L is for… (BDSM Checklist Book 12)

by L. DuBois

  Vic’s lips twitched in amusement.

  “You’re here,” he said, almost accusingly.

  “I am?” Vic looked around in mock amazement. “Oh, you’re right, I am.”

  “Smartass.”

  Her smile faded, her expression a formal mask. “I’m here early because I want to talk to you.”

  Cain folded his arms, and hoped it didn’t look like a defensive pose, though it was. His first thought was that, somehow, she knew what he’d done.

  Knew that he had a completely ridiculous crush on her. That he’d orchestrated this so they could scene together.

  “At the bar?” He nodded the direction he’d been headed.

  “No, it’s a…a private conversation.”

  Her composure cracked and she looked away, glancing to the side and shifting her weight. It made the thin royal-blue tank dress she wore under a leather corset sway around her thighs.

  Cain dropped his arms, then reached out to touch her chin. She didn’t resist when he raised her face, searching her features.

  All thoughts of getting a drink or a snack were forgotten. His sub needed him. He could see it in the tightness of her features and the tension of her shoulders.

  “Come with me,” he kept his tone soft, while the words were a command.

  Vic lowered her lashes, and he wasn’t sure it she meant it to be a submissive move, or she just needed to blink, but his cock twitched in his leathers.

  Cain slid his hand from her chin around to the back of her neck. Gripping lightly, he guided her towards their playroom.

  In the hour and a half she’d been waiting—and honestly she’d expected to be waiting for at least another hour—Victoria had plenty of time to change her mind. There really was no need for her to confess to Cain. The word “confess,” which she kept using in her seemingly endless internal debate, was only adding weight to an already heavy decision.

  Cain flipped on the lights and she shivered. It wasn’t all that cold in the playroom, the same one they’d used last night. The shiver had nothing to do with temperature, and everything to do with fear, and a bit of shame.

  Cain came up behind her, and she stiffened, not with fear, but anticipation. His big hand, marked by a few calluses, cupped her elbows. Then he carefully ran just his palms, which were smooth if hard, up and down her arms.

  “Give me minute to set up someplace for us to talk.”

  “Just talk,” she warned.

  “I heard you, Vic.” He sounded both amused and a little irritated.

  Before she had to respond—she wasn’t sure how she would have responded—he was gone.

  He’d raised the ambient lighting in the room enough that the darker shadows were now a twilight gray. She could see the edges of the room, all the things that had been hidden by the blackness. There were various pieces of moveable equipment, as well as dressers and wardrobes probably holding toys, robes, blankets, and towels.

  He’d also turned on one of the spotlights, its effect muted since the rest of the lights were up. It was into that circle of light that he brought two cylindrical padded stools, placing them several feet apart.

  “Have a seat.” Cain passed her as he went to the control panel for the lights.

  She had taken several steps when he lowered the room lights, the newly created seating arrangement taking the spotlight, quite literally.

  She took a seat. She’d originally planned to wear a pair of leather accented spandex shorts under the thin tank dress and corset, but the leather accents included lacing on the sides that made her hips look lumpy.

  Rather than put on either a thong or other pair of appropriately sexy underwear, she’d decided to forgo anything under the dress. No panties—very submissive.

  Maybe that was some half-baked attempt to push back against the realization she’d had earlier.

  And the things she was about to say to Cain.

  She heard his heavy boots on the concrete, and when he passed her, he ran the back of his fingers over her cheek in a caress that made her heart lurch, because it was tender when tenderness wasn’t something she’d expected from him.

  “All right, Vic.” He took a seat, his big body dwarfing the stool which was a little too low, so his knees were higher than his hips. “What’s up?”

  “Why do you call me Vic?” That wasn’t what she’d meant to ask.

  He leaned forward, forearms on his knees. “Because no one else here does.”

  And that wasn’t the answer she’d expected. “What?”

  “You introduced yourself as Victoria, and then set me on my ass. Do you remember?”

  She nodded slowly. “I was playing bartender, you asked for a drink, and I made you say please.”

  “As you should have. But in my head—” He tapped his temple. “—Victoria is the name of someone fussy and simpering.”

  “Victoria comes from the Latin word for victory.”

  “I know, but my grandma had this white Shih Tzu named Victoria that had like fifty medical problems and always wore stupid bows.”

  She laughed, and laughing, plus the high-wattage smile he shot her direction, muted some of the anxiety that had her in an emotional vise.

  “Well, I agree that I’m not a fussy little dog.”

  “No, you’re not.” He seemed to consider her. “You would make a good goddess. Victoria the goddess of victory, high above mere mortals.” He waved a hand in the air.

  She winced. “That symbolism is rather appropriate, given that…”

  “What?”

  “Yesterday I said that it didn’t quite feel right using…using more formal language, titles and that sort of thing.”

  “True, and I agreed, mostly because I don’t care.”

  “You don’t?”

  His massive shoulders heaved in what for anyone else probably would have been a small shrug. “It can be fun, the formality of a sub having to use “Sir,” “please,” “thank you,” with every sentence. Good way to have an excuse to spank her, but it also makes it easy to top from the bottom.” Cain tapped the heel of one booted foot on the floor. “But the formality of those kinds of non-critical ‘rules’… That’s not the core of it. At least not for me.”

