Willing Sacrifice (Knights of the Board Room)

by Joey W. Hill

* * * * *

  For the third time, Max checked himself in the mirror. This was getting ridiculous. He wore a belted pair of stressed jeans and a black dress shirt. He’d seen the things Janet did with her subs, and he was starting to think he was crazy, imagining himself in similar positions. One night, she’d led a poor bastard around the club on hands and knees. He’d been buck-naked, except for a cage-like thing around his cock. What if any of the K&A men were there? He cut the vision of Matt seeing his limo driver being led around by a cock leash right out of his head, because the mere thought would make Max break out in hives. It would probably make Matt break out in hives as well.

  He hadn’t thought about any of that when he offered this. He’d had some vague sense of her hand upon him, him being on his knees, close enough to put his mouth on her sweet-smelling skin, rub his cheek against whatever sexy concoction she’d wear to drive him crazy. So basically his brain had disengaged and his cock had done his thinking.

  Except it hadn’t been his cock leading him, but his heart. He should have remembered his heart had no more of a brain than his cock did, and they’d both left his head out of it. Idiots.

  Okay, he was turning his internal organs into a community forum, so he was not in a good head space right now. His date was waiting on him. If he waited five more minutes to leave, he’d run the risk of being late, not a good start to the night. Fuck it.

  No. He drew a deep breath. It wasn’t his date waiting for him, but his Mistress. He liked the way she reacted to that, her eyes sharpening but her mouth getting a little softer, the silky brows arching in an interested way. It would be all right. Either way, he’d agreed to do it and he wasn’t backing out. No sense chewing on it any more. Grabbing his keys, he headed out.

  She’d told him she wanted to meet him at the club, not be picked up, so as he drove that way, he wondered what she’d choose to wear. Leather, corset…those awesome boots and gloves that fit like a second skin. No, he bet she was going to be more unpredictable tonight, though if she showed up in sweats and running shoes he’d still be hard as a rock for it. Yeah, he had it bad.

  His mind moved to thoughts of their day together with Amanda, then to what Janet had done when they left the facility, guiding him into the garden and putting herself in his lap. She hadn’t coaxed or chased his emotional reaction. She’d demanded it, in a way that had resulted in a purging of the pain. He’d broken down after his mom, sure, but by himself. In the early days of dealing with it, he’d almost lost it a couple times in Dale’s company, or with the other guys, but their way of handling it was letting him walk it off, protecting him from interruption until he collected his shit.

  Maybe it just wasn’t in his makeup to accept from a guy what Janet had offered. When she took charge, instead of swallowing it down, he’d let it swallow him up. Everything he’d needed to do since he first saw his mother’s body had risen out of his heart and taken over. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried about anything, but if a man couldn’t cry about losing his mother and the death of his sister’s future, then he supposed he had no tears for anything.

  He pulled up to Club Progeny. Fortunately, Matt and his guys mostly preferred the slower weeknights. Since that meant they likely weren’t here, that was a plus, but seeing the profusion of people coming and going, Max felt an unfamiliar shot of uneasiness through his vitals, something perilously close to unmanly fear. He was familiar enough with this stuff to know there were safe words, limits. He could tell Janet what was a no-go for him. But of course that caught in his craw, because it clashed with his determination to be the big alpha guy who could handle anything.

  “Fuck it. Get the hell out of the truck and do it.” Trust her. That’s what this is about, remember?

  As he strode up to the club, he was aware of calculated glances. When he brought the limo, he had an obvious role as a staff person delivering a club member. Tonight his status was up for speculation, an unknown quantity. Dom? Sub? Curious voyeur?

  Trinity was the hostess on shift tonight. She was a gorgeous blonde with glossy pink lips and a lot of soft white breast displayed up high in a blue satin corset with black lacings. He’d had cordial dealings with her before, had even brought her a cup of coffee one night when she couldn’t get away from the desk and he was waiting on Ben and Marcie to finish their session.

