“I do,” she whispered without thinking.
“You know how to bend the law to suit you and your clients. You know how to weasel deals and make power-plays, how to seduce judges and beguile opposing counsel. You have a reputation for nasty maneuvers, and sudden surprises that leave stunning victories in your client’s pockets. You are the master in the domain of law and no one beats you at your own game …” His shoes scuffed the floor in the silence after he spoke, and she drew in another delicious breath of him, and felt her head aching, and her heart pounding fast. She was afraid. “No one beats you on your turf. No one takes the marbles and goes home, or scares you off the playing field, or intimidates your resolve. You are a master in your domain, Ms. Gillian Brahms. You are the master.” He stopped again, the pause fraught with expectation. “But you’re in my game now, on another master’s turf. No member beats me in this game. No one wins but me. Don’t even try to balk. Don’t disobey; don’t get your heart set on anything but surrender, because you’ve been beaten before you even begin.” She felt him come one step closer, but she didn’t move. “I own you now. I own your life. I have enough ammunition to crush you if I so choose.” His words sent a tingle of fear through every atom in her aroused form. “I will protect you because there are times you’ll need my protection. I will guide you because you’ll need guidance. My heart will beat with your heart, our minds will be one mind. Your body already belongs to me for as long as I choose to use it. Remember this night well, Ms. Brahms. If there was ever a moment for you to back away and go home without the prize, that moment is now. If you want to do so, then tell me now.”
In the silence of the dressing room she could hear the atoms dancing in the air, and somewhere in the far off distance there was music from the bar, and the occasional cat-call from a horny man. She heard his shoes when they shuffled, and her own as she shifted her weight in the dangerous high heels. Feeling dizzy, she swayed, thinking she might fall to one side, but there was too much resolve in her bones for that. She kept her head high, her hands to her side, her ass tucked in as if her stranger could actually see her in the gloomy blackness.
“You know a good deal about me,” she said. “You know I’m not the kind to back down from any tough fight.”
“But this isn’t a fight,” he reminded her.
“And I know that too.”
“It’s about surrender, about taking your will and submerging it so that what is in your body can bloom. Are you ready for that?”
“I am,” she replied, her voice steady, her mind no longer drifting. When she felt his hand caressing her hair, she realized that he was close to her again. Another breath of him, she thought she might cum.
“You have sex on orders from the club alone,” he said. “You wear your clothes without panties. You follow every instruction you receive to the very letter and then you wait.”
“I wait?”
“Yes, you wait for more. When you’ve proven your merits, when it’s been decided you can be trusted, when you demonstrate your abiding loyalty and the extent of your lust, and we know your soul belongs to us, then you’ll receive full membership. Your surrender will be complete. Until then, Brahms, you wait.”
Chapter Nine
After sex, Kate toyed with the hair on Thad’s lovely chest, running fingernails down his torso, cupping his balls in her hand and then playing with the flaccid penis that had most recently been knocking about inside her hungry puss.
“I missed you,” she purred to him with a cute smirk on her face.
“Vitorio not as good as me?” Thad asked.
She instantly recoiled at the mention of the man’s name, but then smiled again, hoping he didn’t see her displeasure.
“Ah, I see,” he almost laughed not missing the look at all. “And how about your new jewelry? Don’t you like these heavy ornaments?”
“Of course I like these heavy ornaments,” she said as her attention was drawn to the powerful ache between her thighs. “They do keep me aroused.”
“And are they fulfilling their purpose?”
“There hasn’t been a day in my life for the last three years that I wasn’t constantly reminded of the club. I hardly think I need them … though they do remind me that I’m on probation.”
“And have you accepted that horrifying fact?”
“I suppose,” she said, her face for just an instant looking dour. Again, Thad did not miss even one hint of discontent.
“You don’t need another treatment on your ass, do you?”
She shook her head, honestly not interested in all that pain, at least when there wasn’t the promise of some sexual result. “I’m very happy right now, just being with you,” she tried to lighten the mood.
“Then tell me, why the frowns earlier?”
She pulled up in the bed and sighed, “I think you’re making too much of a little grimace.”
“You’re a subtle woman, McPherson. I’ve learned to look for subtleties with you and I can tell when something’s bothering you.”
She remained silent. This one was going to be hard to put into words since she really didn’t understand what she felt. She jumped from bed and moved toward the bath, hoping he would drop the conversation.
“Kate,” he called her back, and though his voice was stern, she pretended not to hear him and kept on going.
Noting her disregard, Thad’s voice boomed loudly, “Front and center, McPherson!”
She froze in an instant, remembering the last time that command had been given in the board room. Turning around, she leaned against the frame of the bathroom door with a sheepish look on her face as though she might cajole him away from a confrontation.
His responding glare was lethally aimed. Trotting toward him, she took up the demeaning pose beside the bed, on her knees, bent forward on the rug, arms clasped behind her, her nose feeling the prickly fibers of the carpet.
