He lay on her stomach and chest, his body limp. His shirt draped down over her sides, covering both of them. She combed his hair away from his eyes with her fingers, but his gold eyelashes and pale lids stayed closed.
Her other hand strayed under his shirt, and she gingerly explored the hard tangle of scar tissue on his back.
“Remember,” he whispered. His lips moved on her breasts, and sweat ran down her ribs.
He whispered, “Remember what you promised.”
~~~~~~~
Episode 4: Rae Bound
Contract with The Devilhouse
Contract with The Devilhouse
What have I done? What have I done?
Rae’s chattering mind kept cadence with her stiletto boot heels clattering on the tile as she paced around the whipping post and past the red leather-upholstered, undulating sex couch. In the flickering light from wall sconces that pretended to be candles, the black shadows behind the dungeon’s torture equipment looked like they were waving at her and mocking her.
Why did I do it? I shouldn’t have signed!
Since Sunday, Rae had dithered for three days, penduluming, deciding whether she should take the job as a dominatrix at The Devilhouse and hand out punishments to sexually deviant men or change her cell phone number so that Wulf couldn’t ever find her again.
Not that the latter would work. Lizzy and Georgie, her college dorm suitemates, would just barge through their adjoining bathroom and demand to know why she hadn’t taken the job.
Signing her name on that paper that the accountant had slid across the desk at her just a few minutes ago had been merely Rae’s hand scratching the pen on deceptively ordinary paper, but now it felt like a contract with the Devil.
I’ve already done it. There’s no way out.
Rae freaked out some more.
If my family finds out, they will never speak to me again. Wulf’s private investigator almost blew it, but this is all my fault. They’ll find out, somehow. My father, my mother, my brothers, and my cousins will all turn away from me. Shun me. Expel me. Strike my name from the church rolls and scratch my name out of their Bibles.
I’ll be alone in the world, in this Godless, sinful, awful world.
She knew that she was backsliding, becoming again that child who had shown up at college mired more in despair than defiance, but fear drove her back.
Maybe God had devised The Devilhouse as a supernatural moral test, threatening her education by challenging her virtue.
By signing the contract, maybe she had failed.
Yet, the whole point of her college education was to help autistic kids. If she gave up her plan to build her autism clinic, A Ray of Light, surely that would be wrong.
Surely, abandoning children to the darkness of autism was the most evil thing that Rae could do.
Plus, her bank account had fattened by a thousand dollars since yesterday morning when The Devilhouse’s direct deposit had arrived, which meant that her account was up to a grand total of one thousand, one hundred and three dollars.
That was, like, three textbooks for next semester. Maybe four.
Maybe the Devil was tempting her to choose her pride and vanity over helping children.
The Devil was tempting her in The Devilhouse. Get it? Devilhouse.
Surely, even Satan himself was more subtle than that.
She didn’t even believe in Satan any more. After that blowout with her preacher when she was sixteen, when he told her that she was a weak woman and should hold her peace in church and look to her father and younger brothers for guidance, she had written it all off.
She wanted to fall to her knees and pray. The thigh-high leather boots would protect her skin from the rough tile floor.
Instead, Rae paced. Her heels clicked and clacked on the tile, the shadows danced crazy jigs on the walls, and with every step of the knee-high boots, she regretted signing that danged contract.
Probably.
A thousand dollars. For a few hours.
Two thousand dollars a week would change her life.
Her mind boggled at the thought of not scraping by in college. She could buy a cafeteria meal plan and eat something other than oranges off the neighborhood trees, half-burned grilled cheese sandwiches made by ironing buttered bread through aluminum foil, and beer.
To steady herself, she grabbed a beam of a St. Andrew’s cross, a huge capital X, with her gloved hand. The metal chilled her hand through her leather glove, and she leaned her fevered forehead against it. The metal shocked her face.
If only slinging pancakes at IHOP paid two thousand dollars a week, she wouldn’t have to wonder which Devil’s trap she was falling into.
The door banged open, and Wulf, The dread Dom of the Devilhouse, strode in, unbuttoning the jacket of his black suit. Even in the dark dungeon of Play Room Two, his hair glinted gold in the weak lights from the medieval sconces, and the fake candlelight flickered on the sharp planes of his cheekbones and the square angle in his jaw. Her family would disparage his strong face as “too pretty” in their envy of his unscarred skin.
Yeah, he didn’t have any scars on his face. Rae’s heart clenched.
Wulf said, “We’ll start with some basic intimidation today.” When his gaze lit on her, the expression in his bright blue eyes changed to concern. “Rae, whatever is wrong?”
He crossed the play room in three long steps and wrapped his strong arms around her. “Did something happen? We didn’t put you in with anyone, yeah?”
His alarmed tone reproached Rae for being so emotional, even while she noticed that his usually imperceptible accent seemed stronger. “It’s nothing. Just second thoughts.”
“About working here.” His flat tone chastised her. “Or was it the books?”
