“Why would you prefer not to?”
“Because he was willing to wait to apologize, possibly for hours, as penance for his actions. And because he’s still outside the door keeping an eye on things for me so I can have some time alone with you. Furthermore, I believe he’s good people. Troubled at the moment, perhaps. Currently struggling with his sexual identity, definitely. Amethyst is, of course, not helping him. Amethyst could provoke the Dalai Lama into a rage,” he confided with a smile. “So, it’s your choice. I can ban him immediately and permanently. Or . . .”
Martin walked, ever so slowly, back to the table. He spoke softly. “Or we can let him play guard, while we play doctor-patient.”
“That last one.” She breathed in his warmth and scent.
“I thought so. But first. What is this ‘visions’ business in regard to Amethyst?”
“What do I say if I want to change the subject? Yellow?”
“Yellow means to pause, check in, possibly stop. Do you want to stop?”
She looked at him. “No.”
“You’re very distracting like that, you know.” His voice, deeper and more sensual, sent a ripple of awareness through her. “I don’t want to cover you up, Charlotte. I want to uncover more of you. Explore you.” His fingers grazed her neck, pushing the paper gown down her shoulders, her arms, until the garment pooled uselessly at her elbows. Only the outside of her thighs were still covered.
It reminded her of her scar.
She kept her hands in place. “I suppose you want to finish examining me.”
“Astute of you.” He grasped both her slender wrists with one large hand. He lifted them above her head.
She felt a gasping sensation of pleasure at his dominance. He made her feel so exposed, so small before him, so helpless. So entirely turned on. “Please,” she whispered, even as she twisted and tested the strength of his grip.
“You want this, but you fight me.” He tightened his hold, shook her slightly. Her breasts jiggled, bare as the rest of her, but he didn’t take his gaze from her eyes. “You’re all but flying into subspace, just sitting there. And I know exactly why.”
A pleasant languor suffused her. “Do tell me why.”
He let go of her wrists. She immediately felt the loss of his sturdy grip. Her arms remained in the air for a moment, making her cooperation obvious. She lowered them quickly to her thighs. She refused to cover herself like some embarrassed schoolgirl.
“Because you trust me.”
“I barely know you.” She wished he’d step just a little closer to her. Being handled that way by him had her in a state of arousal she’d never experienced before. If only he’d take the one tiny step to close the distance completely, put that deliciouslooking bulge between her spread thighs.
“Doesn’t matter. You can tell I’m not like your ex. No.” He arrested the movement of her hands to cover herself after all.
She raised her chin to him, rebellious yet nervous and curious.
He patted her hands gently. Too gently.
She craved . . . something overpowering. Something beyond the physical thrust of his body into hers, though that would be gratifying.
“Tell me what happened with your ex.”
Her frustrated exhale made Martin smile. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
“It’s that bad.”
“I’ll judge for myself.” He stepped closer, as if unable to help himself. She could feel the heat radiating from his body. She tried to wiggle her body closer to his.
“Charlotte?” He tilted her head up to his, looked deeply into her eyes. “Your fear and lust radiate on a certain, special wavelength. People like me pick up on it.” He took the tiny step closer, which effectively ended the second thoughts starting to rise in her mind. His enormous bulge pressed firmly against where she wanted it most.
“Feel, Charlotte. I know you want this, too, and everything else I can make you feel. So tell me, what is it you keep thinking that makes you frown even when your body’s begging for mine? Hmmm?” He thrust against her, once.
She gasped at the pleasure of it. She tried desperately to remain in control. “I’m not a submissive.”
“There’s no shame in being a submissive.”
“There is. Shame and danger. I don’t have a slave’s heart.”
“The ex.”
“Yes.”
“You’re my patient here, tonight. Not my slave.” He looked at her, inquisitive. “Charlotte, I’ll stop anytime you like. Just say ‘red’ and all play ends.” His body against hers managed to feel both comforting and enormously stimulating.