  “Mistress Janet told me you’d be coming as her guest,” she said with a smile. “Glad to have you with us as a player tonight, Max. Will you give me your wrist, please?”

  When he complied, she put a rubber bracelet on him. It had been stamped with dark letters. Exclusive property of Mistress Janet.

  “No one will offer you any proposals while wearing that,” she said as he studied it. “She said you’d be most comfortable that way.”

  When he glanced up, Trinity gave his hand a quick squeeze, fingers whispering over his palm. “Don’t worry. They’re just people. No one’s going to try to eat you alive, though we can’t keep people from fantasizing about it.” She chuckled. “She’s waiting for you in room D, second level. That’s a private room.”

  Though he should be embarrassed that his anxiety was that obvious, some of it eased at the information. It underlined what he’d thought when he got out of the truck.

  Janet knows you. You can trust her.

  The club really was hopping tonight, music booming on the dance floor, the bass accompanied by the bounce and twist of a lot of bodies showing plenty of bare skin. In the public play rooms, several scenes were happening on the suspension beams, with the St. Andrew’s Crosses and spanking benches at full occupancy. Though he usually enjoyed watching from the safety of his coffee spot, he decided keeping his eyes averted tonight was the wise move. On the first HALO jump, he’d found it was better not to lean out of the plane and see how fast and far the guy who’d jumped ahead of him was falling. But he remembered the rush of adrenaline when he followed him, the oh fuck, what the hell did I do, followed by the glorious sense of I’m fucking flying. When can I go on this ride again?

  This was going to be like that, because that’s what he wanted to happen, and it was what she wanted to happen. They were in it together. He was being a fucking pussy. He’d gone through buildings that were a maze of blind turns obscured by concrete dust and darkness, fire crackling at his heels, the possibility of an insurgent’s gun or an explosive device directly ahead. He could handle one D/s session with a petite, beautiful Dominatrix who already had most of his heart in her hands.

  Room D. He started to turn the door handle, then stopped, knocked. The security light over the door turned from red to green, a beep inviting him to enter. He noted a security card was needed to get in, unless the person already inside unlatched the door. Secure and ultra private.

  Out of habit, he glanced through the crack as he opened the door, checking behind it, and then his gaze swept the room as he stepped inside.

  It was a simple rectangle with a lavatory closet built into the far left corner, that door open to show a polished silver sink, commode. A built-in cabinet along the same wall displayed an array of items assembled on the counter’s surface. Velcro cuffs, a flogger and a sturdy cloth bag whose contents were concealed, but he expected there was more of the same inside it, since he’d seen Janet bring it to her sessions before. The floor was painted with concentric circles, a chair bolted on the bull’s-eye. One wall had several different options for restraining a body against it. The opposite wall had some of those options as well, but they were obscured by an image being projected from the video equipment embedded in the ceiling.

  It was the ocean. Just a continuous, panoramic view of a mild surf breaking and then rushing to shore. The sky was a pre-dawn marmalade. The projector provided sound, matching the image flowing from the wall onto a foot of the floor. He digested all of it in a second, and then found his Mistress. She was leaning against the opposite wall, watching him.

  The things he’d imagined her wearing—boots, corset, tight pants—were things h
e’d seen her don for this type of play in the past. Things that made any man’s imagination run to hot, wet dreams. Her outfit tonight definitely met that requirement, but it wasn’t something he’d seen her wear before. It was as if she’d worn it specifically for him.

  She wore a bikini top, the sides shaped so the garment lifted her small breasts and made them swell out and over, her cleavage deep and tempting a man’s tongue to tunnel there. The pale-yellow color showed the dark smudge of her nipples, the silky, thin fabric molding the points. A sarong wrap was tied at her hip, so her leg appeared bare all the way from waist to ankle. She wasn’t wearing anything under the sarong, unless it was a thong so small the strap was hidden beneath the knot of the fabric.

  She was barefoot, her hair down, curled around her face. She was wearing makeup, but it was different from the office or what he’d seen her wear here. This was so natural, he might have missed it, except for the gleam of the lipstick, the scent of her gloss. Some kind of musk he expected was injected with pheromones, because it pulled him across the room to her like she’d wrapped a chain around his cock.

