by Lilia Moon
She relaxes. “It feels like it gets in my way. Like I’m supposed to hold on instead of being able to let go. It doesn’t clear me the same way impact play does.” She shrugs. “And a lot of Doms push really hard.”
I grin. “Oh, I’m one of them. The difference is that when I edge you, it won’t be your job to stop yourself from coming. It’s mine.”
Her eyes get big. And then intrigued.
My Dom cheers. I’ve got her. Except for the tiny little problem of the conversation we’re supposed to be having and haven’t gone anywhere near yet. I tip my head down and touch her cheek to mine. “One day soon, I want you to let me try it with you. Just once, and if the way I do it doesn’t work for you, then I won’t ask again. But I want to feel my hands on you, feel you shudder like you do just before you come, and hold you there.”
She tips her head, still studying me. “So you’d have all the control. I wouldn’t have to do anything besides take whatever you gave me, even if it pushed me over when that wasn’t what you were trying to do?”
She’s worked with too many baby Doms. “Your job would be to trust me, because it only works when a sub is willing to let me see deep enough to have that kind of fine-tuned control. After that, everything that happens is on me and my skills.” I grin and nuzzle her neck, because it’s soft and curved and irresistible. “It might take lots of practice to get it just right.”
She snorts. “Once. I’ll try it for you once.” Her cheeks are rosier than they were a moment ago. “I’ve heard you’re really good at it.”
The club grapevine is great for some things, but in this case, I’m not sure how I feel about this particular reputation preceding me. “It’s something I know I enjoy. I’d like to try it as part of this experiment we’re doing, but I didn’t want it to be the first thing.” I shrug and take us into the territory I know we need to travel. Reluctantly, because she smells like a buffet and all I want to do is start eating. “I tried something I’ve never done today, and it was interesting learning.”
She swallows. “For me too.”
I tip her chin up and resist the urge to cup a warm, luscious, lace-covered breast instead. “Tell me what was good and what was hard for you.” Standard debrief question, but I’m not usually this invested in the answer. I try to contain myself—I need her to feel free to be entirely honest with me, and she’s tucked in tight to my chest and experienced enough to read pretty subtle tells.
“You asking for my fantasy during the scene felt hard, especially at first. I’m not used to being the director. But then you didn’t do all of what I said, and I realized it was really still you in control, and that felt better. And also really arousing.”
It’s also making her wiggle again, which is stroking my ego in ways I don’t usually need to be stroked.
She puts a hand on my chest. “Did you feel like a Dom?”
It’s fair game for a sub to ask questions in debrief—but they aren’t usually that pointed. “I felt like a Dom the moment I peeled your jeans down. The hard and interesting part for me was when your fantasy headed into impact play. I could feel really clearly that I didn’t want to go there.” I rub a reassuring knuckle down her cheek. “I know you were aware of that too.”
She nods. “It’s not a secret. Your breathing changed. It got all tight.”
I keep breathing in the smell, and the soft, persistent heartbeat of shared honesty. “I’ve been going there too much. Going where the sub’s wants or needs are pointing, and not paying enough attention to my own. But it also felt really weird to go where I wanted to go. Like I was abandoning your needs.” I snug her in tighter, because I’m just now realizing what made it work. “It helped a lot when you got wet all over my hand. When I could see a way to both of us getting something good.”
She makes a face, but I can see her pleasure. “I don’t know why just thinking about being spanked worked. It was like you kept doing just enough that I could feel my fantasy in my body. Or something. I’m not sure.”
I give in and cup a breast in my palm. “You like nipple play.” I rub my thumb over the soft lace and she groans into my shoulder. “So there were some parts I could make more real but still stay in territory I enjoy.” I gently pinch the peak that’s forming under my fingers. “We don’t have to be doing an edging scene for me to spend lots of time with my fingers on your nipples and in your pussy. I like to touch. To feel your arousal building. That’s a happy place for me. For both of us, I think.”
