by Maren Smith
“We are going to have so much fun here.” His thumbs caressed the curves of her face. “There’s something else, too. Something I want to show you. I don’t want you to be scared. Trust me, okay? Can you trust me, Sara?”
This was the happiest he’d looked since they first boarded the bus to come here.
Sara nodded. “Of course, I trust you.”
For looks like this, she’d have said anything he wanted to hear, done anything he wanted her to do. It didn’t even matter that he hadn’t noticed her dress.
He grinned, pulling her toward the door. He looked down at her as he held it open. “You look nice.”
She beamed.
His roving stare turned slightly critical when it came to rest on her shoulders. Both their smiles dimmed a little then. “Are you sure you need the shawl?”
“I’m a little cold,” she lied.
Robert opened his mouth, but then closed it again without arguing. He forced his smile back almost to what it had been. “All right.” His hand squeezed hers. “It’s okay. You’re going to like this,” he assured and led her down the hall.
The Castle was huge, much larger on the inside it seemed than it had from the outer courtyard. Since the twist of scar tissue on her left hip sometimes gave her trouble on stairs, their room was one of only a handful of guest quarters located on the first floor (the woman from orientation was, thankfully, located somewhere else). And still there could have been no less than thirty apartments in this wing alone. As she followed Robert, they passed the double-door entrances to three other wings and at least several hundred people.
They were everywhere, some heading to the complimentary dining hall and others for the fine dining restaurant, some to the ballroom where soothing music was playing. Two professional instructors were walking guests through the dance steps of a courtly waltz. A steady stream of people were heading outside while others came in, and everywhere she looked, everyone was in costume—from super heroes and villains to schoolgirls, to Roman slaves and gladiators to Viking warriors, to royalty like Robert and herself, right on down to every niche in the serving class. There was nothing about any of them that stood out in a way for her to tell who might be guests and who actually worked here.
They passed two servants just outside the ballroom. One, a scantily dressed maid in a barely-there corseted uniform, had sat three seats ahead of them on the bus ride in. The butler, on the other hand, was anybody’s guess. Neat, stern, dressed all in black with a very lethal-looking switch clasped behind his back, he stood frowning down at the chastened maid. When he held out his hand, she heaved a sigh, removed her earbuds and passed him her cellphone, currently playing through her iTunes list.
“I can see I’m going to have trouble with you,” the butler said, pocketing the device. “Modern conveniences are allowed in the privacy of your room and only one other place within the Castle grounds, and that is where?”
“The Rainbow Room,” the maid dutifully answered.
“Are you in the Rainbow Room?”
“No, sir.”
“Turn and grab your ankles. If you value your hide, you’ll not let go before I tell you.”
Sara didn’t know if it was his tone or the actual command, but the butler’s words sent the most delicious shiver dancing down through her.
“Sounds like someone is going to get her naughty bottom warmed,” Robert said, flashing her a sideways grin.
In spite of her initial misgivings, those dancing tendrils turned to excitement. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
Giving her fingers another squeeze and with the echoing snap of the switch and yelps of the maid growing distant behind them, Robert led her through a maze of stone corridors back to the main entrance hall.
“Do you feel up to tackling a few stairs?” he asked. “They say there’s an elevator around here somewhere.”
He paused to fish a map out of his back pocket, but Sara shook her head. “No, it’s okay. I can do a few steps.”
Anything to see him flash another of those smiles. He even squeezed her hand and gave the backs of her fingers a kiss. “Good girl.”
Funny, how praise like that had the power to melt her inside.
He pulled her toward the stairs, a massive curving staircase that led up to an open second-story landing. But instead of taking her up, he drew her into a side alcove to a hidden door and another secret staircase, this one leading down.
From the moment he opened it, the bass thump and crisp snaps of Adam Lambert’s “For Your Entertainment” filtered up to them. The sound-proofing in this place was nothing short of amazing.
“Here.” Robert started down first, but turned and offered up his hand for support.
