by Roxy Harte
Pushed up on his arms, no weight touches me, only the teasing brush of his solid cock against my belly as he lifts my arms one by one above my head, finally placing my hands one on top of the other as if I were bound, but I’m not. Trapped by the fire glowing within his eyes, the truth is I am bound more securely by his mere look than if steel encased my wrists. Even before he growled, “Don’t move,” I would have obeyed the silent command coming from deep within his eyes.
Shifting his body, he drops kisses along the length of each arm, tickling my flesh and soothing the ultrasensitive skin running down the insides of my arms as he works his way from palm to armpit. Lifting just enough for his eyes to offer challenge, he dares me to move before his tongue and lips descend once more on that most sensitive flesh under my arm, his tongue laving, teeth biting. To say it tickles would be absurd, the sensation more than being tickled, an electric jolt that shoots down my spine and deep into my empty womb, making my pussy twitch and parts deeper spasm.
A keening fills my throat as I force myself to remain still, else surely I would awaken. Still sucking and licking and biting my underarm, his long length plunges between my parted thighs, not entering me, just rubbing me, touching just enough for a sudden, explosive orgasm to rock my body and fill the night with my screams.
* * * * *
I awaken to searing light and squeeze my eyes tightly closed, wishing ouzo was never invented. It registers that it must be late in the day for the sun to be streaming in the west-facing windows so brightly, however, I keep my eyelids pressed tightly together, not really caring what time it is, knowing the sun will set soon enough.
Flinging my arm over my eyes for good measure, I snuggle deeper under the covers, wanting only to return to the dream, to Luka…to Master.
Remembering just for a second his words, I grasp to hold on to the memory, not wanting to forget his promise. “You are mine. Open your eyes and see the truth. Your soul cries out in surrender. Surrender to me.”
Similar words from the past come to mind. “Never before has there been a woman, especially one as lush as you, sweet Eva, who has been my equal in passion. I will enjoy teaching you, molding you into perfection. You will become the perfect submissive because your soul consented long before your mind. Your soul is mine. You are mine, Eva. Always and forever. Mine.”
With a heavy sigh I force the memory to end, wanting sleep, wanting my dream lover back.
Shit, shit, shit! I’m going insane!
His voice was so real—in the dream, at the graveyard. Too damn real. I should have gone to Wales with Liam. I have to keep the illusion in place, just a little longer…
“I can’t live with your ghost, Luka! I can’t!”
The stillness of the room answers. Tossing my arm off my face and throwing back the covers, I sit up to face the day. I find myself facing not a setting sun but a raging fire in the fireplace.
I didn’t start a fire.
Fuck. He followed me here.
Whoever was watching followed me here!
My eyes fly across the room to the table with my 9mm on top. Still there, thank God.
Besides, the loft is secure, no alarms triggered. I must have started the fire. My screaming head attests I drank entirely way too much. But so much I don’t remember starting a fire? Yet I remember the dream. Strewn sheets and blankets twisted and torn halfway from the bed are evidence of my restless sleep, his kimono thrown on the floor where he tossed it…no, where I tossed it.
I have to keep this straight in my head!
The Agency will have me in a straitjacket by dawn if I keep this up.
Shaking my head to dispel the cobwebs, I repeat the truth over and again in my head. Master is dead. Luka Stavros Papakirk is dead!
I laugh to keep from crying, my damp hair falling in my eyes. I am so hot, so hot, remembering the slick of sweat that covered my body in the dream. No wonder my hair and the sheets are soaked. Rolling out of bed, I realize something is wrong—terribly wrong, if the puddle of wet, sticky cum I just rolled over is for real. No matter how delicious the dream, I can’t shoot cum.
Unbelieving, I touch my fingers to the wide wet spot. Definitely cum. Shit!
Heart pounding, I fly the few feet to the table and grab my gun, dropping into a roll then crouching. I hide my nakedness behind my 9mm as I search the warehouse, finding nothing, no one. I am losing my mind but I know that the evidence on the sheet didn’t materialize from a dream.
