Chapter 10

I was awakened by the sound of the door latch.

“You were asleep? Didn’t you get enough last night?”

“My reserves have been sapped. I needed a cat nap to make it through the day. What happened with Karen, if it was Karen?”

“It was. She’d done her packing, but Frank hadn’t, so she came out to get some sun before they had to leave. We caught up. I worked the conversation around to getting to know the people we’re going to spend our lives with, figuring out their likes and dislikes, their triggers, the things that drive them, the things that make them happy, like that.

“It was actually a bit difficult to get her onto the topic, I think she was avoiding it, didn’t want to talk about it because then she’d have to face it. So I made it a problem that I’d had – I explained about my mother and growing up constrained – and how I’d had a hard time facing up to having to have sex and learning all those personal details and kinks of this new person...

“I hope you realize how good an actress I am, because I was able to sell that so well, that she was commiserating with me! ‘Oh, you poor thing’ she said. It took all my concentration not to burst out laughing. Anyway, before she got too deep into feeling sorry for me, I told her that you had been so very patient and gentle with me, wanting to make sure that I was okay with everything before going further.

“And I told her I’d been stunned to find that all those things my mother had warned me about were actually fine, lots of fun, in fact, and made me feel amazing. I even told her about the sex toys – tell the truth, I was a little embarrassed to be discussing it with her, but I thought it was important that she understand that this was all new, but I tried it and found that I liked it. Like, a lot. Like, it made me shout hallelujah.”

She paused to take a breath.

“That seemed to break down the barrier a bit, and she confessed that there were some things that she’d suspected Frank liked that she was terrified of, didn’t even want to talk about them. I tried to push for details, but she was reluctant. I’m guessing it was anal, because she kept working the conversation back to butt plugs, and things in the ass, and did it hurt, did you force me, like that.

“So, bottom line, I don’t know if I solved her problem, but I think I got her to think about it more positively, openly.”

I shook my head. “You really have a talent for this. I think you did more in an hour than a shrink could have done. Maybe with what I talked to Frank about they might be able to find a common path. I like them, I hope they work this out.”

“I hope so,” she said. “They’re leaving as soon as Frank finishes packing. She looked a little brighter when we parted. Maybe they’ll talk some on the drive home. It’s lunchtime. Should we eat?”

I’d been thinking about this, wondering if this was the right time. Good a time as any, was the answer I came up with.

“Yes. But first, I said before that I have a surprise for you. I want you to put it on.”

“What? You mean that little box that was with all the vibrators? What could fit in a box that size? It’d have to be pretty skimpy. I probably couldn’t wear it in the dining room.”

“Not clothes of any kind. Wait.”

I dug out the box and opened it, handing it to her.

“What is it? It’s too small for a dildo.”

“Humor me. You insert it into your vagina. This end faces front. Put your panties on after to hold it in place.”

“I don’t understand, What does it...”

“Humor me, Emma. Just do it first, then I’ll explain.”

She looked confused, but she finally nodded and went in to the bathroom. When she eventually came out after several minutes, she still looked confused.

“So it must be some kind of vibrator, I’m guessing, but I couldn’t find any buttons or any way to switch it on. Maybe it’s broken. It feels a bit uncomfortable.”

“Maybe. We’ll check it later, but right now I’m hungry. Let’s go to lunch.”

She grabbed her purse and we headed for the elevator. The car arrived and there was already an older couple on board. They smiled pleasantly as we got on. We stood in the back, against the wall. I took out my cell phone and pulled up the app, flicking at it with my finger.

Beside me, Emma stiffened. I saw her straighten her back and tighten her lips.

The doors opened and the other couple stepped out and went off to the left. Emma said to me very quietly, “You bastard. I almost moaned out loud when you did that. What is this thing?”

“It’s a remote control vibrator. It’s controlled by an app on my cell phone. That’s about the lowest setting.”

“Fuck,” she whispered, “turn it off.”

“Okay. For now.”

We had to wait, as there was a line of people waiting for a table. I was tempted to activate the app again, but decided against it. After a time, we were shown to a small table by one of the side walls. The waiter left menus and hurried off to bring plates to his other tables.

I was struck suddenly by a longing for a cheeseburger, so I looked no further in the menu.

Emma was still studying hers, but finally nodded to herself. The waiter chose that moment to appear. Emma got a Caesar salad with chicken, and I my cheeseburger and fries.

“Heart attack on a plate,” she said. “You’ll regret that cheeseburger in thirty years.”

“I’ll jog right after lunch. In twenty-nine years.”

