by Christa Wick
Hoping the man's eyes were on the drink he'd just been served, I risked another glance in the mirror. Yeah, a body like that, the guy more or less had to be something of a health nut. Not an inch of give padded his frame, just hard muscle. Smoothly sculpted chest plates topped row after row of well-defined abdominal muscles before the surface of the bar interrupted my view. But I'd seen him moving through the club enough times already to have memorized the bits hiding from me at that second. Thick, powerful thighs, a tight ass just as muscled as the rest of him, a bulge up front so big I figured it had to be an effect of the sports leggings he wore -- some kind of protective padding to keep the family jewels intact.
I returned my gaze to the bar's surface and the water in front of me, knowing I had looked too long and would be lucky if he hadn't noticed. At the edge of my vision, I saw his hand wrap around the tall glass of juice.
He had big hands, more than sufficient to handle a woman my size if he ever bothered looking her way. Strong forearms, too, with fine black hairs dusting the golden brown skin beneath. I risked another upward glance in the mirror, my gaze taking in a previously unnoticed detail. A thin, white scar marked the border between his left shoulder and chest. Some might think it an imperfection, but it only served to highlight the otherwise perfectly formed body.
The shoulder pushed forward, and then the breastplate flexed. The dark brown nipple shot upward for a second, almost as if winking at me.
Realizing the man still hadn't lifted the glass to his mouth, I knew I had been caught out, observed while my eyes caressed the masculine piece of meat sitting next to me.
My cheeks flushed hot and my focus snapped back to the bottle of water in front of me. Mouth suddenly dry, I hastened to take a drink. My skin started to itch. My brain telepathically screamed for Rick to collect me for the next half of the shoot. All the while, I refused to look next to me or in the mirror.
I knew he knew.
I was pretty sure that he knew I knew he knew.
But I would be damned if I openly acknowledged the fact he had caught me ogling him.
"You talk a good game in your videos and posts, but you don't believe what you say."
Business-like, the tone made me doubt the man was speaking to me. I mean, he sounded like a CEO addressing a board meeting. It took several long seconds before the words filtered through and I realized from the context, and the fact that even Fife had disappeared from our section of the bar, that his words could only be directed at me. I thought on that for another second before a full-bodied blush turned my pale white flesh a soft pink.
Was there anyone at the club who didn't know who the hell I was?
My head swiveled until I could give him a double dose of side-eye. "And you are?"
His fine ass rotated on the stool. The distance between his legs widened as he put one bare foot on the back, bottom peg of my chair and the other foot on the front peg. Using the powerful legs I'd admired more than once that night, he pulled the stool and me closer so that my seat cushion touched his and the overflow of my right hip nestled against the bulge at the front of his pants.
Sweet heavens!
The bulge had too much give to be sports padding and not enough to be a sock shoved down the front to feed his vanity. That delicious thickness was a thin layer of leather over an uncompromising amount of cock.
Hard cock.
Managing a rough swallow, I wrapped my hand part way around the Veen bottle and tried not to think about the similarity in circumference. It's not like I'm any kind of size-queen in that department, but, with my senses already filled with the man, there was no way I could keep my thighs from clenching with the first genuine arousal I'd felt all night.
He leaned closer, as if he had finally decided to answer my question but wanted to whisper it into my ear. His hard chest pushed against the squishiness of my upper arm, reminding me again that I was the biggest woman in the house by a factor of at least three.
I blinked, trying not to think about size.
Mine or his.
The company that had wanted me to audition hadn't cared about my hips or thighs or overflowing breasts. And I truly didn't care whether the man next to me had enjoyed the videos or just wanted to teach the big girl a lesson for having had the audacity to show up at the club.
I wasn't interested in him, not in any real way. Sure, he would fuel the night's fantasy and maybe a few nights beyond that. But I was at the club to do a job, make a fat stack of cash just for staying through the whole shoot, and have a chance at complete independence if I made the final cut.
