by Maren Smith
"How beautiful!"
Dominick turned in time to see Maddy almost drop her purse, diving into it in search of her camera.
"How unsanitary," Tessa muttered, looking the cages over.
Shying from the rest of the group, Maddy took pictures anyway. As Dominick watched, her lingering unhappiness melted into wonder and admiration. He watched her move around the cage, taking multiple shots of both the birds and the arboretum. He liked watching her.
Emil waited until she had lowered her camera, then herded the group toward the resort's registration desk, a single half-moon counter large enough for six clerks to man. Currently, only one woman was stationed there, and while she ran through the process of checking everyone in, Dominick looked around.
He preferred the Castle, but this was impressive. Several large rooms adjoined the arboretum: waiting areas, a restaurant, bathrooms, a souvenir shop and a coffee and computer room. Sounds of last minute construction emanated from the back kitchen area that connected both the coffee shop and restaurant. Brightly colored promo posters tantalized the eye with all the activities guests could expect to partake in during their stay. Dominick's critical eye stayed mostly on the one depicting a fully-stocked dungeon. The real thing probably wouldn't look quite this way, but in the back of his mind, he found himself mentally rearranging it to allow for roomier stations and the swing of long-tailed whips, floggers and canes.
"You have a Sybian," he commented.
"Three," Emil acknowledged. "And a completely enclosed area specifically for fire play."
Dominick grunted. Not that he was opposed to a flame-retardant dungeon. He had a fairly dab hand at fire flogging himself, but he had also seen and heard of many horrible accidents resulting from that kind of play—Jackson's wife, Sara with all her awful burns, came instantly to mind. Given the choice, he preferred the Sybian. The worst injury he'd ever heard caused by one of those was a sore and swollen clit from spending too long in the saddle.
In the very, very back of his mind, behind his imaginary rearrangement of spanking benches, massage tables, wall ornaments and the fall of the crimson mood lights, he couldn't help imagining how delicious Maddy would look bathed in sweat, her face a battlefield of agony and ecstasy as she strained to reach her next orgasm—or fought it back for fear of cumming before he granted the privilege.
His cock stirred, the heated throb of lust moving through his veins and firing low in his belly. Unwittingly his gaze sought her out. Sticking to the very back of the group, she was also admiring the posters. Specifically, her attention had been caught by the one filled with burlesque-style pirate wenches, pole-dancing around a fire-lit stage.
Reaching the head of the registration line, Dominick leaned close to the woman clerk and said, "You're not to ask her permission, tell her, or even look in her direction, but I want my room as close to hers as can be arranged. Adjacent, if possible."
The clerk caught herself, though not before her startled gaze flicked to Maddy at the back of the group. She glanced to Emil next and, at his nod, very quietly said, "I can put you across the hall from one another."
Dominick nodded once. "That works."
"You know her?" Emil asked, as the clerk entered the changes into her computer.
Not half as well as he intended to by the end of this trip. Dominick kept that to himself, though. He changed the subject instead. "When do I meet the crew I'll be training?"
Taking the hint, Emil said, "After breakfast, we'll start the tour of this island, but if you want to skip that, then I've already notified twenty-five of our most experienced Dominants that they are on standby today. As soon as you want to get started, I'll call them together. You train them; they'll train everybody else. Our employee manual and current operating procedures are waiting for you in your room, awaiting your approval or whatever changes you feel are necessary. I've been told your every wish is my command, so you tell me what you need and I'll make sure you get it."
What a dangerous thing to tell him in advance. Already Dominick's mind raced to construct a list. It only had one item: Maddy, gift-wrapped and presented to him. Preferably in nothing but a bow. A red one. No… blue. He'd always been partial to blue.
