Disciplined By The Dom (Club Volare)

by Cox, Chloe

  “What does that feel like, Catie?”

  She licked her lips. “Good.”

  “The pain?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “Confusing. Like being tossed back and forth, and there’s no more…”

  She had been about to say no more room for lies. It felt like it. If she let herself fall into the sensation completely, she’d lose the strength to keep up the façade, and then she’d just be herself—who knows what she’d say. She realized that part of her wanted to confess, wanted to be known for what she was, and it terrified her, but the added danger heightened the physical sensation. She shook her head and said only, “It feels good.”

  She could feel him watching her. She kept her eyes half-lidded, trying to regain control of herself. Already she was becoming accustomed to the sensations, already she was learning to ride them, rather than be ridden by them.

  “Catie,” he said, and she looked up. He was watching her. That look…it felt like he could see through her, every time.

  He can’t, Catie. Get a grip.

  “Clasp your hands behind the back of the chair.”

  She released her grip on the bottom of the chair, surprised to find she’d been holding on to it so hard, and did as instructed. It stretched her back, moving her breasts a little and pulling at her nipples. She sighed, and she thought she saw him grin.

  Jake moved over to the white box again, and this time came around behind her chair. She heard him come close, and then there was a swath of black across her eyes.

  A blindfold.

  “Where did you grow up?” he asked. He tied the blindfold tightly.

  “California.”

  “What did your parents do?”

  “My dad is—was—a real estate agent.”

  “Was?”

  His questions were coming rapid fire, and it was hard to think about anything other than what he might be planning to do next—not being able to see put her on high physical alert, draining her mental defenses. She struggled.

  “He doesn’t do that anymore.”

  “What does he do now?”

  Her tone grew sharp and brittle, like a blade of glass. “I don’t know.”

  There was a pause. A silence, more like. She wondered if she could call “red” for the questions alone. She didn’t want to, she didn’t want the session to end, and yet she didn’t…

  She didn’t want to be thinking about this.

  When he finally spoke, his tone was gentler. “And your mother?”

  “Dead.”

  “Ah.”

  ‘Ah?’ ‘Ah?’ What the hell did that mean? Catie felt the first stirrings of anger. She was sitting blindfolded in a chair with her chest exposed, her nipples clamped, her hands clasped behind her back, and Jake was—

  His voice split her thoughts.

  He said, “Spread your legs.”

  Her belly tightened involuntarily, and her mind stopped thinking about anything other than what was coming next. Slowly, she remembered it had been a command. She spread her legs, blind to what was in front of her. All she could hear was her own rapid breathing.

  Then she felt him—more than heard him—kneel between her legs. She couldn’t be certain until his hands came to rest on her knees and began to push slowly up her thighs. Her mind went right back into overdrive, and for a moment, she panicked that she would lose control.

  “Sir—”

  His hands stopped and squeezed her legs gently.

  “You do not have to be afraid. I will take care of you, if you will let me.”

  But that was the problem: she did have to be afraid. She had to be terrified. She couldn’t let him take care of her, not without feeling terrible, not without betraying him even more completely, and not without risking…

  “Just tell me the truth.”

  And his hands resumed their advance up the length of her legs, scrambling her thoughts once again.

  “What did you want to be when you grew up?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” he said, and his thumbs reached down the insides of her thighs and hooked under the hem of her skirt. “What did you dream of being when you were little?”

  Each beat of her heart, perfectly in time as his hands slipped a little farther, pushing her skirt up her legs and defining a new border—a border she desperately wanted him to cross.

  “A Roman general,” she said, blushing immediately. She hadn’t meant to say that. It was completely, one hundred percent true, but it was also so ridiculous that she had never told anyone.

  There was a pause.

  “Really?” he said. “Why?”

  She nodded, blushing furiously. “Yes. I read about them. In my dad’s study, there were these fake leather bound books. I mean the leather was fake, not…They were always so smart and wily, and then they came home, and they were heroes, even if only for a little while. They’d earned it. At least the ones who made it into the books.”

  “Well,” he said, pushing her skirt up to her waist, “some of them. The Romans didn’t necessarily share all of our values, but they believed in rewards and punishment. As do I.”

  Catie had been prepared to feel completely humiliated by that admission, by that profoundly weird insight into her strange mind and lonely childhood, and waited for it to arrive. When it didn’t—when no embarrassment was forthcoming, when she didn’t feel completely foolish—she realized it was because he’d made it seem…interesting.

  She was on the verge of thanking him when she felt his hands on her thighs again. She stopped breathing when she felt him pull her underwear away and heard the snip of a pair of scissors. He was cutting her underwear off of her. Soon she’d be completely helpless, completely unable to hide, and then she might lose everything. And she didn’t have the strength to tell him to stop, because she wanted him, again, wanted whatever he wanted to do to her.

  “Please,” she said, and it sounded almost like she might cry. “Please, no more questions.”