She whimpers, soft and low, and puts her hand over mine. “If you want my brain in this conversation, you need to stop doing that.”
I have more to think about—but I don’t really need her for the rest of it. And I have a wet, willing, squirming woman in my lap. I lower my voice into Dom range. Mattie’s all kinds of experienced, and she’ll roll with another mini scene. “I’m going to slide my fingers into your pussy now, and you’re going to ride them. I want you to get as close to coming as you can without going over, and then I want you to stop and ask permission.”
Her eyes are wide, her breath coming in short, quick gasps.
I slide my hand slowly down the curve of her belly, my fingers headed under the scraps of lace and into soft curls.
She doesn’t move. Waiting.
I cup her with my fingers—and know that Ari spoke truth. Because in this moment, looking into the eyes of a sub absolutely willing to take whatever I give her next? I am absolutely a Dom.
I don’t know yet if I can be Mattie’s Dom, because a couple of quickies on my couch won’t make the elephant in the room go away—but damn, I want this. I want to feel her riding my fingers and leaning into what I give her with every beautiful part of who she is. I nod my head, once, and press my palm more firmly against her mound.
She hardly moves. Just micro-wriggles on my hand, her focus, her concentration, her need absolute.
I grin. I don’t know what else we can do together—but we’ve got this.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Mattie
“Are you sure you’re okay with doing this?”
I look across the table at the woman who’s rapidly become a close friend. She’s like a really hot, cool mom without all the baggage. “Gabs. Stop. You guys hired me to be a part-time girl Friday. I’m happy to help out.” I finish logging a client update into the software they use to track weddings. “Besides, I get to sit down for this. Compared to waitressing all day, this is a breeze.” Especially when Tonio’s in a mood, and he was today.
“Thank you.” She taps the photo albums beside her. “Leo and Sam went to do their final adoption approval interview, and they’re so nervous, and I wanted them to be able to spend a little time together before they went.”
I roll my eyes. “Daniel would paddle your ass if he knew how much you were trying to apologize for being a nice person.”
Her cheeks turn hotly pink, but her eyes sparkle.
I shake my head. “Sorry.” Somehow keeping my kink and work lives separate gets hard in this place.
“Don’t.” Gabby’s hand takes mine, and gentle as she is, she’s clearly not tolerating any nonsense. “It’s who we are here, and I don’t have any problem mixing friends with my work.” She smiles sheepishly. “Even if they know what my Dom gives me grief about.”
Her Dom worships every beautiful inch of her, inside and out. “He’s a really lucky guy and he knows it. But Doms have to be trying to fix something or they get all itchy. They need it to keep their tough-guy armor shiny.”
She snickers quietly and slides a gorgeous photo into the front cover of the album she’s just finished. “Tash called him Grandpa Daniel at dinner yesterday. He looked about as tough as a puppy.”
I knew Daniel back when he was a hard-ass Dom and I was a newbie sub nowhere near his league. “He’s changed a lot.”
She smiles. “So I’ve heard.”
Shit. The last thing a woman that deeply in love wants to hear about is what her guy was before. “Sorry, I have a
big mouth today.”
She raises an eyebrow at me, and I know I’ve just run into the mom part of this friendship deal. “Maybe I’m not the only one who needs to be paddled for apologizing too much.”
Okay, scratch the mom part—I don’t talk about kink with my mother and never will. “It’s different. You apologize for being too nice. I apologize for saying stupid stuff without thinking first.”
She pauses a moment, organizing photos on another album page. When she looks over at me, her expression has shifted to thoughtful. “How are things going with you and Milo?”
I wonder if she knows she’s the first one to be brave enough to straight-out ask. “I’m not sure. It’s confusing.”
She pours more tea into my mug. “Confusing good, or confusing like you know you should probably stop but you haven’t been able to say it out loud yet?”
Yikes. “Jules warned me about you.”
“As she should have.” Gabby makes a decision on her layout and starts attaching the little sticky paper corners that will hold the photos in place.
