by Frost, E J
Emily’s hands flatten on my stomach as she presses close. “Or it might make you a good Dom, just one that focused so much on what your subbies needed that you didn’t always get what you needed. Matthew called that ‘service topping.’ Is that right?”
“Uh-huh. Did Matthew think of himself as a service top?”
“Kind of. I’ve told you he didn’t allow physical intimacy. That was a big part of it. But it was more that he never shared with me. We never talked about him. If he’d had a bad day, he’d tell me about that, but we never talked about why he wanted what we did or how he felt. It was all about me. That made me feel good at the time, but it wasn’t a real relationship. There wasn’t any give-and-take.”
I pat the tree ruefully. “I think I’ve had a decade of not-real relationships. That’s what I was thinking.”
She presses kisses along my spine, warm through my tee. “Miranda and Rachel seem to think what they had with you was real. Maybe those relationships just weren’t everything they could have been.” She pauses to give me more kisses. “If they’d been more real, then you might not still have been looking when you found me. Please don’t be sad. You’ve got me now, and you’re the best Dom I’ve ever had, and the best daddy in the universe.”
That makes me smile into the deepening twilight. “Thank you, little girl. We do have give-and-take, don’t we? Although I feel like it’s been mostly me taking for the last six weeks.”
“That’s not true. You give all the time. You gave me the best reward ever.”
“Yeah? You like your kitty, sweetheart?”
“Sable’s great. I bet they can hear him purring in Syracuse. But it’s more than that. It’s you believing in me, that I’m trustworthy and responsible enough to have a pet. No one’s done that before. Not even my husband. He should have been my biggest cheerleader, and he never was. Not like you are.”
I turn around and take her in my arms. “I always want to be your biggest cheerleader.”
Standing in the darkened garden, with the lingering heat of the summer day and the smells of grass and flowers and baking asphalt, knowing I’m going to lose this place, everything else falls away. None of it matters. What matters is the woman in my arms. Being her biggest cheerleader.
Being her husband.
That’s never mattered to me before. I wanted to marry Miranda, but not because I wanted to be her biggest cheerleader. It was because I wanted to win. I wanted her to choose me over Colin.
What does Emily want? I’m fairly sure she doesn’t want to get married again. She told me she didn’t, right from the start. I’m not sure I can convince her otherwise. I’m not sure I should try. Is it fair for me to push her, or is that me taking again?
I could really use that chat with Niall.
* * *
I’ve only been awake for an hour and I’m already behind schedule.
Yesterday’s physical therapy, a long paddling scene before bed, and the goddamn cat caterwauling at the bedroom door for an hour in the middle of night, shattered me. I overslept, not even cracking an eye open until seven. I trained my body to wake at six when I was in the Navy, and even when I transitioned back into civvy life, I maintained the habit. As soon as I came off the pain meds, I got back on schedule and I’ve held it for the last five weeks without fail.
Waking an hour late should make me feel well-rested. Instead, I’m groggy and grouchy and dragging myself away from my beanie blanket, downstairs to the chilly basement, is more painful than anything since getting out of the San Diego hospital bed for the first time.
An hour on the treadmill and rowing machine and weights is fucking purgatory. I can’t even take out my mood on the punching bag. Anything that swings at my head is off limits for another four months.
Once I’ve pushed myself through the cool down and toweled off, I stand at the bottom of the basement stairs, sourly wondering why I didn’t put in an elevator when I renovated. My ears prick at the sound of singing.
Sounds like Queen.
As I haul myself up the stairs, I catch the words.
“I see a little silhouetto of my Dom.
Scaramouche, scaramouche, we’ll do the horizonal mambo.
Whips and chains and lightning, very, very frightening me.
Fellatio! Fellatio! Fellatio! Fellatio-figaro, suck and blow-o-o-o.”
I make it to the top of the stairs, release the handrail and put my hand over my mouth to stifle my laughter.
“I’m just a poor girl but my Daddy loves me.
