Mariah hid her face against his chest, afraid for him to see the pain because she’d made a decision. It would cut like a double-edged sword and would slice cruelly into both of them, but selfishly, it would protect her. In the end, she believed it would protect him too. At least from settling for so much less than he deserved.
“The water’s turning cold. Let’s get you dried off.”
He turned off the shower and opened the curtain, pulling a thick bath towel from the rack—also white.
“Step out, baby.”
She lifted her foot to do just that, but her eyes fell on the bath mat, which was covered in mud. Despite being cautious, she had ruined it. Her eyes followed the muddy mess they’d made on the floor, the filth miring the previously immaculate bathroom. She couldn’t bring herself to step on it and shook her head. It seemed everything she touched became soiled and dirty; she didn’t want that for the rug, and she certainly wouldn’t accept it for Dimitri. Embarrassed that he was witness to all her previously masked dysfunction, she took a deep breath, preparing to suck it up and endure. He wouldn’t understand. She didn’t expect him to.
He surprised her by saying, “Wait. I’ve got you.”
He rubbed her dry, before settling the towel around her shoulders, then once again lifted her and carried her back to the bed. Dimitri ripped off the soiled comforter before setting her down in the middle of the still clean sheets. He then stepped back, taking her damp towel with him, and began drying himself.
Distracted, she forgot about her own nudity as her eyes followed his hands as they moved along his body. She took inventory of every place he touched, committing the image of his masculine beauty to memory. His muscles rippled and bulged as he moved, making her mouth water at his sheer perfection. The small measure of dark hair sprinkled across his chest made her fingers itch to touch it. The coarse dark hair had abraded her nipples as she’d moved against him a short time ago and they peaked now in response to the tactile memory. His ridged abdomen and narrow hips revealed he had not one ounce of fat on him.
Her eyes widened when he dropped the towel and revealed the rest of him. As she stared, his semi-erect cock stirred, swelling and elongating before her eyes. Soon, he was fully aroused and his size was impressive. Looking up into his face, she realized he had been watching her as she watched him. After meeting his intense stare for a moment, she pulled her eyes away.
They swept around the room nervously, searching for a focal point. Instead, she noticed the extra-large armoire, the same that was used in all the BDSM rooms to hold all the implements: ropes, paddles, restraints, and toys. Across the room, there was a spanking bench in the corner and a cross was affixed to the far wall. Her eyes lifted to the ceiling, where she wasn’t surprised to find hooks, chains, and a suspension rigging system.
She felt the covers shift and the mattress dip beside her as he got in. Looking anywhere but at him, the four-poster bed frame came into focus as well as the leather cuffs that hung ready for use, already hooked to sturdy metal eyebolts. The bed, the entire room for that matter, was designed for bondage play and restraining a submissive securely. Goosebumps erupted across her skin.
“This is a bondage cabin. I’ve never been here before.”
“Not surprising, like the dungeon, you refuse to go near any of them.” He lay down on the pillows and extended his arm to her. “Come here.”
Immediately responding, she moved into his arms and pressed her cheek against his chest.
“We need to talk, clear the air so we can move forward together.”
“Together.” She repeated the word as if it were foreign. If only together was possible for them.
“Of course together. I love you, Mariah and have no intention of ever letting you go.”
She tilted her head back until she could see his face. His serious expression told her she should consider his words a pledge, a declaration of intent. Anyone who knew Dimitri knew that his word was undeniably the gospel truth. Despite his reputation for being ruthless in business, he was also known to be fair and honorable. But Dimitri was a powerful and very wealthy man used to getting his way and she’d learned that nothing stood between Master D and what he wanted. He could move mountains if he chose to. For Mariah, that made things more difficult and required a change in plans.
“Tell me what is behind the pain in your eyes, bellissima.”
“I’m exhausted, sir. Can’t we rest in each other’s arms for a while?”
“Certainly, we have the rest of our lives to figure this all out. Although, don’t think for a minute that I’ll wait that long.”
