by Tara Sue Me
“Looks like you did more than wash your hands, Master,” I said, taking note of the pillows piled on top of the bed.
“You never got to eat,” he said, pulling me forward. “And I wanted to give you time to talk with Jeff.”
“You never ate and you didn’t climax.”
He turned me so we faced each other and he pressed his forehead to mine. “You worry about me too much, Abigail. You need to focus on doing what I ask and leave the rest to me.”
“I love you; of course I’m going to worry.” I pressed my lips to his in a soft kiss. “Besides, you need to keep up your strength.”
He smiled against my lips. “Trust me. When it comes to you, I have enough strength for half a dozen men.”
“Half a dozen, Master?”
“Maybe a dozen.”
“That seems more likely.”
He pulled away and I was struck anew by the love and desire in his eyes. “Now come with me and we’ll have a little picnic in bed. And if you’re really worried about my strength, you can feed me a bite or two.”
I felt almost giddy climbing into bed. He propped me up on the pillows and fluffed a few around me. I felt like a princess.
“Take the robe off, Abigail.”
Okay, I felt like a naked princess. But I shrugged out of the robe, just slightly peeved that he kept his clothes on. Not that I minded being naked; I just wanted him to be naked, too. I enjoyed looking at his body, imagining all the things he could do to me, remembering the way he tasted.
“Are you with me?” he asked. “You look like you’re someplace else.”
“I’m imagining you naked.”
“I’d rather be naked, but you had an intense afternoon and you need some rest.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I feel fine.”
He lifted the dome off the tray and started filling a plate with almonds and blue cheese. “You don’t know what I have planned for tomorrow.”
That was enough to shut me up and he laughed at my shocked expression. “Don’t look so scared. You handled today—you can take tomorrow.”
His mention of the next day reminded me of a question I had. “I was thinking, if you didn’t have other plans for me in the morning, that I’d call Julie and see if I could interview her for the blog.”
“Julie, Daniel’s submissive?” He fed me an almond.
I chewed, then said, “Yes, she’s new to the lifestyle and recently collared. I thought she’d make a nice contrast to my normal posts.”
“You mean since you’re a veteran and have been collared forever?”
I took the block of cheese he handed me. “Something like that.”
“I don’t have a problem with that. I can arrange what I had planned for another day.” He took a sip of wine. “In fact, I think that’s a great idea and will mesh nicely with what I have planned.”
“I don’t even want to know, do I?”
“Probably not.”
* * *
I met Julie late the next morning at a café not far from the hotel. She’d obviously been at work at her flower shop; she wore a pink polo shirt with PETAL PUSHERS embroidered on the front.
“Love the name of your shop,” I said, sitting down in a plush brown chair.
“Thanks. We wanted something people would remember.” She took a sip of her latte and sighed. “Mmm, that is so good. We’ve been so busy this morning, I didn’t even get a chance to make a pot. And I stayed at Daniel’s last night and we got up late . . . Well, it was late when we got out of bed. We actually woke up early.”
Her matter-of-fact attitude about it made me smile. “I remember those days.”
“You say that like you don’t have them anymore.”
“We really don’t. It’s hard with the kids and all.”
She nodded and took another sip of her latte. “How’s the week going?”
“Good. Lots of new experiences. I’ll have plenty to write about—that’s for sure.” I took out my notebook and flipped it open to a blank page. “Like I said on the phone, I want to keep this really casual. I won’t use your name or anything that can identify you and if you don’t want to answer a particular question, you won’t hurt my feelings. You said you met Daniel when he came into your flower shop. Did you know he was a Dom then?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I had no idea, but when he left, my friend and business partner, Sasha, tried to steer me away from him.”
“Didn’t work, did it?” I asked with a grin.
“No.” Her smile was full of the love she felt for her Dominant. “We couldn’t stay away from each other. Even though it wasn’t until I attended a group meeting with Sasha that I discovered he was a Dom.”
“You went to a group meeting?”
“I’d always been curious and Sasha was . . . is a submissive.”
“I see,” I said, even though I wasn’t clear on the Sasha details; was she a sub or wasn’t she?
“Daniel introduced me to the lifestyle slowly and carefully. Sometimes, I think I’m ready for things, but he holds me back and makes me wait. I don’t always like it, but I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t almost always right.”
“Pesky Doms.”
She laughed. “Yes.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you and Daniel been together?”
“About four or five months.” She ran a finger along the edge of her collar. “I’ve been collared for about a month.”
I nodded and jotted that down. To be honest, I had no idea she was so new to the lifestyle. But her enthusiasm was like a breath of fresh air.
“You really have embraced your submissive nature,” I said. “Was it easy to accept?”
“Hell, no.” She laughed. “I actually turned my back on it for a while. But it felt like I was living a lie. I couldn’t give it up and still be me, you know? It was almost as if I was playacting at not being submissive.”
I jotted her words down. “That’s an interesting way to put it. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone describe it quite that way. But it’s true—it would be like a part of yourself was missing.”
