by Joey W. Hill
"So it will be rope, maybe some candles, and Madison there. No sex."
"No sex. Not that night. And not just because of Madison's presence." He had his back to the sun, so his eyes were dark. He had a very straight nose, a firm chin. Nice features upon which she tried to focus so she wasn't caught in his deep, rich earth eyes. She should be saying no to this. A big hell no. But she'd suggested it, hadn't she?
"This is your first scene, isn't it?"
She warred with embarrassment, even as she knew it was stupid to feel it. It wasn't like saying she was a virgin. He snapped her attention back to him as he wrapped her hair fully around his hand, used it and the pressure on the base of her neck to bring her closer to him. Her hand fell on his chest again.
"Answer me, Julie," he said quietly.
How did he do that? "Outside of my really vivid imagination, yes. This is my first scene." She pretended she didn't sound breathless.
"That's what I thought. And why I'll save my vast seduction techniques for another night."
She was fairly sure he'd already seduced her in the Conservatory. It sounded like a game of Clue. Mr. Hayes, in the Conservatory, with that intriguing pain-pleasure grip on her hand. It had made her nervous, her knees weak and her whole body stimulated. But he was trying to make her smile now. When she couldn't summon one, he touched her face, his own expression sobering.
"I'll come at six o'clock, day after tomorrow. You have my number, Julie. If you have to cancel, cancel. But I hope you won't. I've enjoyed spending time with you today." He straightened, making a show of surveying the parking lot. "And look. No zombies."
"Yet," she said ominously. "They would attack urban centers and then fan out, right?"
"You are a fascinating, weird woman." Giving her a friendly look, he left her side, headed for a battered green Ford pickup she expected was his. "I look forward to seeing you soon."
Chapter Three
For the first production, Julie and the stage manager were doing double duty as co-directors, and Julie already considered Harris a gift from the gods. He was an obese thirty-something with sharp pale blue eyes, a golden beard and silky blond hair he kept in a long tail down his back. He looked like the first mate on a pirate ship. He'd done stage manager work in dinner theater out on the West Coast, and was in a position to volunteer fulltime to help Julie.
Like most of the cast and crew, he was part of the BDSM scene, a submissive who served and lived with two Mistresses, also lovers. Though Julie had yet to meet them, his adoration for Millie and Tiana was obvious.
Over the past few weeks, he'd shared long hours here with Julie, and his eyes had glowed as brightly as hers as they took each step toward turning the building into a playhouse and bringing the production together. He had the marvelous and terrible passion that afflicted all those dedicated to the theater, whether in front of the curtain or behind it.
Madison had recruited theater students from the area community colleges to provide technical skills. On Julie's recommendation, she'd shamelessly used Julie's resume to attract their interest. Whereas actors could look for work through the trade papers, those interested in a career in backstage work had to build themselves from the ground up, not only volunteering in high school and college productions, but doing heavy networking to get experience that might lead to paying jobs. Julie had worked in almost every backstage capacity in her twenty years in theater, including paid work on Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, before deciding to move to community theater work. Working under her would look good on a theater student's resume.
Harris's ability to organize the students freed Julie up to focus on the other million details a managing director had to handle. Like today, when he was at the theater handling some technical direction, while she was signing off on the scene pieces the set design students were finalizing in Logan's barn.
Unfortunately, once she took pictures and measurements for Harris, she was still later than she'd intended to be. Tonight was the night she was supposed to meet Des at the theater, and being late only spun up her nerves further. Rush hour traffic had her pulling back up to the building at 6:20.
Harris was already gone, but he'd received her text to let Des in before he and the others took off, because Des's old truck was out front without Des in it. She'd texted Des as well, filling him in on the delay.
As she walked past the Ford, she glanced in the open bed. Tar paper, shingle bundles, several coils of twine. A cut piece of PVC pipe, an empty gas can, a scattering of fresh clumps of dry red clay and dried leaves. A crumpled coffee cup was wedged beneath the shingle bundles. She wondered if he'd tucked it there to throw away later, because except for it and the natural debris, everything in the truck was organized and secured with twine.
