by Maren Smith
"Here." Poking the straw into the juice box, he handed it to her. "Drink this."
"I'm not five," she said, her tone fuzzy and her words slightly slurred. It was the first sign of renewing life he'd seen from her and he was… perhaps not happy with the lip, but glad she was at least rousing back to wakefulness.
"Drink up, or it won't be a five-year-old's spanking you get, either."
"Is it apple juice?" She was looking right at the box.
Definitely deep in subspace.
"Yes. Drink."
She took a few shallow sips, then made a face.
"You don't like apple juice?"
"It's warm."
"Ah. Unfortunately, they didn't send up any ice, so you're going to have to drink it this way. Are you a vegetarian?"
She craned around far enough to glimpse the plate on the edge of the sunken bed beside her, then shook her head. "No."
Making himself comfortable on the pillows, Alan pulled the platter of meat, cheese and fruit down onto a cushion between them. "You need protein. Here, eat."
She stole a dark red cherry.
"That's not protein," he wryly observed.
She ate it anyway. "This is new." She picked through the cheeses, taking two pepper jack cubes and one mild cheddar.
"What is, the cheese?" Alan turned the platter, pointedly offering her her choice of meats next before rolling a slice of turkey and Swiss together for himself.
"No, I mean this." She held up the juice box in one hand and the last of her cheese in the other.
"You don't eat when you're here? The buffet is free to everyone."
"I know. That's where I usually end up." She was coming back to herself, her words becoming clearer and stronger. She sniffled again. "One guy took me to the Master's Table to see the Supper and Show, but I spent most of the time under the table so I didn't get to see a lot of what was going on. He gave me a little of his steak though." She shrugged one shoulder, not looking at him as she stole another cherry. "What I was talking about was the room service. I didn't know the Castle offered that."
"It doesn't, unless you work here or took part in the auction, which I do and which we did." Rolling up another slice of smoked turkey and cheese, he handed it to her. "Protein. Eat."
"Are you always this bossy?"
He looked at her, but both her tone and expression lacked rancor, and at least she was talking to him. A giant step up from where they had been only an hour ago. "Only with difficult subs," he replied.
She snorted. "I'm probably the easiest bottom you'll ever top."
Now it was Alan's turn. He lost his composure to a snorting laugh of his own. "You have been by far the most difficult bottom I have ever partnered with."
She had the nerve first to look surprised, and then annoyed. "How do you figure that? I do whatever you want me to…"
"When you want to," he allowed.
"I don't brat."
"You do argue." He offered her another roll of meat around cheese. Her hands weren't shaking anymore, and a measure of clarity had taken root in her eyes.
"I don't refuse anything you want to do to me," she protested, a definite sharpness creeping in under her words. In any other sub, that tone of voice would have had her crawling on a leash at his heel for the rest of the day, if not the week.
Alan drummed his fingers once upon his knee, but kept his tone painstakingly calm while he pointed out, "Apart from this, you've refused every attempt at conversation."
"I have a few small restrictions—"
He almost smiled at that.
"But what does that matter when I let you do whatever you want?" She opened her mouth, but a sudden loud pop and crackle from just outside made her jump so badly she dropped her drink box. Just as quickly Alan rescued it, grateful for Cook Connie's adherence to keeping the Littles program as child-like as possible, otherwise one of them would have spent the night in an apple-juice scented wet spot. Gentleman though he might be, Alan wasn't sure he was chivalrous enough to volunteer for that.
A flickering of multicolored lights drew their attention to the balcony windows. The doors were closed and the drapes pulled, but a crack between the Bordello curtains showed a shower of sparkling red, blue and gold lights at the next loud pop and crackle.
"The fireworks have started," Alan said.
"New Year's isn't until tomorrow."
"It's every day this week, because one of our resident babygirl submissives had to get her tonsils taken out."
Tavy looked at him. "Who?"
