Domination

by Lyra Byrnes

  “Wait out the pain,” he said gently.

  She did. What had struck her as pain was more surprise. A warmth spread through the place he’d spanked her. It felt good—almost comforting.

  Another crack lit up her other cheek. She gritted her teeth and waited for the sharpness of the sensation to dwindle. Bram spanked her again, dividing his blows, with less force than the initial ones. His hand was sure and strong. He had obviously done this before. She tried not to arch her back with the jolt with every smack but when she did she could hear him suck in his breath.

  “That’s a beautiful sight. You’re taking it like a champion, Josie,” he said from behind her. She braced herself for another blow but instead felt his hands kneading, caressing, smoothing over the burning skin.

  A long, rough lick wetted her backside. She wanted to turn around and see what was coming next but the threat of spanks becoming lashes stopped her.

  He licked her again, trailing his tongue over the globes of her ass. She felt as if her muscles were melting. Without thinking she lowered herself to her elbows, raising her hips.

  “That’s good, baby. Hold still.”

  It was hard to follow instructions when the tongue probed between her cheeks. He spread her with his hands and applied the tongue again, pushing and swirling. Her pussy was flowing. She longed to rub her clit while he tongued her ass but stayed still. It felt naughty and evil and so good, the semi-rigid invasion wetting her very core and the gentle bites nipping her cheeks.

  He slipped a finger inside her pussy and her head shot up.

  “You’re so wet for me,” he groaned, slowly finger-fucking her until her head felt as if it would explode.

  Teeth nibbled at her ass, the tongue swirled again, tasting every inch. She had thought she’d be numb but the burning skin on her behind had calmed and it was tingling now, every nerve open to sensation. His tongue entered her tight hole as he shoved his finger deep into her pussy. She followed his rhythm, swaying back with each wet probing as the crowd had swayed at his command.

  “I’m gonna come, Bram,” she panted.

  He pulled both finger and tongue from her body just as another stroke would have sent her over the edge.

  “Right you are, but you’re going to come my way.” He laid a kiss on her backside.

  What did that mean? Her nerves were on fire, her skin hypersensitive. She licked her lips and waited for whatever came next.

  Without warning he spanked her hard and fast, one after another. The blows seemed to set off waves that entered her body and reached something deep and primal within, some hidden button of ecstasy. Unable to stop herself, she began to moan.

  “Come for me, Josie. I want to taste your ass when you come.”

  As if she could stop herself. At each smack her clit swelled and throbbed. She was panting hard and whimpering, arching her back to welcome the blows. Her legs began to tremble as the orgasm rose from her core and this time Bram spread her cheeks and buried his face in her ass. She exploded, her vision going black but for a spray of dancing stars.

  It was only when she collapsed onto the floor that she realized she still had her boots on.

  “Look at me,” he said, his breath ragged.

  She sat up. He towered over her, pumping his cock with his hand, eyes slit. God, it looked delicious, that huge organ slipping in and out of his long fingers.

  “Do you want to taste me, Josie?”

  She could only nod.

  He guided her head and Josie fixed her lips around his shaft, tasting the pre-come. He was hard as iron, the big vein throbbing. It was too big to fit in her mouth all at once so she wrapped a hand around the base and sucked on his cock head, her eyes upraised. Bram groaned.

  “Fuck, you’re good.”

  His hips bucked and a stream of thick, salty fluid shot down her throat.

  Panic set in as her head cleared. But Bram was holding out a hand. She took it and rose.

  “Bram, I shouldn’t have…we shouldn’t have. It was totally unprofessional.”

  “Codswallop. You starting in with that now? I always give the people what they want, love. And this is what you came for.”

  Was it? Well, yes, but only in her deepest, darkest, most impossible-to-realize fantasies. Not in real life, where she had a job and an apartment and a twelve-year-old car and she only went on bad dates and had lame, serviceable sex. This whole scenario, what they’d just done, it wasn’t her.

  She didn’t deserve to feel so good.

  “Any road, it’s not like your putting this in your blog.” Bram continued, striding away. “I’ll be in the shower. Don’t dally.”