Mr. Perfect was no more than a peripheral thought -- a rather rude one at that.
Turning, I stared him straight in the eyes and prodded him again. "Who are you?"
"Tonight," he smiled, something in the dark glitter of his eyes evasive, "I'm the house master."
The tone implied that was all I needed to know, but I had no idea about the culture in which I found myself -- not only the fact that everyone around me was fabulously rich, but some of them liked to tie others up, spank them then take a crop to their most sensitive bits. Others among them lived to be the one bound, relinquishing for a few short hours the unfathomable power they possessed outside the club by virtue of their wealth.
Overlaying it all -- a rigid etiquette. And that was something I had always had a hard time grasping, respecting or following.
"I don't know what that means," I challenged. I feigned a bored look, my red-lacquered fingernails combing a strand of hair as my gaze searched the mirror for Rick.
The house master's hand landed on the top of my thigh. He squeezed, gentle but proprietary, as he answered. "Among other things, it means I'm escorting you to the second half of your shoot, Alexa."
It irked me that he knew my name but hadn't offered his own. I guessed that was part of his control issue. My hand dropped from the bar's surface to the leg he still touched. I meant to brush him away. I didn't how my flesh reacted to the weight of his palm or the faint but restless movement of his fingertips. He would know the way my pussy squeezed at nothing more than my imagination by the flex of my ass cheeks and the way the gesture lifted my thighs so that I almost pushed upward against his touch as if yearning for greater contact.
Before I could actually take the bold step of detaching his hand from my thigh, he moved it up to the bar and drew the bottle of Veen closer to me.
"You haven't had nearly enough water for the paces I'll put you through..."
Paces? What the hell? Did I look like a pony?
Pony...pony play...
No, no, no.
I wouldn't allow my mind to go there. The Razor Girl warehouse overflowed with very adult toys. Some of the more surreal ones had tails attached to them -- no joke. The base holding the tail was meant to be inserted, and not where a woman might naturally expect to have something inserted. And then there was the horse tack -- face halters, mouth bits...
I had turned down more than one Razor Girl shoot with hazard pay because the mere idea of that section of the website made my chest tighten so much I couldn't draw air into my lungs.
Kind of like how I couldn't breathe at that moment in the club, the house master crowding close to me, part of his hard body rubbing lightly against my plump flesh as he changed his mind on pushing more water at me and grabbed the drink Fife had concocted for him.
"On second thought, better drink this." Offering me the glass, he pulled back, just enough that his gaze could openly roam my ample curves. A sleepy appreciation descended slowly down his face. His eyes grew heavy and then his lips parted as his nostrils flared wide and he seemed to inhale every intimate molecule of my scent with one inward breath. "You'll need more than water for what I do to you."
Heat flaring through my body at his bedroom smile, I grabbed the drink without arguing and gulped a mouthful. Sweet, sour, salty -- all at the same time. Not unlike the man next to me with his mouth watering impudence.
I shook my head. I meant rude,
not impudent, and anything could be mouth watering. Didn't mean I liked his bluntness, or him.
"More, Alexa." He had the nerve to tangle his hand in my hair and slowly force my chin up as he pulled downward on the thick, red curls.
The pressure forced my lips apart, but I wouldn't bring the glass to my mouth. Gaze slitted, I scanned the mirror, not sure whether I was hoping to spot an exit sign or a S.W.A.T. team storming the club.
"A little trouble taking direction isn't unusual in the beginning." His grip tightening to draw me closer, he leaned in at the same time. His lips caressed the corner of my mouth, his voice barely more than a whisper as he crawled a little further into my mind. "No matter how deeply submissive you are..."
The hell I am!
I started to twist my head, but he wouldn't release his hold. I glared at him with one eye.
Just because I hadn't wanted to degrade Freddie didn't mean I was submissive. Would a submissive leave an abusive home at fourteen? Would she survive alone on the streets for two more years until she finally scraped enough together for an apartment from her new modeling job? Would she have gone the last two years with no man in her heart or her bed because she wouldn't tolerate an asshole just to feel validated as a woman?