“I ask a question, I expect an answer!” he barked unhappily. “But, if what you want is a perpetually sore behind, that is exactly what you’ll get.”
“No,” she whispered loud enough for him to hear.
“No, what?”
“No, sir.”
“Maybe I should fix a second chain on your labia.”
“No!” she practically shrieked, then calmed and corrected the faux pas, “No, sir.”
He was on his feet, walking about the room. She heard his dress leather belt being drawn from his pants, and then felt it dangling about her ass. A reckless and lusty shiver darted through her whole system.
“Then, let’s get on with your confession, because I will flog your behind and I will make you wear clamps and chains and anything else I find suitable, if you don’t answer me.”
She peered sideways trying to see his eyes, hoping to enlist a little sympathy, but there was no room to negotiate with this unwavering attitude.
“I’m having a hard time figuring this out, Thad.”
“Then maybe your mind needs a little graphic encouragement,” he said. Thwack! His belt came down sharply on her ass.
“Ahhhhhh.” This was not a blow to cause her pain, but one that sparkled with sensation like a skyrocket suddenly blazing against a black sky and then dwindling away in a million glittering droplets of fire.
“You need more?” he asked.
“No.” She knew another strike of the leather would be ghastly—one amazingly consistent trick of Thaddeus Chamberlain’s was first to seduce with leather and then burn with it when burning was what would get the results he wanted. Just the threat was enough right now.
“I’m feeling lost,” she blurted out.
“Lost?” Perhaps even that hit this master unexpectedly. It certainly wasn’t what he expected Kate to say. But then too, it fit.
“Lost, yes. Like I’m suddenly the pariah of the club. I feel cheap and sleazy. I know that must sound ridiculous for a woman who’s been screwed in bars and bound in dressing rooms and used by nearly a hundred men in three years, and accep
ted lots of promotions and favors and gifts because I’ve been so easy. But I’ve always prided myself in being everything I needed to be for any master, and enjoying it without reservation. I’ve explained my behavior to myself as what I need to fulfill me, and so it has.” Her words were rushing out faster than she could think them. “But now, I’m scared to death of Vitorio, and in fact I loathe the thought of being with him. And the others masters, when I see them at work, or in a café, they look at me strangely, like they can’t trust me—like they’d like to see me strung up and lashed again. I feel like a marked woman, and even you seem distant.” She finally took a breath, and not knowing what else to say, shut up.
Thad walked around her, so she could see his bare feet and his ankles. She wanted to gaze up at him in the worst way, knowing she would see his cock moving so deliciously soft against his thighs. She wished she could take back her words, but with them out of her mouth—the complete and honest truth—she was petrified over his reaction.
“Maybe you need to understand why you created this,” he asked.
The ominous belt continued to tease her ass. Each time it grazed her flesh she shuddered a little more inside, as though she wanted it to strike but was too afraid to voice that desire.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“Certainly you believe you write your own fate—even if it is a subconscious thing.”
“You think I wanted this?”
“That you set yourself up for punishment. Yes I do. I’ve seen it a dozen times, my dear McPherson. You’re not the first submissive member to desire a depth of experience you weren’t receiving from the masters. In fact, I thought we spoke of this the last time I was in Milan. Seems to me I mentioned when I last spanked you that punishment was exactly what you really want.”
“Maybe I forgot.”
“Maybe you need a good reminder of what dreadful desires are lurking in you.” The belt caressed her ass with a touch as simple as the touch of a woman’s hand, or even Thad’s when he was being her tender lover.
“I can’t believe I really want to be punished,” she said.
“But by results, McPherson, that’s exactly what is happening to you. You were the one that wrote that diary and left it for someone to find. You knew the consequences of disobedience.”
The more he teased her, the more his indicting words made passionate waves of pleasure skirt about her prickly body. Certainly he saw her tremble. If he was going to punish her, she wished he’d get it over with.
“Seems the last time we were together, I told you to handle this desire of yours, and now we’re back again at square one. What do I have to do to convince you of what you want? Tell me.”
She remained silent, even while her heart was beating fast and her ass was tingling in anticipation of his exploding on it with an angry blast of leather justice.
“Tell me, McPherson. Tell me with your own lips, what is it you really want?”
He waited, the leather stroking not just her ass, but tickling her genitals and sensitive shoulders and the locks of brown hair falling to the floor.
“I can’t,” she whispered softly, though the instant she spoke the words, she winced, expecting the belt to land.
“Oh, but I think you can tell me,” Thad disagreed. He lightly flailed the leather against her skin, not enough to hurt, but enough for her to realize what he was waiting to do. “You want more of Vitorio, don’t you?”
“No!” she practically shrieked, and still Thad remained serene in the face of what he knew otherwise.
“It is Vitorio you want, isn’t it? Be honest.”
“I can’t say that.”