  Josie picked up her clothes and headed toward the bathroom, her head spinning. Was her reluctance really about low self-esteem? No, it was something else. It was her vision of herself—as ambitious Josie Arrington. She was a girl who worked hard, not a girl who got spanked and squirmed in pleasure while a rock star ate her ass.

  But she kind of wanted to be.

  And Bram was right. It wasn’t as if any of this would be published.

  Chapter Six

  “Everything looks good, Josie,” said Artie over the phone. “I’m going to clean up the text a bit to put it in our online format then I’ll send you the document specifications for next time. Or someone will do it.”

  “Is the end that near?” Josie asked anxiously. She knew she should be worried about herself and the Rock Star staff but she couldn’t help but worry about Artie’s future.

  “The place is half packed up, the little gray men have come to go over our accounts files. I’m glad you’re not here, kid.”

  Indeed. She glanced up at the opulent furnishings in her suite, yesterday’s dirty jeans blemishing the rose velvet settee. The penthouse was the opposite of the anonymous, badly lit magazine offices. Which didn’t mean she felt at home here.

  “I’m sorry you have to be. I should have another dispatch for you tonight.”

  “What’s the next stop?”

  “San Antonio.” She refreshed the emails on her laptop. Still no itinerary from Bucky. They’d have to load the bus and move out if the band was to make its live radio appearance before playing the Freeman Coliseum that night.

  “Well, leave the dateline off, Bob Woodward. This isn’t Associated Press. And don’t bust your balls getting it done. We’ve gotta massage the launch, build up excitement. Get butts in seats.”

  “Or eyes on screens.”

  “Yeah. You take care now and don’t let the big bad wolf eat you up.”

  She clicked off. Too late for that, she thought uncomfortably. Was this what she was in for, going from city to city, being spanked and abused and commanded, all while sending out decorous half-truths about the tour to the reading public? Writing was the only thing she’d ever done—truthfully, the only thing she did well. She had never been able to just let experiences happen. They had to be digested, structured and translated into words, pushed through for strangers to witness at one remove.

  But Bram wanted his secrets kept and that meant keeping what had happened between them to herself. In honoring this she had no way to process the extraordinary journey he’d guided her through, from hardworking good girl to supplicant, on all fours with her ass on fire.

  Time to put it out of her head. She went down to the lobby, hoping there was some decent Mexican food nearby to help sop up the weird mix of alcohols in her belly. She had never before accepted drinks while on the job but this one was different. It would be her life for the next two weeks. There were some escapes not worth putting on hold.

  The two buses squatted in the circular driveway outside the lobby doors, their engines running. Impeccable in another suit, this one windowpane check, Bucky stood frowning at his watch. He looked up and impatience turned to annoyance.

  “We are about to leave, Miss Arrington. Where are your bags?”

  “What? I never got the email.”

  “It was sent earlier today after the band meeting with a
specific directive not to be late.” He sighed. “I can give you ten minutes but no more.”

  Josie ran back to her room, stuffed her meager goods into the duffel, double-checked for her equipment and scurried back down. How the hell had she not gotten the email? She must have checked it a hundred times.

  “I hope this does not bode for the future,” he said sourly as she heaved her bag and her half-starving body aboard. The bus doors closed with a farting sigh.

  She nudged her way past a snoring Kraxis and nodded at Varian, who looked up from the rib he was gnawing on and sneered. Bram was a lean shadow in the dark recesses of the bus, reclining on a bench, his head propped up in one hand and a pencil in the other. It wouldn’t do to run over to him like some crazed groupie, much as she wanted to. He looked up, sent a lazy, unsmiling wink her way, and looked back down at the page. Country music rang through the speakers, all tears and bourbon. Yuck. She hated country.

  She took a grateful seat next to Jet.

  “Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome,” he said. “When in Texas…” He indicated a sauce-smeared pile of ribs, brisket and bones. Had these guys ever heard of side dishes?

  She helped herself to a plate of barbecue but passed on the beer.

  “Do you only speak in quotes?”

