Sincerely,
Mistress Delilah
Surprise filled me as I stared at the signature. Delilah made these? Was there anything she couldn’t do? It did explain the tux she wore last night, and how it fit her perfectly. But why did someone with so much talent use them on outfits for sex play?
As if summoned by my imagination, her soft croon filled the room. “Masters and Mistresses, subs and slaves, I’d like to present the sensation play demo for your pleasure. I will be performing on the stage. If it pleases you, I’d love to request your presence.”
My body froze and I found myself actually debating on going. I wanted to see her. To tell her I was sorry for my behavior last night. The whole thing was a little hazy, but I did remember trying to force myself on her and shame remained my companion since. I’d hope to apologize to her when she came to the bar for a drink, but she never did. Until now, I’d been uncertain as to whether she was here today.
As if driven by a will greater than my own, I turned and my feet began walking toward the stage. A crowd already formed around it, but there remained plenty of room for me to have a good view without craning to see over people. Delilah stood in the center, a goddess in a gold dress that clung to her every curve. Her dark hair draped against her shoulders in perfect curls that I wanted to run my fingers through. She spoke quietly with a shorter, tiny chestnut-haired woman who wore a hot pink bikini and a matching collar.
After a couple of minutes, the girl disappeared off the stage and Delilah faced the crowd with a dazzling smile. Was she going to choose someone out of the crowd to demo with? If so, would she choose me? Not likely, after last night. Whoa, what is going on with me? I don’t want her to choose me. I don’t want to be on display in front of a crowd of strangers being exposed and sexually tortured. At least, I’m pretty sure sensation play is a form of BDSM torture.
“As many of you know, BDSM comes in many forms. The beauty of the art is that there is no one true way beyond the basic rules of safe, sane, and consensual. While some partake of heavier scenes with fully immersive activities, others prefer gentler forms. Today I’d like to demonstrate something called sensation play. Sensation play is as diverse as you make it, and can range anywhere from feather-light touches that excite, to flat out sadistic pleasures.”
She paused and the sub she spoke to earlier came back on the stage pushing a rolling cart with a faux fur covering. Two men followed after, carrying what looked like a huge X made of thick, sturdy wood. Once they set it down, the sub walked over to it and stood waiting patiently.
“Megan here was kind enough to volunteer her services for today’s demo. She can take many levels of sensation and is willing to go as hard as I want. Everyone give Megan a round of applause. Without subs, we Doms would be far more lonely and isolated.”
The crowd broke out into a mild cheer accompanied by clapping. I clapped as well, though her statement puzzled me. I thought Doms were supposed to be overbearing bullies who commanded sexual gratification. The way subs were treated here was far different than I expected and I began to wonder if perhaps my view was skewed after all.
We’ll see how this demo goes before I decide to make life-altering opinion changes.
Delilah continued on. “As you know, there are five senses. Many Doms forget this, and only use the sense of touch to play with. But there is still smell, taste, hearing, and sight. I highly suggest using ways to take away the senses you won’t be stimulating in order to enhance the one you want to. For example, today I’m going to be cliché and work on touch sensation play.”
She turned to Megan and began clasping a set of cuffs hanging off the X to the woman’s wrists, keeping the sub’s back to us. Next, she walked over to the cart and pulled a blindfold off. She held it up for the crowd to see. “The Saint Andrew’s cross enhances touch while restricting movement. When you restrict movement, skin becomes more sensitive to touch itself. The blindfold will take away her sense of sight, making her more reliant on touch as well.”
Delilah approached the sub and held the blindfold up. “Megan, what is your safe word for less, but don’t stop?”
“Yellow,” Megan answered. Her eyes were wide and trusting as she turned to stare at Delilah over her shoulder.
“And what is your safe word that means I should stop immediately?”
“Red,” she responded.
The Mistress gave a curt nod and tied the blindfold on. Her movements were measured, gentle, almost loving, and I wondered if Megan’s ease with her was born of experience. They seemed to work well together. Jealousy flared in me, burning the pit of my stomach, but I couldn’t bring myself to walk away from the demo.
