N is for... (Checklist Book 14)

by L. DuBois

  The corset creaked as he untied the lower lace. This one he loosened much more than he had the upper half, hooking his finger under each x and tugging to add slack.

  When he finished tying this one off he patted her hip. Her skirt meant there was no skin to skin contact, but the touch was far more intimate than when he’d been manipulating the corset. It was also a very Dom-y gesture.

  Autumn took a deep breath, fighting through the hot flash of arousal that made her want to do something stupid. Something like turn around and straddle him, and grind her wet pussy against his cock as she kissed him, which would no doubt earn her a nice spanking.

  Instead she walked back to her side of the table and sat. Her skirt rode up, and she was more than a little worried she would leave a wet spot on the leather seat when she stood again.

  “Is that enough to allow you to eat?” Daniel asked.

  Autumn picked up her plate and balanced it on her knees. “If I said it wasn’t, would you loosen it more?”

  “The lower half, certainly.”

  Daniel waited until she unrolled her silverware to pick up his own plate and balance it on his knee.

  “But not the top?” She cut off a small bit of fish and put it in her mouth.

  He finished chewing before responding. “No, I wouldn’t. I will admit I selfishly want to enjoy the view while I eat.”

  Autumn laughed, aware her half-compressed boobs probably jiggled like jello.

  They ate in silence, and while the silence wasn’t exactly awkward, it wasn’t comfortable. Autumn set aside her plate in favor of her wine glass and scooted so she could lean back against the edge of the sunken seating area. She watched him eat, which seemed strangely intimate. He glanced at her as he put a bite of steak into his mouth, then leaned back, still chewing.

  He looked no less formal sans jacket. His shirt wasn’t white the way she’d assumed, but actually more of a cream color. His tie was blue silk with a subtle stripe and his tie tack matched his cufflinks.

  “I’m enjoying the view, too.” She winked and tipped her glass towards him.

  Daniel snorted out a laugh, then started to cough, having apparently half inhaled his food.

  Autumn sat forward, legitimately alarmed, but he waved her away, covering his mouth with his napkin. After chugging half a glass of water, he set aside his plate and napkin.

  His expression turned chiding and stern. Whoa. He did that disappointed authority figure look really well. For the first time in her life, Autumn had a burning desire to put on a little plaid skirt and play naughty schoolgirl.

  That would be fun, but she also wanted to feel his arms wrap around her gently as he pulled her close. She wondered if she’d have an opportunity to run her fingers through his hair, to mess it up enough to make him look mussed. No, that was something a lover, not a play partner, did.

  “Please don’t make me choke,” he said.

  “Maybe it’s all part of my evil plan.”

  “You have an evil plan? Hmm. Usually I’m the one with a kinky, evil plan.”

  He was fun. This was fun. Fun in a totally different way than the normal fun she had at Las Palmas.

  “I make you laugh, you choke, and then I get to give you the Heimlich maneuver.”

  “Ma’am, are you planning to cop a feel?” He pressed his hand to his heart in mock moral outrage.

  “It’s either that or I spill some red wine on you so you have to take off your shirt.” She pursed her lips and gave him a once over.

  Daniel laughed, seemingly totally at ease with their conversation. With their flirty banter.

  Shit.

  She was flirting with him. Flirting was not a part of BDSM pre-scene negotiations. Flirting was for romance.

  She had a rule. Never mix love and kink. It always ended badly.

  “You have a devious mind, Autumn. I like it.”

  She managed a weak smile in response to his comment, but inside she was starting to panic.

  She’d never had trouble following that rule at Las Palmas, at least in part because she always chose to scene with Doms she trusted and respected, but with whom she felt no desire to flirt.

  Fuck. She was romantically attracted to him.

  “Damn,” she breathed. “I’m attracted to you.”

  Why had she just said that out loud?

  He blinked several times, then leaned back and seemed to relax. “I cannot wait to hear the thought process that went into that statement, which your tone indicated you thought was a problem.”

  “Nope.” Autumn shook her head. “Explaining would mean telling you some stuff about myself that, frankly, you have no right to know.”

  “We are about to be scene partners; that means that we need open lines of communication.”

  “It doesn’t mean that I have to tell you all about my trust issues.”

  “A sub with trust issues.” He leaned forward and picked up the wine bottle, tilting it towards her glass in question.

  She held out her glass, let him pour her another. He topped up his own glass before sitting back.

  Autumn patted her cleavage. “That’s me. Sub with trust issues. Please tell me you have control issues.”

  His shoulders tightened, and he looked away. He took a sip of wine before facing her again, smiling, though the skin around his eyes was tight. “Massive control issues.”

  “Excellent. For a second there I was worried we wouldn’t be enough of a stereotype.”

  “Dodged that bullet.” He lifted his glass towards her in a toast.

  Autumn took a sip, lips twitching in amusement, her panic fading, though really it shouldn’t have. Scening with him was a very bad idea.

  They finished eating, conversation easy and just as flirty as before. She was having so much fun—though the word seemed inadequate—that when Daniel set down his glass and picked up the nearly forgotten envelope she was disappointed.

