by Dae, Harlem
“No, it isn’t, but if it’s any consolation, there are some days I wish I didn’t do that job either.” She smiled, almost sadly, and gazed to the side and down. “But then what else would I do?” She looked straight at me again. Grinned broadly. “Besides, I’d be crap in a shop or office. Hell, you’ve seen what I get up to in an office.” She waggled her eyebrows. “My job’s perfect for me.”
“For your dominant side and huge sexual appetite, yes.” I decided to change the subject. I felt we were going to skate far too close to an argument if we continued in this vein. “So, I won’t ask why you needed to wank while he was flogging you, but—”
“I was combining work with doing what you’d told me to do.”
A little honesty, at last. “Yes, well, that’s good of you, but… Do you want me to check that your back is all right? Don’t you want to wash your hand?”
She lifted it then walked towards me. “No, my back is fine. And again, no, I rather thought you might want to wash it for me.”
She placed her fingertips to my mouth, and the scent of her arousal wafted up, goading me to taste it. All my anger dissipated, my innards made a swift comeback, and, damn it, I parted my lips and sucked her fingers inside.
* * * *
I dropped Zara off at Eden Street then drove away with images in my head of her and Carlos together. Earlier, after cleaning her fingers, amazingly I’d cut off any further antics, claiming I’d only nipped home for a file. That hadn’t been true—I’d wanted to see her, awake. Thought maybe a quickie in my lunch break would help relieve the hard-on in my pants.
That plan certainly hadn’t come to fruition, and now I needed time to process what had happened and my severe reaction to it. I actually needed someone to talk to about it. I chuckled at the thought of approaching Mary, then, at a stop light, which thankfully took a long time to switch over to green, I quickly texted Ollie and asked him to come to my office. He only worked in the next building, for a marketing company, so it was easy for us to meet up a couple of times a week if we wanted to, and, of course, had the time.
I walked into reception to raised eyebrows from Mary, who I’d told as I’d left that I wouldn’t be back until the morning. For once she didn’t question my return, gave a quick smile, then bent her head back to her work.
As I walked down the corridor, I called back over my shoulder, “Ollie will be here shortly.”
She didn’t respond, and I couldn’t be bothered to turn around to query why. If she was still sulking, she could get on with it. I had too much on my plate to worry about her insecurities.
In my office, I headed straight for the bathroom and swilled my face with cold water, asking myself what the fuck I’d got into and why I wanted to stay in it. Zara wasn’t my type, her life wasn’t my sort of life, yet I couldn’t get the bloody woman out of my mind. And what would my clients think if they knew who I was seeing? She was hardly a good advert for business—come and get the boyfriend of a dirty little sexual vampire to draw up plans for your new home…you never know, he might even insert a dungeon in the basement.
I huffed and shook my head as a new thought hit. What if someone I’d created drawings for, other than Geoffrey, had perved over her in Eden Street already? The idea churned my stomach. Zara was mine, but nothing to do with my work. Her and my kind of customers didn’t mix. Yet how come those lines between her and my professional image were blurring, despite what I’d told her last night? She was becoming as much a part of my life as my business was, and my business was everything to me. Everything. My heart, my soul and my future.
I swished water on my cheeks again, wondering whether it was really her who had hooked me or if it was the sex, the learning experience. I would only know for sure when we went our separate ways. Sex, I could get that anywhere, but could I find another woman like Zara? I guessed that would remain to be seen.
A quiet knocking on my main door had me hurriedly drying my face with a folded white towel placed on the sink unit every morning by Mary. I left the room and entered my office, pleased more than I’d ever been in the past to see Ollie lounging on the big chair behind my desk. He swivelled it side to side, gripping the arm rests, and I had the strange feeling he was about to spin himself around full pelt like we had in similar chairs in our childhood.
“Don’t,” I said, raising my arm and jerking my thumb over my shoulder. “Out of that chair. This is serious.”
