Shut Out

by Liz Crowe

  Chapter Five

  Sophie stepped back, observing her work for the night. The familiar handle of the bullwhip lodged tight in her palm. A slight sheen of sweat cooled her as a breeze parted the curtains. Moonlight streaked across the dark hardwood floor, crossing the man’s bare, whip-striped torso. Distracted, she gazed out over the city, its huge, hulking, mostly empty buildings, barren streets, and no-man’s land vibe¸ ignoring her client who was strapped up against a large X-shaped cross.

  The city had once been such a jewel, a thriving hub on the edge of Canada, gleaming and glamorous with its French-inspired architecture and many ethnic groups crowding the streets. When the 1960s roared in, bringing race riots and fury, it left this empty husk in its wake, an echoing reminder of what was, and what never would be again, for reasons bemoaned by plenty, but dealt with by none. Her own life mirrored it, probably why she had such affinity for the place, what kept her there, in a dirt-cheap loft.

  Continuing to ignore her sub—her client—she rubbed the end of the whip’s handle along her neck and across the top of her exposed breasts, deep in thought. She’d come from a background of privilege. Had a fully functional and supportive family. Her parents had loved her, their Sophie, the beautiful, desired, only child of a pair of college professors mired somewhat in their own importance. Their one flaw, perhaps, over-involvement in her life from her conception. They were taken from her at once, in an auto accident, while she finished law school in Ann Arbor. She missed them, but in a purely decorative way.

  She’d never been close to anyone, not her annoying parents, or her many friends in high school and college. No one had affected her, made an impact on her, as she worked toward her goal—her own law firm, her own money, and living the way she wanted.

  Hard, brittle, and bitchy had been the name of her game then. How she had gotten to that point escaped her, but it represented a stage of her life, and she’d done little to dispel the image, the self-created perception of being utterly in control of everyone and everything around her.

  Then, just when she believed she had it—the perfect balance of work and play, he had dropped into her life, into her lap, like a Christmas present you didn’t know you wanted and can’t accept.

  Her goals had been simple. She’d achieved them, thanks to her own doing. Had even found an outlet for her restlessness—the never-quite-satisfied, high-level lust she sustained nearly around the clock. But Evan Adams upset that apple cart, sending her into a strange free fall of unwanted emotion and bizarre switching activity foreign to her, until the moment she’d laid eyes on him.

  Shaking her head, she turned, her body on autopilot, needing to finish this guy off and get some sleep. She sighed, fixed her firm Dominatrix voice in place, and flicked her whip at the man who flinched and moaned around his ball gag as she approached. A tough one, this guy—a very high level CEO at a major medical center—an M.D. who loved nothing more than harsh treatment of his entire body: nipple clamps, cock rings, restraints galore, gags, blindfolds, and even more dangerous play.

  She drew the line at asphyxiation bullshit though, unwilling to even contemplate how easy it would be to finish that off. Tonight, he had dropped to his knees in his suit at the sight of her, dressed in thigh-high, stiletto-heeled boots, thong panties, and nothing else. Her high powered client was a breast man—part of their deal that she never covered hers during his sessions. He’d begged for her to help him, fix him, and make him whole.

  Thus commenced her three-hundred-dollar-an-hour life as professional Dominatrix for the night. A cash-only business, the side career had helped her rebuild her finances and her psyche—both of which had been decimated by a guy she had come within a month of marrying.

  She smiled, noting the good doctor’s erection, so pleasantly heavy, that he’d maintained for nearly four hours. Once she hit the twelve-hundred dollar moment, she let him come, every time, and he never failed to impress her with his restraint, no matter what she did to him.

  Tonight, however, she required something more. Something they had agreed upon at their first meeting they would treat on an as needed basis.

  Having done her research, she understood she skirted the edges of prostitution but for one small detail. Actual sex, the insertion of a man’s penis into her vagina, remained in most cases forbidden unless she, as the Mistress, the Domme, the One in Charge of it All, demanded it. If it came to that, she would give a simple command, and the deed would be accomplished.

