by Maren Smith
Though she knew she ought to stay put, when she heard another crash, her train-wreck-in-progress curiosity got the best of her and Sara ran to follow. The butler blew through the swinging door, never once glancing back at her over his dark shoulder, but she caught the door on the backswing and stopped, frozen in wide-eyed surprise at the sight that greeted her.
There had to be at least fifteen workers at various food stations all around the massive old-stone and stainless steel kitchen. Most were women, but there were three men, all dressed as servants, with Cook Connie slamming her hands against the counters, crying and yelling at Jackson and occasionally grabbing the nearest available pot or utensil to throw at him.
For his part, Jackson sat calmly in a chair in the middle of the floor, blocking or catching what she threw, and talking quietly back at her. “You know what this is, Connie. You know you’ll feel better once it’s done.”
“Get out!”
“If you really wanted to get rid of me, you know what to say. You’ve said everything but the Castle safeword. Ergo, you don’t really want to be rid of me.”
“You think I don’t?” Connie’s eyes got huge and, if possible, even more wild, angry and desperate, too. “You think I won’t?”
She grabbed a metal ladle and drew back her arm to throw that, too, but it was the elderly butler who stopped everything. “This,” he stated, his tone carrying like thunder through the disheveled kitchen, “is not acceptable!”
Cook Connie actually jumped. She also dropped the ladle, backing up two steps before she bumped into another counter and stopped. Chest heaving from her exertions, she looked at the butler. Her face crumpled and she began to shake her head. “No!”
Shrugged out of his black coat, the butler dropped it on the nearest surface and began rolling up his sleeves. “You,” he said, gesturing with his switch to every other servant in the room. “All of you, find something to fix, clean or whatever on the buffet in the dining hall. Right now!” He gestured to Jackson as he stalked past him, heading unerringly straight for the sobbing Connie. “You may be excused as well. I have this.”
“In your capable hands, then.” Jackson lightly slapped his knees as he stood, vacating his chair.
Poor Connie stood frozen where she was, shaking her head again and again as she watched the butler come. “N-no!”
Sara tried to sidestep when Jackson neared her. “Wait…”
Cook Connie didn’t seem to want any part of the scene unfolding before them, and Sara was reluctant to just leave her, particularly not when the butler tapped the side of her hip with the end of his switch and said, “Skirt up and knickers down, girl. You know how I want you.”
“Wait,” Sara said again, but Jackson caught her arm and was pushing her back through the door into the breakroom.
“Come on,” he told her, pushing her along. “Unless you want an audience for your next spanking, let’s give them some privacy.”
“Why did you do that?” She stared up at him in shock and then back at the swinging doors. “Why are you smiling, Jackson? Why would you—” The kitchen door barely muffled the hiss and snick of the falling switch and it certainly didn’t muffle Connie’s shrill yelp. It was an awful sound, one that dissolved instantly into sobbing wails as the switch began a swift and steady rhythm.
“Yeah, I know. I’m awful.” He gestured to the table, “Sit down, honey. Let me explain what just happened.”
“I don’t think you can!” Sara tried to pull out of his grip, but when he sat and drew her to him, she lowered herself to perch on his knee with little more than a censuring look. Poor Connie sounded as if she were being skinned alive.
Jackson turned the chair, making it harder for her to see the kitchen door. He looked at her, still smiling, still calculating. “Were you there that night in the Shadowbrook when Donna asked to be ‘forced’?”
What did that have to do with what had just happened here?
Sara shook her head. “No.” She twisted on his knee, trying to see around him to the now motionless door, but stopped with a stifled sigh when Jackson caught the tip of her chin between his fingers and redirected her gaze back to his.
“Look at me,” he coaxed. “Were you?”
“No, sir,” she amended. And she hadn’t been, but she did remember hearing about it at the next munch. Donna had still had bruises then, and she’d shown them off as if they were medals to be proud of.
