Black Light: Roulette War

by Grant, Livia

  He’d recovered into a knee-weakening half-smile, and Violet wanted a lot of things that were not appropriate right then. She settled for accepting his help out of the cincher, and then stripped the rest of the latex off her body, only to stand again, and frown out over the platform.

  “I think we should just hang it over the pillory,” Mister M said of the catsuit draped over her arm. “They’ll want to have everything cleaned. And put your shoes back on,” he said, as she moved to lay aside the gear. “This isn’t the kind of place you want to walk around barefoot.”

  Between that and those gloves… was he worried about her wellbeing, or just a germophobe in general? Maybe both?

  The wheel had chosen better than she could, that was for sure. Her choices had led her to fucking Brian, who’d made her into a damn accessory. The wheel had given her to Mister M, and he’d made her feel like she was the only person in the club who mattered. Sure, they’d played in front of others—and parts of that had clearly, sharply yanked on all her fears—but none of the exhibitionism had figured into her Dom’s gratification that she could tell. It felt like the only thing he wanted to watch was her responses.

  Violet stood nude in her heels, fox tail brushing the backs of her thighs, and took a deep breath. The stage was right there, just steps away, and the roulette wheels gleamed under Black Light’s neon. Another sub was just finishing up her second spin. The woman’s hair was soaked; maybe water bondage? A shower scene?

  She turned her face back to Mister M, grinned, nervous again but for new reasons this time, and then walked her naked ass toward the stage. He followed behind, carrying her clothes and his jacket, and let her hear his hum of appreciation for the display, but didn’t climb the stairs—he just stood offstage, waiting.

  The DJ transferred his attention to Violet as the other woman moved off with her Dom, and she gave him a sheepish smile.

  No need to be embarrassed—there’s naked women all over the place in here.

  “Hi,” she said. “I guess I’m rolling another one, now?”

  “Alright,” Elixxir said, sounding congratulatory, “here you go!” He passed her the tiny marble and spun the wheel into motion.

  She let the ball go, and it popped into place without a skitter or bounce.

  “Blood play,” Elixxir read aloud, his voice dramatic even when he was off the mic.

  God.

  Violet twisted to raise her brows at Mister M.

  He shook his head. “Hard limit,” he said, making his voice project so the DJ could hear.

  Elixxir leaned over to check some paper on the podium and nodded. “Yup. Hard limit for Mister M. Roll again.” He handed her back the marble and made the wheel spin.

  Come on, roulette. It’s my lucky night. Let’s go.

  The ball left her fingers and rasped around the track, momentum carrying it longer this time. It kissed the side of a pocket, bounced bounced bounced, and then settled. Violet’s eyes widened.

  “Breath play!” said the DJ.

  This time when she turned to her Dom for confirmation, the man had a look on his face. A glint to his eyes and a subtle curve to one side of his mouth, like he’d just showed up at someone’s house for dinner only to discover they were serving his favorite thing.

  Violet’s skin prickled under that look. Her nipples tightened to points.

  Down near his hip, the man twitched a pair of fingers at her—come here—and she had to breathe through her mouth.

  She made her way down the stage stairs with extreme care, so she didn’t fall and break an ankle or something. Her fucking knees were weak.

  They were about to jump off the damn deep end, weren’t they? Exercises in trust, hell!

  But he heard you, before. He listened.

  When she came to stand in front of him again, his arm circled her shoulders so he could grip the base of her braid and tilt her head back.

  “Tell me, Miss Payne.” A keen glint in green eyes. “How much do you enjoy breathing?”

  Chapter 5

  Anson

  His sub stared back up at him, lips parted, eyes searching his face. “I… um…” A slip of pink tongue came out to wet her hips. “I don’t…”

  It was not his usual style to tease, but the unfolding of the night had Anson in rare form. “You don’t like to breathe?” He let mock concern pinch his brows together while he still had a handful of the hair he’d braided himself. The woman’s body didn’t squirm, but her face did.

  “I’ve never… done breath play before.”

  Anson had.

  Ohh, had he.

  “But it wasn’t among your hard limits.”

  “N-no…” She shifted her weight, features smudging to one side as though she wished she could go revise those limits right this minute.

  He could’ve stood there for an indefinite amount of time and enjoyed the play of her, naked and nervous against his clothed body, the silver of that nipple ring glinting as her breath made it rise and fall under the neon. But he had to gather himself just as much as Miss Pain appeared to need the same, before they dove headlong into another scene.

  This scene.

  “Do you know what bondage tape is?” he asked.

  Her throat bobbed. “Yes, Sir.”

  “Then head over to where they have supplies”—he dipped his head to indicate the direction he’d gone for the flogger—“and bring back a roll. White, if there’s a choice. And meet me at the massage tables.” He let go her braid, and she blinked up at him.

  “Naked? Sir?”

  Anson glanced at the short black dress and bra he still had in hand. He smiled, an act he was allowing himself more and more around this woman, and said, “Yes. Naked.”

  She held his eyes for a beat and then let her focus travel down to his waist and back up, as though she’d memorize his appearance. Then his submissive slipped around him, off to find the supply station.

