by M. Q. Barber
Henry caught her with his arm around her back. “I don’t believe we’ve met, Mistress…”
Not dog-dogs, but men in tight-laced hoods with ears and snouts. Two nearly nude men wearing black leather shorts, harnesses, and collars.
“Summer.” The woman’s hand emerged from flowing dress folds of lush grass green. Foot-long leashes dangled from shiny D-rings at her dogs’ necks.
“William.” Blowing in like a blond snowdrift eager to mix the seasons, Santa Will stole the handshake heading Henry’s way.
One of the dog-men growled, and Summer thunked the leash’s solid handle against his chest. “Castor, heel. You, too, Pol.”
The men dropped to padded knees and planted their hands in front. Not hands, not really. They wore booties like miniature black boxing gloves. The growler held his head high and his back at a stiff slant while the other man nuzzled his mistress’ skirts.
“Sorry about that.” As Summer dropped her hand between the growler’s pointed ears, he quieted. “Castor’s overprotective.”
“Understandable.” Henry nodded rather than offer his hand. His right hand, where her scent and taste had dried. No wonder Will had nabbed the handshake. Given the growling, Henry’s refusal wouldn’t look like a snub. “A good dog minds his mistress’ safety in all situations until told otherwise.”
Her possessiveness no longer struck her as wrong. Henry belonged to her as much as she did him. As a master claimed obedience and service, a pet had as much right to claim protection and attention. A one-sided claim was no claim at all.
“I’m no threat. I’m downright jolly.” Will backed off a step. “But you said you’ve been looking for Henry?”
“I wanted to thank him.” Summer turned toward Henry. “Thank you, I mean, for starting up those classes. The opening’s been great for niche groups. Emma confirmed for me tonight that she swayed the board into a monthly munch and intro class for pup play.”
Okay, an intro class probably taught them how to get those booties and masks on. Did a munch teach them how to eat Scooby snacks in them?
Henry squeezed her hip. “A munch like Emma’s recent tea or something more casual?”
Christ, he knew her inside and out. Knew she’d stand here puzzling until she understood every rotating gear in the conversation.
“We’ll do a Super Bowl chow spread. Most of the pups are guys. But it’ll be open to novices and curious onlookers. Does your pet like puppies, Henry?”
Alice wrenched her uninvited stare from the dog-men. Too late to play it cool.
“My Alice has something of a puppy at home.” Soft-lipped, he kissed her cheek. “But he’s away for the weekend.”
“Oh, poor thing.” Summer made a sympathetic face, all drooping lips and pinched brows. “Would she like to pet Pol?” She patted the dog-man rubbing his face against her leg. “He’s a good boy, and socialization is always helpful.”
Stepping forward on a goodwill mission, Alice held out her hand, palm flat. Dad’s lessons had stuck. His brother’d been bit by a neighbor’s dog. She and Ollie’d heard the speech a hundred times.
“So you’ll be socializing them in the classes, then?” Will raised his voice over laughter leaking from the game room. “Stellar notion. Start everyone off on the same page.”
As the dog-man sniffed her fingers, he nudged with his sleek leather nose.
“Mm-hmm.” Skirt swishing, Summer rocked on sandaled feet. “We’ll go over safety with props and positioning, basic commands, that sort of thing. We’ll have a playroom for the pups. No marking or mounting, but some fun romping.”
The leather hood ran up and over the man’s head and laced down the back to his neck. Supple but gleaming, the mask lacked the tingly softness of her suede. She settled for scratching a shoulder blade, human and familiar. Summer’s puppy leaned in, tilting his head and whining in a pitch lower than Jay’s.
“Too undignified for my Castor.” Summer rubbed the back of his hood. “But Pollux will play hard enough for both of them.”
Not as hard as Jay. Or as sweetly as Jay. She pulled her hand back. In a puppy hood, he’d lose his beautiful smile and his steep, slender nose. These stand-ins couldn’t compare to irreplaceable Jay. A stealthy twist let her capture Henry, curling their hands together. She’d missed Will’s remark. Something about costuming.