She’s just a poor girl, poor little Em-il-ee.
Spare her little bottom when she goes over the knee!
Easy come, easy go, will you let her go?
Bel-phe-gor, no, he will not let her go! Let her go!
Bel-phe-gor, he will not let her go. Let her go!
Bel-phe-gor, he will not let her go. Let her go!
Will not let her go. Let her go! Never, never, never let her go.
Let her go!”
This is my little girl at her best. Zany. Carefree. Utterly adorable.
“Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no!
Oh Daddy de-ar, Daddy de-ar, Daddy de-ar, let her go!
James Ma-di-son has a paddle set aside for me.
For me. For me!”
I can’t stifle it anymore. Emily breaks off when she hears me laughing. I move into my office before I call her. “Emily, come here.”
Her feet patter across the hardwood floor. I sit in my desk chair and spread my knees. When she appears in the doorway, I point to the carpet between my feet with my index and middle fingers.
She rushes over and drops to her knees, immediately arranging herself in Nadu. She’s wearing the little red and white apron she wears when she cooks. Underneath the apron, she has on white fishnet thigh-highs, but nothing else. When the fuck did she get those? That does it. She’s getting fucked. I don’t care how behind schedule and grumpy I am. My little girl deserves a fucking over the desk for being so unbearably cute.
“What was that?” I ask, keeping my face composed and my voice stern.
“Queen, Daddy.”
“I don’t remember Freddy Mercury’s version involving Daddy’s paddle, little girl.”
She peeks up at me, probably gauging whether or not I’m actually irritated, then puts her head back down with a little smile. “It should have, though.”
“Uh-huh. Should it, now? And what was that about a spanking?”
She grins.
“Crazy little girl. Up over the desk. Spread your legs.”
She wriggles from head to toe before she rises and nearly throws herself face down over my desk.
* * *
An hour later, I rub my hand over the warm spot on my desk Emily’s left after a long spanking and even longer fucking. She’s back in the kitchen, singing, although she’s no longer perverting the lyrics, which is kind of disappointing. Sounds like she’s singing to the cat, who is meowing back. Better than that bloody row in the night. I hope we’re not going to have a repeat of that every night. I like the cat, but he’s not sleeping with us, and I don’t care how many hours crying outside the bedroom door it takes for him to accept that hard fact.
Emily sounds happy. She’s certainly not complaining about the rough fucking over my desk, or her now glowing bottom, or the butt plug I’ve put in and told her she’s wearing through the party so she doesn’t forget for a moment who she belongs to.
Her ebullience fills me up, wiping away my grouchiness. When she bounces in a minute later, singing “Fat Bottomed Girls,” and alights next to my desk for a minute to deliver a cup of juiced green shit, I draw her to me and give her a long, deep kiss, before I let her bounce away to finish breakfast.
While she’s cooking, and, mmm, smells like we’re having bacon this morning, which makes the kale or whatever I’m drinking bearable, I check emails and the two voicemail messages that came in last night after I turned off my phone. I haven’t made it a rule, but both Emily and I turn off our
phones before scenes. I don’t care if the world’s burning down. It can wait until we finish.
Max has emailed me back a truly frightening amount of information about Tiger Tail Tech. He got all this from a single website address? Fuck me. I don’t have a website, my business is all referral, and I’m very glad of that at the moment, but I have a couple of social media accounts. I make a note to ask Max to sanitize them. I do not want anyone getting my home address, cell number, date of birth, and annual income just from what I have online.
I note down Damon Tiger’s cell number and address, but as I discover when I listen to my voicemails, I don’t need to. He’s called me.
Tiger answers on the first ring. “Tiger Tail Tech, Damon Tiger speaking.”
Nice and professional. He doesn’t sound at all like a guy who would choke a stranger with a belt while he and Rick were “spit-roasting” her.
“Thanks for calling me back, Mr. Tiger. This is James Logan. I’m an investigator working for Rick Errol. Do you remember him?”