“She had two men lined up to share that scene with her. They waited until the last hour of the night when the club was almost empty, took it into the very back where they’d have the most privacy, and warned everyone that it was about to get very intense but that it was at Donna’s request, carefully choreographed and entirely consensual. It made a lot of people uncomfortable, but it was what Donna needed, and do you know why?”
“No.” The striking cadence of the switch had fallen silent, but Sara could still hear Connie, crying now as if she were completely broken.
“She was exorcising demons,” Jackson told her. “She chose men she trusted, men who were strong enough to let her fight back but who wouldn’t let her win, because she didn’t want to win. If you take every submissive in the world and you break them down to their most basic, primal level, disregard all the subtle nuances that make each one—man or woman—unique, then you’ll find there are three different kinds: the one who loves and embraces his or her submissive side; the closet submissive, who hasn’t yet come to grips with what her inner self wants or needs; and the one who, for whatever reason, despises that part of themselves. Connie identifies most strongly with her dominant self. You haven’t seen her at her best, but she is a marvelous Domme—gruff and hard on the exterior, smart and funny once you get to know her. She rules her kitchen fiefdom with a razor tongue, busts balls and ovaries with equal delight, and whips ass with a fervor that will have you praying long before it’s done. But she also has a submissive side, one she hates. She crushes it down deep inside, stuffs it into a little box, locks it away as tight as she can and pretends it doesn’t exist. Until something happens that eventually causes all her fortifications to fail. Connie fights her demon. She doesn’t let it out but maybe once or twice a year when her sub-frenzy is at its worst, and she still won’t give in readily or gracefully. There are only three people that she’ll allow to see what she considers to be the weak side of herself: Master Sam is one; Master Grimsley,” Jackson nodded toward the kitchen, “is another.”
“And you,” Sara guessed, some of the stiffness melting out of her spine.
“Barely,” he said. “I made it under the Dom wire by the skin of my biceps alone. Apparently, I’m four months younger than she is, and she won’t submit to anyone her junior in any way. But I can also, as she once said, bench-press small buildings. Upon occasion, that grants me a Hail Mary pass. Unfortunately, this was not one of those.”
The door beside them swung open and another butler swept in. It was the Master who lived across the hall from Jackson. Fighting to get his tie on straight, he headed straight for the kitchen, muttering, “I hate cooking. I hate it. Why do I always have to take the kitchen when this happens? Why can’t I ever take over the Little Maids?”
“When we asked, you were the only one who knew the culinary difference between ketchup and spaghetti sauce,” Jackson answered helpfully.
“No!” The butler snapped around and marched back a few steps, pointing at Jackson with an accusatory finger. “No, sir! I was the only one stupid enough not to fake it, like the rest of you cock-sucking sons of—” His mouth worked silently, and then snapped shut again. Slapping the swinging door open, he gave Jackson dual-handed, parting one-fingered salutes before he vanished inside.
“Who was that?” Sara asked as she heard the butler bellow through the kitchen, “Where the hell are my damn kitchen bitches?”
“Master Kade,” Jackson supplied and then grinned at her. “Aren’t you glad you got me instead? Ruggedly handsome, laid-back fellow that I am, and I won’
t make you spend your last day here in the kitchen as a naughty scullery maid.”
Sara jumped, biting back a squeak of laughter when he pinched her bottom.
“I have an old-fashioned remedy for naughty scullery maids.” His pinching fingers were impossible to evade.
In spite of the seriousness only a moment before, Sara threw back her head, laughing as she slapped at his hand. “Yeah, I’ll just bet you do!”
He redoubled his efforts, and she burst into squirming, squealing giggles, trying in vain to catch his arm, but he neatly evaded her, his fingers nipping in to catch at her from all sides—her bottom, her breasts, the inner curve of her thigh. Her squeals came to a breathless stop, however, when the kitchen door opened one last time and Cook Connie emerged. Grimly followed by the austere butler, Grimsley, her face flushed, Connie walked right past them without a smile or a sideways glance. There wasn’t a tear-track to be seen on her face, but her eyes and nose were both red-rimmed from crying.
