by Diane Leyne
Club Libertine 7
Submission for Skeptics
Writer Kris Comisky was manipulated into insulting a room full of Doms during a book launch at Seattle's notorious Club Libertine. Once she realizes her error, she decides to undergo sub training so she can write an article both as an apology and to help clear up misconceptions about the lifestyle.
University professor Damon Redmeyne and firefighter Brad Martin are Doms and lovers, and they live upstairs from Kris. They're also in love with her and volunteer to be her trainers, hoping it will help her see them as more than just friends and open her up to the idea of a permanent ménage relationship.
Kris takes to the lifestyle immediately but is also fearful. Her family has a history of domestic abuse, and she's having trouble coming to terms with a relationship involving pain no matter how many orgasms Damon and Brad give her. Can she let go of her upbringing and love them back before it's too late?
Genre: BDSM, Contemporary, Ménage a Trois/Quatre
Length: 33,313 words
SUBMISSION FOR SKEPTICS
Club Libertine 7
Diane Leyne
MENAGE EVERLASTING
Siren Publishing, Inc.
www.SirenPublishing.com
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A SIREN PUBLISHING BOOK
IMPRINT: Ménage Everlasting
SUBMISSION FOR SKEPTICS
Copyright © 2013 by Diane Leyne
E-book ISBN: 978-1-62740-030-5
First E-book Publication: July 2013
Cover design by Harris Channing
All cover art and logo copyright © 2013 by Siren Publishing, Inc.
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DEDICATION
It’s not the mistakes we make that define us. It is how we handle the aftermath.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Readers: If you want to read more about Joshua and Jillian’s story that leads up to the book launch at Club Libertine mentioned at the beginning of this book, please check out Club Libertine 6, The Dominant’s Guide to Owning and Training a Sex Slave. DL
SUBMISSION FOR SKEPTICS
Club Libertine 7
DIANE LEYNE
Copyright © 2013
Chapter One
It was early afternoon and Kris Comisky was sitting on the veranda of the duplex where she lived, working on her laptop, struggling to find an original angle on pollution and soy beans, luckily not as a part of the same article, but neither story was going well. She hoped the fresh air and sunshine would inspire her, but it wasn’t really working.
She’d been working, or rather trying to work, for about an hour, when she heard footsteps coming down the stairs inside the house. She had the front door open so she could hear the heavy tread of one of her upstairs neighbors. She rented the main floor of the duplex, and Damon and Brad had the upper two floors.
Kris sighed. The hot ones were always taken or off-limits.
She looked up as the screen door opened. It was Brad. He was a firefighter, although sometimes she thought he looked so much like the Hollywood stereotype that he couldn’t possibly be a real one. He was tall, at least six two, with muscles on top of muscles. He’d been Mr. January in the local firefighter calendar and posed with just his axe preserving his modesty. She still had that photo tucked away for inspiration in a drawer with her toys.
But he definitely was a professional. He didn’t talk about his heroism, but she’d seen the articles in the newspaper about how he’d risked his life last year to save two children, and another time he’d ended up in the hospital with smoke inhalation after running back into a burning building to save a fallen colleague. He was a real hero, but he was also sweet and modest and smoking hot, pun intended.
He was also Hollywood handsome, with close-cropped dark hair and twinkling blue eyes and the manners of a Southern gentleman. In fact, he would have been perfect and Kris would have pursued him until she got him into her bed except for one thing, and that was the fact that he lived with his boyfriend Damon, who was a university professor with a PhD in sociology. He was almost the same height as Brad but probably weighed about forty pounds less, with his lean body and frame, and he was also extremely cute.
They’d been so sweet when she moved in, helping her carry boxes and rearrange furniture, and at first she’d thought they were just friends or maybe roommates, but when Brad had to leave for his shift, he’d paused to kiss Damon on the mouth and that had settled that.
But over the last six months, the three of them had become good friends, often having meals together. She’d even gone to the theatre twice with Damon, when Brad’s work schedule had meant he couldn’t go. She’d never mentioned it to Damon, but sometimes she thought that Brad deliberately switched schedules to miss the shows. He was a wonderful combination of a true Southern gentleman and a “man’s man” who loved his motorcycle and fishing and mixed martial arts, unlike the more cerebral Damon who loved theatre, classical music, and was a gourmet cook.
