I moaned around his dick. That last swipe had sent a hot burning stroke across my ass and it hurt. But I still didn’t voice the words that would end this.
My breasts swayed as my mouth moved up and down on his shaft. My ass was thrust out and would periodically receive strokes of the cane. I was clenched tight and dreadfully afraid that I would graze his dick with my teeth and earn myself further punishment. But thankfully my mouth stayed slack and he moved in and out of that wet hole with ease.
“Good little cocksucker you have here,” the man in black said to the Watcher over the retching, gagging noises I was making.
I saw the Watcher’s grip on the chair tighten but he remained outwardly calm. “So I’ve heard.”
“What?” the man in black taunted. “You mean you loan this juicy pussy out but you haven’t tasted it yet?”
Only the Watcher’s customary silence greeted that comment and there was absolutely no emotion in his eyes. Why would there be? I thought bitterly. I redoubled my efforts on the cock in front of me.
The tip of the bamboo rod poked at my tight asshole and I flinched but kept sucking. Surely the man in black didn’t mean to insert it into my anus?
Each slide of the cane up and down the seam between my butt cheeks filled me with fresh nerves but I didn’t take my mouth off his dick. When the man in black came down my throat, I swallowed dutifully, making sure to catch all of his cum in my mouth. When he handed me a vibrator and ordered me to spread my legs wide and make myself come, I obeyed, blushing. My pussy was splayed open towards the Watcher, but this time I found I couldn’t meet his eyes at all.
The top keeps spinning.
Chapter 9
And so it went on.
There was light and there was dark and I tried to balance them within me. But each time I walked down that familiar corridor and pushed that door open, I lost a little bit of myself.
The girl who was Kelly Mitchell started to fade. My mother didn’t remember me and it seemed to be the only thing that had kept me anchored to my own sense of self. Was it that simplistic? Perhaps not. But it also had roots in truth.
I greeted Friday nights with a mixture of anticipation and dread. Each scene at Club Phoenix grew darker. More intense. More painful. Each session I felt lust. But pleasure? I wasn’t sure anymore what pleasure felt like.
There were whips. There were men in the plural, all of who closed in on me as if I were a particularly tasty bit of meat to be devoured. There was a man with dead eyes who unveiled an assortment of tools that made me shiver in fear. There were men who shoved their cocks into my ass, sometimes with lubrication, but often without. My tears fed their lust. My screams assuaged a need in their souls.
And I allowed it. I permitted each and every act of degradation. I never spoke the words that would end the scene. It was as if there was a deep pit in my soul, and I wanted to see what it would take to fill it.
The Watcher saw everything yet he never once protested. Never once called an end to the scene.
I couldn’t take my mind off sex. I kept checking my phone to see if there was a message from Anna. I was constantly horny, yet when I fingered myself I didn’t find any real relief in my climax.
In Akron, my mother’s health was failing. I caught another ride with Miles in his private plane. I thought he’d talk to me and help me understand the strange rabbit hole I seemed to have fallen down, but though his eyes studied me as he sat down, he opened his laptop and lost himself in his work. As for me, I once again sat across from Dr. Patel and we discussed my mother’s treatment plan. But my phone kept buzzing and I kept reaching for it, hoping yet fearing a message from Anna. Dr. Patel’s eyes grew steadily stormier and my rudeness was inexcusable, but I couldn’t control myself.
Two weeks after that I realized that I’d forgotten, immersed as I was in my sexual fog, to buy a ticket home to Akron. I went to look at last minute air fares, but the trip cost an eye-popping twelve hundred dollars, and that was money I didn’t have. So I called Anna and asked her to schedule a scene for me and I went to the club instead of going to visit my mother.
Little by little, the girl who had been Kelly Mitchell retreated and a new creature emerged from the wreckage. But I wasn’t sure I liked who I had become.