Under any other circumstance, Alan would have bit through his own tongue before he revealed an employee by name to a guest. However, after so many years, Tavy probably knew them all, by reputation if not by name, anyway. "Selena. Master Emerson's wife. She usually works in the Nursery or the schoolgirl program."
A look of recognition crossed her face. "Blonde girl?" Tavy asked. "Bouncy?"
"Bingo," Alan said, chuckling. "Anyway, there were complications and her Daddy Dom won't let her out of bed. So, being as their room faces the gardens, and Master Marshall felt the need to get in touch with his 'big softie' bone, he's putting on fireworks all week long. Would you like to watch?"
Tavy turned back to the mostly finished platter of food. Stealing another cherry, she feigned disinterest. "I've seen fireworks before."
He watched her pick at the stems rather than eat. At the next pop and crackle, her eyes slid toward the balcony. She was trying hard to hide her wistfulness, but she did want to watch the display. So why not just say so?
Almost before he could finish that thought, the answer hit him. Because it didn't involve him hurting her. Because it was something any two friends might do together.
Because it was intimate.
Setting the platter aside, Alan stood up. He offered her his hand. "Come on. You haven't seen fireworks until you've seen them at the Castle."
She avoided his hand, refusing even to look at it. "I saw them last Fourth of July. I was watching from the field."
Last Fourth of July? A rush of awareness swept through him. Wait, he'd worked that holiday. Even if he hadn't, he knew almost from the moment her name hit the guest list every time she paid them a visit. He hadn't seen her on the Fourth. How could he have missed her? "I didn't know you were here that weekend."
She picked at her juice box. "I wasn't. I just watched the fireworks."
His thoughts raced, picking through a wide range of impossible conclusions. "From the field, not the road?" Castle security was too tight. They occasionally had problems with reporters, trespassers, motorists with car trouble—but no one who wasn't a guest made it far onto the grounds before the cameras picked them up and guards were dispatched to intercept. The only way she could have seen the fireworks from the surrounding fields was if she'd trespassed on a neighbor's property. Or knew them well enough to get permission.
Or was them.
The address in her file was a PO Box out of Granger, but he'd known from the frequency of her attendance that she had to be local. She couldn't possibly be that local though, could she? His mouth ran dry. Another pop outside lit the crack between the curtains in a shower of sparks. Alan would have sworn he could feel each one of those pinpricks of light in the fizzling energy racing through his skin, but one look at her tensely averted face told him if he asked what he most wanted to know right now, she was going to lie to him.
He was a tiger, stalking prey very much aware of his presence. He had to be careful. Reaching for her arm, he removed her right to choose. "Come."
Her legs were still unsteady, particularly when she climbed the steps, but he offered his support and let her take all the time she needed. Wrapping a blanket tight around her, he stole another from the bed and then took her out onto the balcony.
Situated in a little stone nook overlooking the Royal garden, they had the perfect view of the fireworks. Each pop lit up the entire sky, bathing the stone of the Castle, the grounds spread out below, and Alan and Tavy them
selves in shimmers of multi-colored light.
Somewhere below them, through open doors, came strains of modern music. The band was already hard at work entertaining the pre-New Year's Eve crowd. Laughter from the shadow-darkened shrubs below betrayed more than one late-night rendezvous taking place. The thrill of getting caught or of being secretly spied upon was so alluring that not even the cold could keep the exhibitionists out of the garden.
Neither an exhibitionist himself, nor interested in spying eyes intruding on his time with Tavy, Alan pulled a reclining lawn chair away from the rail and moved it back into the shadows by the door. His breath steaming the air, he drew the drapes to make the nook as dark as possible and then sat, pulling Tavy down to sit on his lap. He swaddled her in her blanket, taking care to make sure even her bare feet were warmly wrapped up, before shaking out the second blanket for both their benefit. She stiffened the minute he lay back and she realized that, in order to stay warm, she was going to have to lean back with him. Her hesitancy lasted only until the wind blew. The bite in the air made her shiver and, inch by fragile inch, she made herself lie down against his chest.
