by Lilia Moon
I feel so very ready now I want to leap out of my skin. Except for the part where I’m a lazy pile of boneless contentment. I have the woman watching me with an amused smirk on her face to thank for that. She’s done what every good Dom sets out to do—she’s shut down my head. I run my hand down her ribs, hoping what lives inside can feel my touch and my aching gratitude.
Her fingers slide up to join mine. “I want to listen to the music that was playing again. Sometime when you’re not trying to drive me crazy.”
That’s an easy one. “You can have the live version if you want.”
“Both.” She grins. “I’m greedy, and there are a few parts that are kind of seared into my memory.”
I lost track of the music by her second orgasm. “Like what?”
She hums a few bars that are an impressively good rendition of the bridge in a piece that is all about thunder and lightning and what happens after the rain. It’s also the last track of the album. Her ears should have been hopeless goo at that point. “I can’t believe you heard that well enough to remember it.” I shake my head into her hair. “You were supposed to be thoroughly distracted by then.”
“Of course I was listening. The music is you.” She smiles into my shoulder. “Those bars are when my hair tie broke.”
The accident that gave me a chance to run my fingers into her hair and hold us both as the storm arrived. I hum the bars quietly again, touched right down to my bones. She held my music that tightly, even as she shattered.
Respect. Generosity. Love.
I pick up the blindfold lying on the edge of the bed and scrunch it into my fist. It’s going straight into my new gear bag. The one put together with a certain lady in a sexy red dress in mind.
Chloe wraps her fingers around my closed hand. “That was mean, I’ll have you know. And it’s a poor design.”
I chuckle. “I imagine you can fix that.”
She fingers the elastic, hanging down between my fingers. “I might. Or I might keep this one.” She lifts her head up, pinning me with a look I’m very quickly beginning to recognize. The eye-gaze version of latex pants. “Don’t get rid of it. Or the chaise. I’m oddly fond of both of them, even if they’re badly made for the job.”
The chaise wasn’t remotely made for what I just used it for. “And the body lube?”
She raises a stern eyebrow. “That can go.”
I touch my finger to the tip of her nose. “Yes, ma’am.”
She snorts as I trace a path all the way down to her pussy. “Troublemaker.”
I let a couple of my fingers take a dive into the mess we’ve left there. “Maybe we should give the body lube one last hurrah before we wash it off forever.”
She rolls onto her back, giggling like a teenager. “You break me, you have to keep me.”
I grin. I intend to—and I love that she’s leaving the choice of what happens next up to me. Setting down the reins, letting her Dom pick them back up. I slide my fingers out of her pussy and back up to her belly. Power exchange with Chloe is always going to be heavy on the exchange part. She’ll need it to balance her wild surrender.
Which is fine by me. I’ll buy her all the latex pants she wants, as long as I’m the one who gets to peel them off her.
I stroke my hands over skin sticky with sweat and lube. I don’t want to let even that go. It’s part of the shape and texture of this moment, and I’m not done collecting all the notes.
Because I’m absolutely collecting them. This will head to my cello soon. It’s the only place I know other than a scene to lay down all of who I am, and this deserves to be memorialized.
The afternoon I met the rest of my life.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Eli - Epilogue
It’s the same woman, in the same red dress, waltzing into my club and making my fingers fumble. I shake my head and try to pick back up before I send the band totally off the rails. We have a big audience tonight, and I suspect the vixen who just walked in the door knows that.
Chloe scans her audience, a sexy queen accepting her dues.
She strolls toward me slowly, casually meeting my eyes as she scans the room, but nothing more. Which makes me want to leap off the stage and grab her. Quint smirks in my direction, but I ignore him. I’ve seen him dance to his barmaid’s tune often enough.
Scorpio hits the kind of chords that say she’s changing songs and already told me once, and I shake my head, trying to get the Chloe fog out from between my ears. The lounge laughs, right on cue. Funny Dom.