“Oh.” There’s a long silence. “I thought it was about a job. No, sorry, I don’t know, uh, Dick Errol.”
I rub the bridge of my nose. So much for professionalism. “Rick. I think you may have met him at a party last summer on Fire Island. At the Castillo’s house. Do you remember the party?”
“Um, I’m not sure. What’s this about?”
“Rick is trying to reconnect with a woman he met at the party named Laura. Do you know Laura?”
He’s silent. “Laurel,” he says finally.
Bingo. “Laurel? Do you know her last name?”
“Why do you want it?”
He could just be naturally suspicious, although I’d think a naturally suspicious person wouldn’t hop into a drunken threesome. Or he could be part of EvonneBringsTheTruth’s revenge.
“Rick wants to find her,” I say, which is certainly the truth, although certainly not all the truth.
“Been a year plus since that party.”
“Laurel made a big impression on Rick.”
“Yeah? Well, no accounting for taste. He’ll find out soon enough.”
That doesn’t sound good.
“Sorry, I’m not sure what you mean?”
“Means Laurel’s too good for us mere mortals. I don’t know her last name. I met her through Dovie. Devota Donegan, that’s Dovie’s real name, but everyone calls her Dovie. We’ve gotten together a couple of times when Laurel came up to visit Dovie. After that party, I tried to be nice. Treat her like a lady. But she wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
I scratch hurried notes onto my pad. “Devota Donegan, does she live here in New York?”
“Queens, but, yeah.”
“Do you have her address?”
“Sure.” He rattles it off and I write it down. He didn’t have to look it up, which suggests to me that he’s been to Dovie’s house more than once.
“Do you have a number for Dovie?”
“Yeah, I guess I can give you that.”
I try to keep my sigh of relief silent as I write down the cell number he reels off.
“You said Laurel comes up to visit Dovie. Where does she come up from?”
“DC. Somewhere near there. I’m not sure exactly, but I know she works for one of those big lobbyist firms in DC.”
“Is Laurel a lobbyist herself?”
“Junior, but, yeah, that’s what she’s working towards. Big Pharma, I think. She’s not one of the good guys, so I don’t know where she gets off thinking she’s better than the rest of us.”
This guy’s nursing quite a grudge. If his resentment was directed towards Rick instead of Laurel, I’d be talking to my prime suspect.
“When was the last time you saw Laurel?”
“Mmm, probably a little after Easter. Dovie’s birthday party. Dovie mentioned she has a boyfriend now, so she’s not coming up to see her sisters as often.”
Her sisters? “Is Laurel Dovie’s sister?”
“No. Frat sisters. She and Dovie and another girl Dovie lives with were all frat sisters.”
“Sorority sisters? They all went to college together? Do you know what school?”
“Eh, St. John’s? St. James? Something like that. They call it Saint J’s.”
I scribble frantically. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Emily come to the office door. She sweeps her eyes over me, dips a quick curtsey, and backs out, closing the door quietly behind her. Good girl.
“Did they graduate recently?” I ask.
“I dunnow. Why?”
Because I could try to track Laurel down through her school records or alumni association. But I don’t tell Tiger Tail that.
“Just trying to get a sense of her. How old would you say Laurel and Dovie are?”
“Dovie’s twenty-five. At her birthday party, she had these big balloons floating everywhere with the numbers on them. Like she couldn’t remember her own age or something. I’d guess Laurel’s around the same age.”
Thank God she’s not underage, at least. “When she comes up to see Dovie, does she drive or fly?”
“I dunnow. Fly, I think. Why does it matter?”
Because if she drives and he’s seen her car, he could describe it for me and that might be another way to track her down. But I don’t tell him that. “Have you ever seen her car?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Sorry, but I need to ask a couple of personal questions. Have you had sex with Laurel other than at the Fire Island party?”
