by Dae, Harlem
“Yeah, but…”
“But, fucking hell, she would never even undress in front of me. And now…”
“I don’t think she’s had a choice.”
He bristled—I could almost hear his muscles tensing, his clothes shifting as he rocked up on his haunches. Preparing to become a knight in shining armour. “What the…?”
“No, I don’t mean like that.” I quickly rested my hand on his shoulder. His rescue attempt wouldn’t be welcome, of that I was sure. “I mean, I don’t think she’s had a choice because she’s a submissive.” As I’d spoken the words their implication rattled through my head like rocks falling over a cliff edge. “Submissive,” I said again quietly. “Which means…”
It didn’t bear thinking about. How could it be true? Geoffrey was a sub. He never switched, never dominated. This was absurd, preposterous. There must be someone else playing with them. Another Dom who was going to enjoy two slaves.
Yes, that must be it.
I licked my lips, teeth and gums, my mouth suddenly dry. Stared at Helen’s bowed head, her arms resting behind her back, and her pressed-together knees. The candlelight cast golden threads over her pale skin. I could almost remember their heat around me, the scent of the wax, the silent flickering as the air moved—moved because I was wielding a whip, or a cat or a flogger.
I pressed my hands over my ears, Geoffrey’s cries of pain, wails to stop, pleas for more, echoing in my head. The things we’d done in that room. Places we had gone together, the highs we had reached. Soft places we had landed. Those were the days.
They were over.
“I feel really uncomfortable seeing Helen naked and on her knees,” Victor said.
“I should fucking hit you for that.” I dropped my hands to the sill and gripped it.
He turned and glared at me. “No, that’s not going to happen, is it?”
I pouted, itching to slap him, punch him, grab him and pull him close. Anything, I just needed him.
He pressed the back of his index finger to my cheek, stroked it. “Good girl.”
Good girl, damn nerve. A snide comment to put him in his place was on the tip of my tongue, but it stayed there. Because at that moment, Geoffrey walked into the sex room.
He stood tall and proud, wearing low-slung, well-worn jeans and nothing else. He trailed a whip behind him, and it slithered and slunk like a pet snake awaiting his command.
He took slow steps around Helen. Circumnavigating her, assessing her. I couldn’t make out his expression, we were too far away, but the jut of his chin, the upward slant of his slightly-too-big nose screamed one word to me.
Dom!
“Sweet Jesus, he’s switched,” I said, swaying and clinging to Roly and the window sill. “The bastard’s gone and switched.”
I didn’t know he had it in him. Would never have believed it. Geoffrey loved to take it, to be mastered, give up control, and pain, pain was his addiction, his drug, and here he was, doling it out. He’d thrown all those years of teaching me what he liked to the wind. Now I was completely worthless to him. I may as well be dead. He’d looked at me like he still wanted me, but he didn’t, he just didn’t want anyone else to have me.
“Switched?” Victor whispered. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” I paused, swallowed. “The bastard was only pretending to be a submissive when I was with him…” Again I hesitated, memories, thoughts, hopes and truths all shattering around me, becoming broken glass at my feet.
“Pretending?”
I rubbed my hand over my forehead. “All that time he was topping from the bottom and I didn’t even realise. I thought he was giving me some control back, yet all the time he held the reins, the reins to everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Zara was speaking in alien tongues again. I didn’t know what the hell she was on about. Come the end of our month and I was sure I’d understand, but topping from the bottom? Did that mean everything was turned upside down and not as it seemed? Did it imply that what we had was back-to-front? And if Geoffrey had switched to the other end of the whip, did that make it possible that everyone could?
“Are you just pretending to be dominant?” I asked, annoyed I couldn’t quite see her facial expression in the darkness and assess the truthfulness of her answer.
She huffed out a laugh. “No I bloody well am not! That’s quite an insult, but I’ll forgive you because you don’t know the ins and outs of my world. I’ll take it that you asked due to curiosity, a need to know more, and then your question would be a good thing.”
