by Selena Kitt
“Hey handsome.” Frankie smiled as Erich slipped into the office, shutting the door behind him. She met him at the desk, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him fully on the mouth. Tilly didn’t look away, like she usually did, although she felt her belly flutter at the sight. She had an incredible longing to be kissed—but not by Erich.
“You girls ready?” Erich looked over at Tilly in her denim shorts jumper and t-shirt, sitting on the edge of the couch, her hands clasped in her lap. “Sure about this?”
“Well…” Frankie shrugged.
“I’m sure,” Tilly insisted, sitting up straighter. “Very sure.”
“She was the one who convinced me.” Frankie laughed, flicking his earlobe with her long, pink tongue. Erich gave her a surprised look. “Well, you helped…”
“Okay let’s do this.” Erich moved behind the desk, yanking open a drawer and pulling out two thick, stapled packets of paper. “These are clean copies of the contracts I gave you to look over. Once you sign, you’ll be bona fide submissives in training—and property of The Bottom Floor.”
Erich held out pens to each of them and Tilly got up, coming forward to get hers.
“Well, I’ll be yours, right?” Frankie asked, flipping to the last page and poising her pen above the signature line.
“Yes.” Erich gave her a tight smile and nodded, watching her sign in her loopy, childish way.
Tilly smiled darkly to herself, scrawling her own name on the dotted line.
Good, she thought. Now Beast will have to be with me. He won’t have a choice.
I’ll be his job.
Chapter 10
“Why do you want to be a submissive?”
Tilly blinked at Mark, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. She hadn’t anticipated having to answer so many questions about herself. Her visions of being a submissive had been kind of like her dreams—strange, surreal, and mostly naked. But so far it hadn’t been like that at all. In fact, nothing had been the way she had anticipated.
How could she answer Mark’s question? Because in truth, she had never thought of herself as wanting to be a submissive in any general sense.
She wanted to be a submissive to Beast.
Her problem now was finding her way toward that goal.
When she originally talked to Erich to make the arrangements, he’d made it clear—or so she thought—that Beast would be training her. It hadn’t been easy for her, making that a stipulation, considering Erich knew Beast was her stepbrother. She’d wondered if Erich would even allow it, given their relationship—and if he’d told her no, she probably would have backed out. Even if Frankie went through with it, she knew she wouldn’t have pursued it if Erich hadn’t assured her that Beast would be the one she’d be with.
Except when the time actually came for her to be paired with a dom, it turned out to be Mark, the man she’d talked to about BDSM that first night at The Block.
If she’d walked in to find Mark waiting for her on her first day, she probably would have turned around and walked right out again. Not that she had anything against Mark. She kind of liked him, in fact, although she wasn’t exactly attracted to him. But it hadn’t happened like that.
Instead, while Frankie and Tilly were poking around Neiman Marcus—Frankie said she wanted to find the perfect scent to wear while she was training, to make Erich go wild with lust—Mark had caught Tilly’s eye, waving to her over the make-up counter.
He came over to talk to her, carrying a Neiman Marcus bag—Tilly wondered what was in it, but thought it impolite to ask—and that’s when she found out they’d been paired together as dominant and submissive. Frankie hadn’t been privy to that conversation—she was too busy testing perfume samples—and didn’t know that Tilly had requested Beast as a dom, anyway, and Tilly didn’t want her to know.
Really, it wasn’t much of a conversation. Just basic hellos—remember me? How’ve you been? So I heard you took an interest in the lifestyle... Tilly had been surprised by that, and even more shocked when Mark said he knew, because they’d been paired together. Not that she thought Mark would be a bad dominant for her—if she had any intention of being a submissive to anyone but Beast—but her disappointment must have been obvious to him.
She tried to cover it—didn’t want to make him feel bad. It would be too awkward. So she acted as if she had already known about the arrangement so as not to hurt Mark’s feelings, and while Mark looked a little puzzled by her initial reaction, he took her at her word.
But after their shopping trip, Tilly told herself she’d talk to Erich. What the hell had gone wrong? If she couldn’t be in a room alone with Beast, then she didn’t want to be alone with a complete stranger.
So she called Erich to set him straight. Except, after hanging up, she was still just as confused, and found herself strangely outmaneuvered. Erich was rather slippery. A smooth talker. Tilly would have called him a weasel, if Frankie hadn’t been so enamored with him. A weasel—similar to ferrets—could squeeze in and out of the smallest places. So it had gone, trying to talk to Erich.
Erich admitted that he’d agreed to the arrangement—if Tilly signed the contract, Beast would be her dominant. Very straightforward. It was so black and white, Tilly was dumbfounded when Erich pointed to the phrase, “conditions permitting.” She’d actually had to pull out her copy of the contract—it was hidden between mattress and box spring—to find it in the fine print.