“If you want colorful, hit the far end.” Tossing her head back, Summer nodded down the hall. “The pony players have outdone themselves with elaborate getups.”
They shared a round of farewells before Summer patted her play partners between their leather ears. “Up, boys.”
The dog-men, back on two feet, flanked their mistress as she left. Something wagged between their legs with each step.
“They have tails,” Alice whispered. They had to sway somehow. Servos? “Are they sewn into the shorts?”
Grinning, Will shook his head.
“Some are.” Henry glanced over his shoulder. “More likely those are attached to a toy and inserted.” He patted her ass.
His touch tapped a live wire. Wearing a toy for hours. Added weight tugging at her and slapping her thighs.
“For a fuller experience,” Will deadpanned.
Strange and silly as the rest seemed, she clenched her ass in respect for overlapping desire. Complementary kinks. She just wanted her toy bigger and attached to a green-eyed man with a commanding baritone. “I know what filling I’d prefer.”
As Santa laughed, Henry gripped her face in both hands and planted a kiss on her. His stiff-tongued invasion came with a side order of hardening cock at her hip.
She pushed into the pressure. Twice now she’d come at the club, once from Jay’s incomparable oral fixation and tonight from Henry’s magnificent fingers. One of these nights, she’d return the damn favor already.
Henry dragged their lips apart. “Come along, my dear.”
But not tonight. The possibility of Cal wandering the halls tinged the mood. Henry and Will had a habit, conscious or not, of covering angles and watching each other’s backs. They spoke a language of low-toned phrases and subtle nods.
Dozens of colorful signs speckled a viewing window ahead. A yellow-ribboned man wearing train-covered footie pajamas dashed into the hall. A pigtailed woman in denim overalls chased him, her own yellow ribbon flapping around her arm.
The signs—no, closer inspection turned up kindergarten-quality crayon drawings. The lone sign read Littles Coloring Contest. Trees, horses, and houses competed with stick figures holding hands for most-popular subject. The unskilled art probably assaulted Henry’s eyes.
“Who are the Littles?” Maybe they sponsored a contest every year. Coloring was an odd pick.
“You are, sometimes, little one.” Will winked.
Henry gestured toward the door. “Did you have a mind to enter?”
“A coloring contest?” Christ no. “What am I, five?”
Raising his eyebrows, he held her gaze.
Club civility, right. Check the sarcasm at the door with the camera phones. “I mean, no, thank you, sir.”
He steered her nearer, putting them at an angle clear of traffic. “I’d make a fair wager your tea-serving admirer spends time here.”
“Leah?” Inside, adults colored and played. Stuffed animals, cheery totems, crowded the low tables’ centers. “Why?”
“Little is a state of mind.” Wrapping his arms around her, Henry clasped one wrist in his opposite hand above her navel. “For the ageplayers, this is a role-play performance, one they don with their clothes and props.”
In the far corner, a crowd sprawled on a rug while a woman read aloud. No Leah and her master, but other couples cuddled as they listened.
“But for the littles, expressing their inner innocence and need are necessities.” Fondness lightening his tone, he stroked her stomach with his habitual thumb sweep. “When they feel safest, they are free to reveal true selves the outer world will never s
ee.”
He’d brought Jay here. Or brought this idea, this comfort, home for Jay. Henry cultivated caregiving and unconditional love in his fields of expertise. A full-grown man with a child’s heart, Jay would never carry a stuffed animal or run around in footie pajamas. “He wants the security of childhood without the childish things.”
“A lovely deduction.” Henry kissed her cheek. “Our Jay needs that security emotionally. Mentally, he has outgrown the trappings and rejects them.”
“Except story time.” She’d gotten him an origami book and folding papers for his birthday. Not far off the mark from a coloring contest, minus the kiddie stigma and with the added bonus of keeping his mind and hands busy. Chess instead of Candyland.
“Private joys,” Henry murmured. “I give him the things he needs but for which he might be ashamed to ask.”
Part of the joy of loving Jay, but part of Henry’s responsibility as a dominant, too. Making Jay not the lone beneficiary. She spun and stared into bottomless rings of pine green. “What do you give me that I’d be ashamed to ask for?”