He stood, walked around to the other side of the desk, and plonked himself in the spare chair. “Fuck, what have I done now?”
“Nothing,” I said, moving to the wooden sideboard next to the door and opening it, taking out a decanter of brandy and two balloon-bottomed glasses. As I poured I said, “I need some advice.”
“Ah, that woman from the coffee shop,” he said.
I didn’t turn to see the smug look on his face—it always tended to be there when he’d suspected I’d need to bend his ear about something. From when I was six years old and worrying about the health of my pet snail to our teenage years and when my first serious girlfriend had promised we’d go all the way at Dan Todger’s party. “Yes, her. Coffee-shop Girl.”
“Too much for you, isn’t she.” Statement—and damn, maybe he was right.
“I’m beginning to think so.” I’d hated admitting that but if I could to anyone it would be Ollie. And damn, I needed to unload my tumbling thoughts. I returned to my desk, handing him a brandy, then sat, taking a large gulp.
“I did wonder… Could tell she was a handful. Prepared to share?”
I stared at him, shocked. “What, her? Not on your bloody life!”
He laughed. “Would be nice, but no, not her. Some information. I can’t help if I don’t know what you’re dealing with, although I have a sodding good idea.”
I took a deep breath before telling him the pertinent bits, not wanting to reveal too much. I didn’t tell him she was a professional Domme, that she worked in Eden Street. I made out we were seeing one another, an item—no mention of the month-long tuition. He shook his head and nodded alternately, listening to me going on about how much I liked her but how I couldn’t see it working because she was just so…so beautiful and out of my league. Headstrong. All the while I was spilling my guts, I had a feeling he was laughing inside. As I drew the tale to its conclusion, I knew what he’d say once I was done: “A man like you…”
“See, that’s the problem right there, Vic,” he said, pointing one finger at me. “A man like you can’t handle a woman like that. You haven’t got it in you to be the dominant one. She’ll walk all over you, mate, you wait and see. Now, it sounds like she needs a bloke who’ll do what she says, when she says it. High-maintenance, too, if I’m any judge. I think, once you two are over, I’ll take sloppy seconds. Then you’ll see how she ought to have been handled.”
Before I could launch myself over the desk and punch my cousin as though we were eleven again, I blurted, “Helen didn’t go to South Africa, she’s still here, in England. In this city. It was all an elaborate lie to leave me.” I paused, enjoying the brief flash of surprise on Ollie’s face. “And not only that, she’s fucking Zara’s ex.”
“Fuck. Who’d have thought meek little Helen had it in her to be so deceitful?” Ollie raised his eyebrows.
“I don’t know all the details, don’t want to, but I think that’s what you call lying of the extreme variety.” I shrugged, thankful that there was no pain coming from the Helen corner of my heart.
Ollie seemed to guess this. “The lying is shocking, yes, but does that bother you, the ex thing?”
“Oddly, not as much as I imagined it would, especially considering I know the man.” I went on to explain the whole sorry mess—Helen running off with a man she would once have called a pervert. Her wearing the dog collar, and Geoffrey thwacking his cock on top of her head.
“Helen?” Ollie asked, frowning hard. “Your Helen? You sure you didn’t spy on the wrong couple? You said she liked it in the dark, missionar
y.”
Did I? Must have been a few pints in that night. “Not a chance.” I sighed. “It was definitely her. Seems she’d wanted a dominant man all along, and I’d been too damn submissive for her. Now I’ve got a woman who wants me to be submissive, I’ve got the bloody urge to be dominant. I’m losing women by being the opposite of what they want me to be.”
“Shouldn’t be pandering to them anyway,” Ollie said. He sipped a goodly amount of brandy. “Maybe that’s where you’re going wrong. Wanting to please them instead of being who you are and pleasing yourself. Perhaps that way you’d keep ‘em keen.”
Ollie’s brand of pleasing himself was to be an utter wanker and take what he wanted, when he wanted it. I dreaded him latching onto Zara after we’d parted ways. He’d only have to nip to the coffee shop every day and he’d catch her there at some point…
Stop it. Don’t damn well torment yourself.
