R.S.V.P.

by Madeleine Oh

  A brilliant light flashed through her mind, as all her nerve endings seized up and screamed in joy at the same moment. She might have cried out, or she might have slipped silently beneath the waters of consciousness. She was too far gone to know.

  When she came to, still shuddering and shaking with the aftershocks, she was lying on her side on top of the room’s bed. Michael lay next to her, cradling her body against his, and gently stroking her hair.

  Her cheek rested against the brushed cotton of his shirt, and she realized he was still dressed. Skimming her gaze down his body, she confirmed that he was completely dressed. Worse, he was no longer aroused.

  She tipped her head back and glanced upward, meeting his indulgent gaze. He didn’t look unhappy.

  Hesitantly, she asked, “Did I please you?”

  He smiled, and trailed a finger over the curve of her ear. “I came when you did, Sasha. You pleased me very much.”

  She closed her eyes, sighing gently as she settled against his warm chest, her ear resting above the steady thumping of his heart.

  “How about you? Did you like your first time as a submissive?”

  “Oh, yeah. It was… I don’t know how to describe it. More intense than parachuting and bungee jumping combined.”

  Michael shook back his sleeve and glanced at his watch, a multifunction digital watch that seemed at odds with the cool elegance of his Armani suit.

  “Our time slot is almost over. We’ll have to return to the party soon.”

  Sassy blinked. She’d forgotten about the party! It was her whole reason for being here, and she’d forgotten about it.

  She felt her face flame. “Oh God. The way I was screaming, they all heard me. They’ll know exactly what happened in here.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” He dropped a light kiss on the crown of her head. “The draperies muffle the sound. But even if any guests did hear you, they’d be jealous, wishing they were having that good a time. This is why people come to these play parties. To play.”

  His reassurance only made her feel worse. This wasn’t his first party. She wasn’t the first woman he’d picked up and played with. He’d rocked her world, taken her someplace she’d never been, never even dreamed existed, and she’d been just another fun time for him. Maybe not even all that fun. After all, she was the one who’d been doing all the shouting and screaming.

  His arm tightened around her, and he tipped her chin up so that he could read her face. A slight furrow creased his forehead.

  “What is it, Sasha? What’s bothering you?”

  “Nothing.”

  His gray eyes narrowed. “BDSM relationships are built on trust and truthfulness. Don’t lie to me, not even a social lie. What’s bothering you?”

  “I’m not your first submissive.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  She shook her head, trying to clear away the last of the sensual haze her time with Michael had instilled. She needed to think clearly.

  “I’ve never been to a pickup party, not even for ordinary sex. I’m out of my league here. Am I your date for the evening after this? Or was it just a fun time, and now we go out and mingle and try to find someone else to have fun with?”

  He kissed her forehead and smoothed her hair, until she relaxed and laid her head against his chest again. “This is a play party, not a pickup party. Most of the guests are already in relationships. I came to watch the scenes and talk to friends, not find a new submissive. You were an unexpected treat.”

  Unexpected didn’t begin to cover it, from her point of view. If someone had tried to convince her before she arrived at the party that before the night was out she’d be tied up, begging a man to beat her with a riding crop, and loving every minute of it, she’d have thought the person was crazy. But Michael had taken her on an amazing ride, and she could only guess at the wonders further down the road.

  If her life had one credo, it was that you took fun where you found it. She’d found fun, all right, and now she wanted to take it as far as she could.

  Sassy looked up hopefully. “Does that mean you’d like me to be your submissive?”

  “You let me initiate you into the ways of BDSM tonight. Let me continue to guide your development, and we’ll see where this leads.”

  She’d been hoping for more. She’d wanted to hear that it had been as special for him as it had been for her, that he felt connected to her now and unwilling to let her go. But she’d take what he was offering, because one thing was abundantly clear. Being with Michael would be more fun than she’d ever had in her life.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “You can be my Yoda.”

  He laughed. “I’m planning a much more personal style of guidance. I’m going to get into your head and under your skin, taking your body every chance I get and making you think of nothing but me when I’m not inside you.”

  Sassy trembled, her body turning liquid and starting to melt at the heated promise in his words. “I can hardly wait.”

  “Well, you’ll have to. Our time’s up. You’ve got two minutes to get dressed and cleaned up to go back out into the party.”

  She bounced out of the bed and raced around the room, gathering up her underwear and dress. Michael handed her a moistened towelette to clean between her legs, and swabbed the leather table with an antibacterial wipe that smelled strongly of bleach. The toys went back in the dresser drawer, nestled in their places among a collection that made her mouth water with eagerness to try them all.

  Chapter Three

  They spent the next two hours watching the scenes, Michael holding Sassy before him with his arms clasped loosely around her waist. Some of what she saw made her flinch backwards against his protective strength, but more often she shifted forward in anticipation, or rubbed her hands restlessly over his arms. Through it all he asked her questions, wanting to know what it was about the scenes that affected her.