  Anson turned to watch her go, that long fox tail swinging across her thighs. He was far from the only set of eyes in the club with attention for the accent to her heart-shaped little ass.

  Didn’t really think that was my kink.

  Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t. Either way, the plug had served to bring her to the edge and help push her over back there at the pillory, so credit where credit was due.

  What was his kink was fucking breath play. The odds had been slim for her second roulette spin to turn up his one Achilles heel, and Anson had needed to pack his shock away with impressive speed. It was never a good idea to have a Dom’s nerves bleeding over onto his sub, at least not for how he felt comfortable playing.

  A breath scene was what had sent him scuttling to the voyeur fringes of the community the last time. That had happened in private, not at a club. She hadn’t understood her own limits. He’d been too wrapped up in the thrill of watching her struggles to be paying the kind of attention he needed. By the time it was all over, she’d had a full panic attack.

  They’d never spoken to or seen each other again.

  It had taken the structure in place, the pressure to act surrounding the roulette event tonight for Anson to venture out again. He didn’t know what it said about him that the disaster with his former sub hadn’t put him off the idea of breath play. No, that was still at the tip-top of his list of kinks. Where it had made him unsteady was his confidence at reading people.

  But Miss Pain was shoring him back up, tonight. He could somehow gauge the language of her limbs, her face. And he was watching every last twitch. That was why he’d stopped damn near everything, even when she’d only called ‘yellow.’ There could be no assumptions. No half-measures.

  She wouldn’t trust him if she thought he wasn’t listening.

  But that was why the breath play scene was going to succeed this time. He knew himself better. And he trusted her to speak on her own behalf. She already had.

  Anson squinted around the outer walls of the club, deciding where exactly to hunt for the thing he wanted. He
hadn’t seen one when he’d selected the flogger and gag, and there hadn’t been one with the latex gear because, well, they were usually leather. As a last resort, he settled on the costume room. If there wasn’t one in there, he’d have to rethink his whole approach to how he’d manage Miss Pain’s breath.

  He wove his way across the floor to where he remembered the costumes being, trying to avoid touching or bumping anyone as he went. Members clustered in small audiences right and left to watch other Roulette pairs deep in their respective scenes, just as a small circle had gathered to watch him play with Miss Pain.

  The latex had been another thing altogether, when experienced in person. No video could ever do justice to the feel of it under his gloves. The stretch and crease of it as it moved with her curves, right in front of his face. The catsuit and hood had kept her entire body sealed off, and he’d been able to focus only on the most sensitive places.

  He wished he could have done a better job of helping her focus. The blindfold, he’d hoped, could have been a way to block out the sight of the audience for her. Maybe to help with the concerns she’d expressed about humiliation. But he hadn’t counted on the sounds around them, like footsteps, also being a trigger. Nor had he understood from their conversation the depths to which the hooks of her problems with her previous Dom had sunk into this woman’s psyche.

  Had he changed course enough? When she’d been almost ready to tap out?

  Because that might have been the more terrifying factor. Anson Morrow didn’t just want to control and manipulate this woman’s experience—motives he could admit made his dick hard.

  No, with every sharp little breath she took, as he asked her to experience this or that, the lonely Senior Revenue Agent had come to understand he wanted her to enjoy it. To enjoy him.

  Because that’s what you are. Lonely.

  If Matthew could hear his internal monologue right then, the congressman would be having a field day.

  Anson found a velvet rope fencing off the door to the costume room once he made his way there, but no one on Black Light staff manning it. He leaned forward, as though he’d get a peek into the room, but another man spoke from his right.

  “She’s in the back,” he said, “hunting me down a schoolgirl outfit.” One of the other Roulette Doms gave Anson an amiable shrug, hands tucked in his trouser pockets while he waited at the rope.

  “Ah.” Anson stuffed his own hands in his pockets, that universal male posture of waiting, and felt the second pair of nitrile gloves folded on the left side. His need to carry a pair or two everywhere he went had already saved him in more ways than one, tonight. Least of all, his inspiration to bring those clothespins into play. The damn things were close enough to popsicle sticks to make his skin start to itch.

  And you liked the opportunity to push your fingers into all your sub’s wet places, didn’t you?

  A young woman came out of the costume room with something pleated and plaid on a hanger. She handed it off to the other waiting Dom, and then turned to Anson. Her nametag read ‘Jayla.’

  “Mister M, what can I help you find?” Her smile was bright, fingers laced at her waist. She’d clearly been paying attention to names during the announcing of Roulette pairs.

  “Do you have any posture collars back there?” he asked.

  Jayla cocked her head, and her eyes narrowed in that search for information that lived elsewhere. “I think so. Let me go check.”

  “Thank you.”

  Anson let his eyes wander around the club for what was probably less than a minute, before the woman returned with something black in her hand.

  “Found one!”

  He took it from her and turned it end over end, and then made a face. It was a plain circlet of stiff leather. “Do you happen to have one with a chin support?” he asked. “It’ll look something like the neck of a pitcher?”

