by Smith, Maren
Seemingly off in his own little world, he sat on the floor with shoes and socks off, colorful ropes out, his instruction book open next to him and turned to a beginner’s design. He’d tied up one leg in blue rope using one style of wrap and knot, and now he was working his way up from ankle to knee on the other in red, wrapping in a slightly more elaborate pattern. But for all that he seemed very attentive to what he was doing, it only took one small shift in her position for him to stop talking about some marketplace in Afghanistan that he remembered fondly and ask, “Are you comfortable kneeling like that? Would you like a pillow, or do you want to sit all the way down on your bottom?”
Every nerve inside of her had come to life when he’d done that and it was the weirdest sensation. She’d prickled, just like she used to way back when she was a newbie in the lifestyle and talking to her very first dom. Carlson was so soft-spoken, almost parental—which was, in its own right, incredibly weird.
Get your ass in the air. That was what she was used to.
“I’m fine,” she’d stammered. Because she was caught off guard, she told herself. Not because she was turned on. She wasn’t here to be turned on. She was here because… well, because she’d had a shitty day and after being trapped on a bus with Pony for eight hours round trip, not to mention one hour in front of Ethen while he made ominous inquiries into her recent activities before ordering Pony to bed without supper, just the thought of having to stay home tonight while Pony went hungry was just unbearable.
She and Pony had got into another quiet fight when she tried to get her to disregard Ethen’s instructions. But Pony had immediately put herself to bed without supper, and then burst into tears because she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. And Puppy immediately called a cab so she wouldn’t have to listen to it or feel how hungry she was too. No way was she going to eat now when Pony couldn’t.
All because she’d left the house last night.
She wanted to be normal. Normal people could go wherever they wanted. They could talk to whoever they wanted, too, without fear of having to answer to people like Ethen.
Coming to Black Light was like repeatedly sliding down a sharpened knife’s edge. Everyone here knew her; they knew what she’d done. It was inevitable. One of these days, she was going to get cut, but as soon as she was out of the house tonight, Black Light was the only place she could think of to come. And mostly, that had been because she was hoping Carlson would be here again. He was the only person she knew who didn’t know who she was or have any idea what awful things she’d done in her past. With him, she could pretend she was just like everybody else. At least until someone told him. Then he’d probably want nothing more to do with her and she’d have to find somewhere else to go.
Oh, shit. He was looking at her expectantly, like he’d just asked her something. Lost as she’d been in her own thoughts, she’d missed it.
She froze and, for one perfect, panic-stricken second, she might as well have been staring into Ethen’s waiting eyes. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I told you my favorite place,” he said. “Conversations do work best when both parties get their say. So, tell me. If you could go anywhere in the world right now, where would that be?”
Her mind went completely blank and the panic surged. She tried to control it, but the longer it took her to answer, the more his head tipped and his gaze narrowed. It became everything she could do not to shove back from him. Her legs itched to run, but where could she go? Back through Black Light, drawing all those stares and whispers after her all over again?
Back home?
“Red,” she stammered, horrified by the thought.
Carlson nodded once. His handsome face was unreadable, and that frightened her almost as much as the thought of having to leave. Eventually she was going to have to give this up, and she knew it. But not now, not yet. She just wasn’t ready.
“Okay,” he said slowly, and changed the subject.
While he went back to knots and talking about his early military days, she struggled without moving—and, hopefully, without looking like she was struggling—to get her heart rate back under tight control so the knots in her stomach would loosen their anaconda grip and she could relax again.
Except that, just as she was starting to succeed, he asked another question. “So, what do you do for a living?”
That question knocked her feet right back out from under her again.
She didn’t do anything. She hadn’t even spent the day job hunting the way she’d wanted. Instead, she’d spent eight hours traveling by Greyhound to and from West Virginia’s federal prison, under the dreaded weight of impending and then descending punishment.
She hadn’t been able to hold a job since Ethen’s arrest.
No one wanted to hire someone who collapsed into a neurotic ball every time she was asked to do something.
She was a mess.
“Red,” she choked.
“Have you lived in the D.C. area long?”
Her face got hot.
All her life, unless one counted the two years she’d spent in Hell on Ethen’s remote country ranch.
The anacondas squeezed in so tight she could barely breathe. “Red.”
“Do you have a coat?” he calmly countered, folding his hands in his lap. His stone-gray stare pinned her to the floor.
Her coat was in her closet but getting it had meant letting Pony know she was leaving, and she hadn’t wanted to do that. Not when Pony was already being punished for the last time she’d left.
“Red,” she croaked.
“When was the last time you had a good meal? And don’t say red,” he said, interrupting before she could do more than open her mouth. “This isn’t a safeword kind of question. None of these have been.”
Puppy fled, or at least she tried. She should have taken him up on the pillow offer. After so long spent kneeling on the hard tile floor, it was amazing how out of practice for this pose her legs and feet had become. She stumbled just trying to get up and that stumble was all the time Carlson needed to catch her wrist.
