His Master's Voice [4]

  HIS MASTER’S VOICE #4

  By

  Jay Ellison

  Copyright © 2018 Jay Ellison

  Published by Courtesan Press

  http://courtesanpress.wordpress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be distributed, shared, resold, posted online, or reproduced in any electronic or hard copy form.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities between actual persons or events is entirely coincidental. This book contains adult content and is intended for a mature readership. All sexual scenarios depicted in this book occur between consenting adults over 18 years of age.

  Cover art design by Courtesan Press

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  HIS MASTER’S VOICE #4 by Jay Ellison

  About the Author

  How to Order

  * * *

  HIS MASTER’S VOICE #4

  By Jay Ellison

  CHAPTER ONE

  Friday Evening, 5:00 PM

  I was walking Mrs. DeGeneres’s afghan back to her stretch limo when I noticed the nondescript black van for the first time. It was parked at the curb, near the entrance of the dog park. A lot of rich Manhattaners like Mrs. DeGeneres parked there, but they didn’t usually drive vans with tinted windows.

  The sight of it automatically made me think of Todd Harrison, the gentleman who had played with me at Master’s dinner party last weekend—and who had been trying to speak to me since. He was the bass player of the industrial gothic band October Rust and had hinted that he would happily steal me away from Master, if he could. The first time I met him, I’d thought he was joking, but since then, he’d added me to his Twitter, something Harrison almost never did to even his most diehard fans, and had even PM’ed me and invited me to jam out with him sometime.

  I kept one eye on the car while Mrs. DeGeneres’s driver came around to let her dog into the back seat with her. After cooing over him for several seconds, she turned to me with a wide smile. “He is just so improved, Timot. You do wonders! I’m giving your name out to all my girlfriends! Expect to be buried in clients soon!”

  She even gave me a generous tip, but I wasn’t fooled none. Mrs. DeGeneres used to hate me, until she learned I was Master’s boy—she figured his boyfriend, though we were so much more. Then everything changed. Master was like a favorite nephew of hers, and she had known, and likely been deeply in love with, Master’s father. As a result, I was now one of her favorite poor people. The rich, you know?

  “Thanks, Mrs. DeGeneres! That’s really generous of you,” I told her, looking at the wad of money in my hand.

  “Not at all. You’re such a sweet boy. Not like so many.”

  I’m not sure what she meant exactly—was I sweeter than most Milennials, most gay men, most goth guys? I never could figure out rich folks and their ways. I mean, I could have been totally insulted and given her what for. She kind of deserved it. But what was the point? I wasn’t the “what-for” type of guy, and it’s not like I would change the oligarchy by trying to drag her down a peg or two. I would only lose a client—and her girlfriends.

  “How is sweet Byron?” she asked (one of her favorite subjects), as she leaned out of the window of her stretch limo.

  “He’s super busy,” I told her honestly, stooping to talk to her. In all of our history, Mrs. DeGeneres had never gotten out of her comfy car to talk to me, the “help.” “Has a big account with Kellogg’s.”

  “He works too hard, poor boy! He always looks beside himself when I see him!”

  She was literally give me an opening to learn more about Master’s private side, since he himself wouldn’t tell me anything about himself, his family, or where he went when he got those mysterious phone calls in the middle of the night. In the beginning, I’d entertained things like Master was really a spy being called out on special missions by the government, but the truth was probably much more mundane. I suspected he had someone on the side. I understood, intellectually, that that was his right. He was my Master, my Dominant. He could have as many submissives as he chose to. That was our understanding. But that didn’t make me feel any better about his sneaking around.

  “I think he has a lot of irons in the fire,” I said, hoping she would slip up and tell me more.

  “He always does—poor Byron. I wish he took more time out for himself.”

  “I’ve been trying to get him too. We want to go to Europe together.”

  She nodded sympathetically. “Alas, until this thing with Richard is settled…”

  My heart sank and I felt briefly like I was going to thrown up in the gutter. After she drove away, I stood there for some time, too stunned to even move. Richard. His name was Richard. I didn’t know if I should feel victorious that I had finally achieved a name to go with the mysterious midnight phone calls or sick that my suspicions were true. There was someone else in his life—there was a Richard—and he wasn’t telling me anything about him.

  I almost totally forgot about the black van. I turned to check on it, but it was gone. I should have felt relieved. After a really tough week of holding down multiple jobs, I had been looking forward to grabbing the bus uptown to Master’s townhouse. It was Friday evening and a lazy, long and sensual weekend of being Master’s courtier, his slave, and his friend, stretched ahead of me. Only a few minutes ago, it had made me grin like some lovesick fool.

  Now, I had to work on fighting back the jealousy.

  He’s your Master, your Dom, I reminded myself. You belong to him—not the other way around. In fact, Master could have a whole harem of boys, and it was not my place to object. We weren’t married or even boyfriends, not really. I had no issues with obeying him—I trusted him implicitly—but this one thing I couldn’t seem to overcome.

  I went back to the bench where I’d left my backpack with all my training gear and picked it up. Still thinking about “Richard,” I settled it comfortably over one shoulder. I didn’t even hear the man who walked up behind me until it was too late and he covered my mouth, cutting off my cry of sudden surprise.