“Why would it be an insult? Help me to understand.” And I wanted to, I just wasn’t sure I would.
“I’m proud of who I am, of what I want, and that is to dominate in the bedroom—or wherever we happen to be. To insinuate I’m pretending to like it, pretending to be something I’m not…well, it’s a little rude, don’t you think?”
“No ruder than you trying to make me into something I’m not.” I’d said it without thinking, but seeing as we’d agreed her slapping me for something like that was now off the cards, I didn’t have to tense, waiting for the strike. I was sure she’d give me a lashing with her tongue, though, and not in a pleasurable way.
“But that’s what you don’t understand,” she said quietly. “I’m not trying to make you into something you’re not. You’re already that person, you just don’t know it. I’m drawing that ribbon of your soul out and letting it flap in the wind. You must be able to see that, surely. Look back on our time together, see how you’ve changed.”
I couldn’t dispute her words. I had changed. “And I suppose you’d say you’re not trying at all.”
“Correct. I’m doing, not trying. Oh, would you look at those two now? Aren’t they just having lots of fun?”
I stared through the window. Helen was on her hands and knees, and if my eyes didn’t deceive me, she was wagging her backside as though she was a dog. What the fuck had she got herself into? For someone who had prattled on about women being degraded on all levels, she wasn’t doing a very good job of supporting her beliefs. Never in my wildest imaginings would I have labelled her as someone who’d be into role play in any shape or form, let alone being a naked animal, now complete with collar and leash. I was glad she had a blindfold on and I couldn’t see her eyes—not that I’d have been able to at this distance. To see that she was enjoying this…this weird scenario, when she’d been so different in the sack with me… No. I wouldn’t go there. The past was the past. But the past had come storming into my present, so it was inevitable I’d turn back the clock and reminisce a little.
“You do realise it might not have been you,” Zara said.
“Again, I don’t know what you mean.” I frowned at Helen, who was licking Geoffrey’s hand.
“That Helen might have had needs she knew you couldn’t meet. Or ones she didn’t think you could meet. But after your question about being a Master, I feel she’s the unlucky one, don’t you? Maybe she could have drawn it out of you after all—well, enough to satisfy her anyway.”
I remained silent, the word Master spinning in my mind. All that it meant—protection, ownership, dominance, satisfaction, power…
“She wanted a Master,” Zara went on, “but she didn’t think you were up to the job, so she found someone who was. However, had she told you, had she stuck around—”
“I wouldn’t have bloody made her do that,” I said, nodding at the window.
“Why not? If it’s something she wants, something she enjoys…”
“What, after she’d spouted about degradation and how much she hated porn and prostitution, how it took away a woman’s dignity? Giving me the impression she’d be sickened by something like that?”
“Ah, but sometimes we do that in order to convince ourselves what we want is wrong. I suspect you think like that all the time. And you’ve certainly expressed your feelings to me on how odd or weird you think my world is. Yet you’ve enjoyed some aspects of it, fo
und that it isn’t odd or weird. Don’t you agree Helen has the right to the same? Maybe she didn’t know what she wanted when she was with you. Maybe she’d just had something missing and wasn’t sure what it was—until Geoffrey came along and opened her eyes with that ‘O’ book he gave her.”
“I know what you’re doing, Zara.”
“Oh?” she said, that word full of her feigned surprise. “And what’s that, darling?”
“You’re making comparisons. But how could I have wanted things that I didn’t know existed?”
“Wanted. Such a telling word, Victor. You do want what I have to offer. Admit it. And what’s more, I think you’ll also find you need it now.”
I shook my head, letting out a low laugh. “It was a figure of speech. You’re skewing what I said.”
“Whatever you say, slave.”
Oh, she knew how to rile me, but I wouldn’t let her. Slave… I wasn’t anyone’s bloody slave.