“I didn’t think that you would, sir.”
“I was master not thirty minutes ago. You’re conflicted.”
Truer words… She nodded, relieved she was honestly able to agree with something he’d said for a change.
“Tutto bene. As I say, we’ll work through it.”
She frowned at his platitude; it wasn’t all good. It was just like an arrogant dom to think he could solve every problem, because he decreed it so.
Dimitri yawned, her head moving with the rise and fall of his chest. “For now, I think a nap is needed before seeing off our guests.”
“Since when do you nap?”
Hugging her tight, he pressed his lips to the top of her head as he said, “Since a naughty imp misbehaved and disturbed my rest these past few nights.”
“That wasn’t my intention at all.”
“I know. Your intent was to avoid, a defense mechanism you’ve employed expertly these past two years.”
“Hmm, and to think I’m the one with the psychology degree.”
“You’ve told me that when you were treating patients, they and their families, or their close friends were often too close to the situation to see the forest for the trees. That is the case here, I’m sure. You have been avoiding telling me about your past for so long—stalling and evading the truth—that it has become subconscious.” He rubbed his cheek against the top of her head, and she felt his lips brush against her temple as his arms hugged her tight. “You’ve cocooned yourself in your own safe world, keeping others out, even those that love you. I made the mistake of allowing it to go on so long. That all changed on Friday when I threatened your safely constructed world. Since then your evasion has been deliberate and blatantly obvious, to me and most of the others.” His hand cupped her chin and he tilted her face up to his. She read the intense determination in his eyes as she looked at him. “The avoidance and hiding need to stop, Mariah. It’s time to put that all behind us.”
Always intuitive, Dimitri had her nailed. But she couldn’t reply, couldn’t agree with him without telling another lie. Biting her lip, she lowered her eyes and remained silent, using an evasive tactic once again.
“Mm,” he grunted at her lack of response. “It seems we have a lot of work ahead of us, piccola. For now, I want to hold you while we rest. After the guests leave, we’ll barricade ourselves in my suite and not come out until we have it all resolved.” His hand found her chin and he tilted her face up for a thorough kiss. Helpless to resist, she melted into him. Afterward, they lapsed into silence as they held each other close.
“Don’t you have to work next week?” she asked quietly after several minutes had passed.
Drowsiness resonated in his reply. “You are more important than any business. I’ll simply have my assistant rearrange some appointments. Don’t worry.”
Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. With eyes closed, she snuggled against him, savoring every nuance that was Dimitri, as if it were her last.
Chapter Seventeen
His angry eyes snapped with fire as he watched her dress hurriedly. His controlled voice held an undertone of fury as he issued his warning. “If you leave me here like this, when I catch you—and I will catch you, piccola mia—I promise what you had this morning will feel like love taps by comparison. Release the cuffs.”
Ignoring the none-too-subtle threat, she let his
masterful voice wash over her. Goosebumps erupted along her arms and her nipples tightened. She was going to miss him so. Turning her back to hide her reaction, she dropped the sheet she’d wrapped around her body and slipped on the satin robe she’d found in the closet. As she drew on her muddy sandals, she grimaced. They were stiff with dried mud, but there was no help for it. They were the only shoes she had. Glancing at his rigid body, his arms strained against the cuffs, guilt washed over her. She’d taken advantage of his exhaustion, also her fault. As he’d slept, she’d restrained him to the headboard. The idea had come to her while she’d watched him, one arm flung over his head, the other out to the side where he’d dozed off while holding her.
While he’d slept, she considered her next step. He planned to be around all week, so slipping away on the plane on Tuesday when it made its weekly supply run to Jamaica was out of the question. Leaving this afternoon with the guests being her only other option, meant she had to keep him away from the dock somehow. The sturdy leather restraints, already affixed to the bed, seemed the perfect solution. In this remote cabin, once restrained, no one would hear his call for help. Of course, she’d have to alert someone to release him after she was gone, someone trustworthy who wouldn’t be able to stop her.
