Pieces of Stronghold

by Golden Angel

  Her ass was throbbing, burning, and she knew that next time it could be worse, but she didn't feel like running. She didn't love Patrick any less. If anything, she felt more in love with him than ever. It made her feel more secure than ever. Because he cared enough to punish her, rather than ending the relationship because she wasn't fitting into the super submissive mold that most people always thought he wanted.

  So even though her ass was on fire and she wouldn't be able to sit comfortably for the rest of the day, and maybe not even tomorrow, even though the punishment hadn't aroused her in the slightest bit, she was incredibly happy to just stand in that corner and revel in the quiet that filled her mind. Tear tracks stained her face, but her heart felt lighter, the burdens that she'd been carrying around, all unknowingly, had been lifted.

  ******

  There was something different about the way she was standing. Straighter, maybe. But relaxed too.

  "Lexie, come here."

  She turned and practically ran to him, standing between his legs and throwing her arms around his shoulders as she burrowed her head into the crook of his neck. Patrick couldn't help but smile that she wasn't curling into his lap, the way she usually liked to do after a spanking. Apparently, he'd made enough of an impression on her ass that she couldn't ignore the after effects.

  "I'm sorry, Master," she murmured, nuzzling against him as she rested her knee against his chair. She squeaked as he pulled her onto his lap, wincing as her butt rubbed over his leathers, but even then she didn't protest. The little "ow ow ow"s that she muttered were pretty damn cute though.

  "Next time you intentionally disobey me in the club, it'll be the paddle, Lexie," he said, although his tone was gentle. A little shudder went through her slim body. He'd used the paddle on her before, but not during a real punishment. It was obvious she realized how much more that would hurt, even compared to what she was feeling right now.

  "I'm sorry," she repeated, tucking her head under his chin. The way she often liked to do when she wanted to talk but she didn't want to look at his expression. Patrick had discovered that Lexie sometimes found it easier to open up when she was being cuddled, but couldn't actually see his face. "I won't do it again. I think I was testing you."

  "Testing me?"

  "I didn't mean to," she said earnestly. Her hand rubbed up and down from his shoulder to his elbow, caressing him soothingly, but also as if she wanted to make sure he wasn't going to move or push her away. "I didn't even realize it until just now, when I was in the corner. It's not that I wanted to get in trouble, exactly, but I think some part of me keeps wondering if I'm not giving you everything you need... or if I might be too bratty for you. I've heard people saying-"

  "Oh Pixie." He wrapped his arms around her tightly, squeezing her so hard that her hot little butt was practically lifted off of his thighs. Patrick knew what people were saying. "I'm easier on you because I want to be. Because I don't like punishing you, and because, most of the time, you don't deserve it. I like that you're willing to step up and speak your mind. If you'd just stayed on your stool, I probably wouldn't have even really punished you for talking to Roland the way you did. He was being an ass."

  "You still would have made me apologize though," she said grumpily, as if that was the worse punishment.

  Patrick chuckled. "Yes, I would have, because he's still a Dom, even if he is a newbie Dom, but once we got back in here, you would have gotten a much more fun spanking."

  "But that's just it," Lexie said, her voice slightly muffled as she pressed her face into his chest. "I wanted a real punishment. I needed to know that I could handle it. And I did." She sounded proud of herself.

  Crazy woman. "If you really need punishments more often..."

  "No, nope," she said hurried, squirming back to look him in the eye, and wincing as her butt wiggled against his lap. "I'm good now; I’m very reassured that you still want me around, and that I can give you what you need."

  It was hard not to roll his eyes at that, but she was so earnest that he didn't want to make fun of her. "You always give me what I need, Pixie."

  "You say that, but if I didn't, it's not like it would be easy for you to break up with me," she said, huffing a little. "There'd be a line to kick your ass, starting with your best friend."

  "I could take them," he said confidently. Lexie giggled and smacked his chest with her palm.

  Grabbing her wrist, Patrick growled at her, pushing her off his lap and onto her knees on the floor in front of him. She gave a little sigh of relief as her beaten bottom was exposed to the air again, instead of being pressed up against his hard thigh.

