Georgie asked, “Rae?”
Her questioning tone was weird. Recognition shouldn’t be the problem. Rae looked down at her shiny boots and the polished wooden floor. Did she really look so different? “Yeah?”
Lizzy asked, “What are you wearing?”
Yeah, they had noticed.
Rae’s bustier and tight black skirt clung to her curves, and the outfit was a far piece from the jeans and square tee shirts she had worn to class when she had given up the prairie dress look after a week at college. She didn’t look anything like herself, not even to herself. “I got it from the costume closet.”
Georgie asked, “Rae, are you dressed like a Domme?”
Lizzy brightened and asked, “So you’re hired? So you can stay at school?”
Rae decided to answer Lizzy because that seemed like the answer that was the least likely to offend her friends. “Yeah. Um, that guy? Um, The Dom?” She had almost said Wulf because his name was so sweet on her tongue but she caught herself. “The Dom hired me. I signed the contract and nondisclosure agreement just now.”
She didn’t mention her misgivings. Georgie and Lizzy had taken a chance to introduce her to The Dom. If she turned down the position, it would be like throwing away all their effort.
Lizzy squealed and bounced like a pale, blond puppy, but Georgie’s brown eyes widened. “Did he hire you as a Domme?”
“Yeah. As a Domme.” She winced, waiting for Georgie’s reaction when confronted with Rae’s good luck.
Whenever something good happened to Rae—scoring high on her SATs, earning a slot in the honors program, being awarded the college scholarship—someone from her family or church was always there to put her in her place by pointing out how it was really a burden for her family and to make sure that Jesus took all the credit.
“That’s great! That’s great!” Lizzy chanted.
Georgie cocked her head to the side. Her wry smile soothed Rae. Georgie said, “You have to teach me how to be a Domme. I’ve been trying to work into that for six months, and I’ve gotten no traction.”
“I’m just figuring it out. I’m kind of in training,” Rae said.
“Who’s training you? Sonya?” Lizzy asked.
“No,” Rae said. “The Dom is.”
They both goggled at her, open-mouthed.
Georgie snapped her mouth closed and then asked, ‘The Dom is training you? The tall, blond guy you waltzed with at the party?”
“Um, yeah.” Rae’s foreboding crept back. “I didn’t know who he was at the party. I just kind of called him The Blond Hottie in my head.”
Lizzy’s wide-eyed astonishment faded into hurt.
Rae would have done anything to take her comment back, even though it was the truth. “Lizzy, I’m so sorry. I don’t know why he’s doing this. I think it’s just a casting decision, because I’m tall and stuff. I look the part of a Domme.”
Lizzy swallowed hard. “How is he training you?”
“He’s just telling me stuff. Like what to do in a session. What to say.”
Tears welled in Lizzy’s eyes. “Are you sleeping with him?”
Her hopeless tone broke Rae’s heart. Rae shouldn’t lie to her friend. Lizzy had seen Wulf first, had dated him first, had screwed him first, even though his “dates” were understood by all the girls at The Devilhouse to be extravagant one-night-stands.
Rae should back off because she was Lizzy’s friend.
“He just shows me what to do. How to use a riding crop. What to say. That sort of thing. I’m not anything special to him. Like Georgie said, he likes women, lots of women, and he’s nothing but a shiny shell. And I opted out of ‘the arrangement.’”
Even though all that was true, and yet Rae hoped that, maybe, after she finished the session with this Kyle San Jose, maybe she would see Wulf again.
Maybe like last weekend, in his office, on his desk.
But she shouldn’t.
Rae knew that this job and Wulf were wrong for her.
She would just have to work and save the money to go back to school later. Lots of people did that. She could figure it out.
Lizzy’s feelings were the final reason why Rae would have to extricate herself from this whatever-it-was with Wulf and quit this danged job.
~~~~~
Kyle San Jose, and Yet Not Kyle San Jose
Rae waited outside the door to Play Room Five with her hand on the brass doorknob, steeling herself.
