Domination

by Lyra Byrnes

  The truth was she loved it.

  Not him, just it, she told herself firmly. She had never thought of herself as “that kind of girl”—whatever that ridiculous, old-fashioned phrase meant—but putting her domination on the page drew out the central reality of her desires. No man had teased, pleasured and satisfied her like that before and the desire she saw in his eyes, the way he licked his lips at the sight of her, how impossibly hard his cock felt in her mouth—that was satisfying too, if a little scary.

  There had to be more than one man out there who could give her the same. Maybe not as sexy as the one onstage, whipping his midnight hair in a frenzy, his muscular chest slicked with sweat, but someone she could be seen talking to in front of others and not risk losing her professional credibility.

  How to find a guy like that? Online dating? Hi, I like long walks on the beach, Mexican food and being spanked, she thought.

  Time enough to worry about that. Josie had a job to do. She felt more free, looser somehow, like an athlete who had stretched well and was ready to compete. No description of the bus ride could save it from being boring but at least she had been funny, cracking jokes at the expense of Kraxis’ crude Viking habits, drawing Varian as waspish and aloof, playing up Jet’s wit and gentle melancholy.

  As to Bram, it was easy to draw him as alluring and mysterious on the page, since he was like that in real life. By keeping him in the shadows she would only build up curiosity and, with any luck, more hits for the Rock Star site. Of course eventually she’d have to give the public a morsel of the real Bram. If a neutral set piece starring him was out of the question she’d have to get an interview soon.

  Bucky sidled up next to her and leaned over the railing.

  “Good show tonight,” she shouted.

  “They’re all good.”

  “You like Domination’s music?” she asked, surprised.

  He pursed his lips. “Great heavens, no. I’m a Brahms man, myself.”

  You would be. “So what are you doing managing a rock band?”

  “Making a living, like anyone else. A particularly lucrative one. I happen to have excellent managerial skills and a deep knowledge of the business. Also, those barbarians don’t know quite what to think of me, so they do pay attention at least a quarter of the time.”

  Excellent managerial skills…and yet he had neglected to send her the schedule that afternoon. She decided not to ask. Anyone who could intimidate the brutish Kraxis into following orders was not someone whose wrath she wanted to incur.

  “When do we leave for…?”

  “Baton Rouge. I sent you the full itinerary and departure times, Miss Arrington.”

  She checked her emails again. Just one from Melanie she would open later.

  “I’m sorry. It’s not there.”

  He frowned at his phone. “Message sent 13:48 to Arrington dot J at—”

  “It’s J dot Arrington,” she interjected. “Common mistake.” After 1:30. She would have been awake but not by much. Something pinged in her head, something Bucky had said to her earlier. She tried to focus but it had already faded.

  “I don’t make mistakes. How very odd. At any rate, you should have it now. I came to relay a message. Bram requested you appear at suite number ten after the performance.”

  “Oh. Won’t I be riding back to the hotel with the band?”

  He slipped the phone into an inside breast pocket. “He won’t be riding with us. Leave about an hour gap but if you have to hang around outside the door, I suggest you do so. Bram abhors lateness, as do I.”

  Her face fell. She had been hoping for another lesson in erotic discipline. But if Bram was staying backstage for an extra hour he obviously had another student in mind.

  Let it go, girl, she thought. Remember you want romance as well. You want those long walks on the beach.

  Ugh, sand in your hair and seagulls crapping all over the place. Walks on the beach were overrated.

  Chapter Eight

  She could hear the party before it came into view—the sound of splashing and playful screams. The groupies had found the Alamo Suites. Even at one in the morning they tracked the band home and converged on the pool area, some in bra and panties, some in panties, some in tiny wet dresses or nothing at all. Kraxis sat naked on the pool’s edge, a beer in each fist. Again Varian was flanked by girls, hunched over a glass-topped café table with a straw in his hand. A couple of the more hopeful or deluded ones watched as Jet manned a blender, holding up a lime and explaining something with mock severity.