With one sharp tug, she flopped back down, but not on her knees. She toppled sideways, landing on her ass instead. While she scrambled to regain her balance, Carlson let go of her wrist and grabbed her by both ankles instead. Her whole body froze when he yanked her to him. Her jean-clad butt slid across the hard tile floor without any hesitation. All she could do was try not to fall flat on her back as he pulled her in between his splayed knees, heaving her right leg over his left thigh and her left leg over his right, until she was sitting, stiff and still and too much in shock to know how to react, smack between his thighs. He let go of her legs and her feet bumped the floor on opposite sides of his body.
It was the first time in over a year that she’d had a man between her legs, and the first time in her entire life that she’d ever had one there like this. She sat between his knees with her legs draped over the top of his, and the most unbelievable bloom of wanton heat unfurling in the pit of her belly as he softly said, “I’m going to put my hands on your waist. Now, that is something you can say ‘red’ to if you want.”
Trembling, she held both his stare and her breath as, giving her plenty of time to protest if she truly wanted to, he reached for her. The warmth of his palms settled just above her hips, instantly bleeding in through her clothes, and oh, but the things that warmth did to the heat already awakening inside her.
“Put your hand on my arms,” he directed. “That is also something you may say ‘red’ to if you wish.”
Her trembling worsened by the second. His touch on her waist was light; the circle of his arms the closest she had been to an actual hug from a man in a very long time. It was painful how much she realized she wanted to be held.
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep back the rising sting of tears she was too embarrassed to let loose.
Her hands burned as she struggled to find an unobtrusive place to touch that didn’t feel grossly inappropriate. Beca
use, of course this was inappropriate. She didn’t belong to him. She didn’t belong to anybody, although she knew Ethen was less than two months now from happily proving that wrong.
Fingers twitching, her hands found a fragile perch on his biceps. The heat of him burned her there too. He felt so solid, so strong.
Ethen would feel strong too, once he was back to dragging her through the house by her hair… whipping her with the length of her own leash… locking her back in her kennel by the living room hearth…
Puppy couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. The tears were welling fast and she just couldn’t blink hard or fast enough to keep them back. She kept her eyes down, staring into his lap, praying he wouldn’t make her look at him because she really didn’t want him to see just how close she was to losing it.
“Close your eyes,” Carlson soothed.
She hated being blind. Ethen was king of smacks that came unexpectedly out of nowhere, but she had been a menagerie girl for far too long not to obey. Shaking, she closed herself in voluntary darkness, flinching slightly when a whisper of movement came from just behind her. Her muscles tightened, but she was imagining things. No one was behind her. Ethen was in prison; Carlson was right here. Their legs were loosely wrapped one about the other, with the touch of his hands burning through her shirt and her trembling hands resting lightly on his arms. No one else cared enough for her either way to come anywhere near her.
No one else in the world. She bit her bottom lip in a failing effort to stop it from wobbling.
“Deep breath in,” he said, his strong inhale a mirror that she instinctively tried to emulate. Hers was much shakier. “Let it out slowly.”
She very nearly burst into tears. Even closed, her eyes were stinging. She bowed her head, trying to turn her face away, but the only time his hand left her waist was when he caught her chin and gently brought her face back to his.
“Deep breath,” he said again.
She obeyed. In and out, in and out, until the need to cry gradually seeped into the background and only the intense embarrassment remained.
“Keep breathing until you feel calm. When you feel calm, open your eyes. When you open your eyes,” he said, the tone of his voice dipping ever so slightly into disapproval, “then I am going to let you go, we are going to clean up our space, and we’re going to be all done here tonight. While I appreciate that you would rather use your safeword as opposed to lying to me, it was, in my opinion, an inappropriate word use. I am telling you all about me, because I would like to get to know you better. Do you want me to stop?”
Stop talking to her? Or did he mean stop spending time with her?
Or touching her?
No. God, no.
She ducked her head, eyes squeezed tight, as terrified of what she wanted to say as she was of the consequences that would inevitably follow. No matter what she did, there would be consequences.
His hand left her waist again and she flinched, instinctively ducking her chin so he couldn’t catch it again. The intimacy of being forced to face him, even with her eyes closed, was just too much.
It was also no match at all for the comb of his fingers moving up the back of her neck into her hair, seizing a firm hold at the base of her scalp before dragging her head up and back. The hand still on her waist, stole around her back, becoming a secure embrace that pulled her closer. All the way into his embrace, so close that her ass bumped all the way up against his hips, all but lifting her right up onto his lap. This was anything but sexual, and yet it was the most intensely sexual position she’d found herself in in years.
Her eyes flew open, locking on his because his face was right there. So close that he could have kissed her.
The raw thrill of it sang through her. So did her panic.
She didn’t even realize she’d just grabbed his chest until the heat of his body beneath his soft, black, skin-tight shirt burned her hands. She gasped, but the word red never crossed her mind much less her lips. Staring into his calm, unsmiling eyes, she lost herself.
“Breathe in,” he commanded.