She nodded. “I’d have lost Daniel, too. He said he’d still have dated me even if I wasn’t submissive, but I couldn’t have asked him to ignore that side of his nature.”
“I don’t have to ask what it’s like having your first Dom be so much more experienced than you are. I was like that, too.”
“I think it’s better someone knows what they’re doing,” she said with a laugh. “That’s one of the benefits of belonging to a group—you get to pull from everyone’s experiences. The only problem with ours is like I told you—there aren’t any long-term couples.”
“That is a shame. Our group in New York has several.”
“Including you,” she said.
“We haven’t been very active the last few years. Since the kids were born.”
“You’re still around if someone needs you though. That counts for something. And you’re helping a lot of people with the blog. I hope I can help people one day.”
Julie was easy to talk with; she was down-to-earth, intelligent, and lively. It didn’t take much to see why she’d captured the eye of someone like Daniel.
“You’re helping now,” I told her. “With the interview. Who knows? Maybe there’ll be a woman browsing through blogs looking for someone who’s taken the leap and she’ll come across the piece I write on you.”
She smiled and twirled her coffee cup. “That’s a good way to look at it.”
The café was relatively quiet with only a few people inside with us. We’d been talking in low voices and Julie had just finished sharing about her collaring ceremony when the door opened and we both jumped.
“Julie!” a tall, willowy blond woman called, approaching our corner seats. “Sasha said I’d find y
ou here. Sorry to interrupt. Can I speak to you for a minute?”
Julie jumped up. “Are you okay?”
Whoever the woman was, she looked beautiful in an ethereal, angelic way. Her blond hair danced around her shoulders in loose waves and her eyes were a warm blue. She spoke animatedly to Julie for several minutes while I checked messages on my phone to give them privacy. The two ladies hugged and turned to me once again.
“Hi, I’m Dena,” the blonde said. “Again, I’m so sorry to crash like this, but I’m traveling the rest of the week and had to speak to Julie.”
I shook her hand. “Abby, and don’t worry about it. I think we were just about finished anyway.”
“No, no, don’t stop because of me. I’m really going. And thank you, Julie. I’ll call you when I’m back in town.”
“Speak soon,” Julie said. “I won’t mention anything to Daniel, but I still think you should tell Jeff.”
My head spun to Dena at Julie’s comment. Jeff? No way, it couldn’t be. The fact that she was blond was just a coincidence. But the look on Dena’s face made me think maybe it was more. Her expression was a copy of the one Jeff had worn just the day before.
“I know I should,” Dena said. “But I can’t. I just . . . can’t.”
Julie looked just as sad. “Call me.”
The atmosphere had changed when we sat down after Dena left. Julie looked a bit shaken. She picked at the remnant of her blueberry scone.
“Everything okay?” I asked. I didn’t want to pry, but clearly something had upset her.
“Yeah. It goes back to what we were saying earlier. When you lie to yourself, you’re just playacting and it always leads to trouble.” She leaned forward with her head in her hands. “And I told her I wouldn’t tell Daniel.”
I thought that had bad idea written all over it, and even though we weren’t close, I felt I still needed to say something. “It’s none of my business, but I’m going to give you some advice anyway.”
She looked up. “I have a feeling I know what you’re going to say.”
“Then let me say it. I’d be very careful about keeping things from Daniel. It’s a slippery slope you don’t want to start down, because you’ll find you have a hard time working your way back up to the top.”
“I know. You’re right.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t like it if Daniel kept things from me. But I also gave Dena my word.”
I could almost see the emotions battling inside her as she tried to decide what to do. She sighed and I knew she wasn’t going to tell him. Her decision hung in the air for several long seconds.
“Well,” I finally said. “I can’t leave on a down note, so let me ask one more question.”
“Hit me with it,” she said, and some spark of her previous joviality returned to her eyes.
“Favorite thing Daniel wears in the playroom and you can’t say nothing. We all like our Doms naked.”
She laughed. “How did you know I was going to say that?”
“Because I know what I’d say.” I picked up the notebook and pen. “So? What’s it going to be?”
She leaned back into the chair and crossed her arms. “Give me a second. I have to think. When I tell you, will you tell me what yours is?”
“Of course.”
“Okay, it’s a tough call, but my favorite is when he wears a white dress shirt. I don’t care if it’s part of a suit or if he’s wearing it with jeans. Definitely a white dress shirt.”
I jotted that down. “You know the next question: why?”
“When we’re in the playroom and he’s wearing one and he slowly unbuttons his cuffs”—her voice had a breathy quality to it as she spoke—“his eyes are on mine and he begins to roll the sleeve up. Carefully. Methodically. All the while watching me. To see him preparing for whatever it is he’s going to do makes me all quivery inside. And then once he has it rolled up, you can see just a hint of muscle and you know that within minutes those muscles are going to be put to work for my pleasure?” She sighed. “White dress shirt. No question.”
“Damn, girl,” I said, my pen frozen in place. “That’s about enough to make me want to change my answer.”
