by Frost, E J
I more than understand. I can hear Mir’s excuses as clearly as if she were whispering them in my ear right now. I hated her excuses. She had a roster; I heard them all over the years. Misbehave, yes. Take your discipline like a good girl, yes. Lie and cry and try to wiggle out of what’s coming, no.
“Yes, I do,” I say. “You knew he’d broken the rules.”
“More than that. I knew he’d done something completely outside the boundaries. He’d broken rules before. He did occasionally, to get my attention. This was more than that. He did something that threatened our whole power exchange. I’d planned to question him while he was in subspace because I was so concerned about it.”
Not something I approve of. At least not the way she planned. Bottoms are extremely vulnerable in subspace. That’s not the time to grill them. It’s the time to build them up and make sure they feel safe and loved.
“Did you allow him to take drugs?” I ask, to move away from that uncomfortable subject.
“What, the pot smoking? Yes, he did it to relax. That’s not illegal.”
They should put that up on billboards. “Mrs. Black indicated he took a number of drugs including Ecstasy, Viagra and opioids. Did you know about those?”
“Bill didn’t do E when we were together. I wouldn’t have allowed that. Viagra, yes. He was prescribed OxyContin, like everyone else in this damn country, and yes, I thought he leaned on it a little too much, but he did legitimately have sciatic pain, particularly when we travelled.”
“Did he take any drugs while you were aboard?”
She nods. “Oxy. He took some the first night. After that, he didn’t need it.”
“Nothing else?”
“Not that he mentioned or that I saw. We had separate cabins. He could have taken things while he was alone in his room, but I think I would have known. I could always tell when he took the painkillers.”
I tap my pen on my notepad and steel myself for the next question. “Jay MacDonald mentioned that Bill intended to relax with a little pink friend. Did you know about that?”
Her broad brow knits. “No. What’s a little pink friend?”
“Mr. MacDonald thought it might be—” I flip back to the note I made, so I get it right. “Oxymorphone. Do you know what that is?”
“No.” She shakes her head for emphasis. “Look, Mr. Logan, I don’t know about you, but I need to keep myself absolutely clear when I’m topping. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I don’t do drugs. Not even painkillers. Topping’s my high.”
“Same,” I tell her. “I don’t allow my bottoms to do drugs, either.”
Although I’m perfectly happy to give them painkillers, particularly after a session like last night.
Her nostrils flare and her jaw knots. “Are you suggesting I put my sub’s health in jeopardy?”
“No. I’m trying to establish Mr. Black’s mental state. If he wasn’t allowed by his top to take drugs, and he took something on Friday night when he was alone, that would explain why he didn’t answer your calls and why you felt he’d done something outside the boundaries.”
“Oh.” She rolls her muscled shoulders. “I wouldn’t have allowed him to take that, whatever it was called.” Her spine stiffens as she connects the dots. “Are you saying he took something Friday night that killed him?”
“I’m not drawing any conclusions at this stage. I’m investigating.”
“But that’s why you think it isn’t food poisoning?”
I hold my hands up, since it’s no more than the truth.
She touches her fingertips to her mouth, remembers that she’s wearing lipstick, and wipes her fingertips on the hem of her top. “Dammit. If I’d stayed on the cruise with him—”
I can see where she’s going. “You can’t know that. I don’t know anything for certain at this stage. I’m going to try to track down this other couple. See if they had any contact with him on Friday and Saturday. If you remember anything else about them, could you call me?” I fish my card out of my wallet. “Here’s my number.”
She takes the card and turns it around between her fingers. “You think I let Bill injure himself.”
“I’m not pointing fingers. I’m investigating. If you’d like to know the results of my investigation, I’ll ask my client if I can share it with you. Dom to Dom, I think you have a right to know.”
She nods. “He always was a willful sub.”
She’s justifying it to herself already, but I make a note to ask the cruise people if I can disclose Bill Black’s cause of death to her.
I stand and offer her my hand, which she shakes firmly. When I show her to the door, she turns to me and says, “I would like to know.”
