“You’re late.” He looked at the wall clock that recorded the time at nearly six thirty.
“I think that’s a little fast,” I said in my defense.
“I doubt that,” he came right back.
“My, you’re in quite a mood.” I tried to sound cheery, though that was hardly what I was feeling. Yet, any chance to lighten his somber tone I was willing to take.
“I suppose I am,” he came back no less bleak.
“You want to tell me about it?”
“No, I don’t,” he said flatly.
“Okay. Fine.” If I could keep secrets from him, I had to give him the same latitude. I smiled thinly and sat down on the high arm of his leather couch. “So why am I here?”
He studied me for a moment as if he might actually change his mind about what he planned. “You’re here because tonight I need a cunt that’s tight and raunchy and willing to take what I dish out. I don’t suppose you’re likely to opt out of that sort of deal, but if playing my slave girl doesn’t suit you, now’s the time to split. It’s your choice.”
Woah! A frightful lot of dark energy poured into my body. I was shivering all over with arousal but just a little scared. Not scared like I was with Ryder – a man with a defective soul. This was a man I loved and respected who seemed to be having more than just your typical bad day, and I was beginning to have some real concerns.
“Lawton, what’s wrong?”
“You going to stay or not?”
“Of course I’m going to stay.”
“You say that too easily, Sam.”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
This made him sit up and look at me with a steady eye. “I don’t mean to scare you. There’s nothing twisted or evil about what I want. I want you, and I don’t want you asking any questions. Does that work better?”
“Yes, that’s fair, and I’m fine with it…just let me say ‘uncle’ if you get too rough,” I tried to joke.
He didn’t like that much better. “I wouldn’t worry about that happening.”
“No? You’re sure?”
He shrugged. “Probably not. We’ll just have to see what happens.”
I could see now why he hated the divisive wall I’d constructed between us. His silence was just another brick and more mortar slapped onto the rising blockade.
I waited for his mood to change, but a change wouldn’t happen fast. Meanwhile, I hugged my bare arms, still a little cold, and cocked my head, allowing myself to feel vulnerable and surrendered. I think he saw the sensuous shift. When he finally rose from his chair, he moved directly forward and lifted me to my feet, then with a steady hold around my back, he fastened his lips to mine in a crushing kiss. I had the strangest feeling he was saying, ‘Forgive me.’
When he broke away, his mood was no less tense and his desire was clearly on the rise. He pushed me back, and I stumbled to stay on my feet, then he kept moving forward, his pent-up rage only more obvious, but there was more. A huge and uncontrollable sadness almost brought me to tears. He kept after me, pushing and shoving me to the bedroom where I welcomed the safety of the bed.
“Stand up, arms behind you!” he ordered.
Obeying the order, I stood with my chest thrust forward, my bare nipples poking through my white t-shirt. He spanked my breasts back and forth, then when he stopped he rattled off another order: “Take off your clothes.”
I quickly undressed, thinking all the while that I was about to become a punching bag to assuage his anger, and for a while, he lived up to my fears. My breasts were slapped until the skin stung, then he turned me over and did the same to my ass, while bending me over his arm. His large palms roughly grabbed the cheeks and massaged them with such an aggressive force and emotion that I had to force back my tears. My arousal was on the rise, but so was my anxiety. Surely, he could not go on like this forever. In time, he plunged fingers in the dry hole of my anus. I guessed that he was planning to fuck me there, although the pain of the impalement made it impossible to keep quiet. I moaned in agony.
“What? Too dry?” he asked.
“Yes, Lawton, it’s too dry.”
“You want me to give up?”
“No, just a little lube, please.”
“Aw, she wants a little lube. How nice for you.” I’d never heard him mock me so.
“This isn’t you, Lawton,” I cried.
“That’s what you think, but you don’t really know me, do you?”
“I do know you. I know you very well.”
“But maybe not this side of me.” He started smacking my ass again, which was some relief from the unbearable fear that he’d take my ass dry.
When the lubricant I asked for ran in a cold river down my anal cleft, I knew that in moments his cock would follow, but not before he gave me another rude shock. From somewhere hidden in the room, he withdrew a bridle and bit.
“I want you to wear this.” I turned enough to see the strange contraption in his hand, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
He was already putting it on me. Straps that bisected my head and a bit that effectively gagged my mouth, which was in turn attached to leather reins. Once that was in place, he slapped a leather collar around my throat and locked it behind my neck. Strange new feelings of submission augmented what I was already feeling. My body seemed to roar with life and my pussy become more sensitive than I could ever have imagined – all because of this weird bridle and bit.
Finally, he slapped a short tawse against my ass, saying:
“On the bed, on your hands and knees.”
I felt so flustered that I could barely budge an inch, until he finally shoved me forward. By the time I was positioned as he wanted me, I’d reached the strange nirvana that comes from doing something wildly forbidden for the first time. He moved in behind me, exploring my parted ass a while longer as he held firmly onto the reins. Then with a violent thrust, Lawton speared my back door with a prick that I could only describe as determinedly angry. His emotions, in this case, matched the way he fucked me.