“Thanks.” She took the stairs slowly, careful both of her skirts, her heels and her hip. She’d do anything for one of Robert’s smiles, but by the fourth step down, she began to feel the tightness in her skin growing painfully tighter. By the time she reached the bottom, it felt as if her scars were tearing open where her hip met her thigh with every step she took. She pressed her hand over the spot, pushing hard until the sensation melted in intensity to a dull throb.
“You okay?” Robert asked.
She made herself smile past the pain. “Just a twinge—oh wow—” She broke off, falling silent with awe. Standing at the bottom of the steps, Sara looked around the dungeon play space. It was very open, a series of long rooms that were sectioned off by stone pillars and half walls, and filled with people and the biggest collection of BDSM equipment and paraphernalia that she had ever seen. It was huge. It must, she realized, run under most of the castle.
There was something for everyone. Station after evenly-spaced station boasted an amazing array of equipment: a spanking bench, a St. Andrew’s cross, a padded horse, then a table, a saddle, sets of stocks, poles, hooks on chains suspended from the ceiling, sex slings and rows, shelves and racks of implements of every material, shape and kind.
“Oh. Wow,” she said again, looking around.
“No kidding,” he agreed.
At least two hundred people wandered the play area, but the equipment was just spaced out enough for it not to feel too crowded. An occupancy sign posted on the wall at the bottom of the steps claimed the space rated for five hundred, and Sara had no trouble believing that that many could be accommodated. From here, she could see four neon exit signs, the only hint of modernization in the place, apart from the music. Everything else felt like something right out of history. The grand inquisition is what came immediately to mind, and for a while she found herself watching as, straight ahead of them, a naked man was strapped onto a cross while his master selected both a heavy strap and lexan cane from the wall.
“Come on.” Robert tugged her hand, drawing her attention away. They weaved a path through the crowd, past a well-spanked woman in medieval stocks being “forced” to attend her master orally. She was grunting, drooling, gasping for air whenever her master allowed it, her make-up so smeared by tears and other things that she could have stood as a female stunt double for the Joker. In an instant, Sara imagined herself in that woman’s place, with her face being held like that while her master thrust all the way in to the back of her throat. She felt her stomach tighten, a delicious sensation she hadn’t felt in such a very, very long time.
“It’s right over here.” Robert glanced back over his shoulder, giving her another of those grins that transformed his smile into something so handsome and boyish. “You trust me, right?”
Why did he keep asking that?
She laughed a little. “Of course I trus—”
In the next split second, she caught the unmistakable, acrid scent of alcohol, and the cluster of observers gathered just beyond Robert inexplicably parted, as if on someone else’s cue. It wasn’t by much, just enough for her to catch glimpse of the fire wand igniting. That burst of flame brought Sara’s entire world crashing to a stop.
Her chest tightened, a painful spasm so violent and ab
rupt, it felt as if her heart had just stopped. Everything disappeared—the costumed crowd, Robert—only the smell remained and the sight of that burning wand being lowered to tap the back of the naked woman lying prone on her padded table. Yellow fire raced down her spine and though it was promptly brushed out again, in a flash every bit as quick, suddenly Sara was back in that club in California, burning in a pool of liquid fire.
Everything around her jerked. Sara didn’t realize it was because she herself had moved that way, wrenching her hand out of Robert’s though he tried to grab her arm. She twisted to run, but her legs refused to follow her and she fell, crashing to the floor in a rip of costumed skirts. Pain shot from the impact through her hip and up her back. She must have screamed, though she didn’t realize that either, not until everyone around her turned to stare. She flailed on her back on the floor, every limb scrambling and clawing to get her uncooperative body moving, unable to tear her eyes off the sight of that flaming wand. Unable to stop screaming.
Robert turned away from her, stabbing his fingers back through his hair, and something hard struck her back. A wall… no, a door… It yielded almost immediately and the next thing she knew, Sara was kick-crawling backwards across cool bathroom tiles. She stopped only when she crashed into the wall between two urinals, one of which was in use. Zipping quickly back into his pants, the startled man jumped back from her and then fled the bathroom entirely.