  She had only done so once, in the early days, when she still attached a bit of emotion to the act. Since then she’d gone without, doing her whipping, caning, flogging, wax-dripping, ball-gagging, cock-ringing, restraining, and orgasm-inducing thing from a distance.

  Ripping off his blindfold, she sprang his wrists free and put her leather-gloved palm to his handsome, if somewhat mottled, face.

  “Fuck me, slave,” she hissed into his ear.

  He did as he was told.

  Later, after the money exchange, the doctor/businessman/sub wore a strange expression while sliding his arms into his suit coat. “You know I’m married, right, Mistress?”

  She glanced up from where she slumped, body languid from a decent orgasm, a stack of one-hundred dollar bills piled neatly on the table next to her. The laugh burst out of her lips before she was able to stop it, drag it back, and avoid the inevitable. Rising to her feet, and still clad in the ridiculous boots, she pointed to the door.

  “We are done here. Don’t call me again.”

  His face lost its superiority in one fell swoop. Which brought a real laugh bubbling up from her throat. Men. So transparent. “Just because I want to get off, for you to use that cock to make me come, you honestly think I want anything more from you than this?”

  She put her hand on the money, heart pounding with fury and something else, something she refused to acknowledge lest she burst into embarrassing tears. Her voice rose. “Get the fuck out. Don’t call me again until you’re ready to do what I say without assuming anything about me, do you understand?”

  Grabbing the whip, she snapped it in his direction. Her client groaned as the crotch of his dress pants swelled, as always. This guy really had some issues, but she liked him. If she were a different woman, with different priorities, she might make a play for him.

  “Get out, slave.”

  He gulped, started to speak, then slipped out the door. She dropped back into her chair and burst into surprising and unwelcome tears.

  Chapter Six

  Brody wiped the sweat from his eyes and focused on the guy bearing down on him, ball at his feet. He kept his gaze locked on the black and red sphere, as he’d been trained, observing the man’s legs, watched his hips turn slightly to the right, forcing him to adjust his own tactic at the last minute. He reached out, and the ball, the star forward on the Orlando team had been prepared to plant right in the back of his net, landed in his palms. The crowd roared. Brody winked at the guy.

  “Not in my house, dude,” he said, putting all he had behind a kick, sending the ball sailing over the heads of both teams. His team’s first striker spent about four seconds getting it between the legs of his opposite, the flat-footed keeper in the other goal.

  God, I fucking love this game.

  He had his head on straight. Something seemed to be going right for a change. The match ended in a one-all draw, which meant one thing: the sort of ending every decent goalkeeper craved—the shoot out. He downed some water, poured the rest over his head, and glared at the line of assholes—opposing players who honestly thought they would get a shot past him.

  Shaking out his arms, he rolled his shoulders, took a few quick breaths, and crouched, never more ready. The first kick went wild to the left, not even coming near the net. He stayed completely still, which always unnerved the kicker. The second one hit him square in the chest. He laughed and tossed it back out. The third shot forced him to take a diving leap to the left to snag, but no real problem there.

  He got a bre
ather when the other goalie had to go to work. His team made one point off their turn taking a slight bit of pressure off him. He smacked his gloved hands together, rolled his sore shoulder, and winked at the pipsqueak about to kick. He stopped all three of that kid’s attempts with little effort.

  His team then scored twice, and the match ended. He dropped to his knees as all the positive energy whooshed out of him in a scary rush. His head pounded in a familiar way, and his hands shook. The game was over. He had to leave the field—the one place he wanted to be. He had to get showered, get dressed in his suit, and go to some god-awful event. with…whatshername…Kelli. Yeah. Kelli’s daddy had thrown a fundraiser, and he had promised to attend. He tried hard not to puke.

  He shot a weak smile to his celebrating teammates, got to his feet and trudged off the pitch without a word to anyone. Maintaining his silence and feeling encased in a cocoon, he cleaned up, got dressed, and put his sunglasses on his head, ignoring all the whooping and hollering going on around him as he headed toward the door.

