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He almost wasn’t chosen to go. The pendulum of fashion wasn’t on his side; the current ideal husband in America was a dom, and while his appearance and skill set fit the requirements of the agency, his orientation didn’t. He’d known that from the beginning, and had expected to be used in other ways.
So it was a surprise when he was give a massive folder on a man named Philip Jennings, an easygoing American dom who shared a face with him but nothing else. He was to have a wife, a beautiful sub who’d have received equivalent training. They were leaving in less than a year. They were introduced a month after he internalized Philip Jennings, and he’d half-slipped into that skin when he met Elizabeth.
She was a better sub than him in every way — demure, eyes trained on the ground, a flawless mouth and relaxed shoulders. A soft, yielding voice. He found it easy to fake dominating her, and thought: that’s why I get to go. They found someone so submissive I could play my role without slipping.
It wasn’t until America that he realized what Elizabeth was. In less than a year they’d had to sleep with two people each; Elizabeth’s second mark was a sub, but she was also a lesbian. Elizabeth said she’d do it, and Philip had agreed, on the grounds that the mark wouldn’t even let him try. If we’re both subs, Philip thought, it should be her anyway.
Elizabeth pulled it off — after the mark fell asleep, she searched the house until she found the documents they needed in a locked drawer that she picked. She photographed the papers and went straight back to bed, going for a second round in the morning. It was recorded. These things always were.
Philip wasn’t in a hurry to listen to it, and when he finally sat down to, he expected it to be neither titillating or tedious. It was just information. He expected Elizabeth to be competent at faking domination, as she was competent at everything else — it wasn’t that hard. But he also expected to hear that undertone of hollowness, of pitch-perfect command without anything real backing it up. He heard it in his own voice every day.
Margaret Scott was the lover of an influential lobbyist, who sometimes indulged in other affairs in the lobbyist’s house second apartment. Some kind of payback, Elizabeth and he’d agreed. She must have been in love with the woman once. The tape started an introduction in a bar, followed by small talk. It ended with Scott moaning as Elizabeth fucked her brains out, growling out filthy compliments.
A third of the way through it, Philip knew. When Elizabeth pushed Scott into the bedroom and told her to kneel, Philip felt his knees start to shake. When Elizabeth pinned Scott against the ground and told her that she was good, so beautiful, that Elizabeth was going to lick her until she cried, Philip got so hard he had to pause and regain his composure. He wouldn’t masturbate to it. But he was more tempted than he could have imagined, starting out. He’d expected to become a little aroused, but this was several magnitudes above that. He was more aroused than he’d ever been while having actual sex with Elizabeth. She was powerful. Strong enough to faze some other doms, even. Her voice, lazily commanding, thrilled his bones. Philip hadn’t let anyone put him down for years, not since his training, not since he’d known he’d have to start faking it to be accepted by the KGB. Elizabeth, his partner and wife and probably mother of his children, could take him there with a word in the right voice.
Philip listened to a few more minutes and stopped the tape. Put it away. He couldn’t do it.
::::::
“You know,” Elizabeth said, sounding genuinely surprised. “How could you —“
“I listened to the recording,” Philip said. He was leaning against the counter, and the sun was bright on Elizabeth’s hair. “The Margaret Scott mission.”
“That was months ago.”
“I didn’t know what to do with the knowledge. What I wanted to do.”
They stared at each other. He saw the realization dawn on her face. She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it.
Philip said, not without bitterness, “What a pair we make.”
“It was necessary for us to not know,” Elizabeth said. “Now that we have almost a year’s worth of pretense behind us, we’ll find it easier to move forward with it. They intended it this way.”
He shrugged. “I suppose.”
She nodded, assuming the conversation was over, and moved towards the door. Philip tried to let her, but found himself turning as she passed him, orienting his body to hers. She noticed, stiffened. “Philip —“
“Did you think I could just ignore this? We’re married, we have to live with each other…”
“Can't you?... Is this going to be a problem?” Elizabeth tilted her head a little to the side. Her gaze was frighteningly clinical. Philip saw that she was going to call control with concerns about him if she didn’t think he could handle himself. His blood went cold. He’d thought, that after all these months, she’d come to consider him a friend at least.
“Well, I can,” Philip said, with a casual shrug. “But whether I want to…”
He reached out, slowly, giving her time to back away. His fingers brushed her arm. She stood, unmoving, and when she finally spoke it was without any trace of command. “This isn’t who we are.”
