by Barker, Ashe
A Total-E-Bound Publication
www.total-e-bound.com
Darkening
ISBN # 978-1-78184-408-3
©Copyright Ashe Barker 2013
Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright July 2013
Edited by Amy Parker
Total-E-Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2013 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.
Warning:
This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Total-e-melting and a sexometer of 2.
This story contains 147 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 3 pages.
The Dark Side
DARKENING
Ashe Barker
Book one in the Dark Side serial
Who knows where pain ends and pleasure begins?
The chance of a new life out in the wilds of the Yorkshire moors sounds too good to be true to shy musician Eva Byrne. Stifled and smothered within the cocoon of her brilliant academic career, Eva yearns for something different. Something real and exciting. Something she can feel.
Excitement. Passion. Pleasure. She finds that sexy, enigmatic Nathan Darke can provide all these and more when she moves into his home as violin tutor to his young daughter. But Eva’s sensual encounters with her demanding, domineering new employer quickly evoke her deepest fears, as he introduces her to the trauma of submission and marks her with his particularly dark brand of love.
But will Eva’s natural curiosity and thirst for new experiences be enough to withstand the sting of Nathan Darke’s exquisite touch? Will simple surrender be enough as he challenges her every inhibition, taking her on an erotic journey of self-discovery and liberation?
Dedication
This book is dedicated to John and Hannah, for putting up with me.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Savlon: Novartis International AG
Starbucks: Starbucks Corporation
HTC: HTC Corporation
No Fear: No Fear
Converse: Nike, Inc.
Thomas the Tank Engine: Wilbert Awdry/Christopher Awdry
Pot Noodle: Unilever plc
Post-it: 3M Company
Ventolin: GlaxoSmithKline plc
Mini: BMW AG
Aga: Aga Rangemaster Group plc
Porsche: Porsche AG
Toms: Toms Shoes
Muppet: The Walt Disney Company
iPad: Apple, Inc.
Doc Martens: R. Griggs Group Ltd.
Barbour: J. Barbour and Sons Ltd.
Tracy Beaker: Dame Jacqueline Wilson
Worzel Gummidge: Barbara Euphan Todd
Land Rover Discovery: Jaguar Land Rover Automotive PLC
Audi A3: Audi AG
MG Midget: The British Motor Corporation Ltd.
Renault Clio: Renault S.A.
Sainsbury’s: J. Sainsbury plc
Rohan: Rohan
‘Jar of Hearts’: Christina Perri
‘Romanza’: Donald Martino
Luke Skywalker: The Walt Disney Company
Harvey Nicks: Dickson Concepts (International) Ltd.
Next: Next plc
RIBA: Royal Institute of British Architects
Vidal Sassoon: Regis Corporation
Wotsit: Walkers/PepsiCo Inc.
Tango: Britvic plc
Cloud Nine: Unil Electronics Europe Ltd.
The Royal Armouries Museum: The Royal Armouries
Bud: Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company
Radio Two: The British Broadcasting Corporation
The Guardian: Guardian Media Group plc
Prologue
“Red. Red. Enough. Stop now, please!”
Shit! Not again…
Nathan doesn’t voice his frustration out loud—with some considerable effort—but he knows the rules and honours the safe word immediately. Taking a deep breath, and with a last rueful glance at the naked, quivering and only very slightly pink buttocks of his latest she-said-she-was-oh-so-willing partner, he places the barely used spanking paddle on a side table behind him. Reaching around with his left hand, he loosens the straps restraining the cringing blonde, who has now started to sob prettily. Using his right arm, he supports her around the waist to stop her imminent descent to the floor as he frees first her wrists, then her ankles.
Taking her weight, Nathan lifts the girl from the dark brown leather sofa, across the back of which he’d strapped her so carefully only minutes earlier. He carries her across the room to deposit her face down on his large bed, remarkably gently given his darkening mood. He dumps a box of tissues beside her.
“Dry your eyes, Susanna. We’re finished.” Sniff, sniff, whimper, whimper. Christ!
He has deliberately softened his voice. No point taking his frustration out on Susanna. She’s tried her best—probably. Possibly.
“You can get dressed. Unless you want to take a shower first. Then I’ll phone you a taxi.”
He congratulates himself on managing to keep a lid on his mounting frustration, inwardly cringing at the tears and sniffling. He’s not entirely convinced by the display of grief and shock—the lovely Susanna is not above a spot of scheming and manipulation to get her own way, he’s sure of that—but still, he isn’t in the business of making women cry. Not really. Cry out… Now, that’s different.
He might be a dab hand with a cane, he definitely likes to hear them scream, but all this sobbing? No. He wants his subs to look back rather more fondly on his attentions than he suspects Susanna will. He prefers them to be more appreciative of the pain he can inflict, and the pleasure, and to leave his apartment humming.
