Not Your Damn Dom (Denial Book 2)

by Amy Valenti

  “Gotta love it,” Jay murmured. I looked back through the dim, atmospheric lighting to see him smiling.

  Ahead of me, Owen stopped and slid back a wooden panel, revealing a room behind the partition. “Take a look, Alex.”

  Curious, I stuck my head into the hole and caught my breath. A couple was playing—a male sub, completely naked but for a blindfold, was tied to a chair and his Domme circled him with a riding crop, her high heels clacking. And, wait, didn’t I know them from somewhere? They were a celebrity couple of some kind; I’d swear to it.

  “Are we allowed to watch?” I whispered to Owen.

  “That’s what these panels are for. They know people will be looking in.” He spoke close to my ear, and I couldn’t help but shiver as the vibrations entered my ear.

  I watched raptly as the Domme delivered sharp, rapid hits to her sub’s shoulders, his upper back, his nipples and his thighs as she kept circling. The sub was completely aroused, his cock twitching with practically every hit. If I’d been the Domme, I wouldn’t have been able to resist tormenting him with my mouth or hand.

  I stopped trying to figure out who they were. If I ever met them in person, it would be entirely awkward to have already seen him naked and turned on. It wasn’t as though I could tell anyone outside of this place if I recognised them, anyway…

  “Let’s find something a little more our speed,” Jay suggested, and moved past a group of voyeurs to open a panel farther down. He pulled a face and shut it again as I caught up. “Unless you like watching cock and ball torture, let’s move on.”

  I shuddered—their kink was not my kink. Whatever worked for them was great, but I didn’t want to see it.

  “Got one.” Owen had opened a panel on the opposite side of the hallway, and I peeked through when he stood aside.

  A shirtless Dom stood before a defenceless, naked submissive girl who clung by her fingertips to a ring dangling from the ceiling. Her skin was reddened in patches from some sort of impact toy he’d already set aside. He pinched her breasts, pulling her body forward by her nipples alone so she stood on her tiptoes, and kissed her deeply.

  Oh, God, this was what I wanted. She was so enraptured by him, gazing up at him as if he were her world when he drew back from the kiss. I could imagine Spencer doing the exact same things to me as he was to her.

  The submissive let out a sexual cry, her head falling forward as he slid his fingers back and forth through her wet folds. Now she was on her tiptoes she had a better grip on the ring above her, and it swayed and clinked as it took some of her weight.

  I had to stop myself from wriggling, my pussy responding as if her Dom were touching me. I was pretty sure Owen and Jay had their eyes on me as well as on the scene, and I didn’t want to give them any signals that I’d welcome relief from them.

  Though maybe they’d be willing to give me some pain. I could really use that. Then I could go home alone and finish off with my favourite vibrator, and try not to think about the man I loved.

  God, when had my sex life gotten so complicated?

  The submissive began to beg for her orgasm, tears in her eyes, her hips bucking against her Dom’s rough touches. I thought I could come right along with her if it happened soon.

  “Please, please, Sir, please—”

  “Come.” His growl was purely sexual.

  She trembled and dropped her head onto his chest, still clinging to the ring above her head as her knees shook and she fell apart.

  I rested my cheek against the wooden panelling and whimpered softly. To their credit, neither Owen nor Jay put their hands on me. I wasn’t sure if I could have resisted them if they had.

  Spencer…

  * * * *

  Spencer

  It took less than two minutes after Alex’s departure for me to make up my mind. We’d work something out together, some compromise. Anything. I couldn’t lose her like this, especially not after all this time.

  As I reached for the door handle, someone knocked on the other side of the door. I threw it open, hoping like hell it was Alex—and the breath left my lungs.

  “Spencer. It’s been a long time. Can I come in?”

  Kristin, looking exactly the same as she had the last year we’d dated. Short, pixie-cut black hair, a petite, voluptuous body and full lips I knew by heart.

  We had a lot to talk about, but it couldn’t be now.

  “Christ, Kristin, could you have picked a worse time? Where the hell have you been all these months?”

  At least she had the decency to be ashamed of herself. “I’m sorry. I can’t lie—I chickened out.”

  I tried to get my incoherent thoughts together. “Can this wait a day or two? I need to be somewhere right now.”

  “My plane back to Mississippi leaves in four hours. It has to be now. I’m sorry.”

  Fuck. If I told her she’d have to travel back to LA some other time, she might never contact me again. And I owed it to her to hear her out, no matter how badly I wanted to get to Alex. My girl and I had both wanted this meeting with Kristin for months.

  Suppressing a sigh, I stepped back to let her in.

  She went straight through the gym as though she’d never left, and up through my apartment door. Snarling a curse under my breath, I followed her upstairs, where she was looking around the living room with a nostalgic smile.

  “Nothing much has changed up here.”

  I offered her coffee, which she turned down. That was new. She’d practically lived on the stuff back when we were together.

  We sat together on the couch, at opposite ends. For a moment, there was an awkward silence.

  “I should have come sooner.”

  “No shit.” She would have gotten a gentler approach from me if she hadn’t vanished off the radar again after promising to meet with me. I wasn’t feeling patient right then.

