The Lingerie Shop Page 11

  Willow, his submissive, was a regular at the club, one who craved heavy punishment from a Master, hence the pseudonym. A willow bent under any punishment, but didn’t break. She was tied spread eagle to an upright metal frame. This room had several frames like that, as well as a pegboard of whips, floggers, paddles, thumpers and uncomplicated restraint options. The Fortress of Solitude tended to attract those who preferred to use the basics and let psychological domination do the rest.

  At the moment, this Master was utterly still. He held a cane in one large hand, the end resting in the half-curled palm of the other, while his gaze coursed over his captive’s body. Willow was stripped to the skin, which would be a viewing pleasure for anyone watching, but his body language said that was irrelevant to him. Even more importantly, it told Willow she was stripped for his pleasure alone.

  He stood with feet evenly braced, T-shirt pulling across his shoulders and chest, his ass and thigh muscles taut beneath the mold of the denim. The tilt of his head, as if he was listening to something no one else could hear, made the rule of silence not a guideline, but a mandate that would incur punishment if broken. Athena wet her lips.

  His profile could have been etched from granite, his jaw looked that resilient. She wanted to see the rest of his face. She thought he’d be dark haired, because the scattering of hair on his arms was dark, and his five-o’clock shadow was a blue-black that made a woman think of pirates. Since the shadowing in the room made it impossible to determine his eye color, she imagined them as green, then brown or blue. A dark blue, like a cold ocean, hiding pleasures and dangers both.

  He moved then, sweeping the cane across Willow’s buttocks, a strike across the widest part. She jerked, biting down on the gag. He did it again, creating an X, and then kept doing it, focusing on her ass and upper thighs.

  The girl was a pale-skinned, white-haired blonde with a soft, pretty body. She had the tattoo of a rose on the back of her shoulder, the thorny stem winding its way around her shoulder blade and to the front. When she twisted in pain, reacting to the cane, Athena glimpsed the rest of the tattoo. The stem ended at her left nipple, which was pierced with a barbed barbell.

  He stopped. The girl panted behind her gag, her fingers opening and closing in the cuffs that held her to the frame. She wore a blindfold, but Athena saw the tears that had trickled down to the corners of her mouth. Her body was shuddering. Athena’s stomach was quivering in response, a sympathetic tingle in her thighs and buttocks where she had them pressed against the wall. She could sit down on the couch in the corner, but she preferred to be here, part of the ungiving and cool cinder block wall.

  The masked man planted a boot between Willow’s spread feet. Caressing her biceps, he slid a gloved hand over the tender bend of her elbow before he dropped his touch to her hip. Willow’s head turned toward him, the attitude of her body one of yearning, desire for his attention. Wanting to please him.

  Was he a consistent sadist, or had he tailored his skill set to Willow’s need for pain? He might be the type of Dom who chose a different sub on each visit, enjoying the challenge of exploring various techniques, anticipating the needs of different playmates. Even so, he’d have a personal preference; most Doms did. Athena wondered what it was, wondered what it would be like to be bound to him uniquely, such that he would reveal his own desires and let her be the willing recipient of serving them.

  “Her” meaning a special sub, bound to this faceless Master. She didn’t mean herself, of course, except in the comfort of her fantasies.

  Subs had their own preferences as well. Roy had liked the psychology of being dominated and enjoyed some pain to reinforce it, but the restraints, the sense of helplessness, that was what he truly needed.

  Willow shuddered in the man’s grip. From the slackness of her mouth, the jerky movements of her body, as well as the flushed look of her swollen clitoris, she was soaring. Teetering on the edge of climax, caught in mindless submission, the state a Dom loved to see.

  He put his mouth against her ear. Speaking was permitted if the Master or sub had a safety issue to clarify. He spoke so softly, however, that Athena couldn’t hear him. Willow did, her trembling increasing. She shook her head, a whimper escaping her. Though the sound was muffled by the gag, he gave her marked ass a sharp smack, and she stilled, obeying the rules. His touch now became more gentle, though his tone increased enough that Athena caught the rumble. He had a deep voice. She found that pleasing, soothing. Apparently, so did Willow. The girl nodded at last, more tears leaking out from under the blindfold. Anything for you, her body language said. I will give you anything. I will fly for you.

