by KD Robichaux
“Color?” I rumble, my hands moving up then stroking down, but this time, I use my thumb to circle her clit, and she cries out.
“Red!” She tries to curl in on herself, but lying on her stomach, she doesn’t have room for much movement. As she begins to panic, it snaps me out of my own passion, and with swift movements, I pick her up, stride to the leather chair against the wall, and curl her into my lap as I sit down, her naked form molding against my chest as she lets out a sob.
“Shh, my sweet. I’ve got you,” I whisper against her hair. I rub her back, the massage oil slick on her skin. As her breathing calms, I know I have to do the Dom thing and talk about what just happened, when all I really want to do is hold her like this forever. “V, I need you to tell me what just happened. Did I just trigger you? You need to help me understand so I know when not to do something.”
Her face buries deeper into my chest, and if she listened, I know she’d hear my heart pounding there. I feel her shake her head. If we were just Corbin and Vi, I’d let her fall asleep in my arms, giving her rest after she’d been put through so much. But I can’t. Right now, we’re Dom and sub, and she has to communicate.
“V, tell me what just happened, or I will punish you,” I demand in my Dom voice, and she stiffens.
“I… you….” She pants for breath, but nothing else comes out.
“On the count of three, V, I will be forced to spank you if you don’t answer me. This is your last chance. One… two…”
“I was about to come!” she cries, and my brow furrows. “You were about to make me come, and… and….” She sobs, and the sound breaks my heart.
“And what, my sweet? What would be wrong with orgasming?” I ask.
I feel her tears soak my shirt, and I hold her tighter. “I’ve… I’m sorry, Sev—Sir. I just… only one man in this entire world has ever given me an orgasm. And even after all this time, even though we’ve been divorced for a decade, I panicked, because it felt like I was… was… ch-chea—” Her body wracks as she cries against my chest, and my heart both swells with love for this woman, and aches for the pain she’s gone through. It hits me at this very moment: she’s loved me all these years. While I’ve tried to hate her all this time, she’s felt nothing but the love she’s always had for me. She gave up her own happiness to protect me, and her love never faded.
“You felt like you were cheating on m— him? Corbin, your ex-husband?” I close my eyes at the thought. My sweet Vi. My beautiful, innocent baby girl. Her pain seeps into me, and all I want to do is take it away. I think about removing my mask, telling her she doesn’t need to feel like she’s cheating on me, because it’s me who was about to make her come, but I can’t. Not now. Not yet. How the fuck would I explain that? She’s too fragile right now. She needs to be stronger before I drop that bomb on her.
“I-I know it sounds completely stupid,” she whimpers, but I’m already shaking my head and shushing her.
“No, V. I know your story, remember? I know you gave him up for his own good. You still love him. I understand why you feel the way you do,” I murmur against her ear.
She sniffles and melts against me. “Thank you, Sir. You really are the closest thing I’ve got to a best friend,” she whispers, and I smile against her hair.
“Yeah. You’re mine too, V.”
After a few minutes of just holding her, when I’m starting to feel nervous things will be awkward when we come out of our embrace, she surprises me. “I’d like to continue with my lesson now. I mean… if I didn’t make it weird.”
“Naw, my sweet. You didn’t make it weird. That’s the beauty of a D/s relationship. The communication between us will be stronger than in a normal relationship. I’ll give you one last choice for the night, and then starting at our next session, you will only be following orders. Understand?”
“Yes, Sir,” she replies, sitting back to look up into my masked face.
“You’re naked. Would you like me to carry you back to the table, or are you comfortable to walk?” I ask, and her eyes widen as if just realizing her state of undress. She looks down at herself, the cups of her bra resting on her stomach below her breasts, and that’s when I finally get my first look at her. I suck in a breath.
Dear Jesus fuck.
Her once A-cup sized breasts are now more than generous handfuls, and I know for a fact they couldn’t have grown that much on their own. She flushes from her scalp to her toes at my hiss and attempts to cover herself by mashing herself up against me.
“You…” What do I say? I can’t exactly ask her anything about her body, seeing how she believes I’m Seth, who never saw her in person before all this. He wouldn’t know that she didn’t used to look like… this. “You have an amazing body, V,” I rumble.