Then he kissed the top of her head.
Her heart thudded hard in response to the unexpected affection.
This was beyond dangerous. Betrayal, pain, degradation awaited. Most of all, the spirit-shriveling degradation.
The scar on her thigh throbbed, a reminder.
“I can’t . . .”
“Tell me.” His voice in her ear, soft as thought. She felt his smile against her cheek. “You can tell me anything. I’m your doctor.”
She had to smile at that, then gasp as he moved against her again. “It’s complicated.”
“Pleasure isn’t complicated.”
“The fallout can be.”
“Not this time.”
She looked up. There was a nearly audible click as their gazes met. He stroked her arms, her outer thighs . . . then his hand stilled. His fingers investigated the skin on her outer left thigh.
She knew he felt raised scar tissue that was almost, but not quite, in the shape of an ornate, lowercase k.
Her Gorean slave brand.
10
Gregory held a flashlight in each hand as he led the evening’s second tour group down into the city’s bowels.
Halloween would be the jam-packed tour. But the weeks leading up to Halloween boasted the next largest numbers of ghost hunters signing up for a late-night thrill, his predecessor had said.
Seems he was right.
Nearly a sold-out group. Gregory had had to shout to convey the spiel to all fifty people. Though most of them seemed to ignore the overview and safety instructions.
It wasn’t the juicy part.
The tour promised a “unique, once-in-a-lifetime, authentic” ghost tour.
Gregory should be happy, would’ve been happy, except, well, the undertunnels were creepy. He’d never realized quite how creepy.
Not, of course, because the old, interconnecting rooms and the pits beneath were haunted. They were just dirty and claustrophobic. Probably filled with rodents and insects. Doubtless the air quality was bad.
He breathed fast and shallow, holding one of the flashlights thrust forward, a sword of light spearing the dusty darkness. He strode farther into the forsaken rooms. They were simply neglected spaces, not pits of doom, and it was no big deal. He did a job. He explained the remnants of clothes and furniture. He told stories.
Dark fairy tales.
He listened to the murmurs and nervous laughter of the record-breaking crowd in between stops.
As Gregory reported instances of people hearing odd noises, he listened to the murmurs and laughter die down as they tried to hear the noises, too. He pointed out the remains of prison cells in one dreary room. He elaborated upon the bloody history behind the pile of rusty old bedsprings.
Oh, yes, his crowd was affected. Maybe he wasn’t half bad at this gig after all. They wanted to be titillated and scared, and he was delivering the goods.
Though there were some inexplicable noises.
He preferred not to think about them.
Gregory cleared his throat, continued the tour. The group huddled close, the occasional camera flash capturing portraits from the previous century—a small china doll, an old stain in the shape of a body, and numerous broken pieces of furniture that may or may not have been used by the abducted men and women imprisoned there.
Perhaps the ghost hunters foolishly thought the strange
ly random, moist blasts of air were the exhalations of disembodied spirits.
Gregory didn’t. He did, however, hold the other flashlight closer to his body. He liked the heft of it, and he really liked the beam of light illuminating the perfectly ordinary dust.
Other beams of light from other flashlights arced past him, around him, congregating on the holding cells. All the moving lights were making him feel strangely dizzy. Or maybe it was the poor air quality.
It was when they arrived at the deepest, most remote part of the tour that he heard the noise.
The distinct sound of a whip being applied to bare flesh. And, the shriek of pain on impact.
His speech stumbled.
Everyone grew silent. He let the silence stretch.
Gregory knew it was only someone inside the fetish club. Those people did odd sexual things, perverse and dangerous things, to each other. They enjoyed it.
But even as he smiled a showman’s smile, wanting to feel smug, Gregory felt a chill crawl up his spine and freeze his rehearsed speech. The fetish club should be too far away to hear so clearly.
The crowd of ghost hunters marveled at the acoustical emanation of tormented souls.