“Sensation is not just spanking. I’ve brought several tools to show you a few gentler forms, and a couple to show you forms for hardcore players. We’ll start with this.” She grabbed the faux fur covering and ran her fingers over the fluff. “Some prefer to work with feathers for soft play. I like the feel of fur better. Chenille and silk are other great sources for soft sensation play.” She walked behind Megan and ran the material over the back of one arm, then the other. Megan arched into it with a small gasp.
“The inside of our elbows, backs of our hands, backs of our knees, and our ankles are extremely sensitive, especially to soft touches. They make great places for gentle kisses, or things like this.” She moved down and whisked the fur over Megan’s knees, and the sub issued a soft moan of delight.
Delilah stood, returned to the cart, and switched out the fur for what looked like a riding crop. “Since Megan prefers a bit more pain as her source of pleasure, we’ll amp things up faster than I normally would. I’d like to demonstrate something key though. Did you know soft touches as a form of teasing before a strike can cause light strikes to have far more sensual impact? Let me demonstrate.”
Using her fingertips, she feathered across the bare skin of Megan’s ass cheek revealed by her thong bikini. The woman arched into the Mistress’s touch and squirmed a little. Delilah pulled away, then repeated the motion a couple more times. Each time she moved away, my breath caught in my throat as even I anticipated the crack of the crop to follow. Megan whimpered, nearly writhing, and I empathized with her completely.
When Delilah finally struck her with the crop, instead of a loud crack, she landed it on the woman’s ass with a firm but gentle tap. The sub, however, cried out and bucked like she’d been struck harshly. There was no mistaking the cry for anything but pleasure. To my surprise, I shifted where I stood as an ache began between my legs.
What the hell? How am I getting aroused by this?
Delilah repeated the entire thing on Megan’s opposite ass cheek, and this time, when the crop met the sub’s skin, Megan clenched her fists and threw her head back. “Mistress, please!” she cried.
“One should never dive right in to the heavier, hardcore play. You can accidentally turn the scene into all pain and no pleasure by doing so. It’s important to take it in steps.” She flicked the riding crop against Megan hard enough to leave a red spot, and the woman writhed in pleasure as she moaned. “I wouldn’t have been able to hit this hard in the beginning without causing unnecessary pain. The goal is not to harm. The goal is to test her boundaries of pleasure and pain, until she finds release.”
She ran her nails down Megan’s back, leaving red trails in her wake. My skin shivered at the sight as I imagined her doing the same to me. The fantasy made me want to make a purchase from the nearest sex toy table and take a quick break to a private room.
“Since Megan likes knife play, we’ll go to a hard core version of sensation play now.” My stomach twisted as Delilah exchanged the crop for a glove that had long nails on it. It looked very much like claws extended from the glove. As she turned her hand, she showed the glove only covered the back of her hand, leaving the palm open. “The lack of cloth on my palm allows me to better judge the pressure I’m using. The nails are mini-blades, and like a knife, they can be sharp or dull pending on you and your sub�
�s comfort level.”
She knelt behind Megan, placed her hands on the woman’s ass, then trailed her hands slowly down the ass and thighs. Delilah stopped just short of the backs of Megan’s knees. Meanwhile, the sub screamed in pleasure. Her legs visibly trembled and when the Mistress stopped, she sagged in her restraints. Welts stood out in red brilliance, marking the path of the claws.
Delilah stood and ran her fingers on her bare hand softly over the welts. Megan screamed again, then tensed in an obvious orgasm. Instead of it being uncomfortable to watch something so intimate, it was beautiful. I remained frozen, entranced by the exchange of power. I wonder if Megan’s face is peaceful now? Or if she’ll come out of her sex-induced haze and look around in embarrassment.
