by Ann Jacobs
“All right, Master.” Maybe it was her own discomfort that she was projecting onto him, but it seemed to her that he wasn’t precisely at ease here either. Besides, Deidre could hardly wait to peel off the BDSM trappings and be with Les. Only with him. She felt his fingers tighten on her waist.
Then he lifted her off him and slid his hands down to caress her thighs. “Go get dressed. I’ll meet you downstairs in just a few minutes.”
* * * * *
She’d seen the house before, a cozy old-fashioned place that had rocking chairs on the front porch and lace panels covering the two glass windowpanes in the wooden storm door. When Les stepped back and let her go inside ahead of him, she noticed the same pleasant, woodsy scent she liked so much because it had permeated the layers of his heavy jacket.
“Would you like a fire?” he asked when she looked at a fireplace against the back wall of the living room. It looked inviting, facing a brick-red sectional sofa centered on a jewel-toned rug that looked valuable, like her mom’s prized Oriental rug in the garden room at the Bar C.
After helping her with her coat, he hung it and his jacket on a hall tree that reminded her of one she’d seen in an old-time Western movie. When he came back to her he laid one arm over her shoulder as though he was encouraging her to say yes—to spend some time getting to know each other instead of scooting right off to bed.
Deidre was anxious to learn more about Les—where he came from, what made him tick. It struck her that she hadn’t wanted to get that deeply into her past lovers’ lives, and she wasn’t sure exactly why Les affected her this way, other than that he gave her the feeling that she meant more to him than just another casual fuck or a potential meal ticket. “I’d like that, Master.”
He came up behind her and turned her to face him. “Sit down, then, while I get a fire going.” Bending, he took some kindling from an old coal scuttle on the hearth and arranged it below the grate that had already been loaded with several sturdy logs. Lighting a long fireplace match, he held it to the stack of kindling.
Through his denim jeans, muscles bunched in his butt and thighs as he knelt and blew on the little spark, coaxing it to grow and ignite the kindling. As soon as the fire had spread to the first of the logs, he straightened and joined her, lacing their fingers together and staring into the flames.
“I like watching a fire on a cold night like this one.” Especially with you. Deidre snuggled up to Les’ side, loving the rare feeling of belonging that being with him had created in her almost from the first time they met. “Did it get cold enough where you grew up to do this? I’ve spent some time in New Orleans but I don’t remember it ever snowing—or even getting below freezing.”
“Natchitoches is a good bit north of New Orleans. It gets colder there, though it rarely snows enough to stick on the ground. New Orleans does get cold from time to time, though. I know firsthand, because I spent four years there going to college at Tulane.”
“Oh.” Tulane was private and expensive. Had Les been a scholarship student or had he come from a well-off family? “I have a couple of friends who went there. How old are you?”
“Thirty-one next month. I imagine I was out of college before your pals went there, since I’m sure I was in medical school at Rice by then. I might even have been starting my residency by the time you graduated from high school, but I’m assuming you’re not jailbait or else Bye would never have introduced us.”
Deidre laughed. “I’m twenty-three. A year out of college at Bryn Mawr. Mom wanted me to get some polish on my country Texas education.”
“That’s good. If you were too much younger people would accuse me of robbing the cradle.” Les paused as though trying to guess, then asked, “What was your major?”
“Psychology and fun, not necessarily in that order.”
Les raised an eyebrow. “Fun?”
“Things like house parties and sailing and skiing in Vermont. A spring break tour of castles in England and Scotland. None of those things was nearly as enjoyable as a brisk ride on horseback across the Bar C pastures or a fall roundup and barbecue. You can take the girl out of Texas but you can’t take Texas out of the girl.” She looked up at Les and savored the warmth in his eyes, the lazy smile on his sensual lips. “I had a lot more fun with you when we went to Dallas. And tonight too.”
His smile turned serious. “It took you a minute to tack on about tonight, chéri. Did you really like playing at the Neon Lasso?”