  Athena swallowed.

  The man moved back, switching out the cane for a six-foot single tail. It took considerable skill to wield one well, but Athena had no doubt he had that skill. When he assumed the proper stance, it was as if the room bent inward toward him like one of the Matrix movies, responding to his focus. Athena was a peripheral, no different from the wall itself. Everything for him would be about Willow’s reactions, monitoring them, making sure this went where Master and sub both desired, until it became organic, a spiral where intuition was guiding every action and reaction.

  Willow cried out at the pop on her tender flesh. No help for that, and why the sub wore a gag, in case she couldn’t hold back involuntary noises. Club Release allowed bloodplay, but Willow’s unbroken yet abraded flesh said she preferred the pain but not the injury, and he gave her the former in good measure. As she yanked against the bonds, the pain overcame her control, and she was screaming against the gag with every stinging strike.

  Athena closed her eyes, imagining being where Willow stood, feeling that lash. Could such pure agony purge deeper, more emotional pain, bring it all to the surface, let it bleed out, boil forth like a pus? The idea mesmerized her, held her paralyzed against the wall, caught up in the sounds, the tears, the miasma of Domination and surrender.

  When Willow went silent, except for more whimpering, Athena brought herself back, though it was like pulling herself out of a womb. The man put the whip aside, came back to Willow.

  He gripped her hair, yanked her head back as he slid his hand down her front, covered her clit and labia and began to massage. Two of his fingers pushed inside her wet pussy as his thumb worked her outside. Willow struggled, wailed, and then she came. Athena shifted to the other wall so she could see the girl’s climax spurt over his gloved fingers. Her gaze latched onto his forearm, pressed against Willow’s abdomen, and she thought about the heat of that arm against her own flesh.

  He didn’t stop when Willow was done, continuing until she was squirming in discomfort. He gave her another disciplinary smack, forcing her to accept her Master’s will in motionless agony, his manipulation of the oversensitized nerves. By the time he chose to stop, she would have been in a puddle on the floor, had her restraints and the arm he had around her waist not been holding her up. He removed his other glove by pulling at the fingers with his teeth, then shook it loose so it dropped to the floor. Stroking her hair with the bare hand, he bent to press a kiss to the crown of her head.

  The glove had landed three feet away from Athena. She stared at it as he performed aftercare for his sub. It was a vital process that gave emotional reassurance to Willow, told her she’d done well, that she’d pleased her Master. It also physically grounded her, since a sub could be so disoriented right after an intense session like this that she couldn’t even be trusted to walk unaided.

  After she’d punished Roy over a spanking bench with a paddle or flogger until he climaxed, Athena would make him stretch out fully on the bench. She’d bring him back down to earth with a slow massage of his broad shoulders and back, his firm buttocks.

  Setting her drink on a shelf, she bent to pick up the glove. She told herself she did it so it wouldn’t be in the way, so that the Master wouldn’t step on it, but as she held it, she couldn’t resist slipping it over her hand. The glove had retained the heat of his body. She imagined ho
w it had emanated through the thin outer layer, adding to the burn as he slapped Willow’s ass.

  The man straightened and looked over his shoulder at her. The SEALs at her dinner party had registered the slightest shift of the other guests in the same way, particularly at the entry and exit points, or if a guest made an unexpected movement, as she’d just done. Now his gaze fell on her hand, covered in his glove.

  Her cheeks flushed, but rather than prompting her to pull it off, his look made her fingers curl over it. Vaguely, she thought she should apologize, because she might be disrupting his session, but speaking wasn’t allowed. Plus, she wasn’t sure if she’d offended him. His body language gave nothing away. The dim light obscured his gaze, but she wondered if she was right, if his eyes were dark blue. Or maybe hazel, that intriguing gray-gold-green color.

