by Smith, Maren
“That was one of his things, wasn’t it?” Carlson guessed, watching her closely.
She lifted one shoulder. “He was the Menagerie Master,” she hedged. “We all had to be something.”
“And you picked puppy?”
“No, he did. He picked everything.”
“And you just did it, whether you liked it or not?”
Her eyebrows quirked in confusion as she poked at her corn. “It could have been worse, I guess. I could have been Piggy.”
Something he couldn’t quite read flashed in her eyes and then was gone. “What are you thinking about?” he asked.
She shook her head, picked up a forkful of corn and let it fall off the tines again. “Nothing fattens a pig like corn.”
Carlson put his sandwich down. He’d just taken a bite, which left him chewing to clear his mouth enough so he could call her on the disgusting implication that she was a pig. It turned out to be a good thing, because he was still trying to clear his mouth when she shifted in her chair, shook her head again, and said, “It’s something he used to say.” Scooping another forkful of corn, she let it dribble off the tines again. “Eating this used to be a punishment. Not for me,” she said quickly, sneaking a glance his way. “For Piggy. Whenever she did something he didn’t like, he’d tighten her harness until it was cutting into her, it was so tight. Then he’d say, nothing fattens a pig like corn, and he’d make her eat can after can of this until she threw up.”
Carlson sat frozen in his chair, fighting hard not to show how furious and appalled that made him.
“Nobody made him mad like Piggy. Everything she said, he’d say she was challenging his authority. As far as his punishments went, this was one of the ones we’d hope for. If he was really mad, he’d make her sit in a mud wallow. Except it wasn’t, really. It was worse than that. It was like a composting puddle, filled with manure, rotting vegetables, and decomposing grass and leaves. It smelled horrid, and no matter how much she scrubbed, the smell stayed on her for days.”
“Did that ever happen to you?” Carlson heard himself ask. Try though he did to mask his fury, his voice came out strained enough for even her to notice.
Glancing up at him, she shook her head. “Only Piggy. He punished each of us in different ways. Whatever we hated the most, that’s what we’d get.”
The man deserved everything he got in prison. More than that, he’d better pray Carlson never met him face to face.
“I can’t believe you’d subject yourselves to that.” Angry with Ethen and now annoyed with himself for sounding as if he blamed her for what she’d been subjected to, he took her fork away from her. “Eat all your sandwich. You don’t have to eat the corn.”
Puppy stared at him. “He was the Master. We did whatever he told us to.”
“Is that the kind of relationship you want?” He flipped the page in the contract so he could check that section for himself. She’d written in service submissive, but in his experience that could mean anything and it usually took a lot of talking and a lot of honesty to delve beneath what a submissive said and what they actually expected when they gave themselves that label.
“Not really,” she surprised him by admitting. “In the beginning it was different, though. It was fun experimenting, you know… before he changed. I liked some parts, like the positions we used to have to practice before bed every night. I used to fantasize about that sort of thing, back when I was younger and reading the Gor books.” She flicked him a guilty glance, as if unsure how proper it was for her to complain. When he said nothing, she shyly offered, “I think I maybe like the idea of submission more than I actually like being submissive.”
Taken aback, he asked, “Why do you think that?” Because that was honestly not the vibe he was getting from her. He didn’t think she was a service submissive, but she absolutely was a submissive.
“It used to be fun, but…”
When she petered off into a shrug, he said, “Maybe it stopped being fun because it was taken in a direction you didn’t enjoy.”
“Or maybe I’m just broken,” she muttered, picking at her sandwich. “Maybe I don’t know what I want, or I’m too picky, or incapable of being happy—”
Carlson pushed his chair back, silencing her next ‘or’ mid-vowel when he took her wrist and drew her up behind him. Keeping his touch deliberately light, giving her plenty of chances to pull away if she wanted to, he led her across the living room and down the short hall to his office. Leaving her standing at his desk, he opened up the closet where he kept his secondary playbag.
