The Scarlett Letters

by Jenny Nordbak

  I carefully pulled the apple off my teeth and shook my head with a smile.

  “Best of luck with that dream, Mum. That whole marriage thing makes absolutely no sense to me.”

  “Nonsense. You just haven’t dated the right guy yet!” she said with a pointed look at Colin, who thankfully was too distracted taking a shot to notice her meddling.

  I rolled my eyes and blushed the same color as the apple. I was now a moist, disgruntled vampire, so I found the laundry room to throw my cloak and dress in the dryer.

  I had been standing in there for a few minutes, enjoying the gentle hum of the dryer, when Colin came bursting through the door.

  “Hey! I wondered where you had gone.…” He trailed off, taking in the fact that I was definitely not wearing the same costume I had been before. I was suddenly hyper aware of my breasts heaving with every breath over the top of the corset. I saw the exact instant that he noticed the livid bruises that covered my upper thighs. At least he couldn’t see my ass. Unfortunately, there’s no mistaking the bruises from a cane as anything other than having been smacked with a sticklike object. A series of lined, fading bruises worked their way up my thighs in impressively consistent increments. I had admired Dom’s handiwork earlier, but now wished the bruises weren’t so distinct so that I could claim to have just fallen on my ass or slipped on the stairs or something.

  “What the fuck, Jenny?”

  “Please just leave it, Colin. It’s not what it looks like.”

  Did I really just try using that line?

  “Not what it looks like? It looks like someone fucking hit you.”

  If an earthquake could happen right now, that would be really helpful. No idea how to get out of this one.

  “It’s complicated and none of your business. I was a consenting adult.”

  We were treading in uncomfortable territory here. I didn’t want to explain my BDSM proclivities to Colin, but I also didn’t want him making a scene in front of my mom so that I would need to have this conversation with her too. Colin grabbed my arm and held it out in front of me revealing the handprint bruise around one of my wrists.

  “Yeah. That looks consensual. Why do you let guys treat you like this?”

  “Let go. You’re drunk and you’re hurting me. No one did anything wrong. Just let it go. You’re not my boyfriend, and you’re certainly not my dad. Drop it.”

  “Why don’t—”

  “I said drop it!”

  He glared daggers at me, but shut his big mouth. I felt bad since his heart was in the right place. He saw something out of context and, given my track record, it wasn’t an unrealistic leap for him to be concerned. But there wasn’t much I could do about it. I sure as shit wasn’t telling him the truth and couldn’t come up with a plausible lie, so I was just going to have to accept him being upset. I adored him like a teddy bear big brother and for the first time had to contemplate the reality of how the people who mattered to me would feel if they knew what I was doing. It was an unpleasant thought.

  I grabbed my clothes from the dryer and threw them back on even though they were still a bit damp.

  “Everything okay?” my mom asked, looking to where Colin had been standing.

  “Yeah, no big deal.”

  “Are you sleeping with him?”

  “Mother!”

  “It’s a fair question. He looks at you with puppy-dog eyes.”

  “Definitely not. We’re just friends. Good friends. And I’d like to keep it that way, so don’t go making it awkward! And I have a fucking boyfriend, thank you very much.”

  Who I’m now in a polyamorous relationship with …

  “I’m not sure Colin would know what to do with you anyway.”

  “Moving on…”

  “How’s work going? Is Rich managing okay?”

  “Everything’s fine.”

  “And how about your extracurricular activities?”

  I hesitated and looked at her skeptically, not sure whether she was fishing or knew something.

  “C’mon, as if I don’t know what you’re up to. You can’t keep secrets from me. Rich let it slip that you’ve got volunteer work a few days a week, so you work earlier. It’s no big deal. I don’t know why you wouldn’t just tell me.”

  “I guess it didn’t really seem important?”

  “Are you really just volunteering or is there something else going on?”

  “Hate to disappoint, but nothing scandalous going on here!”

  “I wasn’t saying there was,” she said defensively. “Just want to make sure everything is okay with you. We haven’t been talking as much lately.”

