brookings Corp is making ridiculous demands in this business deal."
I tugged the earbuds out of my ears and then blinked a couple of times before my boss's face came into view. Lester Porter the Third was staring down at the clenched golf ball in his hands, squeezing it as though it was a stress ball that would never give.
I shouldn't have worried about his attention span. He wasn't looking at me or my computer. Which meant he hadn't seen me looking at a man tying up a woman and then slamming into her when the knots and her submission made him hard.
Good. This was good.
But then I replayed his words in my head. Brookings. Ridiculous demands. Business deal.
What was ridiculous was that Lester thought Brookings was making a deal with him. They weren't. What they were doing was technically a hostile takeover of Lester's family business. Actual hostile takeovers happened when there was resistance from the owners whose business was being acquired. Lester was oblivious as to what was happening.
"We need to get something called Accounts Receivable over to them before the end of the day."
See, whenever Lester said we, what he really meant was me. He never got slammed. Things never got hard for him. Because he would push everything off to me to handle.
Which was fine. The only reason this business had succeeded over the last two years and acquired the attention of a billion dollar company like Brookings was because I had shepherded said accounts into receiving profit. Meanwhile, Lester took off early each afternoon to go play a round of golf.
"Don't worry," I said, pulling the files to me and placing them over my closed laptop. "I've already taken care of it."
"You have?" Lester stopped pacing, bringing his club to his heart as though there was hope he'd make his tee time after all.
As though there had been any doubt of that. I was the one who pulled the late hours around here. I was the one who ran all the reports. I was the one who did his job and mine. Thank goodness it was a two-person office or I wouldn't have been able to handle the workload.
Truth be told, I would've done any other employee’s jobs too. I had to. If I lost this job, I would have nothing. No income. No new prospects. Not real ones, anyway. Not with my community college degree where other business executives had ivy lacing their placards. And also dicks. I had neither.
I'd gotten this job as a temp. I was able to turn it into a full-time position because no one else would put up with Lester's absences. Or his not actually doing any work tendency. Also, there was the downside of the business losing money and being near bankruptcy two years ago. But I'd turned all that around. Hopefully, the executives over at Brookings would see that when they completed their takeover, and they'd take me with them.
So, in the end, he was right. We had a problem. But I was the only one who had to solve it. And I already had.
"It's a great thing we're merging with Brookings. All this time I've been spending at the office has really been handicapping my golf game."
"We're not merging, Lester. They've acquired us."
"Same difference."
"No, it is not the same. It is different. If we were merging with Brookings, we'd be joining forces to make a new company."
"Like the Justice League."
I was a Marvel girl myself and partial to the Avengers. But whatever. "Yes, except that's not what's happening. Brookings is taking us over. Which means Paul Brooks could get rid of the two of us if things don't go well in my—I mean your presentation tomorrow."
"You'll have all my notes ready for tomorrow?"
"Of course," I said as I walked him to the door.
Everything was riding on the presentation Lester had to give tomorrow on the health of the company. I'd done the reports, made the PowerPoint presentation, and even wrote out exactly what he needed to say—spelling out a few of the big words like incentivize phonetically so that he wouldn't mess that up.
"I've taken care of everything," I assured him. And now I just wanted a brief respite by watching a little art on the company's Wi-Fi. I didn't get that resolution at home using my phone's hotspot.
"You're dynamite, Maree. I don't know what I'd do without you."
I smiled and kept my mouth shut. Once the door shut and I was sure he was out of the office, I pushed the paperwork aside. It was all finished. I would come in early and run through it one more time before the meeting. What I needed was a break. The only thing that stopped my mind from running a hundred miles per minute was—
Little Morningstar finished her long moan when I lifted the lid of my laptop. Her eyes rolled back in her head with ecstasy as Master Xfinity brought her to a climax. My eyes fixed on the knots that held her arms tight to her low back.
I'd never been helpless. Not a day in my life. I'd had absentee parents who both worked three jobs to keep a shabby roof over our heads and discount canned goods on the table. All I knew was struggle and endless hard work. But when I closed my eyes, I dreamed that for just one moment, for just one instance, I could put my hands behind my back and not have to do anything.
Little Morningstar was face down on the bed. She had nothing to do but lie there bound tightly and enjoy her Master's pleasure.