  His hands gripped the back of her buttocks and pulled her suddenly forward, near the edge of the seat.

  “You’re afraid,” he said. “I told you not to be afraid.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  She felt his lips on the skin of her inner thigh. She’d never had a man talk to her while he was down there, never even imagined how that would be, had always just closed her eyes and took the physical sensation for what it was. It had never been so intimate as it was in a fake interrogation room with a man who had blindfolded her. A man who she had to hide from. A man whose last name she didn’t even know.

  “I’m afraid if you know me, you won’t…”

  But she couldn’t finish.

  “Tell me your name,” she begged.

  He didn’t speak, but covered her clit with his mouth. She recoiled from the sudden intensity, overwhelmed, her circuits blown. He held on to her and pulled her closer, and with a jerk, he pushed her chair back until it was balanced on two legs, angling her up to him, his one hand holding it steady in the back. How strong was he? His questions had come fast and hard, had been meant to disorient her, knock the truth out of her, and now his tongue came slow and strong, meant to coax…what? The question rose to the surface in her mind, fringed with panic, and then was sucked back down, obliterated by the sensation of his tongue lathing in tender circles around the border of her most sensitive area.

  Her fingernails dug into her own skin as she fought not to bring her hands around, to grip the hair on his head and pull him into her. She wasn’t physically bound, but she could not move. She didn’t understand it. She didn’t understand anything that was going on inside her body, and when she felt the first rumblings of an orgasm barreling towards her, again her first instinct was to fight it or flee or something. She couldn’t lose control, couldn’t…

  But she did.

  He tore it out of her, relentless, sucking on her clit unti
l she came for him, screaming, again.

  Something clanged, and a jolt rocked her body, pulling the clamps at her nipples harder. It took Catie a moment to realize it was her chair, coming back to rest on the ground. She had been fully prepared to accept that it was internal, an aftershock, some other new thing. The clamps were gently removed and her nipples began to fill with a rush of blood. She whimpered slightly from the pain of it, the way a leg hurts when it’s been asleep, and then her blindfold was removed and she saw Jake kneeling between her legs, his thumbs pressing softly into her nipples, massaging them slowly.

  “You’ve done very well,” he said.

  “At what?” she mumbled. She still quivered, her knees shaking against his ribs.

  He smiled.

  “So far I’ve discovered how you react to various stimuli and peppered you with exploratory questions in a way designed to disorient so you could not lie. You did very well, Catie. I will be able to train you.”

  Now she opened her eyes fully and tried to sit up straight, but she couldn’t get the proper leverage with her hands still clasped behind her back. Instead she glared at him with the aggression of a woman who is overcompensating.

  “Why do you think I would lie?” she demanded.

  Jake’s eyes held her own, but seemed, for a moment, far away. She needed him to be close to her and she needed to hide from him all at once, and because it was impossible, she felt herself starting to get angry.

  “Everybody lies,” he said, and rose.

  She had no answer for that.

  He reached down to cup her cheek and tilt her face up to his. “If I had asked you if you enjoyed bondage, I am not sure you would have been truthful, even to yourself. You think you like to fight. And you do, at times. But you also have kept your hands clasped behind your back this entire time, without the aid of physical restraint. We have learned something new.”

  Catie forgot to be angry for a moment, and instead was bewildered. She had. She still was.

  “You may release your hands now.”

  She brought them back quickly to her lap and found that they were trembling. Jake had been inside her head again. Despite her best efforts, despite the fact that she had her own job to do, despite everything that made it a terrible idea. He’d been inside her head because she’d let him in. Burning with recrimination, she pulled her skirt back down and moved to close her shirt.

  “No,” he said sharply. “Leave it open. I like to look at you.”

  Catie paused. No, she hesitated. There was a moment where her hands hung in the air, and they could go either way, when she was deciding whether to obey. It was only that he had come so close to her again, had been inside her, even if he hadn’t…

  No, she could do this. She let her hands fall to her sides and felt herself begin to flood with warmth again, even so soon after coming for him.

  His thumb brushed her cheek, a gesture of approval, and without thinking, she turned and took it into her mouth. She sucked on it and let her tongue slide over it before nipping it with her teeth.

  She heard his intake of breath as she let his thumb go and she looked up at him, feeling somehow triumphant. He was rigidly motionless, his face on fire.

  Stiffly, he said, “There is one last question.”

  chapter 8

  “Who would you call if you were in trouble?” Jake asked.

  Catie blinked. She must have misheard.

  “What?”

  “Who would you call if you were in trouble? If you needed help—if something went wrong here. Someone you could trust to come to your aid, no matter what the situation,” he said.

  He was still looking at her. Catie wanted to look anywhere else but up at him. She cast about wildly, looking for something, anything. She thought she had been prepared for his questions, she thought she could rely on her improvisation skills, but now her mind was blank. It wouldn’t allow her to think about this. Her eyes fell on the black box, still on the table, and she almost wanted to cry with relief.