Dom who had hot, sweaty sex with the vixen in red less than three hours ago and still can’t think straight.
Jackson’s drums are clearly snickering at me, but I don’t care. I throw a jazzy riff into whatever we’re playing and manage not to pump my fists when Chloe grins. She might not be looking, but I’ve learned just how sensitive she is to the right music. One day soon I’m going to have to figure out how to play my cello with my feet. Until then, the recorded stuff will have to do.
Although my hands happen to be available right now.
This time, it’s me who grins. I play a cut-off for the band. When they crash into silence, I play a single note. Repeat it. Follow it up with three more, a climbing minor chord. It doesn’t have quite the timber it does on my cello, but it doesn’t matter.
Those notes are a direct line to Chloe’s heart.
Her entire body softens as she comes to a stop, staring up at me with the kind of look that heads straight into my fingers and sends them soaring. I play my heart back to her in the notes I wrote before I knew she was coming back into my life. Thunder and lightning and the soft rain after the storm.
She will, always and forever, be my soft rain.
Jackson has picked up some kind of quiet, funky rhythm that mimics raindrops down to the ground, and I can see Scorpio and Quint noodling with their fingerboards, trying to find the key to join in. Our audience is murmuring, swaying with the kind of romantic, swooning energy that could only happen at a kink club.
I smile at Chloe, drinking in the easy contentment and the rushing joy of this scene she’s just landed us in. The sexy ones are my domain. Everywhere else, it’s fun to let her play. Especially when I can leak her brain out her ears with just a few notes. I ad lib a bridge and swing back around to the beginning of the piece. Quint and Scorpio come in right on cue, tracing the lines of a melody they’ve only heard once.
Once is enough for musicians of their caliber, especially ones who know what it is to be the lightning and the rain. Quint could probably use this song as a membership test. It’s kinky down to its very last note.
I let the music roll over me, as it’s meant to. And in the center of its swell, I put my heart out into the universe and ask Chloe to see. Her eyes close. She does that often these days. A blindfold of choice. Touching our love at its deepest roots.
I’m working on a new piece. It’s called “Love is Strongest in the Dark”.
My fingers reach the final bars of the section I’ve just taught the band how to play. I’ll bring the whole thing to practice when we’re not holding the hearts of half the lounge in our hands. I let the final notes die out, never taking my eyes off the woman who has walked into far more than my club.
And then I rap out a bunch of quick chords that belong to one of our standards—a raucous rock ’n’ roll cover I can play on autopilot.
Because there is naked truth here tonight—but there is also theater.
Chloe throws back her head and laughs, which turns my cock to steel and demolishes the rest of me. Her head snaps up, and the regal queen is back—along with eyes that say she’s not nearly done messing with me yet.
I hammer a few chords that won’t do the song any harm. Game on, shorty.
Chloe strolls up the three low steps to the stage, an elegant strut that only a woman entirely at home in her sexy skin could pull off. The theater training probably doesn’t hurt, either.
My fingers are still playing, but I have no ide
a if they’re even in the vicinity of the right song. She takes my breath away and scrambles my brains and a whole lot of other parts of my body further south.
Because she will also, always and forever, be my thunder and lightning.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Chloe - Epilogue
He knows so very much about who I am and what I need. Aching softness and playful fire. Balance.
He doesn’t need to ask twice.
I roll my hips as I close the distance to the sexy man behind the keyboard, sending my dress shimmying in a way that should make at least a few people drool. I only care about one, and the hot appreciation in his eyes is fuel for the fire of everything I am.
Which doesn’t mean I intend to go down easy.
I pause beside him, hands on my hips, and strike a pose. Then I lean in, breasts on display right in front of his eyes, and run a light finger around the back of his ear. “Well hello, sexy.”
I know he’s the only one who can hear me, but the audience laughs anyhow, willing to go along with whatever joke I’ve got lined up.
I raise an eyebrow at Scorpio as the musical volume suddenly dims. She shrugs a shoulder at Ari, who’s standing by the sound system.