“Th-thanks, Sir. I… no one has seen me naked since….”
“Since your ex?” I finish for her, but that’s not where her mind was.
“Since my assault. Since my augmentation. For a long damn time, really,” she confesses.
There we go. The perfect opportunity. “Your augmentation?”
“Yes, I… it’s the one thing I’ve bought for myself since my books became successful. I’ve always been self-conscious about my body. I always had extremely small breasts, and I always thought it would boost my confidence if I just bit the bullet and got a boob job. So I got one a little less than a year ago. Although I like what I see in the mirror a hell of a lot better than I did before, it still didn’t do anything for my confidence around other people, and I end up just covering them up anyway.” She shrugs.
How the fuck had I missed Vi getting surgery? A little less than a year ago? Was I on a job?
She answers my questions without me having to figure out a way to ask. “Luckily, it didn’t hurt nearly has bad as I thought it would. I went in one morning, was under anesthesia for a total of forty-five minutes, and then left the office as soon as I came out of it. Recovery was forty-eight hours, which I spent at my parents’ house. Easy peezy.”
“I’m sure you were just as beautiful the way you were before, but…” I nod. “…you’re fucking gorgeous, V.”
A smile tugs at her perfect lips. “Thank you, Sir.”
I stare into those mesmerizing green eyes of hers while she takes in my hood. She tilts her head and lifts her hand, placing it against the leather covering my cheek, and my heart thuds. I used to love when she’d look at me like this, her fingers running along the stubble at my jaw.
“What do you look like under there?” she breathes, and it’s more like she’s speaking her internal thought aloud without realizing it.
I don’t want to lie to her. So instead of replying, I stand, lifting her into my arms, and carry her to the padded table. Without being ordered, she returns to her position on her stomach, and I let it slide since I had previously given her the choice.
As I reach for the instrument I plan to use next, she giggles, and my head snaps to her, but her eyes are closed. “What’s funny, V?”
“Sorry. Nothing, Sir. I just realized… you held me. My body was pressed up against yours, naked no less, and I didn’t run. I… I haven’t not run in a long time is all,” she tells me quietly, and my chest swells. God, she still has the ability to warm my perpetually cold heart like no other woman before or since her, and I feel the part of me I once thought completely dead starting to stir inside me, waking from its eternal sleep.
But I have to stay in character. If I were Seven, what would I say to that?
“Yeah, the ladies can’t resist me,” I say in a cocky tone, and she scoffs before letting out another one of her giggles, making me smile. “All right, V. There’s one last thing I wanted to introduce you to tonight. Has your research led you to a Wartenberg wheel?”
“Yes, Sir. Usually made of stainless steel, it’s a circle of evenly spaced pins with a handle that allows you to roll it across the skin. It was initially designed to test nerve sensitivity, to see if someone still had feeling in a place on the
ir body,” she explains.
“Very good. Have you ever felt one before?” I ask, rolling it against the palm of my hand, enjoying the prickly sensation.
“No, I haven’t, Sir,” she replies.
“Okay, well, you’re about to.”
“Yes, Sir,” she breathes, and I smile, because I can tell she’s actually excited about the prospect of experiencing it for the first time.
As not to startle her, I warn her, “You’ll feel my hand on your ankle.” At her nod, I wrap my palm around her tiny ankle. “And now we begin.” I place the wheel on her flesh in the space between my thumb and forefinger, and without applying much pressure, I begin to slowly roll it up her calf, watching the goose bumps rise on her skin.
“Oh,” she moans, and I grin behind my mask.
“Color?” I ask, even though I already know her reaction was a good one.
“Green, Sir,” she replies. “Very, very super green.”
THE NEXT MORNING, I wake up smiling. It’s a foreign feeling. Normally, when my alarm goes off, it’s a battle with the snooze button, depending on how late I stayed up writing. But not today. After leaving the club last night, having made plans with Seven to come again tonight for another training session, I immediately came home, grabbed my vibrator out of my nightstand drawer, and took care of myself. My orgasm hit me within seconds.