“Part of it.” Dressing to titillate him had turned her on—not to mention how she’d liked looking at the Dom who’d surfaced when Les had taken off the conservative trappings of a respectable country doctor. What she hadn’t liked much was realizing the extent to which D/s play could go, imagining herself participating with her master in acts that were beyond the scope of her wildest fantasies. “Does everybody at the club do…everything, like the scene we saw tonight?”
“Not everybody. Most of the members seem to enjoy watching the scenes. Only a few actually participate in them on a regular basis.” He seemed to be choosing his words carefully and that concerned her.
When she looked up at him, his expression confirmed that he wasn’t comfortable discussing this. She had to know how he felt, though. “Do you like to participate in those scenes?”
“Not particularly. I’ve done it, but not for a long time and never at the Neon Lasso. The only times I’ve played there before tonight have been in the public dungeon, with female subs who came to play with any available Dom—one sub at a time. Because of my work, I’ve been careful not to let anybody see my face.” He looked toward the fireplace as if he didn’t want to meet her gaze.
“You’ve been into BDSM for a long time, haven’t you?”
“I got into it my last year in med school, when the chief resident at a hospital where I did clinical rounds introduced me to the lifestyle. I found that indulging my masochistic tendencies turned me on. I might as well admit it now, in case you can’t stand the thought of it—I spent two years as the 24/7 slave of an older woman who loved to dole out pain and humiliation as much as I craved it.”
Deidre tried hard not to show her shock. Les, a sex slave? A masochist? She realized that BDSM was a power exchange at its root—a snippet of information that had stuck in her brain bank from an early psych class. It wasn’t easy to process, though, that her BDSM master—her lover—had once lived under the control of a hardcore Domme.
“Say something. For God’s sake don’t just sit there as though you just heard me confess to murder.” As though to negate his confession he brought their laced-together fingers to his lips.
“I don’t understand. Why did you want to be hurt and humiliated?”
He let go of her hand and turned sideways on the sofa to face her. “That’s easy. I was trying to assuage a deeply rooted sense of guilt, although it took a good many years and a lot of psychotherapy to get me to recognize it and accept that my sense of culpability had been misplaced.”
“What did you feel guilty about?”
“I killed a man when I was in tenth grade. If I’d been paying more attention I would have seen him stagger out of a bar in Natchitoches and into the street in front of my car, but I had a friend with me and I was showing off the car I’d gotten a week earlier for my sixteenth birthday. Nobody ever seemed to think I was in the wrong, but I knew better.”
Deidre heard regret in his voice, saw it in his downcast eyes. She wanted to hug him, tell him it was okay. The words wouldn’t come, though, so she reached up and laid a hand over his heart. “You weren’t at fault. But that doesn’t always matter, does it?”
“No. What I did to punish myself was my own doing, though.” He covered her hand with his own. “I want a lot more than just a sexual relationship with you. If I didn’t, I’d never have told you—not about my introduction to BDSM and not about the event that made me spend the past couple of years in therapy to understand why I felt compelled to let myself be hurt.”
Deidre want
ed more from Les too. She hadn’t allowed herself to admit it yet, but what she was feeling for him was more than lust—more than friendship, though that was part of it. “Do you think most subs submit for the same reason you did?”
“No. Not all subs crave physical abuse or humiliation, and not all Doms get off on causing pain. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t find it arousing to be flogged or whipped, or to be forced to take part in degrading or humiliating scenes.” He stroked her cheek, his touch caring, nonthreatening.
The firelight bathed his face in tones of orange and red and yellow, reminding her of a portrait she’d once seen of a satyr, as tempting as an angel yet with the highly aroused look of a demon. His mouth drew her gaze, soft yet firm beneath a strong nose and framed by lean cheeks and a firm, dimpled chin.
It was the expression in his dark eyes that brought her out of her fears. She could never be afraid of a man who looked at her with such blatant care. Such love.
