Gentle Hands – Part 2: Saturday, 7 p.m.

Sophie had a plan for Saturday, and it was written on index cards.

She was a librarian. She organised things. By Thursday night she had nine cards in a neat stack on the kitchen table, each one in her best handwriting, and she was hiding them under a cookbook every time Marcus walked past.

Card 1: 7 p.m. Blue shirt. He waits by the window. Doesn’t speak until I do.

Card 2: Dinner. I choose. He serves.

Card 3: The rug.

She went red writing card three. She went redder writing card four.

“What are you doing?” Marcus asked on Friday, coming into the kitchen.

“Nothing,” Sophie said, sliding a lemon cake recipe over the stack. “Go away.”

He went away, grinning. He knew exactly what she was doing. She knew he knew. It made it better.

---

On Saturday at 6:58, Marcus was standing at the living room window in the blue shirt, hands behind his back, looking out at the little street in Fitzroy.

At 7:00 exactly, Sophie came down the stairs.

She was wearing a dark green dress she had bought on Wednesday and hadn’t told him about. She had put her hair up. She was holding card one in her hand, because she was nervous, and because having it there made her feel braver.

She stopped in the doorway.

“You can turn around,” she said.

He turned. He saw the dress. He opened his mouth.

“I didn’t say you could speak,” Sophie said, and was amazed at how calm her voice sounded.

He closed his mouth. His eyes were shining.

“Good,” she said softly. “Card two.”

---

Card two went beautifully. She had made a mushroom risotto, his favourite, and he served it to her at the little table by candlelight, waiting for her nod before he sat down. She fed him the first bite from her own fork. He looked at her as if she had hung the moon.

Card three was the rug.

She had barely put the card down when someone knocked on the front door.

They both froze.

The knock came again. Then a voice through the letterbox, bright and loud and terribly familiar.

“Marcus! Sweetheart! It’s Mum and Dad! We were passing!”

Marcus went white. Sophie went scarlet. Nine index cards slid off the table and scattered across the floor like confetti.

---

Marcus’s parents stayed for an hour and a half.

His mother admired the dress. His father ate the leftover risotto and told a long story about his new lawnmower. Marcus sat on the sofa in his blue shirt looking like a man trying very hard not to look at his wife, and Sophie sat in the armchair trying very hard not to look at the index card under his mother’s left shoe.

It said, in clear librarian handwriting: Card 5: He asks permission. Every time.

At 9:30, his mother finally stood up. At the door, she hugged Sophie and said quietly, so Marcus couldn’t hear, “He looks so happy lately, love. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.”

Sophie managed to say thank you without dying.

---

When the door closed, they stood in the hallway in silence.

Then Marcus started laughing. Then Sophie did. They laughed until they slid down the wall and sat on the hallway floor, holding their stomachs, tears running down their faces.

“Card five,” Marcus wheezed. “Under her shoe.”

“Do you think she read it?”

“If she did, she’ll never mention it. She’ll take it to her grave.”

Sophie wiped her eyes. Then she looked at him, sitting on the floor in the blue shirt, rumpled and happy and hers.

She stood up. She held out her hand.

“Card three,” she said. “The rug.”

He stopped laughing. He took her hand.

“Yes, Soph,” he said.

---

What happened next belonged only to them: to the candles burning low and the scattered cards on the floor and the gentle, growing confidence in her voice. She didn’t need the cards in the end. She knew exactly what she wanted, and she said it, softly and clearly, one thing at a time, and every time he asked permission, she gave it with a smile.

Much later, lying on the rug with her head on his chest, she picked up one of the fallen cards.

“We never got to six through nine,” she said.

“Next Saturday?” Marcus asked hopefully.

“I decide that,” Sophie said. Then she kissed his chin. “Yes.”

---

The next morning, Marcus found a new cookbook on the kitchen counter.

It had a plain blue cover. On the first page, in her handwriting: The Saturday Book.

Inside were nine index cards, carefully glued in, and room for a hundred more.

On the back cover she had added one more rule.

Lock the front door.

---

The End.

More femdom marriage stories and gentle femdom erotica in Kink & Dominance.

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