“Fine. Do what you want.” Pax was not budging, and her heart was breaking, as she started to lose all hope in Jase’s plan. “But he is not laying a hand on you. If he so much as breathes on you wrong, I’m going to paddle his ass. And then I’ll pound him into the pavement for good measure.”
Diamond had to try really hard to not react. The image of Pax’s paddling Jase made her want to shake with laughter, but the idea that this argument seemed to be coming to an end, without resolution, and without any softening from Pax made her want to curl up in a ball and cry. It had been a long shot. She had been crazy to agree to it, but she would have done anything to have Paxton Donovan in her life and Jase had sworn that deep down Pax felt the same. He was just better at hiding his emotions than she was.
He was really good at hiding his emotions.
Jase let the dust settle on Pax’s threats for a minute before he spoke up. He gave her a soft nudge before he started speaking, so slight she wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not.
“Again, this is my business, Pax. You don’t have the final word in what happens here. Diamond and I have a contract for tonight, and the only one with the option to dissolve the contract is her.”
At the mention of a contract, the intention of the nudge became clear. No such contract existed, and this was Jase’s final move. A Hail Mary Pass so to speak.
It was working. Pax eyed her questioningly and she confirmed it with a curt nod. In for a penny, in for a pound. At least she would know that she had tried everything in her power.
“Oh, my god.” Pax rubbed his temples and groaned. “You made her sign a contract saying you could spank her tonight?”
Jase shrugged. “I learned form the best. Got to tie up all those legal loopholes, man.”
Pax responded with a glare. “If you touch her, I’ll pull out of this partnership so fast your head will spin.”
Diamond’s eyes bugged at his threat and even Jase looked a little taken aback, but he kept on bluffing. “Well technically the contract just says she agrees to be spanked on stage. It doesn’t say I will spank her. I mean, you could.”
“No.”
“Well, I already announced it to the audience, man, and you know, they did buy tickets. They’ve been very patiently waiting while you threw your little hissy fit.”
“Sounds like a personal problem, you know since I only own forty-nine percent.”
“No problem, not really. See, Diamond is agreeing that she wants to be spanked, and I am ready and willing to spank her. The only person who seems to be taking issue is you. And you’ve basically sat here running your mouth, but when offered the option of doing it yourself, you declined. So—again—you need to pull your head out of your ass, my friend. I hope you get that figured out soon. If it gets shoved up there any farther it might have to be surgically removed. Now, if you’ll kindly get the fuck out of my way, I have a show to continue.”
Finishing his speech, Jase shoved Pax out of the way with a dismissive shove, and grabbed ahold of her hand, pulling her onto the stage.
Once there, Diamond regarded him with wide eyes. This was not how she had expected everything to go down. This was not what she bargained for. She did not in any way shape or form want Jase to actually spank her.
Jase knew that, but for whatever reason, he wasn’t quite willing to give up the charade just yet. She wasn’t sure if it was because he honestly thought Pax would come to his senses still, or if she had just become the pawn in a pissing contest.
“Don’t worry,” Jase whispered, as he slowly guided her to the chair in the center of the stage. “If he didn’t care, he’d be gone. He’d have burnt rubber on the pavement by now, but look.” Jason used his eyes to “point” backstage. He was right. Pax was leaning against the wall, just behind the curtain staring them down angrily.
“What if he doesn’t do anything? What if he just stares? And ends up angrier? What if he really pulls out of your business deal?”
Jase just shook his head. “He won’t. And if he does, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I’ll explain later. Right now we have a show to put on. Do you trust me?”
Diamond nodded slowly. It was weird. She had been Jason’s employee for four years, and she hadn’t had any sort of relationship with him at all until after he fired her. Now, she realized with a start, she would actually call him a friend. And a damn good one at that.
He motioned for her to take the same position the other girls had. Bent over the sideways facing the chair, which would mean that Pax had a perfect view of her ass, hands on the high seat, bent at the waist, bottom pushed out.
Jase picked up the paddle and the microphone from the small table, and began to speak. Diamond was listening intently, hoping that whatever he said was enough to get her out of this mess.
“Sorry about that folks. So, here’s the deal. Diamond and I go way back. She was an employee of mine for four years, up until about a month ago. She had a really bad night, the worst actually, and she was very naughty.”
She couldn’t see Jason’s face, but the crowd was laughing, so she guessed he had wiggled his eyebrows or some such other silly thing.
“Anyway, I didn’t know the circumstances at the time, and I wasn’t willing to listen. So, big bad meanie boss that I am, I fired her without giving her a chance to explain herself. And here’s where the story gets interesting.”
The crowd was visibly, excited, leaning forward on the edge of their seats, which was great, but Diamond couldn’t see that anything Jase was saying was going to force Pax into acting. This was a bad idea.
“My business partner figured out what was going on, and decided she needed a second chance. He tried to reason with me, but I wasn’t hearing it. So, since he owns a club of his own across the street, he hired her there. On one condition, see his club is a well-known BDSM club, and when his employees are naughty, he spanks them—on stage no less!”