“I’ll request a waiver from my client. They may ask you to sign a nondisclosure agreement, since my investigation’s confidential.”
She nods. “Nothing against Reggie, but she shouldn’t be suing anyone. She’ll realize that when she gets her head straight. Bill was carrying ten mil in life insurance. Sure, half of that goes to the company, but Reggie’s set for life.”
Reggie didn’t mention that, but I don’t think money is her motivation anyway. I shake Olsen’s hand again and close the door behind her.
When I walk back through the living area, Emily’s peeking out from behind the bathroom door. I beckon to her with two fingers as I go to the couch and sit down to call Ed Isaak, the VP I’m reporting to.
She comes to me but instead of sitting on the couch, she kneels between my knees. I tuck her hair behind her ear and stroke her cheek. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“She let her sub do drugs and he died, Daddy.”
I nod.
“But it’s not really her fault . . .” She trails off.
Any Dom worth their salt will feel it was. “That’s between her and her conscience.”
“Have any of your subbies done drugs?”
I nod. “Two. I broke it off when they wouldn’t stop.”
“I don’t do drugs, Daddy, but I do have medication for depression. I haven’t taken it in over a year, though.”
I’ve been waiting for her to tell me about this, since seeing it in her medical records. I understand why she hasn’t yet. This is deep, and she’s nervous about how I’m going to react. I can see it in her posture even more clearly than her expression. I keep my voice neutral and stroke her cheek with my fingertips.
“What is it?”
“Zoloft.”
“Do you have it with you?”
She nods. “Just in case.”
“When we get aboard, I’d like you to show it to me and we’ll go over the dosage.”
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Emily, when you have bad thoughts, how bad are they? Do you think about hurting yourself?”
She shakes her head and looks up at me with clear eyes. No evasion. “It’s different.”
“The next time you have bad thoughts, I want to hear about them, okay?”
She bites her lip. “Okay.”
Her expression tells me it’s not okay.
“We’ll take baby steps, Emmy. We’ll start with you just telling me when you have the bad thoughts, and we’ll work up to you telling me what they are. Does that sound good?”
She smiles and nods.
I cup her cheek in my hand. “Daddy’s proud of you. I know this is hard to talk about, and I don’t know anything about dealing with depression, so I’ll have to learn. But you’re a very good girl for telling me.”
“I just don’t want you to think I’m hiding things from you the way Mr. Black was from his Domme. I’m not, Daddy.”
I brush her hair back from her face and kiss her bitten-pink lips. “I appreciate you telling me.” It dawns on me why she has. It’s not because of what she overheard about Black. It’s because of last night. We’ve climbed a couple of rungs on the trust-ladder. “You’ve been a very good girl, Emily, do you hear me? A very good girl. I need to update the Pink Pearl people and then we need to catch our taxi to the port
, but you’ve earned a reward once we get on the ship. What would you like it to be?”
She beams up at me. “Anything?”
“Anything.”
Her eyes dart over my face. “Is there anything Daddy would like?”
Sweet little sub. “No, baby’s choice. Daddy will pick the play before bed tonight. This is your reward, sweetheart. Anything you want.”
There’s such light in those big eyes. If I could capture that light and use it to power the world, we’d never need another drop of oil.
“Could I have a tickling? A tickling and an orgasm?”
My little girl and her needy cunt. I’m crazy about both already and I’ve known her for less than a week. I give her a deep kiss and nip her lower lip with my teeth before I let her up for air. “Yes, to both. Come here.”
I take her hand and pull her up beside me on the couch. We’ve got time for five minutes of tickling before I call the cruise people. She sits beside me, open, happy and unquestioning.
“Take your shoes off.”
She’s wearing white Mary Janes today, paired with the pink sweatshirt, denim shorts, and pink-and-white striped thigh-highs. The thigh-highs seem to be part of her daily wardrobe, and, if they’re not, I’m going to make them mandatory. So fucking cute. She slips her shoes off and lines them up under the coffee table. I pat the end of the couch. “Feet here.”
