“So, place your bets gentleman. Game on.”
Chapter 4
Candace
The club is probably one of the only places that I can come to for some good old-fashioned solace. It calms me in more ways than I can admit, but I suppose that is because it is the first place I came to when I discovered just how dominant I really am. This was the place I came to really understand my true self. I wasn’t judged nor singled out for my desires, instead I was accepted and welcomed with open arms. In a sense, Club Crimson is like my second home. Or maybe it’s actually my first home since I never really had one to begin with.
I grab the back of Lusy’s neck after I free her from the cross, and whisper in her ear, commanding her to meet me upstairs. Drake is the owner of Club Crimson and allows a few of his chosen favorites to have rooms here. I’ve been around long enough to have a room, and while Lusy has gotten what she’s needed from the night, she knows what she needs to give me. I take in the looks from the individuals around us and note Drake’s smirk. I can’t help but wonder if he knew I was thinking about him for a moment. He isn’t just the owner of Club Crimson, he’s the most well respected dominant that I’ve ever known. The man is at least fifteen years my senior, and if I had any inkling of a submissive side, I would crave a man like that. A man exactly like him.
Lusy sticks close behind me as I walk through the club and head up the stairwell, and when I take the key out of my corset, I can tell she is tickled to death for what’s to come. She always is and is one of my favorite girls. It doesn’t hurt that the girl is addicted to pain and looks absolutely stunning. She’s everything that I’m not, blonde hair when mine is as black as midnight, beautiful blue eyes while mine are as dark as my soul, fake voluptuous tits while mine are real, and much more than a mouthful. I insert the key in the door, turning it to reveal my room. Black velvet riddles the space. Black on black, with dark purple accents. Exactly my style.
As Lusy makes her way into the room, I shut the door and lock it behind us. Grabbing the dial on the wall I lower the light until it’s almost pitch black. I love the dark, needing it to consume me in all ways possible. What no one truly knows is that I am dark, damaged and have been through the depths of hell in every aspect of my life. However, I don’t allow any part of my past to reign over the life that I have built for myself today. Instead, I take every bit of it for what it was - a hard lesson that had to be learned.
I allow her to remove my clothing, layer by precious layer. Slowly, each garment falls off of my skin until there is nothing left. I can hardly make out Lusy’s face in front of me, and I know the same is for her. I love to take away sight, it is so simple and yet brings me so much enjoyment. I will lie and say it’s because removing one’s senses is a kink of mine. But that’s not the truth. It’s because, when I allow my submissives to get as close to me as Lusy does, I don’t want them to see me for everything that I am. Almost as if I believe they will see me all of my flaws. I don’t want them to really get to know me, to understand me. I want to keep up the façade that I have created over the years, of the strong and resilient Mistress, Candace.
We all have our secrets, I just prefer to keep mine neatly tucked away in the bottom of my closet where no one can find them.
It’s much easier that way, when no one knows the real me. It’s okay, though. No one would like her much. It’s so much easier forgetting about all of the shit from my past anyway. If only it was that easy, especially when I have to go see him tomorrow.
Chapter 5
Drake
Thoughts of Candace make me think of trust, and my inability to do so. I didn’t used to be distrusting, but when the ones closest to you break it... it becomes harder for you to let another person close.
I can give that credit to Monica - the one woman who has made it so hard for me to trust another.
Monica, my submissive. My property. I owned her and addressed her as girl or my fuck toy. She addressed me as Sir or Master. Monica was ten years younger than me, with fiery red hair that she kept cut pixie short. A very intelligent woman with a voluptuous body for the sole purpose of sin. She was well suited as my sub, obeying any command I gave her. I trained her to do many things although my favorite was to suck my cock the way I liked it. In return, I cherished, comforted, soothed, and pushed her to her limits of pain and pleasure. I loved her in a way that I had never loved anyone prior to her. She was unique.