Seven used the Wartenberg wheel on me for a few minutes, until I was a writhing mess on his table, and when I started getting that tingling feeling between my thighs and called Yellow, he stopped, not wanting me to get to Red with another panic attack. And then I got to experience aftercare for the first time in my life. It had always been one of my favorite moments in my books to write, when a Dom takes care of his sub after they’re done with a scene, bring her down from her high gently before she has to face reality once more. I was so unbelievably comfortable in Seven’s hands. I didn’t shy away from his touch. It could only be because I’d known him for a year, getting to know him through our messages and his videos of BDSM demonstrations.
During our aftercare, we talked about everything we’d done last night, including my little episode when he almost made me come. I was still embarrassed that it made me feel like I was cheating on Corbin in some way, if another man made me orgasm. I mean, what sense does that make? We’ve been divorced for ten fucking years. I haven’t spoken to him in that long. I had tried to find him in moments of weakness, checking to see if he had a Facebook profile, or Instagram, Twitter… but I always came up short in my search. It’s like he had completely fallen off the planet. I had no idea if he was even still alive. What if I lived with this silly feeling of being unfaithful to him… and he wasn’t even among the living anymore? I mean, you search for anyone in the whole world, and they will at least come up in some sort of Google results. But not Corbin. Not a LinkedIn, nor a Tumblr. No obituary either, though. It’s like he had never even existed at all.
I had voiced all this to Seven, confessing how I have looked for Corbin. He asked me what I would’ve done if I had found him. Would I have told him the truth of what happened all those years ago? I don’t think I would. I just wanted to see if he was alive, if he was happy. If he had found someone else.
Moving away from that subject when he saw it made me sad, he had a suggestion. In order to further my induction into BDSM, I would need to get over the whole orgasm-makes-me-feel-like-I’m-cheating-on-my-ex-and-sends-me-into-panic-mode thing. Seriously. If just a little massage on day one makes me feel like I’ll combust, how the hell would I be able to handle it when we moved on with my lessons? So his suggestion was… pretend he’s Corbin.
At first, I scoffed at him. How fucked up would I be to imagine Seven was my ex-husband in order not to feel guilty about Seven making me orgasm? My head spins just trying to keep that straight in my mind. I mean, I already need therapy. But as I thought about it, and he continued to tell me he didn’t mind, that it wouldn’t hurt his feelings whatsoever, I began to realize it wasn’t such a bad idea. He wears a mask. I have no idea what Seven looks like anyway. So in my mind’s eye, would it really be so bad to pretend it’s Corbin dominating me? And if I imagine it’s Corbin, would I be able to get past the awful feeling I got as my climax so easily built while Seven’s hands were on me? And it wouldn’t have to be forever. Just until I got used to another man making me come. Then I could stop imagining it’s Corbin’s perfect face behind that black hood. It would be the same as what Dr. Walker told me, with the “expression of anger” scene. I could rewrite my script until the past was erased—or at least until it didn’t hurt anymore.
But for the rest of the day, I have a word count to hit. And thanks to Seven, I’m feeling remarkably inspired.
I STARE AT my computer screen, where the image of me holding Vi in my arms in the leather chair against the wall of the playroom has been paused for the last fifteen minutes. Members, including Vi—who signed all the contracts and paid her membership fees yesterday—are aware there are security cameras in all playrooms for their protection. As sexy as it is watching her on my table, as my hands trail all over her body, especially when she was just… about… to come, it’s this image I love the most. Vi curled up in my lap, her beautiful naked body pressed trustingly against my entirely black form. She looks so small, fragile, and I look like an ominous shadow, wrapped around her protectively. It’s not lost on me that it’s the personification of what I’ve been to her the past ten years—a shadow, protecting her from afar.
Maybe I wouldn’t have done it for so long and so obsessively if I hadn’t kept her from being mugged in the first month I started following her. Shit, she has no idea a guy was even trailing her. He had spotted her at the grocery store, and I kept my eyes on him as he slinked around the aisles, staying out of her sight. After she'd paid for her two plastic bags of groceries, she started her trek home two blocks away, completely oblivious she had a tail.