“So,” I went on, going for chirpy in order to dig into her psyche a little more. “If I have to apply this to Helen, don’t you need to apply it to him?”
I stared at Geoffrey—he was patting Helen on top of her head with his hard cock. Christ… I squirmed a bit, longing to adjust my dick, but Zara might take it that I had a hard-on. Which I didn’t.
“And I know what you’re implying, Victor.”
I waited for more, but she left it at that. She’d got the message, though, and I wondered if she was thinking about it now, that Geoffrey also had the right to change, to have found whatever he’d been looking for and hadn’t known it until he’d met the right person. I studied them, the way Helen didn’t appear uncomfortable in her nakedness anymore. She was enjoying this, especially, I suspected, as Geoffrey was sliding his cock up and down her face, across her mouth, teasing the dog with his bone.
I wanted to do the same to Zara.
Fuck it, Helen and I just weren’t meant to be. Yes, she’d gone off with him, lied to me spectacularly, but if they were happy…yeah, I could cope with that. Besides, I had Zara. She was my here and now, my future too if I dared hope that it could be. The whole package of her had swallowed me, and I didn’t want to be spat out in a few weeks. And how was Zara feeling, seeing Geoffrey in a completely different light? Hurt? Upset? Lied to? I didn’t want her feeling those things, not while she was with me. I felt duty bound to protect her, but was it even my place to ask her how she was, allow her to see that her emotions were important to me? Or would she see it as none of my business?
Instead, I said, “So, I’ll ask you again. How do you feel about calling me Master?”
She was quiet for a full twenty seconds and then, “I’m…I’m not sure.”
Her hesitation told me all I needed to know. She wasn’t sure—truly—and that meant I had a window of opportunity to climb into her mind. If Zara had taught me anything, it was to go for what I wanted and make the most of an opportunity. She’d unleashed the beast in me, the monster, and, although at one time I’d have been horrified, I found myself welcoming more of the same.
On my terms this time.
“Do you want to try it?” I asked. “We’ll use a safe word, and if you’re not comfortable we could…”
“What could we do?” She tugged on her bottom lip and narrowed her eyes.
“You tell me.”
“We could do what you said, if that’s what you want.” She raised her eyebrows and nodded. “Yes, good idea, it could be seen as part of your training—I mean, your learning—discovering who you really are. You’ll find you prefer submission after all and you’re not cut out to be in charge.”
I held in a huff of indignation. “Or I might shine at domination. You see me as a sub, want me to be one, but you have to know that no matter what you wish for, I have to be in agreement, it has to work for me, who I am in the very core of my being.”
“Of course,” she snapped. “I wouldn’t be a good Domme if I didn’t understand that. You really do need to learn the rules properly, especially if you want to be a Master. It’s pointless prancing about being all manly, but if you don’t understand what your submissive needs—”
“Like you understand what I need?” Were we having our first argument? “Like you knew I was going to ask you that question back there in the car?”
“I did actually.”
Liar. “Oh, of course you did. So answer it clearly. How do you feel about submitting? It doesn’t matter what I want at this moment. I need to know whether you’d be uncomfortable or whether it would get you off.”
“You’re being very charitable—unlike me. That isn’t an apology, by the way. I was well within my rights as a Domme by not answering.”
“I know that. But for me this is all new and I have to know I’m doing things the correct way. It’s all very well the other way around. You tell me what to do, and I do it. But when the shoe’s on the other foot…it makes me wonder whether mastering is for me. Do you see what I’m saying? I won’t know until I try.”
She sighed. “And neither will I regarding submission. So, what the hell, let’s do this. What do you have in mind?”
I peered at Helen and Geoffrey again. He was tugging at her collar, drawing her face towards his cock. He said something; Helen opened her mouth. And, Christ, that cock sunk between her lips until her nose was buried in his hairs, his balls touching her chin.
“Is it all right if we just go for it?” I asked. “While the mood is right.”
“What, now?” She glanced around. “In here?”