  "Alright, little brat, if you don't want me taking on all our friends, you'll have to show me exactly why it's worth having you around."

  Lexie's eyes lit up, like she'd just been offered candy. His cock pulsed. Since spanking her, his arousal had been sliding back and forth, and he was now definitely turned on. Delicate, slim fingers undid the front of his pants and wrapped around his shaft, pulling him free of the fabric.

  He groaned as she licked him from base to crown, right along the sensitive underside, her eyes locked onto his face. That little pink tongue lapped around the dark purplish-brown head before she opened her lips and pulled him inside. Leaning back in his chair, he put his hands behind his head, watching as Lexie began to bob her head up and down. With her lips tightly wrapped around his shaft, her tongue sliding over the sensitive head, and one hand gently rolling his balls, Patrick was in fucking heaven.

  As always, he did his best to stay there for as long as he could.

  Chapter 4 - Kate

  "Oh thank god," Kate said, brushing a wisp of light blonde hair out of her sapphire blue eyes as she reached for her ringing phone. Her back practically creaked as she straightened up, and her knees ached and protested. Packing was the worst, and the phone provided a welcome distraction, especially because it was her best friend Sharon's ringtone. "Hello?"

  "You'd better be packing, missy."

  Kate rolled her eyes and laughed, flopping down on the couch. "I'm almost done, I promise."

  The entire room was filled with taped up boxes, all of them scrawled with her looping handwriting, describing what was in each of them. The sun was coming in the windows now, which meant that it must be late afternoon. Kate was going to miss that gorgeous California sun.

  "Good. Ugh, I cannot believe how much I miss you!"

  "It's only been a few weeks!"

  "You know how much I hate living on my own." Even though she couldn't see Sharon, Kate knew her friend was pouting.

  Yeah, she knew exactly how much Sharon hated living on her own. Five years ago Kate had answered a Craig's List ad for a roommate and had been shocked to find the apartment to be absolutely gigantic and the current inhabitant in absolutely no need of a roommate for financial reasons. Sharon was a trust fund baby whose parents were filthy rich, although often absent as they traveled around the world to the various businesses they owned. Despite that, Sharon was one of the most sweet, generous, down-to-earth people that Kate had ever met; she just had the habit of throwing money around to get what she wanted.

  Sharon had also tried to pay for everything else on top of the apartment, especially once she'd found out that Kate was a student with absentee parents, but Kate had insisted on at least paying what the ad had asked for. After all, it hadn't been much. Sharon had low balled the price like crazy, because she wanted someone to share her apartment with more than she wanted someone to help pay for it.

  "So clingy," she teased. "I'm surprised you haven't replaced me with a new best friend already."

  Sharon gasped in mock outrage. "I would never! Although, I've thought about it. There are some super sweet girls at that club you told me I should check out."

  Stronghold. A yearning wistfulness rose up inside of Kate, as it always did when Sharon mentioned the club. Not that Kate had ever been, but she’d known the owner in the past and she’d also known Sharon would be safe
there. Kate had no doubt that a lot of her old friends frequented Stronghold, all of them really good guys, even if she hadn’t seen – or even talked – to any of them in five years. Since Sharon hadn’t known the area at all and had wanted to go to a BDSM club, that was the only place Kate had trusted Sharon to go to without her. Some of the clubs that Sharon had dragged her to in L.A. had been pretty shady, and she'd wanted to make sure Sharon was safe when Kate wasn't there to watch out for her.

  "You could always replace me with a man," Kate teased.

  "Please." Sharon snorted and then sighed. "I'm starting to think that maybe I'm not actually submissive. Or maybe the kind of dominant I want just doesn't go to the clubs. I'm just so over the yes Sir, no Sir, give me orders Sir thing. Can't one of them just bend me over and fuck me hard without having to boss me around first? Is it so much to ask for a man to just grab me, hold me down and fuck me? The talking is killing me! I finally gave Master Maniacal a chance last night, and we talked for freaking half an hour before he'd even spank me. I don’t want to talk, I just want to do. I might have to change his nickname to Master Meh."