She wasn’t stupid—a girl with a business degree didn’t sign a damned thing without reading it. Thoroughly. Several times. She’d seen that clause. She even remembered asking about it, in reference to her request, and Erich had given her the impression that it was supposed to mean nothing, that her pairing with Beast was a done deal. “Conditions permitting” was just a CYA—a “cover your ass” statement, meant to cover an ass that wouldn’t need it.
But Erich had again reassured her, claiming that, while Beast wasn’t immediately available—of course, no explanation as to why her stepbrother wasn’t available was offered, even when she asked—he would, at some point in the future, be paired with her. As soon as possible, Erich promised.
Weasel. That’s what she kept thinking, even as she accepted his explanation, given she couldn’t argue with the clause that enabled him to skip out of an arrangement Tilly thought was a done deal.
But she made him assure and reassure her that, yes, at some future point, she would be able to pair up with Beast as she had intended. Tilly listened more carefully this time. There was no “conditions permitting” in his words, but she was not entirely convinced he wouldn’t back out again.
“Conditions permitting” were just weasel words.
The whole thing bothered her. She would have talked to Frankie about it—except she didn’t want Frankie to know the caveat she’d put on her training. Frankie thought Tilly pursuing this was a good thing. It showed she was finally “taking charge” of her life—ironic, given that this process involved letting go of control to someone else. But Tilly wasn’t ready for Frankie to know anything different.
If there was some mysterious reason Tilly couldn’t be paired with Beast—not that she was really surprised, everything about Beast was shrouded in mystery—why hadn’t Erich contacted her to let her know? Why all the secrecy?
“Tilly?” Mark prompted her again. “Why do you want to be a submissive?”
Tilly thought of asking Mark if he knew about the apparent temporary nature of their arrangement, but thought better of it. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings. She thought of asking how he’d come to know of the arrangement to begin with. Erich, presumably. Any other source would imply a breach of confidentiality.
But she didn’t ask him. She told herself she was probably overthinking it anyway. Maybe it was just a scheduling conflict.
But the more she pondered Erich’s response, the more it disturbed her. She started to wonder if Erich was like this with Frankie. She’d thought about asking her, but doing that would involve telling Fra
nkie about her own feelings for Beast, and Tilly wasn’t ready for that. Besides, she knew Frankie—right now, Erich was the man of her dreams, and she would never hear any suspicions that he just might be less than he seemed.
“I guess…” Tilly cleared her throat, trying to focus on the question at hand. “Because it turns me on. Maybe… I don’t know. Maybe something in childhood that happened that I don’t even remember?”
She offered this on a lark, not really believing a word she was saying. She looked at Mark as if he could help her give the correct answer, and he merely raised his eyebrows. Why was he asking these questions anyway? Curiosity? Would it help him in being her master? Or were these questions part of his role as master? This felt more like therapy than any sort of sexual training. It was decidedly weird.
So far the entire experience had been strange, wholly unexpected, from the moment she’d knocked on the main door of the club, and Mark had unlocked it from the inside to let her in. It was the middle of the day and the club—upstairs and downstairs—had been just about empty except for a man mopping the dance floor of The Block and the bar manager going over his supplies and arranging orders. Each of them had waved at Mark as he and Tilly went upstairs to the office.
The first surprise was that they’d gone upstairs instead of down. Tilly climbed the flight, following Mark, thinking there must be couples downstairs at The Bottom Floor in those small, private rooms. But they weren’t headed there, at least not yet, that much was obvious.
Like the smart, good, obedient girl she was, Tilly had thoroughly read and studied the small book Erich had given her—Handbook for Submissives. On the front cover was a picture of a nearly naked woman on a St. Andrew’s cross, apparently in a state of ecstasy. The book was broken down into chapters with titles like, “The Submissive Attitude,” “Daily Routine,” and “How to Address Your Master.” There were chapters on rope bondage and safety issues. It talked about equipment and safe words. There was a whole glossary in the back of terms she’d committed as much to memory as possible.
But when Tilly first looked through it, she giggled. That felt incredibly childish, but given the fact she was hiding in her closet, reading by the light of her phone, that shouldn’t have been surprising. But the more she read, the more turned on she felt. And the more intrigued she became. It felt as if she were falling deeper and deeper, following Beast down a hole that grew curiouser and curiouser at each level.
The book had certainly served to give her all sorts of new fantasies, all of them involving her stepbrother. She wondered if he had a handbook for dominants. Maybe there was a handbook for fucking your stepsister? The idea made her smile.
“Do you remember having any unusual feelings during your childhood?” Mark asked.
“Unusual? No. I don’t think so.” If she remembered any feelings from her childhood, she’d long since covered them up. Feelings weren’t things that were welcomed very readily around Tilly’s mother.
“Do you remember having a desire to be spanked? Punished?”
“No...” Tilly shook her head. The exact opposite was true, in fact. Tilly had always been a good girl, obedient to a fault. She’d gone out of her way, her whole life, to avoid being punished. But she wasn’t going to tell Mark that.
