He pulled out, halting his own release. He squatted at her feet, eyes on her throbbing pussy. “Is it here?” His probing finger wouldn’t find it, but she used the reprieve to catch her breath. His exploration moved deeper, and she grinned at the image of tattooing her own vagina. Unsuccessful in his hunt, he shifted behind the tower and spread her cheeks.
A ragged laugh burst from her chest. “You must think I’m a contortionist if you’re checking my asshole for ink.”
“Stubborn brat,” he mumbled as he lifted her feet as much as the shackles would allow, bending her toes, checking her soles.
“You’re getting closer.” Not.
He stood, yanked on her hair, probed her scalp, and released her with a huff. “Fuck this. I don’t need to ask. You’re marrying me and that’s that.” He spun and tagged his pants from the floor.
“What are you doing?” Was he done? His erection disagreed.
Tugging something out of his pocket, he held it up to her face, pinched between his finger and thumb. A point-cut diamond caught the dim light, casting a glimmer over her vision. Black curling flames engraved the inside of the silver band. The design mirrored his tat, a symbol of their pasts, their future.
She sucked in a breath. “When?”
He trailed his fingers along her left arm, over the wrist cuff, and interlaced their hands. “I commissioned it while on the plane from New York. It’s been in my pocket for a long time.”
“Why didn’t you give it to me this morning?”
“I didn’t know where my pants were, and I was quite comfortable.” He leaned his weight against her and captured her lips, his tongue rolling with hers in a sensual dance. “Marry me.”
Without waiting for a response, he shifted toward her outstretched arm and uncurled her fingers. The drum in her chest was so loud she was certain he could hear it. With her palm open and facing him, he slid the ring down her finger and stopped.
His lips parted, and their eyes collided. She nodded, floating into his gaze, their dreams, her promise.
A smile blazed over his beautiful face as he looked back at her hand, at the word permanently inked on the inside of her ring finger.
Yes.
The End
About the Author
Pam Godwin lives in the Midwest with her husband, their two children, and a foulmouthed parrot. When she ran away, she traveled fourteen countries across five continents, attended three universities, and married the vocalist of her favorite rock band.
Java, tobacco, and dark romance novels are her favorite indulgences, and might be considered more unhealthy than her aversion to sleeping, eating meat, and dolls with blinking eyes.
Connect with Pam:
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COMFORT OBJECT
ANNABEL JOSEPH
Nell, an out-of-work professional submissive, is desperate to find a job when she meets handsome film star Jeremy Gray at the restaurant where she works. He says he needs a personal assistant, but the work contract he shows her details not organizational duties, but sexual ones. Jobless and homeless, Nell agrees to work for him anyway, on the promise that he will pay for her to finish her college degree when her stint as his “assistant” is complete.
The start of their formal Dom/sub relationship is rocky, but they soon fall into a mutually satisfying, highly sexual routine. They play vanilla boyfriend and girlfriend in public, while Jeremy uses Nell as his kinky comfort object behind the scenes. Then a stalker threatens their secret lifestyle, and their contract may not be strong enough to hold them together.
“Annabel Joseph has once again written an amazingly intense and exhilarating novel. Powerful in presenting the lives of adults living a life imbued in varying levels of BDSM and rich in emotion and drama, Comfort Object is sure to become a favorite read for those who enjoy a book of great depth and substance.”
—Blackraven Reviews
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Annabel Joseph
Cover art by Adrienne Wilder
For Affordable Custom Cover Art visit:
http://cityofdragons.daportfolio.com/about/
* * * *
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All characters depicted in this work of fiction are 18 years of age or older.
Question me now about all other matters, but do not ask who I am, for fear you may increase in my heart its burden of sorrow as I think back; I am very full of grief, and I should not sit in the house of somebody else with my lamentation and wailing. It is not good to go on mourning forever.
—Homer’s The Odyssey, Book 19, 115-120
Chapter One
Mr. Gorgeous
‡
He was beautiful. No, beautiful was not the word for it. He was godlike, breathtaking, astounding, life-changing. I’d been working at the Eden Fetish Club for five years now, and I had never seen a male specimen like this come through the door. He was golden. His faded jeans fit perfectly over his taut, muscular ass, and his black tee concealed a sculpted torso. He was at least six feet two, maybe taller, with wavy dark hair that framed a classically handsome face. Prominent jaw, and the kind of full, sensuous lips that made me think naughty thoughts. His eyes were set deep and communicated an animal sexuality. Even the way he moved reeked of sex. Everyone in the main dungeon, dominant and submissive and undecided, turned to look as he walked by.
He walked around for a while, taking his time, checking people out. He was shopping. Everything ratcheted up. Scenes got louder, harder, more intense. Doms’ voices got more authoritative, subs’ cries and moans grew more heartfelt and deep. He was new, he was unattached, he was shopping, and he was something else. Was he a top? A bottom? Both? Neither? Who cared? Everybody wanted him.
