by Livia Grant
“Think you can do something with that?” Chase challenged.
“I’m sure I can figure it out.” Gathering the box in his arms, Noah started to turn, but stopped. “Oi, one more thing?”
Chase’s smile faded slightly. “Yes?”
“I can do this myself, sure,” Noah drawled, “but I could do it better and make it more fun for my subby and myself if I had a helper.” He grinned. “I forgot my manners last time. I just wanted to make sure I ask for my helper right and proper this time.”
Drawing a breath, Chase looked to Hadlee and then past her, the direction of his increasingly resigned stare wandering out into the crowd until he found the quiet spot where Garreth stood watching. “I suppose you’ve got someone in mind already?”
“Well, we’ve already got a good working repertoire, I suppose you could say,” Noah acknowledged, following the direction of his gaze. “Plus, he makes my subby relax. Nothing could be more important than that, right?”
Shaking his head, Chase visibly gave up. “Garreth. Your help is needed with a scene, if you’re available.”
The blush that burned Hadlee’s cheeks at the mention of his name went straight to her stomach once she saw Garreth making his way back to the stage. He came up the steps as if he expected everyone to burst out a laughing with a ‘Just kidding!’
“Doing what exactly?” he asked.
Noah snuck around her to give him a peek into the box. They already announced it was food play. Hadlee didn’t understand the secrecy, anyway. There was only so much a person could do with food. She’d never tried it before, but she had seen it and even taken part when, a few months back, another dom at Black Light turned his submissive into a meat, cheese and vegetable platter, complete with ranch dip in cups between her legs. When they were done, the audience had been invited to eat off her. Beyond that, Hadlee’s experience with food play involved the movie 9 ½ Weeks. Neither explained the look Noah and Garreth shared right before they turned and looked at her.
“I’m in,” Garreth said simply. Her acrobatic stomach ran a gamut of flips and tricks. “We’ll need a wide space. I’ll get the plastic sheeting.”
Plastic sheeting?
“Can I see?” Hadlee took a hesitant step forward, but Noah closed the box.
“Now, now,” he chided. “Not until we’re ready.”
She frowned, but he had control of the box and its mystery of contents, which left her with nothing to do but follow when he beckoned her off stage. Garreth went in search of plastic and Hadlee trailed behind Noah, passing station after packed station, all the way to a quiet corner by the rear emergency door, which was the only place in the whole of the dungeon currently not seeing much use. Only two people were back here, both members of the audience illicitly tucked up into the shadows. The male sub was kneeling. Holding onto the back of his head, his master guided his movements right up until Garreth returned with the plastic.
“Back to the tables,” Garreth told them bluntly. “The floor’s closed tonight, and you both know it.”
Zipping back into his pants, the master hauled his boy to his feet by his collar and they disappeared back into the crowd. But Hadlee took advantage of Noah’s and Garreth’s temporary distraction to peek inside the box.
“Curiosity, kitten,” Noah warned.
Curiosity, nothing. Hadlee knew what she was looking at the minute she recognized what all those shadowy containers were—Hershey’s chocolate syrup, vanilla bean ice cream, crunchy peanut butter, whipped cream in a can, a half-gallon of banana-flavored milk, whole bananas, and two Tupperware containers full of smashed strawberries and diced pineapple respectively. The cold items were fresh from the fridge, she knew because condensation was only just beginning to bead up each condiment. Non-refrigerated items, like the sprinkles and nuts, didn’t have that, although all were brand new, unopened bottles.
“I can’t eat half of this,” she said as Garreth came to collect the box. She jumped, not at all braced for the stinging swat he landed full across the center of her buttocks.
“No one asked you to. Strip.”
She startled. “What?”
“You heard him,” Noah called, spreading the plastic out on the floor before grabbing a spare folding chair from a stack of extras in the corner. He thunked it down in the center of the sheet. His leer was positively wolfish. “Everything off, right on down to the juicy little tidbits.”
“Unless you want to ruin your clothes,” Garreth added.