  She didn’t want this little dinner date to end.

  She was such a fucking idiot.

  Daniel took a thin stack of papers from the folder, turning the packet to show her the front page, which had her picture on it. “A copy of your checklist. Do you remember what you put?”

  “I only joined last year, so I think so, but I should also say that I’ve learned a lot about what I will and won’t do over the course of the year.”

  “Really?” He flipped a few pages. “Well, then it’s a shame that you didn’t update your list before the game.”

  “I would have, had I known the game was happening.”

  “Ah, but then there’s no element of surprise.”

  “I don’t like surprises. I doubt any member does. Lack of surprises is why we negotiate every moment of our scenes in advance.”

  “Is that what you do?” He set the papers on his lap, focus on her. “Negotiate every moment?”

  “That’s how it’s supposed to be done.”

  “Come now, Autumn, you know there’s no one right way to play.”

  “Don’t presume to lecture me.” For the first time real anger touched her words, and she could see from his body language that he was surprised by her calm, hard tone.

  She looked away, taking a mental step back. The whole point of her membership here was to get away from the icy, risk-taking, disciplined person she was outside of here. When at Las Palmas she was supposed to be fun-loving Autumn, the person she’d been when she was younger, before bad relationships and a high stress job changed her. The sassy and dynamic version of herself that rarely saw the light of day anymore.

  “Autumn.”

  His voice was low and rang with command. Stiffly, she returned her gaze to the man, the stranger, across from her. Flirting didn’t make him any less a stranger, and she needed to remember that.

  His gaze bore into hers, but his body was relaxed—a king totally in control, and confident on his throne. “I will presume to do far more to you than just lecture.”

  Chapter 3

  Damn he was a lucky Do
m. His partner was hot and sassy and how the fuck had he never seen her before?

  Daniel watched Autumn’s body language, loving the way her shoulders squared even as she uncrossed and then re-crossed her legs. She was the very picture of pissed off, but also aroused, submissive.

  She’d taken him by surprise with the ‘bat-shit’ comment, and just kept surprising him, in the best possible ways.

  The announcement of the checklist game had certainly shocked the hell out of him. Assigned partners, assigned letters, all because the club overseers thought they’d gotten complacent? He didn’t need his sex life shaken up. BDSM was his outlet for a desperate, dark need for control. Anything that fucked with his ability to use BDSM as an outlet was risky.

  The checklist game was wild and dramatic and he’d heard plenty of grumbling from among the Owners, Doms, and Masters who’d been standing near him during the all-club meeting.

  He, it appeared, had gotten very lucky with Autumn.

  They had chemistry. That had been apparent from the first words they exchanged, and he knew she felt it too.

  Well, that was hardly some great insight on his part. Her damn it, I’m attracted to you comment made it pretty plain.

  “You’ll presume to do absolutely nothing without my consent.” She notched her chin up in challenge.

  “Of course not,” he agreed.

  She relaxed a little.

  “Our letter is ’N’ not ‘R’,” he teased, trying to get them back on their previous conversational footing.

  “R? Wait, let me guess. Rape fantasy?”

  “Yes.” He tapped the papers.

  “Well, ’n’ could be for non-consent.”

  “You mean CNC?” Consensual non-consent was a more modern, and more current term than ‘rape fantasy,’ but the overseers were from an older generation of kinksters.

  “You don’t read much dark erotica do you?” She made an exaggerated sad face.

  “No.” He didn’t bother to hide his grin. “I can’t say I do.”

  “Well then, you’re really missing out. Maybe I’ll let you join my book club.”

  “You have a book club that reads non-consent dark erotica?”

  “No, but I’m going to start one just so you can join,” she assured him with mock solemnity.

  Daniel let his head fall back and laughed. Damn, this was fun. Fun in a totally different way than the ‘fun’ he was used to having at Las Palmas. Fun wasn’t something that had ever played a big part in his life.

  When he finished laughing and glanced at her, the small smile she was struggling to hide was enchanting. Nearly as enchanting as the soft, bronzed mounds of her breasts plumped and lifted by her corset.

  It had taken a fair amount of self control to stop himself from spinning her around and burying his face in her cleavage after he’d finished adjusting her corset.

  Needing something to do other than look at her pretty tits, Daniel picked up her checklist. It was already flipped to the page that had the items for the letter N on it.

  The list of items for N was distressingly small and rather vanilla compared to some of what the other letters were going to deal with.

  “We’ll start with reviewing our checklist items, then we’ll discuss,” he declared.

  “You already told me—it’s nipple play, right?”

  “Actually the phrase ‘nipple play’ isn’t on here. We’ll make that the implied fifth item. The first is actually ‘name change’.”

  Autumn paused, the glass halfway to her mouth. “What?”

  “That’s actually what you put on the list.” He tapped the page, where a bold hand had written what? next to “name change.”

  “You wrote ‘what’ with a question mark and then didn’t actually check a box. The overseers said that for any unchecked or ‘no comment’ items, we could assume those were ‘willing to try’ or default to our own list.”

  For each item on the checklist there were four possible responses—“yes”, “no”, and “willing to try” were available options for each item on the list. The fourth response was to not answer, as she’d essentially done with name change.