  Kate burst out laughing. One of her favorite things about Sharon was the various nicknames that she'd come up for people at the clubs. It helped her keep track of them when she didn't know their actual names, but sometimes they were less than complimentary. Knowing that Sharon could be kind of judgy, Kate had specifically asked not to know the real names of the Doms that Sharon had nicknamed. She didn't want to pre-judge before she could get there and meet any of them for herself. Plus, there was always the chance that she would already know some of them.

  "Seriously though... other than Master Maniacal, only Crusty Cock and the Speedy Spanker asked me if I wanted to scene. I'm running out of options over here," Sharon whined. "It's even worse because everyone reassures me that Stronghold is definitely the place to be in this area, so it's not like I can just hop around to another spot."

  Which is what Sharon would have done in L.A. Although, Kate doubted that Sharon would do that unless she had someone to go with her anyway. The girl was rabidly co-dependent about some things.

  "You sure you don't want to give the Speedy Spanker another chance?" Kate teased. "And Crusty Cock's dick might be crusty, but he probably knows what he's doing with all that practice."

  The Speedy Spanker was one of the first guys that Sharon had scened with when she'd moved to D.C., and he was constantly asking her to scene again. His nickname was because Sharon had said that he spanked hard and fast, and the scene had been over within half an hour, too fast for her to mentally get into the scene. It had left her breathless, and not in a good way. Crusty Cock was apparently the club man-whore, and Sharon refused to scene with him on principal. She was looking for a relationship. Plus, he was supposed to be a sadist, although Sharon had said he was willing to play with any pussy he could find. Even though the club had the usual policies on safe sex and having its members tested, the nickname had stuck.

  "What about Hot Chocolate?" Kate asked, referring to the bouncer that Sharon had been drooling over, even though she said he was too big for her. At 5'1", most guys were too big for Sharon, but that had yet to stop her as far as Kate had noticed.

  "Apparently he's on the rebound from a Heinously Evil Ex, and possibly already interested in someone else," Sharon said with the same heaving sigh that she always did whenever Hot Chocolate was mentioned. Kate grinned, wondering if Sharon was fanning herself with her hand, the way she often did when she thought a guy was particularly sexy. "Why are all the good ones taken or man-whores?"

  "Well it is a BDSM sex club."

  "Sex is not a required part of a scene. Not that I'd say no at this point. I'm on the verge of growing back my virginity," Sharon stated dramatically. Well, dramatically for her, since she tended to do everything dramatically.

  "I'm pretty sure that's what dildos are for."

  "It's not the same."

  Kate sighed. "No, it isn't."

  She hadn't had sex in about the same amount of time that Sharon had - a little over a month. Ever since she and Paul had broken up when she'd made the decision to move back east with Sharon. It wasn't that she hadn't liked Paul, she had, a lot, but they'd only been together about six months, and she found herself wanting to go back to Maryland more than she wanted to stay and find out where a relationship with him could go. He was a good guy, a good Dom, and a skilled sadist, but neither of them had been particularly broken up about the break up. They hadn't fallen in love, and she couldn't help but wonder if she'd been holding back because she'd somehow known that she wasn't going to be on the West Coast for much longer.

  Although she could have gone to one of the Cali clubs it wasn't the same without Sharon. She was too cautious to go by herself; she needed the back up. Not because she didn't trust the Doms or the dungeon monitors, but because she didn't trust herself. She knew exactly what happened when she completely gave herself over to a scene, when she let go of her control completely, and she had the scar to prove it.

  She spent the next twenty minutes on the phone with Sharon, missing her best friend and roommate more than ever. Not only that, but she missed the East Coast. Sharon whined about how freaking cold it was, the flurries that fell, the ice and the blizzard warnings, and it made Kate's chest ache. She missed the seasons. She missed the snow and the cold and the ice. While she loved the weather in L.A., there was some part of her that craved the seasons she'd grown up with. Even if some of them seemed kinda awful when they were happening; complaining about them was part of the love.

  "Alright, I've gotta go," Sharon said, sighing. "I miss you, Barbie Girl."