It was a fantasy. I knew that. It wasn't something I could have as a modern, career-focused woman. It wasn't even something I should want. Which was why I kept my desires to myself.
The bound sub on the video did not share my sentiment. She screamed her next climax. The sound reverberated through my small office. It was so loud that I missed the knock on the open door.
I looked up to see a man standing in the doorway. It wasn't just any man. It was Harrison Ford. It wasn't just any Harrison Ford. It was a young Harrison from the film Working Girl, complete with an expensive suit and a dark textured tie with a thread count that looked like it would hold a naughty career woman tight.
His brow lifted.
And that's when I remembered my laptop was still open. The thwap thwapping of Master Xfinity's hips pistonning into his sub was loud and clear. Not to mention Little Morningstar's moans of ecstasy were stereophonic from my little laptop speakers.
"It's a commercial," I said, closing the laptop. Unfortunately, the sub's last words could be heard before it shut. And they were, Yes, I'm your good little slave, Master.
Young Harrison Ford's other brow lifted to join the first.
I stood, brushing off my thrift store business skirt that I'd hemmed and mended myself. "Is there something I can help you with?"
"I'm looking for Lester Porter."
Harrison Ford had a voice that hit a deeper note than Master Xfinity's. And that tie? It matched the same color of rope that Master Xfinity had tied his sub with. My brain scrambled to work.
"He's… Mr. Porter is… in a meeting."
Harrison Ford lowered those two perfectly plucked brows. The look on his face reminded me of Master Xfinity's face when Little Morningstar misbehaved and he had to give out a punishment. Oh, man, how did this guy know most of my bondage fantasies featured Harrison Ford in his role as Jack Trainer in Working Girl? I wanted him to take off his tie, bind my hands, be
The side of his lips quirked, like he was considering doing just that. He didn't step into the room. He stepped back.
"That's too bad. I was hoping to meet Mr. Porter before tomorrow's meeting."
"Tomorrow? You're with Brookings?"
"I am Brookings. I'm Paul Brooks."
I gulped and almost started hyperventilating, just like Tess McGill did when she found out how much her boss's little black cocktail dress cost. One of the biggest lessons I'd learned in my community school education was that the first impression was always the longest lasting.
Here I was standing before Paul Brooks, the man who could've made my working girl dreams come true. His first impression of me was that I was a pervert who watched porn on the company's dime.
Great. There was no way I was getting acquired in this takeover. I was about to head back to the unemployment line.
Chapter Two
"I'm going to get fired," I moaned, but in the least sexy way known to man.
"It couldn't have been that bad," said Kellie as she patted my back. Though her pats of comfort were more like a linebacker wishing a tight-end a good game in the locker room.
"A woman was hogtied and being pistoned into from behind," I said, explaining the scene between Little Morningstar and Master Xfinity.
There was a long, pensive silence from either side of me. Silence of voices, not of the atmosphere. The bar was filled with the dregs of happy hour in downtown Washington, DC. The political lackeys mixed with the artists at a bar near the Smithsonian Institution. The décor of the bar screamed come as you are. The price tags made sure to keep the lower class out. Their poverty detector wasn't working well tonight, cause I’d gotten in under the radar.
"At least it wasn't flogging," said my other bestie Josie, toying with the crisscrossing straps of her top.
"Or suspension," said Kellie, toying with one of the coiled locks of her hair. "Man, we are into some kinky shit."
"Well, you and I are actually into it. Maree won't come off the sidelines."
"Have you seen the dating pool out here?" I said, waving my arms around the overly styled males on one end of the room and the man-bunned guys on the other side. "I can't trust a guy to pay for dinner, let alone tie me up and give me orgasms. Most can't find their cars without an app. If, that is, they're not using ride share."
They both raised their glasses to that.
"That's why I don't date," said Kellie. "I just get my kicks at the club."
"You mean your knots," I said.
Like me, Kellie was into rope bondage. We'd been in Girl Scouts together and bonded over our rope tying and knots badges. We could tie a knot better than any Boy Scout. Don't ask how I'm one hundred percent certain of that fact.
We hadn't known ropes and knots were a fetish until college. Where Kellie had gone off and had guys tie her up and suspend her with rope, I had never had the courage to get in such a bind. I wasn't ready to give up that much control over my life.
