by Maren Smith
A soft knock at the door. Hannah checked her watch again and fought the urge to roll her eyes. Five minutes, right on the nose.
“Hannah, honey?”
“I’m okay,” she called, and hoped that would be good enough. Sometimes it was.
This wasn’t one of those times.
“Are you dressed? Can…can you open the door?”
Biting back a sigh, Hannah hung her head a moment, then nodded. “Just a minute.”
She stood up and put Sam’s business card down beside the sink. Already anticipating what her aunt would want to see, she took her business jacket off and draped that over the sink as well. She rolled her long shirt sleeves up and then she unlocked the door. Without a word, she showed her arms.
“There’s no razors in here,” she reminded, once her obviously flustered aunt had looked her fill. She always flinched when she glanced at Hannah’s left arm. It had only been ten days; the wounds were still healing. Some looked better than others, but most lingered in that midway, angry-pink limbo between scabbed-over and new-scar white.
“I thought you took your shower this morning,” her aunt said when she finally managed to raise her gaze back to Hannah’s face.
“I’m going on a date.” It wasn’t until she heard those words falling from her mouth that Hannah even realized she’d been considering Sam’s bizarre invitation in the first place. It was the last thing she should do; the very last kind of temptation she needed in her life right now. She shouldn’t even think of it as a temptation. She was all better now. She was normal. Normal people didn’t need to associate with the likes of Sam or his club.
What if the club was like the Castle? Those shadowed sconces—kneeling submissives, dominants with whips…heat unfurled like a blossom in her belly.
Her aunt looked at her with wide eyes, surprised, tentatively smiling. “You are? With who?”
“Someone I met at work.” A misleading answer, yet still the truth. “He seems very—” dangerous “—nice.”
A flicker of worry moved through her aunt’s eyes. “D-does he know…a-about that other thing, I mean?”
That other thing.
Feeling wooden, Hannah shook her head. “No. Why would he?”
“Right!” Her aunt half-laughed, her relief weighing in the air between them. “Why would he? Do you want supper before you go? I could make you something quickly? Soup? A sandwich?” When Hannah shook her head, her aunt stepped back out of the doorway. “I’ll just leave something in the fridge. You can have it when you get home. A date.” She backed up again, squeezing her thin hands tight in front of her. “That’s wonderful, honey. I’m so excited for you.”
“Thanks.” Hannah made herself smile and watched her aunt’s awkward withdrawal until, taking pity on her, she simply shut the bathroom door. She locked it again and then stood there, quietly resting her forehead on smooth wood until soft footsteps retreated back down the hall.
Hannah closed her eyes. She used to love coming here. Uncle David, Aunt Loraine—they used to be her favorite relatives to visit. The summertime retreat she had most looked forward to throughout her entire childhood. Funny, how irrevocably some things could change, especially when you thought it so impossible that they ever would.
That other thing.
Seventy-two hours for observation at her father’s hospital. That’s what that other thing had cost her. Seventy-two hours. If left to her father, she’d probably still be there, under hospital observation with Dr. Ng sitting at her bedside and droning on and on in that faux-sympathetic tone. It must have come as a bitter surprise to her father that there were some things even his money could not do and having her committed against her will was one of them. No, Dr. Ng had simply encouraged her to look into antidepressants, then drawn up that stupid no-more-cutting contract, made her sign it, and released her.
Opening her eyes, Hannah looked down at the healing marks on her arm. She touched the row of smooth, pink scabs.
She should have locked her bathroom door. In hindsight, that was so obvious. But—at twenty and still living at home while she finished out her last year in college—she had never once locked a door in her childhood home. Not once. And not once had her mother ever just walked into her bedroom and then her bathroom without knocking. Not once. Until that day.
The day she had finally let her curiosity and fascination take control and she cut herself.
She could still feel the way her skin had iced and then burned as the razor glided into her. Like butter, she remembered thinking that at the time. Just as smooth as butter, though really it was more like a paintbrush, tracing a single line of white until her skin just…separated.