A box for her had been delivered to the front desk of her dorm this morning. When Rae opened it up in her room, the smell of mildew-foxed paper floated out, and she sneezed. The two volumes were bound in old, red leather, and the early sunlight picked out the worn gold lettering on the spines, Shakespear. It was kind of weird that they misspelled his name. She had seen nicer copies, newer ones, with bright gold leafing in the big box bookstore just off campus, but the thought was nice. At least he hadn’t bought her ostentatious faux jewelry, which she would have returned to him. Some of that jewelry that he had sent over were obviously high-end crystal and probably worth a couple hundred bucks.
Indeed, he had bought her used books. That was an appropriate gift and obviously not a weird sex bribe.
“No, no, no,” she said. “The books were really sweet of you. I love Shakespeare. His sonnets and long forms are incredible, and I really appreciate it. It was very thoughtful of you. Thank you.” Even though Venus and Adonis and The Rape of Lucrece were kind of scandalous for a guy to give to a girl.
“They’re the 1709 printing,” Wulf said.
“Wow. They’re that old? They’re in really good shape.”
“Fine condition, specifically.”
“I love them. They’re beautiful, and used books are an appropriate gift.”
“Used books?” He glanced at her face, his eyebrows raised.
“They’re not used?” Disconcerted, she tried to figure out what he meant.
“I guess they are. Yes, used books.”
“Well, I like the books. Thanks again. I just have qualms about working here. It’s a lot of money, but it’s just,” and she couldn’t think of how to end that without offending him, “some things about the Devilhouse, I don’t know, they kind of scare me.”
“What scares you? The clients?” Wulf thumb-pointed to the eye in the sky, the shiny black dome embedded in the rough-tiled ceiling. “If anything untoward happens, Mr. Jackson or one of the other security personnel will intervene. They’re all ex-special forces. Mostly SAS. A few Americans. They will stop anything that might occur. I consider security nearly as important as punctuality.” His knowing tone suggested self-mockery.
She didn’t think she could
explain her qualms to him. If she tried, she would feel foolish, and he would be scornful, even if he didn’t show it. “Yeah, that’s it. I’m all reassured now.”
He leaned back and studied her. Disbelief lingered in his bright blue eyes. “Really.”
“Yeah. Seriously.” She shouldn’t protest too much, either.
He released her. “All right. I won’t pry. You’re practically British sometimes.”
Rae needed to either take her acting classes more seriously or drop her second major so she could concentrate on counseling.
Probably the latter.
In the meantime, she was at The Devilhouse, she had signed the danged contract, and she needed to take this seriously. “Let’s start.”
“As you wish. Let us begin with some basic intimidation techniques,” Wulf said. “All these are within the context of a scene. We don’t seek to permanently harm our clients, so you must be cognizant of the greater influences with which you work. Mostly, we use shame.”
Rae reared back. Every psychology class she had ever taken recounted shame as a foundation of neurosis. “But that’s unethical. Shame is psychologically damaging.”
“We are not psychologists. We work with what we have, not some romantic ideal of psychological health. Shaming is our most common tactic and the one our clients find most useful. Since most of them feel shame for utilizing our services, shaming tactics for other items divert them from their shame for their sexual proclivities. One of our doctors deemed us a ‘counter-irritant,’ which amuses me no end.”
“I’d love to talk to your sociologist Domme at some point. I can’t imagine how she rationalizes this in her own head.”
“She is here most Saturday nights. You are coming to the club next Saturday, ja?”
When he said that, Rae finally heard, where she had thought that Wulf said “yeah” at the end of his sentences, he had actually said, “ja,” the German and Swiss word for “yes.”
Wulf had told her that he was Swiss, a secret that he had told no one else.
Even his name, Wulf, was a secret.
The huge gunshot scar on his back with the dragon tattoo woven around it was a secret.
He told her too many secrets, and Rae didn’t know why.
She said, “Yes. You said I should come here on Saturdays.”
Wulf’s grin was extravagantly innocent, and his eyes were so amused. “Perhaps I will see you there.”
Rae sure as heck hoped that Wulf would be there because she probably was going to need someone to explain stuff to her. “Okay.”
“Now, back to shaming our clients. You did a stellar job dressing down Mr. Park yesterday, but you must be careful about the subject matter. We usually critique their subservience and manner of submission. We keep to non-physical aspects. For example, I would never denigrate you for your petite stature.”
Rae laughed. She was five-feet-ten when she slouched, and even though she wore high-heeled boots, her nose was lower than Wulf’s.
He gathered a fistful of her auburn curls, which she hadn’t tied back in a bun this morning, and kissed the tresses that curled out of his hand. “Or chastise you for your dull, listless hair.”
He was standing so close to her that his suit jacket brushed her sides. “You’ll notice that I’m using physical proximity to make you uncomfortable, standing in your personal space.”
“I’m not uncomfortable.” Her breathy voice betrayed her.
“Just as an example of other ways to play, you can do something that appears innocent at first, and then use that to shock them.”
Rae saw his fist tighten in her hair, and he yanked her head back and kissed her. His lips were rough on hers, kissing her hard. His tongue pushed into her mouth, swirling with hers, and she wound her arms around his neck.