“That’s all from me, ladies and gentleman. I’m going to turn Megan here over to her Master now, so he can teach you about proper after care. After care is extremely important, so I highly encourage you to watch. Then Master Rick will be performing a Shibari demonstration. To watch one is absolutely stunning.”
She scanned the crowd and I could tell the moment her gaze locked with mine. Her eyes, vibrant only moments before, dimmed and the space between her eyebrows wrinkled in a slight frown. Delilah ripped her gaze away from me to turn to a man walking up to her and the sub. Any intention I had of talking to her went out the door. Her expression when she saw me said it all.
I’d burned that bridge.
Chapter five
My phone rang and I scrambled to find it in the dark. The clock on the nightstand proudly displayed an ungodly hour of four. Who in their right fucking mind would be calling me at this time of night? Morning. What the fuck ever.
I found my cellphone under my pillow and squinted to read the caller ID. Teresa’s name flashed there, along with a photo she’d set once as her contact display. The image of us hugging while laughing taunted me, and I considered not answering. Thought about simply setting the phone back down and pretending I’d never heard it ring. What if it was that prick of a guy she was dating, calling to harass me?
What if it’s Teresa calling to say she’s sorry?
I hesitated until the phone stopped ringing, then sat there staring at it. My stomach rolled, tying itself in knots as a million thoughts raced through my head. I’d loved Teresa, dearly. To find out she’d been having an affair on me, with a man no less, crushed me. But there was still a part of me that missed her, yearned for her. Yearned for the comfort of a relationship again.
With shaking fingers, I pressed the missed call notification, then tapped on her name. The phone rang over and over, and each time only amped up my nerves worse. Just as I considered hanging up, a noise came over the line indicating she was answering.
“Hello?” Her voice trembled as she spoke, and she sniffled.
“Teresa? It’s Paige. Did you just try to call me?” I kept my voice as stoic as possible.
A choked sob filled the line, wrenching my heart. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry. I... He... We fought and...” Her words were interrupted as she noisily blew her nose. “Can you come get me?”
“Come get you?” I didn’t know whether to laugh at her or rush to her rescue. A mixture or rage, pain, and regret surged through me, confusing me. “Why on Earth would I do that? Call your macho man. Or is this another experiment? ”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and started crying loudly. Great heaving sobs that ripped my heart out. “I was wrong to treat you the way I did. Ben was a mistake. Just one huge mistake. Please, please come get me and I’ll make it up to you.”
I rested my forehead on the headboard of my bed and mentally groaned. I can’t believe I’m doing this. “Where are you?” I asked.
“I’m outside your apartment, but when I keyed in the code, it rejected me. You changed your code because of me, didn’t you?”
My stomach performed a series of flips as I tried to figure out how much to reveal to her about my current predicament. “I don’t live there anymore.”
“Oh.” Her voice muffled for a moment, and I wondered what she was doing. “I still don’t have a car. Can you come get me?”
I squeezed my eyes shut and let out a sigh. “I’ll come get you, and we’ll go somewhere for coffee while you explain what happened and why the hell you decided to call me of all people. Consider it one last favor for the debt I owe you.”
“Paige—”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, interrupting her. “Love doesn’t keep count of debts. But this isn’t love anymore.”
With that I hung up and stared at the phone. Agreeing to get Teresa wasn’t one of my brightest ideas, but she’d been the one to jerk me out of alcoholism and set me straight. When we met, she worked as a receptionist at a doctor’s office, and took me under her wing after she spotted me walking home one night, drunk. Without her intervention, I would probably be taking a taxi everywhere because of a suspended license...or worse.
I dragged myself out of bed and put on my clothes from yesterday that were still laying in a pool at the foot of the bed where I’d shucked them off. Within five minutes I was out the door and pulling out of the driveway. I kept expecting my cellphone to ring as Brandi called wanting to know where I was going at this hour. She’d always been a light sleeper, and extremely over protective even though she was the baby of the family.