She turns on her bum, and sets her feet on the couch, side by side, toes digging into the leather. I draw her feet into my lap and strip the adorable socks off her, one at a time.
“Lie back,” I tell her, a command the semi-circular couch can accommodate. “Put your arms over your head and grip your elbows.”
She does, without hesitation.
“So that I know how to tickle you properly later, we’re going to have five minutes of exploring now. During these five minutes, you can move, but you have to keep your arms over your head and hold onto your elbows. ‘No’ and ‘stop’ won’t work, but your safe word always does. Five minutes only, then you’re going to be a quiet girl while I call the cruise people. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, Daddy,” she breathes, arching her back and wiggling her bottom against the couch.
“Five minutes, starting now.” I pin her feet against my thighs with my forearm and draw my fingertips up the bare, delicate sole of her left foot, letting my fingernails scratch her lightly.
Emily whoops and thrashes on the couch. “No, Daddy! That tickles!”
I bet it does.
“We’re going to have such fun, baby,” I tell her as I draw my fingertips up her other sole.
* * *
Emily’s breathless, tear-stained, and grinning like a maniac after five minutes of exploratory tickling. I calm her with a cuddle. Then, because it’s been too long since any part of me was inside any part of her, I have her lie on the couch with her head in my lap. I take my cock out and tap it against her lips while I stroke her hair and smile down at her.
“You can have Daddy’s cock in your mouth for the duration of the call as long as you don’t make any noise. You can lick and suck and do anything you want, but the first wet, naughty noise you make, Daddy takes his cock away.”
She nods and opens her mouth, the light in her eyes brighter than the sun. Fuck, is she eager to please. So sweet. I rub the tip of my cock over her soft lips a few times before drawing her head down.
She takes just the tip and rubs her tongue all over it, swirling and flicking. This might have been a bad idea. Emily’s got a super-talented mouth, and the last thing I want to do is orgasm while I’m on the phone. Very unprofessional.
I look down at her face, ready to tell her to stop. Her eyes have rolled to white, and her expression, even with her mouth closed around my cockhead, is one of utter bliss. She’s licking me, rubbing her pointed tongue over the magic spot where the shaft meets the head, lips sealed to my skin, not making a sound, just as I told her. She’s being such a good girl, doing everything so right, and it’s clearly making her happy to please her daddy. I can’t take this away from her.
I stroke her hair, lean over to tap the phone lying on the arm of the couch, and pray for voicemail.
“Ed Isaak.”
Crap.
“It’s James Logan. I’m calling to update you on the interviews with Bill Black’s two assistants.”
“Excellent, Logan. I’m all ears.”
I really hope Emily doesn’t make a sound. I really hope I can stay coherent while her tongue is sliding all over my cockhead, now pressing hard, now fluttering, and, oh fuck, now she’s giving me a little suction.
I clear my throat and try to focus. “There have been some interesting developments. Black’s assistant Jay MacDonald was not on the ship with Black, but they did discuss Black taking what he described to MacDonald as a little pink friend. MacDonald also confirmed Black’s abuse of opiates.”
I hear Isaak shuffle papers. “I’m still surprised Regina Black admitted that to you so freely.”
She only did it because she was out of her head with grief and didn’t have any other outlet. If I’d been able to discipline her properly, she wouldn’t have been telling strangers intimate and damaging details of her husband’s life.
I put that aside and focus.
“Black’s other assistant, Chrisjean Olsen, was on the ship with him.” I have to pause and swallow as Emily increases the suction. How is she doing this without making any noise? “She saw him use opiates the first day aboard, so he clearly had them with him.”
“There’s nothing we can do about guests bringing prescription medication on board.”
I know that already from the endless briefings before I left New York. “Yes, my point is, he had bottles of prescription drugs with him. If he bought an illegal drug, either while he was aboard, or when he was ashore and brought it back, he could easily have hidden it in his prescriptions.”
“Okay, point taken. What you do want us to do?”