I sigh and think about her question. “A bit of both. He wants a lot of the same things I do outside the club, and that was a really nice surprise. And there’s chemistry.” I shiver, remembering just how hard I came on his hand before I left his couch yesterday. “Lots of it, even when we’re not being very kinky.”
She looks at me, and I’m suddenly a bug under a wise, perceptive microscope. “Kink is just one part of a relationship.”
I sigh again. “Yes, but it’s an important part for me, and that’s where the bad-confusing parts are. Our kinks don’t line up very well, and that’s fine for a scene or two, but couples crash and burn all the time over those issues. He likes pain, she doesn’t like to dish out. She wants threesomes, he can’t handle sharing. He wants a full-time sub, she just wants a Dom in the bedroom.” I have a hundred more examples, but Gabby doesn’t need to hear them.
Her hand is back over mine. “I can hear how deeply you believe that. How important you think it is for your sexual needs to align.”
My brain very belatedly realizes who I’m talking to. “Shit, I’m not talking about you and Daniel. At all. You guys are so good together—you know that, right?”
She nods, and the confidence in her eyes awes me. “Yes, I do. It took a while, but we’re terrific together.” She smiles at me gently. “And I don’t think anyone would have said that our kinks line up well.”
I’m not as sure about that as she is. “He changed. And you’re—” I squeeze her fingers. “You’re the woman we all want to be when we turn forty.”
Gabby’s cheeks flush, and her eyes are extra bright. “Daniel says that in the clubs, most Doms play a role. They wear leathers and growl a lot and generally try to exude the vibe that makes subs want to drop their panties.”
I love her so much—and she’s hooked me with part of what she’s said. “You don’t think it’s real?”
She shrugs, and I can see her hesitate. “I don’t think it’s the whole picture. Subs do it too. There’s a way you tend to behave at Fettered that’s maybe different than you might in a long-term relationship at home. Even a kinky one.”
I squint at her. “I’ve been a club brat for so long I hardly know.”
“Exactly. You know what relationships look like in the club and why they fail there.” She pauses and makes a face. “Never mind. I’m a newbie who hardly ever goes, and when I do I mostly sit at the bar and let Quint flirt with me. Ignore me.”
I’m staring. And thinking, because she may be a newbie, but she’s just put her finger on something so obvious I’ve long since forgotten it.
She pats my hand. “If Daniel taught me one thing, it’s to not think so hard. When are you seeing Milo next?”
I shrug. “Maybe tonight at the club.” Which suddenly sounds a lot more complicated than it did a couple of days ago. I’m in the mood for a scene. My usual kind. Public, fun, high impact.
Not Milo’s thing at all.
Gabby smiles again, and it’s gentle, but not at all soft. “I’m coming tonight. Ari says I need brat lessons.”
I laugh. “Ari just wants cookies.”
She makes an amused face. “Don’t worry, I’ll have some for you too. And for Quint, since he asked so nicely.”
I shake my head. Quint’s the scariest Dom I know. He never asks for anything nicely. Which makes it hard not to wonder just how much a person can change if they have the right incentive.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Milo
I squat down, studying the padded table that currently only has three legs, and raise an eyebrow at Quint. “Exactly how did this happen again?”
He shakes his head. “Baby Dom had his wife strapped to the top. She’s a weightlifter, he’s not. She got a cramp and he tried to release her and pushed the wrong button.”
I designed the table, so I’m well aware there isn’t a button that removes one of its legs. I study the release mechanism, which basically got ripped from its socket. “Is she okay?”
He nods. “Yeah. Embarrassed that she broke the table. He’s kind of proud.”
Idiot man. “She wants to surrender, not to be his big, strong, weightlifter woman. At least not with this.”
“I’m hoping he figures that out so I don’t have to tell him.” He hands me a wrench so that I can take off what’s left of the table leg. “Even so, no way she breaks a cherry table leg unless it had some kind of stress weakness in it already.”