But there were moments I remembered when something shifted, only for brief moments. Monica would be naked, kneeling at my feet. At my command, she’d raise her bowed head to look up at me. There was only admiration for her Master with those green eyes. But there was something else I sensed at times. To anyone else, it wouldn’t have even been noticed, but as her Dom I knew every inch of her body, her mind and her soul. I guess I was in denial and didn’t want to consider my own intuition. I didn’t want to ever doubt Monica’s loyalty to me.
I was still in denial, even when my eyes registered to my brain what was in front of me. It was Monica, wearing a short blond wig. She wrapped her cherry red lips around a cigarette. A tight-fitting red dress exposed those toned thighs and legs as she crossed them, sitting at the bar at the Velvet Dungeon – an exclusive kink club. I knew of this club, located on a side road off the Vegas Strip.
Everyone can be careless at times, when you have other things floating around in your mind, like Monica once did. My mind drifted back to the night. She had lit some candles for me to cast a relaxing scene as she worshipped my swollen, aggressive cock. My little pretty slut sucked, licked, stroked me as she wore an emerald and diamond encrusted platinum butt plug in her sweet tight ass.
I praised her when she licked my balls. I fisted a firm grip into her fiery red hair. “That’s it my pretty little slut.” I shoved myself fully into her warm wet mouth, and thrusted my hips, making her gag on me. “I want to listen to you choke on my fat cock!”
She whimpered and gagged, tears welling up and running down her soft cheeks.
Later the next morning, I spotted the purple colored pack of matches next to the candles Monica had lit the night before. Some of the matches had been torn off and used. “Vel Dun” in white gothic font stared up at me from the front cover.
So, there I was, knowing at that time what Vel Dun meant. Standing there, watching Monica, and she wasn’t alone. A man in his mid-fifties, with salt and pepper hair, dressed only in leather pants, his burly chest covered in gray hair, sat next to her. His hand squeezed her thigh, his other hand held a leather leash, attached to the collar buckled around Monica’s throat. She exhaled another cloud of smoke, her eyes leaving leather boy. She looked away and suddenly her green eyes met mine. A punch to the gut is what I felt as I moved toward them.
Leather boy’s eyes pivoted to see me standing only two feet from him, in his space. He moved to climb off his bar stool but stopped. “Don’t try it,” I snarled at him, my hackles raised like an alpha wolf ready to rip his throat out.
I seized Monica by the arm and she was off her stool. Leather boy let go of her leash as I dragged her down a dark hall with huge window panes to watch a kink scene in every room.
“You’re not even into leather!” I snarled, shoving her back to a wall, I kept a hard grip on her arm, making sure she couldn’t slide away from me. No. We had too much to discuss, like her obvious betrayal.
“How did you find me?” Monica’s jaw dropped, her brows shot up.
“How long you been fucking leather poser out there?” I pulled the half pack of matches and tossed them at her. It bounced off her tits and fell to the floor. My teeth clenched so hard, I felt a molar crack. No. I couldn’t do this anymore. I couldn’t stand there and look at the shocked look on her face. I couldn’t wait for her to spew out another lie. I grabbed her arms and shook. “How fucking long Monica!”
“Six months!”
It felt like a slap to my face. The mercury on the temperature of my blood was at boiling point.
She had
the stupid courage to actually smile then, “I was the one in control this whole time Drake! Not you! I used you for practice! I sharpened my submissive abilities with you! So, I can be the very best submissive to my one and only Master, Mr. Smith!”
“Leather boy out there? He’s not a Dominant, you stupid girl!” I jerked her chin up to me roughly “My little slut is no longer mine to cherish, to protect, to lavish her with pretty things. Goodbye, Monica. Practice with some other fool.” I relaxed my jaw, letting her go, and chuckled.
I turned and walked out of the Velvet Dungeon a year ago. The bond and trust between a Dominant and submissive was broken that night.
Chapter 6
Candace
I tried my best to not allow my mind to wander last night, but it did. I had one of the most beautiful creatures on this planet underneath me, plowing a dildo deep inside her until she was begging me to cum. She knew better, though. And she did it for show. Lusy is an excellent actress, and quite the brat, always trying to get her way.