The whipping had stopped. The sound of a woman crying—a desolate, heartbreaking expression of grief—could clearly be heard.
It sounded real.
It sounded . . . haunted.
His crowd milled uncertainly. Gregory could feel panic in the air.
He suddenly realized they might stampede, hurting each other. Hurting him. Definitely hurting his business.
Gregory improvised desperately. “The century-old ghost of an abducted woman, named Lilli, is rarely heard. It seems she has, she really has revealed herself to us.” Gregory licked his lips. His voice trembled, but that only enhanced the tale. “Once captured and bundled away from daylight and everyone she’d ever known, Lilli refused to submit to her captors. They tried the usual tactics employed in breaking a woman: withholding food, leaving her in isolation and darkness, applying dreadful indignities to her person. Still she rebelled, until they decided to make an example of her.”
The room was silent except for the ghostly echoes of a woman sobbing.
“The most evil of the crimpers, a man named Dunthor who prided himself on the creation of docile prostitutes, stripped her naked and bound her facedown to one of those mattresses.” He pointed to the pile of rusty bedsprings, which was all that remained of the beds. “He proceeded to whip her mercilessly with a very cruel weapon, a cat o’ nines embedded with sharp slivers of glass. An inappropriate tool to use on even the most mutinous of shipboard louts, he used on her poor flesh until skin and muscle was nothing but raw hamburger.” Did they have hamburger back then? Gregory didn’t know, but he could hear the shocked gasps of women in the group and figured it didn’t matter.
He aimed a beam of light at the ceiling, at a square of old wood. “The brave, spirited Lilli didn’t have a chance. But though she screamed herself hoarse, she never broke. Rebellious to the end, she cursed Dunthor. He finally gave up. Furious and humiliated, Dunthor dumped her body, still alive, down through the trapdoor you see above, into a pit. Into this pit, as a matter of fact.
“In time—no one knows how long—she succumbed to her injuries. But her ghost lingers.”
Gregory felt a strange tightness in his throat and nausea in his belly. He’d made it up, every gruesome detail. The trapdoor was real, but everything else pure invention. And yet his body quivered with panic and an enormous sadness. It felt as if he were channeling something real, some insistent soul’s story . . . which was ridiculous! There was no Lilli!
The crying woman had finally fallen silent.
“I’m sorry, Lilli,” he whispered. His words echoed.
Thoroughly unnerved, Gregory pushed through the group, which parted in silence.
“The tour is completed,” he announced. He spoke over objections, launching into the closing spiel and cautioning them to watch their heads as they ascended steps under low cement blocks and exposed pipe. “There will be another ghost tour tomorrow night,” he concluded. “And, of course, the extraspooky Halloween tour. Tell your friends.”
He knew they would.
The whipping and crying had sounded real.
Gregory held two flashlights before him, twin lightsabers of reason. When the last of the group departed, he shook his head and all but ran up the narrow staircase leading to the fresher air above.
11
Charlotte remembered the smell of burning flesh, fragrant like a kind of meat. The skin on her leg had sizzled, the hot iron brand hissing. The kiss of pain progressed relentlessly, penetrating with each microsecond into deeper and deeper agony.
She remembered screaming.
Helpless in Cory’s ropes, knotted tightly like an animal, she’d still managed to jerk away from the hot brand.
Lodged within her flesh, the iron had ripped her open, ruining the brand’s precise edges.
She’d been marked for life.
White with shock, Cory had apologized. He’d helped her to the bathroom to vomit. He’d held her as she’d choked and sobbed.
When she asked for a divorce, he’d let her go without the fight she’d expected. He said he was sorry he couldn’t give her what she needed sexually. He’d said he forgave her for being the way she was.
He forgave her.
Martin tapped his finger on the raised flesh. “What is this?”
She felt her lips thin and tighten. “What does it look like?”
He gazed at it. “Like . . . a two-headed kangaroo in quicksand? No?”
“This isn’t a Rorschach test.”