I grin. It’s always good to have accomplices.
I speak again into the space that’s suddenly not full of ear-splitting sound. “I heard you were playing tonight. Thought I’d come listen.” I slide smoothly into Eli’s lap, with an extra wiggle for the delightfully hard cock waiting for me there. I wrap an arm around his shoulders and kiss his cheek. “Don’t let me get in the way.”
Our audience hoots and hollers like they’re meant to—the subs because it’s always good when someone else is at the front of the troublemaker line, and the Doms because they fully expect Eli will get even.
Just in case he hasn’t figured that one out, there are helpful suggestions from the crowd. The loudest is a voice I recognize. “You need to work on your sub’s manners, Eli.” Harlan tips his head at me and grins. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
Scorpio gives him a look that could strip paint off a rocket, which just causes more hooting and hollering. I notice that nobody bothers to give him suggestions. I grin his way. “I have a couple of special pieces set aside at my store you might like.”
Harlan looks interested. Scorpio looks ready to kill, and I’m at the very top of her list. I run a sexy hand down Eli’s chest. “Lace is a nice look for a cock, don’t you think?”
Scorpio doubles over laughing, which probably means I won’t get stabbed tonight.
Eli growls in my ear, but he’s far too amused to be taken seriously. And far too aroused. I grind into the hardness pushing up into parts of me that are already getting expectantly slick.
Eli palms a breast with one hand and fists my hair with the other.
I whimper. That’s my kryptonite and he knows it.
He speaks loudly enough for the audience hanging on our every word. “Do you know what happens to subs who interrupt their Doms, shorty?”
Some wisecracker in the audience pipes up. “Is that what she’s named your cock, Eli?”
I’m smart enough not to laugh, but Quint isn’t. Eli plays the opening bars to Rocky one-handed on his keyboard and the man on second guitar manages to quiet himself. Mostly.
Jackson, in an act both brave and stupid, picks up the Rocky beat.
Eli switches to the theme from Star Wars.
I shake my head and pick up his hand, plunking it back on my breast. “Focus, Sir.”
He growls, even though I can feel his ribs shaking. “There must be some kind of impact play you haven’t made a hard limit.”
We’ve never had a formal discussion about that, but I know my man. “Any kind that lands on your ass is just fine, Sir.”
The shaking in his ribs gets perilously close to a seizure. “I’m thinking it’s time for you to learn to play the keyboard, sweetheart.”
That’s totally not in the script, but Eli has always been good at improv. I helpfully place my hands on the keys.
He wraps his arms around mine and plays the opening bars to “These are a Few of my Favorite Things.” Which happens to be literally the only song I know how to play, courtesy of a really awful stint skipping through the theatric hills of high school as a music-loving nun.
I wince. “I’m not sure that’s a really appropriate song for the club, Sir.”
I hear his evil grin, even though I can’t see it. “Oh, I’m sure our audience can help you with some new words.”
The audience suggestions ramp up to outrageous in two seconds flat. I ignore them. There’s no way he’s done. Eli’s evil comes in layers.
His cock grinds up into my ass crack, and his next words are full of Dom glee. “You might want to get started. You don’t get to come until you have three verses with club-appropriate lyrics.”
I squirm as he gives my nipple the kind of tweak that makes my clit sing. “Do they have to rhyme, Sir?”
He chuckles as his hand moves to my other breast. “They do now.”
I lean into his fingers, needing the touch, even if it will make me crazy. “You’re going to make me regret this, aren’t you?”
His next words are quiet and heartfelt and meant just for me. “No, shorty. Not ever.”
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Chloe
I hold up the pants and make a face at Ari. “The quality of these is total garbage.”
She snickers. “I know. Which is why you’re making my next pair, but first you need to get the vibe, so we’re here playing dress-up. Quit looking under the covers.”
It’s an occupational hazard, but she has arranged for us to be here at the crack of dawn when no other self-respecting people in latex are awake. Which lets me poke and prod at things without some worried shopkeeper breathing down my neck.