  He was incredibly strong. His other hand slid around me, and he chuckled softly and darkly as he cupped the front of my jeans, grabbing me in a way that made me groan. “Don’t fight,” he whispered intimately into my ear. “You are mine, boy.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWO

  The weekend before

  To say I was scared was a major understatement.

  I kept thinking about all the elegant courtesans and courtiers and their gentleman and ladies. All the people I would meet tonight, most for the first time. I knew they would be beautiful and graceful. Learned. Worse of all, they would have high expectations. They would expect me to be beautiful and cultured and graceful and obedient. They would be anticipating that we would be entertaining—Master and me.

  To distract myself, I stared at my reflection in the long vanity mirror hanging in Master’s bedroom, barely recognizing myself. The dark, fitted evening suit was definitely not “my” kind of clothing, but Master had started early on that there were rigid rules in the Dollhouse, ones even he was not allowed to break. A dress code. A way of conducting oneself. He even said it like that: “A way of conducting oneself.” All posh-like.

  I kept pressing my hands together nervously—they were damp and sweaty—and checking my fingernails as if I would find a ton of dirt or something uncouth under them. I looked at my very scared, very young-looking, face. I looked so vulnerable with my black and red-streaked hair combed back and secured at the base of my neck. My guyliner was perfect, and the black leather collar made my neck look slim and vulnerable. Perhaps kissable?

  Gah. I had to remind myself I was a twenty-
three years old man, an elegant courtier, not some little goth boi going off to a headbanging ball. Right at this moment, I wasn’t a goth boi, or a metalhead, or a dog trainer or the Assistant Manager of Pet World, or the bass player of The Long October—a nothing band going nowhere. I wasn’t any of those (admittedly mundane) things. Right now, I was Byron Erbach-Schönberg’s submissive. A young man who had willingly given himself to him, my Master. I was expected to obey him and, tonight, to thrill and entertain the other members of the Dollhouse Society.

  Master stepped into the room, looking elegant in his black satin tuxedo, and said, “The car is waiting.” He was carrying my leash in one hand and a soft but radiant smile on his lips. Earlier, when I first arrived at the house for my usual duties, Master had surprised me with this turn of events, this little outing of ours, but that wasn’t really his doing, or his fault.

  My first visit to the Dollhouse had always been kind of up in the air. Master had an arrangement with his friend Henry Eisenberg and his courtesan Sasha—one I had fully agreed to. I would cover Sasha so Henry would not be passing his genetic disorder down to the child they yearned for. But that necessitated waiting until Sasha was at the top of her reproductive cycle, when she was most fertile and conception most likely. When I arrived a half an hour ago, Master informed me that she was and that we would be visiting the Dollhouse tonight. He said it almost apologetically, as if he knew all this was pretty impromptu.

  It was my first time performing publicly as his courtier, and Master’s first time as a full member of the Society. I think we were both scared to death.

  In a way, I was glad all this was as sudden as it was. At least I hadn’t dwelled on it all day at work, hyping myself into ridiculous and paranoid worries. Instead, I could do that now, in the slim window of time leading up to our first performance.

  Master stepped behind me in the mirror, attached my lead, and pulled it snug. He wrapped an arm around my waist, holding me against the hard slab of his chest. His other hand, the one still holding the lead, went to my face, and there he brushed the leather loop at the end gently along the curve of my cheek and neck. The soft contact made my skin jump and made me lean my head against his shoulder. Within seconds, I was virtually purring for him.

  “My little kitten in heat. Are you ready to play with me?” he asked.

  He’d meant it to sound sexy, and it was, but it also reminded me of Todd Harrison, who had called me his kitten at Master’s party. Since his friending on Twitter, he had liked a number of my Tweets and had even sent me a link to a website about the BDSM lifestyle. I thought about saying something about Mr. Harrison’s behavior of late, but then dismissed my fears. I was probably just overreacting due to nerves.

  Master was hard against me, but I knew there was no playing before our performance. He had refused to even take me when I first arrived at the house, instead ushering me into the tub so he could wash and groom me to his own unique specifications. His touch was pure torture, and, at the end of it, while he tried to dress me in the bedroom, I wound up squirming around like an antsy three-year-old on a sugar high and begging him with my eyes.

  “Stop that,” he told me playfully while he tried in vain to button up my dress trousers. When he saw there was no getting around the trouble he had caused with his gentle and thorough bathing, he went and fetched the dreaded cock ring and tightened it around my already aching member, slipping the tiny padlock in place and put the little key around his neck. “There. That should contain you for now.” He gave me a wicked smile that told me there would be no relief until we reached the Dollhouse.

  Now, the extreme tightness of the ring made me shift uncomfortably against him. I felt all warm and eager and, yes, kitten-y…but I couldn’t have him.

  “Nervous?” he whispered in my ear, his voice raising the little hairs long the side of my neck.

  “A little,” I answered. Then I amended my statement by saying, “A lot, actually.”

  He tightened his arm around my waist comfortingly. “Don’t be. You have nothing to be afraid of. I’ll be with you the whole night.”