Just once, Philip wanted to say, but it was only going to drive her further away. He could feel his fingers close on something and then lose it, like a block of ice. So he withdrew his hand, and heard an indulgent dom’s voice emerge from his throat: “If you say so, honey.”
Elizabeth Jennings smiled in relief.
:::::
Timoshev’s neck snapped, the sensation indistinguishable from the sound. Philip stepped back and the body crumpled against the wall. Elizabeth was staring at him, composure gone. All the shields had gone down.
“I didn’t ask you to do that,” she said roughly.
“If you’d remember, I don’t need asking.”
She brushed back a strand of loose hair from her face. “Right,” she said, but it was rote, no conviction behind it. Philip glanced down at the body on the ground. It charged everything; every extra pretense was an effort when you’d just been flayed to the bone.
Elizabeth hung back when he hauled the body into the trunk, but went with him to dispose of it.
They drove a long way out, at an angle from where they lived and where they’d been staying. After deciding on the location, they were silent all of the way. Elizabeth stared out of the window, locked in with her own nightmares. It probably never occurred to her to talk to him about it.
It was hard being in love with someone like Elizabeth. Like running alongside a river and not being able to drink from it. But still being able to see, every step of the way, its beauty and cold purity, and the reflection of the trees. This was just the latest stretch. He’d given himself away, probably too much. But what had been the alternative? She was his wife. And whether she liked it or not, knew it or not, she was his dom.
They heaved the body into the river, and Elizabeth’s shoulders moved when she heard the splash. She was looking into the water; he was looking at her. He saw the slow, careful sigh leaving her body, and then she turned to go. He fell in behind her, a little to the left and half a step behind. Normally it was her position.
He was already shaking when she touched him in the car. “Whatever you want,” he said, unable to stop himself. “Whatever you…”
Elizabeth kissed him. Her hands were on his shirt, warm and quick. They didn’t take off their clothes — too little space. She unzipped his pants and pulled his cock out of the slit in his boxers, and he pulled off her underwear, sliding his fingers into her. She was soaking wet. “Do this for me,” she said, positioning him. The tip of her cock brushed against her, and he groaned, straining. Waiting for her to clarify. Every cultivated dominant instinct was gone. He’d wait like that for hours if she told him to. Her eyes widened when she realized why he was waiting. She grabbed his belt and just pulled him into her. “Philip, fuck me.”
It was hard and sloppy and uncomfortable and blindingly good, and when he pulled off of her she snatched at the keys and pushed him into the passenger seat. He looked at her pushing at the gear stick and realized they'd just taken the edge off.
Elizabeth went exactly at the speed limit, driving home, and they stopped only to switch out the license plates before they were stumbling to the bedroom, as clumsy as they were capable of being, falling into bed where finally — finally — she let him eat her out, she ordered him to eat her out, her voice tight and sure like he’d only heard directed at other people. And for the first time in fifteen years she let him know exactly what it was that she liked.
After giving her two orgasms in succession Philip was hard again. She made him lie down on the bed as she strapped her own cuffs on him. They were a pair that every good American couple should have — classy and feminine, the kind Elizabeth Jennings would have at the bottom of her underwear drawer. She took it out for anniversaries and Valentine’s. Neither of them had had much of a taste for it.
Philip felt his breaths coming out in sharp, uncontrolled breaths as she ordered him to put his hands up against the headboard. The cuffs were a little too tight on his wrists, digging into his skin when she locked them. It was good. He’d always liked it a little bit like that. Elizabeth was fully naked when she got on top of him, her hair cascading down her shoulders. When she started riding him, he couldn’t take his eyes off her breasts. When he finally lifted her gaze to her face, brows furrowed in concentration or ecstasy, he found that he couldn’t look away from that, either.
He came when she told him to, and she pumped her body slow and gentle as he shook beneath her. When he was done, she bent down and kissed him. Unbound his wrists and licked at the reddened lines. Philip closed his eyes. He rather thought they’d give away too much if he looked at her.
They did some minimal cleaning up, but the sheets were done for and they were too tired to slide on a new set. Philip bunched it off to the side and just lay down on the coverlets. His fingers brushed her arm, and very hesitantly, she took his hand.
:::::
When she told him her name, and it was like a door had cracked open to let in the sun. Illuminating everything.