Hadlee looked down at herself, at the stockings and garter peeking out beneath the lower edge of her shrouding blanket. She stared again at the sundae contents Garreth was now unpacking, and the realization dawned. She wasn’t going to eat all that; she was going to wear it.
“Uh,” she stammered, hitting that moment of shock where she couldn’t conjure up words enough to argue with. She took a giant retreating step back from both the plastic and the chair, shaking her head. “I-I—”
Noah straightened, hands on his hips, a little surprised. “What’s the problem, luv?”
“She doesn’t like getting dirty,” Garreth answered for her.
Not ‘liking’ didn’t come close. Even before Ethen, Hadlee had always been very clean. She showered twice a day, every day—first thing after she got done exercising and right before she went to bed at night. Sometimes it was three times, especially during the hot summer months or if she went to the beach or the pool. Her hands she washed all day long, whenever she touched something wet, or dirty, or sticky, or food related. When cooking, her hands got washed dozens of times.
“If it’s not dirty, it’s not done right,” Noah joked, but Hadlee didn’t feel like laughing.
“Front and center,” Garreth said, as he finished unpacking the food box on a small portable black table.
Hadlee dragged her gaze off all that sticky stuff. It wasn’t that she was afraid, she told herself. She wasn’t. Truly. She just didn’t want to do it. “Why?”
“You heard me.” Tossing the box well out of tripping range, he beckoned with two fingers and then pointed to a spot on the floor directly before him.
A creepy prickling dread tickled up her back. It had been a long time since her obedience had last been commanded quite like that. Garreth wasn’t Ethen, Hadlee had to remind herself before she forced herself to move toward him. He didn’t grab her arm as soon as she was in reach. He didn’t grab the back of her hair, either, or stare her down with that icy glare that was only half the punishment. The other half always came later, at bedtime when she was ordered out to the pig wallow.
Her skin crawled, but still she stood before Garreth, telling herself over and over again that he wasn’t Ethen. Neither were the sundae condiments. It was ridiculous how, at this moment, she couldn’t tell which made her more uncomfortable.
“Do you want to stop?” Garreth asked. He said it so quietly, it was hard not to be ashamed.
“No.” That was true, too. She didn’t want to give up. The whole point of tonight had been to prove to herself that she was still the same person now that she had been before Ethen, but so far what had she proved? She hadn’t taken more than two strokes from Noah’s whip before she wimped out and she was so worried about where Ethen was and what he was doing or saying that she couldn’t get in the right headspace. And now, this? Compared to her last scene, it was almost ludicrous that ice cream and chocolate syrup was making her itch to quit.
“Do you want to keep going?” Garreth asked again.
Hadlee prickled, her growing discomfort turning instantly defensive. “Why do you keep asking me that? I already said yes. What more do you expect?”
Something in the back of Garreth’s eyes flashed at her tone, but he kept his own calm and patient. “I expect you to say ‘Yes, sir’, and take off all your clothes. My concern is that you’re not saying that, you’re not doing as you were told, and this is a pretty easy scene.”
“For you,” she countered. “You’re not the one getting doused in al
l—” She couldn’t even make herself look at that gathering of bottles. “—that.” She hugged her arms, promptly feeling foolish and infantile for arguing. This wasn’t Garreth’s fault. It wasn’t Noah’s either. Neither dom was forcing her to do this scene; she was the one who’d spun it. It wasn’t like she didn’t have a choice either. She had choices. She had two; play the game or quit, but there was no point in arguing, especially when she never would have dreamed of arguing with Ethen. The few times she’d tried had been every bit as humiliating as it would be to stand on that sheet of plastic—
Like a Piggy in a mud wallow…
—with Hershey’s syrup—
Shit, food rot, and filth…
—flowing over every inch of her. Tears threatened, she tried to blink them back, but she wasn’t very successful. One trickled free. She swiped it from her cheek before it fell very far, but he’d definitely seen it.
“Don’t bring him into this,” Garreth told her. “Don’t you dare. This has got nothing to do with him.”