  “You said I could choose a card from the box if I couldn’t answer,” she said, her words coming very quickly. “I choose the box. I’ll choose a card.”

  “No.”

  His fingers threaded through her hair, and she remembered the last time they’d been together and looked over at the table, wondering. But he wanted her to look at him.

  “Not for this question. This question, you must answer.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You must.”

  “You can’t make me.”

  She cringed. She hadn’t meant to sound like a child. She hadn’t meant to be reminded of her own pathetic situation. Volare was an escape from that, it was her way out, it was a place where she could be someone else, not the poor little rich girl who wasn’t rich anymore and whose family didn’t give a shit about her.

  That was it. She wasn’t just drawing a line in the sand. She didn’t want to answer because she knew the answer, and it was terrible.

  “Catie,” he said softly.

  She looked back up at him again and pretended she didn’t have tears welling up in her eyes.

  “Is it because there isn’t anyone?” he asked.

  He’d know if she lied this time. He’d know, and he’d know she could lie about anything. And yet, admitting it would make it real. She hadn’t thought about how often she lied to herself; about how often she’d pretended that her father was about to come around, that she’d hear from him soon, that it would all turn out to be a mistake. But now someone else had asked. Now Jake had guessed, and she couldn’t lie any longer, not even to herself. She wasn’t a coward. She plunged ahead.

  “Yes,” she said. “There isn’t anyone. I’m alone.”

  He looked at her for what felt like a long time. Several times, she thought he was about to say something, but he never did. He just stood there, stroking her cheek, smoothing her hair, watching her with eyes that had gone soft.

  Finally, he said, “Thank you for telling me, Catie. I will arrange for something. Stay here. I will be back shortly.”

  And he walked out of the room.

  Catie was slightly stunned. She didn’t pretend to know so much about Volare and the rules and expectations surrounding a training session, but she knew people, and she knew he shouldn’t have left. He’d just made her answer all these questions, he’d just made her answer that question, he’d made her come again—he shouldn’t leave her. He should…

  Well, what did she want from him? He’d said he didn’t get attached. He wasn’t “built” that way. But then he got so close to her, so close to something hard and sensitive deep inside her, a place where she was bruised all over, something she’d been able to block out, emotionally, until he came along and demanded access to it. Something he made more real by asking those questions. No, she didn’t have anyone. She was alone. No one wanted her. Thanks for pointing it out.

  And now the person she’d felt closest to was someone who said he wouldn’t get attached. Someone who left her here, after all that.

  “Screw this,” she said, and dressed herself.

  She felt her old defenses growing back, like a scab. She had to remember why she was here. It helped to think of it as a tactical diversion, part of a larger strategy. What would a Roman general do?

  She eyed the room critically. She might as well learn something.

  That’s when she saw his jacket, still hanging on the back of his chair. Even if she wasn’t worth anything to anyone else, she could prove she was worth something. She could do what she came here to do: file her story and support what remained of her family.

  She walked over to it, and hesitated for just a moment. Even with everything that had just happened, even with the way he’d refused to tell her his name, even with everything she needed to do to save her grandmother, there was something in her that was repelled at the idea of going through a man’s wallet.

  “Get over it, creampuff,” she said, and rifled quickly through the pockets.<
br />
  It was a simple, fine leather wallet, but expensive. She could tell from the quality of the leather. But she could tell he was rich from the suit he was wearing today, and from the fact that his clothes were always tailored. Many of the members of Volare had money; it was no surprise.

  His name, however, was a surprise. A shock, in fact.

  She read off of his driver’s license twice. Then she read it again.

  “That Jacob Jayson?” she said aloud.

  “Yes,” Jake said behind her. “That Jacob Jayson.”

  Oh shit.

  Oh. Shit.

  Slowly, she turned. There was no point in hiding what she’d been doing. She was still holding his wallet and his driver’s license. And he’d heard her say his name. His name that he very obviously wanted to protect, and for very good reason.

  Jake—Jacob—stood in the middle of the doorway, his hand still resting on the doorknob. His face had lost all expressiveness, which was somehow worse. She expected him to be angry, upset, betrayed. She could have responded naturally to that, could have fought back. Could have reacted, could have improvised. But he surveyed her with the cold calculation of a machine, and now she knew what it was really like to be lonely in this room. The anger she’d felt when he’d left flooded in to fill the vacancy.

  “You wouldn’t tell me,” she said. “It wasn’t fair. You had just asked me…you had just demanded that I tell you things that were so private, and you wouldn’t even tell me your name. How could I trust you?”

  He was silent.

  “You deserved it,” she said hotly.

  At the snap of her words Jake’s head tilted back, as though he’d been struck, and a flicker of human emotion lit up his face. Catie was afraid to move, to speak, to breathe, for fear of what that emotion would be. She herself was torn between righteous indignation at the fact that he really did deserve it, and guilt because, well, that’s not the only reason she’d done it. And then Jake stepped forward, and she saw him more clearly. She saw that he was lit up with…