Her plan, although far from foolproof, was formulated as she carefully rolled out of bed. At the headboard, she examined one of the cuffs. Damn… buckles. They would be difficult to apply without waking him.
Padding quietly to the armoire, a quick search of the drawers and shelves produced a set of slip cuffs. Made of soft suede, they would loop easily around his wrists. She wasn’t foolish enough to think they would hold such a big man for long, but with luck, they would slow him down temporarily buying her enough time to apply the standard heavy-duty police issue handcuffs (also courtesy of the armoire).
She had worked quietly. After slipping on the slip knot cuffs, she threaded the other end through the eyebolt affixed firmly to the wood and iron headboard and pulled slowly. Removing the slack tightened the restraint. He didn’t stir and with one wrist restrained securely, she quickly moved to the other. They went on quickly, but she didn’t breathe easily until she’d gotten the second restraint on and by then he’d awakened.
She approached the bed now and sat by his side. “I suppose I owe you an explanation.”
“That would be helpful, yes.”
Sarcasm was unlike Dimitri, but these were extreme circumstances. He moved slightly and the metal cuffs clanked against the bed. His eyes snapped with fire as he glared at her. Probably wasn’t used to being restrained to the bed by someone he thought he could trust. Mariah flushed with guilt and looked away.
“I can’t live in the lifestyle again, Dimitri. It nearly broke me the first time. With you, if something went wrong again, well… I’d die. Of that, I have no doubt.”
“Tell me what happened. We can work through it together.”
Unable to meet his eyes as she confessed the horror of what she had done, she turned away before she whispered. “I had a very bad experience in the lifestyle with my husband.”
He didn’t respond; there was complete silence behind her.
Finally, he spoke in a chilling voice. “You’re married?”
“Oh no!” She shook her head empathically, earnestly meeting his eyes. “At least not anymore.”
The tightness in his face lessened with her answer, but the anger remained. Having decided to tell him the worst, in hopes of illustrating exactly how messed up she was, she dropped her gaze and continued.
“In my senior year of college, I met a man. He was older, sophisticated, and worldly. He was also quite charming and it was exciting when he turned that charm on me. He ultimately swept me off my feet and we married right after graduation. At first, things were good. He said he loved me and wanted to nurture my submissive side, but I soon found out he had more than D/s in mind. He wanted someone young and inexperienced that he could guide and mentor in the lifestyle. He said he wanted to mold me into his perfect submissive.”
“I can see where this is going.” His voice quivered with rage as he spoke. She wasn’t sure who was the target, herself or her former master, but she kept going regardless. She might not ever get the nerve again.
“Yes, he wanted much more than a submissive, he wanted a 24/7 sex slave. I’m ashamed to say that he turned me into a puppet—I essentially danced on his strings. He isolated me, which I was told would help immerse me in my submission. What it did was distance me from the few friends I had and we lost touch. He changed greatly while this was going on and I saw a cruel side to his nature for the first time. It would come out if I defied him or made the smallest mistake. He looked for reasons to punish me, although he often said he didn’t need one. He demeaned me, called me stupid, and convinced me that I was such a poor excuse for a submissive that I deserved his wrath and disdain.”
She paused, still unable to believe how he had manipulated her thinking. Her hand went to her forehead to rub away the headache that was forming. Closing her eyes against the pain, she whispered, “I was frightened, Dimitri, so I surrendered. If I became docile, it pleased him and the pain lessened.”
A muttered curse and an enraged growl, like an angry bear, rumbled from his chest. Still, she didn’t turn.
“Uncuff me so I can hold you, baby.”
She shook her head, murmuring, “I’m sorry, but I can’t,” before she continued. “He controlled my entire life, how I dressed, what I ate, and he scheduled every minute of my day. I submitted and things went well for a while. Then it got weird.”