  “Everything is great. Just been really busy.”

  I was sweating by the time Amelia and I escaped and were driving to the party. The guilt monster inside of me was rearing its ugly head and there was nothing I could do to assuage it. I hated lying. I had to acknowledge that I would potentially be lying to some of the people in my life indefinitely. Certainly as long as I worked at the Dungeon, but even after that I was beginning to understand that there were some things I was never going to be able to share.

  19. SIR LIAM

  Amelia seemed nervous in the car on the way to the fetish party and I wondered if I had made a mistake bringing her. It was my first public play party too, so I was already faking a level of confidence that I didn’t really have without needing to bolster hers. It was too late to worry about it, though. We parked and met Wes on our walk over to the club. I squared my shoulders as we approached the entrance, knowing that I needed to have enough confidence for all three of us. We bypassed the line that wound around the building, and I addressed the guy at the front who was holding a clipboard.

  “I’m Scarlett. From the Dungeon. I should be on the list of performers. These are my guests.”

  He looked me up and down before flipping a few pages on his list and waving us in. It was thrilling to be part of the list at an event like this. I walked into the club feeling like the Queen of the Damned. Amelia looked like a deer in the headlights. Wes was a kid in a candy shop.

  There were no bullshit, half-assed costumes here. Everyone was an over-the-top mixture of terrifying and sexy. The sinister electronic music was so loud I could feel it vibrating in my chest. The club space was absolutely massive and I wondered how we were going to find my friends in all this madness. Go-go dancers twisted sinuously on platforms and cages around the dance floor and I found myself mesmerized by their erotic movements. A hand grabbed my shoulder and I turned to find Dominic looking devastatingly handsome in a tailcoat and vest. He took me by the hand and gestured toward a door in the far back corner. I grabbed Amelia’s hand so I didn’t lose her, and the three of us made our way quite easily through the crowd that parted before Dom. We went through the door into an almost pitch-black hallway, and then emerged onto a huge outdoor patio that was also filled with people, but the music wasn’t nearly as loud.

  It looked like we had walked out into the midst of a vampire bondage orgy. Immediately outside the door, a girl was tied to a chair and being fingered by a huge black Dominant wearing black latex gloves up to his elbows and a black leather butcher’s apron. He nodded acknowledgment to Dominic as we walked past, barely reacting to his sub reaching a screaming climax. His eyes drifted over to Amelia and did a leisurely survey of her female form. She didn’t even notice because she was so distracted by the debauchery that surrounded us. Dungeon rules clearly didn’t apply as we had just witnessed, but there seemed to be some rules. Nipples were covered and it wasn’t as though the people around us were having full-blown sex … but still there was a different vibe than I had experienced before. The air was rife with arousal and mischief. This wasn’t about a controlled one-sided exchange of experience for money like it was at work. This was about experiencing hedonism with wild abandon.

  Dom led us to the side of a stage and showed us where we could put our coats and bags.

  I looked up on the stage and saw that Raven had a sub from wo
rk named Minx tied to a spanking horse and was paddling her ass to the frantic beat of the drums. A crowd had gathered to watch and it was obvious that Raven thrived on the attention. Dom brought my gaze back to the floor and said, “Scarlett, I’d like you to meet my lovely wife, Vanessa, and our good friend Sir Liam.”

  Vanessa was a pretty woman with dark curly hair and kind eyes. I instantly liked her. She squeezed me in a tight hug and said, “I’m so happy to finally meet you! Dom always talks about you!”

  I didn’t have a chance to formulate a good response to this because Sir Liam had taken my hand and kissed my knuckles in a formal greeting. I was mesmerized by him and couldn’t have said why. I have always been attracted to very tall men and he was barely my height and slight of build. He had long blond hair and a goatee, but it was his eyes that drew me in. They were rimmed in smudged black eyeliner, but their blue depths seemed so open and unguarded that it made me self-conscious.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I responded to both of them and introduced Amelia and Wes, whom I had embarrassingly forgotten now that we were outside. The next few moments were a blurred rush of hugs from friends and introductions to new and fascinating-looking people. This was the first time Wes had seen any of my coworkers in person. He kept giving me looks of amazement and approval as he met each new girl. I could tell how eager he was to instigate something, but I was too nervous to ask anyone to play with us yet.