“What do you think makes me want to submit to you, Master?” She spoke softly, afraid to hear his reply but needing to know. “Do you believe I feel guilty for something I may have done?”
He turned her to face him and took her in his arms. “I doubt you’ve ever done anything as serious as killing someone, but you may think you did something wrong and want to punish yourself. I doubt that. What I believe you want is someone to direct you sexually, take away your choices and your responsibility for what you’ve been programmed to believe is wrong.
“Not that I think you’re sexually repressed to the extent that you can’t reach climax without feeling your power of refusal has been taken away. I found that wasn’t true our first time. You’re one hot, sexy lady who doesn’t seem to have a problem with coming.”
“You’re one of the very few vanilla lovers I’ve had who could give me an orgasm.” The only one if you want the truth. But she wasn’t ready to admit that to him. Not yet. That would be ceding too much power. “I like the titillation of the club atmosphere, the idea of being restrained. The feeling that I have no choice but to hand over my pleasure to a Dom. To you.”
“It doesn’t bother you that I was once a slave, that I subjugated my will to a Domme? Or that I didn’t do it in order to train myself to be a good Dom?” Les sounded hopeful yet dubious. That made Deidre want to hug him and assure him that she didn’t care.
“You’re a Dom now. That’s all that matters.” She needed his strength, the control he exerted over her when they had sex. She wanted to hand over the responsibility for her sexual pleasure to him. The idea of him physically restraining her got her incredibly aroused. When she thought about submission with Les, she even included the possibility that someday she’d want to exist under his control in other aspects of their lives, but…
“Does inflicting humiliation and pain turn you on now, the way receiving those things aroused you when you were with her?” She half expected Les to get angry, tell her that what he had been had no bearing on who he was today. “I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like to be on the receiving end of a flogging like what I saw Jack do to Liz and that other guy tonight.”
He cupped her chin in one hand and lifted her face to meet his gaze. “My idea of dominating my partner involves getting into her mind and making her realize what it is that she wants sexually, not beating her into submission. I became so fucked up in the head before my Domme dumped me that I wouldn’t wish that feeling on my worst enemy, let alone my lover.”
“What did she do to you?”
Les could tell Deidre was upset. She’d be more so if he took her to meet his parents and his mother questioned her about the nature of their relationship. He found he desperately wanted to take her home, reconcile with his family so he’d have something concrete to offer her along with himself. It wouldn’t be as much as she’d grown up with but at least he could hold his own with other men she’d known.
Tell her now. Better to lose her now than after she gets all snarled up in your emotions. Not that she isn’t already. He leaned against the back of the sofa, pulled her against his side and focused his gaze on the roaring blaze in the fireplace.
“At first we played in her club, the usual stuff. She’d flog me until my ass and thighs bled. One of her favorite acts was to force me to lick her pussy in front of others while she let a Dom friend of hers fuck my ass. Sometimes she’d switch around and fuck me with a strap-on while she made me suck off her friend. She incorporated either the ass-fucking or the cocksucking into almost every one of her scenes because she knew I hated them so much. She’d call me fag and pussy-boy—I’m sure you get the idea.
“After a few months she decided she wanted to move in with me—or rather that she wanted 24/7 access to me even though she didn’t always make use of her key. If I wasn’t at work I was to be at home waiting for her, stripped down, shaved and on my knees, wearing her collar and nothing else.”
When he felt Deidre shudder against his side he thought about letting it go but gathered up his nerve and continued.
“Over the next few months she had me pierced and tattooed.”
She looked him up and down, then met his gaze. “You don’t have any piercings or tattoos. I’ve seen every inch of your gorgeous body.”
“The piercings have closed up and I had the tattoo removed—there was only one but it took nearly a year’s worth of laser treatments to get rid of it. God, but she liked those piercings. I had to wear earrings and nipple rings and a big Prince Albert ring through my cock, whenever I was at home or in the club.
“She made me wear a tongue ring even when I was working. It turned her on to know I worried constantly that a professor or fellow resident would notice it.”