But hey, what do you know? The lovely Susanna is already beginning to rally. In fact her sudden, rapid and pretty much total recovery before his very eyes seems little short of miraculous, given the quivering mess that was draped across his sofa just moments ago. She is starting to sniff daintily and is now obligingly rolling over onto her back, her arms flung up onto the pillow to show off her curvy little pink-tipped breasts to best advantage.
Sitting alongside her on the edge of the bed, and still fully dressed apart from his black, soft leather jacket and navy tie, Nathan signals with a flick of his finger that she should stay face down. The view is definitely not without its attractions, but, in truth, his interest in her breasts—or indeed any other part of her anatomy—is at an irrevocable end.
He reaches into a drawer beside the bed for the large tub of Savlon he keeps there. Unscrewing the lid, he takes a generous scoop of the soothing cream onto his fingers and starts to spread it across her backside. As gently as he is able in his current frustrated state, he works the cream into her
buttocks. They were just beginning to glow nicely, in his view, and could use a couple of dozen more strokes to bring her sweet little arse to full tenderness, ready for a good, hard, satisfying fuck.
Time to call a halt, he acknowledges ruefully. Susanna just isn’t going to cut it as a submissive. Pity, but there you are…
Snatching a couple of tissues from the box on the bed, he wipes his hands. He stands, gazing down from his height of six-two at the undoubtedly lovely blonde stretched out on his bed…and realises he just wants her out of here. Now.
Tunnelling his fingers through his over-long dark hair—he usually pulls it back into a sleek ponytail, but he prefers to let it hang loose to his shoulders when he’s in Dom mode—he ponders the mysteries of women. And, in particular, what brought Susanna, decked out in a very fetching black and red leather corset and thong, along to The Manor House, that exclusive club in leafy, suburban north Leeds. There, she paraded around in front of him until he eventually beckoned her over and treated her to the spanking she was obviously looking for.
That went well enough—she seemed to appreciate his efforts and he certainly saw promise there. She obligingly agreed to meet him the following week. They had coffee together at Starbucks in City Square, discussed his requirements—his exact requirements—and she agreed to join in his ‘games’.
He’s always very explicit regarding what he has in mind. Over the years he has found it best to avoid any misunderstanding up front. Susanna is no exception. His submissives need to agree, willingly, to do what he asks. Indeed, it’s always something of a surprise to him that some even offer more. Again, Susanna is a case in point, having suggested that a nice bit of age regression could offer an interesting twist to their bondage and discipline play.
Not to Nathan, it wouldn’t—not his idea of fun at all. He turned her down politely but very firmly. But if she’s so keen on gymslips and canes, why has she wimped out at the first sight—well, seventh stroke, actually, in this evening’s case—of a very unassuming spanking paddle?
He had a lot more than that planned for her over the coming few weeks. She is absolutely gorgeous, just his favourite type of submissive. Not that he has a particular physical preference. He doesn’t care whether they are blonde, brunette, with blue eyes, green or brown, tall or petite, slender or curvy. Well, if he’s honest he does have a fondness for willowy redheads, probably because they tend to be fair-skinned so their buttocks go a beautiful, delicate shade of pink without too much effort on his part. Although he’s flexible regarding physical appearance, Nathan does go for a particular demeanour. Privately, he calls it his ‘librarian look’. He likes submissives who present themselves as meek and modest, unassuming, studious, quiet, shy. They can be plain—but preferably not too plain—dress as if they are going to a funeral, wear bottle-bottom glasses—you can always remove glasses, he’s found, if they get in the way of a blindfold—and not say boo to a goose. The fun comes from peeling back those layers to reveal the sexy, demanding, responsive little temptress underneath, the slut under the prim and proper outer shell. He loves to transform his subs from demure Sunday School teachers to panting sex goddesses in a matter of minutes. Female orgasms are absolutely the biggest turn on Nathan Darke can ever imagine—he loves it when they come.
He particularly loves how women sound when caught up in ecstasy—their soft, breathy moans, groans, panting. And screaming. He particularly likes to hear a woman scream, so he doesn’t use gags that often. And he loves the writhing and stretching as a woman spreads herself out under him or in front of him, even when she’s bound and blindfolded, completely open to his touch and revelling in all he offers. And that sublime moment when they reach the point where they’re begging him to fuck them—hard and fast and often. He aims to please, and as far as he’s aware no woman has ever left his bed disappointed.
Until now. Susanna is definitely not happy, and distinctly disappointed. To be fair, he’s pretty disappointed in her too—he had such high hopes for her. By way of celebration once she agreed to join in his ‘games’, and by way of partial compensation for his intransigence over the gymslip, he invested in a new set of canes to add to his already extensive collection, as well as two neon-coloured butt plugs, all with her delicious little arse particularly in mind.
But she’s safe worded—again. This is her third visit to his apartment and each time she’s cut their games short. Well short.