She had known, going into this, that their first meeting wouldn’t involve nudity or sex—it’s one of the reasons she’d decided not to back out at that point—but she had expected more of an orientation-type situation, possibly in a group with the rest of the submissives-in-training, not a one-on-one therapy session. If Beast had been assigned as her dom, would he be the one asking her all these questions? The thought made her blood feel like ice flowing through her veins. Very hot, burning ice.
Maybe Erich had done her a favor, assigning her to Mark at first?
“Did you receive corporal punishment as a child?”
“Yes.” She nodded, remembering her grandfather and the incident with the neighbor’s trampoline. “A few times.”
“By which parent?”
“Oh… neither.” She blinked. “It was my grandfather. My mother never spanked me. And my father… I… I never met my biological father. I was adopted by my stepfather when I was ten, but he never disciplined me.”
“Interesting.” Mark scratched his chin.
Tilly wasn’t sure if all this questioning was part of the “act” or not, but she was surprised by her own reaction. Just the act of answering Mark’s inquiry made her think about things she hadn’t before. Or maybe, she started thinking about them in ways she hadn’t before. It filled her with both excitement and fear. She thought that this was quite possibly the dumbest thing she’d ever decided to do—but something compelled her to keep going. It was the part in her that perked up when Mark talked about punishment and discipline. It was the part of her that had come alive when Beast had pulled down her pants and spanked her like a naughty two-year-old.
“I wonder…” Mark tapped his chin with one finger, looking at her across the desk. “If maybe you have a need for a controlling, masculine figure in your life? Do you remember seeing any TV or movies when you were young that had a strong effect on you?”
“Ummm…” Tilly knit her brow, trying to remember. Her mother loved television—one of her guilty pleasures—but Tilly found most television boring and repetitive. Movies, though, were her real love. She loved going to the movies, and dragged Frankie every chance she could. She would even go alone, if she couldn’t find a companion, laughing loudly at the funny parts, sobbing like a baby at the sad parts. It was one of the few public places that open emotion was both expected and accepted. She liked that about going to the movies.
“What’s your favorite movie?” Mark prompted.
“Rear Window,” she replied without hesitation.
“Hitchcock fan?”
“Yes.”
“Anything made in this century that affected you?” Mark smiled. “Maybe when you were just coming of age?”
Tilly flushed, swallowing and shaking her head, but a sudden memory jolted her. There was a movie that had affected her, although she couldn’t see what connection it had to what Mark termed “The Lifestyle.”
“You can tell me,” he said softly. “Or not. It’s not a requirement. This is just me getting to know you. I want to understand you. Why you’re here. What it is you want.”
I want Beast.
It was really that simple. But she couldn’t tell him that.
“Girl with the Pearl Earring,” she confessed. “I saw it when I was about ten…”
“Interesting,” Mark said again, leaning forward, his elbows on the desk.
Mark was not tall, but well-muscled. You could tell he worked out, and he looked good in his tight black t-shirt and black jeans, but right then he would have looked just as comfortable in a lab coat, taking notes on a clipboard.
She didn’t know it then, but Mark was definitely an intellectual’s dom. Not that he was into it physically any less than other doms, but he liked to think about the lifestyle as well as participate in it—he liked the theory. He later even recommended several books to her on the subject. She even wondered if he had written the Handbook for Submissives, which did not mention an author anywhere within its pages.
“How do you think it’s related?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Tilly shrugged. “It was the first thing I thought of when you asked. Do you know the movie?”
He nodded. “Based on the Vermeer painting. The relationship between the older artist and the young girl he was painting.”
“Yes.” Tilly frowned. “You thought of the age difference first. I guess, on the surface, maybe you’d think it was just a daddy thing for me. I mean, I don’t know my biological father and my stepfather committed suicide just four years after my mother married him.”
“Oh Tilly, I’m so sorry.”
She nodded in acknowledgment of his sympathy, giving him the glimmer of a smile. “But it isn’t just that. There is so muc
h going on in that movie, under the surface. The whole thing feels emotionally charged. No one talks about what they’re really feeling. I felt like I was holding my breath for the whole movie.”
“Hm.” That was all he said, by way of comment, when she paused.
Tilly continued, working it out as she talked. “The girl, the one from the painting—she was just a servant. Most everyone in that movie doesn’t even see her. Or if they do see her, they do so just to criticize her. But the artist… he didn’t treat her like a servant. He paid attention to her. And then he began teaching her. About light and color and art. He took an interest in her. He listened to her. He saw something in her no one else ever had. So much so, he had to paint her.”
“Mm-hmm.” Mark nodded, an encouragement for her to go on.
“I think they understood each other. That’s what her eyes say to me, in that painting. She’s looking back at him, and she’s not looking at me or you—she’s looking at him. She sees him and he sees her. I don’t mean superficially, with their eyes. It’s more than that. It’s deeper than words or painting or art or even feeling. They see that they are the same—they are… one. They can’t ever be together, and they both know it, but they have a connection, and will have, forever. That painting is the legacy of what could have been…”