  They watched a flogging that left her breathless, as Michael probed her feelings about the different whips and floggers, and where each of them was used. A humiliation scene made her wince, and informed him in no uncertain terms that she did not find being disparaged and belittled the least bit sexy. A demonstration of rope dress tying left her indifferent, until his soft explanation of the changes the abrasion and compression were causing to the submissive’s body heated her blood.

  When a bound, gagged and blindfolded submissive was led to the center of the room and teased with a variety of feathers, furs, and textiles, Sassy’s panties grew damp with eagerness to experience such complete dependence on Michael for not just pleasure, but all sensation. Then the dominant performing the scene invited some of the gathered guests to take their turns with the girl. Sassy stiffened with distaste even as the girl writhed in obvious ecstasy.

  “You wouldn’t want to be shared?” Michael breathed in her ear, tightening his hold on her with reassuring possessiveness. “Many submissives find it the ultimate expression of bowing to another’s will.”

  Sassy turned to read his expression. Did he want to share her with other dominants? Was that what his other submissives had done for him?

  “I…I don’t think I could. I’m sorry.”

  “Sh.” He brushed a kiss across her forehead, and cradled her body against his, soothing her with his touch. “I won’t ask you to do anything you don’t want to do. But I have to know why you have a problem with it so I can determine if it’s just something you find unappealing, or if it’s something you’re afraid of, but you could work your way into it with time.”

  She thought about it, turning in his arms to watch the woman writhing in ecstasy as she was teased and tormented by five unknown dominants, both male and female, while her master stood by and observed the action. Sassy tried to imagine five times the arousal Michael had inspired in her earlier. She failed.

  “I think it’s because they don’t know her. They’re doing the things they would do to arouse any woman. She’s not special to them.”

  “And you
want to be special?”

  “Yes.” Sassy glanced over her shoulder at him. “Is that wrong of me?”

  “No desire between consenting adults is ever wrong. Some are just more complicated to fulfill than others.”

  She raised an eyebrow in obvious disbelief. “There must be some limits. What if someone’s desire would leave them maimed or disfigured?”

  “Would you set yourself up as the arbiter of what is an acceptable range of suffering to exchange for pleasure?”

  Michael’s voice had not risen from his previous low whisper, but his enunciation grew markedly more clipped.

  Sassy blinked, startled at his vehemence. “Well, no. Of course not.”

  “But you believe someone has that right?”

  “I…maybe. I don’t know. Let me think.” She bit her lip, not wanting to anger Michael, but also not willing to back down from something she truly believed was correct.

  “Come on. You can think outside.”

  Wrapping his arm securely around her, he led her through the assembled crowd and out onto the patio. Ignoring the dancers, who now included the multiply pierced mistress and her two attendants demonstrating some sort of line dance to another couple, Michael guided Sassy to an empty spot along the waist-high wall facing the ocean. She watched the hypnotic ripple of the distant waves, and felt her breathing deepen and slow.

  “Take all the time you need,” he instructed in the same clipped tone. Her brief feeling of peacefulness vanished. He was mad at her, and struggling to control his temper. But she wasn’t going to just roll over on this issue. Not unless she could prove her initial opinion was wrong.

  The sultry Latin beat echoing across the patio made it easier to concentrate than the gasps and muffled cries of the submissive. Slowly, Sassy worked her way through the problem.

  Speaking as much to herself as to Michael, she mused, “If someone stepped in to prevent someone else from acting on their desires, in order to protect them from the results of their actions, it would be relegating the person to a child status, unable to be trusted to make a decision for themselves. You can’t say that applies to only one area of a life. So you’d have to strip all of the rights and privileges of adulthood from them.”

  She nodded, certain of her reasoning. “So if they were capable of acting as an adult in other areas of their life, it would be wrong to penalize them for their sexual desires. And if they weren’t capable of acting as an adult in other areas of their life, that would become obvious, and they could be institutionalized or otherwise treated without basing the decision on their sexual preferences.”

  Behind her, Michael relaxed slightly, and his voice resumed its accustomed gentleness. “In some places, dominants and submissives are still persecuted for their desires, arrested or sent to counseling until they can act ‘normal’. The laws are still on the books in most states, although they’re rarely enforced unless we flaunt our behavior in a way that can’t be ignored.”

  Sassy felt the blood draining from her face. She’d been thinking of the review of this party as a deliciously lurid article for Sun Daze. But could her review actually get someone arrested? Close down the dating service under some obscure codicil of law?

  “Sasha? What is it? You’re pale as a ghost.”

  She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, sucking in deep breaths of humid salt air. Gradually, her initial panic faded, and she opened her eyes.

  “Feeling better now?” Michael asked.

  Sassy nodded, but kept her gaze trained on the ocean.

  He sighed deeply, tucking her body into his embrace and resting his chin on top of her head. “I was in a relationship last year that turned ugly. There were some dicey moments when she threatened to get the cops involved. Your comment hit a nerve.”

