Call Me Killer

by Linda Barlow

  A little while later, he came out onto the deck, greeting her with a smile and handing her a glass of wine. She rose, smiling at him, and they clinked glasses and drank. He leaned to kiss her, his lips hard and firm against her own. As the kiss deepened, he pulled her up into his arms and ran his hands along her spine to the curve of her ass.

  "Umm, nice," he whispered, molding her thighs to fit his own. "Can you feel me wanting you?"

  She nodded, arching her pelvis against his. She loved the feel of his hard cock against her.

  "It's been several hours since I was inside you," he said, kissing her throat, then moving his lips to nibble at the portal of her ear. "I'd like to remedy that as quickly as possible. I guess we'd better eat first, though. I want to be sure we have plenty of energy for the night."

  She laughed. "True. Let's load up on calories and then burn them off."

  While they ate supper, she asked, "If you could do everything that you wanted with me, what would that include?"

  He grinned. "Well, that would be quite a list."

  "But what's on your list? Besides whipping and that predicament bondage thing?"

  "You really got off on that, didn't you?"

  She shivered a little. "I got off on the idea of it. I'm not sure about the reality."

  "We'd have to work up to stuff like that. We don't know what your limits are yet, and I don't want to move too fast."

  "I appreciate that. But I'm still curious. What would you do for your own pleasure? If pleasing me weren't even a factor? What would you do if you could just, I don't know, use me to get off?"

  He hesitated. "You're asking a writer about his fantasies? Dude, I could talk all night—my brain is always teeming with images and scenarios. Hell, if you've read my books you already know a lot about the way my imagination works."

  "I knew it...you're really Bart!"

  He laughed. "Look at it this way, babe—my bed is way more comfy than his rack."

  "You're still not answering the question. I've been here all weekend, and I'm a little in the dark about you."

  His expression grew serious. "Okay. It's just that despite your interest in these things, you're a beginner. Whereas I—" he shrugged "—I've been into this for years. At times, I've played hard. I don't want to freak you out by doing anything that might scare the pants off you." He reached out and slipped a hand inside the waistband of her pants, stroking the silky fabric of her panties. "Actually, these are coming off, scared or not."

  She giggled. "It's not as if there's anything here to frighten me. You don't even have any predicament bondage hooks driven into the ceiling of your bedroom. I checked. And if you have as vast collection of whips as you've intimated, I don't know how they all fit into that bedside table. You don't have a dungeon in the basement, because unlike Bartholomew Giles, you don't have a basement." She smirked at him. "I'm beginning to think you're all talk."

  "I might not have a basement," he said slowly. "But I do have a dungeon. A well-equipped playroom. I had it built to my specifications. I wasn't planning to show it to you this weekend, but if you'd like to see it, we can go out there tonight."

  Out there. The garage? The garage where he did not keep his car?

  Oh my god. She wasn't sure which emotion was strongest—curiosity, dread, or excitement. He had a freaking dungeon.

  "It's in your garage, isn't it?"

  "It never actually was a garage. I had the architect change the plans before the builders started work. I decided I didn't really need a garage."

  But he did need a dungeon? Whoa.

  "I warn you, if I show you the dungeon, we'll spend some time there. Use the equipment. There will be rules. If you say yes to the dungeon, you're saying yes to everything that happens while we are in there. Although you can always use a safeword if something gets too intense."

  Her heartbeat had zipped up into the danger zone. "What rules?"

  "I'll tell you the rules when the dungeon door closes behind us. My rules, my orders, my control. That's the price of admission. You enter there and you're mine to do what I wish with. Mine to dominate. Mine to hurt. Mine to fuck."

  She took a deep breath. "Oh wow."

  "I can get really into the role play, babe. That's part of the kick for me. There's a socially forbidden place where I like to go, and my dungeon is that place where I indulge that side of myself. Safe, sane and consensual still applies. It always applies. But that doesn't mean that I won't be harsh and cruel. I'm a sadist. You know that already. You might have even sensed it nine years ago, but you trusted me. If I kept you safe then, when I was a rank beginner, you can trust that I will keep you safe now that I know what I'm doing.