  The woman’s face broke into a grin, and her eyes glittered. “Feisty,” she said in approving tones, and took the black collar back from him. “You know, I think we have a small collection of asylum-themed gear—I’ll go see if there’s anything in there.” She turned on a heel and left him at the rope again.

  This was taking long enough that Miss Pain was probably already at the massage tables, looking around for him. Waiting. Naked, save the fox tail.

  God, he’d wanted to fuck her.

  Just watching her shake back there, when his fingers had chased her to a climax. The jerk of her backside at each lick of the flogger. But it would have been too intimate. Too soon. Somehow oral was less personal, but it had done nothing to slow him down. The moment Anson had imagined her bare mouth on his cock, no condom to spare him every visceral stroke, he’d come with a rage that nearly had him bending fingernails backward as he’d gripped the top of the pillory.

  And that had thrown him, as well. On any other night, the idea of that sort of contact with bodily fluids would have sent him recoiling in a panic. Not emptying a nut under a spotlight. Hell.

  But there had been no way he wasn’t going to indulge after watching Miss Pain lose herself that way, especially after her turnaround from the panic. A second condom sat in his pocket, alongside the gloves, in case Anson reached that level of need again.

  “So, how you like that tattoo?”

  Anson nearly leapt out of his thoughts at the sound of Matthew’s voice. His friend stepped around from behind him, grinning, drink in hand.

  “Tattoo?” Anson said.

  Matthew gave him a look. “The bonsai? Come on, what are the odds?”

  Anson’s mouth went into a line. “I’m sure there are trends in tattoo design for women in certain age demographics that at least make it somewhat likely th—”

  “Oh shut up, Morrow, she’s fucking made for you. You either like the tattoo, or you don’t.”

  The coincidence had been fairly staggering, especially paired with their roll of breath play. But Anson didn’t like how much the narrowest odds working in his favor smacked of the ‘L’ word.

  I do like the tattoo, though.

  “I thought you weren’t going to watch my scenes,” Anson said.

  “Look at this guy, trying to change the subject.” Matthew sipped his drink. “I didn’t stand around and ogle you, but it’s hard not to stare at a naked woman on the way by.”

  “Will this work?” Jayla emerged from the costume room to hand Anson something new: a white and tan leather padded collar with the chin support he’d requested. The colors gave it an institutional feel.

  “Perfect,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome!” She turned to greet a petite brunette, and Anson stepped sideways, out of the way.

  “Well,” he said to Matthew, “my sub is probably still naked right now. I need to be getting back. Breath play.” He raised the collar to make his point.

  “Oh shit!” His friend’s eyebrows shot up. He was the only other person who knew about what happened with Anson’s former sub.

  “I know.”

  “Well good lu—”

  “I will make it look like an accident, Matthew.” Anson made a firm gesture with the collar before turning to head back into the crowd.

  People and their precious ‘luck.’ Let it go.

  Miss Pain stood beside a vacant massage table when he found her, arms folded behind her back, but head up, since she had to pick him out of the crowd. The colored neon overhead painted out highlight and shadow on her curves, and she smiled when she saw him. Anson found himself smiling back.

  Yet another thing bolstered his spirits for the night: Miss Pain’s air of ready obedience. She wasn’t a brat—at least not so far—and that went a long way with Anson. Those kinds of obedience games were tedious; he preferred getting straight to the business of curating his partner’s sensual experience.

  On the table at her side sat the roll of bondage tape, white like he’d asked, and inside the roll was another of the red foam balls. The woman had realized this sort of scene would probably leav
e her without her voice again, at times, and brought the alternate safe word option.

  “Smart,” he said, setting the collar down on the table and tapping the foam ball with a finger. Miss Pain’s eyes met his after getting a glimpse of the collar. She wet her lips with her tongue, and every line on her face smacked of nerves. “Do you need a minute?” he asked.

  “Can, um…” One of her ankles tilted to the side in a patent heel. “Can we just talk a little before we get going?”

  She’d never played this way. His sub wasn’t saying ‘no,’ but the obvious stalling was both understandable and—he could admit—endearing.

  “We’ll work up to it,” he said, and patted the leather of the massage table. “Sit up here, please.” Anson pushed their gear to the foot of the table with his forearm, before folding her dress, bra, and his coat to hang over the support rung between the table’s legs.

  She did as he said, hoisting her backside up on the table with a small hop and the thrust of her arms.

  “Lie back, Miss Pain.”

  Nervous or no, the woman went, flat on her back before Anson instructed her to bend her knees toward the ceiling. The limbs leaned together to form a small pyramid, and her fox tail and braid trailed out from under her body. Anson reached for the tape.

  “May I ask you a question, Sir?” she said to the lights overhead.

  He was pulling at the edge of the tape. “Kind of late to ask permission, don’t you think?” Anson turned up half a smile at his own stuffy humor and lifted her left ankle from the table, so her leg bent back at the hip and her calf was touching the back of her thigh. He removed her shoe and set it on the floor beneath the table before anchoring the end of the tape with one hand and beginning the loop around ankle and upper thigh. “Ask.”

  “I’ve been trying to guess all night,” she said. “What do you do? For a living?”

  Anson smirked. “Is that what you’ve been thinking about the whole time?”