As if it were happening all over again, Hannah felt the seductive sting of that first small nick, a tiny cut really, drawn across the top of her right thigh while she built up the nerve for something bigger. She felt again the cool, hard edge of the tub she had straddled to help mitigate the mess and how that coldness didn’t quite compare with those icy prickles that moved up along her spine, crawling in under the back of her head when she failed to bleed and she realized she was going to have to cut deeper if she wanted to glimpse that beautiful crimson reward.
Hannah felt again the sting of the next slice, followed by those dancing prickles that raised every small hair on her body as she’d watched—not a skinned knee from a fall or a nick of a paper cut, but an actual, deliberate line of sliced skin with tiny crimson drops beading up like jewelry all along the seam.
It had been the single most beautiful thing she had ever seen on her body. The sight of it, smell of it, taste of it as she’d wiped her finger across the drops and put it into her mouth—all of it—intoxicating. Sheer heat had washed over her. In a dizzying rush, her blood had flowed to her head, and the next thing she knew, she had carved the top of her thigh all the way to her knee and was methodically working her way down her left arm with that bloody razor in her bloody fingers making slash after slash after slow and steady slash, and someone was screaming.
It was the screaming that woke her, which wasn’t quite right since she was, without doubt, already awake. But that’s what it felt like. A hard snap of vertigo, a hot flush of dizziness, and suddenly Hannah came back to herself. Where exactly she had gone, she didn’t know, but she remembered staring down at herself dazed, diminished somehow, and yet so very alive. More alive than she could ever remember feeling. More alive than, she suspected, she would ever feel again, trapped within this mask of normalcy when the only time she felt ‘right’ anymore was in moments like this when it was safe to relive how sensual it had felt to have those pungent drops running down her arm, dripping from her leg into the bottom of the tub, painting a slow river that had flowed from her heel all the way down into the drain. How decadent the copper-penny taste had been, filling up every corner of her mouth as she’d drunk from her wounds. Drunk and more, her blood had been an aphrodisiac in her nose. She’d bathed in it, smeared it over both legs, up her belly, over her bra, across her face and down again. The tackiness was all over her hands, all over her skin, all over the white cotton and lace of her underwear, showing exactly where she had pinched and touched and rubbed at herself in between cutting.
And someone had been screaming.
Pressing her face into the cool wood of the bathroom door, Hannah felt again that cold flinch as she’d raised her head and looked up at her horrified mother, still standing in the doorway, a half-circle of partially folded towels lying forgotten on the tile floor all around her feet, screaming over and over again.
It was the screams that brought her father running, with Amy the maid not far behind; and Hannah, feeling both unbelievably alive and yet not quite there, in the full sight of everyone, sank that bloody razor into her arm and cut herself as deeply as she could make it go. For the first time, she let them see her—the real her—the one that up until that fragile second, she had kept so hidden that no one ever suspected she existed. It was her father, snapping into motion, who gr
abbed the razor from her hand and quickly applied pressure to stop the bleeding.
That had been ten days ago—ten very long days of living in somnambulistic exile because she wasn’t allowed to go home again. The reasons had been laid out for her. Her mother still had nightmares every night and couldn’t stop crying; her father bounced between being so angry and so ashamed that he wouldn’t even talk to her when she tried to call. Ten very, very long days of living every second with the memory of how alive she had felt while her blood had painted her body and dripped from her burning limbs, and how very dead she felt in comparison.
But, she was better now.
Hannah went to the sink and picked up Sam’s card. He was going to take one look at her scars and know how sick she once had been. He’d probably think, like everyone else, that she was suicidal. He’d probably be repelled. He’d probably be sorry he’d asked her out.
But he had asked—she turned the card over and ran her thumb across the raised phone number on the back—and this morning had been the first time in ten very long days that she had felt something besides all this dead nothingness. That alone had to be worth the risk of calling.