  "So I have two questions for you? Do you want this? And do you still trust me? If you can say yes to both those questions, we will go to my Not Really A Garage and play."

  She was scared, but she had to know. She had been a little disappointed when she'd thought that he didn't have a dungeon. Now that she knew he did, there was no way she was going to leave here without seeing it. And trying it out.

  "I want the dungeon experience," she said, trying for lightheartedness. "I'm much too curious to say no to that, now that I know it's a possibility."

  "Curiosity might not be enough of a reason—"

  She interrupted him. She took one of his hands and brought it to her breast, where her nipples were erect and swollen. Then she pulled his hand lower. He took over then, sliding his fingers under her waistband and down, in between her legs to the place where her pussy was drenched. "I don't think I brought enough panties with me," she gasped as he expertly caressed the slick folds. "Every time I put a new pair on, it keeps getting soaked though."

  "I suggest you leave them off altogether. All your clothes, in fact. It's plenty warm here, and I love to see you naked."

  "Is that an order?"

  "No orders here for now. In the dungeons, though, my word will be your law."

  She pressed herself against him. "Take me there. I want to, Stephen."

  "Okay. I will."

  Chapter 22

  There wasn't a plan for this. A yearning, yes. A need. He hadn't intended to bring her here because he hadn't let her know yet how great his need was.

  Of course he had a dungeon. He had spent almost as much time planning it as he'd put into the design of his beachside home.

  But taking a novice into his dungeon might not be the best way to proceed.

  Especially a beginner like Viola, who was here with him for other reasons. Other reasons? He wasn't even sure what he meant by that thought. She hadn't come to him as a submissive. She wasn't here because of the dungeon. It was an odd feeling. All the women he had hooked up with in recent years had been into some form of BDSM.

  He didn't do vanilla dating. Not anymore. Not at this point in his life.

  Not that she was vanilla. He knew with every instinct he possessed for these things—his splaydar, he called it because he would have her naked, splayed out in front of him, arms and legs bound—he knew that she wanted what he wanted. Or, close enough.

  She had been his first. Before Viola, he had never watched with awe and delight while a girl he had bound, helpless, came hard, screaming his name.

  Now she was his again. Beautiful, passionate Viola of the smiling face and the merry, teasing eyes.

  And yet...and yet. His instincts, which he had learned to trust, had been warning him right from their first night together that something was not quite the same. It was subtle. His rational side had argued that people changed a lot in their twenties. She had changed and so had he.

  But did sexuality change? His sexuality had been fixed for as long as he could remember. He’d always had dreams of capturing girls, binding them, using a whip. There was no reason for it that he knew of. No abuse. No spankings in his family. No reason why his imagination should take such a dark, forbidden turn.

  He had spoken with enough other doms to know that this was not unusual. Some people had childhood e
xperiences that had shaped their sexuality, but many, like him, had not had any weird or violent experiences. He was just kinky. That was the way it was. He had nothing to feel guilty about or apologize for.

  If he had never found out that there were people who shared his fantasies, he probably would have kept them secret, pleasures to be indulged when he was alone. A way to get himself off. In the privacy of your own mind and heart, you could indulge any scenario. Safe in the shadows, no one else involved, no one else harmed.

  But it had turned out that there were other people who shared his need. Who fed it. And he had learned the ways to take his pleasure and give it, while keeping his partners safe.

  The great taboo surrounding consensual BDSM had mostly been lifted in the contemporary world. People knew about it, joked about it, did it for fun. Dabbled.

  Stephen wasn't a dabbler. He didn't want a partner who was BDSM-curious. He wanted someone who took the same delight in it that he did.