Kris had heard all about their families back east, both of which had met each other and approved of the relationship. Kris marvelled at the acceptance. Her family wa
s not nearly so open-minded. They were shocked when she wanted to have a career and left home to pursue it. To them, a woman’s primary job was caring for her man and producing babies. Kris was the youngest of five. She had one sister and three brothers and had watched her mother cater to her husband until the day she died. Her mother had never come first a single day in her life, and Kris had left home rather than enter into that kind of relationship. And when her mother didn’t live up to her father’s expectations, he thought nothing of hitting her. Mostly he just left bruises, but Kris could remember at least two occasions on which she accompanied her mother to the hospital.
She suspected her brothers were following in their father’s footsteps, and she knew her sister, Katie, who was four years older than Kris, got married at eighteen and had her first baby at nineteen. She had clearly followed in her mother’s footsteps, as her husband was overbearing and not a kind man. Kris had seen bruises on her sister’s arm when she’d been dating Frank, but it got worse right after the wedding. She tried to get Katie to leave, but when Christine was born, she knew her sister would never leave him. Frank’s family was influential in the community, and Katie was afraid she’d lose custody, so she stayed with him. But she also was determined that her little sister would have a better life. She demanded Kris work her butt off in school, and she scoured academic journals and wrote letter after letter to find scholarships for her baby sister. Kris paid her back by getting a degree in journalism, which was, at best, a poorly paid field with few jobs, but she loved it, even though she’d had to move to the city to get work.
Fast forward nine years since her graduation, and she was still a struggling writer. She made enough to pay the bills and was making a reputation with her deep investigative pieces and her clear and catchy writing style. She freelanced for a number of big and small papers and magazines and had been toying with the idea of writing a book. And she did it all on her own. Her father had disowned her when she went away to university because he didn’t think it was worth wasting education on a female whose only role was to raise babies and serve her husband. Her brothers followed her dad’s lead, and her poor mother wasn’t given a chance to voice an opinion. Only Katie stayed in touch, and she had to do that behind her husband’s back.
She hadn’t even been back home or seen any of them in three years, not since her mother’s funeral. She’d been able to spend only a few minutes with Katie and had been shocked by her appearance. Katie was only four years older than her, but it might have been a decade. She looked tired and drawn. She had had a number of miscarriages after Christine’s birth, but had finally given birth to the son that Frank desired the previous year. Kris had taken the opportunity to slip a prepaid cell phone in her sister’s pocket and whisper in her ear that she should call any time of day or night when she needed help or was ready to leave.
That was the only time they were left alone. Kris wasn’t allowed to go to sit with the family during the funeral or see Katie again afterward. They’d talked three times since then, but Katie could never bring herself to leave her husband and disrupt the children’s lives. The last time she’d called, she’d also admitted she was afraid to leave and told Kris not to ask again.
Kris waited and worried and educated herself on spousal abuse. She interviewed many victims, trying to understand why they stayed with their abusers, sometimes even dying at their hands. She helped raise money for shelters and even underground organizations that helped spirit abused women out of situations where their lives were at risk.
Often, she learned, the abuser made sure his victim had no money of her own and no way to support herself, so she was totally dependent on him. That was another reason why Kris’s career was everything to her. She needed to be able to support herself so she would never be dependent on a man’s good will and never feel trapped. “You made your bed, lie in it” could very well be the family motto, but that wasn’t ever going to apply to her.
She’d spent many hours discussing life and love and everything under the sun with Brad and Damon. She even told them something about her upbringing, including her parents, but she didn’t talk about her siblings, especially Katie. And she didn’t tell them about her sister’s situation. She wasn’t sure why she didn’t talk about her sister. Katie was a wonderful woman in a terrible situation, and based on what she read, abused women’s risks actually increased when they finally left their abusers. Kris didn’t know what to do to help her sister, and she’d thought about talking about the situation with Damon and Brad, but somehow, she’d never been able to get the words out. Maybe it was because they were men. They were wonderful guys, and part of her wished they weren’t gay, but they were male and she didn’t feel comfortable talking about the subject with them.