"Sorry, Doctor Love." I whipped the words at his handsome face. "But you missed the diagnosis on that one."
As he released my hair, I thought -- for one fleeting second -- that I had wrestled him back into place. A foolish notion that he gently corrected.
"I'm never wrong, baby doll."
He did that thing again, the one where his lips danced at one corner of my mouth, the sensation like a magnet drifting too close to metal.
Fighting the urge to turn into him, I groaned. Something cold and wet, the glass of juice, pressed against the top of my breasts. The chill spread quickly through my body.
"I'm not taking a novice into the auditorium without enough fuel in her to keep a clear head." Another sweep of his lips and then he bit lightly at my earlobe. He rubbed the glass up and down my cleavage, condensation running in small rivulets beneath the fabric of the expensive silk corset. "So, unless you don't want to finish the audition, you'll drink this down."
Knowing nothing would keep me clear headed around this man, I nevertheless moved to wrap my hands around the glass in compliance.
"No," he warned before I could capture it. "If you hadn't played the brat, I'd let you drink it on your own. But now you're going to let me feed it to you."
I started to squirm. Unpleasant memories ricocheted inside my head.
"I can't," I whisper-begged. I really couldn't, but neither could I tell him why. No one needed to know about the purgatives my mother had shoved down my throat. The pills, liquids, and anything else that might make me puke or shit the extra pounds away so that she wouldn't have to be seen in our upscale, suburban neighborhood with the whale masquerading as her daughter.
Blinking, I fought back tears and repeated my plea. "Really, I can't. If that means I have to stop the audition, so be it."
His dark brows pulled tightly together. I expected anger, invectives, the horrible words I thought I'd grown immune to so many years ago. But he released me and placed the drink on the bar.
A side shift of his gaze and a short wave of his finger at the juice told me to drink it.
"Thank--"
He cut me short, his words a sharp, warm hiss directly into my ear. "Never thank me. That's not what I want from you."
I took a nervous swallow then nodded. That he wanted anything from me made me feel unsettled. Another swallow and I discarded the notion that he really meant that he wanted anything from me. He had been talking in generic terms about women who were my type, or at least what he thought my type was.
Submissive...
Turning on the stool so that his back pointed at the bar and he had a full view of the crowd on the main floor, he spoke softly to me. "You read the rules attached to the release?"
"Yes." With his piercing gaze no longer on me, I took another drink of the concoction and finally released the grimace that had twisted through the inside of my mouth at the crazy mix of honeydew, lime and salt.
His head tilted lazily in my direction, but his eyes continued to hold the look of a predator in them. Some kind of big cat. The indolent roll of his joints as he stalked masked a capacity for sudden speed and violence.
"So you picked a safe word," he said, his attention resting on my lips. "Tell me."
Embarrassingly, I hadn't. I knew from the rules listed in the release that the word should be unique. I thought about borrowing Freddie's, but "cosmos" felt too short and elusive to remember if the stress finally reached a level I couldn't handle.
Ignoring the command a second longer, I drank the last of Fife's energy drink. Taking a larger mouthful than before, with much of the salt having deposited at the bottom, the need to violently shake the taste away quivered through me from head to toe.
"Meringue," I answered, certain the taste of the drink would linger on my tongue the entire session and make it impossible for me to forget my safe word.
A chuckle so soft and short I could have imagined it escaped his lips. He stood and his hand found mine, our fingers interlacing.
I felt none of the usual awkwardness present when holding hands with someone for the first time. No painful bending of my wrist because he was so tall, no pressing the wrong joint or rubbing against the wrong section during an adjustment period. It was as comfortable in that sense as if we had been holding one another's hand for a lifetime.
That still didn't mean I was at ease. He was a good hand holder, nothing more. Probably a good kisser, too. But our acquaintance would be short lived and it didn't matter how comfortable or familiar it felt at that moment.