  “Stop.” Her eyes were half slits, her head leaned back as if she was on the beach, listening to the waves. “Go to the wall, Max. The one with the ocean.”

  When he hesitated, those dark eyes opened fully. “This is your punishment, yes?” Her voice was a sultry purr. “Which means you follow your Mistress’ commands. She knows what kind of discipline you need.”

  They were the type of words he didn’t expect to arouse him, make him harder, but they sure as hell did. Nodding, he moved to the wall. She watched him, that mysterious gaze following his every move.

  “You won’t speak unless I give you permission to do so. Face the wall and grasp the handles that are closest to the full stretch of your arms.”

  He could see the flicker of the video as he obeyed, his body becoming a part of the wave images. The handles were just above his shoulder height, and she’d accurately predicted his arm span. The set at the full reach of his arms had already been locked down in their tracks.

  “Spread your legs shoulder width.” She’d moved closer. When she curved her hand over his tense shoulder, let her fingers glide down the center of his back, over his shirt, his nerve endings reacted to that touch like a drug. It helped him deal with the fact he had his back to the door, making him twitchy.

  “That beep you heard when you entered happens whenever the door unlatches. There’s a five-second delay before it opens. Once it’s coded by the user, the only one who can come in without me unlocking it from the inside is a staff member with an override. Even with an override, there’s that beep and five-second delay. All right?”

  He nodded, another concern dissipating. “Yes ma’am.”

  She moved away from him, over to the cabinet on the adjacent wall. As she studied her options there, she pulled her hair over one shoulder, so his gaze was caught by what was drawn on her back. He’d seen enough of her body to know she had no tattoos, but this temporary wasn’t a cheap sticker. Her skin was the canvas for a monarch butterfly, wings stretched out and curved over her shoulder blades. The lower set of wings were pierced by a trident, the eagle with the bowed head along the base of it, across her lower back.

  The butterfly was a fragile creature, but so beautiful its beauty had an indelible strength. And it had been pierced, captured, by a modified form of the SEAL trident symbol. Whether she’d intended the meaning or not, the idea of it swamped him, giving him courage and a willingness to handle whatever this was. As well as risk additional punishment by speaking without permission.

  “I like your ink.”

  She looked at him over her shoulder. “I didn’t know about the eagle, why his head is in that position. I liked that.”

  The SEALs were the only armed services division whose symbol showed the eagle’s head bowed. It was done that way to honor the fallen. Seeing her honor it on her flesh made him want to put his lips there, follow the trident up her spine, kiss every inch of the butterfly’s wings. His neck was getting a crick, looking at her at the strained angle, but he didn’t care.

  “The artist said he’d enrolled in SEAL training once, when he was much younger,” she continued. “He made it to the third week, and had a tremendous appreciation for SEALs. He also said, and I quote—‘those are some of the craziest motherfuckers in the world’.”

  “We take that as a compliment.”

  “Hmm. I figured as much.” Now her lips curved. “Look at the wall, not at me, Max.”

  She’d pulled something from the bag but was keeping it concealed in her hand. As she returned to him, she touched his nape. She leaned against him, her breasts pressing against his back, and he felt silk against his cheek.

  “I’m going to blindfold you, Max. You’ll be able to hear my voice, and I’ll tell you what I’m going to do before I do it. You may wish I didn’t,” that seductive tease was in her voice again, “but I’m counting on that brave, alpha, all-guts-and-balls side of you to take your punishment like a man. Can you handle that? It’s just a day on the beach…and you know just how punishing that can be, don’t you?”

  Even his missions hadn’t been as tough as certain parts of BUD/S training, so she was right about that. As she guided the blindfold over his eyes, she spoke again. “Tell me about Hell Week. What do you remember about it?”