The bindings on the shingles seemed more thorough and far more elaborate than she suspected was the norm. Had it been an idle pastime on breaks between jobs, practicing his skills?
She hadn't let herself think about what was going to happen tonight, though it had been in the back of her mind simmering like a witch's cauldron ever since she'd somewhat agreed to it. The parameters he'd set had helped her rationalize away the multiple flares of panic. It was just a session. That was all. It didn't have to be anything outside of that. Inside of it, it could be incredible and intense, as Madison had warned. Yet when it was over, it was over. No fallout. That was what she wanted. As long as she held onto that, she could fully enjoy the experience.
She hadn't had a second thought about Des being in her theater without anyone else there. Out of all the worries she had about Des, trusting him here wasn't one of them. That feeling was reinforced when she found him sitting on the edge of the stage.
He had his hair pulled back more sleekly tonight, accommodating the jaunty black plaid fedora he wore. He wore a dark blue button down over stonewashed jeans. Several brightly-colored woven bracelets were on his right arm and he had a small knife sheath threaded onto his belt. The untucked shirt crumpled high enough up on his hip in his seated position to see it, and the curve of his ass pressed to her stage. His biceps rippled in an appealing manner as he sipped from a bottle of his preferred flavored water, black cherry. When her footsteps made him twist around to find her with his russet eyes, he smiled.
He could lasso a woman with that smile as easily as with any rope he could call to hand. It was the real deal, a gift of the gods. Not artificial charm, not the luster of the sun reflected off a fortunate surface, but the sun itself, a limitless energy source.
If she was composing flowery narrative, she was in trouble. He screwed the top back on the bottle and set it to the side as she crossed the stage. The curtains were drawn, leaving a several foot wide apron of the stage visible. A ghostlight was on to illuminate the theater area. In theater lore, it was kept burning throughout the night for friendly spirits. It also kept unfriendly ones away, supposedly. She mused it must be working, since all she saw was Des.
"Hey there. What are you doing?" She took a seat next to him. It felt natural to sit close enough to brush his shoulder, particularly when he flipped open the cooler next to him and twisted the top off an Angry Orchard to hand it to her. It was crisp apple flavor, her leisure time drink of choice. He'd talked to Madison.
"Listening." He leaned back on both palms, his side touching hers. He smelled like heat, tar, smoke, wind. "You must do this all the time. Sit and listen to it."
"I do." Though she was surprised he guessed that. When Julie had arrived, she'd given up her room at the Extended Stay as soon as she'd set up a cot in the dressing room. Madison had already achieved so much, but Julie would require some insanely long hours to get the theater, staff and first performance, already being promoted, ready on time.
That was just an excuse, though. She liked exploring the silent building in the middle of the night, imagining the performances that would happen here, the responses of the audience.
"What do you hear?" he asked.
"All of it. Every performance, the chara
cters laughing, crying, talking. The audience responding. The thumps as they rush across the stage. The audience gasping." She gestured, sweeping her arms wide. "And I won't have to imagine it much longer. Once we start doing performances, the theater stores it away. Then you can hear all that even more clearly in the silence. I think it's the way a theater breathes."
Initially, Madison had hoped to start the theater in the building she'd used for her earlier benefit, but the cost and city regulations were too prohibitive. The rural zoning had been essential, since permitting for an erotic theater might have met greater opposition in the city limits. It might have even in the county, but Logan's personal friendship with two of the county commissioners had helped, as he'd been able to assure them this would be avant-garde theater, not a sleazy strip club that attracted criminal elements.
One of the donors had offered Madison a great lease-to-own deal on a long-vacant tax write-off property outside Matthews. The picturesque town where Madison ran Naughty Bits butted up against the edge of Charlotte.
Inhaling the energy of this building, an infant theater about to be born, Julie knew this was where it had meant to be all the time.
She took a thoughtful sip of her cider. "You're like a character come to life yourself. Far too colorful to be real."