"Good girl," he praised, wrapping his arms around her. She shivered again, but already her body was relaxing on top of his. Her breasts pillowed against his chest. Her bottom was a burning heat against his thigh. She'd have to be numb from the hips down not to know he had the erection to beat all erections pressing stiffly against her. She said not one word about it, however, and neither did he. Together, they watched the show.
The pop of each starburst of light was so much louder out here than it had been inside, and each one of them filled the entire night sky. It was magnificent; a backdrop of stars with a shimmering fall of sparks so colorful and bright that with each explosion, for a few seconds at a time, it bathed her in their light. She kept her face turned to the sky and did not look back at him, but now and then when he forced himself to watch the fireworks instead, that confounding beauty on his lap would steal glimpses back at him.
"Do you like working here?" she suddenly asked.
Alan hid his smile. Curiosity was good. It wouldn't win his battle for her, but it was an encouraging start. "Yes, very much."
She was quiet, one hand tucked between her cheek and his chest. After a moment, she shook her head. "Why?"
Her bewilderment surprised him. It was the sort of question he never would have suspected from a repeat guest, much less someone with Tavy's reputation for intense play.
"I like being in control," he said honestly, his throat tightening, because right now the calm control he was most well-known for was the last thing he felt. It was everything he could do not to slip his hand between the folds of her swaddling blanket in search of heated bare skin. "I like being able to evoke total submission from a woman. I like the way she looks with her hands bound, her body posed to please me, the softness of her eyes when all she wants to do is whatever I desire, even if what I desire isn't at all what she wants to do."
Tavy puffed a soft sound, another of those breathy snorts that wasn't quite laughter. "You'll get that in spades with me, I guess. Are you sorry you didn't bid on someone who enjoys it?"
Alan forgot about pretending to watch the sky. "You enjoyed yourself."
"No, I didn't." She kept her face stubbornly turned toward the fireworks. The showy displays were coming faster and faster, the flowering explosions growing more beautiful and elaborate, heralding the impending finale. Alan stared at her, hardly believing what he was hearing, hardly believing how good she looked illuminated in all these shimmering shades of silver and blue, red and gold, even pale green.
"I am beginning to understand Emerson's view on mouth soaping," he said slowly. "Are our definitions of 'enjoyment' that drastically different? You come for me, Tavy—"
"O."
"Don't start that shit again," he snapped, perhaps more harshly than he should have. "Not right now. I know for a fact you orgasmed."
"A purely physical response to stimulation," she snapped back, tight-lipped. "Rapists can get their victims to do that."
He went cold. "Are you saying I raped you?"
"I'm saying you didn't have to. I never say no, remember?"
He very nearly dumped her off his lap onto the balcony floor. His chest was so tight he couldn't feel his heart beating, but he could hear it—the dull, pulsing thud of it building, along with the heat of anger in his temples. "I took you to subspace."
"Also an involuntary response to stimulation."
He caught her chin, his fingers digging in along her jaw as he forced her gaze from the fireworks back to him. "Three strokes of my cane for an honest answer. If not enjoyment, what were you feeling when I made you come?"
Her stare was every bit as cold as the winter air around them. Her nostrils flared with the quickening of her breath. Somewhere in the folds of the blankets, he thought he felt the slight motion of her fingers fidgeting in her lap. "Dirty," she finally admitted, tight and unhappy. "I felt dirty."
"Ashamed?" he asked.
"Sometimes."
"Because I was touching you sexually?"
"I'm not frigid or repressed," she snapped, annoyed. "I don't have a problem with sex."
He wanted an answer, so he allowed that ill-tempered response to pass without consequence. "What do you have a problem with?"
She tried to pull her chin from his fingers, but he shifted his grip to cup the whole of her lower jaw, his thumb and fingertips digging slightly into her cheeks to still her half-hearted struggles.