  “You mean the core of being a Dom.”

  He nodded.

  She didn’t want to do this, didn’t want to say these things out loud. It would be so much easier to put a spin on them, to make this into something else, something less embarrassing and also less disgraceful.

  She hesitated too long, because Cain stuck out one long leg, and nudged her ankle gently with the toe of his boot.

  “Hey, what’s going on in there?” Cain tapped his temple with two fingers.

  The darkness outside their little pool of light gave the illusion of intimacy, as if they were tucked together into a small space instead of in the center of a massive play space, complete with an observation room behind the one-way mirror that meant there could be any number of people watching them right now.

  Intimacy made confession easier, if not easy.

  “I’m ashamed of being a submissive.”

  She expected shock, or maybe smug acknowledgement—most Doms were perceptive, at least when it came to the emotions that were flowing inside a scene.

  Cain nodded, but not as if he’d known what she would say; it was more of a “I hear you, I’m listening,” nod. His expression didn’t change, and she could feel the weight of his attention. In this moment, he was wholly focused on her.

  “I realized it because I didn’t want you to think of me as a sub. We’re…friends. And if I started behaving like a sub I was sure we would lose that. That you would think less of me.”

  This time when the silence stretched out long enough to be awkward he shifted a little, drawing her attention to him when she’d been looking down at her bare toes.

  “Do you need me to tell you that I wouldn’t think any less of you if you were a high protocol sub who spoke only when spoken to and enjoyed being used
as a footstool?”

  That surprised a laugh out of her, and to her disgust, along with the laugh a tear spilled down one cheek. She didn’t wipe it away, because she didn’t want to draw attention to it, hoped he wouldn’t notice.

  His gaze tracked the path of the tear, but he didn’t say anything about it. When the drop of water reached her jaw she rubbed her chin on her shoulder to get rid of it.

  “No,” she said, in answer to his question. “I don’t, because intellectually I know that a man who thinks less of a woman because she has a kink or two that involve being submissive isn’t a Dom, he’s a misogynist.”

  “True.” Cain waited for her to speak.

  Her throat was too tight for her to get words out.

  “I didn’t ask you to call me ‘Sir.’” The words were careful, his full attention on her. He was feeling out the conversation.

  “I know you didn’t.” She needed to speak plainly. “It’s not just that I am ashamed of my submissive needs. We’re friends. Frenemies.” She winced as she said the word.

  Cain laughed, his head thrown back. He had a sexy neck. He had a sexy everything.

  “You and I are equals. We respect one another.”

  “Yes,” he agreed.

  “And if I were submissive for you, with you…you wouldn’t think I was your equal any more. You would think less of me.”

  Before she was done speaking, Cain was shaking his head. “I wouldn’t—”

  “I know that. I know.” She held up her hands. “All yesterday I had this feeling I couldn’t name, and then this morning, a very uncomfortable realization.”

  This time Cain said nothing, only waited.

  “I didn’t want you to think of me as less because I was submissive, when in reality, it’s me. I think less of women who are deeply submissive.” The words hurt as she spoke them.

  She was ashamed of herself for being so closed-minded and judgmental.

  She was ashamed of being a submissive.

  And she was afraid. Afraid of being seen as less-than because of what she wanted…needed.

  “Women who need or want high protocol play, or finish every sentence with ‘Sir’ and ‘Master’…I think I don’t respect them. Not really. Not enough to ever want to be them.” She let out a soundless laugh. “I’m the misogynist.”

  Cain was quiet, his gaze never leaving her face. He took time to consider everything she said before he responded. “Not necessarily.”

  “I’m a submissive in a very expensive sex club, who just admitted to thinking submission is something to be ashamed of. Clearly I’m—”

  “Conflicted.”

  She froze, mouth open. His statement was closer to the truth than what she’d been about to say.

  “Vic, when you look at scenes where the sub is doing high protocol, what do you feel?”

  “I know I don’t want to do that.”

  “That’s not a feeling.”

  “It is.”

  “Vic.” He deepened his voice, and it wasn’t just a good “Dom voice.” There was menace in his words, a threat that made her spine stiff and her nipples tight.

  “I feel like I’m better than them.” The words came out through stiff lips. “And I know that’s terrible. I know it’s bullshit.”

  He’d gone back to relaxed but attentive, and nodded in response to her shameful statement.

  “High protocol, even strict ‘manners’…the idea of not being able to talk, of responding to hand gestures like a dog.” She shook her head so hard her hair whipped her cheeks. “No. Just no.”

  “You think those women shouldn’t be allowed to behave that way.”

  “What? No, that’s not what I said. I believe in ‘live and let live’ as long as it’s between two consenting adults. They should be allowed to do whatever makes them happy.”

  “You just don’t want that for yourself.”

  “Exactly…but Cain, I don’t respect them. I think less of them for what they want.”

  He shrugged. “But you aren’t trying to stop them. You aren’t telling them they’re trash, aren’t confronting them.”

  “Yes, but I’m not accepting of them.”