The door to Play Room Five was not a forbidding edifice of carved mahogany and designed to look like a door to Hell, like the other dungeon doors in The Devilhouse that Rae had seen. This six-panel door was painted white, and the waiting room had three recliners facing a wide-screen television on the wall, which was tuned to a college basketball game. The unassuming door projected the illusion that they had left The Devilhouse, but Rae knew better. No matter how much this door pretended to exist in the sane world, the sex-crazed madness of The Devilhouse was all around her. The insanity clung to her as tightly as the black leather bustier that girdled her ribs.
Rae turned the knob and opened the door.
The blue living room looked like Rae’s grandmother’s house, decorated in what had been fashionable in 1958. A blocky couch was slung low against the back wall. Brass stand lamps flanked it. The pleated lampshades glowed like white truncated triangles against the sky blue wall. A vanilla candle burned on a sideboard.
This play room reeked of normalcy, except for the shirtless, tubby man wearing a black leather hood, kneeling in the center of the low shag carpet. The eyeless mask only had one hole cut out, for his nose. He leaned to one side, favoring one of his knees. Ginger hair sprouted all over his body.
Sonya’s notes in his file detailed that, in general, Kyle San Jose liked to argue, made up excuses for everything, lied at every opportunity, but he didn’t like to be punished for it. He wasn’t a good little sub. He just wanted some girl to spank his ass and to be on his way.
His safe word was “Yes-yes-yes.”
Sonya had hand-written in the margin: ODD.
Yeah, well, all The Devilhouse’s clients were a little odd.
“Good afternoon,” she intoned as she stood above him.
He didn’t answer.
Rae selected a wooden paddle from the umbrella stand near the door. Three golf-sized umbrellas mixed in with the riding crops and thin paddles. Nice to know that she could borrow an umbrella from here in the rare case of desert rain.
The long wooden paddle looked like the one her grade school principal had had mounted on the wall above his desk, painted with the motto “The Good Old Days.” She whacked the paddle against her palm, testing it. The sturdy plank slapped instead of pounded. She could work with that.
She noticed Kyle San Jose fidgeting. “Sit still, sub.”
“I can’t. I have a knee problem. I can’t kneel like this.”
And the excuses started. His knees even rested on shag carpeting, a luxury that other subs did not enjoy. “I did not give you permission to speak.”
“You’re not my usual girl.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You haven’t worked here long, have you?”
“I didn’t give you permission to speak, sub.” She smacked him on the butt cheek with the paddle.
“Hey! Why did you do that!”
Rae glanced up at the white, drywall ceiling and found the black orb almost directly above her. Wulf might be watching her, or one of his ex-special forces security guys might be the one protecting her and looking down her cleavage. Waving was probably unprofessional, not that Kyle San Jose could see it through his eyeless mask.
Rae walked around the hooded man, stomping on the carpet so he could hear her. So that was why the dungeon play rooms were tiled, so that the sub could hear the clicking of high-heeled boots. That, and it was easier to hose down tile if needed. “What is your name, sub?”
“Foxhound.”
Another dog name. Interesting.
&n
bsp; She paced around Kyle San Jose, stomping some more on the carpet. Brown hair curled out from under his hood on the scruff of his neck. Neck stubble met his weedy back hair. Rae was glad that she wasn’t going to see Kyle San Jose’s hairy arse. She just had to spank it over the leather pants that bound his pudgy hindquarters. “Stand, Foxhound.”
He lumbered to his feet.
The furniture in the living room didn’t include a proper spanking chair. Rae wondered how she was supposed to paddle him. She stomped around him again.
He said, “The other girl always leads me over to the chair to spank me.” The leather mask muffled his whiney voice. “Aren’t you going to do that?”
Wow, this one was mouthy.
Because she was a good seven inches taller than San Jose in her high-heeled boots, Rae bent down to whisper near where the hood covered his ear. “No. I’m going to make you wait for it.”
“I don’t want to wait for it,” he said. His tone turned ugly. “The other girl never makes me wait for it.”
Probably because Sonya wanted to get away from his nasty attitude as soon as possible. No wonder she hadn’t come in today.
Rae whispered near his leather-covered ear, “Wait.”