He heard her tone. “I know it’s not. I’m just trying to minimize what appears to be its tense-making effect on you.” His thumb caressed her. “Where’d you get the scar, Charlotte? I really want to know.”
She couldn’t help smiling a little as she threw his words back at him. “It’s good to want things.”
He gave her a stern look. “You trust me, but not completely. It won’t do.”
He moved against her, ever so slightly. “I’ll just have to distract you.” The length of him throbbed against her. She leaned into him as far as the thigh restraints would allow. He felt so good.
“I will get to the bottom of you.”
She shivered at the promise in his words. Her body yearned for his despite her vigilance. He’d seen her gruesome scar and he wanted her anyway. Impossible to disbelieve; his erection pushed at her.
The tense core of tightness inside her relaxed further.
She wanted more of him. All of him.
At the moment, she wanted Martin to unzip his pants and shove his cock inside her. Just like the movies of the two of them together. Was that too much to ask? She looked at him under lowered lids. “I’m very sick, Doctor. I think you’ve realized I like men who are rough with me. I’m not sure we have time for a pill. You’d better give me an injection.”
“Self-diagnosing is frowned on in my office.” But he leaned in for another teasing fabric-covered thrust. His dark pants were wildly tented now. “You’re being a very difficult patient.”
“Cure me,” she invited. She tried to thrust back at him, but the restraints held her by the legs.
“Naughty Charlotte. I think it’s time you remembered who’s in charge here.”
With economical movements, he fetched a small blue jar from the counter. “This should help you focus.” He held it before her.
“Vicks VapoRub?”
He opened the top of the jar, dipped a large finger in, scooping out a small amount of pungent white jelly.
She began shaking her head. “Oh no you don’t.”
“Oh yes I do.” He rubbed his forefinger and thumb together, spreading it thin. Then without further words, he applied it between her legs.
At first, the slippery sensation electrified. Then it ratcheted up to a turn-on too quickly. “Oh!”
“Your mind’s in
the right place now, isn’t it?” His fingers were deft, stroking, massaging all around her clit without quite touching it. She trembled, every inch of her yearning for him. Her belly felt deliciously fluttery as he continued above, below, in sensual circles that made her sigh and gasp with pleasure.
The menthol scent and Martin’s devious smile seared itself into her memory. He’d somehow managed to relegate her scar, and all it represented, to unimportance. She knew that whatever else happened between them, she’d cherish this moment for the rest of her life.
Her heart softened further toward him. A need beyond the physical craving spread through her body. He’d awakening an ache of longing inside her that encompassed more than sex.
Distracted by it, she suddenly realized the stimulating sensations had ignited. Everywhere his fingers went, the coolness heated. Heat on heat. Almost burning.
“Oh.” She shifted, unsettled. “That’s . . . wow.”
He tapped his now-empty fingers on her leg. “Yes. Where were we? I was asking you where you got this scar.”
“Oh, that’s intense.” She shifted again. It felt like liquid fire. Not like the brand’s agony. More like a prickly sunburn. Charlotte shifted. Martin was correct. Her mind was now quite focused on the fire between her legs.
“I’d also like to know why you abandoned me to hang in my shackles. The first woman I play with in ages, the first woman I’ve ever let lock me onto a St. Andrew’s Cross, and she runs scared the moment I mention she’s a natural submissive. Now why might that be? Charlotte?”
“What?” She shifted again.
“You aren’t paying attention.”
She bared her teeth at him. “So punish me.”
He grinned back. Then lowered his head. And blew on her.
She squirmed at the sudden icy chill in her nether bits. “Oh, no! Cold! It’s cold!”
“Yes. That’s without putting any directly on your clit. If I have to take an extreme therapy method, I assure you I will do that, and more.” He lowered his head, but instead of a cool blast of air, she felt the warm, moist tip of his tongue touch her where she was most sensitive.
She shouted. How had he managed to bring her right to the brink so quickly?
Rough Play Page 11