The crowd went wild with applause. Some of them hadn’t been sure how they felt about spanking when the night started, but they really seemed to be getting into it now.
“So Diamond gave her consent to be spanked onstage for the naughtiness that got her fired. I was there that night—and I have to tell you—it was nothing like the spankings you have seen here tonight. Those two had an instant connection, and sparks were flying all over the place. People were talking about it for weeks. And they fell in love; they couldn’t have not. Did I mention my buddy was a professional dom? No? Well, he is. So, Diamond here, I’m going to guess, besides being his spanked employee, was also his spanked girlfriend. But he broke her heart.”
The crowd sighed audibly and in unison, they were totally invested in Jason’s story by now. Diamond just hoped it had a happy ending.
“It really wasn’t his fault. Without going into details, there were more extenuating circumstances—damn pesky things anyway—and she was in danger. Now it wasn’t really his fault, but he had vowed to keep her safe, I guess. How does one take sole responsibility for another person’s safety, anyway? She could leave here tomorrow, hop on a plane and crash. Would it be my friend’s fault? No, but he’d find a way to bear the blame for it, in his own mind anyway. I’m getting off track here, sorry about that. So because my friend with his epic guilt complex, feels like he failed to keep her safe, he decided that he failed her and that she would be happier, and safer without him. But, she’s certainly not happier—and she’s up here on stage, about to get her ass beat—because she feels that is the only way to get rid of her own epic guilt over the way things ended. Pretty fucked up love story, isn’t it?”
The audience booed and hissed in agreement that it was indeed, fucked up.
“You know what? I even gave my buddy the opportunity to step in for me tonight, but he didn’t want to take it. Way to man up, huh? But this pretty little lady feels like she needs this in order to move on, so I’m going to be the one to give it to her. No voting on this one. Diamond is an experienced spankee, and we’re going to
go until she feels better. Are you ready?”
* * *
Pax’s jaw twitched in anger as he listened to Jase’s speech. How dare he put Diamond in this situation? How dare she ask to be put in this situation?
Standing up there, all bent over and ready, shaking her pert little ass in his direction; she knew he was watching. But he knew his friend, too, and he was certain this had to be a scheme. Jason was a surprisingly nice guy when you got to know him, but he wasn’t that nice. He might however, go to these lengths for Pax which was exactly why Pax was calling their bluff. He refused to be a pawn in Jason’s cockamamie scheme. Jase was trying to control his life decisions just as he had accused Pax of trying to control Diamond’s.
And he wouldn’t go through with it. Jase would not spank Diamond. He knew it for a fact. He also knew that Diamond’s ass was his. They might not end up together, but she would not be spanked by another man. It wouldn’t be the same. He had known it from their first night together—she wasn’t kinky—she was just his.
They would go through all the motions, but when it came down to it, if he didn’t react, they had a back-up plan. They had to.
Even though he kept telling himself that, just watching the two of them up there was making him physically ill. His palms were sweaty, although that might be attributed to the fact that they were still balled into fists. His heart was beating fast as adrenaline rushed through his body. His mouth was dry with anticipation and his head was pounding with anger.
Every single nerve in his body was screaming at him to act, but he stubbornly stayed in place, even as Jase ended his speech, and went to stand behind Diamond, effectively blocking Pax’s view.
Pax rocked back on his heels. This was it, one of them would give.
Shock coursed through his veins as Jase raised the small leather paddle, and brought it down with a resounding smack against Diamond’s left cheek.
He stopped thinking; he just reacted. He was on the stage before he even had the coherent thought to move. Grabbing the paddle from Jase’s hand before he had a chance to strike for a second time, he shoved his friend out of the way.
“Nobody touches her but me.” He wasn’t yelling—his voice was scary calm and low—even to him.
“And we’re back to this again.” Jase shrugged, having the audacity to address his comments to the audience, rather than Pax himself. “The girl wants a spanking—that’s what she wants—so put up or shut up.”
The audience clued in quickly to the fact that he was the aforementioned professional dom in question, and they took up chanting.
“Put up! Put up! Spank her! Spank her!” Given the fact that he had come out looking like an ass in Jase’s retelling of events, he was actually pretty surprised that they weren’t instead chanting for his castration or worse.
“Fine!” He jumped off the stage and grabbed the first empty chair he could find. The other one was much too high for a good over the knee spanking, and he wasn’t about to do it any other way. He dragged it to the stage, and grabbed Diamond by the arm, moving her out of the way, so that he could shove the other chair off the stage.
Then he sat, and pulled Diamond face down over his knee, poising the paddle for impact. Jase stood off to the side, looking slightly worried, and Pax knew why. It was an unspoken rule in the BDSM world never to spank in anger—and Pax was angry—but not with Diamond.
Still, he took a few moments to compose himself, breathing deeply as he blocked out the cheers of the audience and the choking pain in his own heart. When he was visibly calmer, he looked at Jase and nodded. I’m okay. I’ve got this.
“Do you really want this spanking?” he asked, leaning down to whisper in her ear. It occurred to him, that she might not actually want a spanking at all, that it might have been just another layer of their plan.