Didn’t it?
CHAPTER FOUR
The Sanctuary was an innocuously named S&M club that met once or twice a month, in the rear of a senior member’s old cow pasture and under the cover of the fully decked-out barn. It was poorly lit, had a dirt floor and was barely big enough for the fifty some people who showed up like clockwork every weekend. Although no livestock had called this place home for almost a decade, amazingly, the faint aroma of manure and straw could still be detected—particularly when someone was bent bottom-up over the spanking bench in the far corner. Compared to the Castle, this place barely ranked, but unlike the Castle, the Sanctuary was open and so here Sam came.
He waited in the shadows beyond the bare-bulb light gathering bugs just above the hayloft doors. Inside, the low beat of Marilyn Manson’s Personal Jesus thumped through the rafters, setting the mood for those already organizing their scenes and coaxing meetings out of shyer members. Sam could feel the thump of the bass through the weathered boards at his back, and the heady reverberations amplified his anticipation. He was excited. That in and of itself was not unusual; there was always a measure of excitement to be felt in the meeting of a new play partner. He loved women—old or young, thin or heavy, flat or curved, it honestly didn’t matter. All were beautiful in ways as varied as the women themselves. But, without a doubt the most beautiful of them all was the willing submissive.
Like Hannah—his gut tightened, heated. Already, his cock was beginning to throb in time to the beat at his back and she wasn’t even here yet.
She might not come at all, a little voice whispered in his head.
No, she’d come. He’d heard the determination in her voice when she’d called. His eyes followed the car lights moving up and down the distant road. One set slowed down and turned into the pasture, following nothing more than the well-laid ruts of all the cars that had wandered the grassy hills before it. After so many years of meeting here, some of the grass had become discouraged, leaving twin dirt paths running parallel all the way to the barn. Sam rolled, propping his shoulder against the wall as he watched the car come. He remembered how she’d looked at the carved wall sconces and the images on the panels of the Wardrobe door. He had known that look—that glint of reluctant fascination, shadowed by equal measures of denial and need.
Hannah was a submissive, but she was trying to hide it and that made him curious. He had walked beside her for more than an hour, every inch of him so in tune with every flinch, every blush, every averted gaze that resulted in her dragging her eyes reluctantly back again within seconds to whatever had embarrassed her. Every vibe he got from her suggested she was inexperienced, but captivated; drawn, but resisting it; aroused, but fighting the allure.
She had secrets; had she followed him down into the basement dungeon, she’d not have left again before he’d coaxed them out of her. His cock throbbed harder, hotter. Well, that was what tonight was for then, wasn’t it?
Anticipation rocked him as he watched the car come. It had reached the impromptu parking lot now. Finding a space in one of the outlying rows, it stopped and the lights went out. A car door opened and closed, kicking his anticipation even higher, and then…there she was, walking toward him out of the darkness, in sweltering ninety-six degree Midwest summer weather and yet dressed in form-hugging but long-sleeved black shirt and jeans. Her clothes weren’t just covering—like wearing a parka to go swimming at the beach, they were going to make her stand out. She was presenting him with a challenge, and everything that Sam was rose to take the bait. He rubbed his chin, his mouth actually watering as he considered how best to divest her, not just of her clothes but of all those tantalizing secrets he could feel churning just under the surface of her.
He pushed off the barn and stepped out into the light. She actually stopped walking when she recognized him. He put on his most unassuming smile; she still hesitated, albeit only for a few seconds, before venturing closer.
“You found us,” he offered by way of a greeting.
“I have a GPS.” She didn’t smile back. Twin spots of pink (was it the start of a soft blush or the result of the heat and a too-warm shirt?) colored her cheeks, but her face was a quiet mask to the emotion her hands revealed. She gripped them tightly before her, wringing at her fingers until her knuckles whitened. Ah, but her face—it was a perfect lie, striving hard to hide the swell of nervous emotion roiling underneath.