The grunt from behind her challenged that remark without him actually saying a single word.
“Okay, it was already weird, but it got weirder and scarier. About six months into our marriage, he got involved with a local BDSM group who thought of themselves as strict lifestylers. They believed in exacting discipline and high protocol. He was like a kid with a new game after that and I was his perfect toy. He studied their rules, poses, and protocols. There were a lot of them; so many that they even had a manual. He made me practice, repeatedly, kneeling and standing in these difficult embarrassing poses. Once I had been trained to his standards, he started to show me off to his friends. As he said, he ‘loved putting his play pretty on display.’”
Mariah could hear his snide voice in her head, speaking to her as a pet, not his wife. A trained dog, eager to perform her tricks for a reward. Realizing that she had become lost in the horrific memories and had stopped talking, she continued aloud.
“Robert preened like a peacock that a fifty-year-old could attract and hold onto a sweet, young slave like myself. When he began to show an interest in sharing me amongst the group, I balked. Of course, I was punished severely.”
“The scar across your back; he whipped you, didn’t he?”
She turned then, looking at him in surprise.
“Baby, I know how cruelly a lash can cut. I’ve seen the scars before. Did you have no one to turn to, Mariah? A friend, another member of the community, a dom you could trust?”
“No, I was truthful when I said I had no family, Dimitri, and my husband made certain I didn’t get close to anyone. Most of the time I wasn’t allowed to speak at all.”
“He gagged you?”
“Yes.” A sob escaped. Frustrated, she scrubbed the tears from her face. She wanted to get through this without breaking down; it would be easier for the both of them. Clearing her throat, she took a deep, steadying breath.
“I won’t get into all the gory details, but in the end, he brought others into our scenes. At first, a ménage with one man seemed to appease him, until he decided to bring home two men while he watched. Still, that wasn’t enough. He was like a drug addict; the more he had, the more degradation he subjected me to, the more he wanted.”
The cuffs grated and clanged against the headboard as he pulled at them. “Mariah, I have to have you in my arms, baby. I want you to do as you’re told now and let me loose.”
He’d said the dominant command softly, but she still had to fight the urge to obey. Her need to protect herself and flee outweighed her need to please him at the moment. She didn’t want to draw out the torture for either of them any longer than necessary. There was no point getting into her depression and that her self-worth was at zero. Or that when she tried to leave, Robert had found her, brought her back, and punished her with that whip. From then on, she was on lock down when not in his presence, but she didn’t tell Dimitri about that, or the cage that had one day appeared in their bedroom. In the end, she’d become worse than a slave, she had become his prisoner. She felt less than the animal he treated her as and had seriously contemplated suicide as her only way out. No, what she’d told him was horrifying enough. She skipped all that and jumped to the end of her sordid story.
“It all blew up the night I killed him.”
“Mariah! In the name of God, get these cuffs off.”
As she spoke, the evening replayed before her eyes. “He’d invited friends over for a weekend to play in his prized dungeon. I was to act as hostess and be the entertainment for the group; there were five doms and two dommes. Some had brought their own slaves and submissives, others planned to play with me. It was the final straw. I decided I was leaving even if I died trying. When I refused to service one of the men and demanded to be released, Robert pulled a knife.”
“O mio Dio.”
She vaguely heard his vehement curse, but locked in the nightmare of her memories, she didn’t respond. “Blood play, he called it. He told his friends it was my kink and that I liked to be subdued at knifepoint. He assigned two of the men to strap me down. Some of the guests got antsy about this because I was screaming bloody murder through the gag and fighting like a maniac. At first, they thought it was role-play, but as it went on, they weren’t sure. They began to question my consent, but the group didn’t have safewords that would tell them for sure that I wanted out. I think some were intimidated by Robert because of his wealth and respect in the community. Still, some of them told him to stop and began to argue about it. It was a welcome diversion for me. I broke free, but as usual, he came after me.”
Pleasure Bay Page 24