  A few players slapped him on the ass, yelled various profanities. But Brody’s vision tunneled as he flipped his internal switch over to autopilot, biting back a yell of frustration.

  He’d been a goalkeeper for the last six of ten years playing the game. It had proven a naturally isolated place as the eyes on the field, part of the team, but at the same time the ultimate loner. The guy who had the final say. The place where the proverbial buck stopped. And he was most at home there, simultaneously in the group but set apart.

  A hand dropped on his shoulder, startling him out of his semi-trance.

  “Great saves, Vaughn,” the coach said. Brody stared at him about a half-second too long for his silence to be polite. “You’re in a hurry. Headed to the Grosse Pointe thing tonight?”

  He tried and failed to suppress a shudder. Metin stared at him, his hand still on a shoulder that suddenly ached like a bitch—a reminder that he’d forgone the usual post-game therapy of massage and ice.

  Shit. I am losing my fucking mind. The only place I can focus is on the pitch anymore. I should never have let Kelli convince me to….

  “Uh, yeah, I am.”

  He stepped out of Metin’s reach, something the coach noted and Brody understood he noted. His skin crawled, as if an army of ants marched over every inch of him. Trying hard not to recall how he’d learned to relax after stressful college games, he gulped, willed his body not to react to the memory, and pasted on a weak smile.

  He wanted—no, he required—more pain, to submit, to be forced into a place in his head that he missed so badly it kept him awake at night. But instead, he had to go out with a weak-willed, transparent social climber. For the hundredth time, he honestly wondered how he had gotten here.

  Just as his coach started to speak, no doubt to impart some bit of wisdom or advice Brody wouldn’t take even if he wanted to, a shout and loud bang distracted him. Metin blinked and suddenly the noise of whatever the hell had happened around the corner of lockers got louder.

  “See you there,” he mouthed, before turning and yelling at the players who sounded as if they had decided that a Greco-Roman wrestling match was a good use of their celebration energy.

  “Yeah, sure,” Brody said to his retreating back. He stood for a minute, listened to Metin curse and stomp and separate the idiots. Unbidden, a vision so clear and bright he hoped the whole locker room couldn’t see it, appeared before him.

  That of She, his Mistress, her thick red hair, long, slim legs, full lush lips, possessed of his peace, his everything, burned before him. The last time he’d seen her, the night the text hit both their phones with the blackmail threat, she’d been in rare form. Just before the final game of the NCAA Final Four men’s soccer game, he’d been a head case, a mess, a wreck with the sort of pulsing, pounding nervousness that only high-level athletes, actors, dancers, rock stars, or concert pianists can ever truly appreciate.

  He knew why he had these visions. Because his entire soul craved her and how She and only She brought him down off the high from a match. He needed it, she convinced him. And he’d been flat out programmed to play to the best of his ability, to shower, and go straight to Her.

  His Mistress understood and trained him well. She’d take one look at him when he arrived at her front door before yanking him inside, tossing him to the floor as if he weren’t a six-foot-eight, semi-professional athlete, and she a petite woman twenty years his senior.

  She would strip off his clothes, her low, sexy voice whispering, then yelling, her commands. She liked to truss him up, use the well-worn soft cotton ropes against his skin. He loved to fight them, shifting around for the express purpose of hearing their creak. And the sweet, sharp bite of the whip always soothed his freshly showered skin.

  Within an hour, he’d be a weeping mess, and the hour after that, relaxed, finally at peace, having given up the natural testosterone-fueled tendency of a strong, virile male to fight back and resist her. Which reflected the beauty of his psyche—that he finally learned at Her hand after years of wholly unsatisfactory sex with various women. He required this—the pain, the submission, and the commands. And then, more from the bullwhips, or better yet, the hard wooden cane.

  She wielded candle wax, ice cubes, and clamps like no other. Nothing helped settle his mind more than focusing on the very real pain she brought, preferably while his wrists and ankles were shackled with metal or cotton.