Not the sex for damn sure. Even the kinky stuff. Being ashamed of her arousal triggers would be pointless and unsatisfying.
“Shelter,” he whispered.
A chill shivered through her and left tingling goose bumps behind.
“A place in which you and your happiness are valued. A place in which you may be dependent and needy without fearing consequences.”
Not something she’d ever ask for. Or so she’d have argued just three months ago. She tried to drop her gaze.
He clutched her tighter, his eyes narrowing and nostrils flaring. “A place that will not fail you.”
She couldn’t look away. He’d given her that place before she’d known how to ask. His heart, where she knelt side by side with Jay.
“I—you—” As her throat closed, her mouth moved without sound. I know you won’t fail me.
Through his intense scrutiny, he understood her in ways she didn’t herself. His love overwhelmed her. But what she’d imagined as a current trapping her beneath the waves instead gave her buoyancy to surface.
A shadow fell over them, the hall lights bowing to Will’s broad back.
Henry rubbed his nose against hers. “A bit much to think about here, dearest.”
With words delivered low and intimate, he came close to freeing her tears.
Humming, he swiped his thumbs beneath her eyes. “And, of course, I provide the opportunity for one stubborn bastion of independence to recognize a person’s strength is not lessened merely because she has the good sense to take shelter in a rainstorm.”
The hiccup clogging her throat broke through with a giggle attached. “Are you calling me stubborn, sir?”
“Does that seem to you a statement I would make about my ever-obedient Alice?”
His feigned amazement coaxed out her second giggle. The teary pressure along the bottom of her eyes retreated. “Ever obedient, huh?”
A smile peeked through Henry’s solemn demeanor.
This lifestyle he’d introduced her to, sex didn’t cover the half of it. Like Leah with her master, or the dog-men with their mistress, or the grown-ups attending story time in the room behind her. An arousal trigger for some functioned as an instruction manual to life for others. “It’s not all whipping and blowjobs.”
Will’s cough carried a suspicious undertone.
Henry laughed without subterfuge. “No. Although light whipping is likely at the pony showcase.”
“Yes, yes, everyone loves to see the ponies.” Rotating like a wide-bellied top, faux-grumpy Santa pushed out a pouty lower lip. “Will no one think of the rope players?”
“There’s a rope demonstration?” Purple lines on mocha skin. The beautiful honeycomb design had crisscrossed the stranger on stage on her first night. Before the threats and the spanking. “Like the one we watched?”
“There is.” Head tilted, Henry studied her.
“More advanced,” Will added. “The main hall’s open platform isn’t optimal for suspensions.”
“Suspensions?” Decorative rope paled beside the possibility of functional rope, its strength put to use. What elegant architectural routes did creative minds devise to cradle living, breathing sculptures?
Henry clasped her wrist. “Is rope play something you’d like to see, Alice?”
Her affirmative answer sent them striding through an area crowded by more dog-people in harnesses and the pony-people with tack as colorful as promised. She took in a fraction of the whole, grasping but the fringes of the games they passed.
The leather gave way to cotton and nylon. Players swished by in short skirts with rope leggings or paraded on rope leashes by their bound wrists. Time slowed to a crawl as Will exchanged greetings and complimented ties. Not a person passed without comment. The room ahead bore We swing a little knotty on its sign.
“William, dude!” A shirtless man in threadbare jeans and sandals hustled through the hall. “I’m about to take over in the demo room.” He slipped his hand through the short brown curls on his head. “Thought I’d missed you. Surprised you haven’t sniffed out a couple of rope bunnies and headed upstairs.”
“The night’s young, Justin. I’ve had the pleasure of spending time with my best friend and his delightful pet.” Will gestured to them in a wide sweep. “Henry, Alice, meet Justin, one of our up-and-coming riggers.”
Henry, asking the chicken-scrawny guy about his planned scene, jumpstarted the conversation.
Justin’s explanation came with a spate of arm flailing and head ducking. “It makes more sense in the air, I guess.” He unbent and shook out his limbs. “You gonna watch the demo?”