She did feel comfortable spending time with them, talking with them about any and everything. They were smart and funny and she liked getting a male perspective. Since they were gay, she could relax with them. She never worried about makeup, and if her hair was a mess, she just tied it back. She once even went up to their apartment in her bra to get their opinion on what to wear for a date.
There were really only two things she didn’t tell them, and one of those things was that they now starred in many of her fantasies, sometimes singly and sometimes together. Because there was never any chance of an actual sexual relationship, her imagination had been somehow freed up, and she found herself having the wickedest sex dreams about them, leaving her horny and frustrated. Her battery-operated boyfriend had gotten such a workout since she met her boys, as she thought of them.
Brad gave her a wave as he hurried out. This wasn’t his regular shift, so it must be some kind of emergency, particularly judging from the rush he was in. She hoped it wasn’t serious. She worried about him every time she saw a fire on the news.
She was watching him leave when her cell phone rang. It was Margo from the gym, or rather Margo who she knew from the gym. As a writer, Kris felt it was important to be accurate. However, Kris didn’t really care much for Margo. The woman was arrogant, and someone wasn’t worth her time of day unless they were rich or a hot guy or she wanted something from them.
Kris sighed. She was a freelance writer trying to make a name for herself, and Margo worked for one of the big publicity firms, representing mostly writers, which made her someone Kris had to stay friendly with.
“Hey, Margo.”
“Kris. I have a story for you. But you can’t tell anyone that I set it up.”
“Tell me more.”
“Do you promise me you’ll keep your lips zipped?”
“Yes, fine. Whatever.”
“You’ll be grateful when you hear what I have to say. Do you still work for The Woman’s Press?”
“Amongst others.”
The Woman’s Press was what it sounded like. It emphasized not only stories for and about women, but also by women. They’d given Kris some great opportunities writing on women’s issues in the past, but now she was mostly writing features with a wider audience for the more mainstream press. She was grateful and didn’t forget where she started, usually sending them a few articles a year. It had been six months since she’d had anything for them, so she decided to listen to what Margo was pitching.
“Have you ever heard of Dr. Joshua McClain?”
“Never heard of him. He one of those doctors who diddle their patients?”
“No, he’s not that kind of doctor. He’s a PhD who specializes in human sexuality, specifically BDSM. You know what that is?”
“Yes.” Her reply was clipped, but now her interest was piqued. “Doesn’t he have some kind of risqué book coming out? I remember hearing something about it.”
“That’s him. The Dominant’s Guide to Owning and Training a Sex Slave is the book, and my firm is handling the publicity.”
“Yeah. I have heard about it. Apparently the official book launch tour is starting with a kickoff here in Seattle, but only a handful of members of the media have been invited and everyone�
�s dying to be there. Everyone figures this book will be the nonfiction equivalent of that Fifty Shades book, and wants to be there. It’s tonight, isn’t it?”
“You want to be there?”
“Where exactly is there? Reporters who are attending have signed confidentiality agreements, and reporters who haven’t been invited are desperately trying to find it so they can crash.”
“They can’t find it because it is at an extremely exclusive BDSM club.”
“What’s the name of the club?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Where is it located?”
“Seattle.”
“Ha-ha. Address?”
“No can do.”
“Then why have you called me?”
“Because I think that an objective journalist needs to be there to call them on their shit. They only invited a few sycophants, and there needs to be someone who can write from the female perspective. He’s promoting a book about men beating on their wives and tying up their girlfriends and sharing them with their friends. He’s sick.”
“Don’t you rep him?”
“Yeah. But when I started, he was writing serious academic papers on sex and sexual dysfunction. Now he’s sold out and is writing a sensational book strictly for the money, and I think it would be dangerous to women everywhere if this book is a hit.”
“Why me?” Kris asked, knowing that Margo never did anything out of the goodness of her heart. But this story idea was intriguing. If nothing else, it would be a major scoop for The Woman’s Press.