My talent in managing The Golden Pecker had always been in how I handled the members. I let the eccentrics have their little corners to play with impunity. I kept the general membership happy with the sort of amenities and special treatment they wanted. I solved disputes in ways that left both parties happy more often than not. But this time, the only solution my members would approve of was the removal of Andi from the equation. That, or I could finalize the will and remove any possibility that Andi would inherit it. My gut told me making a move on the will would push Andi away, but waiting much longer might push my members to the brink of their patience.
“Have you decided what you’re going to do?” Grant asked. “I’m assuming you haven’t done anything yet, considering the rumors are only getting louder.”
“I’m making sure my choice is the right one before I act,” I said stonily.
“Yeah, well, there comes a point when planning the quickest escape from a burning building becomes an exercise in futility. You know, the point where the entire building is on fire and every exit is blocked?”
“I’m not out of options yet.”
He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “But the door handles are heating up and there’s smoke filling the stairwell. Also, you would hate to lose those leftovers in the breakroom, so you’re going to have to detour for them before you make your escape.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What?”
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just really hungry. I skipped lunch to be here. Speaking of,” he wiggled his eyebrows, saluted, and left.
It was only a few seconds before I heard the clattering of glasses at the bar. Idiot. Admittedly, I liked the idiot, but I definitely didn’t need to tell him that.
I did need to think about how I was going to deal with the club, but every time I tried to focus, I could only see Andi and that stubborn glint in her eyes. Just thinking about tying her up again and watching her squirm for me made my dick stiffen.
Now that she’d signed the contract, she was officially my submissive. I knew she didn’t completely understand what that entailed, but I planned to give her a real taste of it tonight.
All that was left to do was wait until she arrived.
17
Andi
I went through the motions like it was a normal day. I helped write a post about whether you should have your baby wear a helmet in the crib for Rachel, read through one of Bree’s college application letters, and listened to Aubria while she practiced explaining her dissertation to me.
Except I only felt half there. The other half of my mind kept replaying the moment I’d signed Landon’s contract—the contract that made me his property. My imagination had run wild with what tonight was going to be like when I met him at the club.
And then it was time. My stomach felt like it was full of Pop Rocks and my stupid hands wouldn’t stop sweating. Just after midnight, I sent a text to Landon, letting him know I was coming. I still didn’t have a key, so he had to meet me at the secret entrance to the wine cellar and let me in.
His text came back a few moments later.
Landon: Looking forward to breaking you in.
I made an annoyed face at my phone. Breaking me in? If that’s what he thought—
I angrily tapped out a response.
Andi: Good luck with that.
I found myself grinning as I reread our brief exchange, then wiped the smile off my face. Landon wasn’t a grinning matter.
The door opened, and I was greeted by the frowning demon himself. “Took your time,” he said.
“Judging by the scowl on your face, it looks like I took your time.”
Apparently, Landon didn’t appreciate my blinding wit, because all he did was gesture for me to come through the door. He stuck his arm out to stop me from going any further.
“Before we go in,” he said. “We need to establish some ground rules.”
“You were that kid growing up who had way too much fun explaining how games worked, weren’t you? Everyone would show up for a game of tag, then half an hour later you’d probably still be covering what constitutes a tag and what doesn’t.” I did my best nerd impression, speaking through my nose. “Only if five fingers make full contact! And when I say five, I mean five!”
Landon had an arsenal of annoyed stares, and I thought the one he aimed at me now was of the mild annoyance category. “Are you ready to listen?”
I crossed my arms. “I’m just saying… Contracts. Rules. More rules. How complicated can this really be?”
“Think of it this way: you’re walking across a narrow bridge with no railings. The contract is a safety harness.”
“And the endless rules are, what? The medicine that makes you uncontrollably drowsy, so you fall asleep before stepping foot on the bridge?”
Landon took a calming breath, then, as was his way, he decided to ignore my comment entirely. “Inside the club, you will be my submissive. You will follow me everywhere I go, and you will not walk in front of me. Stay as close as you can, keep your eyes down, and absolutely avoid making eye contact with other men. Do nothing without my permission. Understand?”
I worked my lips to the side. “What if I need a bathroom break? Do I raise my hand? Two fingers? One?”
“You tell me you need to use the restroom.”
“And what happens if you tell me to do something I don’t want to do?”
“You use the safe word. It will be—”
“The geese flew south for the summer.”
“What?”
“That can be our safe word. It’s supposed to be something we wouldn’t ever say by accident, right?”
“It’s supposed to be a safe word. Not a safe ridiculous phrase. And the safe word isn’t up for a vote. Yellow means you’re uncomfortable, but willing to proceed. Red means stop.”
“Boring. But fine.”
“Now come with me. Remember, eyes down and follow close behind me. It’s important that everyone else in the club knows your mine.”
I hated how a little fluttering blast of nerves rose up at his words. Mine. I could make all the stupid jokes I wanted, but inside, I was absolutely freaking out. Despite the contract and the extensive rules briefings, I still had no idea what I was getting into. I hardly even remembered all the things Grandpa Willy read off on his list.