  “There’s a hell of a lot of shit people do that I don’t think is acceptable and that I don’t respect, but I don’t get in their face about it. We all do that.”

  While he wasn’t wrong, she didn’t deserve his understanding.

  She could have left it. This was a good natural stopping point for the conversation, but it would have been a lie of omission. “The closest I can come to explaining it is like this.”

  She cleared her throat, then held up her hands, palm up. “Let’s say there are two lawyers. They got the same degree, have the same job, but what they’re actually doing can be quite different.” She raised her left hand higher, so they weren’t level anymore, then wiggled the fingers of her lower right hand. “One is a personal injury attorney with ads on late-night cable. The other is an environmental lawyer taking on companies that pollute waterways.”

  Cain grunted. “One of these is clearly a better person than the other.”

  She winced and dropped her hands. “That’s the thing, once you say it out loud, the statement is clearly wrong. The environmental lawyer might be a terrible person, and the personal injury attorney—”

  “Might save puppies and kitties on the weekend and only take on cases for little old ladies who desperately need their help.” Cain finished with a small smile.

  She nodded, then sighed. “But the imbalance…the idea that one is better than the other…I can’t get past that.”

  “So if submission is a scale, you don’t want to become one of those submissives.” Cain reached out and tapped the hand that had been lower.

  Victoria groaned and covered her face with her hands. “This is so fucked up. I thought I’d come to terms with my sexual needs.”

  “I think you found a way to get what you need without having to confront your conflicted feelings about sexual submission.”

  She spread her fingers and peeked at him.

  He grinned, and it was just a little bit wicked. “You like the ‘B’ of BDSM; you’re not liking the D/s.” He pursed his lips in mock consideration. “And the ‘M’…”

  There was more she needed to think through, and maybe she would go to one of the overseers to talk this out. Should she even be allowed to be here if she was harboring this secret disgust for the other subs? But he was providing her with a way to table it for now, and she was going to take that deal.

  “I enjoyed the paddling yesterday,” she said, not realizing how prim she sounded until his lips twitched.

  Cain casually stretched out one long leg, leather pants creaking a little. His booted foot snuck between her ankles, and then, to her shock, he kicked her feet apart.

  “Legs spread while we talk.”

  Her mouth opened and closed a few times. She probably looked like a fish.

  “We have a contract, sugar.” He was almost purring at her. He, apparently, had no problem transitioning from hard conversations about sexuality and shame to a scene.

  “Cain…”

  “I expect you to fulfill that contract.”

  “Haven’t you been listening? I’m not sure I’m a sub.”

  “Just because you’re ashamed of something doesn’t mean you aren’t that thing.”

  The sentence was convoluted, but she understood what he was saying. That didn’t stop her from holding up one hand and shaking her head as she said, “Cain, I think—”

  He came off the stool fast, faster than someone his size should be able to move. Now kneeling in the space between them, he grabbed her knees, one in each hand, and forced her thighs apart.

  The thin satin tank dress she was wearing had a much fuller skirt than yesterday’s outfit, and he spread her open wide, the fabric sliding up to the top of her thighs.

  She now regretted the decision to go without underwear of any kind.

  Cain glanced at the ape
x of her thighs, the corner of his mouth kicking up in a smile.

  Victoria tried to close her knees. Her thigh muscles were no match for those massive arms. The ease with which he kept her thighs spread could have been frightening.

  Fear was not her primary emotion.

  “I said legs spread while we talk,” he murmured.

  “This conversation isn’t part of a scene. I’m not playing.”

  “And normally you are playing? Playing at being a submissive?”

  “Maybe.” She’d meant to say ‘yes’, and surprised herself that that wasn’t the word that came out of her mouth.

  “I’m not going to make you call me ‘Sir.’ I don’t give a crap what you call me.” His smile widened to a grin. “You can call me a son-of-a-bitch if you want, as long as you’re willing to pay the price.

  “The price being a spanking?” She tried to sound bored or resigned, but instead sounded breathless, and maybe a little hopeful.

  “Too predictable.”

  Cain sat back, and when he let go of her legs they closed a little.

  He slapped the inside of her left thigh, hard enough to make her yelp. “Keep them spread.”

  Victoria’s jaw clenched, and, because sometimes she was an absolutely stupid masochist, she slapped her legs together and crossed her ankles.

  Cain threw his head back and laughed. “If you want me to manhandle you, I will.”

  “I didn’t say that.” But part of her did want that, wanted the illusion of force with the safety of the rules and structures with BDSM.

  That was cowardice. A way for her to get what she wanted without having to confront her own conflicted emotions about being a sub.

  “You don’t have to.” Cain stood, towering over her, then bent to place a single finger on her knee. “In the immortal words of the great philosopher Jagger…”

  His hand slid down to her ankle and then, oh-so-slowly, he forced her legs to uncross. She struggled, trying to jerk her leg from his hold, tried to pry his fingers loose with her own.

  He simply ignored her struggles. With no apparent difficulty, he uncrossed her legs and forced them apart, sliding his hands up her calves to her knees. Because he was standing, that brought his head and shoulders down until his face was so close to hers that she could smell his minty breath, feel the wash of air when he exhaled.