I drifted through work, going through the motions, but with my head clearly somewhere else. My sketches suffered from my inattention. After I’d produced yet another incredibly derivative drawing of a purple coat that looked startlingly similar to a Vivienne Westwood design from two seasons ago, even Nina Germain noticed. She had plenty of flaws, but Nina knew her fashion.
“Kelly,” she waved the sketch at me, her eyes flashing. “The kindest word for this is derivative. What the fuck is going on with you? Your designs are sloppy, you’ve missed deadline after deadline and you’ve lost attention to detail.” She glared at me. “I have to say, Kelly, this isn’t the standard of work I expect.”
I’d held her business together for so many years now and this was how I was rewarded? But in a moment of clarity I knew Nina was right. Fashion was a brutally competitive industry and my distraction had no place in a work environment. I was on the brink of losing my job and I knew it.
I did something I never thought I’d do. I lied. “My mother might be dying,” I said. The tears that rose to my eyes were real, though my mother wasn’t the reason for my inattention at work. But have you ever been so gripped by something that everything else suffers? Everything in my life felt fuzzy and unreal and only Club Phoenix had a sharp clarity to it. A knife edge and I was starting to bleed.
Her eyes softened in sympathy and I felt horrible, but only for a moment. Then, my phone buzzed on my desk and my eyes jumped automatically to it. Was it Anna? Had she set up my next scene? I needed it. I craved the darkness.
It was still there around my waist, the lifeline of the Watcher’s gaze. But my fingers picked at the knots, attempting to unravel them.
My almost firing should have scared me straight. It did, for the space of twenty four hours. But Friday night rolled around and I opened my email with shaking fingers. I was an addict, and I needed my fix.
“Why aren’t you stopping me?” I asked Miles as the car ate up the miles on the highway, taking me closer and closer to the source of my pain and pleasure. His face had been expressionless, as always. But I could sense the weight of his concern. “You could, you know. You could wave your arm and I’m sure my trial will be cancelled.”
He didn’t try to pretend that wasn’t true. We both knew that money was a powerful tool and if he wanted, I’d no longer be welcome at Club Phoenix. What was the saying? Give me a place to stand and a lever and I will move the world. His money was his lever. Was his disapproval not creating a wide enough platform to stand on?
The silence grew between us till it seemed to take on a tangible shape. I pressed against the side of the car. He sat on his side.
I wanted him. For the last few months I’d danced around the truth in my own heart, but in that moment of complete quiet, the truth couldn’t be hidden. Miles St. Clair was familiar to me, yet he was not. He was both darkness and light. Sometimes, his lifeline felt like a noose around my neck, but right now, as we neared closer and closer to that castle in the countryside, it felt like a warm blanket of comfort around my shoulders.
And yet, the space between us was more than a physical space. I could move closer to him on the car seat. But to move closer in any other way would be a step on a different path and I was trapped in my current lane, unable to swerve away, unable to change my mind.
“You once asked me if I had a Watcher of my own and I said no,” he began, his voice a warm murmur in the quiet night.
I nodded.
“It wasn’t exactly true. I too had a Watcher, at first.” His eyes were closed and his voice had taken on a faraway tone as he reached into the past to tell his story. “Her name was Daria. She was my lifeline as I fell.”
His fingers were locked into tight fists, betr
aying his tension, though his tone stayed even. “You think there’s a bottom to the pit. That there’s a point where it’s enough. But with me that wasn’t true. Each door I walked through made me more eager to push open the next one. The welts hadn’t yet healed, but I would pester them for another session. Daria warned me to slow down. To stop and think about what I was doing.”
“And?” I was almost reluctant to speak, just in case he wouldn’t continue his story. But whatever pain he felt he pushed past it and kept talking.
“Three months. A session every other day. There was no time to think. No time for me to regain my senses, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I insisted. More. Faster. Harder.”
I recalled the text message I’d sent Anna last night. “Can I schedule a session on Saturday as well?” I’d asked. I completely understood Miles’s story. I was living it.