  “Sasha and me…in front of all those people.” I laughed nervously.

  I felt his hesitation. “Are you having second thoughts? Because it’s all right, if you are…”

  “No. It’s not that. I want this. I just don’t know if I can…you know, do it right. What if I fail?” I bit my bottom lip. “I mean, I like Sasha. I love Sasha. But like a sister—not a girlfriend.”

  “I’ll be there. You’ll need to trust your gentleman.”

  “Yes, Master.” I watched his nuzzle my neck affectionately in the mirror.

  He stroked my cheek with the lead until I was completely relaxed and all my fears seemed to evaporate. “I don’t want you afraid, Timothy. This should be fun. If it’s not fun, if you’re not enjoying yourself, then it’s not worth doing.”

  His words made sense. They reminded me of how it was to perform as a musician in front of large numbers of people. You start out singing and playing for others because it’s fun. It should stay that way, or it isn’t worth your time to do. But I couldn’t help worrying. This was…well, everything to Master.

  He was the youngest gentleman to ever join the Society. He had been waiting for years, and had gone through at least one other courtier (that I knew of), to get to this place right now. He had been a courtier himself, until he learned he wasn’t, that he was better suited to being a gentleman. This was immensely important to him. To be a full member of the Dollhouse Society, to play with his doll just like all the other (albeit, older) gentleman did.

  It was a lot of expectation to put on my shoulders, you know?

  “Were you nervous your first time?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  I suddenly realized my faux passé. Sasha had revealed to me that Master had entered the Society as a courtier to his Master, Enrique Martín. But I wasn’t supposed to know that. “I mean…” I stumbled for a decent answer. I was never very good at lying. I think it was the Irish in me. They always say if you want something to stay a secret, don’t tell an Irishman.

  He seemed to catch on. “Ah. That.” He didn’t demand to know where I had heard that he was once a courtier, thankfully. Sasha had told me, but I would never betray her confidence like that. “I did terribly my first time, actually.”

  I stood up straighter. “You’re kidding?” I looked at him in the mirror for answers. He seemed good at everything!

  Master shrugged self-consciously, a vulnerability he almost never showed the rest of the world. It reminded me of just how young he really was. He put on a big, tough, Dominant face for the rest of the world, but I knew underneath it all he was still unsure of himself, at times. He was only twenty-eight years old, after all. “That was in a time when I thought it was my calling.” Master smiled at the memory. He almost never smiled. “I wanted the connection so badly. Enrique had his doubts, but he was my Master, and I wanted to make him proud. Unfortunately, I spent more time watching what the other gentlemen were doing with their subs than listening to him. It’s how he figured out I was a gentleman like himself. I think we both knew then that our arrangement wouldn’t work out.”

  “That’s when you broke up.”

  “I don’t know that we ever really ‘broke up,’ per say. We’ve stayed good friends.”

  “And lovers,” I pointed out.

  “I love him, yes. He was my first. He’s my mentor, my lover—even though we aren’t intimate like that any longer.” He was telling the truth on that front. I had been with them both, and we had done all kind of things together, but both my Masters preferred to use me. In a way, it was almost like they were touching each other through me.

  He looked at me in the mirror. “Are you jealous, little kitten?”

  I saw an opening to talk about his midnight phone calls to that unknown party. Strangely enough, Master’s affection for Enrique Martín didn’t disturb me the way that
did, maybe because he was so open about his feelings for Mr. Martín—my Sir. Sir was a huge enigma in our lives—coming and going when he wanted to. Doing to me whatever he wanted to, always under the watchful eye of my Master. He had been thrown out of the Society for an infraction that no gentleman would speak of, and I had the distinct impression that he was the baddest of the “bad boys,” and, yet, I found I was kind of/sort of in love with him.

  The moment came…and then the moment passed. I wondered if I would ever wind up the courage to ask Master about those phone calls. Instead, I asked, “Will Sir be there?”

  “Enrique has business elsewhere tonight,” Master said only. He sounded sad about that. I knew he would have loved to have his mentor and lover there to see him perform with me, and I started wondering if there was something we could do to make it up to him—some way we could all play together. I would need to think about it.

  Master checked his watch. “Come,” he said, pulling on my lead. His face was flushed with excitement and I could almost hear his heart beating rapidly in his chest. “It’s time, my courtier.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER THREE

  Normally, Master liked to drive his sports car everywhere, but tonight we took a limo, black and shiny and luxurious, with an honest-to-god chauffeur driving it. Master handed me down into the buttery white leather seats, where I found a dozen black roses edged in gold waiting for me.

  At first, I thought they were for someone else, or maybe someone had left them there by accident, but Master, seated beside me, plucked one from the crunchy paper and brushed my cheek with the soft petals. “Red roses, though they express the heart’s deepest desires, seemed a bit banal to me. I wanted something truly unique for you, Timothy. I wanted something…that was you, through and through.”

  I blushed horribly at his admission. “They’re beautiful,” I said, fingering the velvety petals while the car shot off into the city night—but I couldn’t meet his eyes. “So I’m a black rose?”