As I drove along the eerily empty streets, I obsessed over why Teresa called me. She’d mentioned something about a fight with dick head Ben, but how did that make me the go-to gal? We hadn’t spoken since seeing each other at the bar the night her fiancée insulted me, and the last time we spoke before that was when I kicked her out for having the affair with him.
Before I knew it, I was pulling into the parking lot at the apartment complex. I scanned the area for Teresa, and when I didn’t see her immediately, bitterness filled me. She probably went crawling back to that loser of hers because I took too long.
Movement in one of the airways caught my attention, and I watched in silence as Teresa emerged. As she moved into the illumination of a streetlight, I gasped. Her torn clothes, runny mascara, and disheveled hair gave her the appearance of someone either badly beaten, or a homeless drug addict. Last I knew, Teresa had never done drugs, and wasn’t homeless. Well, maybe she was now.
She moved toward the car, and her whole body language screamed wariness. What the fuck did Ben do to her? I put the car in park and lowered my window, wondering if the shadows hid bruises.
“Get in, Teresa,” I said, keeping my voice completely neutral. Freaking out on her about her appearance wouldn’t be the right way to handle this. I had a feeling I’d want to kill someone before the night was over, though.
She made her way to the passenger side, opened the door, and slid in. The stink of cigarettes clung to her, and I wrinkled my nose. “You took up smoking?”
“No...” She shook her head as she buckled her seat belt. “Ben smokes. He’s a chain smoker. I thought I might be able to get him to quit. You know, like I did with...” Teresa trailed off and turned to stare out the window.
“You thought you’d whisk in and save him from his bad habits like you did me, huh? Except I take it he didn’t want your help?” I put the car in drive and pulled out of the parking lot. With what she looked like, I didn’t think a coffee shop would be a good idea after all. I didn’t want people staring at her while she was vulnerable like this, and I sure didn’t want people thinking I’d done it to her.
As we drove through the strip without stopping, Teresa glanced over at me. “Where are we going?”
“I’m taking you to my place. I have coffee there, and you look like you could use a shower and somewhere quiet to get yourself back together. Mind at least telling me what happened?” I continued to keep my voice as neutral as possible. Doubt still filled me over the entire situation, as if by coming to her rescue, I was falling in to a trap.
She fidgeted around for a moment. “Ben and I got into an argument. Usually, when we argue, we just yell. Tonight
though, he grabbed my arms and slammed me against a wall, and called me names. When I tried...” Her voice thickened and I spared a quick look at her to confirm my suspicions that she was crying again. “I told him I wouldn’t put up with being abused, and he told me to get the fuck out. He called me a whore and said I’m the perfect victim trying to play at being a hero. What does that even mean?”
I shook my head in response. An inkling of what he meant tugged at me, but I wasn’t completely sure. “What caused you to fight in the first place?” I asked.
She locked her gaze on the scenery again and I could feel her shutting down on me. “I dunno,” she muttered. “Something stupid. I can’t even remember what.”
I knew she was lying to me. Knew it as surely as I knew my own name. But until she was ready to talk, there was nothing I could do to make her tell me the truth. Experience proved that if you pushed Teresa in a corner when she lied, it turned explosive. Causing a fight between us right now was the last thing either of us needed.
We pulled into the driveway for the guest house and I put the car in park. Teresa looked around and then turned her head to peer at me. “Why aren’t you still at the apartment? Why are you living in some garage?”
“A lot of things have changed,” I responded as I opened my door and climbed out.
“Whose house is that?” she asked, pointing at the main home. Her demeanor no longer emulated that of a beat dog anymore, and I didn’t know whether to be suspicious or relieved.
Stop it. You’re just being wary because you’re still hurt over the break up.
“My sister and brother-in-law’s.” I hit the lock button on my key fob to set my car alarm, then made my way to the door and unlocked it. Teresa crowded so close her breast brushed my elbow as I moved. Uncertainty played with my nerves, but I powered through and let us both in. As soon as we entered, I locked the door behind us, then busied myself in the kitchen making coffee.
The Abduction Agreement (Mistress May I Book 1) Page 4