  At some point, she wasn’t simply meeting his gaze; she was caught in it. Wishes, inarticulate needs, things so contained she wasn’t sure she could move for fear of eruption, seemed to rise up to a perilous level inside her. She wanted to tell him something, tell him everything, but she had no idea what. Or even how to start.

  Some shocking part of her wanted to sink to her knees, wait until his other gloved hand touched her face, lifted her chin. He’d command her to take Willow’s place on the frame and send her soaring as well.

  Jimmy’s jaw would drop at that, for sure.

  Retrieving her drink, she turned away, leaving the room. Aftercare was personal, intimate. It had been her favorite part of the sessions with Roy. Even though this Master and Willow were in a public club environment, Athena didn’t have a desire to intrude on that. It made too many things hurt.

  It wasn’t until she’d left the room that she realized she was still wearing the glove. She took it off, left it on a drink table next to the archway leading into the Fortress, where he’d be sure to find it.

  She had to suppress a strong urge to keep it. She wanted to sleep with it on her pillow, her cheek against it. She wanted to put it back on her hand, rub it between her legs the way he’d massaged Willow, and imagine him whispering in her ear. Come for me.

  When she put her cup on the bar, Jimmy gave her a knowing look. “The new guy’s something, isn’t he? He’s been really popular with the lowercase ladies.”

  Athena offered a faint smile at his reference to female submissives. When submissives wrote their names on the guest logs, most of them, even those who used their actual first names, wrote them in lowercase. Willow would be willow. Only Masters and Mistresses had capitalized names.

  “He won’t play with men?”

  “No. To the eternal disappointment of those of us with bi or queer tendencies.” Jimmy winked. He was bisexual and a switch on top of that, though she knew his preference was submissive. “But I’m not sure I’d call what he does play. He goes at it with a singular intensity, like he’s performing a religious rite. You hear about that happening, but rarely see it in action. Not to the level he does it. You should come in one night, see him do it from beginning to end. The way he prepares himself, lays out what he’ll use. That’s why we’ve taken to calling him Master Craftsman—MC. He said he thought we were comparing him to a Sears department store. Solid quality but something most folks sadly consider outdated. That part didn’t seem to bother him. In fact, I think he took it as a compliment.”

  Jimmy flashed a grin. “Oh, and on the straight versus gay thing, he told me he doesn’t mind watching some Mistress-girl action.”

  Athena made a wry face. “That’s every straight man’s fantasy, Jimmy. You know that.”

  “Yeah. Isn’t it peculiar, how many religions get worked up over two guys going at it, but they don’t say diddly about two women?”

  “Just proves men wrote religious texts.”

  “No argument there.” Jimmy chuckled. “I bet MC would have enjoyed the heck out of that thing you orchestrated for Roy’s last birthday.”

  She’d put Roy on that same frame that Willow was on now. She’d wrapped his arms, legs and torso with multiple bindings so that he could barely move. Then she lay down on a divan several feet in front of him. Marsha, a submissive who liked being commanded to do oral on men or women, had lent Athena her services that night. She’d put her soft lips between Athena’s legs, curled her pretty hands around her thighs and brought Athena to climax while Roy watched. When she was done, Athena ordered Marsha on her knees in front of Roy to service him the same way while Athena watched, standing behind her. After she’d given him permission to come, Roy had gushed into the cherry-chocolate flavored condom Marsha was sucking.

  Marsha had been thanked and dismissed, and then Athena had shifted behind him, laid her cheek on Roy’s back. Listening to his breath go in and out, absorbing the shudder of his body through her own, she’d been captivated by what she’d done to him. He’d been hers, but she’d been his, too. Had he realized that? She missed having a man look at her with pure ownership in his eyes. Very much.

  “I’m calling it a night, Jimmy. Thanks for the drink.”

  “Sure thing. Don’t stay away so long next time. And hey . . . I mean, if Dillon and Seth don’t interest you, I’m another option. Just give me a heads-up and I’ll make sure I’m not on shift here.”