I was getting my ass thoroughly beaten by a client when the stranger’s gaze fell on me. I wondered if he found me attractive at all. I had a nice body, petite and curvy. My heart-shaped ass was a favored target for Eden’s doms. My pussy was waxed bare, and I wore the typical submissive’s uniform at Eden—a skimpy garter belt and a black O-ringed collar at my neck. I had red hair, which helped me stand out in a crowd, but my eyes were probably my best feature. Besides their unusual pale green color, they looked slightly ethnic, slanted and wide set. I could drop my lashes over my eyes or peer up and bat them innocently. I had long ago mastered the pleading, vulnerable look.
I turned them on the new guy and saw a flicker of interest. My “master” for the moment, a regular named Jack, wasn’t too pleased to see my attention wander and tried to regain it by laying the strokes on a little harder with the flogger.
I tried to concentrate on the job at hand, being his devoted slave, because he was paying me to be, but it was difficult. As I writhed and sobbed under Jack’s blows, I knew, guiltily, that I was putting on a show for him. Yes, I wanted him to want me. Beauty was desirable, but oh so rare in clubs like these. Jack, bless his heart, had long since passed his prime. But Jack was a great dominant and a loyal customer, so God, I tried to concentrate on him. I took my job seriously. I really tried to be a great sub to everyone who wanted to play.
When Jack finished with me thirty minutes later, Mr. Gorgeous was still standing there, watching me come down. Everyone else had gone back to their own scenes. It was clear now he’d made his choice. I was his choice. I was a little jittery about it, which was silly, being a professional sub.
Focus, Nell, you idiot. He was not Prince Charming, and I wasn’t Cinderella. I was a professional working at the Eden Fetish Club in Los Angeles,
and what I was looking at was just another job.
Mistress Amelia glowered at me from the corner, where Jack was bending her ear and gesturing at me in annoyance. Her eyes said it all. This better be good. Forget about poor Jack. I’d better convince Mr. Gorgeous that playing at Eden was a lot of fun, that he should come back all the time. Having regular members like him could draw more business, attract more submissive women. There were never enough subs. Mistress Amelia’s cherry red lips pursed into a strict line.
Make it work, bitch.
I walked up to the client and got a noseful of fresh, outdoorsy smell, like he’d spent the day at the beach. He was even more delectable close up. His shoulders were so broad, and his arms had that perfect bulge of muscle… Focus!
I gave Mr. Handsome my best submissive greeting: a sweet, soft murmur with my eyes cast down. Would Master like to spend some time with Little Nell? My only limits were the club’s limits: no fluid exchange and no severe marking or bloodletting. I was available to play publicly, here in the main dungeon, or in one of the private, themed rooms. Schoolroom? Hospital? Boardroom? Harem? Interrogation room? What did Master wish?
Master Gorgeous wished to play privately, he said. Mistress Amelia wasn’t happy about that as I led him toward the hallway, but the themed rooms were there for customers, so what could she say? I asked which of the currently available rooms he wished to play in, and he shrugged and said he didn’t care.
Okay.
I wasn’t sure what that meant, that he had no preference. He only kept staring at me with those eyes that seemed to be weighing, measuring, analyzing more than anything else. They weren’t warm eyes. They were businesslike, in a strange but not a scary way. I’d actually never felt more like a sex worker, although I suppose that’s what I was. I realized then that must have been his fantasy. Pick out a sex worker and dominate her. Cool. I could understand that kink.
I led him to the first open room we came to, the harem, one of my personal favorites. Along with the de rigueur hooks, trestles, benches, chairs, and display of disciplinary tools on the wall, there were piles of pillows, a very cozy sofa, and a massive crimson-canopied bed. I’d cuddled with many a dom after taking a sound whipping on that bed, watching the garish scarves and curtains blow in the breeze of the ceiling fans shaped to look like palm leaves.
Somehow I doubted this dom was into cuddling. Actually, as the door closed behind us and he looked at me, I could tell, with a certainty born of experience, that this gorgeous, staring, studying man wasn’t a dom at all. I was suddenly a little thankful for Joel, the club-appointed chaperone who stood in the shadows to monitor the safety of every private scene I did. I had long since ceased to feel embarrassment around Joel, but feeling thankful for his presence was a totally new thing. What did this guy want? I went down on my knees and waited.
He just looked at me a long while. I finally murmured, “Would Master like me to suggest ways to best make use of my submissiveness?”
“No,” he said tersely.
“I’m yours,” I answered in reply and waited on my knees patiently. He looked over at Joel.
“So the rules apply here too? Privately? No sex?”
“No sex, not with the staff,” boomed Joel from the corner.
Too bad, I thought. He wanted sex, and Lord in heaven knew I wanted to give this man sex. All women should have given this man sex, and probably did. Any woman walking the planet would have given it up for this piece of maleness, so why this rigmarole, why come to a club and try to buy it? Why? Because he wanted kinky sex. Sigh. I wanted kinky sex too. It had been far too long.
What I would have given to take this man’s cock out and take it in my mouth, roll it around on my tongue, and make it hard and stiff and then… I would have taken him anywhere. Anywhere he wanted to stick it, I would have moaned and taken it deep. How long had it been since I’d had good S&M sex, been pushed down and fucked hard and silly and then been beaten and fucked again? After work I was usually too tired, too used-up to troll the straight clubs, and the Eden customers and staff, the only “scene” people I knew, were strictly off-limits to contact off the clock.