“That’s cheating. You have to tell me yours.”
“Okay, fine. It’s his belt.”
“Belt?” she asked, wrinkling her nose. “Why?”
“Because when I’m bent over something and he comes up behind me and I hear the belt slowly slide from his pants, I know what’s coming. Sometimes he’ll have me kiss it and the smell of the leather fills my head as he steps behind me and I hear it whistle through the air.” I shivered just thinking about it. “But it doesn’t stop in the playroom. He’ll wear it the next day to work or out with the family and seeing it around his waist brings back every slap and stroke. His eyes will catch mine and he’ll give me a little smile because he knows exactly what I’m thinking.”
She fell back against her seat and sighed. “Wow, that almost has me wanting to ask Daniel to use a belt on me.”
We looked at each other, both with big grins on our faces, and before long we were giggling. When I left a few minutes later, it was with a light heart and quick feet.
I hurried back to the hotel. Nathaniel wasn’t due for another couple of hours, but I needed to work on getting my notes on Julie’s interview typed up. And I really wanted to take extra time to prepare for when he did return to the room.
The afternoon with Jeff yesterday had been more of a turn-on than I would have ever thought possible. I wanted to write down some thoughts about it as well. Being blindfolded and knowing Jeff was watching, but couldn’t touch me intimately had heightened the intensity of the session.
I wanted to show Nathaniel how much I appreciated him inviting Jeff over. And part of that would be taking extra special care to prepare for his return this afternoon.
I stepped inside and frowned. The shades had been pulled and the entire suite was pitch-black. That didn’t seem right; whenever we’d pulled the shades before, some light was always visible. It was almost as if housekeeping had replaced the draperies with heavy-duty ones.
I reached out to find the light switch when someone grabbed me around the waist and pushed me against the wall. I tried to scream, but a strong hand covered my mouth before I could get a sound out. Any move I made to escape was anticipated and rendered useless.
My heart pounded frantically as I struggled against the unyielding mass of muscle behind me. Oh, God. No.
His voice was rough. “Your safe word is red. Say it at any time and this ends immediately. Otherwise”—he bit my ear—“I do whatever I damn well want to with you.”
My mind recognized it was Nathaniel, but my body was poised to fight. He paused for a second, obviously giving me a moment to safeword. I didn’t want to safe out; I wanted to see how far he’d go. His hold loosened slightly and I took the opportunity to wiggle my arm free and swing at him.
It was a blind swing, but his grunt confirmed I’d connected with some body part. He cursed and pushed me harder against the wall. He pulled my arms behind my back, even as I struggled to resist. “You’re going to pay for that.”
So quickly I didn’t immediately realize what he was doing, my arms were tied behind my back. I twisted one way and then the other, but his bonds were sound and I got nowhere.
“Go ahead. Fight. It just turns me on more.”
“Bastard.” I kicked a leg back toward him and hit nothing but air.
His chuckle sent shivers down my spine. “Call me all the names you want—we both know this will only end up one way.” He grabbed a fistful of hair and pulled my head back. “And that’s with me fucking the shit out of you.”
“Sounds messy.”
He pushed my head against the wall. “Enough. If you say anything other than red, you’ll regret it. Understand? Nod if you do.”
I nodded. For some reason his cool reminder of my safe word seemed even scarier than if he’d said nothing about it.
He pushed a knee into my lower back and tied a blindfold over my eyes. I told myself it was okay, it was only Nathaniel, but for some reason my body still trembled.
“We’re going to walk into the living room nice and quietly. And if you know what’s good for you, you won’t fight me.”
We walked the short distance to the living room. He led me while keeping hold on my tied hands. I decided to act like I was playing along and when we came to a stop, I’d make a break for it. Just to see what he’d do.
I hid a smile. Nathaniel thought he had the upper hand and while I appreciated his willingness to act out my capture fantasy, I was beginning to relax with the thought that this was only a well-planned role play.
We stopped in what I guessed to be the middle of the room, near the couch. I tried to anticipate his next move, tried to decide the best time to make my break—when I heard a sound from the far side of the room that made my blood run cold and turned my feet into stone.
A cough.
Chapter Ten
“Gentlemen,” Nathaniel said in a frightfully calm voice. “Our entertainment for the afternoon has arrived.”
Faint applause came from the same direction as the cough. More than one person. Two maybe, but no more than three. Unfortunately, my surprise cost me. During my hesitation, he untied my arms and rebound them, spread above my head.
I pulled on the restraints and tried to guess what I was tied to. I couldn’t remember anything in the room that could bind me in my current position. My heart started racing again. We’d played in front of people before, but nothing even close to this. Even yesterday with Jeff hadn’t been like this.
Nathaniel grabbed my chin. “Are you going to be a good girl for my guests?”
I pressed my lips together, refusing to give him an answer.
“Going to be like that, are you?” He let go of my chin and I felt him move away. “Very well. Hope you aren’t overly attached to this shirt.”