Catching my reflection in the long, oval mirror, I see the undeniable proof that I have not lost my mind. I walk closer, touching my fingertips to the smooth surface, not quite believing what I’m seeing. My neck and shoulder sport a massive bruise with teeth indents, some bloody, and each nipple is purple with intense bruising.
Oh God, oh God, oh God! It can’t be! It just can’t be!
Of course, it can’t possibly be. Luka is dead and the only plausible explanation makes me ill. Daniel. God damn you, Daniel!
My mind rocks. Daniel has access to the Special Ops Bunker, he knows where I live and he’s a dead ringer for Luka… Well, not dead yet, but I now have a very personal reason for wanting him dead.
“Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty’s works…”
Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby
Chapter Twelve
Thomas
Whips Underground Bondage Club, Paris
December 26
It is a moment before my eyes adjust to the dim, smoke-filled air and another moment before I locate him in the crowd. Sean Paul, my long-standing informant, sits in the farthest corner. The day-after-Christmas crowd, unruly, angry, post-holiday-hell leathermen, here to forget the last two days. Home for the holidays rarely makes merry and by the sheer number of predominantly gay men arrayed in various degrees of black leather, tight jeans and biker boots, this holiday was especially distressing. Some couples are male with female or female with female but they are few. The couples with female tops and male bottoms fewer still.
A mixed club, the dancing cages equally represent naked men and naked women dancers. The sheer roughness of the place makes me remember just exactly why I miss Paris.
Sean Paul sees me and lifts his chin in a barely perceptible greeting before turning to resume his voyeurism of a scene in progress in the corner behind him. A woman topping a man. Tall and elegant, I recognize her from a well-known Chanel ad campaign. Her dark hair is pulled into a tight ponytail, exaggerating her naturally high cheekbones and cupid lips. I take the extra moment to admire her lithe body covered in a barely there bright-red PVC halter with cutouts to display her surgically enhanced nipples, and matching hot pants. Thigh-high red boots command the attention of her leash-bound slave as she forces him to take her four-and-a-half-inch heel into his mouth while whipping him across his ass with a leather flogger.
By the time I reach Sean Paul’s table, I can hear the male bottom’s grunts over the music as he fights to control his gag reflex. The leather flogger thuds with an uneven stroke. She might be cute in her designer PVC and thousand-dollar boots, but she has no idea what she’s doing, and her man of the moment is suffering for it. At my regular hangout, Lewd Larry’s in San Francisco, where I have been hiding out for the last decade as a professional Dominant, she would have already been stopped by the security team. Whips has no such safety measure in place. Damn.
Sean Paul rolls his eyes and exits through a side door. I don’t follow, at least not yet. I know where to find him.
I catch the beauty’s hand mid-swing and, taking her knee in hand, lift so that her stiletto is removed from her slave’s mouth. To take the sting out of my interference, I distract her with a kiss. Well, some would call it a kiss, none would call it romantic or soft. For a moment, I possess her—mind, body and soul. It is a kiss she will remember the rest of her days, though I will forget the taste of her a second after I walk away.
“May I?” I ask, as I remove the flogger from her limp hand.
Eyes wide, she nods.
Taking her slave’s chain leash in hand, I yank him to his feet and push him over the nearest table. With his wide, muscled back as the perfect target, I teach the model a basic stroke for warming up, a stinging stroke and a nice thuddy stroke, and watch as she imitates for a few moments before leaving them to finish their evening. As with most Saturday nights, the crowd has brought the action out of the back rooms and into the public areas, providing an audience for my impromptu demonstration. Applause heralds my exit and I realize that, for a man so intent on keeping his visit to Paris secret, I haven’t been very careful. It almost seems I welcome my enemies discovering the truth.
I smile, knowing most of my enemies received word that I live seconds following my phone call to Sean Paul to demand this meeting. The man never could keep a secret—a highly valuable character trait in an informant, not so great in a friend—or at least friend once.
I am tired of hiding from the truth.