  “Everything hurt. There was nothing but cold.” God, every SEAL remembered that fucking, unbelievable cold. “But when you reached a certain point, your brain shut down. All you did was follow the instructors, trusting them and the guys around you to get you through. You weren’t going to quit. No…it wasn’t even that conscious. You passed exhaustion, left it way the hell behind. Everything was stretched past breaking…it was broken, and yet you were being remade too. You’d keep going as long as the instructor said you had to go, until you dropped and died.”

  “You gave everything over into his keeping,” she said quietly. “The most difficult and yet most complete moment of your life. The mind no longer involved. Just the effort, the goal, the instructor’s commands. That was everything.”

  “Yeah.” He hadn’t ever really thought of it that way, but he guessed that was true. She’d made the blindfold snug, using a Velcro strip in the back, something he could rip off if needed. Her nails slid across his back, and then her touch was gone, leaving only the rush of the waves. He couldn’t hear her footsteps.

  “Janet.”

  “I’m here.”

  He didn’t know if he should call her Mistress, but her name was what came to his lips. Ironically, he realized he called her Mistress when he felt in control.

  “I was getting these.” More cushiony fabric brushed his left hand, wrapped around his wrist. “These cuffs are going to hold your hands to the handles.” After she put another one on the right arm, a wider piece brushed his throat. “This is a collar. I’m going to put a short tether on it, attach it to a clip embedded in the wall. All of the connectors are plastic snap locks, which can be broken easily by a powerful man. But you won’t break them. That would displease me. You will restrain yourself, follow my commands. Do you understand, Max?”

  He got his cue this time. “Yes, Mistress.” They could be broken. It didn’t make his gut tighten any less or make his throat less dry. Though the cuffs made him feel peculiar, they couldn’t hold a candle to his reaction to the collar. Maybe it was how she lingered over it, stroking his throat, tugging on the strap in a way that told him that putting it on him seriously aroused her. His cock, which had diminished some while evaluating the uncertainties of the situation, came back to life. When she rose up on her toes to hook the tether, keeping his face within a foot of the wall unless he pulled against the leash, her body pressed against the side of his.

  “I like the outfit. You dressed up for me. Nice jeans, black shirt. You even shined your shoes.”

  “Yes ma’am. My mother always told me to look my best for a lady.”

  “Ssshh. No more
talking unless I ask you a direct question. If I have to remind you again, I’ll gag you.”

  Her tone was firm, calm. A reminder of consequences. She hadn’t snapped the cuffs to the handles yet, but he figured out why soon enough. She wanted to undress him first. She ran her hands down his back, like a police officer searching a suspect, only her touch was far more provocative, teasing, molding to his sides, his waist and hips, cupping his buttocks in the jeans, then slipping her fingers into the back pockets. She took out his wallet, his keys, fingers caressing his groin through the pointed reach of the front pocket. The waves continued to make their rushing noise. Some sort of air filter was adding to the hologram, because he could smell sea air.

  Her hip bone was against the lower part of his buttock as she reached around him to tug his shirt out of his jeans. She worked open the buttons from bottom to top, palms sliding over his ridged abdomen, his chest, fingers tugging the curling hair there, then the shirt was fully open. When she slipped the buttons on the cuffs, her nails scraped his wrist pulse, then trailed down the opening of the sleeve as far as it would allow.

  “Lift your hands from the handles and put them behind your back.”

  As he complied, she slid the shirt off his shoulders, slow. When she got it to his elbows, she shifted her grip so she was pulling on the collar only and putting her other hand directly between his shoulders, palm against his heated flesh, nails scraping as she pulled the shirt free. Her fingers lingered on the tattoo on his rib cage. She seemed to like touching that one quite a bit.

  He only had the one, representing a mission where he and his team had taken out three high-level insurgents. They’d also lost three men of their own that day; hence the three prongs of the trident for the three lost men, and the three skulls for the three enemies removed. He had it on a mission patch, but while he’d been in the SEALs he’d never marked his body, since tattoos could reveal his branch of service if he was captured. But when it was clear he would never return to the SEALs, he’d needed the connection. It had been the last mission he’d done.