  She sighed. “Not just six months ago—like, two years sooner than that. Truthfully, I’ve felt terrible about the way I left things since I came to terms with what happened back when I was a kid.” Her face was stricken. “I’m so sorry, Spencer.”

  In the past, that expression would have made me cup her face in my hands and leave kisses all over it. Now I was just pissed off. “Why didn’t you come sooner?”

  “I was scared,” she admitted, her voice virtually a whisper.

  “Of what?”

  “Of you looking at me the way you are right now.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I made it worse by disappearing again, I know. But I saw you on the street outside your place and all the good stuff started rushing back, and I just felt so guilty… I couldn’t face you.”

  We wouldn’t get anywhere if she didn’t relax a little. I made a conscious effort to calm her down, making sure my own expression and body language conveyed a lack of anger. “Look… Forget the last six months. What did you want to say before, when you told Kat you’d talk to me?”

  She’d always been prone to babbling, done better with communication when I’d given her something to focus on. It looked as though that hadn’t changed. She spoke slowly, as I’d once trained her.

  “I wanted to apologise for what happened after…that night. I blamed you, and it wasn’t fair. I needed someone to hit out at, someone to hurt, and you were the closest. Physically and emotionally.”

  I’d always been able to tell when she wasn’t being sincere. This was heartfelt and genuine, which soothed my irritated mood. This was a talk we needed to have.

  “I was your Dom, Kristin. I didn’t take care of you.”

  She stared at me for a moment, then dropped her head into her hands. “Callum was right. I really did do a number on you, didn’t I?” Her voice was muffled between her fingers.

  Instinctively, I reached for her. I didn’t love her anymore—seeing her now just confirmed that—but the desire to protect her had never gone away. At the touch of my hand on her shoulder, she looked up, eyes shining with tears, then hugged me tightly.

  I held her for the first
time in well over three years, and marvelled at how familiar she still felt. She had always fitted into my embrace in a particular way, her head tucked under my chin, and something in me that had been tangled and snarled for years finally unravelled and relaxed. It seemed stupid to think the Dom part of me remembered that I hadn’t been able—been allowed—to comfort her after our last scene had fallen apart, but that was how it felt. Like closure.

  “Spence, you stopped the second you realised I wasn’t okay. You did everything you could for me, just like you always did. I just didn’t cut you a break. I was scared and I was traumatised—not because of what you did,” she added, pulling back to stare me in the eyes. “Because of the memories.”

  “I wish I could have predicted it,” I said, shaking my head. “I don’t trust my own judgement anymore.”

  “Because of me,” she said sadly. “The way I refused aftercare.”

  “Maybe partly. But even if you had let me care for you, I don’t know how things would’ve gone. Fuck, Kristin, we were together for six years and neither of us knew you had that trigger. How can I do kink with anyone without wondering if I’m gonna hit another?”

  She shrugged, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. “I dunno. You were always better at figuring out the Dom stuff than I was. I just listened and obeyed.”

  “Most of the time,” I said, the old habit coming back to me. She’d forever made out she was a more obedient submissive than she was.

  “Most of the time,” she agreed with a wan smile, remembering.

  After a pause, she got back on track. “We were good together, Spence. You were a great Dom. I always knew that when I watched other people playing, when I talked to other subs on the scene. You were always so careful with safety but it never slowed down what we were doing. No one ever believed what happened between us was your fault, because they knew you. I never believed you let the bad scene drag on longer than it could have been.”

  Anger rose like a shark to the surface of my mood again. “Then why act the way you did back then?”

  “My brain was messed up. My therapist helped me untangle it all. I needed to blame someone and you were the lucky guy.” Her lips twisted wryly. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve spent a lot of time feeling guilty about the way I handled things.”

  “Well, that makes two of us, then.” Somehow, I managed to keep the words from snapping out sarcastically.

  She flinched anyway. “If you need to hate someone, then please hate me. I asked you to pretend to force me. I had the flashback. I forgot my safeword. You stopped the moment you realised I was in real trouble.”

  “Wasn’t your fault, Kris.”

  “And it wasn’t yours. I’d way rather you blamed me.”

  I gazed at her—this tiny, curvaceous woman I’d once loved—and shook my head. “Is it fucked up that I can’t?”

  “It’s fucked up that you’re taking it out on yourself.” She stood up and folded her arms, glaring down at me as if she felt more dominant that way. “Callum said you had a new sub. All those months ago. You still with her?”

  Alex. The weight in my chest that had lightened during Kristin’s confession abruptly became heavier. “Yeah. But she’s not exactly my sub.”

  “You don’t trust yourself because of the way I left. You won’t let her in.”

  She’d always been adept at reading me. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m trying to protect her.” And driving her away in the process.

  Kristin groaned and put her hand to her head, as though I were giving her a headache. “There might not be anything hidden to protect her from! Don’t become a sexual martyr over this, Spence. Sometimes bad stuff happens in scenes that you can’t predict. What matters is how you deal with it.”

  She looked away, her shoulders hunching with shame. “I didn’t let you deal with it the way you needed to. That’s on me, and I’m so sorry, Spencer.”