Which only went to prove that not even God got everything he wanted. This wasn't the Castle, where he was a highly sought-after commodity by submissives who already knew they wanted what he was capable of giving. No, this was the Island. It wasn't even up and running yet, and worse, Maddy might have been hired by Rita to handle the promotional aspects of this BDSM resort, but the reality was, she was really more of a tourist, walking along the outer edges of all the things he'd like to do to her and occasionally looking in. He didn't even know if she had a penchant for bondage, suspension, floggings, canings, cuppings, nipple clamps… he did know she harbored a secret fascination with spankings, though. There was no mistaking how her eyes had lit up when he'd mentioned it and her breathing had quickened.
He'd have no problem spanking her. Right here, right now; in front of the birds flitting through their arboretum and everybody. He wasn't concerned about finding a reason. In his experience, submissives didn't need one. All they really needed was a lap strong enough to secure them in place and a broad hand capable of continuing what it started until the job was done.
Dominick had that hand. He had that lap, and the waiting lounge off to his left, not to mention the restaurant and coffee shop, was full of suitable chairs. He could practically feel her across his knee. He could feel the heady weight of her hips, the heat of her mons against his thigh, the full fleshy bounce of each nethercheek in turn as his hand came clapping down again and again and again…
He could well imagine how she'd struggle to endure in silence at first, that seductive flush of embarrassment lighting up her cheeks, and then how she'd just plain struggle. He could feel her kicks, the twist of her hips, the way her hand would finally snatch back behind her, desperately grabbing at air in a vain attempt to stop his from landing the next painful smack. He could hear her soft grunts as they gradually escalated, becoming teeth-gritted mews and finally full-throated cries as she realized he wasn't like any other man who had spanked her before—if any man had ever spanked her before. And by the end of it, he couldn't help but imagine when he released her to come back up off his knee. She'd be blushing, he was already decided about that. Blushing and teary-eyed, rubbing frantically at her backside to put out the fire he'd built (he didn't yet know if she'd come scrambling up with her pants on or flying at half-mast around her knees), and sputtering all those things well-spanked but far from broken young ladies liked to say: 'You can't do that!' and 'How dare you!' and 'Who do you think you are?' At which point, he would probably become the Island's very first lawsuit, because (as he'd already reminded himself, twice now) this wasn't the Castle. This might well be a BDSM vacation resort, but it wasn't in operation yet, nobody here had signed anything approaching a waiver of consent, and that made this whole place just as vanilla as, say, the nearest local Wal-Mart.
The real world wasn't arranged with Dominants in mind. The real world required that he operate by a completely different set of standards. Standards which should have been familiar to him and yet which by now felt almost entirely foreign. The real world, frankly, sucked, and that left him with two options: He could either give up the chase, put as much distance between himself and temptation as a week on the Island would allow, and eventually go home, pining for the one-night stand that might have been, every now and then perhaps pulling out her card or haunting her webpage until he could no longer remember the siren's allure of her blush, or he could do something equally unlikely.
He could date her—Dominick smiled—Dungeon Master style.
* * * * *
Maddy didn't know about the rest of the resort, but the Island's command center was phenomenal. Apart from the airport's restaurant, coffee and souvenir shops and waiting lounge, full of floor-to-ceiling bird cages—there wasn't much in the way of guest amenities. But th
en, the command center had been built with the staff in mind. There was a medical unit, just in case, Emil had said, but absolutely no hotel rooms. Instead, a series of apartment buildings had been built into the hillside overlooking the beach, tucked in behind the palm and coconut trees until it almost seemed to blend with the scenery.
"Staff will be working in kind of truck-driver-like rotation," he'd told them. "We'll spend a few days living on assignment on one of the islands, then a few days back at home once the customer flies out again."
"That's what we do, too," Dominick said from his usual spot, standing somewhat aside from the rest of the group.
"Follow me, then." Emil waved everyone into line. "I'll give you a short tour of the compound, then I'll show you to your rooms before we eat."