  So far, he hadn't been able to decide where Viola fit in the scheme of things. At some moments, he thought she was as into it as he was; at others he wasn't so sure. He would discover the truth of her, though. An intense BDSM scene had the tendency to strip away all pretense, all facade. He could take her to a place where there was no shelter, nowhere to hide. A place where she would have to be honest with him, because when your defenses were shredded, honesty was all that was left.

  * * *

  She didn't know what to expect. She had seen a few pictures online of the interior of BDSM clubs and people's personal dungeons. Usually it was just a room in someone's house where they'd hammered hooks into the walls to hang their whips, paddles and floggers. Maybe a spanking bench where the submissive could be bent over and restrained. Dim lighting. A bed or a couch where partners could fuck. A room that was similar to a gym, except that the apparatus was kinky.

  This was not like that.

  She knew it as soon as he unlocked the heavy door and pressed it open. When she paused for a moment on the threshold of the dark space within, he took her hand and pulled her through.

  The air was warm and humid. "I've turned on the air conditioning, but it'll take a few minutes to cool down. I'll show you around in the meantime."

  She was blinking into the darkness, having just come in from the bright sunlight. She couldn't see a thing. There must not be any windows, and he hadn't switched on any lights. "Why is it so dark?"

  "A dungeon should be dark, I think. It's a metaphor, after all."

  "A metaphor for what?"

  "Cruelty. Control. Pain." His voice sounded different—harder, colder. "Forbidden desires that we civilized individuals usually keep repressed." She heard him move a little away from her and a dim light came on to their left. She also saw a faint glow on the wall next to the door where they had just entered. An electrical panel of some sort, which he was now standing beside. It sparkled with tiny lights, which were all red except one. That must be the light he had just illuminated in the corner.

  "This is a little freaky."

  "It'll be fine," he said in his usual voice. "Remember it's playacting. Theater."

  He took her arm and drew her toward the lighted corner. The only thing she could see was an isolated chair. The chair looked ordinary enough, made of wood with a straight back. Except for the leather straps attached to its legs, arms and spine. But, no, it wasn't ordinary, she realized as they came closer. The seat was split. It would support her thighs and legs on either side of a big empty space.

  Her cheeks reddened as she imagined herself strapped into that chair. Naked, of course. She would be unable to move while he stood over her and did, well, whatever he wanted.

  "That's one," he said, moving past the chair and flicked another switch on the wall. It lit up the next area, where there was an X-frame up against the wall, complete with restraints for fastening a submissive to the device. She would be pinned there, arms and legs widely spread, unable to free herself, her body open and vulnerable.

  The frame looked old, but that was an illusion. Now that she was accustomed to the dim lighting, she could see that the entire space had been designed to look like something from the interior of an ancient castle. The walls appeared to be made of stone blocks, old and crumbling. There were spots where there appeared to be algae or lichen blooming on the stones. Artful painting, she realized. There were iron rings pounded into the stone with chains hanging from them.

  "This is, um, realistic," she said, her voice a bit unsteady.

  "I wanted a medieval-style dungeon. And I like to collect historical artifacts when I can get them."

  Okay. She glanced around nervously, half-expecting to see a rusty iron maiden, a charcoal stove with burning irons, Bartholomew Giles' torture devices.

  Her heart was pounding, but she was wet between her thighs, and the moisture there was increasing with each device he showed her. She wasn't sure why, exactly. This was scary, and she began to think, as she had a few times before, that deep down Stephen might be as twisted as his hero.

  A spanking bench was next. A wooden contraption that looked like a pillory from an earlier century. A set of strong chains hanging from the ceiling. She looked up. This ceiling had hooks. Bars. Rings. Some kind of pulley type device.

  They came to a place where the wall had been studded with iron pegs. Various implements were hanging there. Whips and floggers of all shapes and varieties. Paddles. Riding crops. Rods and canes were standing upright in a wooden barrel. There were shelves with cuffs and harnesses and leather collars. There was stuff she couldn't even identify, some of which looked dark, sharp, and ominous.

  "In case you're wondering, I have safety equipment, too, including powerful shears that will cut through rope or leather instantly. I'm prepared for emergencies."