Yes, I recognize the irony.
Ari scoops up a vinyl bustier that looks like it might crack if I breathe too hard, a pair of pants that match, and a neck collar that actually looks fairly well made. She eyes my feet and heads for the boots in the corner. “Size?”
Seven, although I’m pretty sure it won’t matter. My ankles feel broken just looking at the display rack. When you aren’t very big, you have to own your size, not strap five-inch heels on the bottom. That’s just a good way to get a nosebleed. I walk up beside her and take down the pair least likely to cause me permanent brain damage. “Anything else before I head in there and try to sausage myself into those pants?”
She grins. “Everyone needs to have the sausage experience at least once.”
Not my clients. “I started making lingerie so I’d never have to do this again.”
Ari giggles. “You’re really grumpy before you’ve had coffee.”
“Yes, she is,” says a dry voice from behind us.
I turn, dragged around by the scent as much as the sexy man holding the coffee cups. “You’re my hero.”
He chuckles and hands one over. “That’s not what you said last night.”
I roll my eyes. Last night he proved just how much of a sadist he can be with nothing but feathers and an innocent looking glove.
He neglected to mention that the glove had teeth. Thousands of them, pinpoint sharp. Dom sandpaper. My skin might never be the same again, which will make the whole sausage process this morning even less fun than usual.
I pick up the pile of vinyl one-handed, cradling my precious coffee in the other. “I’ll be out in a minute.”
Ari strikes a pose that has Domme written all over it. “If you don’t come out, I’m coming in to get you.”
Eli grins. “I’ll follow her in to watch.”
I shake my head. Morning brings out my inner grump. It brings out Eli’s immature delinquent. Who, I have to admit, my inner grump kind of enjoys.
Ari swings into a chair that’s padded in the same cheap vinyl as the items in my hand. “Pro tip, put the pants on before the boots.”
That doesn’t des
erve an answer. I swing into the tiny excuse for a dressing room, having fun despite myself. I don’t get to play the grump with people who thoroughly don’t care and find me amusing very often. If I pulled this stunt with Mandy, she’d have heart palpitations for a week. I take a huge swig of coffee, gird my loins, and stick one foot into the pants. Which plants me headfirst into the wall. Vinyl doesn’t slide. At all.
“Oh, yeah.” Ari’s voice is laced with schoolgirl giggles. “Also, sit down before you put the pants on.”
I take another swig of coffee. “The next corset I make for you is going to have strangulation ties.” I’m not exactly sure what those are, but they sound dire.
“Nope.” She sounds totally unconcerned. “Breath play is a hard limit.”
Threatening Ari is like trying to convince rain it’s scared of getting wet. “I’ll make it puke green and festooned with polka dots.”
This time it’s Eli who laughs. “That one landed. Nice one, shorty.”
My main cheerleader. I look at the pants, now mostly slicked on, in disgust. “I’m not coming out in these.”
Ari sticks her head through the dressing room curtain. “Nice bra. Now you see the issues with the pants, yeah?” Eli’s head pops in above hers. He takes one look at the pants and makes a face.
I wiggle my sausage-shaped ass his way. “Want me, darling?”
He doesn’t even pause. “Yes.”
I shake my head at their reflected grins in the mirror.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
Eli
The pants are hideous, but I don’t care. The glint of fun in Chloe’s eyes is worth every bit of what I had to give up this morning.
She doesn’t bother trying to kick either of us out. She runs her hands over the pants instead. “I saw the issues before I did the sausage dance. Poorly sized, no give, and the cut is styled after a prepubescent boy.”
“Exactly.” Ari nods and hands in another pair. “These are the high-end, latex version. They’re not quite so awful.”
Chloe’s hands are testing and tugging. “The cut is better, and the latex has some stretch, but not enough.” She looks at Ari. “There has to be a blend available that will give the look of latex with the give to flatter more figures.”