  “Darling, all the really choice things have already been said. I spread the wisdom of our literary elders to the world while Bram thinks up new rhymes for ‘blood’.”

  That seemed a bit unfair but Josie realized she should research Domination’s lyrics so she knew what Bram was singing about. More than blood, surely. There couldn’t be that much to say on the subject.

  “Did you sleep well?” Jet added slyly. “You look positively radiant.”

  “Like a top, as you English say.” She had slept so soundly she woke up boneless and confused, the blackout curtains hiding the early-afternoon light, not even recognizing where she was. There’s something to be said for a late night of rough sex, she thought. Does wonders for your rest cycle.

  “Well, don’t get cozy. This will be a short ride, Bucky tells us. See you at the show.”

  Josie felt dismissed, although Jet’s smile was kind on his delicate, girlish face. She took a notebook and pen as cover and made her way to the back where Bram was scribbling.

  “The muse strikes?” she ventured, sitting down. His lean form stretched across the bench like a jungle cat at rest.

  He nodded at the pen. “Silly tool, that.”

  “It’s just a front. You said I wasn’t allowed to quote you.”

  “Not exactly, Josie. I think you can figure out what’s publishable, what’s indiscreet and what’s actionable. Still, use a pencil. You’ve clearly never been north of Leeds.”

  That had been one of Artie’s tricks. He learned it on the road with Iggy Pop, somewhere in New Hampshire in January. The ink in his pen had frozen and he’d lost half a day of band shenanigans and solid-gold quotes.

  “What are we listening to?”

  “Lefty Frizell.”

  “Not familiar.”

  He didn’t look up. “A songwriter can learn a lot from any genre, if the quality’s good enough. Lefty, Hank, Merle—they had a lock on heartbreak. Universal emotion, that. Take a butcher’s at the lyrics before you judge.”

  Heartbreak. Even Bram Hunter knew the feeling. She wondered who the girl had been and what she had done to him.

  “What are you working on?”

  Bram scowled. “My last will and testament.”

  “Oh.”

  His black-ringed blue eyes started into hers. “A song, love. It’s generally a song.”

  She sat mere inches from his body but could feel the heat of it. She wanted him to touch her, just a stroke on her back or a squeeze of her waist. But he twiddled the pencil and frowned at the notebook.

  “Have at it. Sorry for interrupting.”

  The ride wasn’t more than ninety minutes but to Josie it seemed like an eternity. The glow of the morning had faded and the barbecue sat uneasily in her belly. I forgot I get motion sick, she thought grimly. This is going to be a long two weeks.

  Especially if Bram ignored her the whole time, writing songs about girls who had broken his heart.

  Then again, neither of them wanted the rest of the band—much less the rest of the world—to know what had gone on between them. “Between you and me,” he had said. And it would stay that way. Stop being such a girl, she told herself. He’s not your boyfriend. Get to work.

  *

  The live radio appearance wouldn’t reveal anything new and anyway, Josie was on board with the band for exclusive content, not rock platitudes available to anyone within the station’s broadcast range. She holed up in her suite—another beautiful set of rooms, these furnished in sunset colors—in the cool, low-slung white adobe hotel. The air-conditioning froze the back of her neck as she typed into her laptop.

  It’s Day Two of the World Domination Tour and we’re rolling into San Antonio, Texas, everyone very tired after last night’s debauchery. [See previous post. Artie, link here please.] Bus rides are as boring as backstage, I’m sorry to tell you, with fewer groupies. But we did have barbecue and lots of it. And, needless to say, beer.

  Struggling to keep Bram out of her post had reduced her writing to bland mush. As she tried to think of something fascinating to report that didn’t involve sucking his cock, her phone rang.

  “Josie! Tell me everything!” Melanie squealed.

  Josie laughed to hear her roommate’s high, sweet voice. Melanie was a wannabe singer, working backup gigs around L.A. and waiting for her big break, just like everyone else in that city of dreamers. She was excitable, relentlessly optimistic and had a debilitating crush on the lead singer of Domination.

  “Didn’t you read the first post?”