“Why are you making me wait? I don’t want to wait! I’m a paying customer here, and I don’t want to wait for my spanking!”
His shrill tantrum was so ridiculous that Rae laughed at him. Her strong laugh rang like a bell from years of singing with the church choir.
San Jose stopped complaining, and his black, eyeless hood swiveled toward her. “Rae?”
She backed away. She didn’t know anyone named Kyle San Jose. She would have never agreed to the session if she had. “Who are you?”
The man pulled the black hood off his face.
Rae recognized the man’s round jaw and broken nose as the hood stretched, even before it popped free of his face. Years of rage and alcohol abuse had popped spidery blood vessels around his nose. Sweat darkened his orange hair.
Her cousin Jim Bob Mulligan was ten years older than she, had inherited a couple warehouses in Pirtleville, and was a deacon in her family’s church.
Why had the form said that his name was Kyle San Jose?
Making a run for the door would be useless.
His gloating smile was cruel. “Rae Stone. It’s been, what, three years since you left for college?”
Jim Bob grabbed her by the waist and dragged her against his flabby body. Even though she was taller, some of that height difference came from her high-heeled boots, and he outweighed Rae by a good fifty pounds. “What’re you doing in a whorehouse?”
Rae pushed back on his shoulders and answered before she thought about it. “I needed money.”
He leered at her from an inch above her boobs. “Your parents would be crushed if they found out. What’re you going to do for me so’s that I won’t tell ‘em?”
“Stop it, Jim Bob!” She wiggled, trying to push him off of her without starting a brawl.
He grabbed Rae’s shoulder, spun her, and slammed her against the wall.
She felt his hands pulling at her skirt, trying to hike it up on her hips.
Like hell she was going to let her jerk cousin rape her. She had grown up with four brothers and knew how to knock people around.
Rae pushed off the wall and jammed her elbow back, catching Jim Bob in the ribs.
She whipped around with her fist balled up ready to sock him, just in time to see Jim Bob’s surprised face spin away from her. Wulf’s expression was as calm as if he were about to sip tea as he punched Jim Bob’s lights out.
Jim Bob crumpled and flopped to the carpet. His limp dick flopped sideways because he had pulled it out of his pants.
Wulf shook his hand like he was flinging something nasty off his knuckles. His calm question was as even as if he were inquiring about her health after a sneeze. “Are you all right?”
“He knows.” Rae tugged her skirt down. Terrible fears spun in her head. “He’s my cousin Jim Bob Mulligan, and he knows about this.” Rae was undone. He would tell everyone about her and The Devilhouse. A sinner could be forgiven, but the temptress could never be redeemed. What use was it to go to college if she couldn’t go home?
Wulf stepped over her cousin’s unconscious body. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Why did it say his name was Kyle San Jose in his file?”
“Many of our clients use pseudonyms for their working files. Their real names are listed in the business files.”
“He’ll tell my parents. He’ll tell everyone. They’ll disown me.” Her life stretched in front of her, long and lonely and alone.
“I’ll make sure he won’t tell anyone.” Wulf cradled her face in his hand, and his touch was gentle. Blood ran down his pale hand and soaked into his white shirt cuff.
Rae wanted to sob but she held it together. “He’ll tell them all anyway, just to watch them get all upset. He likes scenes and chaos.”
Wulf smiled, and his calm smile was so ordinary that it scared her. “You can watch from the security booth, if you’d like.”
~~~~~
A Freakishly Good Head for Numbers
In the dark, dusty security booth, Rae sat on the swivel chair beside Jeff, the big black guy who had run security at the party when she had met Wulf. On the wall, eight monitors took the high-definition video feeds from the security cameras in all the play rooms and the silent, still night club. Empty tables dotted the balconies that hung over the dark dance floor. It must take hundreds of people to fill such a space. Maybe thousands.
Beside her, Jeff the Security Guy glowered at the monitors, watching each one in turn with stern, dark eyes.