“Only from you,” she replied, confirming his earlier thoughts.
Pax sighed as he processed what had happened. In the end, he had played right into their hand—and Diamond’s bottom would pay the price—but the final end result would not be what she was hoping.
Lifting her skirt revealed black cheeky panties, which would soon be coming down. He poised his hand to deliver a warm up—another thing Jase had done wrong—but if Pax was going to be the one doing this, it was going to be done his way, and he preferred to give a warm up.
He spanked quite ruthlessly. As warm-ups went, this was a hard one, but Diamond didn’t make a peep of protest. Instead, she arched her back, pushing her bottom up to meet his hand, leaning into every single swat. Damned minx.
She wasn’t supposed to be enjoying it, no matter the fact that she hadn’t actually done anything wrong. It was a spanking and he did not intend for it to be a pleasurable one. If anything, she deserved it simply for taking part in this asinine scheme.
Pax flattened his hand like a paddle, and brought it down as hard as he could across the crease below her cheeks. That did it. She stiffened, and shrieked, and then burst into noisy sobs. He repeated the action several times, watching as the white skin turned a lovely shade of pink, and the prints from his fingers raised as marks across her ass, but only for a minute.
She cried harder, and then something happened. He hadn’t known it would, but looking back, she and Jase must have. As he spanked her, all his guilt, and stubbornness and frustrations began to fall away. The audience ceased to exist. Just like that first night, nothing existed, nothing mattered, other than his hand on her ass.
It fell again and again, as both her cries, and his intensity with which he spanked weakened. Every stupid doubt he had, and each paralyzing fear seemed to fall away with every connection of hand and flesh. It was freeing, and liberating, and the connection between them was electric. Despite the fact that her ass had to be well and truly on fire by now, she still leaned into every swat with a sweet little moan that had his cock pulsing with need, throbbing against her stomach.
He had to be done soon. If she moaned any harder, both of them might come right there on stage. Besides that, Jase was staring at him, and tapping his watch.
The paddle. He hadn’t even used it yet at all, and damned if he would let Jase have that pleasure without claiming it for himself. Picking it up off the floor, he showed it to her. Her only reaction was a happy shiver.
Five swats. Each one fell hard, whizzing through the air like only leather can do, and bouncing off her already red bottom with a satisfying thud. Her reaction was satisfying also, as she burst into sobs anew, and pressed against him, flattening her stomach against his lap, squeezing his bulging cock. When the last one fell. He threw the paddle into the air towards Jase, flipped her upright and stood, before scooping her into his arms and running off the stage. He carried her through the club, out the door and across the street, not stopping until they were in his new suite.
He dumped her across the bed, and began ridding her of her clothing before he covered her body with his own, and yanked off his own shirt.
“I’m so sorry,” he moaned into her mouth, just before he kissed her. “I should not have sent you away,” he continued when he finally came up for air. “Sometimes I’m an idiot.”
She giggled her agreement as she pulled him closer, angling for another kiss.
He was happy to oblige, but only for a moment. He had one more question to ask. “That was a really crazy scheme. How did you know it would work?”
It was her turn to pull back, and she did so, regarding him seriously. “Sometimes,” she replied, echoing his own words back at him, “it can be just as cathartic for a dom to give a spanking as it can be for a submissive to receive one.”
Epilogue
Diamond’s Birthday, One Year Later
“Are you all right, darling?” Pax asked, walking up to stand behind her as she gazed at herself in the full length mirror.
“Yes,” she told him with a sad smile, and she was. Her day had been perfect, almost too good. She had to remind herself that it wasn’t somehow dishonoring her mother to have
a good day on her own birthday, just because it was also the anniversary of her mother’s death. As her dad told her every year—if her mother could have chosen a different day to die—she surely would have.
And as Pax reminded her, her birthday was the start of their love story, even if she didn’t remember the events of that first night.
Pax had poured himself into making sure every detail of her day had been perfect. The perfect flowers, the perfect meals, the perfect gifts, the perfect activities. They had had a big greasy breakfast and sushi for dinner, and after a trip through her favorite shops, they had gone back to the room and Pax had finally, as long promised, fulfilled her fantasy of being flogged. Every nerve in her body was still tingly, and she felt floaty even after a good long nap. The man truly knew how to spoil her and he wasn’t done. They were heading down to the club right now; a perfect end to a perfect day.
“Okay, good.” He swatted her butt, and smiled at her. “Let’s get moving then. I have a few more surprises.”
When they entered the club, Diamond kept her eyes turned to the floor, as she always did to keep from tripping over any unsuspecting bodies. This time she didn’t see any. In fact, as she looked around the room in confusion, she saw very few outward signs of kink at all. The players were all there, and yeah, they dressed like they were ready for a night at Rojo—the spikes and collars and stilettos were out in full force. What was missing were the floggers, and the crops, and the leashes, and the ropes. None of that was prevalent. It looked very much like she had walked into a vanilla party, albeit a very interesting one but a vanilla party nonetheless. The room was set up differently as well. There was a full band on the stage and twinkle lights hung everywhere.
Collared (Vegas Nights Book 1) Page 20