by Maren Smith
Dominick waited until the gate swung closed with a groan and a clang. In all that time, Tessa only scowled at him, that sulky moue twisting what should have been pretty lips into something he just couldn't imagine kissing. Even if he didn't already know her.
"What does she have that I don't?" Tessa pouted. "Apart from sixty extra pounds."
For a man who prided himself on his ability to maintain control, it was amazing how fast she could prick through his defenses and strike temper. Looking about him, Dominick spied a little house further up the walk, tucked a small distance off the cobblestone road and around a nook in the wall. The door was locked, but a narrow passage through the decorative palms hinted at the seclusion of a private side garden. Adjusting his grip on her elbow, it was to that garden that he dragged Tessa.
She came willingly enough, though not with any degree of penitence. With every step, she grew increasingly more sullen. It set his teeth on edge. He couldn't stand Tessa's type of submissive, the ones who thought BDSM a game fought and won only through bratting. The ones who thought only of their own selfish desire for punishment, winning spanking after spanking until their Doms stood exhausted by the futility of their efforts. The ones who took and took, but never gave anything back because they weren't really submissives and there was nothing for them to give.
Dragging her around the corner of that tiny stone house, Dominick pushed her through a grove of dwarf lime trees ahead of him and released her—not when she finally gave a yank meant to test his patience and his grip, but when the garden path abruptly dead-ended at the high perimeter wall, grown halfway up by carefully cultivated trellises of purple flowers, and a stone bench overlooking a small, percolating rock fountain.
"What is it going to take for you to behave?" he asked, both knowing and dreading the answer.
"What do you think?" A glimmer of victorious calculation crowded in around her pout. "All I wanted, right from the very start, was a little of your attention. Why is that asking too much?"
"You're used to asking too much," Dominick said without thinking, knowing even as he did it that there would be consequences to pay, even for him. "That's one of your many problems."
Whatever price he'd have to pay, it was worth it to see that small measure of self-satisfaction melt back out of her withering smile.
"My problem," she snapped back, "is that you—Ow!"
Her indignation ended on a squeal when he dropped to sit on that little stone bench. He was a little surprised it held him, and was even more surprised that it held up so sturdily when he jerked her down across his left knee. For a woman who had been begging for this since before they'd stepped off the plane, she put up one whale of a kicking, screaming, fist-pounding fight. The telltale clue he paid the most attention to, however, was that she never once used her safeword. Not when he pinned her wrists to the flat of her back, nor when he scissored her legs and clamped them tight between his thighs, and especially not when he whipped up the back of her skimpy designer tunic and ripped her bikini bottoms down as far as his confining grip on her slender body would allow.
"You son of a bitch!" she shouted, flopping awkwardly, little more than a beached fish for all her flailing. "You can't do this to me!"
But of course, he could, and they both knew it. When he saw the glistening tattletale moisture trickling down the slit of her shaved sex, they both knew also, despite her protests, that it was what she wanted.
It was his job, so he gave it to her. He busted her scrawny, narrow-hipped brat of a backside until all he could see of her bottom was varying shades of pink and red; and all he could hear of her protests were the gasps that escalated into squeaks, before dissolving again into sniffles and wails; and all he could feel was the bucking of her hips as she quite genuinely fought to find someplace where his hand could not reach her. Just for a minute. Just long enough for a breath or two of respite. He wasn't about to give it to her.
"Sto-op!" she wept, fingers clawing the air behind her. Hips twisting now, desperate to escape. She kicked both feet, a mermaid swimming out of water, when he switched targets to the backs of her milk-white thighs, and then burst into tears. If he didn't know better, he might have thought them genuine. "Stop, please!"
"This is what you wanted, isn't it?" he countered, paddling her sit-spots until he was certain sitting was the last thing she do once he let her go again.
"No!"
He stopped spanking her just long enough to whip off his belt. Within the first three strokes of the leather on her tender thighs, she threw back her head, all evidence of crocodile remorse gone as she shouted out, "Yes! Yes! I'm sorry, yes!"