I want him to hang up so I can fuck my little girl’s mouth. I already know she can deep-throat me and I want that so badly right now my cock’s about to mutiny. My balls are pounding like death metal drums. Rightnow-rightnow-rightnow. I shift my hips slightly to try to relieve the pressure on my balls, but Emily follows my motion, her hot, wet tongue clinging to my shaft. I close my eyes and see sparks in the blackness that have nothing to do with the bright California sunshine.
When I realize I’ve been silent for too long, I clear my throat and say, “I need that CCTV footage sooner rather than later. Olsen left the cruise early and Black was alone for the last two days. I think he took the brick then. Narrowing down where he was during those last two days could help us identify either the source of the drugs, or how he got them through security.”
I hear him typing. “I’ll tell the IT boys to make it a priority.”
Ending this call is a priority.
“I’ve got another lead on what Black might have done the last two days,” I tell him, rushing through the important points. “Olsen mentioned they did a scene with another couple: Sar, possibly short for Sarah, and Rod, presumably short for Rodney or Roderick. They sat with Olsen and Black during the first formal dinner. Could you check your passenger list for a couple by those names? I want to interview them to see if they had any contact with Black after Olsen left.”
Isaak sighs. “That’s more potential for someone to go public. We’ve just gotten the last of the four locked down with a non-disclosure.”
It will be a great deal more bad publicity if another of their guests dies, but I let him vent without comment and enjoy the sensation of Emily’s soft, slow draws on my cock. Before I get completely lost in it, I say, “One last thing, MacDonald mentioned that Black had taken this cruise before, a few years ago. I don’t remember anything about that in our briefings.”
“No, I’m not aware of that, either. It was before my time. I’ll have the IT guys check our database.”
“Great. I’m in transit
the rest of the day, but I’ll check my emails later.”
“Oh, Logan, that reminds me, I’ve put you down for dinner at the captain’s table tonight. That way you can meet the officers without revealing your role.”
I grimace, since he can’t see me. I had plans for dinner tonight, which included hand-feeding Emily. I won’t be doing that at the captain’s table. “Thanks for that.”
“No problem. Thanks for the update, Logan. I appreciate you keeping me informed.”
“My pleasure. I’ll be back in touch on Monday.”
And then, finally, it’s time for my pleasure as he disconnects and I can have my noisy, messy way with my baby doll’s mouth.
4
I saw promotional pictures in the itinerary Logan emailed to me, but the plushness of the cruise ship still takes me by surprise. Logan leads me from the huge embarkation lounge where we enter, which has its own chandelier, through hallways carpeted in soft mauve and hung with artistic nudes, to our cabins. He gives me my key card and waits while I enter.
“I’ll just be a second, baby doll,” he tells me as I take in my cabin.
Golden, midday light pours through a sliding glass door that leads out to a balcony overlooking the ocean. The light is as dazzling as the cabin’s décor: all in shades of mauve, white, and gold. I cross the soft carpet to peer out from the balcony. Wow, what a view. I’ll be able to watch the sunset from my cabin every night as we sail down, and the sunrise every morning as we sail back. Well, if I don’t sleep through sunrise. Logan’s very . . . energetic. Not that I’m complaining. I haven’t been so satisfied in, well, ever.
I turn from the view of whitecaps and passing ships back to the cabin. It’s bigger than in looked in the pictures. There are two separate areas. The area closest to the exit is the bedroom, with a king-sized bed, a built-in dresser, and closet. The bathroom is between the bed and door, also bigger than expected, with a full-sized tub. A half-wall and curtain that can be drawn across the width of the cabin separate the bedroom from the living area, where there’s a seating area with a couch and loveseat. Across from the couch, there’s a large, flat screen TV mounted on the wall, and below it, a desk and padded chair. There’s a glass-block vase with a dozen pink roses on the desk, which is a lovely touch, like a high-end hotel. There’s space next to the vase for my laptop. If my time with Logan doesn’t inspire me sufficiently, the view will.