Georgie and Lizzy had said that Jeff was nice and that being gruff was just part of his job, but Rae got the feeling that Jeff didn’t like her. It wasn’t like a psychic thing, like she was picking up telepathic hate vibes from him. It was more the way that he stared at the television screens on the wall, even the ones that showed empty rooms, rather than acknowledge her timid hello.
Her arms and legs were still shaking.
She was being ridiculous. Jim Bob Mulligan—who was her second or third cousin or great uncle once removed or something but she wasn’t sure because generation lines blurred in her family like a desert-wind twisted scrub brush—wasn’t even near her right now. She could see him on the monitor in one of the dungeon play rooms, bound spread-eagle with nylon rope to a St. Andrew’s cross, facing the metal X. He had cranked his head around and was silently raging at Wulf. A shiner on his left eye marred his chubby face.
Wulf jerked Jim Bob’s pants down around his ankles, stepped back, and idly flipped a whip near Jim Bob’s head. He had removed his suit coat and tie and rolled his shirt sleeves up again. His white shirt blazed in the darkness and sometimes strobed on the monitor when he moved too fast, like he was an avenging blond blur.
Jim Bob Mulligan’s arse looked like he was wearing horsehair pants.
Two burly men stood at parade rest on either side of her cousin and a step back. Their black fatigues reminded Rae of a paramilitary outfit rather than a security guard’s pseudo-police uniform. They were even wearing combat boots.
“Um, sir?” Rae asked Jeff the Security Guy, who was wearing a very wide, very large suit, not fatigues. A baby blue tie was knotted around his thick neck muscles below his chin and ears.
“Yes?” His voice was so deep that rumbled.
“Could you please turn on the sound in Play Room One?”
The security guy flicked a switch.
Through the speakers, they heard a whipcrack pop the air, and Rae pushed herself back in the chair. Mulligan’s enraged screaming didn’t falter each time the signal whip broke the sound barrier near his head.
Jim Bob Mulligan had tormented Rae while she was growing up, teasing her and knocking her off her bike because she didn’t have any older brothers to defend her. When he was fifteen and she was five, he had been riding his bike inside their
grandmother’s house and blamed Rae for the muddy tire tracks and broken china. Rae had been crying too hard to defend herself, and her father’s spanking had been brutal.
Her cousin Jim Bob flailed against the ropes and screamed, “You can’t do this to me! I’m a paying client! I can do anything I want to these girls! And that bitch is my cousin!”
The whip cracked again, louder.
Wulf’s calm voice was so low that Rae could barely hear him on the security booth’s speakers. “You signed the contract, James. Poor behavior may be punished in any way that we see fit.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong! She did! She didn’t spank me like I wanted!”
“I don’t like rapists, James.” On the monitor, while they watched from above, Wulf reared back.
“Oh, no,” Rae said.
With one muscular cast of his arm, Wulf laid the whip across Mulligan’s bare ass.
Jim Bob Mulligan screamed more in fury than pain. “You can’t do this to me!”
Rae said to the security guy, “Jim Bob is my cousin.”
Over the speakers, Jim Bob screamed, “I didn’t sign your contract!”
Wulf laid another stripe on Mulligan’s ass.
The security guy beside Rae snorted. “Oh, he signed the contract, all right.” Jeff turned to Rae. “This is your cousin?”
“Yeah,” she said. “We’re not on good terms.”
“I got folks like that.” His voice seemed warmer.
Over the speaker, Mulligan yelled, “Son of a bitch! I’ll call the police! This is assault!”
She leaned over and plucked futilely on the security guy’s sleeve. “Could you please tell The Dom to stop? I don’t want this.”
Wulf’s mild voice with that faint Germanic accent sent shivers down Rae’s back as she remembered Nazi movies. He said, “You should have read that contract more closely.”
“Do you know who I am?” Jim Bob hollered. “I can have you arrested and this whole whorehouse closed down with one phone call!”
Over the booth’s speakers, Rae heard Wulf chuckle and say, “I doubt that.”
Rae patted the security guy’s arm to get his attention. “Please. The Dom needs to stop. Please tell him to stop. Jim Bob means it. There are a lot of police and politicians in our family. I don’t want you guys to get into trouble.”
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