  When the madness had calmed a bit, Dom pulled me to one side and said, “You should play with Liam. He does fire play. It’ll blow your mind.”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what fire play meant, but it sounded intriguing. I was hesitant about subbing for anyone, though, particularly in front of a crowd. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Wes seeing me in that role either. He knew in theory what I did for my clients, but I felt that it might shatter his image of me as his Mistress to see me submit to another man. I voiced this concern to Dom.

  “Nothing really subby necessary. I could tie you up just to give it a bit of flair and then he can do his fire thing. Nothing corporal, no protocol.”

  Vanessa chimed in, “You have to try fire. And Sir Liam is amazing at it.”

  “Okay. Do you think he’d be down to play with me?”

  They both laughed. “Fuck yes, love. Look at you right now.”

  Before I had time to get nervous, I was stripping out of my skirt next to the stage and putting on a pair of Vanessa’s boy shorts. I took my corset off and she helped me to apply electrical tape in two X’s to cover my nipples. I had never seen this before, but within months would be carrying electrical tape with me at all times. You know, just in case I needed to whip my tits out in public. We left my thigh-high boots on and pulled my hair back, lest it get singed. I suddenly wished I hadn’t brought Amelia because I was worried about her judging me, but to her credit, she didn’t say a word as she helped me to balance in my heels as I stripped off and she folded my clothes into a neat pile. She just smiled at me with wide eyes and shook her head as though she couldn’t quite believe what I was about to do. Neither could I.

  Liam, I would come to learn, was a well-respected Dominant within the community who happened to be living with cystic fibrosis. His disease explained his smaller stature and his wiry build. His fetishes primarily revolved around piercing, ritual scarification, and tattoos. In light of his condition, I found this fascinating. On some base level, he seemed to be trying to leave his mark. Already in his early thirties, he was unlikely to live another decade. He had to know that, in all likelihood, the marks that he left on the people in his life would outlast his time on this Earth. There was something incredibly poignant about that thought.

  Dom and Liam explained to me what we would do once we were on stage. Dom would take the lead with tying me up while Liam got his fire implements ready. Fire play, they explained, worked by brushing a stick dipped in flammable fluid across the surface of an area of skin and then lighting it with another stick that was on fire. The fluid would briefly flame up, but as long as he quickly swiped over it with his hand, my skin wasn’t at risk of burning. It sounded straightforward enough.

  Once we were up on stage, I was a little insecure at how naked I was in front of such a big crowd, but it was easy to get caught in the moment. A Puscifer song hammered through the speakers. Maynard James Keenan’s seductive voice combined with the hypnotic beat were enticing me to join the rest of the sybarites and surrender to my baser desires.

  Dom tied me spread-eagled to the Saint Andrew’s cross on stage while Liam lined up his tools on a small table. He fiddled with fluid for a moment and then approached me with two tools in hand. One stick was on fire and the other was covered in fluid. He looked me in the eye and asked, “You ready?”

  I laughed nervously and replied, “Let’s do this.”

  He swiped the fluid stick down my thigh, leaving it glistening. I could feel my heart pounding over the music as he drew the flame closer to me. He started with it in front of my face and slowly moved it down my body. I could feel its warmth against my skin and shivered in anticipation of him reaching my thigh. When he did, the fluid ignited and flared up for a brief second before he wiped it out with his hand. It was electric to the senses. All of the information being fed to my brain was screaming that I had just been on fire, but the logical part of me knew that my skin hadn’t actually burned. It didn’t mark the skin, but left it tingling deliciously as a reminder of where the wicked flame had been. Now that he had let me feel it once and reassured me, he started to find a rhythm with the flame, crisscrossing all of the exposed skin on my body. I twitched every time he touched the flame to me, but it quickly turned from twitching to writhing at the glorious sensory experience of it. Liam was captivating. The crowd looked almost as entranced as I was. I wondered whether they could possibly be as painfully aroused as I was too.