The most horrible noise reverberated through the small room—high-pitched, scratchy, rattling in and out of raspy sound and repeating over and over again. It bounced off the bathroom walls, filling her ears. It was her, she suddenly recognized. She was still screaming, and it barely sounded human.
She wasn’t burning. The fire hadn’t touched her, hadn’t even come close, and still it took real effort before she could make that awful sound stop coming. Huddled against the wall, shaking violently, she clutched her knees to her chest and stared at the door. The smell of the fuel was still in her nose, although now it mingled with the equally pungent odor of something else—ammonia.
She had wet herself.
CHAPTER TWO
Jackson had his plate in hand, his silverware rolled in a napkin and tucked up underneath, and his mouth set for seafood alfredo. So, naturally, no sooner had he joined the buffet line than did he get the call: Dungeon proper, sub in trouble.
He came out of the line and headed for the door, dropping his plate and silverware on the first table he encountered. The couple already seated there looked up from their plates in wide-eyed surprise. They glanced from him to the bold white lettering of his shirt—Castle Security—stretched tight across his chest and back to him again. He cut an imposing figure and he knew it.
Always disarm with a smile.
He smiled and waved. “Hi, how you folks doing? Dishes are clean, don’t worry.” He patted the man on the shoulder, reassuring the submissive first. “How’s the food?” he asked the woman next, distracting her back to her plate. “Seafood alfredo. Excellent choice. It’s always good here. Excuse me.”
One more pat, one more smile—always personable, always friendly; yeah, that was him—and then he was off. Long-legged strides carried him quickly from the dining hall and out of the thick of the lunch crowd. As soon as possible though, he broke into a jog, ducking through the ballroom to shave some time off having to go all the way around and reaching the main entrance foyer a good ten seconds ahead of the response team on duty. He had the under-stair cupboard door open and was halfway down before he heard the jingle of their keys and the pound of their sneakers hitting the top step behind him.
Slow. He tsked and shot them both a look. Ah, but he was in charge. He should be the first on the scene, the first to know what had happened and the first to act to fix it—whatever it was.
Today’s "it" wasn’t hard to find. All Jackson had to do was follow the crowd. The dungeon monitors already had the scene pretty well locked down. One was talking to a very agitated dominant—purple bracelet, nobleman program. He was doing a lot of nodding, a lot of commiserating; now and then he’d interject a word or two, and it was working. He was calming the guest down. With every word, the man’s voice was lowering. His pacing and wide-arm movements were becoming less aggressive. Jackson would talk to him eventually, but for now, he wasn’t needed there.
Two other dungeon monitors were re-routing the crowd, turning the music up a little, getting the focus of public attention back on good times. Like the pretty little lady doing time on a wooden horse, unpadded, with a peaked top, which she straddled like a pro. Her hands were bound behind her back and she had weights on both ankles, keeping the pressure right there on her bald little pussy and very sensitive perineum. Her naked body was shimmering with sweat. Very nice. The little whimpering sounds she made were even nicer. He loved those sounds. One of these days, he really ought to take some vacation time. It’d been a long, long time since he’d last had a pretty little thing like that bound and helpless to his whims, the blush of a hot bottom suffusing her and soft whimpers like these spurring his lust to hot and hungry peaks.
Yeah, someday…but not right now.
He turned his attention back to the job and noticed one of the dungeon monitors standing a little apart. Standing guard, it seemed, in front of the men’s room door. When the man noticed Jackson, he beckoned, but Jackson was already heading for him.
“Ethan,” Jackson greeted, as soon as he was close enough, “what happened?”
The dungeon monitor shook his head, then shrugged. “Claustrophobic, maybe. I really don’t know. I’m actually supposed to be patrolling the private rooms. I came running when she started screaming, and I know, I know what you’re going to say. People scream here all the time. But if you’d heard the way she was screaming, you’d have come running, too.”