Behind him, a woman sauntered out of the room in nothing but coils of rope. The fiber twisted around and over itself, a knotted puzzle mapped to flesh. The rope sketched in hints of clothing, a corset around the midsection, a slanted skirt to the knee, a top with a peek-a-boo window between the breasts.
Tracking the paths and imagining the reverse, Alice grew dizzy. “That’s incredible.”
“You like?” Justin waved to the woman. “Van’s one of my best.”
“You made that?”
“Took him an hour to wrap.” As the woman strolled closer with short, pencil-skirt steps, the coils shifted around her thighs. “All that delicious standing still while the rope tightens.” She extended a manicured hand. “Vanessa.”
“Alice.” Forcing herself to stop staring at the knots, she greeted her with a proper handshake. “Love your dress.”
Vanessa ran a visual sweep bottom to top. “Love yours. The hint of what they’re missing sells it. Justin, Amie’s raring to go and the room’s about full.”
“Ah. My cue to be masterful.” Justin pressed his hands in prayer and bowed. “Great to meet you. I hope you’ll stay. Van’ll find you spots.” He jogged off, sandals slapping at his heels.
“Well, Henry?” Will offered his arm to Vanessa, and she accepted. “Are we parting ways, or will you and your little one sit for a spell?”
She crossed her fingers. Stay?
Henry traced her hairline and smiled. “We’ll sit in, Will. I expect I’ll need that refresher on knots and wraps soon.”
Victory danced in her blood, heated and jumping. God, Jay should be here to toss her across his shoulders and spin until they collapsed and dragged Henry down with them.
Vanessa found them seats, though Henry declined one on her behalf and settled her in his lap instead. His warm thighs made for a better perch than the wooden folding chair. Curling around him, she tucked her fingers under his lapel.
As Will took the seat beside them, Vanessa bent and whispered in his ear. The knots on her back matched the front for beautiful tension and strength.
“Is it the symmetry or the asymmetry that entrances you so, sweet girl?” Henry pitched his voice low. “Or are the coursing lines so many gears turning in your mind?”
/> “Gears, sir.” Locked together, they rotated as one piece in fluid motion. The linen of Henry’s dress shirt teased her fingers. Her scant knowledge of rope play didn’t answer the hundred questions on her tongue. The stretch and strength of the materials. Their roughness or softness as they snaked around her. “Too many.”
Vanessa paraded up the aisle, ropes slow-dancing across her hips and shoulder blades.
Tap tap tap went Henry’s fingers on her spine. “Save your questions for after, and any the young man fails to answer in his demonstration, Will will gladly field for you.”
“What’s this I’m being volunteered for?” Santa patted her knee. “If it involves tying this one up and watching your boy please her, I can clear my schedule.”
“In time, perhaps.” Thick currents played in Henry’s tone. “You’ve always been a marvelous rigger.”
His darkening, distant eyes rolled a storm under her skin. Cloud lightning flashed in her muscles, setting her shivering.
Henry engulfed her in a tight squeeze, but he said no more as Justin called everyone’s attention to the front. The presentation proceeded step by step, each function explained, every choice identified and qualified. Eye bolts dotted the massive exposed wood joists in the ceiling. Justin zipped from laid-back chill dude to serious instructor as he covered hard points and drop lines and checked in with “rope bunny” Amie for tingling, numbness, and fatigue.
By the time he’d finished, she hung from the ceiling in a meditative lotus. Ropes girded her hips and crossed in a Celtic knot above her breasts. Serene and still, she seemed a statue. Some ancient deity enshrined in artwork Henry’d be able to name.
“Normally about now I’d fetch Amie’s favorite bunny ears vibe”—Justin slipped his hand between his partner’s thighs, drawing a low sigh—“and torture her awhile, but my time’s up.”
Will launched to his feet and clapped with gusto. The crowd followed. Henry displaced her gently, steadying her before he stood.
“Well?” Cheeks round and cheery, Santa Will peered at her with bright blue eyes. “Do we have you on the ropes, sweet Alice?”
“I haven’t heard the details of your pitch,” she teased. “Length, thickness—a girl needs to know these things.”