“Red!” I half-shouted.
Landon turned and fixed an annoyed look of the more severe variety on me. “What?” he asked through tight teeth.
“Just making sure it works,” I said, flashing a sweet smile.
When we were out of the little private hallway that came from the wine cellar, the club seemed to thump to life around us. Sensual, porny music was pulsing from a hallway. To complete the picture, a guy was making out with two leather-clad women at the bar.
If only Miss Couch, my second grade teacher, could see me now. She’d always said how I was such a little sweetheart and how she knew I was going to do something special with my life.
Check it out, Miss C. Little did you know, I would be prowling the underground porn club my grandpa sort of planned to leave me as part of my inheritance.
I jumped when Landon’s finger touched my nose. Gently, he tilted my head down, then waited a few seconds to make sure I got the message.
Eyes down. Yeah, yeah.
I tried my best to keep close, but not so close that I got in front of him, but also not so far that people wouldn’t think I was “his” while he headed for the bar. It was all so ridiculous. But just like playing with Barbies way, way past the appropriate age, there was something fun about knowing I shouldn’t be enjoying it.
I sneakily peeked ahead without lifting my head too much and spotted his gloomy black hole of a brother at the bar. A woman was leaning beside him, clearly hoping her massive boobs would get his attention. It appeared they weren’t working. I was fairly sure Landon had said his brother ran one of the sister clubs, so I wasn’t sure why he always seemed to be here, instead.
Landon
put his hand on James’ shoulder. “Is she here tonight?”
James turned his head a fraction of an inch toward Landon but didn’t look up. “Yes.”
God. His voice reminded me of two mountains rubbing together, and not in a sensual kind of way—more like an annoyed shoulder bump while passing in a crowded subway.
“Is who here?” I whispered.
“Wait until you’re asked to speak,” Landon said under his breath.
As much as I wanted to bite back with an angry reply, I couldn’t help feeling the pressure of the club adding weight to his words. It really was like a different world down here. While it irked to have a someone actually tell me to “wait until you’re asked to speak,” it had a different context here. I’d gone to Germany when I was sixteen once, and I pretty quickly learned that nobody over there had discovered carbonated drinks—or drinks in general, taste better with ice. I didn’t go around trying to convince the entire country that I was right. I just sucked it up and drank room temperature beverages for two weeks.
As the saying went, when in The Golden Pecker, do as the peckers do. In this case, Landon was the Pecker King. The peckeriest pecker of all, you could say.
So, I batted my eyelashes and studied the floor.
Landon watched me, then nodded. “Come with me. I’m going to show you the sensory deprivation room.”
I wanted to ask a question, but I could tell from the look in his eyes that he was waiting for me to slip up again. Wait until I’m asked to speak. With an internal sigh, I shoved the question into the back of my mind and followed obediently. I couldn’t say why but bowing to his authority filled my lower stomach with a not-so-unpleasant kind of warmth.
I recognized the hallway we moved through, as well as the curtains leading to two of the rooms I’d been in already. My curiosity was piqued by the sheer number of curtained-off areas and then the rows of sturdy looking doors a little farther down the hall. Landon stopped at a door that was painted black. He pulled one of the golden coins from his pocket and slid it into a receptacle below the handle. It reminded me of an arcade machine. There was a little metallic clink, then Landon pushed the door open.
“How do you get your coin back?” I asked.
“Each coin is chipped with an identifier. Some rooms require you to ‘spend’ your coin for the night. Once it’s spent, you can retrieve it on the way out at the reception desk.”
I rolled my eyes. “You guys come up with so many overly complicated systems down here. What about just asking for a key like for a gas station bathroom? Hmm? Did anyone consider that before they imbedded microchips inside metal coins?”
Landon gave me a look that said I was walking on thin ice.
I blew out a frustrated breath and made an exaggerated show of redirecting my eyes to the ground and zipping my lips.
The room was nothing but a narrow walkway covered in a soft, black fabric shaped like the inside of an egg carton. The floor below the walkway, the walls, and the ceiling were all clad in those spikey, sound dampening triangles like the kind YouTubers stuck on their walls. As soon as the door closed behind us, the most intense silence I’d ever felt seemed to crush in around me.
“Wow,” I said. “Wow,” I said again, more quietly. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but even my voice sounded different—like little echoes and reverberations that normally only registered subconsciously were absent as well.
“It’s state of the art sound dampening technology. Almost every surface is covered in it. And that’s the tub,” he said, gesturing to a little bowl that was surrounded by the same soft, black spikes. I could see now that it was full of water.
“Wait,” I said. “I’m supposed to get in that thing? I didn’t bring a change of clothes.”
“You won’t be needing them,” Landon said. “And I’m being gentle with you because it’s your first night as my submissive, but I expect you to learn without needing to be reminded of the rules again.”
I winced. Right. I was asking questions again. I clamped my mouth shut.