  “For me, too. I didn’t realize how important it was to keep all this secret.”

  Michael chuckled. “Unless you take out an ad in the paper announcing your new proclivities, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Miami’s pretty laid-back about sexuality.”

  She shivered. Her review would definitely be advertising her newly awakened sexuality. Everyone who read it would know how she’d spent her evening.

  “You’re cold. We should go back inside.”

  She shook her head. “Suddenly, I’m not interested in the party anymore. I’ve got a lot to think about.”

  Although she usually stayed and partied until a club shut down, that was because she liked to have fun. She had enough material for her review. If she wrote a review at all.

  But if she didn’t write a review, Bryce would never cover the expense. She had enough trouble making her rent payments. She’d never be able to repay the thousand dollars Bryce had invested in the Briar Rose membership.

  Michael studied her face intently for a moment, turning her chin so that the decorative fairy lights better illuminated her.

  “You’re frightened. And not in a good way.”

  Sassy hesitated, then nodded.

  “Of…?”

  “It’s complicated. But it’s about my job.”

  “Worried about what will happen if they learn about this party?”

  “If my boss knew what I’d done tonight, I’d be in big trouble.” That much was true. He’d question her ability to be objective.

  Sassy blinked. Maybe that was it. He wanted an article. Maybe he’d be willing to accept an article about the appeal of BDSM, an eyewitness account of one woman’s journey into submission.

  “You’ve had an idea?” Michael prompted.

  “Maybe. It might work.”

  He smiled, stroking her cheek and hair with casual possession. She leaned into his touch, and his smile broadened. “Ready to go back to the party?”

  Sassy shivered again, anticipating Michael holding her close, his low voice whispering in her ear, the warmth of his body heating hers with promise.

  “Yes.” Her throat was so tight, her answer was barely louder than a breath.

  Michael bent his head and claimed her lips, his gentle pressure gradually growing more and more insistent as he backed her hips against the low wall of the patio. Her view of the dance floor blocked by his body, she felt isolated and alone with him in this dim, secluded corner he’d found for them. Soft reggae music played from the DJ on the other side of the patio, masking the sounds of other conversations and reinforcing the sense of solitude.

  Michael’s tongue plunged inside her mouth, tasting and taking. Smoothing his hands over her body, he caressed her back, then cupped her ass. He squeezed, pressing his fingers into the flesh still tender from his earlier spanking and flogging.

  The memory of how completely he had possessed her drew a shaky groan from her, and the flesh between her legs began to throb in anticipation. Her nipples tightened, beginning to ache. He shifted one hand up to press his palm into the small of her back, anchoring her against his onslaught. With his other hand, he slowly lifted her skirt, until his fingers could slip beneath the hem. He stroked her bare thigh, then the sensitive skin of her inner thigh.

  Sassy sighed into his mouth, clutching his shoulders and shifting her legs further apart. Why had she made the mistake of putting her underwear back on?

  His fingertips brushed lightly against her damp panties, teasing her with his faint touch against her pulsing flesh, before dancing away to trace delicate circles up and down her inner thigh. When Michael lifted his head to begin trailing kisses along her jaw, she whispered, “What do you want to do to me?”

  “What would you think of my taking you right here, against the wall, in full view of the guests behind me on the dance floor?”

  Sassy shuddered, her heart pounding. Her legs quivered, too weak to hold her upright without his strong hand at her back, and her breath puffed in and out in rapid bursts. The thought terrified her. She was the reviewer, the objective analyst who recorded others’ outrageous behavior for the titillation of her readers. She didn’t want to become the story.

  But wasn’t that exactly w
hat she was contemplating? Becoming the story for Bryce, exposing her inner self on the page for all of Miami to gawp at?

  The idea was darkly seductive. She wanted Michael to make love to her, to feel his cock filling her, then exploding as he found his release. She was growing wetter just thinking about it. And if he did it here, in full view of everyone, he’d relieve her of having to choose to expose herself in print. She’d be the story, whether she wanted to be or not.

  Her inner spirit protested. It was one thing to hand over control of her body in the context of a hot bout of sex. It was another thing entirely when her career was on the line.

  Michael was still waiting patiently for her reply, watching her expression. She temporized, answering the question he’d asked without answering the question he’d meant.

  “I think you’d be announcing to everyone that I’m your submissive.”

  “And that would make you feel…?”

  “Very, very special,” she admitted. That was part of the allure. But was it enough?

  Michael growled softly, a sound of masculine pleasure, his firm erection pressing into her stomach as he nipped the sensitive skin above the pulse point in her neck. She tilted her head, exposing more of her neck to him. Despite the arousal rushing through her blood, she snickered.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I feel like I’m in a nature special. ‘The alpha dog expresses his dominance by growling, and the submissive dog exposes its vulnerable neck and underbelly.’”

  As soon as she said it, she worried that he might not appreciate being compared to a dog.