  Kate smiled, her heart aching a bit. "I miss you too, Little Italy." Their nicknames for each other always made her smile. Sharon had dubbed her Barbie Girl the second they'd met, because Kate was tall with long blonde hair, blue eyes, and a slim hourglass figure that the Hollywood starlets hated her for. The complete opposite of Sharon's petite, curvy, olive-skinned, dark hair and eyes, compliments of her Italian heritage. Kate wasn't as good at coming up with nicknames, but it was appropriate. "Just two more weeks and then we can play in the snow together."

  "If it snows," Sharon said, her skepticism loud and clear. "They keep saying it's going to snow and the most we get is freezing rain or flurries."

  "Now you sound like a real Marylander," Kate teased.

  "Ugh, shut up. Love you, mean it." Sharon hung up the phone without actually saying goodbye, leaving Kate giggling. God she missed her roommate.

  She sat on the couch, wallowing a little bit in her loneliness. But two weeks really wasn't a long time, and then she'd be back east. Back to rooming with Sharon. Back to seeing her sister again. Back to old friends that she'd lost touch with.

  Part of her wondered if she might run back into her ex while she was there too. If he was in the area, she knew he’d be at Stronghold. But the last she'd heard, he was in New York. So probably not.

  Chapter 5 - Leigh & Jared

  "So... is it a date? Or not?"

  One downside to Christmas break, it meant that there was no escape from Angel. Since she mostly taught her classes in the evenings and worked from home during the day, she was free to bug Leigh as much as she wanted to. Leigh sighed in exasperation, resisting the urge to throw something at her friend. Not that there was anything around she could actually throw, since they were both sitting in massage chairs, getting pedicures.

  The two women at their feet had fallen silent, obviously listening in. Not that it mattered; nail salons were always rife with people talking as if the manicurists couldn't hear what was being said. As far as Leigh knew, it wasn't like the women went out telling the world. Although, she bet they overheard some really interesting things.

  "Not," Leigh replied, well aware of how uncertain she sounded. "I'm pretty sure it's not. We're just hanging out. We've hung out before, it's not a big deal."

  Angel gave her a look. "Yes, but this is the first time you're 'hanging out' ju
st the two of you," she said, making derisive little quotation marks with her fingers. Leigh didn't know how Angel managed to make finger quotes look derisive, but she did. "And you like him."

  "I mean... yeah, but I don't... I'm not..." Leigh gave an exasperated sigh and glared at her friend, who was nodding skeptically every time Leigh stuttered. "We're not going to be sleeping together. If it is a date, then it's just a date. I like him, but I'm not looking for anything serious."

  "You don't want anything serious." Angel sounded a little skeptical.

  "No, I don't. Why would I? I just got out of a serious relationship barely a few months ago. I'm allowed to want to date casually."

  The look Angel gave her practically had Leigh wilting in her chair. "You're not a casual dater Leigh. You suck at it."

  "So? Maybe that's because I was trying to do it with guys that I didn't care about. Maybe I just needed the slutty period." Which was what she called her little slew of one night stands. Heck, she'd almost caught up to Angel's "number" within a matter of months. She was feeling defensive, and she wasn't quite sure why. "I can casual date Jared if I want. Although, I'm not even sure that's what's happening tonight. We're just hanging out."

  "What are you doing tonight?"

  "Just having dinner. I was going to see if he wants to watch a meteor shower afterwards. It's the peak of the Geminids tonight."

  "That'll be cold."

  Leigh shrugged. "I just thought it might be fun. Different. Michael never wanted to go watch meteor showers with me."

  "Kind of romantic."

  "That doesn't bother me."

  "Because you see Jared as safe."

  "Exactly."

  Safe. Fun. Made her feel a little giggly, which she liked. But also still not ready for a real relationship. They were on exactly the same page, unlike the guys she'd slept with, all of whom had wanted more than just one night. She didn't regret any of those nights; Michael had broken up with her so that he could get more experience, and Leigh hadn't seen why she couldn't do the same. But Angel was right, she'd gotten tired of it after a while. Not of the sex, but of the men wanting more when she didn't. It was too much hassle to deal with their emotions when she was struggling with her own, especially when it had been clear before they'd slept together that it wasn't supposed to be serious.