Sam held out his arm, letting his hand rest lightly upon her shoulder as she preceded him to the barn. He got the door for her, his hand dropping to the small of her back as he nudged her on inside. That she did not flinch from his touch encouraged him; it wasn’t he that she was afraid of, then. She drew up short just inside, rubbing and rubbing at her arm—the left, he noted—as she paused to look around. It didn’t seem to be the other members she feared either, which left only one thing left: she feared herself.
It was a fight not to immediately back her into the nearest corner. Patience, Sam told himself. Patience. He watched her closely, seeing the way her gaze bounced from one scene to the next, neither disturbed or particularly titillated, simply taking it all in.
Nearly all the stations were taken. Straight in from the doorway in the first old horse stall, a couple was practicing shibari—the submissive held her arms straight out at her sides while her Domme knelt behind her, adjusting the lie of the silken ropes as she brought them twisting down her torso and looped them between her legs. Both St. Andrew’s crosses were in use, the flogging taking place on one having a slightly larger crowd watching than the whipping on the other. Marshall was in fine form—a snake whip in each hand and all of his attention fixed on the woman arching and writhing into every snap of the tips against her back and buttocks. A man was relaxing facedown on a padded table while Tabby, in her usual kitty clothes (including ears and tail) administered a fire-cupping massage. In the very back, spitfire subby Nattie was just stripping down for her first spanking of the night. Her Dom, a relative newcomer to the group, was getting the restraints ready and laughing at something she’d just said. She was a playful handful; she was also a scene-hog. By the night’s end, he’d probably see Nattie bending herself for the attentions of half a dozen men or more. She loved playing with the newer, less experienced Doms. That way, she got away with more.
Hannah turned in a slow circle, her wide-eyed gaze bouncing from scene to scene, couple to couple, and suddenly stopped, arresting in open fascination on a nipple piercing taking place on a spanking bench across the barn. One breast had already been done. Jackson was getting ready to pierce the other and was just rechecking his marks when Hannah took that first hesitant step toward them.
“Do you have any piercings?” Sam softly asked her as she very quietly joined the outskirts of the watching crowd.
Hannah shook her head, riveted in watching Jackson
work, enraptured, as if she could not tear her gaze away.
Sam watched her the same way. “Pity,” he said for her ears alone. “I can imagine how good your body would look dressed in a few extra pieces of jewelry.”
Sam heard the sub catch her breath, but he knew exactly when that second piercing happened by Hannah’s reaction alone. She shivered, her soft puff of an exhaling breath barely more than a sigh. When she caught her forearm, her nails dug into her own flesh as if inflicting punishment. Just like at the Castle, he suddenly realized, every time she’d looked at something that attracted her, the erotic wall sconces, the costumes, the restraints still neatly packaged in all their clearly marked boxes.
Sam moved closer, close enough to see (even in this dim lighting) the soft flush of arousal rising to paint Hannah’s pretty face, neck and chest. Her breaths had turned to pants, quick and shallow, forcing the rapid rise and fall of her small breasts. They were the perfect handful—his palms itched; his mouth watered—tipped with taut little buds that strained at the fabric of her shirt, refusing to be hidden, begging to be kissed and sucked.
He tried to resist—she struck him as sheltered, very new to all of this, and she didn’t know him at all—but still he could not stop himself from slipping up behind her. His chest brushed against the heat of her back, his hands found the alluring curves of her hips and rested lightly there. She could so easily have pulled out of his reach, but she didn’t and so he leaned into her, feeling the wisps of her hair tickling at his cheek and the corner of his mouth as he whispered in her ear, “Are you wondering how that will feel, Hannah—the cold impersonal grip of the clamp, the touch of the pen as it makes each tiny mark? You’ll feel a slight pressure, the startling puncture followed by a little pain, and when it’s done, you’ll look down at the perfection that is your beautiful little breast and the glitter of the ring catching in the light will steal your breath away.”