He wished Deidre would say something, but she just sat there, a look he hoped was sympathetic, not condemning on her solemn face.
“Do you want to hear the rest?” he asked. He didn’t want to go on but he certainly didn’t want to revisit his humiliation again later.
“If you want to tell me.” She spoke softly as if what she’d already heard had practically taken her voice away.
He took a deep breath and tried not to shudder as he began to relive the worst of what he had allowed—no, what he’d invited. “One of her favorite things to do with me at the club was to drag me around by a leash hooked to the ring in my PA. She’d chain me to the wall by my cock and nipple rings and beat me with a cat-o’-nine she’d decided to learn to use for my punishment. Sometimes when we played at private parties where there was no dungeon master to intercede, I’d end up covered in my own blood.
“I could take the pain, but the humiliation tore me up inside even though I felt I deserved it all. At the time I didn’t know why. It took more than a year after we split for the shrink to help me figure out why I’d craved the torture she meted out.”
Deidre turned, her eyes wide and her expression horrified. “I can’t imagine…”
“I can’t either, now. Back then I wanted it the way I wanted my next breath. More. Yeah, I was sick. Seriously sick. I got over it, though.
“I still crave BDSM play. I get off on the thrill I get from controlling a sub the right way—without hurting or humiliating her. You’d think I wouldn’t want to see hardcore BDSM play now, but I’ve discovered that watching others do consensually what I used to do at my former Domme’s command arouses me. I don’t know what the voyeurism says about me, chéri. I’m sure a psychiatrist would have a field day trying to figure that one out.”
“I don’t know either.” Deidre stroked his knee the way she might rub the back of a fractious pet. “You didn’t have to tell me—”
“Yes. I did. I want to take you home to meet my family but I couldn’t unless I told you everything.”
She looked confused but she moved her hand up along his thigh, close enough for his dick to swell and harden. “Why not?”
Les had no doubt that Deidre would have preferred not to hear the demeaning details of his past relationship. He’d much rather not have had to tell her.
“My parents saw what I just described to you. Not at the club, of course, but they came to visit one day when I was expecting my mistress. I was naked, shaved from neck to toe, wearing my slave collar. I had jewelry in each of my piercings and a leash dangling from the ring in my PA.
“I had thrown the door open and was kneeling beside it when they saw me. Needless to say they were horrified. From the time they walked away in disgust, we didn’t speak for nearly two years until just before I came out here. Mama said, though, that if I ever brought a woman home she planned to ask her if she was like the depraved woman who’d done such awful things to me. I don’t doubt that she will.”
“You want to take me to meet your family?” Deidre’s hand stilled on his thigh and she looked up into his eyes.
“I do. What we do in bed or at a club is strictly between us, but I want more than that. What I feel for you is more than lust—and I want you to know where I come from, who I am beyond what you’ve seen and what I’ve told you.”
She moved her hand up and cupped his sex. “You mean more to me than this, Master. Much more. Not that you don’t make me want to hand you the key to all I am—the bad as well as the good. I trust that you’ll control me with care…that you’ll be a good master.”
“I’ll also be your lover…and your best friend. This weekend I’ll be off call. I’d like it if we could fly out to meet my family. You make me want to embrace the heritage I nearly lost so I can share it with you—to show you where I came from.”
“I’d love to.”
Les didn’t realize until he let his breath out in a long deflating whoosh that he’d been holding it, fearful that Deidre would walk away. “Good. Now that the fire’s gone down to embers, let’s go to bed. I want to make love to my chéri—my sweetheart.”
* * * * *
There was something different, something infinitely sweeter tonight than Deidre had experienced before with Les—with anybody, ever. It wasn’t that he did much that was different. His touch was strong and sure but never intimidating, as she had found it every time they’d fucked. By the time they’d cleansed every inch of their bodies in the shower, she’d been frantic with need for him to toss her down on his bed and fuck her senseless.