"Was it worth it?" Dominick turned the belt back on her bottom. Sore as she was, he didn't need the full measure of his arm to make the belt effective.
"No! I promise, I'll be good, please! P-Please! It hurts!" This time when she burst into tears, braying out loud gusty sobs, they were unladylike and unpretty, and for the first time, he believed she meant them.
He put the belt down and released her wrists. Her hands shot to her bottom instantly, grabbing great handfuls of thoroughly spanked flesh, squeezing and holding and rubbing fitfully to extinguish the burn. He spanked each hand in turn, making her squeal and snatch them away.
"Did I say you could make your bottom feel better?" he demanded, giving the backs of her thighs two more blistering slaps apiece.
"No!" she bawled and grabbed his knee instead, her increasingly weary bucks and twists the only outlet he allowed her for how much it hurt. "P-Please! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"
When Dominick loosened his grip on her arms and legs, she broke free. She scrambled to get up, her bid to stand gracefully losing out to gravity and the tangle of her sagging bikini bottoms. She tripped. He caught her, latching one arm around her waist, his other hand clapping hard enough to count as swatting right up between her legs. He brought her safely down again, draped even further over his left knee, her head very nearly striking the grass. This time when he scissored her between his legs, he caught only her left leg. Her right he allowed to kick free, a position that now left her pussy as vulnerably bared to him as the blazing red flesh of her ass.
For all her tears, it only took a touch to discover she was as sopping wet as only a woman on the verge of orgasm could be.
He could not have been less interested or aroused.
His instinct was to dump her in the grass and walk away, but that wasn't the job, was it?
Tightening his grip around her waist, Dominick let his hand play in the moisture he'd found. She gasped, the whole of her body as stiff as a broom handle when he grazed her clit. "You're going to be good from here on?"
Her moan was low and guttural. When he pinched, she panted, "Y-Yes, I promise… I promise…"
She kicked her free leg up, throwing back her head as he rolled her clit between his fingers and sank two fingers into the eager well of her pussy. For all Tessa's beauty, for all her tears, for all her weeping and wailing as she so wantonly rode his hand, it wasn't until some disjointed place in his mind thought to wonder if he'd still be this unaffected were it Maddy he held like this, her plump bottom swollen from his disciplining hand, her thighs splayed so lewdly wide, and her drenched and weeping pussy coating his fingers with the oils of her shivering sex, that his cock finally stirred.
"Do you know why you're going to be good?" His cold tone at odds with the heat of his touch, he brought her to the very edge of completion. Two thrusting fingers inside her became a deep impacting four, flexing and thrusting in search of that elusive spot that felt just a little different from the rest of her pussy walls, and which he knew the instant he touched it when her flesh locked down on him, contracting and spasming in hard, shuddering waves.
And therein lay the difference between Maddy and Tessa. Maddy, he would have denied. He would have played with her, teased her, brought her dancing and writhing and pleading right to the intoxicating edge of orgasm before refusing her release. He would have played her body
as finely as any concert violinist. He'd have made her weep music, verse after chorus after verse, song after song, show after show. He'd have made her beg to cum, scream for it, pray for it. He'd have taught her a new religion. His religion, and when she finally, breathlessly, wailed out those immortal words—"God, please, please! God!"—she'd know, he'd know, everyone in hearing distance would know to whom she truly spoke.
But that was Maddy, and this was Tessa. Tessa he let fall off that edge, abandoning her to the force of her hollow pleasure, letting her writhe in its grip while he fingered her with all the cool professionalism of an experienced Master of the Castle, and when she finally dropped, panting and worn out, he immediately stopped. Because he simply didn't care.
Barely managing to keep his distaste concealed, Dominick dumped her off his lap. Wiping his fingers on the back of her tunic, he stood up. "You will apologize for your misbehavior and you will not repeat it again, or this will be the last orgasm you ever receive from me, either here or at the Castle. Do I make myself clear?"