Sean Paul also hides, though for very different reasons, and where better to conceal himself than in a place where no one ever uses real names and shadowed darkness is the norm. Sean Paul was my inspiration when I decided to disappear in San Francisco.
Like a sloth, he moves slowly, controlled, drawing no attention to himself, becoming one with the décor until forgotten. Sean Paul was a marvelous teacher while I was here. I owe him a lot.
The playroom is dark, but I don’t seek out a light switch, rather crossing the room to the center. I remove all my clothes as expected, laying my three weapons on top—Bowie knife, 9mm, pocket-size cache of explosives. The missive I received from Sean Paul earlier in the day had been very explicit as to expectations if I wanted to learn anything at all about Nikos’ whereabouts.
It speaks volumes about just how far I am willing to go to find my brother—to play submissive to Sean Paul’s top. I don’t regret my decision until he steps away from the wall, the deep ebony darkness of his skin having blended perfectly with the wall’s darkness. I didn’t realize he was there. His pleasure at my not-well-disguised shock reflects in the whites of his eyes and the gleaming whiteness of his broad smile.
“Bang, you’re dead,” he jokes badly, his Jamaican accent, whether real or created, hanging thick in each word. “Oh too late, that was your last trick. What’s your trick this visit to Paris?”
It’s a question that isn’t meant to be answered.
I watch his approach, a slow swagger meant to accentuate his solid, lithe frame, every oiled muscle gleaming with perfection as he swishes the leather-thonged flogger in his right hand, lightly slapping the black leather covering his thigh. In a distinctly feminine gesture, he flings his long braids over his shoulder with an exaggerated head toss. The many beads laced in its dark length clink together, breaking the silence. He waits until he is near, very near, before he whispers my name lightly, as if he does so with such tenderness every night. As if I belong to him, and have belonged to him for a time long enough that he has the right to say my name with such gentle passion.
A chill goes up my spine as I answer him similarly, his name a well-practiced caress flowing off my tongue.
The flogger slaps against his own thigh in perfect, timed rhythm. The same rhythm he will soon use across my back. “I attended your funeral. I mourned for you—deeply. I held your brother as he broke down the night he heard the news. So can you imagine my surprise when I heard your voice on my private line?”
I shrug. Sean Paul’s questions rarely require answering.
“Why have you returned from the dead, Luka?”
“I made it quite clear what I require from you, Sean Paul. Information. That’s it. Where’s my brother?”
Moving closer, slapping his thigh, he circles me, assessing my nakedness, trying to intimidate me.
“You’ve wasted a trip across the ocean, my friend. I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me, Sean Paul,” I seethe, unnecessary frustration and raw emotion choking me. “The two of you were lovers too long for you to deny knowing his whereabouts now. Just tell me where he is.”
“If I knew, I would tell you,” Sean Paul promises, raising the butt end of the flogger to caress my cheek.
“I don’t believe you.”
The strike on my cheekbone is almost expected. I pull in my emotions as fast as I can, locking down. I know he witnesses the tightening in my jaw, but it can’t be helped.
“You never were a very trusting man.” Sean Paul laughs, spinning and swinging so the knotted tails of the flogger bite deep.
I tense, ready for the second slap but it doesn’t land.
“That was for breaking your brother’s heart.”
“He knew I was still alive.”
“Did he? And how is that, Luka? How do you think he would know such a thing when all the world accepts your death?”
“I hoped he knew.”
Sean Paul circles me, calculating.
“And what do you know about your brother?”
“I know he is innocent, he hasn’t switched sides,” I lie, my gut telling me long ago that Nikos was in over his head, enjoying himself too much. He’d turned and that is why I am here, but Sean Paul doesn’t need to know that.
“Why do you lie to me?” Sean Paul swings wide, wrapping the throngs around my side so that the knots strike my ribs, breaking skin. “Now, when you want me to hand you the whereabouts of your brother? I will not let your doubts cost him his life!”
Two more strikes fall, raking hard. Slap, slap.
“Arrange the meeting, Sean Paul. Please.” I hate the emotion in my voice.