  I kept quiet, absorbing her apology. I didn’t know if it would make a difference, but it felt significant.

  Kristin took my hand and squeezed it. “Just…be who you are. Do what you love. Don’t carry this guilt around with you anymore, because I don’t blame you. I’m even with a new Dom now. A few more hard limits, but I’m scening.”

  I expected territorial anger to wash over me at the thought of another Dom scening with the girl I’d once made the centre of my life. But nothing happened. It didn’t bug me the way it had when Alex had suggested finding a platonic Dom.

  “You happy?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I’m getting that way, yeah. It took a while to get past…that. Still have nightmares sometimes. But I’m happy most of the time now.”

  I nodded. At least that was something.

  “So how are you gonna make yourself happy, huh?” She raised an eyebrow. “Where’s your girl tonight?”

  “At Scene One. Probably trying to choose between a dozen Doms who’ve invited her to scene with them.”

  Kristin rolled her eyes. “And if there’s one thing men never seem to get about women, it’s when they’re supposed to follow you and make it right. Go after her! She’s waiting for you to claim her as your sub—what are you waiting for?”

  “Why can’t women ever say what they fucking mean?” I asked her without heat.

  “Why can’t men ever read between the lines?” she retorted.

  I stood up and grabbed my jacket. “Looks like I have somewhere to be.”

  Kristin looked me over analytically. “Gonna put your leathers on? I don’t know if they’ll let you in dressed vanilla.”

  “I’m in costume as a pissed-off Dom ready to put his sub on her knees, where she belongs.” It was an exaggeration. I was far from confident and still not sure of my own limits, but I knew what I wanted for the night and was determined not to let fear get in my way.

  “Oooh. I like that,” Kristin teased, some of her old self showing through her remorse and sadness now.

  At the front of the building, she stopped in front of a rental car. “I’m gonna head to the airport early. You definitely don’t want me around for this.”

  That was true.

  “Thanks for finally coming, Kristin. It’s good to see you happy.”

  She hugged me. “You made me happy too. Don’t doubt that. Now go make her happy.” Hesitating with her hand on the car’s door handle, she asked, “Do you forgive me, Spence? For what I did to us?”

  “If you forgive me too.” I squeezed her shoulder. “Send me a Christmas card or something. Keep in touch.”

  She smiled, relaxing. “Will do.”

  I kissed her forehead and let her go, then turned my back on my past and made for my car. I had a sub to claim and a relationship to salvage.

  The only fear is fear itself.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Alex

  I stood at the doorway to the open dungeon—not a semi-private room, but a large space with chains hanging from the ceiling, shackles attached to the walls and floor, St. Andrew’s crosses, suspension rigs and other BDSM furniture dotted around… and people occupying nearly every piece of equipment.

  “Wow,” I whispered, unable to choose which scene to focus on first. Everywhere, naked or half-naked subs, bottoms and masochists were draped, stood or kneeling. Doms, tops and sadists were lavishing pain or pleasure on their willing victims, and the sexual charge in the air was palpable.

  “Sure we can’t tempt you in there?” Jay asked, leaning against the wall.

  I hesitated, the submissive, masochistic side of me rearing its head. It had been so long since I’d played with Spencer, and I missed pain, missed orders. Jay and Owen had promised they could scene platonically with me, and I had told Spencer this was what I’d come here for…

  But he’d been supposed to stop me. He’d been supposed to tell me I was his girl and then make sure everyone knew it, right here. That was my dearest wish, but too much time had passed. If he’d been planning to claim me, he’d have gotten here b
y now.

  I didn’t even know if I was in a relationship anymore.

  I took a breath in, then out, watching a very short male Dom slap the naked breasts of his tall submissive until they were a rosy red.

  “Can I have some time to consider it?” I asked.

  Owen and Jay exchanged a glance over my head. “Take all the time you need, sweet thing.”

  I felt terrible stringing them along like this, when I didn’t even know whether I planned to play or not. “If there’s someone else you can scene with in the meantime, please, go ahead. I don’t want you to end up wasting your night. I might not even go in there at all.”

  Owen shrugged. “We’re just enjoying you enjoying the sights. It’s not often we get to show a complete newbie around.”

  “I’m not a complete newbie,” I corrected him. “I did one scene. One and a half, even.” Six months ago.

  “Still, you’ve seen a lot that’s new to you tonight. It was fun to see you shocked.”

  “I wasn’t shocked,” I protested, finishing my drink and putting the empty glass with some others on a nearby shelf. “Just surprised.”

  “And turned on,” Owen teased.

  I blushed and turned my attention back to the dungeon festivities. That was none of his business, whether I planned to play that night or not.

  After a few moments of watching a couple of female submissives get flogged by their Mistress, their asses side by side, I turned around. “Hey—where’d Jay go?”

  “Don’t worry about him. He’s just sorting something out.” Owen looked so nonchalant it made me suspicious, but the thought got lost as a male submissive practically screamed with agony and everyone within earshot tried to figure out why.

  Some sort of metal cock contraption seemed to be the culprit, and I averted my eyes, looking instead over at a shirtless Dom with very attractive biceps. Not quite as impressive as Spencer’s, though.