She lay where she'd fallen, sucking air and whimpering, her belly still convulsing in empty twitches. She didn't open her eyes, not even when he walked away. But, as he pushed back through the lime grove, intent on rejoining the others for whatever remained of the orientation speech, he heard the high, tinkling giggle—like water tumbling over brook pebbles—of her laughter following him.
* * * * *
"Okay." Emil made a note on the page of the protocol packet they had been reviewing since coming to Fleetwood. "Motion sickness patches will be passed out to everyone from the moment they reach the docks. Mention will be made in the documentation we send out upon receipt of each customer's payment, and there will be a medic station available to everyone immediately upon disembarking. It won't be any problem, really, to do two orientations instead of one. What's next?"
Dominick checked his watch—hair past a freckle; he'd forgotten he'd taken it off and left it in the locker assigned for his use back when he changed into his pirate garb. "Let's call it for today," he said, and looked back out the window again. He kept hoping to catch another glimpse, but he'd lost sight of Maddy, all dressed up in the glittering blue finery of a governor's daughter, hours ago. For hours, there hadn't been one damn thing he could do about it, either.
He hated meetings. He hated feeling this trapped, this restless. Like a… well, a man who'd missed his workout two days in a row. He needed to get his ass to the nearest gym. Failing that, he needed to find Maddy. She'd get his heartrate up. His fingers drummed, a corner of his mouth curling upward as he considered all the ways in which she could definitely inspire him to work up a sweat.
"I'm ready to call it a day, too," Emil said, dropping his packet on the conference table. "Honestly, though. You make me feel very stupid."
His attention pulled from the window, Dominick arched an eyebrow at him. "Why?"
Emil rapped a knuckle on his discarded papers. "This."
Dominick looked at them, not quite comprehending.
"I thought we had our procedures locked down," Emil explained. "When you first got here, I was so sure we'd spend maybe a couple hours going over it and what you thought you were going to do with the remainder of your stay, I just didn't know. But no. We've been at it for two days now, and we're barely on page five."
"We thought we were a lot better prepared than we were when we first started, too." Smiling, Dominick let his gaze wander back to the street outside. Two pirates and an officer were laughing and walking together along the building fronts toward the tavern at the corner. A handful of vervet monkeys were racing along the rooftops directly across from him. "Every suggestion I've made comes from a mistake we've already made."
"I know, and I appreciate it." Bracing his elbows on the table, Emil rubbed his face and yawned. "I'm just tired, and we still have all night left to go. I don't know how you do it."
"It helps to have a full guest roster," Dominick said, not without some sympathy. He liked Emil. The resort's CEO struck him as both competent and knowledgeable, and somewhat long-suffering; he reminded Dominick of himself, back when all of this was new to him, too. He even liked the scrawny, geeky-looking, stick of a Master, Cecil—what could he say, the guy was growing on him. "Time passes more slowly when you don't have at least four submissives keeping you on your toes."
"Is that what you keep looking out the window for?" Emil asked pointedly. "Four submissives to help keep the boredom at bay, or is it someone in particular that holds your fancy?"
Was it that obvious? Realizing he'd just found something he disliked more than meetings, Dominick shoved away from the window and returned to the table. "None of your business."
"Fair enough." Emil both laughed and yawned. "Word of your unhappiness with our abilities has spread through the ranks. Practice areas have already sprung up on the three larger islands. No matter where you are, if you listen carefully you can hear the crack of people throwing whips." Leaning all the way back in his chair, Emil let his hands drop to his lap. "Except Cecil here," he added, after a contemplative pause. "He's the only one I haven't seen practicing."
Cecil glanced up from his paperwork in surprise. He blinked at them both, his eyes owlish behind the dark rims of his Buddy Holly glasses. "I practice," he protested, wounded.
"I didn't say you don't." Emil shrugged. "I only said I haven't seen you."
The buds of annoyance beginning to grow once more, Dominick fixed Cecil with a knowing look. "Are you practicing?"
"Yes!"
"When?" he demanded. "How long?"
"This morning," Cecil said with a lift of his chin. "I practice in my living room."
"So no one can see how often you miss the mark?" Dominick frowned. "You will be taking that test in front of me at the end of the week, just like everyone else."