“What would you like to do after lunch? Swim? Horseback riding? Something to work off too much rich food.”

“I dunno, maybe swimming would be the thing. It felt good yesterday.” I slipped my phone out of my pocket under the table and, more by feel than anything else, opened the app. With barely a glance downward I flicked the vibrator to a low setting.

I saw it in her eyes first. They went wide and she started blinking.

“God damn you, Kenny. You can’t do this here.”

“Think of it as an exercise in erotic self-control, Emma. There’s something sexy about being in a state of arousal and none of the people around you have the slightest hint. Unless you lose your self-control.”

“I can’t. Oh, fuck, I’m vibrating.”

“It’s on the lowest setting. Here, I’ll show you.”

With my fingertip I moved the display “slider” higher and she made a sound in her throat, closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the table.

I moved the slider back to just above zero, and she relaxed somewhat.

“See? The low setting is easy. You just have to learn to separate what you’re feeling from how you react to it. It’s a learned response. We’ll practice.”

“I can’t, someone will see,” she said desperately.

“Only if you let them. Control your responses.”

I could see she wanted to raise her voice, berate me, but she was here in the middle of a hundred people having lunch, so she gritted her teeth and gave me the occasional glare.

I started up a conversation, really more of a monologue because her contributions were seldom more than one word. I think she was afraid of her voice giving her away, so I chatted about friends, work, what we would do about holidays and family. More my thoughts than hers.

In due time I saw the waiter approaching with a tray balanced on one hand. As he got close, I pushed the app slider just a little higher. He put our plates down before us and asked her, “Can I bring you anything else, ma’am?” Emma, avoiding his eyes, said tightly, “No, thank you.”

The waiter stepped away and I lowered the vibration to almost nothing with my fingertip. “You did that really well, Emma. It’s not so hard once you get the hang of it.”

“I will pay you back, Walsh, just you wait.”

“Admit it, it’s a turn-on, isn’t it, with that thing humming away inside you, putting you right on the edge. It’s sexy. It’s arousing. Don’t let your food get cold.” I took a bite of my cheeseburger. Mmm, not bad at all, just the thing.

She stared at her salad, trying to regain her self-control, and finally picked up her fork and began eating, the vibrator still buzzing at its lowest setting.

Midway through the meal, she gave a nod of her head to her left and said through a mouthful of salad, “Isn’t that Donny and Amy over there? They’re partially blocked by that other table. Can you see?”

I looked in the direction she’d indicated, searching. “Yeah, I think it is. Geez, he looks tight-wound even when he’s having lunch. She doesn’t look like she’s on her honeymoon, she looks like she’s at a business lunch, against her will.”

Emma was back in the middle of that drama now, in her head, and she’d forgotten her annoyance with me. “I wonder if it’s too late to get the marriage annulled,” she questioned herself. “I forgot to ask her if she had any close girlfriends she could talk this over with. She looks like she needs a friend. Poor girl.”

We passed Amy’s problems back and forth while we finished. I saw the waiter coming back to check on our progress and picked up the phone in my lap with one hand and, under the table, nudged the app’s slider a bit higher. I heard Emma cough once.

“Some dessert, sir? The German chocolate cake’s very good.” I told him I’d pass, and he turned to Emma. “How about you, ma’am? Perhaps some ice cream on this warm day?”

I could see the faintest tremble in her mouth, but she forced herself to look at him and say, “No, not today, thank you.”

He nodded and said he’d bring our check right away. I lowered the slider to its previous setting.

She looked at me. Then she said, “I almost didn’t get through it that time. I was so close to moaning out loud. Damn, why did I let you talk me into this?”

“It’s a learning experience, baby. It’s something new and daring, and maybe a little scary because it’s done in public. The trick to making it sexy is hiding your responses until you can’t be seen. I’ll keep it turned low while we’re among people.”

The waiter dropped the check off in passing, and I added our room number and an appropriate tip. I stood up and held out my hand. She took it, her purse in the other, then put her arm in mine as we walked out. “Let’s take a little walk around the grounds to settle our lunch,” I suggested.

I heard no objection, so we set off. It was warm, a little humid, but there was a breeze. There were plenty of meandering pathways threaded through the place and we took one at random. There were only a few people about. I was carrying my phone in one hand, and I’d gotten pretty good at using the app without looking. I nudged it upward a few points.

“Oh, Jesus...” She stumbled once, but got her footing. There was a couple approaching, and she couldn’t show anything outwardly. They nodded a pleasant greeting as they passed. I nudged it back down low.

“It’s almost too much. How do people act normal with something like that buzzing away inside? I’m about ready to take off and fly.”