“One day Daria quit. She stopped right in the middle of a session. She stood up and she turned on all the lights in the dungeon and she said she couldn’t watch anymore. I’d blown past safe, sane and consensual. My obsession was bordering on insanity and she couldn’t take it anymore.” He looked at me. “Remember my porn parallel? At first you can’t watch a submissive cry during a session. Then, it all becomes old hat. Daria had found the bottom to her own pit. She couldn’t watch without being affected.”
“And that jolted you?”
His lips twisted. “That is the neater narrative,” he commented, “but of course not. Addiction isn’t like that. Club Phoenix intervened. They wouldn’t schedule any more sessions for me. They forbade me entry.”
His eyes were still closed. Outside, the sky was darkening into dusk and all was quiet. The car purred on, drawing us nearer and nearer to the source of all of this. The phoenix was the bird that died in flames, but was reborn again. With each mile that the car ate up, we drew closer to that killing, renewing fire.
All the pain, all the desire, all the angst and the suffering. All the lust and the longing. Each mile brought it all closer.
“Daria should have been my wake-up call, but she wasn’t. Phoenix throwing me out should have been it as well, but it wasn’t. I found a different club, one less concerned about limits and safety. I didn’t want to be restrained, you see. I wanted to fly, to soar.”
His concern had felt like a golden cage around me. Too well, I understood Miles. I didn’t want to be protected either. I wanted to find out for myself.
“When did it end then?”
“When I started to forget,” he replied. His eyes opened and locked onto mine. “You understand, don’t you Kelly? When you lose your memories you lose yourself. I’d wake up in back alleys without any recollection of how I got there, my body aching and covered with welts, bleeding from multiple cuts and I couldn’t remember how or why or who. My mind shut it out.”
My lips started to tremble as I fought to keep myself bursting from noisy tears. Each quiet word from him had sliced into my skin. I didn’t understand why I was shaking; I didn’t understand the tears that welled up in my eyes. I moved closer to him and he opened his arms and pulled me into his body.
Memories. Losing my memories was a fear too close to the bone for me, though he didn’t know it. I’d lied and told him I’d been tested and everything was clear, but my terror had kept me from finding out. Every single time I couldn’t remember something, it was as if a canyon was opening up in front of me and one misstep could throw me down a dark pit from which I couldn’t escape.
“I can’t stop you Kelly, not if you don’t want to be stopped. I can keep you from Phoenix, but I can’t stop you from seeking out those back alleys, the same way I did. And I care too much for your safety. All I can do is be your Watcher. I will be your lifeline. But you need to find your own center. I can’t do that for you.”
“Do you care?” The question was so soft I could barely hear myself speak. My entire body stilled as I waited for his reply. For him to speak the words that might change the path that I was on, or condemn me even further.
Leaning as I was against him, I could almost hear his heartbeat. My fingers splayed out to touch him, to feel the vibrations as his heart thudded in his chest.
His reply was so simple, his voice just as quiet as mine. “Yes.” His hand engulfed mine.
I swallowed. “What does this mean, Miles?” I didn’t move from the warm security of his embrace.
“Whatever we want it to be,” he replied, maddeningly vague. “Kelly.” His voice was suddenly intent, and I paid attention to his next words. “Once upon a time there was a subconscious thought running through me that if I said enough I was choosing conformity and I was shutting off a part of me permanently.”
I blinked up at him. It was as if he could articulate my most hidden fears.
“But sex is not just about pushing limits. Sex is about intimacy and comfort and pleasure.” His hand brushed my cheek gently. “I can’t decide where you draw the line. I can’t tell you when you should say enough. You’ll have to do that for yourself.”
On some level, I guess I was hoping he’d make my choice for me. That he’d sweep me into his arms and become my Dominant and he would control what I did and didn’t do. But real life wasn’t that simple. I needed to choose on my own.
But I wasn’t sure if I still retained the ability to judge what gave me pleasure.
Chapter 10
This time, the Watcher stiffened when a man walked out of the darkness. I watched as every muscle in his body tensed. His fingers balled into fists at his side and he exhaled, a harsh sound in the dungeon. When he turned to look at me, I could see the message in his eyes. Just say no.
