In an attempt to ease my thoughts that never seem to stop, I look out the window at the dark night sky. No moon is showing. It’s a new moon and barely a sliver of it shows in the sky. That’s probably why the military decided to do the mission. Slip in with one of the darkest nights of the month to help shield them from the enemy. It did that much. The news reported the mission was a great success. All the targets were hit and the cave system is no more than a hole in the ground now.
A hole my man may be buried in.
Shaking my head, I try hard to stop thinking that way. I want to keep only positive thoughts going, but it’s so damn hard to keep the negative thoughts away.
No matter how hard I try, they creep in. My brain must be getting me ready for bad news, just in case that’s all I get when I finally get the answers I’m seeking.
I hate this. I hate it all. Every aspect of this is hurting Harold and me. Damon came into our lives, at my beckoning, and changed us. Harold and I were fine on our own. I knew the man was in a dangerous line of work. Yet I forged on and found him anyway.
Why did I do this to us?
Damon
The sound of a chopper is what woke me up. I found myself lying on top of the sand, somehow. I really have no clue how it happened. I was blacking out from lack of oxygen as the sand began to crush me.
But I made it out, somehow, and must’ve passed out once I was safely out of the hole. And then an American chopper happened to come by and find me in the dark of night. Again, I don’t know how that happened either.
All I do know is that we’re coming into the base in Pensacola now and I’m about to get to make one hell of a phone call to Liv. I wonder if she knew I’d been left behind.
Hopefully she has no idea about what I went through. Man, if she does know, she’ll never let me go on a mission again!
The lights of the base come into view and my heart revs up as I think about setting my feet on American soil. It’s only been a few days, but I sure missed the place I call home.
Hell, it’d even be great to set foot on English soil at this point. Anything but sand!
I’m wearing only a T-shirt, as the medic had to take off my other shirt so he could stitch up the hatchet wound on my bicep. That’s a thing Liv will surely ask about and I’ll have to tell her something.
What kind of a lame story can one make up about a hatchet wound that leaves his woman not worrying about him going out on another mission?
The chopper lands on the helipad and I waste no time exiting the machine that’s brought me home. Nearly home, anyway. I do have to get back to London as fast as they’ll let me go.
I miss Harry and Liv so much it hurts!
I’m quickly met by one of my superiors, who looks a bit aggravated as he approaches me, which I find weird.
“Lieutenant, I’m damned glad to see your ass alive!” He grips my hand with a hard handshake.
“Glad to be alive, sir,” I greet him.
He points to where he wants me to go with him. “Over here, man. You have one stubborn-as-hell woman waiting for word on you, and she doesn’t understand our security policies.”
“What?” I ask, completely confused.
“She showed up a few hours ago and refuses to leave the base without an answer about you. Which we had, as you know, but were uncertain about your health. You seem to have made it through just fine. You’ll have to go to the infirmary for a full evaluation, you know.”
“Is the woman’s name, Liv, by any chance?”
“Livacious Tillman. Yes, that’s her. And she has a little boy who’s with her. Poor kid needs to be asleep, not listening to his mother hounding our top personnel for answers they can’t give her yet.”
A smile breaks out over my face as I follow the General into the building where I’m about to find the two people I miss the most in this world.
Liv’s agitated voice echoes down the hallway as she says, “Who came in on that chopper?”
“We can’t tell you that, Miss Tillman,” comes a man’s voice.
“And why can’t any of you tell me anything at all? Your secrecy is beyond annoying and I’m close to getting the media involved in this. I want to know where Damon was last seen. And I want to know what the hell you’re doing to find him! Now!”
“Baby?” I ask as I come into the room.
Liv and Harry turn around and I watch the color drain out of both their faces.
“Daddy!” Harry shouts and runs to me at full speed. He jumps into my arms and I wince a little as the wound on my arm stretches a bit.
“Damon!” Liv says breathlessly. “You’re here!”
She runs to me too and I pull her in for a group hug where I find them both crying like babies. It’s not that I don’t feel like crying right along with them, but my fellow Navy men are looking on, and that’d be kind of sissified if I did such a thing.
“Feel free to take them to my office so you three can have your little reunion, Saunders,” the Captain tells me as he opens the door for us. “We’ve heard enough from your girlfriend to last us a lifetime.”
Wrapping my arm around Liv’s narrow shoulders, I kiss the top of her head. “I bet you have.”
Liv just stares at me as we walk down the hallway. Harry hides his face in my chest, and I can’t stop looking at either of them. “Damon, you are really here, right?” Liv asks me with quivering lips. “This isn’t a dream, is it?”
“I don’t think it is. But to be honest, I keep wondering the same thing. You have no idea how much I missed you both.”
Stepping into the General’s office, I find a long sofa along the wall and take a seat. Holding Harry on my lap, and Liv as close to me as I can get her, I let the tears flow. Liv does her best to kiss them all away, but there are just too many. “Oh, Damon!”
“We have to make some changes, baby.” I let her know.
“First one, you put in for retirement,” she bosses me.
“No, the first one is you marry me, Livacious Tillman. I don’t want to spend another day without knowing you’re a permanent part of me. You see, when I found you two, I found a treasure I didn’t even realize I was seeking. So, first, I want to really make you mine.”