“I know,” she said thickly, but knowing and putting it into practice were two very different things. She was failing—both herself and Garreth; she was failing everything.
The need to run made her step back, but Garreth caught the folds of the blanket that still wrapped her and yanked her back where he’d told her to stand. He didn’t do it gently. She was almost grateful for that. Doms should be tough. They should be strong. They shouldn’t have to put up with the bullshit of stupid submissive insecurities, and that was exactly what this was.
Jesus, now she was crying. And for what? Because she was faced either with failing herself or getting sticky?
“Look at me.”
She couldn’t. She folded her arms tight across her chest, as if the force of her grip now were the only thing keeping her together.
He didn’t let her not obey, however. In the last few months, he’d been so willing to let her shy away, but this Garreth, the one that grabbed her chin and forced her gaze to his, so she could do nothing but wallow in the disapproving frown he bathed her in—this Garreth was like the Garreth who had, at a phone call from someone he had at that point barely known, rushed out in the freezing cold, in the middle of the night, to the middle of nowhere, and rescued her out of an abandoned gas station phonebooth. This was the one who had bundled her into his car, wrapped her in an emergency blanket that smelled like the spare tire in his trunk, and then who had held her while she fell apart in the bottom of her own stupid shower. He hadn’t said one word to her back then, but he had a thing or two to say now.
“I said, look at me,” he snapped, and it was that no-nonsense harshness that cut through her self-pity, party of one.
Hadlee forced herself to meet his stare and not wilt beneath its frowning weight.
“This isn’t about him,” Garreth emphasized. “This isn’t about humiliation. This is about you and me.”
Someone behind her cleared his throat.
Garreth almost rolled his eyes before grudgingly admitting, “Yeah, all right. And Noah.”
Content to be included, Noah didn’t take offense. “Love you too, mate.”
“You can say no,” Garreth continued without softening. “We’ll pack it up and go home, if that’s what you want. But I’m beginning to see you’ll wear that failure like a collar, putting it on in future moments as uncomfortable as this one and tightening it down until it chokes you.”
She almost laughed. It had to be her eyes. God, she hated it when they showed more than she wanted them to.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Garreth challenged.
Hadlee shook her head, and then shrugged. “I can’t,” she admitted. It surprised her how freeing it felt to say that, when in the past admissions like that had tasted so bitter.
“Then repeat after me.” Letting go of her, Garreth said, “We’re going to do this scene.”
She felt like an idiot. A corner of her mouth twitched into a self-depreciating smile of embarrassment. “We’re going to do this scene,” she obediently echoed.
“You’re going to be blindfolded.”
Her insides tightened. “I’m going to be blindfolded.”
“We’re going to tie your ankles and wrists to the legs of the chair.”
“You—” She shuddered. “Y-you’re going to tie me to the chair.”
“And we’re going to turn you into a sundae.”
She almost laughed again. The feelings being evoked were very real, but it seemed so pathetic to be afraid of something that sounded that silly when she said it out loud. “I’m going to be a sundae.” Groaning, she buried her face in both hands. “This is so not my kink.”
Already the need to run and wash was itching at her. Bending her head, she tried to ignore it as she shed her blanket and removed the last of her clothes. Blushing all the way to the roots of her hair, she made herself completely vulnerable in front of the man who had, against all her better judgment, become the most important man in her life. Funny, how she felt so much more exposed before Garreth’s eyes, than she did in front of either Noah or the audience of people watching from the sidelines. They were seeing all the same things. All the minute flaws she saw in her body—the breasts that weren’t as pert as they used to be, the extra jiggle in her stomach and her thighs, the curve of her bottom, which hadn’t performed a single squat since she abandoned both Ethen and his damn-near militarian exercise routines.
“Look at me,” Garreth said again, softer once more, but no less the dom than he had ever been.