“It isn’t that easy. Go home, or go to whatever hole you crawled out of,” he seethes, raw emotion making him a lethal force. “Let it be enough that he is safe, that he is well. Let it be enough that Nikos believes the lie of his life so much that that is what you are feeling. But know this, he has not turned. He will never turn—not completely. He is not the same man you left, Luka. He will never be the man he once was, but I love him still, and I will protect him—even from you.”
Slap, slap, slap. “Arrange the meeting,” I grit out. It feels as though Sean Paul is cleaving away flesh with each strike but it is an illusion. I will have welts, bruises, some broken skin.
“King Cobra won’t let him out of his sight long enough for you to meet.”
“Then arrange for me to meet King Cobra. If they are that close, I will see the truth with my own eyes.”
Sean Paul wraps his hand into my hair, pulling me close, brushing his lips ever so lightly across mine before pushing me to my knees. His look tells me what he wants as he insists, “Not possible. Cobra doesn’t meet anyone new. I won’t risk your brother’s life with such a suggestion.” His hand wraps more tightly in my hair, pulling for real, not play. “Unzip me.”
I consider his request an extra moment before unzipping his pants, surrendering to his top one of the hardest things I’ve done in a very long time. Holding his gaze, I slide the zipper down with deliberate slowness, exposing the white cotton of his briefs. I’d expected color, perhaps satin boxers. My surprise doesn’t show as I lick his erection from bottom to top, swirling lightly over the dark purple head barely peeking above the wide elastic band. “You think this man is more dangerous than me?”
“Oui.”
I lick the head, pushing the tip of my tongue into his small urethral hole with teasing force, stretching the entrance just enough to get his attention. “Do you want this, Sean Paul?”
His eyes close, air hissing through his lips. “Yes.”
“And if I make you come in less than two minutes, you’ll deliver my message to my brother?”
“I’m not here to bargain with you, bitch.” He jerks my hair. “Now suck me off!”
“Worried that I can really get you off that fast?” I chuckle, wrapping my fingers into the waistband of his shiny black leather pants, pulling both leather and briefs to his knees in one quick slide. “Make the deal with me,
Sean Paul. What do you have to lose?”
His erection bobs straight out only for a second before tightening muscles pull his length closer, a dribble of thick pre-cum falling over the edge to slide down his length.
“Two minutes, bitch, starting now!”
I close my mouth around the helmeted tip of his circumcised dick, grabbing with my lips, grazing with my teeth, sucking hard, just the tip, a technique a whore once told me was called milking the mango. Sucking harder and harder, rolling the helmet with my tongue, I milk him, sucking, pulling hard and fast on just that helmeted end. He tries not to moan and fails, his hand tightens against my skull, fingers digging into my head as I bite, then milk him harder, sucking, bringing him quickly, easily. And when he looks down at me just before throwing his head back, I see just a flash of anger.
Rising, I grip his still-throbbing dick in my hand. His knees shake against mine. I lick his cheek, leaving the evidence of his orgasm as a slime trail on his face. “Call my brother. Now!”
* * * * *
Climbing into a borrowed Jag, I tell myself I can be on the next plane back to San Francisco. As I disable the alarm and cross the wires needed to start the engine, I think back to all I left behind, but the truth is…there isn’t so much to return to anymore, now that my children are lost to me. The life I loved most is over. There is only Sophia and Garrett.
I take a deep breath and close my eyes, knowing I should call them. There is always the possibility that they are worried about me.
No. They won’t be worried. I come and go from their lives so much of late that worry isn’t what they will be feeling. Irritation, maybe, that I am gone again without so much as a note or a phone call. I’m rude, inconsiderate…some days, blatantly mean, but I have to be. My actions give me the distance I need.
Shifting the Jag into drive, I peel out of Whips’ parking lot and hit the road to follow more clues. Sean Paul wasn’t completely honest, I know that, but some of what he said was truth…truth hidden in lies. It is my job to separate one from the other. I hope it is easier to discover the reality of my brother’s fabrication than it would be for anyone trying to unravel the world I’ve created for myself.