  “That’s an…odd one.” She rolled her wine glass against her lower lip. “I guess you could call me ‘Fall’ or something.”

  “You think you would get to choose the name change?” He sank a little steel into the words.

  She stiffened, as he’d expected. He’d never had a sub be simultaneously easygoing and defensive. An odd, but compelling, combination for a submissive.

  Though he was hardly a typical member of Las Palmas.

  Daniel pushed those thoughts away. “The other three items are all nipple related. Nipple clamps, nipple piercing, and nipple weights.”

  Autumn waved one hand dismissively. “We can knock this out in five minutes. My nipples are pierced, so we switch to rings, add weights, then remove both for a few minutes to use the clamps, and you can call me ‘Fall’ or ‘Spring’ or something.”

  “You’re absolutely right.”

  She jerked a little in clear shock. She hadn’t expected him to agree to that. And did she look a little disappointed? Maybe that was wishful thinking.

  “You’re right that we could do what you just outlined. We’d be the first pairing to start, and the first pairing to finish.” He gestured around the still empty dining room.

  He hadn’t been the first person to receive his assignment packet, but he’d been the first person to walk out of the Conclave in search of his sub. He’d been planning to go the Den and use the intercom system to call for Autumn to meet him somewhere else in the club.

  But he’d walked faster than planned, and caught up with the subs. The very sexy woman in the red corset with glossy gold-streaked dark hair had drawn his attention immediately. When she’d turned her head to the side, he’d recognized her from the picture he’d received.

  “However, we’re not going to,” he finished.

  “Oh?”

  “Your idea would satisfy the technical requirements, but not the spirit, of the game.”

  “And what do you think the spirit of the game requires?”

  His blood heated at the slight tremble in her words, in the way she was once more shifting restlessly. He wanted to see her let go, to hear her moaning in pleasure and sighing in emotional release.

  Wanted her to give him control.

  “You’re going to submit to me. You’re going to trust me enough to do that. You’re going to give me control of your body, and let me take care of you.”

  “Take care of me?” She shook her head, strands of hair whipping her face. “You mean—”

  “I mean take care of you. Of your needs,” he clarified.

  “And your own.” There was a bit of snark in her tone.

  He let it go. For now.

  “Yes. This arrangement is mutually beneficial.”

  She turned her head away, and he could see the tendons in her neck flexing. She was tense, tightly strung.

  “Are you a switch?” he asked after a moment. He hadn’t had a chance to go through every page of her paperwork, so maybe he’d missed something.

  “I’d be a good Domme.”

  “That wasn’t what I asked.”

  “It wasn’t, was it?”

  She still wasn’t looking at him, and Daniel had a feeling that he wouldn’t get any more answers, any real answers, unless he asked his questions as part of the scene, when she was feeling her submission.

  He stood and walked around to where she sat. He’d deliberately chosen to approach her from her blind side, so she was looking away from him, and would have to turn her head to see him.

  She stubbornly kept her head turned away, even when he was so close to her that the crease of his pants brushed her bare knee. Daniel hooked a lock of hair around his finger, twirling it idly. Standing while she was seated meant he had a lovely overhead view of her breasts rising and falling with her now rapid but uneven breaths.

  He released the
lock of hair so that it fell forward over her shoulder, the ends brushing the top of her breast.

  “Autumn,” he murmured.

  “I don’t even know you. You’re a stranger,” she snapped. The hard words were at odds with her breathing, with the way her body was softening as she leaned into him.

  “Yes, I am,” he agreed mildly.

  “I would be crazy to agree to…”

  “To submit to me.”

  She pressed her lips together so tightly that they almost disappeared. But her breath hitched, and when she exhaled it was almost a moan.

  “But you’re going to. Because you need to submit right now, don’t you? And the game means that you either submit to me, or you walk away.”

  “Damn it,” she whispered. “Damn it.”

  “I’m guessing that normally you play with Doms you’ve gotten to know over the course of time.”

  “Yes.”

  “You negotiate—how did you put it?—every moment of a scene.”

  “Not always.” She sounded less sure.

  “If playing with a partner you just met is one of your hard limits, then that is a different issue.”

  “It’s not.” Her breasts heaved as she took a heavy breath. “I mean of course there are times when I come to the club and just…” She raised one shoulder, let it fall.

  Daniel cupped the back of her head in his hand, spearing his fingertips through her hair and massaging her scalp.

  “Sometimes you scene with a stranger, a new partner, because your need outweighs your trust issues.”

  That got a small laugh out of her.

  “Then,” he continued, “tonight will be one of those nights.”

  She reacted to the words with a slight catch to her breath.

  “You’re going to submit to me,” he murmured.

  “I shouldn’t.”

  He kept up the scalp massage until she tipped her head back, letting the weight of her skull fall into his hand. Her eyes were closed, her breathing slow and even. Her legs had relaxed, one now leaning fully against his knee, her thighs parted just enough that if he’d wanted to, he could have slid his hand between her thighs and touched her pussy.

  “Why?” he murmured low and gentle. “Why shouldn’t you?”