“Of course you can. You want the man, even more than you want me right now. He enticed you. His dark side fascinates you, draws you in to him. You’ve done everything this club has asked of you, but you haven’t taken that last wicked step of debauchery. You haven’t become a slave to that final and very cruel, punishing passion. But that is exactly what you want most. You’ve only tiptoed into the club’s dark regions; you’ve toyed as I toy with you now. But you’re intensely curious. You want to know just how far you can go, and you don’t want to go with me. You know how much I love you, and you’re afraid I won’t let you see and feel and taste everything in that darkness. You want to go with a Bellamy, or a Redford, perhaps, but most especially you want Vitorio.”
“Thad, no,” she whimpered.
He smacked the belt on her ass, this first in several minutes creating a ripple of joyous feeling. But the smacks that followed were sheer torture, laid on hard and very fast with a belt that was hard to control. It nipped her cunt and caught her sides, so she practically came up off the floor in an angry rage.
“On the floor!” Thaddeus roared, as an especially harsh strike hit her thighs, whipping around the sides and laying a startling fire against her tender skin.
She collapsed back in position and breathed relieved as the sting died away.
“It is Vitorio you want, isn’t it?” he asked again, quite calmly.
“It is,” she replied as scared as she’d ever been.
Thad backed away, Kate hearing the belt dropped to the bed. “I doubt this will create much problem, I think he’s between members now. You’re his, McPherson, for the next several weeks. When you’ve learned what you need to learn from him, we’ll talk again. Get up.”
She couldn’t believe what he just declared. “You’re leaving?” she cried looking desperately toward the man she loved as he moved toward the shower.
“I’ll let Vitorio decide who does the leaving, but I imagine it will be you. He much prefers to handle his submissives at his country villa. This time of year it will be beautiful,” he said with a smile on his face as if that should allay her fears.
“Thaddeus?” Her cry was sadly plaintive, all the woe in her heart written in her expression, but it wasn’t changing his mind.
“You will survive, I promise you that.”
“But when will I see you?” she asked.
He shrugged. “When do you ever know when I’ll appear?”
Despite that truth, she had the feeling that it would be some time before she’d be in her lover’s arms again.
Chapter Ten
One night after the Cat’s Meow, Gillian was at the theatre on the arm of an attentive Mike Bellamy.
She almost canceled the date. Considering the wealth of her lust, her attraction for her newest client, and the stringent rule of law she’d just agreed to obey, it seemed like a dangerous gamble to think she could keep a vow of “chastity”—especially this one night.
Her mind ran in circles, her lust chasing it about with a thousand explanations why she shouldn’t just let nature takes its course … the club would never know … just one night and nothing more … they could hardly expect perfection … wasn’t almost enough to suit them? She knew the answer to all her explanations, but seeing Mike Bellamy it was easy to forget.
He arrived at her door, looking breathlessly handsome in a finely cut black suit. His tie was a splashy hand-painted silk in purple and green, and the cufflinks at his wrists gleamed, the gold shining brightly. Despite the spit and polish, his devilish free spirit lured her as much as anything. His hair was delightfully disheveled and his smile radiant. She loved his hands-on style—she loved his hands—how his fingers absently traced their way down her back along bare skin. He gave her a mirthful wink seeing the bodice of her dress present him with two ebullient breasts pushed into a cleavage that bounced saucily as she walked.
“You’re tempting me, Ms. Brahms.”
“Call me, Gillian,” she retorted with a sparkle in her eye. “You think this is bad for business?”
“I don’t care much about business when I have a woman as lovely as you on my arm.”
“You are a charmer; your reputation is certainly earned. But then, I never thought it hurt to gain a healthy rapport with my clients,” she purred sweetly. “Mind you, I don’t do this with all of them.”
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“I hope not. I wouldn’t like to think I hired a slut.”
“And what if I were?”
“I probably wouldn’t mind that either. What you do with your body is of casual concern to me. What you do with your mind, well that’s another thing altogether.”
“Oh, so what I do with my body doesn’t matter? Except when you enjoy looking and feeling your way around?” He had his hand on her ass, a rather forward move, but it nonetheless delighted her.
“I think, perhaps, we’re cut from the same cloth, don’t you? Two charmers with a penchant for putting ourselves in precarious situations only to see how we’re going to weasel out of them.” He winked at her.
She gave him a laughing smirk. If he only knew. So much tension the night before, that night like a dream that she dreamt ten years ago. She could hardly remember it now—except the feeling of being reckless, and then captured, and then tortured by the sound of a man’s stern words—almost like he was reprimanding her. Now, she felt even more reckless, sparring dangerously, erotically with a man she lusted after. Could clubs and vows and surrender really be her fondest desire? She had only a moment to think that thought and she had her answer. She could surrender to Mike Bellamy, or any man like him, in an instant. She was made for that, just needed a little coaching and the opportunity.
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