Unzipping it on his desk, he dug through the contents, withdrawing a vibrating wand first and, watching her face startle, then a package of clothespins. Leaving her staring at both, he moved his secondary playbag out of the way. She was picking her fingers when he turned back.
“Questions, comments, concerns?” he asked.
Her cheeks tinged pink. “I thought you, um… said sex was, um…”
“Off the table?” Circling the desk back around to her side, he sat down on the edge with feet braced apart and hands cupped in his lap. “It is. It’ll continue to be off the table too, until such a time as I feel I know you, your likes and dislikes, as well as your hard and soft limits well enough to proceed without the fear of consent violations.”
She fidgeted with her fingers. “Oh.”
Though she averted her eyes to the floor, he still saw it when her eyebrows beetled in and worry tinged her expression.
He tipped his head, trying to read her better. “I saw in your papers that sex is something you would be willing to explore.”
Her cheeks pinkened and her head came up. She tried to smile, but it wasn’t a good mask for her embarrassment. “You don’t have to have sex with me if you don’t want to. I wasn’t saying that at—”
“Not wanting to,” he stressed, “is not the issue, honey. What is a problem, at least for me, is my submissive feeling like she’s nothing more than a booty call. I want to know what your needs are, so I can make sure I’m meeting them. I want to get to know you as a person, and frankly, I want you to know me too.”
“Oh,” she said again, the set of her shoulders easing a bit.
“I’m going to learn a lot about you when I read through what you wrote in the negotiation. So, before we get started, how about I tell you a little about me? I identify most strongly on the domestic discipline side of the BDSM spectrum,” Carlson said, not waiting for her reply. “I am what is called Head of Household. I make decisions based on what I feel works best for my household. I am a provider. In fact, I would say I identify most strongly in that one aspect over all the others. I am driven to provide whatever’s missing.”
And in that instant, he felt the click of why he felt so driven to help her. From the moment when she’d seated herself at his table and he’d taken her hand, he’d felt the subconscious draw. He’d never met anyone who needed as much as she did. Guidance, reassurance, self-confidence, and comfort—she needed all of it.
“I’m not a Daddy-Dom,” he cautioned. “I’m absolutely not a sugar daddy, either. What I’m looking for is a submissive who both needs and wants the kind of Dom I am, and I want to fulfill her needs in a way that also fulfills mine. Can I be a hard-ass sadist at Black Light, sure. I can tie you down with the best of them, gag you and go to town with flogger, paddle, cane, or crop. I can hit your clit or nipple with the tip of a signal whip without any problem at all. I can send you flying into subspace or reduce you to tears, and I can do it in a matter of minutes or I can take all night. But if you’re looking for someone who can do that 24/7, then you’re not going to be happy with me, because that’s not who I am. So”—he gestured to her—“who are you?”
She looked at him, a deer caught in the headlights. She didn’t even know.
“That’s all right,” he told her softly. “Let’s find out together. You have full use of your safeword from this point forward. It will be my discretion if we need to stop to talk it out, or s
top altogether. Are you comfortable giving me that level of trust, or would you rather all play just stop the minute you use it?”
She picked at her fingers, her eyes still wide, still very much a deer in the headlights. “I can trust you.”
Neither her expression nor her tone held a single note of trust. Considering what he’d read in the papers someone at the club—he suspected Spencer—had slipped him, plus what he’d found regarding the trial on the internet in his searches at home, it would have been more surprising if he thought she did trust him. Trust had to be earned. The groundwork of that would start today.
“Can I trust that you will use your safeword if you need to?” he countered. “You won’t hold it in for fear of upsetting me, or because you think you can take it, no matter what?”
She fidgeted, wearing away at her nails one torn keratin splinter at a time until, with a tight nod, she said, “Yes, Sir. I promise.”
Determined to take her at her word, he nodded too. “Take off as much of your clothes as you feel comfortable removing.”