"Most people are colorful, if you shine the right light on them." He studied the darkened rows of seats before them. "I'd like to be a pirate stepping out from the curtains, loud and dangerous." He straightened, puffing out his chest in parody. "I'd pick the most spirited woman out of the audience, tie her to my main mast and bring out all her inner fire."
"That would be great for a scene. Oh..." She drew in a breath, grabbing onto the idea and his arm at the same time. "You come out dressed as a pirate. Your partner, she's in the audience, an aisle seat. When you head in her direction, she tries to run away, but you cut her off, like you're kidnapping her. You toss her over your shoulder, carry her to the stage... While you have her over your shoulder, you could bellow at the man nearest you: 'If you're thinking of rescuing her, mate, my cutlass is far bigger than yours... Wanna see?'"
She made her voice boom, echo off the walls, causing his eyes to widen and a grin cross his face. She knew her gaze was sparkling, filled with the idea, because his reaction seemed as much for that as for her unexpected vocalization.
"Okay, but how do you transition that to the intensity of the rope scene?" he asked. "You don't want that part to be comedy."
"No, definitely. Even the audience part shouldn't be entirely farce. Except for that one joke, you would be serious, romantic, dashing. Very large, powerful and dominant, making every sub's pulse flutter. Or that part of each person that can imagine being a sub, even if we aren't actually that way all the time, or identify as that."
Des pursed his lips. "I could pull off romantic and dashing, but you'd need to pad my shoulders to make 'large' work."
She nudged him. "I've felt your grip. You can pull it off. The pirate bit would inject humor, pageantry, a hint of the sexual excitement to come. Your outfit could be piratical in the audience, but on stage, you strip down to black trousers, returning us to the contemporary, and a more serious note. We could apply some sexy tattoos on you, like your ladies. Do you have any real ones? Can I see?"
The lines alongside his eyes were still creased with amusement at her enthusiasm. "Yes, but I have to take my shirt off to show you."
"How horrible. I'll suffer through it. Off, off, off."
He shook his head. "Don't get pushy with me wench. I'll tie you to my mainmast."
"Is that a hugely optimistic double entendre?"
She shrieked as he reached out and grabbed her thigh above the knee, a ticklish spot. "Remember, this is hypothetical," he warned. "I'm not one of your performers."
"No, but roll with it. I might be able to make it work for another rigger. Seeing you shirtless will help the creative process."
He snorted but complied with her hopeful request. He took off the hat and playfully put it on her own head. As she adjusted it to a cocky angle and gave him an expectant look, he removed the shirt. He did it in a functional way, telling her he was neither overly proud of his physique nor self-conscious about it. Slipping several buttons of the garment, he pulled the whole thing over his head rather than unbuttoning it all the way, and put it down next to him.
He was lean and hard all over, as her glimpse of his abdomen at the garden had suggested. He wasn't wearing the insulin pump or cannula tonight. It must be a day he was changing out the injection site. She saw some nicks and scars on his torso, probably the result of his very physical job. The light mat of dark hair on his chest funneled to that silky arrow of hair she still wanted to touch. To prevent herself from being too forward, she focused on the reason she'd asked him to remove his shirt.
A tattoo of a black dragon coiled around his biceps. It started as a spiral of rope and became a serpentine version of the mythical creature. The other arm had a black inked rope wrapped around his biceps, intertwined with a vine of thorns.
"One more on my back." He twisted around to show her the design, a sunburst between his shoulder blades in blazing colors of orange, gold and red, the orb outlined in another twist of rope.
"I'm sensing a theme," she observed.
"Yeah, rope's kind of my thing."
She reached out to the dragon on his biceps. It was lovely work, but it was merely an excuse to touch him. He was incredibly resilient, his muscles even at rest as evident as an anatomical drawing. She wanted to explore that terrain further, but when his gaze dropped to the contact, she withdrew.
"I'm sorry. If you're a Dom, and I'm here to see how a session works, I guess I should have asked you if it was okay to touch you first."