  It looked like fun and a great addition to her second post but she had an appointment to keep.

  “It seems we’re always meeting in anonymous rooms,” she quipped as she entered the suite. It was as spare, cool and Southwestern as her own but twice as large.

  Bram had a shirt on for once, a black muscle tank. Not a good sign. “Hello.”

  Josie reddened. “Sorry, hello.”

  “Come in and take a glass.”

  “I don’t feel like peppermint tea tonight.”

  He splashed brown liquid into two highball glasses, one already sticky with residue. “Neither do I.” He settled on the bed and gave her a piercing look, eyebrows raised. She sat next to him, almost giggling to herself.

  We’re like an old married couple watching TV side by side in bed, she thought. No, yikes. Don’t say “married”. Don’t even think it. Yum, whiskey. Concentrate on yummy whiskey.

  “That was an awesome show,” she ventured.

  “We have to work on your manners, Josie.”

  “You’re kind of a stickler. I’m more California casual, I guess.”

  “Around me, you’re submissive formal.”

  “I don’t even know what that means. And I’m not… I’m not submissive.”

  “You are. Or are you going to tell me that you come like that, howling and shaking, on the regular? I should spank you again or do much worse for lying to me.”

  Spank me again, she thought wildly. Door number one!

  “What’s worse?”

  He shrugged. “Things I carry in my suitcase, for one. A couple of venues have private backstage areas, very well supplied. You’d be surprised to hear some of the bands that use them. Magicians too. They’re a funny lot.”

  “Like…” She licked her lips and tasted the whiskey on them. “Like dungeons?”

  “Something like that. Equipment for specialized tastes.”

  She digested this. So Bram went from city to city lashing girls with his whip, making them feed on his cock, chaining them to shabby backstage walls or bending them over one of those weird sex chairs and god knows what else. Against her will the thought of it excited her. Arousal coursed through her veins, stronger than jealousy.

  “That’s what you like.”

  “Josie.” He sounded exhausted. “What I like is to be in control, to make women feel what I want them to feel, and when I want them to feel it. All that clanking stuff, the chains, the ropes, the clamps, the crosses—”

  “Crosses?”

  “It’s a means to an end. There are other ways to get there. Virtually any mundane object will do, if you keep a sharp eye out.”

  Josie regarded her heavy-bottomed glass. He could shatter it and cut her. Would she like that? She decided no.

  “Here.” He pulled off her glasses and set them on the nightstand.

  “Bram, I can’t see!”

  “This,” he held up a safety pin close to her face, “is a common pin, yeah?”

  “Fair enough. That is a pin.” Crap, the room was fuzzy. Even Bram was fuzzy and she really, really enjoyed looking at him.

  “Now close your eyes.” She obeyed as he took one bare arm. Josie felt a light stroke. “Does this hurt?”

  “Of course not. Helps that I can’t see the pointy part.”

  She heard a chuckle. “Smart girl. Closing off a sense or two heightens the others. Now, what does this feel like?”

  A scratch, but a gentle one, not nearly
as bad dragging a ragged fingernail across the skin.

  “You’re scratching me with the point.”

  “Don’t describe, love. Feel.”

  “Um, okay, it’s not bad. Scratchy but not painful.”

  “And now?”

  “Well that’s…that’s gonna leave a mark. Still, it doesn’t hurt-hurt.”

  “Look at me.” He wore a serious expression, ice pick-blue eyes boring into her small gray ones. “It’s all sensation, Josie, a spectrum. But it’s not a straight line from great pleasure to outright pain. More like a circle. There’s an area where they meet, the realm of heightened sensation where one is indistinguishable from the other. That realm is my playroom, not those fusty dungeons.”

  She pawed around for her glasses and fixed them on. The back of her forearm sported a long, thin red line. “I think I see.”

  His grin was predatory, the inner panther revealing itself. “Though those dungeons have their own charms. Just another way to get there.”