Losing all the air she had in a gusting exhale, she obeyed. Locked in his arms and his stare, breathing was all she could do. Breathing and shaking, and God knows she was doing plenty of that. It was a wonder she didn’t shake him, she trembled so hard.
“Do you want me to stop?” he repeated himself.
Heaven help her.
“N-no, Sir,” she gasped.
Tipping his head, slowly he said, “Don’t call me that again. Not unless you want me to take that role. It’s Carlson. Just Carlson. Do you understand?”
God, why couldn’t she have found someone like this instead of Ethen all those years ago?
Let go, she told her hands. If she let go of, then eventually Carlson would too. They’d untwine. Their time here would end and who knows if he’d ever invite her to sit with him again, because she was inappropriate and messed up, and God, but she just couldn’t make her fingers release him. Not anymore than she could make herself stop trembling, or blink back the rush of her tears now spilling freely down her cheeks.
And yet the worst was still to come, because when she opened her mouth to apologize, what came pouring out was every bit as unstoppable as those awful burning tears.
“I’m not allowed to leave the house, so I sit in the tub. I lost my job a year ago, and now I live with my mother. If I tried to get my coat, Pony wouldn’t have let me come tonight and I had to get out of there. I had to! He’s punishing us again, because of me, and I’m sorry. I’m just so sorry. Please.” She needed to let him go, and yet her fists only tightened their grip on the sleeves of his shirt. “Please, Sir, don’t stop.”
She didn’t sound sane, even to herself. That he didn’t immediately dump her off his lap, with an appalled, ‘Jesus, lady,’ as he quickly walked away, would forever be a miracle in her mind.
“I told you not to call me that.” But instead of pushing her away, Carlson pulled her closer, embracing her with the kind of strength she only wished she had.
“I’m sorry,” she sobbed.
“Maybe, but probably only half as sorry as you’re going to be. This isn’t the way it’s done,” he said, holding her tight. “You want a sir? Well, you’ve got one now.”
He held her with her head buried against his chest and she couldn’t have resisted if she wanted to. She melted into him, letting the softness of his shirt absorb all the tears this awful day could drag from her. She didn’t deserve his kindness, but knowing she might never get another chance to feel this again, she gratefully stole all the comfort that he chose to give her.
With her face buried as it was, she never saw the look Carlson shot over the top of her head to Spencer, standing silently in the mouth of the nook just behind her.
Jaw clenching over and over again, Spencer nodded once, then shook his head and, fists balled up tight at his sides, quickly walked away.
* * *
Spencer sat in his office with his feet flat on the floor, forearms braced across his knees, and hands steepled in front of his mouth. This was such a mess. He wished he’d stayed in his office tonight. He certainly wished he hadn’t heard the things Puppy had said out there. It had been a hell of a lot easier back when he could vilify her right alongside Ethen, but no longer. She was every bit a target for that man’s abuse as Hadlee and Kitty had been, and now Spencer was right back to square one, struggling to think back to the beginning of this whole mess, second guessing everything he’d seen and searching in retrospect for some clue to the horror that had been going on right under his nose before Hadlee and Kitty revealed it all. No matter how hard he thought about it, he couldn’t find it—that one word or action that he could put his finger on and say a-ha that was the clue he never should have missed.
The time Ethen had been sentenced to wasn’t anywhere near what he deserved.
Spencer glanced at the calendar, not pulling the pages up, because what good would it do to stare at the man’s possible
release date, circled in red so it wouldn’t be missed? He couldn’t stop Ethen’s impending release. Nothing he could say would reverse the parole board’s decision, because really, none of the abuse had factored into the excuse the prosecutor had used to put him behind bars to begin with. The man had mentally, physically, and sexually broken four women, and it had barely come up at the trial. It was the financial fraud that eventually convicted him. The beatings and rape… those had simply, quietly, and litigiously swept under the figurative rug.
He frowned at his computer, but he knew better. There were rules in place here, especially in regards to the confidential handling of the private information Black Light held on its members. In a case like this, however—he scooted his chair in close enough to take command of his keyboard—he just didn’t feel good about not sharing what he knew. Especially after what he’d just seen.
It only took a few minutes to print off the small cache of newspaper articles he’d saved over the course of the trial. After that, his hardest obstacle was overcoming his own sense of right and wrong as he tucked those pages into an envelope small enough to be slipped into Carlson’s locker through a ventilation slit.
Chapter 7
Old Ebbitt Grill was one of the best-known late-night bars in the D.C. area. Although it had been razed three times throughout its long history, it still had an old Victorian air complete with mahogany wood paneling, frescas on the walls and ceiling, four interior bars, and oysters served half-price for as long as they still had them or until they closed the kitchen at two a.m. on weekends.
Carlson loved the history of this place. He’d been coming here since he was a kid. The wait staff was always friendly, the atmosphere was lively. It had awesome entertainment most nights, although it was pretty quiet tonight. That quiet was about to become the bane of Puppy’s sitting abilities, too. If she looked in her wallet one more time, he was going to put her over his knee and spank her right here in the booth.