"I'm telling you, girl, just try it once," Kellie hedged. "Once you're suspended in the air like that, you won't ever want to come down."
"Except inevitably you will come down," said Josie. "And when you do, the guy who tied you up will ask you to be in his polyamorous harem where he has a dozen girlfriends."
Where most girls put on the freshman five in college, Josie had stumbled into polyamory. She'd had two boyfriends, who each had two girlfriends. And the whole crew had lots of—shall we say—sleepovers together.
Most girls in my college dorms wanted to talk about frat guys and makeup. The three of us talked about sex. Especially Kellie, who had been studying the phenomenon even before we were out of high school. She was now getting her PhD in sociology with a focus on gender, sex, and deviant behaviors. Her dissertation topic was a study of power dynamics in the BDSM lifestyle, and she took her data collection very seriously. So sex in all its forms was often the topic of conversations in our dorm room.
"That's why I don't date," said Kellie. "I just scene at the club."
"Me too," said Josie. "I can't imagine dating someone who I let flay my back. The fights would be awful."
Here my two best friends were talking about what they would and wouldn't let a man do to them and where. Yet I couldn't even let my boss do a spreadsheet on his own. Mainly because Lester thought he could just draw the tables in Microsoft Word, which didn't have a calculation feature.
"Maybe this will be for the best," said Josie, turning her attention back to me. "You are overqualified for that job, and you do all the work. If you get let go, then the company will fall apart."
That was true. Except I didn't want to get let go. I had built that company up from a near catastrophic flop. I knew I wouldn't get the credit. I didn't want it. I just wanted a chance at the big leagues.
Brookings was the big leagues. I was made to work at a company like theirs that specialized in mergers and acquisitions. It had been my career of choice ever since I saw the movie Working Girl.
True, I just wanted to have a wardrobe like Tess's boss, Katherine Parker. And I wanted to have Harrison Ford see how brilliant I was but still fall for me because I was pretty too. Paul Brooks totally had a Jack Trainer vibe going on. Only in real life, we weren't working together like he and Tess had done in the movie. He hadn't fallen for me under the mistaken identity of one of his equals. He'd already labeled me as the pervert who watched porn in the office.
"You know, this has the makings of a great romance." Josie was ever the romantic, even as she swore she'd never get collared by a Dom again. "If only he'd laughed when he heard the porn."
"It wasn't porn," I said. "It was art."
"He didn't even try to hit on you?" asked Kellie.
"He might be gay," said Josie.
"I'm not gonna date my new boss."
Even though he was exactly my type. Especially with that tie. I imagined it wrapped around my wrists. I'd be begging him to pull it tighter as he unzipped his pants and bent me over the desk and—
I gave myself a mental shake, coming back to reality. "He might not even be my boss come morning."
"Then there's nothing you can do about it now," said Kellie. "No matter what happens, come to the club with us this weekend. It'll take your mind off everything."
The idea intrigued me, as it always did. But I could never set my mouth to say yes. I wanted to be tied up. I'd have to give up control to do that. That wasn't something I thought I'd ever be ready for. So I'd just keep watching. Hopefully, I could find a hotspot closer to my cheap apartment.
"No, I need to go home and make sure this presentation is in order," I said. "I still might be able to salvage my job."
"You will salvage it," said Josie. "Because you're a fucking rockstar."
"You're a boss bitch," said Kellie.
"I love you guys." I slung an arm around both of them, squeezing tight before hopping off my stool.
The walk home was cool in the humid DC night air. The city was built on a swamp, and Mother Nature didn't let us forget it in the warm summer months. There was a heat wave that greeted me when I walked into my apartment. The AC only worked for a few hours at a time. I tried to keep it on only at night. That meant I had to wait a few hours for it to kick in.
I took a cold shower, and it took some of the edge off. When I pulled my laptop open, I got a treat. The video I'd been watching at work had downloaded to my hard drive. I slid the play button back to the beginning.
On the screen, the knots on Little Morningstar's arms unraveled. The looser the knots got, the more I noticed the heat in my apartment. I forwarded ahead until at least her arms were bound.
A cool trickle went down my spine as I hit play. I didn't get the same thrill of relaxation as I watched Master Xfinity make his loops. Instead, I closed my eyes and imagined Paul Brooks wrapping his tie around my wrists. That vision left me hot and bothered for the rest of the night.