  “I’m good with the pin for now.”

  “I know you are. I like that you’re honest with me. Most girls are so desperate to fuck Bram Hunter they’d say and do anything. But there’s nothing worse than an amateur with no understanding of the rules.”

  “So what are the rules?”

  He lit a cigarette. “Well, since you’re new at this and I don’t know how far I can push you, you’re going to need a safeword.”

  Josie made a face and reached for the bottle. “I’ve heard about those. ‘Stop’ or ‘no’ or whatever.”

  “Doll, you are more innocent than Bambi. Something neutral that can’t be misconstrued. Like ‘yardage’ or ‘fishhook’.”

  “What’s wrong with ‘stop’?” The whiskey was going to her head but she took another sip, enjoying the warmth in her belly.

  “Because there is another thing I like, more than safety pins and spankings. Something I saw in you when you showed up at my door by mistake. You’re feisty, Josie. You have a smart mouth and your brain’s not far behind. You’re a strong girl, and a strong submissive is a rare breed.”

  “You want a girl who fights back? Isn’t that rape? There’s a fucking safeword for you.”

  He ran a hand over her breasts as if his fingers could taste her flesh. “Far from it, if it’s entirely consensual and part of the game. I want a woman who stands up to me but only to a point, so when I try to take you, it’s safe to fight back, scratch and claw, call me names. That heightens the sensations as well.”

  “On the spectrum of anger but not actual anger.”

  “Call it passion. Anger is a passion too, but it doesn’t come into play.”

  “Why would any girl fight back against you?” she asked, immediately regretting giving voice to her thoughts.

  But Bram did not dismiss her or even smile. He palmed her nipple firmly. “We’re talking about you, and you can if you like, right? But when we fight, Josie, be prepared to lose.”

  Her pussy flooded. Oh god, screaming at Bram Hunter, pretending to reject him, her writhing subsiding as he wrestled her down and shoved his huge cock inside…

  “That sounds unbelievably hot,” she admitted, feeling her cheeks flush. “But not very submissive.”

  “You’d be surprised. And that’s the second lesson. I won’t be pushing you around to make you feel small. Demanding your body, your attention, your obedience is an expression of my desire for you. I might be controlling the experience but you’re the one in control of this.”

  He placed her hand on his cock, a hard ridge under the leather.

  “Because you want me so bad?” she teased.

  “I do. But more importantly, because I trust you and that’s a rare thing for Bram Hunter.”

  To her dismay he sprang up from the bed and began to rummage in her messenger bag.

  “I don’t think I have anything in there you can use to, you know, spectrum.”

  He threw a notebook and pencil on the bed then brought the tape recorder over and plugged it in. “You’re about to get your second interview with the lead singer of Domination. How does that feel?”

  “Not as good as your cock did a minute ago,” she said.

  “Keep that up and I’ll be too busy fucking you sideways to tell the world about the next recording. Now, shall we get started?”

  “Are we really going to do an interview?”

  He lit another cigarette and shook out the match. “Yeah, first. And after…”

  “After?” she asked, hope fluttering from her voice.

  He nodded at the television set. “Cartoons.”

  Chapter Nine

  She had to give it to Bram—he was great at his job. Domination changed up the show every night, reordering the set list, fiddling with the lighting and performing one cover song that paid homage to the city hosting them. Last night it had been Remember the Alamo. If Josie hadn’t known the Johnny Cash number already she would never have recognized it. Tonight it was Randy Newman’s Louisiana, a mournful tune turned into a power-dirge, full of menace and melancholy.

  For a hot, rebellious rock god, he’s a damn hard worker, she’d thought, watching him pull a tearful, chubby brunette onstage.

  She wanted to spend some time alone, preferably writing the naughtiest fantasies she had ever dreamed evoked by Bram’s admittance of his true desires, but Artie wanted “color”, which meant watching the boys get drunk backstage.