I looked at Gorgeous. Did I dare try to meet him later? I’d never attempted anything like that before, but I was so, so fucking horny, and his appraising, level stare and Adonis body weren’t helping to cool me off. I tried to infuse a spark of maybe into the I’m yours in my eyes.
“We’re not allowed to do any type of fluid exchange here, Master.”
To Joel, I hoped it sounded like I was just telling Gorgeous the rules. But I pointedly added the here. I hoped Gorgeous heard it. I think he did, because he glanced at Joel, then walked over to the wall of whips, paddles, and floggers impatiently.
“So what, I can just whip you, huh? What if it gets me off and some fluid exchange just…happens?”
I smothered a smile. “As long as it’s not from penetration.”
“Can I come on you?”
I whispered, “Not here.”
“Where?” he whispered back.
I looked up at Joel pointedly from under my lashes. Gorgeous sighed in frustration and picked up a wicked-looking leather paddle and lifted me from my knees. He walked me to the couch.
“Bend over.”
God, I wanted him to fuck me. I went up on my toes, my stocking-covered legs tensing as I waited. I tried to make my ass look irresistible.
Ow! Fuck. Fuck.
Fuck.
It occurred to me that bulging, golden muscles instead of the typical flabby limbs came at a price. Particularly when those muscles wielded an instrument that already imparted a hearty sting. He rained blows on my ass like a jackhammer, with no moderate warm-up strokes and no pauses to adjust to the pain. I danced from foot to foot and bit my lip hard as the deep, stinging pain suffused my cheeks.
A fucking amateur. Definitely not a dom.
I looked over at Joel in the corner, his arms crossed over his broad chest. Was the fucker smirking? He knew as well as I did when a client didn’t know what he was doing, and this one clearly didn’t. He wouldn’t step in, though, not unless I used my safe word and the client kept going.
And no way was I using a safe word. I needed sex from this man, I really did. But ow!
Jeez, how did these guys get past the front door? Well, I knew how this one got in. His body, his gorgeous face. He was definitely a Los Angeles pretty boy. I wasn’t even sure he was totally straight, although he acted straight and dominant enough. He acted. That was the weird thing. I got the feeling he wasn’t that into what he was doing.
Well, a lot of people came to experiment here in a safe, nonbinding place, to see if the “lifestyle” was for them. If you tied up and beat the shit out of your high school sweetheart and decided it wasn’t for you after all, it was a lot more uncomfortable a situation than finding out by beating on a stranger you’d never see again.
I whimpered and fidgeted as he went to town. It wasn’t an act on my part. It fucking hurt, and soon the fire in my ass reached crisis proportions.
“No severe marking,” I finally said when it looked like Joel wasn’t going to help me out.
“What?” He leaned close to me.
I let the pretense fall away. He knew I knew he wasn’t a dominant. “You’re hitting too hard.”
“I want to see you somewhere outside of here.”
“I’m not supposed to,” I whispered.
He pulled back and landed a few more lackluster blows for Joel’s benefit. “I’ll give you what you deserve, you little slut,” he declared in a stern, faux-dominant voice.
I stifled laughter, turning my head as he leaned down again to whisper in my ear.
“I’ll give you two thousand dollars if you’ll see me tonight at your place.”
I shouldn’t have said yes. I really shouldn’t have. But I heard myself tell him my phone number and that I got off work at two.
*
The rest of the night at work was a blur. I vacillated wildly
between uncontrolled horniness and horror at what I’d done. I finally convinced myself that when he called I wouldn’t answer. But I answered, of course, and I told him where I lived. I called my friend Alexis to let her know what was going on, and then frantically tried to remember whether I had pepper spray in the house. But I didn’t, I knew I didn’t. I was ninety-eight percent sure I wouldn’t need it anyway. I figured Mr. Gorgeous was just a vanilla boy with a little bit of kink inside and nowhere to let it loose. I didn’t get a sociopath vibe from him. No. He wanted something else.
He knocked on my door at two thirty sharp. I had on a nice, tight little fuck-me dress I could shimmy out of quickly, and my naughtiest thong underneath. I tried to look like I wasn’t anxious and wet as hell to see him.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi,” he replied awkwardly. It occurred to me that neither one of us knew what the hell was going on. Okay. I would set some parameters.
“I want to tell you first thing that I made a safe call.”
He looked nervous for a second.
“What’s a safe call?”
“I called a friend to let her know you were here, and that if I don’t call her in the morning, to call the cops. That they would know you at the club.”
“Oh, okay,” he said. “I guess that’s smart. But I have no intention of hurting you or killing you or anything like that.” He half smiled, half smirked at me.
Gorgeous man, he flirted. But he wasn’t a dom. I locked the door and leaned back against it, looking at him expectantly.
“So what is it you want? Because I don’t think you’re really into S&M.”
He met my eyes. Guilty. He smiled self-consciously, but his fingertips reached out to touch my waist and trail down over my hips.
“You can tell? I guess after all this time you know it. How long have you been…working as a sex slave?”
Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire Page 159
