by Joey W. Hill
His free hand lifted. She strangled on a soft sound as he brushed a curved knuckle over one taut peak.
“These beautiful, beautiful tits,” he said quietly. “Just out there, begging to be touched.”
He fanned his fingers like a bird wing to caress the full mound of one. Then he curled those long, strong digits, and two of his knuckles closed over the nipple, a firm clamp like a hawk’s beak. She swallowed, noisily.
He guided her captive hand past his waist, to his back. The heat in the small space between their bodies intensified. “You can touch me as you imagined,” he said, that deep, rough voice tagged with a growl. “As long as you can bear the pain. If you ask me to stop, then you have to stop.”
“Yes, sir.”
He let her wrist go. As soon as she started to slide her liberated hand toward his spine, his knuckles began to tighten.
She knew how to take a lot of discomfort, but an enticement like this made it harder to focus on pain management. She thought of how he’d brought the woman to climax while beating the soles of her feet. It wasn’t the first time he’d demonstrated his mastery at bringing a sub right to the threshold where pain and pleasure had to go their separate ways. When he did that, she saw the sadist in him. One who would push a sub past that threshold, feeding on how much she would be willing to take for him.
She wanted to give him that, almost as much as she wanted to touch him. So she was doubly motivated. But hellfire, he was going to make her earn it. The pressure of that clamp continued to grow, the pain lancing through her breast as she reached the center of his back.
Her middle and index fingers settled in the valley of his spine, the other three alighting around it. His skin was warm, with an amazing solidity, the skin merely thin gift wrap over muscle. She started low, just above the tempting dip between his buttocks. The hard bones of his pelvis were briefly under the heel of her hand as she trailed upward.
A gasp escaped her as he added a slow twist to the pincer grip. She’d dampened when he took her hand at the dais, so it was no surprise that she was fully wet between her legs. She was incapable of concealing her strong reaction to honoring a Master’s will, earning his approval, all while enjoying the pleasures he gave her as a reward.
When she reached the base of his neck, he twisted harder. She cried out, and her fingers jerked, but then she dug them into his flesh. Hell, it hurt so much. Her body was contorted in a rigid curve around that central pain point, trying to ease what couldn’t be eased.
“You just have to say stop,” he reminded her in a throaty rumble.
Which meant she’d have to stop touching him. She shook her head, a quick snap, and pressed into his punishing touch so she could slide her fingertips along the slope of his ear, headed to his skull. She tipped her face up, gazing at the strong line of his cheek and jaw, his ear, the movement of her arm. She could feel his total focus on her reactions.
He was tall, even sitting. He slid his other arm around her waist, hand over her hip and buttock to give her the extra lift needed to touch the crown of his head. She had a round ass, but his hand was nearly large enough to span the whole cheek he gripped. He scattered her mind when he tightened that hold, kneading. Supporting her needs while he took what he desired. It was a powerful combination, one that could break open dangerous yearnings in her.
He increased the compression on her nipple. She was beyond true agony, but if she wanted to touch him the way she’d described, this was the price.
How badly do you want it? That question always stood guard between a person and any goal worth having. But there was more to this, and that, as much as her own desires, kept her enduring. What was she doing to him? What pleasure was he receiving from her pain, her willingness to bear it simply for the right to touch him?
She passed her fingertips over his crown. Her hand was shaking, but she fought through the pain rocketing through her to make it a caress, to convey how much she liked the feel of him.
Abruptly, the compression stopped, which yanked a moan of relief from her. She sagged against his shoulder and upper arm before she could catch herself, but he had her. He was still holding her up, letting her touch him. She’d stopped moving her hand, though, anticipating what he might command next.
Instead, he dipped his head down, making her heart beat faster and giving her more access. An unspoken permission to continue.
She breathed out a sigh as she touched his skull. A man who shaved his head had to care for it, to keep it gleaming and smooth like this. She wouldn’t mind helping with that, rubbing in whatever aftershave products he used to keep it pleasurable to the touch.
She imagined how this felt to him, the tiny tracks each of her fingertips were making over his bare skin, a skimming, easy caress. Down to the nape, behind the ear, back up. The head, nape and occipital bone were all erogenous zones. His breath heated the base of her throat, and she realized his head had dropped further.
He closed his hand fully over her breast, massaging her throbbing nipple in the nest of his palm, soothing while he explored the fullness of the curve. Her breath caught again as he put his mouth on the top of her breast.
Now she had both hands on him, one stroking his nape, measuring the width of his shoulders. The other continued to caress and explore his head, the shape of ears, the creases at the base of his skull, then around to the temple and up to that crest again.
He moved his touch up her back, wound his fingers into her hair, and drew her head back farther, way farther. He arched her over his arm as he nuzzled her collar bones, used his tongue to tease her temporary tattoo, all the little birds fluttering up her throat. She could hear the artery pounding harder beneath his mouth and he paused, his fingers tightening on her. When his teeth scraped her, she moaned, and he muttered something that reminded her of Aquaman, the way he’d cursed against the demand for self-restraint. But she was the sub. Wolf could do as he liked. She wanted him to do whatever he wished.