A flush of warmth moved through her as she obeyed. Her nipples tightened, aching to feel the caress of his wandering gaze or his hands, the way he’d plucked and tweaked at them back when she’d been bound to the hoist and been every bit as disinclined to evade his touch as she was now. Not just because of the pulsing need growing in the heavy flesh of her breasts and between her legs, but because his touch would have been comforting.
“You’re beautiful,” Garreth told her.
Hadlee melted, all the way into the chair Noah placed in the center of that plastic tarp. Within a few short minutes of sitting down, her ankles were fixed not to the front of the chair’s legs, but to the rear ones—a move that forced her legs wide apart. Which meant Garreth didn’t have anywhere near the problems in touching her that she’d thought he might, something he proved just as soon as she was fastened down. Every muscle locked when he slipped his hand down between her thighs. Her knees tried to close. Had her feet been tied to the front legs, she might have managed it.
“Smart,” Garreth admitted to Noah, who tapped his head with a smile before he finished buckling her into the wrist cuffs. Those he fastened together behind her, with a length of chain drawing her arms down through the opening in the back of the folding chair. He hooked the end to the support bar that linked the rear legs, which didn’t give her a whole lot of wiggle room. Although she could lean forward a short few inches, leaning to either side was easier, but threw her off balance. Had Noah and Garreth not caught her the one time she tested her range of movement, both she and the chair would have fallen over. She had to remember not to do that once they got started.
“Ready?” Garreth asked, straightening all the parts of the tarp that had gotten kicked up while they’d been buckling her down.
“Almost.” Digging into his bag, Noah chuckled as he came up with the final restraint. “Look what we forgot.”
“Oh God,” Hadlee groaned, as she took in the blindfold he dangled at her.
Giving her chin a light, two-fingered chuck, Noah pulled the elastic band of the disposable night mask over her eyes. It was soft, the thick black cloth cutting out all light, all movement, all sight of where they were and what they were doing… cutting out everything except the growing prickles of her own nervousness. As if on cue, a hand come to rest on each of her thighs. One was Noah’s, she suddenly realized. It was rougher, more calloused. The other, slightly bigger with thicker, blockish fingers, was Garreth’s and she knew
that only because when both men leaned into her, the warmth of their chests brushing against opposite arms, she recognized Garreth’s scent. She’d been smelling it all night, she just hadn’t paid it much mind until now, when smelling was all she could do. Hadlee shivered under the heat of their synchronized breaths as they each whispered to her.
“Let’s get started, yeah?” Noah asked right as Garreth seductively growled, “You’re mine.”
For tonight went unsaid, but it didn’t matter. Hadlee melted all over again anyway.
Chapter 6
“The foundation of all good sundaes is, of course, the ice cream,” Noah said, somewhere to her right.
Blindfolded, bound hand and foot to the cold metal folding chair, without a stitch of clothing to protect her, all Hadlee could do was listen to the scrape of a spoon against the cardboard side of a food container. Her skin crawled, but only partly due to revulsion. This wasn’t just going to be dirty, it was going to be cold and the room was cool enough already. There were a lot of people here tonight. The overhead vents were blowing in an effort to counter the rising accumulation of so many bodies packed into the dungeon proper. Their little scene was tucked in a corner too small to accommodate the tables spread out between the bar and the stage. But there were chairs. Lots of them, spread out around the walls between the stations so people could watch in comfort, regardless how long a scene stretched out. She’d become so caught up in those whispers of movement—the shuffling of feet as people waited impatiently for something to happen, the occasional murmur of conversation or cough—that she completely missed the much more relevant sounds made by Garreth. It wasn’t until she felt the heady pinch of his fingers catching the tip of her left breast, rolling the nipple between them until it stiffened, that she realized it wasn’t the scrape of the spoon that she ought to be wary of. It was the bite of the metal clamp that latched onto her nipple the minute Garreth took his fingers away.
She gasped, and then louder still because even the pressure of that clamp settling into her flesh was no match for the cold, wet glob that suddenly bumped up under her chin before gliding a slow and deliberate trail down the side of her neck, sweeping around her shoulders before finally coming to rest in the hollow between her collar bones.