As he pulled back on the reins, the edges of my mouth burned from the thick bit wedged between my teeth. I shook my head like a furious filly, which forced his hand to pull up tight against the back of my head. Something about the demand brought me to another depth of surrender, to a place where I’d never played before – even with Ryder. I suppose I would have stomped my feet too had I been in that position, but this was certainly enough. Subjugated. Driven to my knees. Ridden into the savage places of desire, the climax built and soon exploded in a frantic coming. He came too, ramming his member into my ass while my inner muscles milked him dry.
My ass hurt when the fucking was over, so did my mouth. But deep within, a feeling of satisfaction moved me to tears. Every other time Lawton had taken me to such dark places, he’d followed up with his enormous arms lovingly wrapped around me. This time would be different. Had his dark mood still not lifted?
I lay on the bed alone and waiting, while empty minutes lingered on.
When I realized that he wouldn’t be coming back, I finally lifted myself from the bed, and moved out to the living room where I found Lawton much the way he was when I first arrived.
With the bridle, bit and collar still in place, I felt a little strange, though Lawton didn’t look at me this way. I was embarrassed by the costume, but if this is how he wanted me, this was what I’d do for him.
“Come here,” he motioned me toward him, to a place on the dusty floor between his legs. Settling in, I leaned my head against his thigh and closed my eyes, waiting for him to say more – if he would. Time passed in our silent tableau. The room became so quiet that I could hear the clock ticking the minutes away. Lawton’s hand was in my hair, as much as it could be with the bridle around my head. Still dazed by the last half hour, my thoughts roved from place to place. How long would he make me wear the strange contraption? It actually fit as if he’d made it for me, which was an eerie thought. Was this scene supposed to tell me th
at he was into kinky ponyplay? To me, just the idea of turning humans into ponies seemed absurd. What I couldn’t deny, however, was what happened to me in the bedroom – the stunning way that I’d been fucked.
I wondered about the quiet. I wondered about Lawton’s thoughts. And finally when I just couldn’t stand the silence anymore, I looked up, letting him see my present distress.
“Oh, you want this off?” he asked.
I nodded.
The hand that absently stroked my bridled head began to remove the thing. The collar came last, and I was relieved to be finally freed from the thing, even given the satisfying feeling of submission it produced.
“Now what was it you had to say?”
“Is this…is this what you’ve been hiding from me?” I asked.
“Good God, no!” he came right back. “Just a means to an end. If the weather had been more pleasant I might have worked you in the paddock, but this was enough. At least for today.”
“I guess I don’t know exactly what end you had in mind.”
“You don’t have to understand, do you?”
“No, I guess not.”
The affection seemed to be returning to him, with the dark force that held him in its grasp now in retreat. I didn’t have to see his face or hear him say another word to feel the change in mood.
“Did I give you what you needed?” I looked up asking.
The smile returned to his face. “Yes, Sam, you did.”
I thought we would spend the night in the cabin, but after he pulled me into his lap for a long embrace and a few tender kisses, he announced that it was time for me to leave. He brought us both to our feet and gave me one last and very comforting hug.
“You be careful driving out,” he said. “In fact, why don’t you wait until I can follow you.”
“You’re leaving too?”
“I have to make a trip to LA and should get my things packed.” I would have gone with him in a heartbeat had he asked, but then I remembered that our carefully carved out relationship didn’t include things like that. Just the unpredictable few times when we suddenly exploded on a sexual level.
I didn’t realize until after I was on the road, with Lawton close on my tail, that something special had happened that night. We shared silently what we couldn’t speak about. This should have been some consolation, but it just seemed to make me sad. I didn’t know how many more times I could be intimate with Lawton and deny us both all we dearly longed to have.
Chapter Thirteen
A week later, Lawton was back at his perch in the diner eating his morning omelet.
“How was the trip?” I asked.
“It went well,” he said. I poured him a cup of coffee and was about to move on. “Say, what’s this I hear about you and the bar exam?”
A funny tingle of guilt almost made me blush. “Oh, yes. It’s coming up soon… if I don’t chicken out.”
“You want to explain that?”
“Right. I guess you didn’t get the whole story,” I gulped.
“I don’t think I got any of that story.” He sounded miffed, so I gave him the explanation I’d been passing on to my Rio Marinas friends over the past several months.
“I studied law when I was in Florida.”
“I thought you dropped out of school.”
“I did that too. I didn’t tell anyone because, because, well, I’d pretty much given up on the idea of practicing law. I think I’d be good at it, but it just wasn’t the right time.”
“And now is?”
“Maybe. We’ll see. There’s a lot I don’t seem to remember.”
He looked at me and nodded. Rather curiously, I thought. Finally he said: “Yeah, for some reason this story sounds more like what I expected of Samantha Ross.”
Story? I wasn’t sure I liked the way that sounded. “Really? Why’s that?”