"I know." Cecil's voice rose, somewhat defensively. "I just… I don't like doing it in front of everybody else. They make fun of me enough as it is. I don't want people thinking I'm a know-it-all just because I don't miss anymore."
"Anymore," Dominick echoed flatly. If by that, Cecil meant he'd managed to hit his makeshift bullseye once this morning and now figured he had it down, Dominick was about to get seriously pissed. "How many times did you hit your target this morning?"
"Five times."
Dominick almost scoffed, but he folded his arms across his chest and managed to stifle it. "Out of how many throws?"
"Five," said Cecil, folding his arms right back. "It's my morning routine: Five throws whether I need it or not, with ten full minutes of practice for each time I miss."
"And you didn't miss this morning?" Dominick said in flat disbelief.
Cecil's chin hiked that much higher. "No, I did not."
Dominick stared him down, but Cecil didn't blink. "Fine." Unclipping his bullwhip from his belt, Dominick slapped it on the table. "Paper," he told Emil, who was already pulling the first page off his protocol packet. He flipped it over to the pristine back, clicked the ballpoint on his pen, and drew a bullseye. Handing it to Dominick, he then vacated his chair and moved well out of striking range.
Slapping the target up on the whiteboard, Dominick stuck it there with a spare magnet. "Five out of five," he told Cecil, and backed from the board. Claiming a spot next to Emil, he folded his arms across his chest to watch as Cecil uncoiled the whip. He ran the braided black length through his hand before shaking it all out across the floor behind him.
"Take your time," Dominick cautioned. "You might be used to your whip, but that—"
"Doesn't mean I'm used to yours," Cecil finished for him, and in a fluid, dancelike motion, stepped and threw. The crack was loud as gunshot, a report that made everybody in that conference room jump, including Emil. The only two who didn't were Dominick and Cecil, who was already drawing back his arm to cast another throw.
Five throws, five sharp cracks of the whip, and damn if he didn't hit the center of that makeshift bullseye each and every time. Three small tears
and two faint indents in the paper target showed where each strike had fallen. Stepping in toward it, as he coiled the whip back up again, Cecil gave his handiwork a critical eye.
"That's good," Dominick said, joining him. "That's almost better than I can do." Truth be told, that tight cluster of strikes probably was better than he could do. And with his own whip, to boot. "How long have you been throwing?"
"Fifteen years," Cecil softly admitted. "Figured if I was going to make whips, I ought to know how to use them. Demonstration purposes, you know." Bullwhip looped and properly tied, he looked at it before handing it back to Dominick. "One of the best I ever made."
"You're Leatherman C?" Dominick stared at him, so startled that he almost forgot the whip entirely. "The," he emphasized, "Leatherman C?"
There was nothing grandiose about Cecil's quiet nod of assent. "In the flesh."
"What in God's name are you doing here instead of coming to work for the Castle?"
"Hey!" Emil straightened sharply, shoving off the back wall. "No headhunting Island employees while you're here. I shouldn't even have to say that!"
"I'm sorry." Dominick held up both hands. "You're right. My bad." He let his expression apologize one last time, then turned back to Cecil. "But seriously though, what are you doing here?"
"Hey!" Emil said again, sharper this time, but Cecil only shrugged.
"My neighbors found out my hobby was making whips and bondage furniture. From the way they acted, you'd have thought I was a pedophile. I had to sell my house and move, but it followed me. I used to be lead accountant for the state, until someone sent an email to my boss. Next thing I know, I'm fired. I moved again, this time all the way across the U.S. I got another job. My third day there, I walk into the breakroom to find an old internet picture of me taped to my locker with the heading 'Sex Freak'. I tried to laugh it off, like it was a joke, but they handed me my pink slip by the end of the day and that was that. To be honest, I never thought about the Castle. I saw Rita's advertisement on Fetlife first. Not only did she offer me a place to stay and a good paying job, but I get a percentage of everything I sell through the gift shops and the online store." Shrugging again, Cecil looked at him. "After two moves in two months, you know, that sounded really good to me."