I don’t like to think about what could have happened to my sweet Vivian had I not stopped him from following her inside her apartment building. But hopefully the fucker thinks twice before pulling that shit again, after he woke up naked and beaten to a pulp a couple of alleys away. And yeah, he did wake up. I could tell by all the transactions on his bank account and the e-mails he sent out, which I accessed through his personal information on his driver’s license and his social security card he had in his wallet. He’s now in our “Fuck up one more time and your ass is ours” database.
My phone rings, and I glance at the screen. “Fucking finally,” I grumble, and then answer the call. “Give me good news, Seth.”
“Unfortunately, I can’t, bro. This Alan Fischer dude just fell off the fucking planet. I was able to find his lease agreement for the apartment he used to share with V’s friend Sierra, but after he moved out, absolutely naddah,” he tells me.
“Fuck!” I growl. “Nothing? No social media, no bank transactions…? He was in college with Vi. There’s nothing from his transcripts there?”
“Corb, I’ve been doing this even longer than you, remember? I know all the avenues to look. There’s nothing. It’s like he’s one of us or some shit. Completely wiped clean.”
I sit back in my office chair and rub my hand over my shaved head, letting out a frustrated groan. “Wait… I have an idea.”
“Hit me.”
“Later. Turns out, Vi played FBI agent and tried to find me a while back. From the sound of it, she was pretty damn crafty about it. Searched all sorts of different sites and shit that most people wouldn’t have even thought of. I wonder if she was curious enough to try to look up Fischer,” I say, as I start tapping on my keyboard, logging in to Vi’s computer. I go into her browser history and search for the name Alan. “Bingo.”
“What is it?” Seth asks excitedly.
“Putting you on speaker,” I say, pushing the button for it and setting my phone on my desk so I can use both hands. After a few minutes of looking around her computer, I find a file. “Motherfucker.”
“What? Dude! The suspense is killing me. Quit playing,” he whines.
“Is it odd that I find Vi’s search skills fucking hot as hell?” I question.
“Corb, I swear to God….”
“All right, all right. Looks like Alan Fischer legally changed his name to Kevin Valdaperez when he turned into some D-list movie director in Austin, Texas. Oh, look. How cute. He even has his own IMDB page.” I flip through the pictures on the website, screenshots of his low-budget horror flick mixed in with images of the motherfucking rapist himself on the red carpet, some coked-out skank on his arm while he grins into the camera. “Jesus fuck,” I breathe. “You ever look into someone’s eyes and just know they’re fucking evil?”
“Every time I take a job, bro,” he confirms.
“I mean, I’ve seen some pretty malevolent-looking people in our line of work… but this guy….” I send Seth the picture of Alan on my screen and wait for him to open it.
“Dude.”
“Yeah.”
“He looks like he doesn’t have a soul. Like, not even fucking around,” Seth says, his voice conveying the same creeped-out feeling I have the longer I look into Alan’s almost-black eyes. They’re so wide you can see the whites all the way around his irises, looking almost wild as he… I guess you would call that a smile? “I mean, we ain’t no punk-ass bitches, Corb. But that dude is fucking creepy.”
“Yeah. And that’s the motherfucker who raped my wife,” I murmur, as a mix of sadness, anger, and full-on determination fills me. “His ass is mine.”
“HOP RIGHT UP here, my sweet,” Seven tells me, patting his hand in the center of the padded leather table in the playroom.
“Yes, Sir.” I climb atop the soft surface and sit Indian-style, waiting for my next instruction.
“As adorable as you are sitting like that, I prefer a more classic submissive position when greeted. First, sit up on your knees,” he commands, holding his hand out for me to grasp for balance as I do what he said. As I place my fingers into his palm, an electric current shoots up my arm and down into my gut, setting off the butterflies that had taken up residence there whenever I started coming to Club Alias. “Good girl. Now, flatten the tops of your feet against the table then sit back on your heels. It’ll feel awkward at first, but you can adjust your knees and feet until it feels more comfortable, and then it’ll become second nature. A little discomfort is actually a good thing though, because it’ll heighten your awareness. Too relaxed, and you could get sloppy, forgetting your job as a submissive.”