“I, uh—” He’s silent for a moment and I’m afraid he’s working up to a lie. “Yeah. Whenever she came up to visit Dovie. I called it the R-Train Booty Call. Dovie would let me know she was coming up and I’d take the R-train out. We’d all get together.”
Sounds like Tiger Tail is really into threesomes.
“Then the thing on Fire Island happened,” he continues. “She’s been up maybe a half-dozen times since then, but no booty call. I mean, it wasn’t my fault, right? I wasn’t the one who slapped her.”
For someone who doesn’t remember Rick, he clearly remembers what happened.
“That’s unfair,” I commiserate, although I actually think Dovie and Laurel are well-rid of this d-bag. “Did you talk to either of them? About what happened at the party?”
“What, the porno guy slapping Laurel? Not really. I mean, at the time I tried to comfort her. She was crying. But Dovie was there and she told me to leave Laurel alone, so I did. I was pretty wasted myself. I don’t think we talked about it afterwards.”
No aftercare, either. No wonder this girl is pissed-off.
“Sorry to keep asking personal questions, but as far as you were concerned, was everything between you, Laurel, and Rick consensual?”
“Consensual? What, like, did she ask for it?”
“Yes. I understand things got a little rough even before the slapping. Did it seem consensual to you?”
“Yeah, absolutely. I mean, she wanted the threesome with the porno guy to start with. Before that it’d been Dovie, her, and me. I wouldn’t ever have suggested it. It was fucking hot, don’t get me wrong, but who wants that kind of competition, you know? I didn’t even get the right end.”
Classy. “Okay, so it was her idea and she went into the room with you and Rick voluntarily?”
“Voluntarily?”
I need to stop using the big words with Tiger Tail, clearly.
“Of her own free will. She wasn’t dragged or pulled into the room?”
“I don’t think so, but if she was, it was ’cause we were playing around. We were kissing and maybe I pulled her after me, or maybe the porno guy did. I don’t really remember, but she wasn’t dragged or anything.”
That’s not as clear-cut as I’d like, but better than her being dragged in by a belt around her neck.
“The party itself, was it any special kind of party?” I ask.
“Fourth of July, yeah.”
I’m glad he can’t see my expression. �
�I mean, was it a swingers party or anything like that?”
“Oh, no. I mean, not that I was told. Laurel was the one who got the invite. Her company uses Pedro’s for something. I’m not really sure what. Anyway, she knows him. That’s how we ended up there. Otherwise we’d just have gone to Gantry Plaza, had a picnic, and watched the fireworks. Probably should’ve.”
Since it broke up the R-Train ménage, I’m not surprised he has some regrets.
“Uh-huh. Did you hook up with anyone else at the party? I understand it got a little wild.”
“I didn’t. I crashed out on a couch. I think Dovie might have. She seemed pretty happy when we left, anyway.”
“How did Laurel seem when you left?”
“Okay. Maybe a little quiet but she wasn’t crying or anything.”
Mmm, such a sensitive guy.
“Going back to what happened in the room, did Laurel ever say no or ask you or Rick to stop?”
“No. I mean, I don’t see how she could have. She had my dick down her throat pretty much the whole time.”
That’s what I was worried about.
“Did you have any signal with Laurel to stop if she couldn’t breathe or got into trouble?”
“Uh, no, but she’d have pushed me off if she was choking or something. I’m not an asshole, man. I wouldn’t have kept hammering her throat if she’d tried to get away.”
Good to hear, especially after finding out what else was evidently going on at the party.
“I understand that there was a belt around her throat for some of it. Did she seem okay with that?”
“Yeah. We’d done that before, when it was just her and me and Dovie.”
Thank God, rough play wasn’t new to her. “And being spanked and hit with the belt? Had you done that before?”
“No, that was kind of the porno guy’s thing. Dovie and Laurel were teasing him before we went into the room, asking if he was as mean in real life as he was in his films.”
That tallies with Rick’s memory, too. “Was he?”
“Yeah. It looked pretty mean. I wouldn’t have wanted him to hit me like that, that’s for sure.”