After a charged moment, he moved downward, lips playing over the birds on her sternum. Then he placed his mouth fully over her nipple. An even more needy sound escaped her throat as he suckled her through the cloth, rubbed the folds of it wetly against her. She swayed in his hold, her hands dropping to grab his shoulders. They felt wide enough to carry the world.
Most of the things she did at Club Atlantis had a very defined structure. Beginning of session, end of session. Wolf hadn’t set any parameters. Just brought her here, asked her a question, made clear his price for the answer. She didn’t have any context or meaning for what he was doing. She was adrift on a heavy tide of feeling. Her sex was throbbing, making her want to rub herself against him.
He lifted his head, and cupped hers in one hand. She was bent back over his arm, still on her knees but almost parallel to the floor as he leaned over her. He’d left the chair and dropped onto one knee to hold her like this, suckle her nipple. Her hair was brushing the floor while his fingers remained buried in it, his palm supporting her skull.
He looked down at her breasts, straining against the gauzy cloth. “Show me the one I hurt,” he said.
She fumbled her way to her chest, found the loose elastic of the scoop neckline. Lifting it over the nipple and pulling the fabric down, she exposed the breast to him. Her whole body quivered at his look, the silver-touched-with-fire irises getting more iridescent.
“You’ve pleased me, Ella,” he said.
“Thank you, sir.” Her voice was barely a breath.
“There will be bruising around it. If you do a session, you’ll tell the Dom to avoid that area.” He lifted his gaze to her, and if he’d driven a spike through a collar around her throat, locking it permanently, he couldn’t have her attention more completely. “No one touches that nipple but me, until I say so. The rest of you is fine, but that one belongs to my mouth and my hand. You understand?”
She found her voice again, somewhere, somehow. “Yes, sir.”
He lifted her hand from his shoulder and examin
ed it, his fingers spreading hers, his thumb running over her palm. Tingles shot through her arm, to her upper torso, flushing her neck and making her exposed nipple harder.
“Curious,” he murmured. He brought her hand back up to his scalp and placed it against the broadest part of his skull. As he pressed her palm against the heat of flesh and resilience of bone, his gaze pinned hers. “That’s a place only you have touched, like this, in a very long time.”
He straightened and brought her up out of the arched position, lifting her to her feet as if she weighed nothing, even though he stayed on one knee. Once she was upright, he adjusted the neckline of her shirt. She wasn’t much taller than him, even while he was kneeling.
For a minute, she felt like a little girl, her daddy straightening her clothes. The impression was enhanced by the stern way he was looking at her. Because of what he said next, she wondered if he’d intended that.
“I’m doing a workshop on Daddy Dom/little girl play at Friday’s early evening orientation session. I need an assistant. You’ll be there at seven.”
Though it wasn’t the primary form of BDSM expression for either of them, they’d both had plenty of experience with guests and members who did enjoy Daddy Dom play. That was why he was asking for her assistance, she told herself. There was nothing unusual about it.
Except he’d never asked her to assist him before, despite the wealth of expertise she had, in a variety of areas.
Sorting quickly through her complicated schedule, she was relieved to find she could make that work. Saying she couldn’t do it would have caused her far worse pain than what he’d done to her nipple. Now that he’d taken his soothing hand and mouth away, the throbbing was back. But she wondered if the thumping pulse of blood she felt in the abused area had more to do with the awareness he’d planted in her mind than the physical trauma.
No one would touch that part of her but him. It was his, until he said otherwise. What was happening here? This wasn’t a session. What was he doing?
She knew the boundaries and negotiations that went into healthy Dominant and submissive relationships. She could ask for permission to ask questions, request definitions, structure, to whatever this was. She wasn’t weak-minded or desperate, unwilling to ask or say no for fear of rejection. That kind of mindset was born of insecurity, a poor self-image. Anwyn and the other Dominants were quick to detect it when it came through the doors. They either educated the sub to bring them up to speed, or regretfully denied them membership until they could get to a healthier place.
So it wasn’t that which kept her silent. Something about him had always been…more, when it came to the Dom thing. As if his Dominance went beyond a sexual orientation, which was an odd thought, since an orientation was part of a person’s core identity. Regardless, she couldn’t find it in herself to question him now. Instead, she was drifting in a haze of instant recall, remembering the way he’d bent his head to let her touch his neck and head. His skull had been so close to her mouth she could have pressed her lips to his flesh, as she wound her arms around his broad shoulders.
The music had changed radically. The DJ had dialed it down with “Danny Boy,” sung by a female vocalist.
I will sleep in peace until you come to me…
She didn’t know about that, but peace wasn’t always peaceful. Sometimes it rode the current of something overflowing with possibilities, right over a waterfall and down beneath it. The pounding strength could drive her to her knees, keeping her exactly where she wanted to be. In over her head.
“Yes, sir,” she said. “Seven o’clock.” I’ll be there.
She didn’t say that part, because there was no need. His expression said no other answer was possible.