“I can’t be like you,” I said. “So, what the hell should I do?”
“No idea, mate. She’s like an untamed horse by the sounds of it, this Zara. Bridle her and she’ll rear up on you and then bolt. You’ll be left broken and eating dirt, and when that happens, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He finished off his drink, grimacing at what I guessed was the throat burn. “You should just end it now, while you’re still in one piece. Find someone more in your league who you can control.”
I held in a sharp retort. Because Ollie’s advice might actually be good advice if I’d told him the whole story, but he didn’t know Zara had been willing to submit, that she was willing to do so tonight and allow me to take that control he’d just mentioned. Which turned everything he’d just said—and I liked to think from the goodness of his heart—into a load of crap.
Zara and me finish it, now? That wasn’t going to happen, and I’d soon see if she’d bolt, all right. My hand whacking her arse would see to that. And if she did rear and gallop away, well, that collar she was still wearing would bring her straight back to me.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Fifi glared at me in the way only she could and get away with it—as though I’d come from another planet and had just spoken a load of gibberish.
“What bit didn’t you understand?” I asked, watching her swivel from side to side in the chair behind the reception desk. “The part where he told me he wanted to be a Master, or the bit where I think I’m getting a bit too fond of him for my liking?”
“The last part. I thought you said—”
“Yes, yes, I know what I said.” I flapped my hand so she wouldn’t speak. “But what I’ve said and what’s happened—is happening—is another bloody matter. I need to cut him loose, before it gets too serious. Even more serious.” I paced back and forth, fingertips to my bottom lip. “The trouble is, I can just see myself hanging out in his damn penthouse, maybe changing this job, and that isn’t something I thought I’d ever say. And as for Geoffrey…”
“What about him?”
I stopped and stared at her. “Oh, God, I forgot to tell you that bit.”
After I had, and Fifi had calmed down from shrieking and slapping the desk every time I’d revealed something new, she said, “Well, what do you know? Geoffrey being a Dominant. All right, I’m guessing he’s certainly like it in everyday life, so I can see him in that role, but after what you’d told me he was like in the bedroom, what he’d expected you to do…” She shook her head. “Wonders will never cease. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it? Just when you think you know someone, just when you think you know yourself…”
“And that’s the thing. I thought I knew myself. But what about me switching?” I asked, yanking down Victor’s scarf and revealing the dog collar. “And what do you make of this?”
“Oh, bloody hell!” Fifi shrieked again, and got up ready to fling herself at me.
“Don’t,” I said. “It doesn’t mean what you think it means. It’s just for…effect, to make him feel he’s really Masterish. It was for a scene.”
“Masterish! A scene!” She plonked herself back down and roared with laughter. “I don’t know who you’re trying to kid, Zara, me or yourself.”
“What, you think I’m lying? You think I like wearing this thing?”
“If you hated it you’d take it off.”
“I can’t. You know the rules. If I take it off without his permission, I’ll be teaching him wrong. I want him to know how to do things the right way; otherwise, all these nights of training him will have been for nothing.”
“Can I just say that with the right man, anything is possible, Zara. You just hadn’t met him until your virgin came along.” She frowned. “So tell me, what exactly is the problem again?”
I shook my head. “Oh, no. It isn’t that simple.”
“It’s as simple as you make it. Or as difficult. Sounds like you’re going for the latter to me. What the hell is your issue? Why have you got this fear of a relationship? And don’t say you haven’t, because it stands out a mile.”
“Does it? How did you know? Do other people know?” I didn’t want my rock-hard Domme persona shattered. If people thought I had a softer side, well, that could lead to all sorts of trouble in the shows. Carlos might not behave himself, for one, and Julie—she wouldn’t tolerate me being submissive when we acted together. But was that what I’d been doing all this time? Acting?