As he walked by, Grimsley paused long enough to say, “The Supper and Show will no longer be required.”
Jackson conceded without argument. “I never placed the order.” His hand returned to Sara’s hip as Grimsley guided Connie from the room.
“She doesn’t look very happy,” Sara noted.
“Sometimes what you need isn’t what makes you happy. That doesn’t mean you need it any less, though.” Patting her hip, Jackson caught her chin and turned her eyes back to his. “Does it?”
It sounded more like he was stating a fact rather than asking a question.
“Maybe,” she answered anyway. She loved it when he held her like this, forcing her to look at him. Like holding her hand, it made her feel connected.
“Maybe,” he echoed, a corner of his mouth tilting upward. “What would you say if I told you we’re going back down to the dungeon today?”
Her heart gave a lurch, a sickening ba-thud-thump that slammed against her ribs hard enough to burst right through the bone. “Today?” for a moment, she didn’t think she could breathe. “I-I don’t know…I…”
His hand caressed up and down her back. “I’ll be with you, Sara. Every single second, right by your side. Nothing will hurt you.” He pinched the tip of her chin between thumb and forefinger. “Nothing. I swear it.”
“I know.” And she did, but that didn’t stop the whirlwind of ugly thoughts running through her head. Why the dungeon? What if she panicked? “What are you going to do?”
She didn’t say “to me,” but they both heard it anyway.
“Nothing that involves a match,” he assured. “Trust me.”
He was the second Dom to say that to her in the last two days. Sara twisted to look away, feeling none of the light-hearted laughter of only a moment before. Her heart was pounding now. Each breath was coming right on the tail of the last. She tried to slow it and control it.
“Look at me, Sara.”
She didn’t want to. He could read her too easily. She turned her head, letting his dark eyes capture hers once more.
“Can you trust me?” Jackson asked.
That was the million-dollar question, wasn’t it?
Sara had no idea how she should answer.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Jackson took the stairs slowly, offering up his arm for support and giving Sara plenty of time to negotiate on her stiff leg. Something told him she probably didn’t need it, but this support wasn’t just for her physical limitations. It was for the mental ones, too, and there were a lot of those. He could see all the little doubts she wouldn’t give voice to piling on top of her, but she kept moving, her limp quite pronounced as she took each step.
She would have preferred, he knew, to spend the rest of her vacation in his apartment, and the selfish part of him wouldn’t have minded that. It was her last day. Tomorrow he was going to have to let her go. There was nothing he’d rather do than spend the day with her in his bed playing Master and submissive games, rocking her sexy little world over and over until she couldn’t walk tomorrow without feeling the effects of it. No, he wouldn’t have minded that at all. But another part of him, a bigger and slightly more desperate part, couldn’t help wondering if he could just reintroduce her to something that made her remember how overwhelmingly right their attraction had been three years ago, then maybe, just maybe, tomorrow’s goodbye wouldn’t have to be a permanent one.
Reaching the bottom first, Jackson looked around. It was crowded—the dungeon always was—but the packed stations were even worse than normal today. Most of the scene stations were already occupied, but no one was playing with fire. That was good. No Robert, either. That was even better.
Holding onto Sara’s hand, Jackson backed up to the wall to let another couple squeeze past him on their way up the stairs and out. Ducking her head so she wouldn’t have to look at them, Sara pressed in close to him. She was rubbing her leg, more a nervous reaction than a result of the old injury. He didn’t for a second think she was exaggerating how uncomfortable taking stairs were for her. Having made love to her now many times over, having touched every inch of her with his hands, mouth, teeth and tongue, he was aware that, texturally, that section of scarring on her hip was the worst and it went deep into the muscle. The more she tried to work that leg, the tighter the twisted flesh became. Rubbing seemed to help her loosen it again, but since prolonged touching also hurt, she usually didn’t rub it long.
“Are you all right?” he asked, giving her the verbal nudge she seemed to need to get moving again.