She looked from him to the vibrating wand, and then down at herself. And then she surprised him. Stepping out of her shoes, she got naked. He’d thought, considering what he knew of the abuse she’d gone through, she might only remove her top if given the choice, and he was prepared for that. A sub didn’t have to be naked for him to use the vibrating wand on her. He knew where a clit was and how to find it through jeans. Likewise, a sub stripped down to jeans and a bra still provided a lot of useable canvas for him to apply clothespins to—the biceps, the fingers and webbing in between, not to mention all the tender pinches of skin along the forearms.
Oh yes, he could have made partial nudity work just fine. But naked would always be better, and Puppy naked very quickly hit the top of his preferential list. Folding each article of clothing as she removed it and setting them in a neat pile beneath the desk so they wouldn’t become a tripping hazard, she stood before him just as if she were equally comfortable being naked as she was clothed. Back at Old Ebbitt Grill, she had tried to cover herself, but that was a different situation. He’d been newer to her then. Also, he’d been about to punish her, and most submissives found that to be incredibly difficult to get through on its own.
Puppy stood before him now with her hands at her sides, her back straight, her chin up, and her eyes staring down. Her brown hair looked windblown, from however long she’d been sitting on the library steps waiting for him, and she was thin. Too thin. But given time and a few healthy pounds, he could easily see how the loveliness of her would become absolute beauty.
Pushing off the edge of his desk, he went to his playbag long enough to retrieve a hairbrush and an unused hair tie out of his stash. It was amazing how many long-haired submissives came to Black Light aching for a flogging and yet unprepared to receive one. Being prepared was something he was good at, and it certainly served him well right now.
She stood obediently frozen while he gently brushed the tangles out of her hair and then gathered the long mahogany tresses into a ponytail. He let his hands rest on her bare skin, caressing her from the sides of her neck to the curves of her shoulders. Her head bowed and she shivered. He liked that. Even more, when he circled back around to stand before her again, the tips of her nipples had tightened into buds so pert that his mouth ached to taste them.
“I would like to touch your breasts. Do I have your consent to do that? I want you to say no if you’d rather I didn’t.”
She looked at her breasts just before she nodded.
“Use your words, honey. I need to hear you say it.”
She swallowed hard. “Yes, Sir. Please… touch m-my breasts.”
He reached for her, watching close for the first sign of panic and seeing only the wonder, the catch of an uncertain breath when he let his fingers brush along the outer curve of her left breast. His thumb passed across the tightly perked nipple. He circled it, rolled it gently, plucked, all the while watching that slow flush of pink rise bright across her face. The set of her body melted as that blush of arousal spread all the way down onto her chest.
“These are the hands of a dom who cares for you,” he said, bringing his left hand up to her right breast. He circled her nipples in tandem, loving how her eyes closed, her face tipping upward as her back arched, offering her breasts to him that much more. “These are hands that respect you and will always work hard to protect and defend the trust you’ve put in me.” Letting go of her, he added, “They are also the hands that are about to show you just how not broken you are.”
Turning away, he emptied the bag of clothespins out onto his desk. Filling his pocket, he returned to cup the weight of her left breast in his hand. He bent.
“Remember your safeword,” he said, just before taking the peak of her nipple into his mouth.
Her body and her gasp both melted into the suckling draw of his mouth as he drank in his first taste of her. He loved the sound. Even more, he loved how she closed her eyes, losing herself in the sensation as his lips, teeth and tongue gently played with her. Her breathing turned swift and shallow. Goosebumps broke out along her skin.
“Cold?” he asked.
She shook her head, quick, tight back and forth jerks that meant no.
“Little pinch,” he warned, plucking the tip of her wet nipple into a bud that the first clothespin easily bit down upon.
Her shaky breath ended in the softest mewl of a moan. One she quickly choked off into silence.
He liked the moan. Hearing more of it became his instant goal.