What Lusy never quite gets, is that I choose when to allow her to get her way. She begged and pleaded like a hungry little slut, and that’s when I chose to bring my mouth to her budding clit, clenching down hard while I roughly fucked her with the huge cock. She came undone in seconds, squirting all over the place. I slid the dildo out after a few moments, teasing her, watching her body writhe with every thrust and then began to lick her clean.
I wake up in my bedroom at club crimson and immediately head into the bathroom, needing a hot shower to wash away all of the pain and I’m not talking physical, I’m talking emotional. I turn the water to the hottest that it can possibly be and walk right in. It’s like every time I go to visit my father, all of this emotional pain resurfaces and comes all the way up to the very top of my head. So, if I choose to believe that by taking a scolding hot shower, it will destroy all of the said emotional pain. I’m usually good.
After all, I don’t get to cry.
I’m Candace.
I am never allowed to show weakness and need to be presentable at all times. I laugh to myself, brushing my fingers through my wet hair. I can psycho analyze as much as I want, but it won’t change a damn thing. Nothing ever will.
I’m quick to wash my hair and get out, blow drying and straightening it quickly before walking back into my bedroom. I’m here a good bit and because of that I make sure to have the selection of wardrobe choices for any occasion. There’s not really any outfit that says let’s go see your Dad who’s probably going to die in a federal penitentiary, but hey… I make it work.
I pick out a blouse that will surely make him laugh and smile. It’s funny. He may have disappointed me my entire life, but I still look to make him smile whenever the occasion arises. It’s the thirteenth, which should be deemed a lucky day for me since I live in Vegas… but it isn’t.
On the thirteenth of every month I have to be reminded of everything my father had done, everything that he put me through, on why I had to become strong and resilient, even though sometimes all I want to do is crumble to pieces like every other human. I may look like I have my shit together, but don’t let me fool you. It’s all just an act, and one that I’m very good at if I might add.
I change quickly, looking over to Lusy who is still passed out in my bed. I don’t bother her, choosing to allow her to sleep. I know that she doesn’t get much of it when she’s at her apartment. I trust her to clean up and leave the room looking presentable for whenever I return. I make my way out of my room after I slip on a pair of black heels and head downstairs. Not to my surprise at all, there’s already a crowd here. Not even ten in the morning and some of the guys have already started drinking.
“It’s the thirteenth,” he states calmly. I turn my head to the right and see Drake standing in the arch way to one of the other rooms.
“Yes, it most certainly is.” I respond, wondering if he’s going to say anything else. Drake and I have an interesting relationship, if interesting is even the word for it. But I suppose what is the word for the Dominant who you’ve had intense sex dreams of?
“He’s appealing for parole soon, isn’t he?” I’m taken out of my own mind as Drake asks me and I nod, collecting my words.
“He’s trying to, but I doubt anything will come of it. I don’t see the board allowing him back on the streets. It’s a little hard to trust Vegas’ most notorious conman. Knowing him, he’d want to start the game as soon as he got out of the cage.”
“It’s hard for anyone to trust these days, regardless of your father’s old habits or not.” Drake makes a valid point. For as long as I’ve known him, he’s always had the smartest things to say. It makes him that much hotter. Fuck. We’d never work though, I’d want too much control and he’d never switch for me.
I graze over Drake’s features stuck in my head wondering how it is that a man of his age happens to look the way he does. His hair is barely starting to salt over, and the way he cut his hair is delicious. The sides are shaven while he seems to have a long mohawk sort of thing, but it looks good. Really good. There are so many submissives here, who would die to fall at his feet, but everyone knows that there’s one thing Drake doesn’t do.
Love.
He too has had his heart broken in the most aching of ways, by a woman I know who he planned on marrying. Monica was a fool for ever doing what she did, and an idiot for losing him. I talk about myself acting, but Monica was the real star, tricking everyone around her. He loved her in the most authentic way possible, and she broke him. No one else had seen it, but I had gotten a first-hand look.