"I wouldn't mind a nibble or two right about now," Dominick said and, standing beside him, Tessa giggled. Yet, it wasn't to Tessa that he aimed that wolfish look of his—it was Maddy. Her whole stomach seized, fluttering hard like the wings of that rainbow array of birds at the arboretum feeders. Nine loosely gathered people stood between them and yet they might as well have been alone in the room.
A chill danced through her at the way he continued to stare. When one corner of his mouth curled slowly upwards, her heart stumbled just a little in her chest, threatening to stop altogether. Until Tessa laid her hand upon his arm and suddenly, the spell was broken.
Dominick glanced down at the redhead as she sidled in closer to him, and Maddy turned away altogether. She really didn't want to know what Tessa was arching up onto tiptoes to whisper in his ear. And she really didn't want to see Dominick redirect his smile to her.
She had to stop doing this to herself. All he'd done on the plane was be nice to her. He'd flirted a little bit, sure. But lots of people flirted; that didn't mean anything. That she seemed determined to turn it into more just went to show how desperate she'd become since her divorce four years ago.
Fortunately, she'd recognized the situation for what it was while they were still on the plane and before she'd said or done something irrevocably stupid. Yes, it had taken Tessa poking her beautiful head up over the seat—something that hadn't seemed to bother Dominick in the slightest, and why would it, since of course it would be part of his job to be equally nice to all of Rita's clients… or pre-clients… or test clients, or whatever they were—before Maddy could see it, but at least now she could protect herself against any unintentional heartache. Just like Dominick, she was here to do a job. Just like that burly, handsome hunk of dominant masculinity all wrapped up in black jeans and a nerdy Star Wars t-shirt, she was here to win Rita's future customers over. She wasn't going to do that by flirting. Or by mentally deluding herself into thinking that two people so completely wrong for one another—not just because they were strangers, but because, well, look at him, and then look at her; enough said—could ever find anything more meaningful together than an erotic fling in a tropical setting.
"Follow me," Emil called, waving them all into line behind him. "Let's get you settled in to your homes away from home."
Off they set, across the compound, following a hard-packed sandy walkway between the frond trees toward the apartment buildings and, in particular, toward one so newly constructed that the flowerbeds and banana trees were still being planted.
What was wrong with having an erotic fling, Maddy thought to herself, trailing along a short distance behind the others. Wasn't that the expectation of most single people when they went on vacation? It was practically a law: Go to an exotic island getaway and find someone to hook up with. Maddy could search for weeks and probably never find anyone in all the Caribbean who was even half as exotic as Dominick, a man so… so… umph!… that he would try to pass his first name off as 'Master'!
She wondered if he was kinky or if it was an act.
Well, of course he was kinky! He made his living working as a Dominant for the Castle, for crying out loud! Maddy couldn't imagine anyone lasting long in that kind of profession if they weren't every bit as kinky as they portrayed themselves to be.
The real question was, was she kinky enough to keep up with him? Probably not. A past boyfriend had once smacked her butt during sex, but apart from that and a few late-night lurk sessions on Fetlife, she really hadn't explored that aspect of her sexuality. Yes, she found the idea of a strong man giving her butt an occasional swat to be belly-warmingly erotic. Yes, sometimes late at night, she found herself thinking about how it would feel to lie beneath someone, flat on her back with her wrists pinned by hard yet gentle hands to the mattress above her head. Sometimes just the thought of having to ask if she could cum, her pleas for release falling on deaf ears because he hadn't yet satisfied himself, could bring her right to the very edge, if not over it. Sometimes when she thought of teeth nipping at her flesh, her nipples tightened and throbbed. Sometimes, the imaginary tease of a little pain entwined with her pleasure made the tickles of liquid arousal flow from her heated womb, like the tip of a phantom tongue playing along her slit, to soak—as it was now—the cotton gusset of her panties.