“Yes, now, here,” I said firmly and in a new, more assertive voice.
“I suppose…” She swallowed and nibbled on the side of her thumbnail.
I’d knocked her off-kilter, taken Zara out of her comfort zone. How would she handle it? I suspected her safe word would spill from her lips quite early on. Being told what to do clearly wasn’t her thing, but she was willing to try it—for me. That had to count for something, didn’t it? Could I consider it to be a flicker of hope that I was different to all the other men she screwed with?
“Safe word?” I asked.
“Smitten,” she said, not a beat between my asking and her response.
I frowned at her choice then shrugged it off. “Take that collar off Rory.”
“Roly,” she said.
“Roly then. Take it off. And don’t correct me unless it’s to teach me the ways of being dominant, all right? In fact, don’t say anything to me at all unless I ask you to speak, got it?” Was I going overboard, being too harsh? All I had to go on was her way of doing it, how she’d treated and spoken to me. It felt bloody good, though. I just had to hope she enjoyed it too.
“Yes…Sir.”
A surge of respect for her whipped through me. I knew how difficult it was to address her as Mistress, and her playing the game the right way, even if it felt alien to her… I goddamned adored her for it.
She reached down and did as I’d asked, then raised her arm in front of the window, her hand and the collar seeming to fit inside the backdrop picture frame of the full moon.
“Now put the dog out,” I said. “He doesn’t need to see what we’re going to do.” I would try many things she asked of me, but fucking in front of an animal wasn’t one of them, not after seeing The Harlequin and the snake anyway.
She opened the door, shooing Roly outside. I watched him plod off, then change his pace into a swift run towards where I knew his luxury wooden kennel had been constructed, in an outbuilding to the side of the barn.
“Remove your clothes,” I said, taking the collar from her. “All of them.”
While she undressed, I kept her in my peripheral, at the same time eyeing Helen and Geoffrey. He ploughed his cock in and out of her mouth, hands on top of her head, keeping her still. My cock twitched.
Zara was naked now, standing with her arms by her sides, fists clenched. She had a swathe of goose bumps over her chest, and the hairs on her arms stood erect. I’d soon have her hot and sweaty.
> “Get down into a submissive pose, slave.”
She obeyed, albeit reluctantly.
“Are you comfortable with this?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Answer me, Zara.”
“Yes, Sir, for now.”
I knew full well what she must be feeling. I wanted to call it off—seeing her struggling like this; was it something I could handle?—yet at the same time I had the need to push her to her limits, see when she’d call it off. Is that what she’d been doing to me the whole time, waiting for me to shout my safe word? I damn well hadn’t, though, had I.
“Good. Now, I’m going to put this collar on you,” I said. “I know enough to understand the significance of it. And it’s only for now, for what we’re doing. I don’t expect you’d want the equivalent of a marriage band around your neck. I don’t know much about the lifestyle, but I’ve heard about that.”
She lifted her head and looked at me. Again, I couldn’t see her exact expression, but I thought I detected a question there.
“Do you want to say something, sub?”
“Permission to speak, Sir?”
“Yes, go on.”
“How do you know what I’d want?” Her pupils were wide—her lips shone, she’d just licked them.
“Much as you knew what I’ve wanted this last week.”
“No, I’m not talking about that, Sir. I meant your reference about the collar. It’s very significant in my world.”
What was she saying? She’d always given me the impression that she couldn’t wait to get rid of me. That she was a Mistress—one who would never be doing any permanent collaring. She was a free spirit, independent and more than content flitting about and hooking up with coffee-shop men.
“What do you mean?” I asked, wary of her answer.
“I might like it,” she said, almost too quietly.
“I see.” At least I thought I did. Was she was trying to tell me something—more than her enjoying being submissive? I couldn’t hope for that—no, not that, something more between us at the end of our month. I wouldn’t get so lucky. That kind of thing didn’t happen to blokes like me.