“Yes.” Sara gave her leg another squeeze and then took that last step down to the bottom landing. She held his hand tightly, worrying her fingers in his as she shot nervous glances back in the direction of her last visit here.
“Come on.” Jackson tugged her hand, leading her in the opposite direction.
The room had the same gloomy overcast atmosphere adopted by fetish dungeons just about everywhere. The music was thumping and the talking seemed a constant rumble. It wasn’t as deafening a din as could be found in the average nightclub, but it wasn’t a library, either. He took her to the far back, where a row of private “torture” chambers was located. There were nine, each closed off from the dungeon proper by a heavy medieval door with barred windows and “unoccupied” signs switched over on all but two of them. Master Dominic ruled here. Jackson couldn’t see him, so it was either his day off or he was occupied in one of the rooms.
Jackson glanced through the barred window of one of the two empty chambers, but it struck him as not much different from letting her hide out in his apartment. As much as he wanted to keep her to himself, he didn’t want to allow that, either.
Still, an open station was an open station. He made a face, but just as he was about to take Sara inside, he noticed an A-frame opening up. The couple currently occupying it was just finishing up their scene—the Dom in black leathers briskly wiping down the leather padding and restraints, while his submissive sat as if stunned on a nearby chair. Even from here, Jackson could see she was still flying high in subspace, waves of endorphin-filled pleasure bringing her slowly back down into the here-and-now. Her Dom paused often during cleanup to touch her, checking to make sure she was okay, brushing her hair back from her face and bending to whisper in her ear.
Studying the A-frame, Jackson pulled Sara closer and wrapped his arms around her. With her back against his chest, he bent to her ear. “What do you think? Want to take a walk with me down memory lane?”
She tensed, her arms tucking in around her stomach as she hugged herself. He angled his head, trying to catch a peek at her face, relieved when he saw it wasn’t fear so much as wanting haunting her features as she stared at the A-frame.
“I haven’t done that since Shadowbrook,” she confessed.
Perfect.
He rubbed her stomach, then her shoulders, and leaned in to whisper in her ear. “Deep breaths, baby girl. I’m going to go help him clean his station. When I’m done, I want you to come take your position
while I find a good flogger. You and I, we’re going to take a first-class trip to heaven.”
She breathed in, excitement and trepidation both lighting her face. “Okay.”
Giving her shoulders and back a brief massage, Jackson left her there and went to help clear the other couple off the equipment he wanted. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one to spot the opportunity to claim a not-yet vacated station. He barely beat another man to the A-frame, receiving a dirty look for his efforts, but he got there first and that was all that mattered.
“Go take care of your submissive,” he said, tugging a disposable wipe from one of two boxes near the station. “I’ve got this.”
The leather-clad Dom looked up at him in surprise. “Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.” Jackson summoned up one of his most disarming smiles, but the other man had already tossed his wipe in the garbage and turned back to his starry-eyed submissive. An attentive Dom who knew how to give good aftercare: Jackson didn’t know the man, but he liked him instantly.
Helping his dazed submissive back into a silky slavegirl dress, the Dom pulled her to her feet. He held her, one arm slung around her waist while her knees wobbled. Her back—exposed by the low cut of her costume—was bright pink and latticed by only a handful of welts, but she was smiling and moving with the same somnambulistic slowness of a woman lost in the afterglow of deep orgasm. Guiding her stumbling steps, her man laughed at something she must have said under her breath, and together they disappeared into the crowd.
Glancing back over his shoulder, he saw Sara move closer. She stopped to stand at the very edge of the station, still looking at the cross. There was no trace of her earlier nervousness anywhere about her. A softness had taken over her expression. Obviously, her memories of the time he’d had her on a cross, just like this one, were pleasant ones. Her corset was too stiff to show the little peaks of her nipples, but Jackson was willing to bet they were stiff little buds thrusting out against the fabric, rubbing against the confines with every breath that filled her chest and making the rounding of her soft breasts that much rounder.