  "Have you ever had any emergencies?"

  "Minor ones, yeah. A sub who had an asthma attack. That could have been serious, but we had her inhaler and she was okay."

  So that was why he'd asked her if she had any health issues.

  "Then there was the time," Stephen went on, "when I must have left the door a little ajar, and Rusty trotted in at an inappropriate moment. I started laughing and that pretty much wrecked the scene. It's hard to be a cruel, vicious master when you're laughing your ass off."

  "I like it when you laugh."

  "I like it when you laugh, too." He caught her wrists and pulled them behind her back. "No more laughing now, though. You're supposed to be intimidated, you disrespectful brat."

  "I am," she assured him. "This place is wild. Scary. You really are deviant, aren't you?"

  "Oh yeah." He pushed her over to the X-frame device. "Let's start here. Your basic standing bondage. Strip. I want you naked and ready to be fucked."

  She didn't have many clothes on, so they were easy to shed. Stephen stripped at the same time. His dick was fat with arousal, and they hadn't even done anything yet.

  He was quick and efficient in finding soft leather cuffs that fit her wrists and ankles. They fastened with Velcro and were snug but comfortable. She was grateful that these, at least, looked contemporary; she had been worried that he might put her in those iron manacles she could see resting on one of the shelves.

  There were heavy steel rings in both the wrist and ankle cuffs, and equally heavy clips that he used to attach her cuffs to the four points on the X-frame. When he was done, she was bound with her back to the X, her arms high and spread and her legs spread about three feet apart. A thick leather strap went around her body at the waist, locking her more firmly against the frame.

  "You look incredibly hot," he told her, running his fingers over her helpless body. "There are so many things I would like to do to you."

  She swallowed hard, feeling exposed and helpless. "Do them, then."

  "I intend to. Not all at once, though. And not in a way you expect."

  When he blindfolded her, she protested. "I want to see."

  His fingers bit down hard on her nipple, prompting a
cry of pain. "We do this my way. And the next time you fail to call me Master when you speak to me, I am going to whip your pussy."

  She moaned out a "Yes, Master."

  "I'm going to flog you. We'll try some different whips so you can get the feel of them."

  She tested her bindings, but found herself well and truly locked to the frame. "You're going to whip the front side of me?"

  His hand moved over her breasts, then slid to her belly and thighs. "I'll never strike a part of your body where an injury could result." He leaned close. Both his hands moved around behind her to grab and caress her ass. "A spanking back here is safe. It's an area of fat and muscle with no internal organs near the surface. But I won't strike you here..." his touch moved up to just above the small of her back. "Your kidneys are too close to the surface. Higher up on the back is safer because of protective muscle and bone." His hands returned to her breasts. "It is also safe to strike the breasts, which are largely fatty tissue. Within reason, of course." The caress moved to her thighs. "You can be whipped here." His fingers touched her between her legs. "And even here. As long as the top is careful. It would of course be painful."

  She was quivering all over, but she was not afraid. He hadn't actually done anything but talk and caress her lightly, but she felt as if she was ready to explode. She’d known she had dark fantasies, but she’d never realized she wanted his kind of loving so damn much.

  His hands returned to her breasts. "Arch your back for me a bit." When she did, her breasts were thrust more deeply into his hands. He ran his fingertips lightly over her nipples. She tensed, waiting for him to squeeze the way he loved to do. But he caressed and teased instead, and then he dipped his head to kiss her breasts thoroughly, sucking each nipple into his mouth and tonguing until they were both hard as pebbles.

  She moaned with delight. "Your breasts are beautiful. So many ways to play with beautiful breasts." Sucking one nipple into his mouth, he bit down until she tried to pull away, but her bonds made it impossible. Before the pain built, though, he soothed the spot with his tongue and slid one finger down to delve into the wet folds between her legs. "So wet for me." He moved the finger in and out. He angled it up against her clit. "Roll your hips, love. Ride my finger."