Just being near him made her body ache for him. She wanted to feel his skin slap hers and his dick hard inside of her, even though she had had sex with him three times in the last week. Every time she touched him, she wanted more, again. She pressed her pelvis against his body, craving him. He slid his other arm around her waist and squeezed her to him. Under his buttoned dress shirt, she could feel the muscle that ridged his body.
Lust had a hold on her, she realized. She wasn’t longing to understand his mind or his soul. She just wanted to screw him against a wall, like that first night she had met him.
The moral danger in The Devilhouse wasn’t in the clients or the work.
Rae grabbed Wulf’s shoulders and shoved him away.
Wulf stumbled backward, catching himself on a beam of the St. Andrew’s cross, and laughed. “Yes, like that. Keep them off balance.”
Rae turned away and pretended to inspect the case of whips while she composed herself. Her heart thumped like a kicking rabbit. In the glass front of the case, Rae could see that her expression looked horrified, so she inhaled deeply and tried to make her face look like she didn’t care that she was doing so many wrong things and that Wulf tempted her to worse.
“Yes, yes,” Wulf said from somewhere behind her. She glanced up and could just see his reflection in the glass. “I promised to teach you whip work. We’ll get to that soon.”
His cell phone beeped.
“Pardon me.” He turned away, touching the screen. “Hello.”
She took the extra moment to cram her stupid trembling down into her stomach while she watched him, mirrored in the glass of the case. She wanted to run her fingertips over the pale skin on his strong cheekbones and jawline.
Wulf listened to the cell phone, and his shoulders slumped. “Again.” His neutral tone betrayed no emotion. “Thank you for notifying me. Call Karin and inquire if she can come in for a few hours. I’ll take care of it until then.”
Rae watched, but he was impassive.
Wulf tapped his phone, and then he stared at the ceiling of the dungeon for a moment. He might have been calculating a sum in his head or inspecting the faux granite up there for cracks. He transferred his attention back to his phone, but his cool expression didn’t change. “Rae, my Lady Macbeth, could you do a personal favor for me and step in for yet another session this afternoon? The client is here, now. His Domme has not checked in.”
She shouldn’t do it.
She should leave The Devilhouse and Wulf and never look back.
Wulf was still pondering his phone. “I understand if you are not ready, but your session with Lando Park went exceptionally well yesterday, and I think you have a talent for this.”
His approving tone warmed her.
One more session would pay for another couple of textbooks.
Or let her buy into the meal plan for the rest of the semester.
If she didn’t quit The Devilhouse at all, if she did just one more session, then another, and then another, she could finish her college degree and open her clinic.
Oh, so slippery the slope.
And yet, that triumphant moment after Park had left buoyed her up.
But the scene had been so demanding, and it seemed like it could have gone wrong at any moment, like when Park had refused to assume the submissive position and she had put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down to his knees.
She might screw this one up.
Her fears always showed on her face, so she scrunched her face up and then let it go, trying to release the conflict. She was supposed to be an actor, dang it.
She felt like she had mastered her expression, so she turned away from the whip cabinet to face him. “Okay. I can do it.”
“Excellent.” Wulf looked up at her, and his head tilted slightly. Rae couldn’t tell what changed in his expression, but an emotion rippled across his face and was gone before she could figure out what it was. He asked, “Have you been on the internet lately?”
Odd question. “Not since I checked email a few hours ago. Why, has something happened?”
“No.” He smiled at her, but Rae thought his smile looked a little forced. “Not at all. The client this afternoon is Mr. Kyle
San Jose. He’s been a client here for several years but has not progressed beyond the spank-and-wank phase. He’s almost vanilla. I can retrieve his file for you.”
Rae’s heart sank. She shouldn’t do this. She should leave now. “That would be great.”
Wulf frowned at his phone again. “This is Sonya’s third absence this week.”
“Maybe she’s really sick.”
“She had an article in the college newspaper this morning that must have been written last night. I believe she might have reached The Hairy Arse Boundary.”
Rae had never heard anyone say “arse” unless they were mocking a British accent. “And that is?”
His wry smile suggested that he was telling her another secret. “You can only view a limited number of hairy arses before you cannot stomach seeing another one, ever again. This upper limit is different for every girl, but when she reaches it, she retires almost immediately. Sonya will graduate soon, and I assume she has been prudent with her earnings. I must have a conversation with her.”
~~~~~
Lizzy in Love
Rae dodged into the spa-like Zen refuge of the Ladies’ Locker Room to freshen up before her appointment with Kyle San Jose and rounded the corner to the make-up area when she high-heeled-skidded to a stop in front of Lizzy and Georgie, her dorm suitemates. It was too late for Rae to grab one of the white, fluffy spa robes out of the stack to hide what she was wearing.
Hey, they might not even notice. The Devilhouse was full of girls wearing weird costumes.
“Um,” Rae said. “Hi.”
The girls’ heads—Lizzy the blond who came up to Rae’s chest and Georgie the brunette who stood near Rae’s shoulder—dipped and rose, surveying Rae from her made-up face to her black leather bustier and stiletto-heeled, thigh-high boots and back up to her face as the spa music tinkled in the air and the waterfall burbled. Rae waited for them to be pissed off at her.
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