Bowing his head, Carlson closed the heat of his mouth over her other nipple. He suckled that, fiercely now, wrapping his left arm around her waist to hold her steady when her knees buckled. His right hand took command of the clothespin, letting it repeat its blunted bite over and over again as he made love to its twin, licking, kissing, and nipping until all the frozen tension in her body had melted into writhing.
Her hands cupped his head, not to push away, but holding him at her breast right up until he let her nipple go and suddenly she noticed what she’d done. She quickly snatched her hands away.
“I-I’m sorry!” she gasped.
Clipping a clothespin on both nipples now, he took hold of the biting tips, gently applying pressure to increase the nip of pain, bringing her dancing up onto her tiptoes.
“Did I censure you?” he asked pointedly.
“No, Sir,” she gasped.
“Then don’t be sorry.” He released her, and she came down off her toes with a barely muffled moan born in part from relief and in part arousal. From the moment he knelt to plug the wand into the power strip beneath his desk, he caught the unmistakable whiff of feminine desire. “You’re not broken at all, are you?”
Excitement was an electrified wire singing through his veins. He rose, feeling that bite of anticipation in every one of his fingers as he cupped each of her breasts in his hands, molding them in his palms, taking a moment to savor the softness before, one clothespin at a time, decorating them in clips.
She closed her eyes, rolling her lips to muffle the moans, and struggling with the nip of each new clip to keep her breathing slow and steady. In the early days of his domhood, he’d once decorated his forearm in clothespins, just so he’d know what it felt like. Some springs were tighter than others, making the initial bite on some stronger than others. But for the most part, they all went on with little more than a nip of sensation. At first. But as the seconds ticked into minutes, those nips turned into bites, and then the bites began to throb. The longer they clung on, the worse that throb became.
He took his time and decorated her in the most beautiful of bites. The lobes of her ears, the slope of her neck. Clothespin after clothespin, he bit at her ribs, her belly, her buttocks, and the quivering softness of her thighs. By the time he was down to his last handful of clips, he knew every one of his nips were fast dissolving into that exquisite ache and throb by how tightly her fists clutched at her sides and how fiercely sh
e squeezed her mouth and eyes shut. She was shaking, but the flush of arousal now stained her breasts and, kneeling as he was before her, he could smell it.
His own arousal wasn’t any less obvious. All she had to do was open her eyes to see it, pushing hard at the confines of his pants where, he was determined, it was going to stay. At least for today.
“I love it when you look at me,” was all he had to say to get her to open her eyes. That look, combined with a caress of her hand along his shaft, and he could easily have come.
Not today, he told himself, reinforcing his determination and locking it down.
“Some touching will be required to make you come. Do I have your consent?”
She startled, her widening eyes and shaky gasp letting him know that reality had just intruded on her pleasure. “I… I c-can’t!” she quavered, panic rising fast in her eyes.
“Can’t let me touch you or can’t come?” he asked, fairly certain he already knew the answer.
“I…” Panic turned to guilt. Caught, she stared at him, which was all he needed to know he was right.
Ethen O’Dowell, rearing his nasty head yet again.
“Please don’t be mad at me,” she whispered, blinking hard against the sudden sheen of tears.
“I’m not mad at you,” he promised. “I just want to ask you a question.”
She swiped her wrist across her cheek, crushing out the first run away tear.
“Do you want your Sir to touch you?”
Swallowing hard, she nodded. “Very much.”
Her admission was as soft as it was guilt-laden. If he ever met Ethen face to face, he was going to knock the man flying. Careful to keep all trace of that quiet anger out of his tone, Carlson asked, “Do you want your Sir to make you come?”
She clutched at her fingers, holding onto them so tightly that her knuckles whitened. She nodded again, her brow buckling in what seemed almost like apology. “Y-yes, please.”
“Then who says you can’t?” He remained on his knees before her, holding the last of the clothespins in his hand while he waited for her to worry through the consequences of her answer.