“Good,” he said.
I hated how his praise made a little ball of pride blossom in my chest. I was starting to see how women could get addicted to this, silly or not.
“Take off your dress and get in the tub,” he commanded.
I opened my mouth to protest, then remembered the rules. I closed my eyes, trying to think of a way to ask him to turn off the lights first without getting in trouble.
“Here,” he said in a voice that was surprisingly gentle. He took me by the arm and led me to the edge of the tub. “When I turn off the lights, it will be absolutely dark. Not the kind of dark you’re used to. I want you to take off your clothes when the lights are off—even your underwear—and hand it to me. Then take my hand and I’ll help you get into the tub.”
I took a deep breath and studied the vaguely alien ceiling. It really felt like I was losing my mind. I was in this strange, aggressively quiet room. Landon was towering over me like a bossy, mysterious demon, and… And I was considering stripping completely naked and getting into a bathtub in the secret BDSM club below my grandfather’s hotel.
I closed my eyes, then nodded my head. Giving my assent made my entire body light up. I could feel every hair standing on end and I knew Landon must’ve heard the impossibly loud thumping of my heart. The room was so quiet, he probably could even hear the blood sloshing around in my veins.
He clapped his hands twice, and the lights cut out.
Despite my best efforts, I laughed out loud. “Clap on, clap off lights? Really?” I asked,
“People kept losing the remote,” he muttered.
My smile quickly faded when reality sank in. I was doing this. I really was about to strip naked only inches away from a man who was practically a stranger. The only thing separating my kind of dimpled ass, the unfortunately placed freckle that kind of blurred the border of one of my nipples, and all my other points of self-consciousness from his eyes were two claps of his hands.
I pulled my dress over my head and extended it toward where he’d been standing. I found his hands and passed it to him. Next, I unclasped my bra, and then slid out of my panties. I set both of them on top of the dress and then waited for his hand. He took me by the wrist and guided me into the tub.
The whole experience was already surreal. Once I took my mind off undressing, I realized just how dark the room was. Like the silence, it was another factor beyond dark. It felt as if the darkness wasn’t just around me or in front of me, but like it had flooded to the inside of my eyes and brain, too. It made me realize how even when I’d been in dark places before, my mind was just working overtime to process what little visual information was available—hints of a wall here or an object there. This darkness was so complete that I could feel a sort of stillness in my brain, like it wasn’t even trying.
The unexpected sensation of his hand against me in that dark silence seemed to magnify everything, even the barely audible rasp of his calloused skin against me.
The water sloshed as I slid into the tub. I was pleased to find it wasn’t cold at all. In fact, it was as close to a neutral temperature as I thought there could be. It felt like nothing, just like the rest of the room, and I understood now why the tub was the final step of the sensory deprivation.
“No jokes?” Landon asked. His voice seemed to float in the darkness just above me.
I frowned up toward him, even though I couldn’t see a thing. I was certainly nervous, but the gravity of the moment was starting to weigh down everything else. I realized I’d been treating this whole thing like I was taking a tour of a chocolate factory. I figured I’d just pop my head in, take a look around, and leave the way I came once I had my fill. Clearly, I’d been very, very wrong.
This was the part of the tour where the Oompa Loompas emerged, locked the doors, and started singing. What do you get when you play with your, heart? You get naked in the, tu-ub! I was pretty sure that wasn’t how the song went, but I was defini
tely naked and in the tub. I was also neck deep, and I wasn’t just talking about the water.
“Relax your head back,” Landon said.
I shivered when his fingertips pressed lightly into the sides of my head, easing it back to rest on a small, padded ledge at the back of the tub.
“Good,” he said.
Just the sound of his voice alone was so overpowering in the black silence. It sent shivers across my body—or maybe that was his hands on me when I was naked, even if I knew he couldn’t see anything.
“Now,” Landon said. “Touch yourself for me.”
When I didn’t move, I felt him kneel until our faces must’ve only been inches apart. “You remember the safe words, don’t you?”
I nodded, stupidly realized he couldn’t see me, then whispered a hoarse, yes.
“Good. Then I’m only going to say it one more time. Your options are to touch yourself, or I’ll do it for you. You have three seconds to choose.”
I felt the weight of each passing second like fists to my stomach. One… Two…
Almost as if it had a mind of its own, my hand slid up my stomach to cup one of my breasts.
“Tell me what you’re doing,” Landon said. His voice was a low, raspy whisper. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said there was a hint of animalistic need in his tone, too.
I bit my lip. “I’m holding my boob.”
“Tell me how it feels.”
I swallowed, and the sound might as well have been two cymbals crashing together in the silent room. “Good. Better than it should? Like my hand is extra warm, and it’s making little tingles go all over my body.”
“Put your other hand between your legs.”
I let my thumb rub across my hardening nipple and shivered. My other hand moved through the water, gliding across my body in a way that felt far, far too sensual to be happening while Landon hovered inches away in the dark.
The Golden Pecker Page 12