“I know you a little better than the others, that’s all.” Fifi smiled. “Don’t panic, no one else thinks you’re anything but a hard-nosed, fearless Domme. That’s why, when they’ve been gossiping, they can’t believe that you’ve agreed to teach your virgin for such a long stretch of time. No one knows you’ve fallen in love with him, and they don’t need to know either.”
I bristled. “I didn’t say I’d fallen in love with him, woman, just that I had feelings for him. I can see us being friends once his lessons are over. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”
She thought about that for a second or two. “But how will you handle seeing him with someone else? Isn’t that what you’re training him for?”
I shrugged, ignoring the clawing fingers of jealousy in my gut. “It’s what has to happen. I can’t afford to be all lovey-dovey. Geoffrey was as close as I ever got to really caring about a man, and look what happened there. No, Victor’s got to go. I’ve been seeing him just under a week, and if this is how I feel now, imagine the whole month. Okay, I’ve made a decision. I’m going to let him do that spanking business on me tonight, then tomorrow evening I’ll invite him here to watch the Swedes. That’ll be the last time I see him.”
“You’re being foolish, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
“Yes, I do mind. I don’t like being called foolish when I’m being sensible.”
“You care about him, and I could see even from the first time I met him he’s sweet on you. Are you going to pass him up for what, a life being a Domme? You can get too old for this job, you know. What will you do then?”
“Open my own place,” I said, backing up to the door. “Yes, I’ll do what Victor did and build my own business so I never have to worry about paying the rent or relying on someone else to pay me.”
Fifi nodded. “Like the banks lend money willy nilly for places like this one. And if you get lucky and they do, you can open your own place on one condition.”
“What’s that?” I asked, reaching for the door handle. I’d had enough of Fifi’s so-called sensible advice.
“That you let me come and work for you. This place, it’s all well and good, but it lacks that certain…well, that certain glamour, know what I mean?” She glanced over at the door that led to the rooms. “It comes off as a bit sleazy here.”
I nodded, seeds of a new beginning nestling in the fertile mud of my mind. I should concentrate on finding premises, securing a business loan, and then I wouldn’t have time to think about Victor at all, or trawl the coffee shop for one-night stands. Being too busy for sex might not be a bad thing, and besides, I could always wank.
“I
’m going to bloody do it,” I said. “You mark my words, I’ll be a business woman yet and, of course, I’ll take you with me.”
I turned away from Fifi with a wave of goodbye and opened the door, stepping out and banging straight into Carlos.
“Mistress, thank goodness. Are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said breezily. “Why ever wouldn’t I be?”
“The virgin,” he whispered, glancing inside over my shoulder. “He was very angry, Mistress.”
I laughed, a false tinkle, and swatted his chest. “Oh, don’t be daft. He was fine. Now, I must explain something…” I indicated with a jerk of my head that he stay with me outside—I didn’t need Fifi knowing Victor had caught Carlos flogging me. That would send her busy little brain into overdrive, and goodness knew what she’d start advising me then!
Closing the door, I gestured for him to walk with me to the car park. “Look, Victor got the wrong idea about earlier. Like I said to him—and I would have explained it to you afterwards, if I’d had the chance—I have a new idea for a show…”
Once I’d finished telling him, Carlos treated me to one of his satisfied smirks. “I shall look forward to that, Mistress. Very much, but I don’t think any amount of flogging would make me say my safe word.”
“I thought you’d like it, but we shall see about the safe word. I aim to have you screaming it,” I said as we reached my car. “Now, I don’t want any of the others knowing about it—or about Victor finding us. I feel we need to be a bit more edgy when we do a show together, and I don’t want any of the others stealing our idea.”
“I won’t tell a soul, Mistress.”
I nodded once. “Good. So, now I know what it feels like to be flogged, I should be able to deliver a better set of strikes to you, and I know how much you like them.” I winked and unlocked my car. “We’ll practise again in a couple of days, all right? I’ll have lots of free time then.”