He glances back at the bed. It’s obvious that the cream has been absorbed into Susanna’s peachy little butt-cheeks and done its work. The crying, wincing, wittering and sniffling have all stopped, and Susanna now seems perfectly calm and collected. She obviously enjoyed his ministrations, if her stretching and sighing was anything to go by. In fact, now she’s really rather perky and keen to regroup. Such amazing powers of recovery! Nathan smiles wryly. Manipulative? Yes, probably.
Rolling onto her back to make sure he can properly appreciate her pale, slender body and full breasts, and opening her legs wide to make sure he’s under no illusions about how wet and ready she is, Susanna smiles and runs her tongue slowly over her bottom lip.
“Thanks for stopping. I just got a bit, well, nervous really. I don’t mind trying again in a minute as long as you don’t hit me too hard…”
By way of invitation, Susanna rises to her knees on the bed, rubbing her own backside with one hand and using her other to roll first her right nipple, then her left until both are swollen and hard, pink, juicy pebbles. She arches her back to better present her breasts for him to suckle, if he cares to. She slides her hand downwards, between her legs. She’s all happy smiles, bobbing breasts, throbbing clit and simpering apologies—and much to Nathan’s astonishment, he wants none of it.
No doubt picking up on his lack of interest, she’s now trying to placate him, offering to let him tickle her dainty, delectable little butt with his spanking paddle if he absolutely must, or better still suck her nipples, in exchange for a good fuck. It’s clear enough to Nathan what she wants, and to be fair, she isn’t being particularly unreasonable. Good, hot vanilla sex, maybe spiced up a bit, isn’t such a bad offer.
But that’s pretty much all that Susanna is offering. He’s treated her to some fabulously explosive orgasms in their two previous encounters, and she obviously fancies a bit more of that, but on her terms.
Well, maybe if they’d met in a bar, or at the gym. But not on his turf. It’s his terms that count here.
If Susanna wants vanilla she can have it—is welcome to it—but she’s simply come to the wrong place looking for it. To the wrong man. He needs a submissive, and one with a hell of a lot more staying power than Susanna has demonstrated up to now, one who will hand over her body and let him do what he wants to it. A submissive who will explore his wants and fantasies with him, meeting his particular and sometimes brutal needs as well as her own.
And clearly Susanna is so not submissive. Submissives are exactly that, as far as he’s concerned. They’re partners who agree to submit, to voluntarily give themselves and their bodies over to him to do as he wants. They do this because it’s safe, they know the deal, the parameters, and they trust him to take care of them.
And because they fucking love it, of course. Subs get off on it all, just as he does. The violence, the restraints, the beatings, the violation, the intimidation, the subjugation, the humiliation, submitting to his authority, the pretence of powerlessness…
She likes the sex well enough, and has all the modesty of a panther in heat once her black skirt and crisp white blouse hit the floor—she works as a solicitor’s clerk in one of the commercial developments close to his apartment. Classic librarian. As well as being very handy—she can show up within a few minutes of his call—she will come on command, in any position, can play his cock like a musical instrument with her delicate little fingers and hot little mouth and she has the most receptive arse he can remember sinking his dick into in a long time. And she can keep going for hours. He definitely appreciates stamina.
The first time he brought Susanna here they went through exactly what he wanted from her, again. Susanna knew exactly what would be going on, her part in it, his very particular requirements. If a sub wants to stop at any time she can use a safe word of her choosing and that will do it. No argument, no questions. The deal is that he will stop immediately. If she is getting close to her limit and feels she can’t take much more she can ‘amber light’ and he will respect that, maybe let up a little, take how she’s feeling into account, help her to avoid having to safe word. There was absolutely no coercion. Never. He and Susanna talked it through, she didn’t seem to have any questions—well, she didn’t ask any when he offered her the chance—she didn’t ask for any practices to be taken out or limited, expressed no reservations at all, and she couldn’t get started fast enough.
Susanna is very enthusiastic and experienced, which has been a definite plus—regardless of his preference for the ‘librarian look’ he really can’t do with naïve little virgins for what he has in mind. But it seems that despite all her ‘qualifications’ and feigned enthusiasm for spiced-up fucking, Susanna is really a vanilla at heart. She likes her sex straight and safe, minus the whistles and bells and with plenty of penetration. Nothing wrong with that. It’s just that he doesn’t—well, apart from the penetration—so that’s that.
Three strikes and you’re out, sweetheart. No pun intended…
But you can’t win ‘em all.
Philosophical, he decides it’ll be better to cut his losses with Susanna now. She’s bloody lovely, truly she is, but not for him. He glances ruefully back at her, still stretched temptingly on his bed. Maybe he can just…for old times’ sake?
But he squashes that notion fast. It would be a pity fuck at best. And, even more disturbing, he isn’t entirely sure which of them would be on the receiving end.