  It was over too soon for my liking, but my skin was beginning to sting, so he couldn’t keep doing it in the same places without burning me. While Dom untied me, Liam took a damp cloth and wiped the remaining traces of fluid from me. I didn’t bother to hide how badly I wanted him. I stared him down with fuck-me eyes and moaned at his touch. Ever the gentleman, he kissed me on the cheek and whispered in my ear, “You were incredible.”

  To which I could only reply, “No, you were incredible. That was amazing. Thank you.”

  Looking back on it, I’m fairly sure he put me in sub space, but I was too excited about it to even notice. I felt high as I rejoined Amelia and Vanessa on the side of the stage and they helped me to dress.

  “That was fucking hot!” I exclaimed to them. “I’m going to have blue balls for the rest of the night!”

  Raven appeared as though that was her cue, and yelled over the music, “Blue balls? No blue balls allowed! Wanna get off? We were about to play with one of my subbie boys in the bathroom. Come on … he can take care of you!”

  She said it matter-of-factly. Oh, you need an orgasm? No big deal. I have one waiting for you in the bathroom. I didn’t really know what that meant, but went along for the ride. I couldn’t find Wes. I assumed he was at the bar, but thought he would be fine until I got back. Amelia came with me, and Raven led us into a medium-size bathroom with two stalls and a counter with two sinks. There were six or seven women already in there and an attractive male sub wiping the counter down. He had short salt-and-pepper hair and a five o’clock shadow that highlighted his strong jaw and cheekbones. He was naked and looked totally unselfconscious about it, but then he didn’t have anything to be insecure about. Raven introduced us.

  “This is my subbie. He doesn’t really need a name, so we just call him Boy. Boy, this is Mistress Scarlett.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mistress,” he said, making brief eye contact before bowing his head. That fleeting look was enough to know that there was a spark of mutual attraction between us.

  Raven continued, “Boy, Mistress Scarlett says she has blue balls from fire play on stage. Your job is to get her off while w
e do whatever we want to you. Clear?”

  “Yes, Goddess.”

  She turned to me and asked, “Are you okay with him going down on you? He’s skilled with his tongue, this one.”

  If I’d taken any time at all to think, there’s no way I would have done it: let a perfect stranger go down on me in a bathroom at a club with an audience? Not a fucking chance, for reasons innumerable. I must’ve still been riding a high from the fire and feeling a little reckless, though, because I said, “Fuck yes!” and hopped up on the counter.

  I hadn’t noticed Erin in the room, but she appeared in front of me and, without saying a word, reached under my skirt and slid my panties down and over my boots. I watched as she tucked them in the pocket of her trench coat and wondered if I would be getting them back. The thought was titillating. As was the realization that if Raven was right about her sub, I was about to get off with Erin watching.

  I looked up and saw Amelia’s back as she left the bathroom and the door closed behind her. I thought she was probably freaked out and possibly offended by my behavior, but going after her didn’t seem reasonable. I had told her what would likely be going on here tonight and she had agreed to come. Maybe she just didn’t need to see me doing it.

  This is the part where I’m supposed to tell you that I submitted to my inner wild child and rode the thrill of the moment to a mind-bending climax. But to my dismay, it didn’t work like that. Raven was right: Boy not only knew where my clit was but what he was supposed to do with it. Mechanics, however, are only part of the battle. I couldn’t get out of my own head long enough to let go. My thoughts were suddenly racing out of control and I wanted to stop but I didn’t want to look lame in front of my new friends. They were all watching me expectantly and I found myself faking pleasure. I had started this journey to avoid this very thing and now I felt more pressured to fake it than ever before. How did it come to this?

  At my first throaty moan, Raven said, “Right? I told you he had a talented tongue! Let’s see if he can keep it up when he’s distracted!”