“Don’t know. I’ve had a feeling for a long time now that there are huge pieces of your history missing. You’ve virtually said as much. Law student? A little surprising, but it fits.”
“Really.” I didn’t know what more to say. My smile was a little shaky, my nerves definitely on edge. And it didn’t help that all morning, I’d been having premonitions about another visit from my ex. I finally moved onto a table of customers who’d just sat down at the corner table by the window.
Customers come to Miss Bessie’s Soul Food Diner all day long in a steady stream. I usually paid no attention to the constant arrivals and departures, but just as I was about to serve four heaping plates of food to that table in the corner, I heard the waitress Debbie behind me saying:
“I wonder who that guy is? Ooo, he is a hunk.” She moved off with a pot of coffee in one hand, a bowl of sausage gravy for table four in the other.
Me? I held up in my tracks, wearing my dread across my face as if it had been written there in a bold felt pen.
“Hey, girl, you look like you seen a ghost,” Miss Bessie came up behind me, muttering.
“No, not a ghost,” I softly said.
Following my gaze, she looked through the windows into the parking lot, seeing exactly what I did. The broad-shouldered Jon Ryder was standing beside his black SUV, gazing about as if he were waiting for someone, which I suppose he was. Me. In his mouth was a cigarette that he smoked with a casualness that suggested he was a habitual smoker. I knew he was not, and yet, the vague trail of smoke added so much to the picture he presented to the people of Rio Marinas that it seemed completely within his character.
“Miss Bessie, I have a feeling that I’m going to need to leave. Would you mind?” It was nearly the end of my shift. I’d come in early so I could leave early for a long day of studying.
She shook her head, perturbed. “Hope you don’t mind me sayin’, I don’t like the looks of that man.”
“I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.” I moved quickly toward my table of diners and set their plates down, doing my best to focus my attention on them, not on the scene outside the window.
As I passed back through the lunch counter, I noticed that Lawton had already left. He usually took the side door, leaving cash on the counter to pay for his meal. As I moved into the parking lot, Ryder was leaning against the side of his car, the cigarette squashed at his feet, his eyes on me, a faint smile on his lips. I moved as close as I dared, but then he suddenly leaned forward and grabbed me. His arm went around my waist, and he kissed me on the cheek, his lips remaining intimately at my ear as he spoke.
“Get in the car, Kris, and there won’t be a scene.”
Much later, I would think about that moment and wonder why I let him take me away right out there in front of the world I then called home. So many alternatives were available in that decisive moment, but I considered only one.
As Ryder was backing the SUV out of the parking lot, I looked up through the windshield, seeing Lawton Brady standing by the side of the diner gazing intently in our direction, his expression curious, though the look in his eyes conveyed real concern.
***
The upscale bar was dark and filled with smoke, the atmosphere, the music deliberately erotic, and it actually worked on my splintered psyche. All day, I’d been unable to lose the image of Lawton Brady’s face as he watched the intimate scene in Miss Bessie’s parking lot. If it hadn’t been for that, I might have plugged into Ryder’s perverted sensibilities as I had so many times in the past, but this one small thing had kept any eroticism, any arousal at bay. There was no heart, no desire for the task I was to perform that night, even if it was important that I give Ryder’s clients a good show.
Did Ryder see that? I doubt it. His simmering agitation ruled his mood, as it often did. I knew a lot was riding on the success of the night ahead.
He dressed me in leathers: a black skin-tight dress, two inch collar, and stiletto boots that came just over the knee. Fetish Girl. That’s what he called me. This was what he’d promised his clients.
As we moved through the smoky interior of the bar, he kept his
hand on my back, forcefully pushing me forward. While I was not inclined to balk, I’m sure the long walk between tables and through the various rooms went faster because he was egging me on. I kept my face forward, while my peripheral vision still caught glimpses of men and women eyeing me and the bold attire. What I could tell of the classy patrons suggested they were dressed as richly as their fat bank accounts allowed, which made me an anomaly, standing out from the crowd in the sleazy fetish clothes.
‘Private party.’ The whispering voice was loud enough for me to hear. I looked that way, seeing an entire table of women gazing at me through the darkness with fixated eyes. When we arrived at the lounge furthest from the main door, I walked into a scene not unlike what I’d seen in the other rooms, though this was totally populated by men: a mix of races, most of them Oriental. Ten in all. Stuffed shirts. Gleaming gold. The pride and self-assurance of wealth and control clearly in play. “You’re here to give them a good time,” Ryder had said. In my mind there was no choice but to obey his instructions.
He led me straight to a small wooden platform in the middle of the room, at the center of the tables, and there I began to dance at his command. A sound speaker with sexy exotic music played behind the hushed conversation, and as I began to move, the murmur of voices began to recede.
‘I’m not a dancer!’ I’d told him during the drive.
He said that made no difference. Mr. Wu liked the way I moved.
Mr. Wu – the man who inspected me?
Yes, that Mr. Wu.
He was in the far corner looking on, though not with the same intensity as his friends – or were these just business associates? That was not for me to know.
Nightmare of Vengeance Page 17