Her tears choke her up and she can’t seem to tell me if she’ll marry me or not. I watch her as she swallows, then nods. “Okay, we can do that first. Then you put in the paperwork and retire. Deal?”
I didn’t know I was going to do this. I really didn’t. I had no preconceived notion that my mouth would open and tell her she was going to marry me. Not ask, just tell. And I had no idea I’d be agreeing so quickly to retiring. But I guess a near-death experience will do that to a man.
“Daddy, did you see Mummy?” Harry asks me as he pulls his head off my shoulder.
“How’d you know that?” I ask him with amazement.
“I saw you and her together in the sand. Is she okay?”
His eyes sparkle and remind me of hers. I kiss his plump cheek and answer him, “Your mommy is fine, Harry. She loves you very much. She told me to take good care of you for her, and I will do just that. Don’t you worry, Daddy isn’t going on any more dangerous assignments. He has two special people he has to keep safe now.”
“Me and Aunt Wiv, right?” Harry asks.
I nod and ask him, “Do you think you could call her mommy, instead of Aunt Liv? You see, Daddy’s going to marry her a little later today when we three go to Las Vegas. Then she’ll be your real mommy, Harry.”
His eyes move to look at Liv, and she runs her hand over his red cheek. “I’d love it if you did call me your mom, Harry.”
“K,” he says with an innocent smile that tells me we three will be just fine. As long as we have each other, we can make it through anything.
The End
Secluded
A Submissive’s Secrets Novel
With one question on a BDSM message board, Jade Thomas sparked something inside of me that had never been lit up before.
Our di
scussion of my world as we talked online woke things up in me I had no idea were lying dormant. My dominate side was calling out to me to take her and make her into what I knew she could be. But she was young, afraid, and had a fragility about her that was daunting.
In no time at all, she had me wanting to get her obstinate ass into my hands. Mold her, shape her into the submissive I wanted her to be. Capture her spirit using sex and pain.
What happened blindsided me, and changed me forever…
Pierce Langford answered a question I’d left on the BDSM message board for a club called ‘The Dungeon of Decorum.’
No matter how hard I tried to keep it all above board, he was determined to reel me into his dark world. A place I was curious about but also afraid of.
Like a persistent hunter, Pierce never let up on me, keeping the pressure up to get what he wanted. Me, as his submissive.
My body was on fire for the man from the get go. I yearned to feel his actual touch on my flesh. Flesh, he wanted to torment. Pierce Langford wanted to show me his world and all that goes with that. Pain, pleasure, and there would be no room for love.
Part One
Jade
Romance has been in my blood since I was only a girl of sixteen. An avid reader of anything in the romance genre, I’m especially keen on the darker side of the romantic spectrum. The side where pain and pleasure meet in an ebbing and flowing stream of both calm and frantic nuances. A place where sin and evil meet with good and innocence, leaving their residue on each.
My curiosities have come all the way to the surface, and they won’t allow me to shove them down any longer. I sit at my computer, searching the vast internet to find someone who will help me. I need help to understand the reality that is BDSM, something that won’t leave my mind.
The books I’ve read are great, enjoyable, and pleasing. But I think they’re purely fictional with little to do with the reality of that lifestyle. And I want to know more about it all; the why’s, where’s, and how’s of the whole thing. Why do people do it? Where do they find others, who want the same things they do? How do they take society’s sideways glares that lets them know, everyone knows what they’re doing, and most think it’s disgusting?
What immoral behavior is, has been adjusted since the days of old. Back in the times when women wore nightgowns that covered them from their necks to their feet, and men were covered too. Small slits were made in the front for sexual activity. An activity that was not for pleasure but for procreation and procreation alone.
Masturbation, if one was caught doing such a horrible thing, was more than merely frowned upon. One was punished and harshly at that. Nowadays when one is punished, per their requests mind you, they’re deemed immoral. It’s a common belief that if one practices BDSM or any variety of that, then the person must’ve had a bad upbringing or something terrible happened to them. Most people think something sexually abusive occurred.
I have to admit that I have favored that mindset. Recently, for reasons I cannot explain, I’ve had other thoughts about the people who practice the lifestyle. I just can’t imagine why anyone would want to dole out punishment or receive it, as an adult. But deep in the recesses of my heart, I long to understand. The core belief resides in me that not all who seek out this type of attention have been broken in one way or another.
Being an erotic author is my dream, my passion. I simply love to go away in my head to worlds where anything is possible. Worlds where an ordinary woman can meet up with an abnormally handsome, viral, and of course, heavily muscled man. And he would be filthy rich and just plain filthy in the bedroom, or any room really.
The world of erotic romance is where I dwell so often in my mind. Damsels in distress are no longer acceptable heroines. No, today’s heroines are smart, sharp as a tack in the wit department, strong in all ways, and take-no-shit kind of broads. The majority of these fictional women aren’t looking for love, they seem to stumble upon it. And with that little stumble, they find themselves in the arms of a man.