  “Thanks, I appreciate that. You’re a good friend.” The sudden flash of male interest made her uncomfortable, however. Perhaps sensing it, he waved his hand dismissively. “I’m a guy, Lady Mistress. You know it’s a selfish offer. A lot of us would love to experience what Roy did. You’re an amazing Domme.”

  How would he react if he knew she wanted to go to her knees for a Dom she’d just seen for the first time? Jimmy’s innocuous and honest proposal made her want to flee. Not wishing to hurt his feelings, she gave him a distant smile, shaking her head to deflect the compliment, then took her leave.

  The club was on the second level of a warehouse in an industrial area, so she took a set of stairs down to the first level. They had a volunteer at a table just inside the entrance door. He served as an informal security guard, keeping an eye on the cars in the parking lot. She nodded to him, pushing open the door.

  Her dark blue BMW was close to the entrance, and she unlocked it, slipped in behind the wheel, closed the door. Embracing that personal cocoon, a haven from questions and the outside world, she tried to shrug off her confusing emotions. Jimmy’s suggestion had stabbed something down deep inside her. Something that rose up with astonishing firmness and proclaimed never again. She’d been a Mistress to Roy alone.

  Yet she wasn’t done with this, was she? The sense that she belonged in this world kept drawing her back. She just didn’t know how to change her role in it, or if she really wanted to change, or if she was just confused. Sometimes the simplest thing was best. Perhaps it was time to cut it out of her life. Bury it as she had her husband. Metaphorically, since he was cremated.

  When she keyed the ignition, she saw she had less than a quarter tank of gas left. Enough to get home, but tomorrow she’d be heading to the Garden Club meeting, so it would be more convenient to get gas tonight. She should have thought about it earlier, but lately she’d been more forgetful about those kinds of things. Suppressing a sigh, she glanced across the street. There was a twenty-four-hour, credit-card-only station there. Despite the late hour, since she was across from the club entrance, it should be safe enough to put in a few gallons.

  She cut across the quiet street. After she processed her credit card and inserted the pump into the BMW to start fueling, an old Cadillac pulled into the aisle across from hers. The two men driving didn’t look particularly reputable, but in New Orleans, that didn’t necessarily signify danger.

  She was merely annoyed, not alarmed, when the driver approached her. He was probably going to try and bum a few dollars off of her. As she unhooked the gas pump from her tank, put it back in its slot, the other man emerged from the Caddy, circled around to the other side of her car.

  In hindsight, she knew she should have jumped in the car at the
first sight of them, locked the doors and laid down on the horn. The club volunteer was at the proper angle to view the parking lot, but he wouldn’t be looking toward the gas station unless something drew his attention there, like a blaring horn. It might have been an overreaction if they meant her no harm, but it would be better than what she was facing now.

  Hindsight never really did anyone much good, did it? She should have filled up earlier. She needed to give herself a firm scolding for that. Unbidden, she imagined “MC” giving her that scolding, and received a shiver up her spine at the mere thought.

  What was the matter with her? Two men had her hemmed in at her car, and yet she seemed caught in a fog, her natural adrenaline reaction clogged. Her response to their threat was perilously slow. Almost apathetic.

  “Give me your credit card and whatever cash you’re carrying. As well as that sparkly ring you’re wearing.” The driver seemed laid-back, almost conversational about it. Not even particularly aggressive, but then, he didn’t need to be. The look in his eyes told her he’d done violence before, and wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. “C’mon, bitch. Just give ’em to me and you can go back to your fancy life, order a couple hundred more credit cards.”

  Of course. Because like all rich people, I simply pull money out of my ass by magic, not hard work. She was smart enough not to say it, but she met his gaze squarely. “No.”

  The punch in the face was unexpected, jarring. As the world reeled, she thought of the masked man smacking Willow’s ass. It had been intended to provoke pleasure as much as pain. This was simple violence, the companion to hate and resentment and all the things that made a person not care what they were doing to another. As a result, a matching response boiled up inside her.