Drake and I are one in the same. Two broken people who will never trust someone enough to love them.
Chapter 7
Candace
“Orange? Really?” My father gives me a whimsical look as he laughs at the color of my blouse. His hands are cuffed to the metal bar on the table and even though he’s a bastard I still want to wrap my arms around him and give him a hug, but I won’t be able to. Dad thought it would be a good idea to punch a fellow inmate this week, and because of his hostile behavior the jail is playing it safe. When he told me, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes at his idiocy. Punching a guy, a week before his parole review, is really a smart thing to do.
I curse at myself in my head, wondering why I wasted money on getting him the best criminal defense attorney in Vegas if he was just going to fuck it all up. It wasn’t easy getting an appointment with Miss. Sharpe, but I managed to do some sweet talking and get her to represent my father. That isn’t the only thing I did, though. I’m not going to share that with my father.
“She thinks that you may have a shot this time, but I don’t have to tell you how disappointed she is at your actions from this past week. It’s made the waters a bit murky, and it won’t be as cut and dry as we initially hoped.” I tell him, hoping that my words will resonate with him, but I know better. They won’t because he’s a selfish bastard who only thinks about himself.
I’m sure you’re wondering why I even want him out of jail, but the answer is plain and simple. Even though he was a shit Dad to me when I needed him the most, it doesn’t change one major thing. He’s still my Dad, and I still love him, even with all of his faults. We’re only human after all.
“It doesn’t matter what your fancy lawyer says, sweetheart. She’s giving you the emotional boost that you need. I’m not getting out of this crap hole and we both know it, so why throw thousands at her when we know the end result? There’s no sense in it.”
“There’s no sense in a lot of things, Dad.” I hiss out to him, sitting up straighter in my seat. I try not to allow his words to hurt me anymore, but I can’t help it. Sometimes he just really knows how to make them sting.
“You know what, Candace. I think you’re on to something. Where is the sense on spending thousands of dollars for your shitbag of a father to get out of prison early, when you know he doesn’t deserve it?” Just when I thought he couldn’t hit me any harder, he just did. I ta
ke in a deep breath and gather my thoughts, trying my best not to tell him to shove it where the sun don’t shine, but that’s what he wants. He wants me to be the one to walk out. What he will never understand is that I will never walk away from someone that needs me, including him. He may not want to admit how badly he needs me, but he does, because there is only me. No one else is fighting for him as badly as I am. No one.
“Now I think I’ve figured out how you got that lovely shiner.” I point to his face, looking at the blue and purple that coats his left eye. “I’m betting your big mouth got you in trouble.”
“Depends who you ask. This mouth has gotten me out of a lot of hasty situations, sweetheart. Until the day it didn’t, that is.” He chuckles like our reality is nothing but a joke to him.
I huff, because he’s always viewed his life as a joke. It’s how he got here in the first place, by not taking life seriously, or walking the straight line even after he promised me that he would. At the end of the day he’s the only family that I have and because of that I’m willing to fight a little harder for his freedom, even if he’s so sure to fuck it up.
“Can you please just be on good behavior?”
“I try, Candace. I really do, but I can only try so hard being in here. I’ve pissed a lot of people off, and it just so happens that not everyone is my friend in this joint. I can’t promise to not get into a scuffle with another inmate, sometimes this just happens.” He shrugs his shoulders, continuing on about his normal bullshit.
There’s a big difference on the type of criminal my father is opposed to the others here. He’s locked up with murderers, rapists, people who assault their girlfriends. He’s in here with real pieces of work, and my father is maybe one of ten conmen. The law is a funny system, they’d much rather convict someone who’s physically committed a crime versus hacking, stealing money, or conning. The thing is, my father could have gotten out of it if he chose. The government was willing to give him immunity if he helped gather information on one of his associates, who also happens to be one of his best friends, Stefan Lucci. Also known as my Godfather. I bet you can see his issue.
Switched (Sin City Fets Book 1) Page 2