Not any man will do in today’s erotic romances. He must be alpha, clean to his core. In many of these novels, for some reason, our hero loves to hit women. And they love to be hit by him. And that is where my writer’s brain has found a dilemma.
I can see falling for a big, strong, handsome man. Who can’t?
But falling for one who wants to tie you up and beat your ass while you cook his dinner and iron his clothes, well, I can’t see it at all. BDSM makes no sense to me, and I’m striving to make sense of it. For my career!
I was a writer before I was anything else. I told stories before I could read. I looked at scenes and made up why things were going as they were. Making up stories has always been like second nature to me.
Being only one year away from graduating with a Master’s Degree in Creative Arts at Bangor University in North Wales, United Kingdom, I’m dangerously close to the part of life where I will need to make my own living in this world. Soon to be cut off from my father’s dime, I have to focus, and that means I must have some belief in what I’m writing about. Or I will never see my dreams come true.
My dreams aren’t huge. See my name on the cover of books. Oh! And best sellers’ lists as well, of course. I don’t want to be a mediocre writer. I want to be one of those authors who goes the distance to get to the meat of the story. Somewhat like a reporter, only I want to get creative with my truths. Make my characters, and the world they live in, seem realistic while having fantasy-like lives.
And there is little to no reality in normal women finding men with voracious sexual appetites and a penchant for beating them. So, here I am, searching the internet, hoping no one ever looks at my browser’s history and thinks I’m a woman of ill repute. I am far from that.
At the ripe old age of twenty-three, I haven’t found Mr. Right. And by that, I mean my cherry is still intact. I’m not a prude, though one might think that. I’m just very into my own head a lot of the time. A writer’s thing, my professors, tell me. I’ve been told I’m normal, for a writer.
Socially, I am a bit inept. Sure, I talk with ease to others, part of my reporter’s instinct, I suppose. But I share little about myself, preferring to steer people in directions that allow me to learn more about them, rather than talking about myself.
With a click of my mouse, an awkward picture fills my computer screen. A woman, deep throating an enormous penis!
Hurrying to get the picture off my screen, I notice the small writing at the bottom of the page. It’s about some auction that’s about to come up. Only after seeing that, do I notice the link I clicked on that took me to this sexual place is that of a BDSM club in Portland, Oregon in the States.
Several clicks later, I find out this place is a haven for those types of people, and there are many clubs in that city. It’s the number one city in America to find things of this nature. And it seems like the perfect place to begin my search for people who might be helpful enough to be truthful with me and offer me more insight into the dark world that’s shrouded in mystery.
Another click sends me to a picture of a naughty young woman, wearing leather clothing and holding her hand to her mouth as she looks surprised. I suppose she never saw the man coming, who’s behind her. Hard to believe, as he has a whip in his hand, and it’s aimed for her round and firm ass. Somehow, he’s surprised her with what he’s about to do.
No fear is in her eyes. No tears from pain. Only a surprised look covers her pretty face. The man wears a firm expression on his ruggedly handsome facade. I can hear him now, in my mind, ‘Gertie, you have this coming to you. You forgot the salt in my soup again.’
I giggle to myself as that was an actual line in one of the novels I read, recently. Even then I thought it was silly and dimwitted. If a man told me I was about to get whipped with an actual whip because of something so small and easily fixed with the jiggle of a salt shaker, I’d most likely laugh and walk away. He would obviously be an idiot and not worth my attention or time.
My mind is too strong, and so is my will to ever be involved in any of that stuff. But it’s such a fantasy of many women that it bears investigating. My first novel in the erotic realm should have more than a grain of truth to it. I want some real grit mixing in with the fairy tale of a story I will create. None of that phony crap!
I wonder if I can find a real Dom or Master to ask questions to. I wonder if any of them would even want to take time away from whipping asses to talk to a lowly, vanilla virgin about things she knows little to nothing about.
Doubt clouds my vision as I sit back and gaze at the next thing that’s popped up on my screen. A couple of women, clad in nothing but black panties, stand with their backs to a whip-wielding man who wears a black mask and looks like he’s about to bring down the rain on them both.
“Run, you morons,” I say, out loud as I notice an open door, to their right.
Is it humanly possible to stand still and take the pain of a whip when you’re steps away from escape?
Is it possible that, in some people, the need to feel pain is overwhelming? Like a drug addict who hates the after effects of a certain drug but can’t stop taking it.
The sharp eyes of the women as they look over their shoulders while holding hands, waiting for the whip to meet one of their bodies, haunts me. How can they be so bright eyed with pain on the way?
If I see a hot burner on the stove, I don’t touch it. If I saw a man running wildly down the street with his belt in his hand, striking out at people, I’d hide. So why do some seek this out?
And what chance do I have of finding even one of the people who practice BDSM that would be willing to help me understand them? And why would they want to?
I’m offering no compensation for their time. I’m offering nothing. I merely want to satisfy my own curiosity, nothing more than that. I want to use what I’m given to make money as a matter of fact.
No, it’s doubtful that I will be able to find anyone in the BDSM scene to answer my questions. Perhaps I should end this silliness. Maybe I should put this idea to rest and focus on Romantic Comedy, instead. That would be so much easier, wouldn’t it?
Winter Page 156