  He had exquisite control over his own orgasm after all this training. Able to approach the very brink of release, only to slink away, so he could keep going. She always took her pleasure first, sometimes denying him for an entire night while she came, over and over again.

  But this woman he’d allowed himself touch, to finger, to fuck, had the opposite effect. Kelli-with-an-i made him come fast and hard like a goddamned kid, and afterward he felt even more overwrought than when he started. He wanted that control back. But had no idea how to regain it.

  His legs shook so hard he had to drop to the large wooden bench that stretched along the wall, in front of somebody’s locker. That last night had imprinted on him, tattooed like one of the inked messages or images on his skin. He touched his neck, sensing the chain he’d had done for Her, for them. It seemed hotter than the surrounding skin, in a sort of sympathetic agony.

  “Go, Brody,” she yelled at him, her huge green eyes snapping. He was naked, unbound, set loose, and had no idea what to do or say. “You have to. We…we are done. I release you. I command you to leave me. Now!” Raising her voice higher, she sounded loud and a little screechy with panic.

  He understood it now. But at that moment, he’d wanted to jump off a bridge seeing her angry, panicked face as she screamed at him to get out of her life.

  The rest of the scene blacked out, like a television with the power cut. He stood, dropped his sunglasses into place, unwilling to revisit the abject horror of it, and the following days when his entire life imploded while he watched, helpless to do anything about it.

  The next day, Vanderbilt had won the men’s soccer championship, a first in their program’s history. Brody had saved the day in the eighty-sixth minute when it seemed Indiana would rebound from a missed corner kick. He lunged right, nearly missing the ball, then stuck his leg out, in a trance, and kicked it free of the net. They had won 1-0. Thanks to photos and sports news reports, he got to experience it but remembered none of it. All he knew was that he had been rejected and honestly had not given a single shit about that game because afterward he couldn’t go to Her.

  Squinting when the sun hit his sweaty forehead, he grunted when a female-feeling object launched itself into his unready arms. “Jesus, Kelli,” he growled, putting her down and wiping his face. “Don’t do that.”

  Frowning down at her over-done, over-skinny self, he rallied his inner asshole, hoping she would leave him the hell alone. She just beamed up at him as if he’d given her a dozen roses and an engagement ring.

  Dear god, help me get ou
t of this. Please.

  He let her drag him to his car, a brand new Mercedes that he despised, but would live in if it meant escaping from Kelli-with-an-i. He missed his bike, the one he’d left behind with his life in Nashville like an amputated limb. The feel of his Mistress’ arms around his torso as they would take long rides out into the Tennessee countryside still had the power to leave him breathless. However, his training as a proper Southern young man and as a sub to his one true love would not be over ridden. He opened Kelli’s door, helped her in, and clenched the key fob so tightly that when he opened his hand, a distinctive medallion logo had imprinted on his palm.

  Chapter Seven

  The oppressive heat of the room only amplified the gag-inducing humidity. A sickly odor rose from the well-sweated-on carpet. But thoughts of inside of a gym bag no longer rose to her brain.

  No. The smell of her hot yoga studio centered her now in a perverse way. She’d discovered the practice not long after getting released from the hospital, in conjunction with the physical therapy required to inch her way toward recovery. She’d lay in the semi-dark a few minutes before the lights would blaze to life, and the sixty or so barely dressed bodies would rise to their feet to begin the ninety-minute session of stretch and sweat, sweat and stretch.

  Sophie liked to use the fifteen minutes before each session to settle, to get focused and used to the heat in the room and, at times, to grab a short nap. She hadn’t slept well for the last couple of years even after all the physical and mental pushing to total exhaustion. These odd, aromatic few moments had become some of the few where she actually relaxed as her body slowly geared up for the coming torture session.

  The practice kept her fit and her mind sane, as she liked to tell anyone who asked why in the hell she would do such a thing, considering her past injuries. Anyone who hadn’t done it, or had tried and given it up, would never understand the perfect balance she found for a couple of hours each day in the zone of a one-hundred-plus degree, fifty-percent humidity room while she went through the postures.