Most people build kink equipment out of metal and leather. I can do that, but I have a real fondness for wood. It’s warm and beautiful and unique and that’s always seemed like the right thing to hold people while they let go. It does, however, have some vulnerabilities, and repetitive use tends to find all of them. “I can replace it. Tell them to use the magic chair next time.” It’s soft, it will help her feel vulnerable, and its guts are made of high-tensile cable and steel.
Quint sits down beside my toolbox and starts toying with a clasp. “You fix things with Mattie?”
She hasn’t been a trainee for ten years, but he never totally lets them go. “Some. Still working on it.” I have no idea what that means, but watching her finally come after half an hour of very effective teasing crystalized some things for me—and ripped open some others.
“You gonna talk about it, or do I have to go ask her?”
That’s about as threatening as Quint ever has to get. And he’s the right guy to talk to about this, because he’s not goopy in love, and he has no tolerance for people who can’t find their shit and hold it together. “I’ve been making crap choices while I scene for a while now. Giving subs what they need, but not thinking much about what I need.”
He nods. “Happens to a lot of trainers. You have to balance it out with scenes that are exactly what you need.”
I should have talked about this months ago. “I’m not a trainer, so I wasn’t thinking very clearly about that.”
“You’re a caretaker. You take all the subs who’ve had crappy experiences or who haven’t seen the light yet or who need someone to stretch them in new directions and you give them what they need. Damon and Harlan went and retired from playing the field on us, so a lot more of that’s fallen on you lately.”
A lot of people are pointing out the obvious suddenly—which is making me realize how blind I’ve been. “We need to bring in some fresh blood.”
“Maybe.” Quint’s toying with my screw collection. “We need to talk about what it’s doing to the old blood first.”
The man never lets go of anything. “I think I’ll be okay now that I know what’s up. Your training program is doing its job. There are a lot of skilled Doms on the floor these days. I can do more matchmaking, less scening myself.”
“You can. Which will take care of the subs nicely and you’ll still be sitting in your steaming pile of shit.”
The man knows how to sound polite and deadly all at the same time. “I’m working on that too. I
let my Dom gas tank get empty, and I think maybe it needs to fill differently than it used to.” I glance his way, because I’m about to diss his favorite kink. “I’m pretty sure I could be happy if I never touched a paddle or a flogger or a cane ever again.”
He rolls his eyes and shrugs. “Kink’s a head game. If you’ve forgotten that, I’ll go put you on the list for my next refresher class.”
I take off the last bolt holding the table leg remnants in place. “It’s not a head game if impact play is what your sub wants, and Mattie does.”
He shrugs. “Sure. Maybe not as much as she thinks she needs it, though. We all get stuck in ruts.”
I toss him the splintered hunk of cherry and pocket the bolts. “She seems happy in hers.”
“She’s less happy every damn day. She wants a baby and a life and she doesn’t want to have to cut off any of her kinky limbs to get it.”
I’m suddenly pissed off and he’s strong enough to take it. “So you think I should play with feathers and wax and edging and try to convince her she doesn’t need a paddle on her ass anymore? Fuck off, Quint. You’d be the first in line to drive a truck over me if I tried that.”
“Damn straight.” He throws the hunk of cherry back at me. “Nobody gaslights a sub on my watch. But I’m also first in line telling you to get your head out of your ass and see if you can find some road to go down with Mattie that isn’t bullshit.”
He’s not the first in line.
And he’s not done. He gives me one of the looks that turn baby Doms into quivering puddles. “And if you can’t, keep your hands the fuck off of her.”
My brain knows he’s right. It’s the rest of me that wants to break another table leg. The rest of me that felt Mattie come in my hands and wants more of what lived and breathed for a couple of hours on my couch.
I just don’t know if it can walk without life support.
Chapter Thirty
Mattie
I’ve walked up to Fettered’s front door hundreds of times, and every time, it’s a thrill. A validation of a big, bold choice I made that changed my life for the unutterably better and has never stopped giving. Which makes me a little sad tonight—and forces me to remember.