  “Yeah, but I know you got some dirt on Bram Hunter. What’s he really like? Did he keep that accent up the whole time?”

  Melanie wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box but she had a big heart.

  “He’s a Brit, Mel. That’s the way he talks all the time.”

  “So how hot is he in real life? Does he really drink panther blood? Does he have a girlfriend? She must be so beautiful.”

  “Smoking hot, no on the panther blood and…”

  Did he have a girlfriend? Mel was right about one thing—if he did she had to be as supernaturally gorgeous as he was. Another reason not to dream about holding hands and walking on the beach with the likes of Bram Hunter.

  “I haven’t seen him with any girls.”

  “Then I still have a chance. Cool beans!”

  “Mel, you haven’t said anything about the blog post.” Josie was anxious to get feedback from someone who wasn’t paying her. One of Artie’s dictums that had always stuck in her mind was to be aware that what they did was subjective—you never truly know if you’re good at it. Some great talents spin their wheels, some idiots inexplicably fall upward and any writer can expect a hundred different reactions to the same set of words. It made not just writers but any creative person needy for outside validation.

  “I read it, Josie. Sounded pretty cool, the party and all. You made the show sound really exciting. I liked that part.”

  “But…”

  Josie could just see Mel twisting a blonde curl around one finger while she searched for the right thing to say.

  “It’s not a big but or anything, but it didn’t feel like you. Usually I have to look up half the words you use, and this one seemed kinda…simple? Bloodless. Is that a word?”

  Josie had forgotten that for an airhead Melanie could be weirdly insightful. Even Artie hadn’t pointed out she’d lost her mojo. He had one foot out the door of the business anyway. She had to stop depending on her editor to fix her flaws. She was on her own now in the cybersphere.

  “Thanks, Mel. You’re a peach.”

  “I never know if you’re being sarcastic.”

  “It’s usually a yes but not this time. Really, thank you.”
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  “Okay. Not sure when I can call again. I’m doing open mikes every night and still waitressing at Cantor’s. But try to reach me when you get a break. And if you get anything on Bram Hunter, you have to swear to tell me first!”

  Josie laughed again. “Take care, Mel. Break a leg.”

  She looked at her computer screen. It’s Day Two. Bus boring. Barbecue and beer.

  Jesus, could this be any duller? Mel was right—bloodless, toothless, colorless. Bram’s little bargain had put her in a bind. Without the lead singer’s curious magnetism, animal sexuality and wry, laconic way of speaking, it was just another dispatch. The blog might have been an update from a political candidate’s campaign tour but even less interesting.

  Bram was the heart of the band, its voice, its focus and the reason thousands of screaming girls descended on their shows and hotels. They wanted a taste of that primal erotic power he carried around like an energy source. And that she did have access to.

  So Mel wanted to hear the dirt. Josie wasn’t ready to spill the details of her night to anyone but writing a fresh blog would refresh her mind as well, pour some muscle back into her work. She quickly set up a new blog, established hardcore privacy settings so that only she could read it.

  Adventures in Submission—that was simple and to the point. She took a deep breath and began to type.

  He stalks me like a jungle cat, slow, hypnotic and predatory, infused with some exotic substance no other could claim. Is it the panther blood he’s reputed to quaff on tour? Who knows? Wherever he gets it from, Bram Hunter is the living embodiment of raw, mind-bending sex. As I was about to find out…

  Chapter Seven

  That night’s show was like the first one only it seemed there were even more girls. Blonder ones with bouncier boobs, higher hair and louder screams. Everything’s bigger in Texas, thought Josie, rapidly typing notes from her perch on the catwalk.

  Working on the private blog had energized her. It felt good to process the explosive night with Bram, even if she had to steel herself to type the dirty words. Not that dirty words, acts or feelings could be avoided if she was going to be honest. As always when her writing was on fire, she discovered truths about herself just in her choice of phrasing and the way she structured the paragraphs. The journey she had been on with Bram felt like a purely sexual one but now she saw it was emotional as well. He had broken down her barriers and resistance and allowed her to see the truth about herself.