Curiosity kills the cat, you know? I should have listened, but I didn’t. I wanted to know why my Watcher was reacting the way he was.
The top starts spinning.
“Do you submit?” The words echoed around the dungeon.
“I submit.”
The man with the goatee, the one that the Watcher had tried to protect me from, smiled though his smile didn’t reach his eyes. His voice was high and fluting. Almost musical. It sent instinctive chills running through me. “Then, shall we get going, my slut?”
And just like that, yet again, it began.
I was completely immobilized and the wax dripped steadily on my exposed, vulnerable flesh.
There were candles, the same way there had been candles during my first session. There was a flogger set out on the table, the same way that first day. Everything was coming full circle.
Yet I hadn’t been afraid my first session. Now, fear prickled between my shoulder blades.
My arms were extended out straight at my sides and tied to the metal grating I’d been pushed against. A knot of rope pushed into my mouth, chafing against my tongue every time I yelped in pain. I was tied at my waist, and again at my ankles, holding me open just the way the man with the goatee wanted.
The candles stained my skin with blood-red wax, and my skin ached in response.
I’d been exposed to candles before. When Adam had dripped wax on my skin, I’d writhed and moaned, but I’d remembered enjoying myself. Or had I? Everything seemed so far away and I just wanted to surrender to the oblivion.
I wasn’t enjoying myself now. The flame was being held too close to me and the drops of wax were skin-burningly hot. It felt like drops of fire were raining down on me and all I wanted to do was cower and hide until the storm passed. In some distant part of my mind, alarm bells were slowly starting to ring.
Yet I didn’t utter my safe word or make any other gesture that would indicate that I wanted this to stop. In his corner the Watcher gripped the arms of his chair so tight that his knuckles were white.
The candle dripped on my nipples, the flame just inches from my skin. I saw the fine hair on my body shrivel up from the intense heat radiating from it. I wanted to shrink back and retreat, but the metal grating at my back provided no relief.
“Please,” I tried to beg through the gag. The sound was an incohe
rent shriek.
Red, red, say red, my mind yelled. But I didn’t speak. I didn’t understand why. All I knew was there was a door and I needed to walk through.
Every time I whimpered in pain the man with the goatee grunted in pleasure. “Mmm,” he kept warbling and I shuddered in revulsion. Wasn’t I supposed to be turned on? I was in a sex club. Wasn’t this supposed to be fun?
It’s fun when you know when to stop Kelly, my mind reminded me. I’d passed fun so long ago, I couldn’t even see it in the rear-view mirror.
The flame danced against my nipple. Now there were two candles and his hands were moving in a figure-eight and my skin was splashed with drop after drop of hot wax as the candles traced a line of fire in the air.
I kept moaning through the gag in my mouth. I just wanted this to end. I didn’t know what was wrong with me, but I wanted to curl up in a bed next to Miles and never wake up again.
The wax dripped on my hips, on my toes. My body was shaking with fear and nerves and the man in the goatee noticed. He grunted his little sighing sounds of lust and he laughed at me. He was feeding off my terror.
Say red, say red, say red, my mind implored.
“That’s it, little dove,” he crooned. “I want to watch you struggle.”
I shuddered at the tone of oily lust in his voice. Even listening to him I felt unclean and violated.
He kept bringing the flames of the candles right up against my skin and I kept screaming through the gag. I felt the Watcher’s gaze boring into me. His green eyes were screaming a message of his own. Stop this, Kells. I could almost hear his voice in my head. His sweet, kind voice, telling me that whatever I wanted was possible and mine to take.
I wanted him. I did. I really did.
Yet, my lips wouldn’t articulate that word. I couldn’t make myself say it. Red. Such a simple word, really. Only one syllable. I could open my mouth and spit the word out through my gag and this would end and Miles would take me in his arms.
The Watcher (A Dark Romance) Page 8