Maddy shivered. None of that made her kinky, though. It just made her… odd in bed. She wished she could say 'adventurous', but wouldn't a truly adventurous person have tried at least some of those 'sometimes' in real life? Maddy hadn't. She couldn't. Virgil hadn't been willing, and in the few relationships she'd attempted in her life after Virgil, she'd had no idea how that conversation was supposed to go. How soon after going to bed with a guy was it appropriate to say something like, 'Hey, would you mind pulling my hair a little while we have sex?' Or, 'I don't suppose you'd like to spank me… a little harder… yeah, harder please… and about fifty more times just like that last one?'
Women like Tessa probably had that conversation as naturally as ordering coffee with breakfast. Following along behind the group, Maddy tried, but she couldn't even get herself through an imaginary version of that conversation without the slow burn of embarrassment scorching up her insides. Partly because she was a sexually unadventurous coward, but also partly because instead of some faceless imaginary lover, she kept imagining herself trying to have it with Dominick.
At least with an imaginary lover she had a fifty-fifty chance of success. With Dominick… hell, there was no chance at all. She knew it. She could tell by the occasional glances Tessa kept tossing over one skinny shoulder that she knew it, too. Maddy wished she'd taken her makeup with her on the plane so she could have touched up in the bathroom, but really, like pearls on a swine, this was probably one of those too-little, too-late situations. Dominick was just one of those perfect kinds of guys, and she… she just wasn't perfect.
As they trailed around the front of the first set of apartments toward the new construction building, Maddy eyed the breadth of his back, the blue cotton of his t-shirt showing off the bunch and gather of his shoulders, and the black denim of his jeans molded around the kind of butt that just made a girl want to grab and hold on. They circled the flower gardens that divided each complex from the next and came to the two-story building, and the main double-entryway atop a circular flight of grey-stone steps. They had an awesome view of the distant beach from the top, but all Maddy could think about was how Dominick probably didn't need those kinds of conversations anymore. Having had so many over the years, she was willing to bet he could tell at a glance what a woman wanted.
Waiting while Emil fished his keys from his pocket, she stared out at the gently rolling waves as they lapped against the white sandy shore, but all she could see was Dominick backing a woman into his bedroom. The dark shadows would play over his half-naked body as he pointed to the bed, snapping his fingers once in voiceless command. Try though she did to envision herself in that phantom woman's place, it was Tessa that Maddy saw, throwing herself back on the mattress, that hungry need lighting up her face as she scrambled to grip the headboard, hunted every inch of the way by his predatory crawl of pursuit.
"You find the beach that displeasing?"
M
addy jumped, shocked back into the present half a second before she felt the brush of Dominick's forearm against her own. Propping his elbows on the top security rail, he studied the view.
Emil must have found his keys. The doors were standing open and they were the only two people left on the upper landing. Everyone else had gone inside to claim their temporary apartments.
"No, I…" Maddy snapped back around to stare wide-eyed at the white-tipped waves rolling in to kiss the beach, her entire left arm tingling from his touch. "I-I'm just…"
"Miss Maddy," he said, abruptly disregarding the beach and turning to face her instead. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but I rather thought you'd enjoyed my company on the plane. What little of it we got to enjoy before you took yourself off to hide in the bathroom. Now I get the distinct impression that you're trying to avoid me."
Avoid him? It was all she could do not to stare at him like a love-struck schoolgirl! Were Maddy breathing right, she'd have laughed. But she wasn't breathing right, and what came puffing out of her then sounded more like an asthmatic goose-cough.
"I'm not avoiding you," she hedged and would have sidestepped to get a little more space between them, except that he pushed back off the rail so suddenly that she found herself turning to face him instead. And he moved in closer, diminishing what little distance there already was between them to catch her between his arms. He didn't touch her, not exactly. He simply took hold of the rail with both hands and there she was, backed up against it, with the end of her nose bare inches from his and every nerve in her body sparking with his physical awareness. She'd read somewhere once that there were more than fifteen thousand nerve endings in the clitoris alone. This right here was what it felt like to have every single one of them firing all at once.