Realizing I was being led in the direction of a double set of doors that opened into an auditorium, complete with a stage and a large audience filtering in, all of them masked, I offered the slightest tug of resistance.
His steps slowed but didn't stop. Slightly ahead of me, he looked over his shoulder. I cursed the shadows that lived in the club because I could not read his eyes or even discern their color.
"What, Alexa?"
"I still don't know who you are," I whispered. I wanted a name for him, didn't want to make one up when I returned home that evening and replayed whatever was about to happen. And I was certain I would replay it -- the only question remained was whether it would be a loop of pleasure or one of shame and humiliation.
Seeing the evasive curve of his mouth, I knew I would go home ignorant even before he answered. With a hundred or more half-hidden faces turned toward me, I dropped my gaze to the floor. I didn't want to see their smiles or the amusement dancing in their eyes. More importantly, I didn't want them to see my fear as an absolute stranger took control of my body.
"I told you, baby doll." Releasing my hand, he placed his palm against my lower back and guided me down the center aisle. Carefully, he helped me onto the stage, the crazy high heels I'd been given threatening to send me sprawling off the edge of the steps.
"Tonight, in this club, I am only Master..." Stepping up behind me, he smoothed his hand over the curve of my ass as his lips brushed my ear. "Your Master."
********************
A kinky contraption filled the center of the stage. At first it looked like the incomplete frame of a table resting on a small metal cage, but only because the top had been left in a horizontal position. "Master," as he wanted me to think of him, slid a bar on the underside, then tilted the top down.
Intent on not fainting, it took several long seconds for my mind to make sense of the padded planks that crossed the frame's center. I didn't fully get it until I noticed the straps at each of the four corners. He intended to cuff my wrists and ankles, securing my limbs in a spread-eagle position.
I inched one foot toward the steps leading off the stage. Half my brain tried to stop my flight from this man and the club with the reminder that, not only
was a big payday at stake, but I also wouldn't collect a fee for the audition if I ran. The other half of my brain screeched that I was a fool to think I could stop everything just by crying out "Meringue!" The safe word would prove nothing more than a ruse to get me to accept the cuffs...
"Look at me, Alexa."
Soft and commanding, his voice lifted my chin and I got my first good look at his eyes beneath the stage lights focused on us. Each iris wore a dark blue ring on its outer edge, as if the gray-green mist needed a thick barrier to keep it contained. Another jagged ring, silver struck and polished, hugged the black pupils. Large, deeply set, the eyes danced beneath the shadow of his thick brows, the hair a definite black.
"Come here," he ordered, his tone silky and low.
The warning bells stopped ringing in my ears. I stepped toward him. He hooked one hand on the bottom edge of my corset and used gentle pressure to guide me until my back was against the cross.
The rip and tear of Velcro separating pulled my attention away from his mesmerizing eyes.
Looking up, I saw that he had unfastened the strap that would bind my right wrist. His hand drifted lower. Finding my shoulder, his fingertips surfed sensually down my arms to circle my wrist. I tensed as his free hand covered the swell of my stomach.
"You're not afraid of me, Alexa." His gaze and the warmth of his open palm against my belly held me in place.
Shocked, I realized he was right. A chorus of thoughts and sensations rippled through me, but none felt like fear. Arousal and curiosity fought for dominance. Or curiosity over my arousal if I thought really hard about what I was feeling.
I mean, I had seen pictures like this all over the Razor Girl site. Not one of them had produced the slightest tickle between my thighs. But, on stage, with this man, my arousal slowly soaked through the gusset of my panties.
Pressing his torso against mine, he lifted my wrist to the strap. He just held it there at first, his gaze securing mine and keeping me compliant as the anticipation of his binding me built with each throb of my pussy.
"Tell me your safe word." His chest pressed harder against my breasts as his kaleidoscope eyes glittered roughly.