"Two more strokes if you answer," he softly encouraged. "None at all if you refuse."
She looked at him as if she hated him, though he already knew what she hated were the ugly truths he was dragging out of her. "I've done things I'm not proud of. Real submissives come here because they want to. I don't want to; I need to. It's my redemption."
A shower of crimson and white sparks burst above them, haloing them both.
"What have you done?" He gentled his grip on her jaw, but did not let her go. She didn't try to push free either, and only attempted once to avert her eyes. All he had to do was shift his hand from her jaw to her throat, and she looked at him again. Good girl. His thumb caressed a rewarding stroke down the slope of her neck. "Ten more," he said aloud. "I promise, you'll wear the marks for at least a week. All you have to do is answer."
Her eyes glittered in the brief darkness that came just before the grand finale filled the sky, revealing the slow build of watery moisture along her eyelashes. The first tear slipped free, followed by the rest. He never would have seen any of them if not for the flowering sparks falling in the air above them.
"I rob people," she said, her tone flat and dead. She gave him plenty of time to absorb every nuance of her revelation in the shocked silence that followed. "There. Now you know. Are you sorry you bought me yet?"
He almost called her a liar, except there was nothing in her face to suggest she was lying.
Alan studied her, unable to make himself react. At least, not at first. He'd spent too many years holding in what he really felt—schooling himself to be stern with bratty Littles when he was really either annoyed or inappropriately amused, striving for patience when he felt anything but, feigning enthusiasm for kinks he really had no interest in for the sake of a submissive who needed the release. It was that schooling now that kept him from demanding a full explanation, or worse, laughing at her. She didn't look like she was joking any more than she looked like she was lying.
She was telling him the truth as she saw it. She robbed people.
"Go inside," he finally managed, his throat tight. "Face the pillar and wait for me. I'll be in in a minute."
She got off his lap, leaving him one rumpled blanket to fend off the sudden cold and taking the other that still swaddled her back inside. She closed the door quietly behind her, chasing back the shadows with only the briefest flash of amber light when she slipped between the curtains. When they fell back into place, he was left a
lone in darkness, with nothing but the sudden chaos of his thoughts.
Try through he might, Alan could think of no way such a statement could be misconstrued out of anything innocent. Robbed was a very simple word. It could only be taken to mean one specific thing—she took money or possessions that did not belong to her from the person or entity to whom it did. But… did that mean shoplifting? Breaking and entering? Grand theft auto?
Was she a criminal, or was this 'robbery' work-related? Repossession, possibly?
He couldn't spend too much time thinking on this. The longer he stayed out here, the more likely she was to convince herself that he was drawing all the wrong conclusions. Gathering the forgotten blanket, Alan rolled it into a wad and stood up. Exactly what conclusions was he drawing? Did this change how he felt about her?
Perhaps it should have, but no, it didn't. He wasn't at all sure what it said about his character that, instead of being repelled by her confession, the thought of following her back inside made his pulse race. He still wanted her, whatever her wrongs.
She called this her redemption. A chance to clear her conscience. Was it possible that, instead of the pain she chased so relentlessly, what she really wanted was for someone to show he cared enough to take her firmly in hand? To show he was willing to guide her, validate her, and put an end to whatever 'robbery' she claimed she was doing?
His own hands trembled for the chance to be that strong, and the trembling only got worse when he stepped back inside to find Tavy standing exactly as he had bid her. She was naked, her blanket nothing more than a puddle of red cloth around her bare feet as she waited for him. Head bowed, she faced the pillar like a Little sent to stand in the corner.
His instinct urged him to go to her, to caress the back of her bowed head and let her know above all other things that, eventually, it—whatever 'it' was—would be all right again.
Every tense line of her said that to do so would have been a mistake. He was a Master of the Castle. His job was to give her what she needed. He hardened himself.