“I’m not sure. My guess is that other women aren’t as sensitive, as responsive as you are. So most of them wouldn’t really be aware of any feeling where it’s set now. They’d need it turned up much higher to get a good orgasm going.”

There were some benches up ahead, lining the path, with a nice view of the lake further down.

No one was using them currently. “Why don’t we sit for a bit?” I suggested.

We found a bench in the shade of a nearby tree and settled ourselves. With my phone in my hand down by my side, I turned to watch her. I thumbed the slider about halfway up, slowly.

She grabbed the seat of the bench with both hands. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, oooohh...” She closed her eyes tight, her lips trembling. She held herself rock still, then her body shook, and she choked in air. I lowered the slider very slowly to almost nothing.

“Jesus Christ, Kenny. What if there had been people around? I was shaking, trying to keep myself from shouting.”

“No one would have seen it, unless they were looking at you closely. You covered it up very well. Well, next time try not to say ‘Ohmigod’ out loud. That’s kind of a giveaway.”

“How far does that remote thing work?”

“The actual remote control, which is back in the room, works up to twenty-five or thirty feet. The app on my phone can control it anywhere in the world. Just in case you were thinking of running off to Brazil.”

“Damn, I almost fell down, I came so hard. It was an effort not to shout out loud.”

“Emma, it was only about halfway up. Sometime, when we’re alone in a soundproof room, we can see what happens at full throttle.”

“I don’t think I’d survive that. It was pretty intense. I’m still shaking a little.”

I teased her a bit. “Well, for the first day of training, you handled it pretty well. By day ten you’ll be able to cum in church and no one around you will have a clue.”

“By day two, wise guy, I’m going to be looking around for a similar device that locks around your dick, and I’ll load the app onto my phone. We’ll see how you get through the training.”

I had to admit defeat. She’d do it, more likely than not. Still, that could be fun, having her control my arousal when I didn’t expect it. But there’d be that awkward bit at the end when I finally cum in my pants because she pushed the slider up too high, and I’d have this wet spot on my trousers and everyone would know what happened. Perhaps it’s best not to push this too far.

We walked a little more, and over some time I nudged the slider a couple of notches higher.

She was talking about archery again, saying she wanted to do it again tomorrow, and wasn’t as singularly focused on the vibrator in her pussy, so when she ran out of things to say she suddenly realized she was on the edge of cumming again.

There was another couple coming down the path towards us. I put my left arm around her and stepped off the path to admire the sailboats on the lake. As the people got close, I nudged the slider higher. She threw her arms around me and hugged me. To the other couple we looked only like a pair of lovebirds sharing a moment.

But beside me Emma was shaking, an orgasm washing over her, and she was gasping out “Unh, unh, unh” into my chest. I don’t think the other couple heard it. As they moved on I felt her knees give, and I had to hold her up with my arm. I lowered the slider to zero.

“Jesus, Kenny, I didn’t know you had this sadistic side to you. I don’t think I can stand yet.”

“Tell me with a straight face that you didn’t like how that made you feel, Emma. You can’t.”

“It’s not the how, it’s the where. I’m not good at hiding this stuff yet. Give me your phone.”

I was going to object, but you need to know how to pick your battles. There would be another time. I handed her the phone.

“That’s enough for now, I think. I can’t do another. I need to change if we’re going swimming.”

We turned back to the hotel and made our way to the room. I asked her about swimming, had she done it as exercise, or was it mostly just splashing in the water for her. She told me she’d done some semi-organized races when she was younger, at camp, but not so much recently.

In the room, I had to pee. When I came out I found her lying on her back on the bed, playing with the app on my phone. She was experimenting with the controls, moving the slider up and down.

She twitched her thumb, and she arched her back and gasped, “Oh, wow!” She flicked it down again. “Jesus, Kenny, it’s almost too much. It was only halfway up the scale.”

“Find out what your limits are. When does it get to be too much, what setting?” I sat in a chair across the room and watched.

She was hesitant, a little afraid of it, but she moved the slider higher, slowly. I couldn’t see the phone from where I was, so I could only gauge by the responses I had seen when I moved the slider. She was beyond that now, I thought.

I could see her body muscles tighten and her lips moving as she slowly edged it upward. It was as if her body was being moved by some outside force, lifting her back into a perfect arch. There was a sound coming from her throat now, not words, something more guttural.

The thumb twitched higher and suddenly the phone fell from her hand and she let loose a desperate cry, “Oh, GOD!” and her body shook, quivered, for quite a long time. I was hypnotized watching her, then realized that the app was still at its high setting.