"Not a problem for me. You touch what you want to touch, love. When I want you to keep your hands to yourself, that's what my rope is for." He tilted his head to watch her trail her fingertips over the length of the dragon's tail. "You've an easy way about you, earthy. Did you get that from your family?"
She'd been nervous about tonight, but his lack of urgency about getting to anything fast helped to relax her. She suspected he was doing it intentionally. She probably wasn't the first nervous sub he'd had to help calm down. The realization didn't thrill her, since she wanted to think of herself as unique, an entirely unrealistic expectation. She squelched the negative reaction.
"Most people down here think I'm too direct and brassy, too New York. And God, no. My family...they're Upper East Side, old money. Well, my father is. All of them polished and contained, clear markers. No personality ooze overflow. Don't get me wrong. I love them and they're family. I'd go after anyone who hurt them with a tank, but...you know how Mowgli was raised by wolves?"
"The Jungle Book? I thought it was Baloo and Bagheera that raised him?"
"You get serious points for remembering their names, but it was wolves that found and raised him. Bagheera and Baloo were his friends. I'm not sure if that was the book or the Disney movie, or a little bit of both. It's been a while." She ignored the amused sparkle in his eye. "Anyhow, back to my point. Humans and wolves are both predators. They think in a lot of the same ways, so Mowgli wasn't a bad fit for them."
She sighed. "My family and me, it's more like they're rabbits, all snug in the same warren, and I'm a turtle with fin feet. Can you imagine anything more different? Turtles are happy swimming along in our shells, our home on our backs. We're not trying to be cute or fuzzy. Our shell is shiny when it's wet and we're kind of wrinkly, but there's something so damn cool and unclassifiable about us. Just don't turn us over, because it ruins everything."
His brow creased. "Are you babbling?"
"Yeah, a little. It's the manly chest, the lack of recent sex, and I'm nervous about what we're going to do tonight."
He removed the hat from her head, stroking a tendril of hair away from her cheek, an oddly tender gesture. "I'm flattered by the chest comment. I don't get that too often. When's Madison getting
here?"
"I decided against that."
His expression shifted into disapproval, the first time he'd looked less than affable. It made things tighten in her belly, adding to her reaction to his bare upper torso, and that was doing a good job at unsettling her all on its own. She figured he didn't get the compliment that often because he didn't take his shirt off much in mixed company. From what she was looking at, manly covered it. Who knew he'd have such distracting shoulders and pecs?
"It's not just about you trusting me, Julie. It's about safety."
"I know that. I'm not an idiot." She made a face. "I checked with Logan and he vouched for you 100%. If you make a liar out of him, he'll remove one of your lungs with a garden spade. Right?"
When he continued to give her that look, she shook her head. "I really would rather get into the moment and feel it as a sub would feel it. I don't want an audience making me self-conscious about that. I just want to feel. I trust you to stop if I say stop, or change anything that scares me or makes me uncomfortable. Am I wrong about that?"
"Not at all. But you should never just take the word of some bastard you don't really know on that."
That was the problem, wasn't it? She felt like she did know him. But at least it appeared he'd decided to accept her judgment. He stood, giving her a hand up to face him on the stage. He captured her other hand, too, closing the connection between them. His gaze slid over her tunic top, belted over a mid-length skirt. "Did you bring an outfit like I described, leggings and sports bra?"
She shifted her gaze to his throat. Her shyness was silly, she knew, but it didn't change it. "I want you to be able to do the candle thing you mentioned. So I figured I'd just undress. On one condition. That you leave your shirt off."
His lips curved. "Quid pro quo?"
"Well, if I'm going to be fully without, asking you to leave a shirt off seems reasonable."
"It does. The jeans okay?"
She nodded. His were loose enough at the waist that she saw a hint of hip bone, and when he'd turned to get up, she'd glimpsed the rise of his buttocks, telling her he wasn't wearing underwear. That look would work for her just fine. Especially since the stretch of the denim in the groin area suggested she'd already successfully engaged his attention.