Chapter Two
Grenadine had been his last session of the evening. Usually, Wolf stayed longer, helped monitor the floor, maybe picked up an additional walk-in scene, but tonight, after what had happened with Ella, he finished up and headed out. There was plenty of night left, but he needed to think, so he drove to the place he currently used for his daylight sleep. He’d owned the building since the nineties, renting out the top space for income while he lived in the basement. Beneath the basement was a bomb shelter only he and the City of Atlanta records office knew about. It had been constructed by the original builder, back in the Cold War fifties.
A management company handled the property, so the tenants didn’t know he was the landlord. He was just the shadowy renter who lived in the basement apartment but was rarely seen coming or going.
He’d outfitted the apartment to be a comfortable living space when he wanted to use it that way. Once in the bedroom, he punched in the code that opened up the insulated back panel of the bedroom closet—no hollow sounds if someone tapped on it. That gave him access to the stairs leading down to the bomb shelter, an area with a bedroom, kitchen and living room.
It was the perfect hideaway for a vampire—or a person assuming they could outlive the apocalypse.
He’d changed clothes at the club and wore comfortable jeans and a button-down shirt. He removed his shoes and socks before he sank down in his large easy chair. As he picked up the pack of cigarettes on the side table and shook one out to light it, he tried to figure out what the fuck he’d been thinking tonight.
But he knew. Over the past several weeks, his path had crossed with Ella on two different occasions, outside the club walls. He didn’t engage with a submissive like her, beyond the basic courtesies that working in the same club involved. But one night, he’d been out near a bookstore she frequented, something he hadn’t known until he’d seen her go into it. He’d followed her in there, talked to her a few minutes, then left. Well, after dropping a bag containing her favorite local deli sandwich in her bike basket. She’d looked pale and tired when he’d talked to her. It had bothered him.
But he wouldn’t have followed her into that bookstore if it hadn’t been for the first outside-of-the-club experience they’d shared. Which had occurred when he’d been helping Gideon with security needs. As he drew in and released the smoke, watching it curl toward the ceiling, he went back in his head to review that night, even knowing reliving it wasn’t going to help the situation.
It was far more likely to make this need growing in his gut worse.
A few weeks ago…
Wolf paused in the doorway of Club Atlantis’s security office. Stan, rocking back on the axis of a creaky black chair, glanced his way.
“She left the alley about ten minutes ago,” the guard said. He pointed to one of the screens he was monitoring. “Stopped by before she headed out there. Told me not to worry if she wandered out of camera range, that she’d be fine. Soon as she did, I stepped out, but I didn’t see her. I radioed Gideon, and he said he’d handle it. I guess you’re how he’s handling it.”
Wolf didn’t smile. “Yeah. I’ll handle it.”
Despite extra precautions to make the club and its surroundings safe, there were always those who would insensibly push the boundaries. Like meandering aimlessly in and around the neighboring warehouses after dark.
Truth, on a normal night, there weren’t a lot of problems. This section of Atlanta’s industrial district wasn’t the same crime magnet as other places in the city. However, it was Wolf’s experience that predators were always drawn to prey.
He should know. He was one of the predators.
He stepped out into the alley, letting the door close behind him. Stan hadn’t known which direction she’d gone, but he didn’t have Wolf’s vampire senses. Ella’s scent was a distinct combination of cinnamon and caramel. Wolf left the alley, turned north and found her, sitting on a stack of empty pallets on a loading dock.
A hollow metallic sound drew his gaze to a mobile made of Pepsi cans. They hung from the tin roof overhang. Probably the result of a moment of idleness, a whimsy an indulgent manager had allowed to remain.
Ella was reaching up, trailing her fingers along the bottom trio of cans, creating that music.
&
nbsp; James, the normal head of security, was on an unprecedented vacation to New Orleans. Anwyn, the owner of Club Atlantis, had bullied him into it, since he hadn’t taken time off since he started working for the club. In James’s absence, Gideon was taking care of security.
Gideon was Anwyn’s servant, a marking that had happened very soon after she’d been turned into a vampire. Since then, Gideon’s responsibilities at the club had been increasing. Therefore, with his hands full, he’d called for Wolf’s help on this one.
Like the rest of the human world, most of the staff at Club Atlantis didn’t know about the existence of vampires, much less that their employer and a staff Dom were one. However, since Gideon did, he’d known who to call as his most effective tracker.
And once you find her, you can help me hold her down to inject a GPS chip in her ass.
Wolf’s lips quirked at the memory. It wasn’t a problem for him; he didn’t have a session for another hour, so he could handle this task while Gideon juggled other ones.
Ella’s hand drifted back to her lap, settled. Her hair was down, miles of dark curls. As he approached, he saw she’d been using her other hand to comb one thick curtain of it alongside her face in a meditative way.
“I know it’s you,” she said, without looking his way. “Wolf, who moves so silent. The absence of sound still makes a noise, have you noticed?” She turned the side of her face hidden behind her hair toward him, then tilted her head to reveal a half smile. “Look, I’m Cousin It.”
Her Southern accent couldn’t be mistaken for anything but small-town Deep South. For him, it resurrected images of lemonade on the porch in summer. Grandma fanning herself with the cardboard fan she’d kept from the latest revival.
Boy, you’re a big, handsome one. You’ll make something of yourself, if you don’t let that go to your head. Don’t ever let your head get ahead of God.