She? Jackson double-checked himself. Yup, the restroom door said gentlemen. He looked at Ethan again. “Who’s in there with her?”
The young man almost winced. “Well,” he hedged. “I started to go in but, to be honest, I do ‘take it, bitch’ a hell of a lot better than I do ‘there, there…please stop crying.’”
Jackson managed to keep from rolling his eyes, but only just. He stepped forward, started to push the bathroom door open, but then changed his mind. With a single step back, he aligned himself with Ethan again. Looking him straight in the eye, very quietly he gave the young dungeon monitor a single word of advice: “Learn.”
Ethan managed not to grimace the same way Jackson had managed not to roll his eyes: only just. “Yes, sir.”
Stupid kid. Young kid, Jackson promptly corrected himself. One who had a lot of potential and a lot still to learn.
Planting his hand on the door, Jackson pushed it open and went inside. The pitiful sight of the crumpled submissive was truly that: pitiful. Huddled against the wall, she clutched her knees to her chest as if they could somehow shield her from whatever came next. A long trail of torn skirt cut a path back to the door, showing the direction she’d come, and the smell of piss hit him on his first breath. He didn’t know if she was sitting in a puddle of it or if some jackass had missed the target at the urinals, but Jackson immediately backed out the door again.
“Have someone bring me a change of clothes, washcloth and towel,” he told Ethan. “Put a cleaning sign on this door and direct anyone who needs it to the secondary bathrooms on the other side of the dungeon. And he,” Jackson stabbed an accusatory finger at the agitated dominant most likely responsible for all this, “doesn’t go anywhere until I figure out what happened.”
Ethan nodded and back Jackson retreated into the bathroom. He locked the door, guaranteeing their privacy before turning his attention to the woman once more. She looked like a wadded up tissue, huddled in the volumes of her ruined gown, sandwiched between two urinals with her face pressed to her knees and her head buried under both arms. Now and then she sniffled, but from the sounds of it, she seemed to be done crying. Which always made his job easier.
/> Time to go to work.
Jackson pasted on his most disarming smile. “Hey, honey. Mind if I—”
That was as far as he got before she jerked her head up off her knees and looked at him. Her face was flushed and wet with tears, her baby-blue eyes and soft mouth both rounded in a warring mix of surprise, recognition and dismay.
“Jackson?” she croaked, her poor voice sounding raw.
And just that fast, all her features rearranged themselves into something that resurrected memories best left forgotten. His own recognition hit him like a half-ton truck. “Sara.”
Her hair had grown back; of all things, that was his first thought.
She was still beautiful—how could she ever be anything but?—that was his second.
And yet, what came spilling out of his mouth was something else entirely.
“Give me one Goddamned reason why I shouldn’t put you over my knee right here and now,” he growled. He had no idea why he was growling; he wasn’t mad. He didn’t know what he was feeling, but it wasn’t mad. Not at first, anyway.
Not until she blinked up at him with those wounded baby blues—like a kid who’d just been told Santa had been found shot to death in a back alley somewhere; no more Santa, no more presents, from now on, Christmas cancelled—then she burst into tears. “Please don’t yell at me, Jackson. I can’t take it. Not now. Please?”
She covered her head with her arms again and sobbed into her skirts. That was when Jackson got mad.
Jackson never got mad. Well, all right. Upon occasion he might, but when it hit him it was usually directed at co-workers who failed to follow protocol, or Doms who should have known better, or assholes trying to pass themselves off as Doms in the pursuit of a “Fifty Shades” thrill. There was more to being a Dom than smacking ass and pulling hair; Jackson knew that even if half the clients in this place didn’t. The only ones he didn’t get mad at were the subs. There wasn’t any point to it. Losing one’s temper involved emotion and this was a resort based on fantasy. Emotion was never involved, not for him, not when he was playing and certainly not when he was working.