  “Backstage is a hellhole. It’s depressing and ugly and nothing ever happens there,” she’d complained to him countless times.

  “I know, kid, but the paying customers want to feel they’re getting the inside experience. Sex it up.”

  If he only knew how much she could “sex up” the story of her road trip it would make his hair curl but Josie had to buckle down and get another post to Rock Star before they hit the next city. The blog was a hit, she had learned from an unlikely source while organizing her notes in the lobby earlier.

  “Views in the high five figures. That’s higher than your print circulation was before it went all pear-shaped,” Varian had pointed out, looming over her like a specter.

  She looked up from her screen. “How do you know that?”

  “Oh, I keep an eye out, girlie.” His thin lips approximated a smile.

  Josie did not like him at all. Something about him was…unhealthy. Sick in the soul.

  But he wasn’t looming over her now. Varian was cramped in a corner of the putty-colored room, pale and shivering. She hoped there wasn’t some kind of flu going around.

  “I thought Texas was hot,” Kraxis complained, jiggling the girl on his lap as if she were a baby. She giggled like one. “I’m sweating like a Tory in a nancy pub.”

  “Watch your step, Krax,” Jet said without menace. “And that was a dry heat. What’s your name, lovely?”

  A blonde helping herself to a shot of tequila smiled. “Candi.”

  “Didn’t ask what ye taste like!” roared Kraxis.

  Jet seemed more interested in his drink than the girls and, to be fair to the girls, they didn’t seem all that interested in the scene. Certainly it was less exciting without Bram and Josie knew he had a private dressing room. Unless you were the one with a girl on your lap it was as boring as a boardroom meeting.

  Something Bucky had said at last night’s concert had rung a bell and now she remembered it. The band meeting! As she had boarded the bus in Austin he’d informed her with characteristic disapproval that he’d sent her the itinerary after the meeting. Perhaps someone had hung around and distracted Bucky, changed the address on his phone. It was worth asking before Jet got too drunk to answer.

  “Hallo, ducky,” he said with a smile. “How you getting on?”

  “Pretty well, thanks. I have a question.”

  “Ooh, we finally going to do that interview? I have lashes of lovely gossip. Well, I don’t, but I’d make some up.”

  Josie laughed. “Not yet but I promise soon. No, I was wondering about the band meetin
g yesterday. What time did it break up?”

  “One-ish, I’m sure. Same as all the others—noon to one pip emma if we haven’t made a night of it.”

  “You mean that was—”

  “A quiet evening at home for this lot, yeah.” He grinned like a wicked angel. “Wait ’til you see us in action.”

  “Christ almighty. Anyway, did one of you hang around afterward?”

  “Hang around?” Jet’s eyes lit up. “Right you are! Miss V wasn’t too spry about heading to the door, as I recall. Still haunting the place when I gathered up my slate and satchel.”

  “Interesting. Thank you, and I owe you a turn in the spotlight.”

  “Just be sure you get my good side.”

  Interesting indeed. So Varian was keeping a sharp eye out. So would she.

  Bucky put his head in the door. “Loading in fifteen, ladies and gents,” he said then glanced at the groupies. “Not you ladies.”

  “What?” cried Josie. “We have two days before the next show.”

  He pulled her aside. “And a four-hour commute even if we crawl. Do you really want to be stuck in this backwater?” He shuddered. “The boys want to spend their downtime in New Orleans.”

  So did she. She’d never been to New Orleans, although she’d heard plenty about it—mostly involving beads, boobs and beer. She stuffed her laptop away and shouldered her bag.

  Negotiating the metal steps down to the arena exit was tricky enough without someone pushing by. A tall brunette in sky-high heels shoved by her on the way up, giving Josie a filthy look.

  “Do you mind?” she sneered. “I’m on a tight schedule.”

  And in a tight dress, Josie noticed. And going the wrong direction if we leave in fifteen minutes.

  Bram. He needed a quickie after the show while his adrenaline was still pumping.

  Shit, shit, shit.