Taming Me

by Alexandrea Weis

  His eyes remained on his menu. “The big deal is you need to be convincing as my new sub. To do that you need to pay attention to what I’m about to say, and remember everything I tell you. You can’t do that when you’re tipsy.”

  Fuming, I did not argue. He had a point, and despite really wanting a glass of wine to calm my nerves, I decided to abide by his wishes.

  When Tim returned with our iced teas, Garrett snatched the menu from my hands. “We’ll have the fried oysters as an appetizer. The lady will have the gnocchi main course, and I’ll have the seared rib-eye filet. Thousand Island on our dinner salads, and a side of oven roasted potatoes.”

  Tim scribbled the order on his pad, took our menus, and left our table.

  My anger was gaining ground. As I sat back in my chair, finding the right words to rip into him, Garrett calmly removed his rolled up white napkin from the plate and spread it on his lap.

  “What I just did is something any Dom worth his weight would do. My job, as a Dom, is to predict your needs and see to them. I am expected to be a protector, teacher, and lover to my sub.”

  “I can order dinner for myself, Garrett. I don’t need you to—”

  “What were you going to order?”

  I squirmed in my chair. Did I have to tell him I had decided on the gnocchi?

  He gazed steadily into my eyes, waiting for my answer.

  “All right,” I confessed, unable to take his continued scrutiny. “I was going to order the gnocchi, but not the oysters. I don’t like oysters.”

  “The oysters are for me.” He grinned, arching an eyebrow. “I may not be the best, Lexie, but I’m very good at what I do. You need to listen to me.”

  Sagging into my chair, I hated the idea of listening to him. However, I really needed this story. I had to just remember that this book would be worth it. Think only of the book.

  “What else?” I grumbled, playing with the silver fork set beside my plate.

  “You’re right. You are a ten-year-old.” He shook his head, took my hand away from the fork, and placed it in my lap. “When we are together at this club, there will be others watching how you interact with me. You have to be convincing. If you’re not, they will get suspicious, and you will never be able to speak with anyone.”

  “What others? Other Doms?”

  “Yes.” His eyes drew together, appearing slightly worried.

  “What do I have to do?”

  “I thought that was obvious. You must do whatever I say.”

  I was between a rock and a hard place. I had to go along. If I wanted to get anywhere, I had to do as he demanded, no matter how much it infuriated me.

  “Just remember that this,” I motioned between us, “is not real. I’m in this for my book and only my book. So don’t think I’m going to wear black leather boots and handcuffs or any of that stuff.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” He sat back and took in the small gathering of diners at the other tables about us.

  Studying his strong profile, I was slightly disappointed that there could not be more. Any other woman would have done everything she could to possess such a man. For me, he was a means to an end. I had given up on finding someone. Instead, I found the relationships I longed for in the men I wrote about in my books. It may not have been very satisfying, but it was a whole lot easier on my heart.

  “When are you going to tell me more about your experiences?” I asked after a time.

  His eyes wheeled back to me. “Where did I leave off?”

  “Ruth, the one you met in college.” I reached for the white linen napkin on my plate. “She made you her sub and you didn’t like it.”

  “It wasn’t that I didn’t like it.” He smiled coyly, making the corners of his eyes crinkle up in the most alluring way. “It just wasn’t for me. Not long after Ruth, I met Mary Lynn.” He paused and cast his eyes to his plate. “She was in school with me, taking design classes. We started out like a regular vanilla couple. She was the one who wanted more. I would do things to her, here and there, to see if she liked it, and our relationship evolved. After a time, Mary Lynn asked me to be her Dom. That is when everything changed for me. I discovered I liked being in control of her every desire.” He grew silent, and his smile slipped away.

  The coldness returned to his gaze, stirring my curiosity. “What happened to her?”

  He tilted his head casually to the side as he crossed his legs beneath the table. “She started to demand rougher play. Things I would not do to a woman, so I ended it.”

  “Rougher play? What do you mean?”

  “Play is a term we use to refer to the time we actually practice our art, inside and outside of the bedroom. Inside the bedroom, Mary Lynn wanted to go more and more into rough sex. Choking, hitting…the whips and chains end of BDSM. That is not what I do.”

  “Did she find someone who was into that?”

  He readjusted his napkin in his lap. “I’m sure she did. I never saw her again after we ended it.”

  “Who was next?”

  He reached for three packets of sugar from a ceramic bowl in the center of the table. “That’s enough, for now.” He dropped one of the packets by my glass of tea. “Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Jeez, you can dish it out, but you sure can’t take it.” I picked up my packet of sugar and dumped it into my tea. “So what is this club we are going to?”

  He stirred his tea with his long spoon. “A place I found soon after I arrived in New Orleans. It’s pretty generic as BDSM clubs go. It’s mostly women interested in being subs with a few vanilla groupies thrown in.”

  “What’s a vanilla groupie?” I lifted my glass to my lips.

  “Fans of that book I can’t stand, who think they want a BDSM lifestyle. Once exposed to it, they run like scared rabbits.” He chuckled.

  “Do any of those elite masters you talked about go there?”

  The question instantly made him appear uncomfortable. He shifted in his chair and lifted his tea. “Sometimes.”

  “How do you know when anyone is an elite master? Do they wear green blazers or something?” I started giggling at my joke, and had the air let out of my sails when I saw him drawing a complete blank.

  “The Masters Golf Tournament. The winner gets a green blazer….get it?” I rolled my hand in front of him, trying to add emphasis to my joke.

  His chiseled features were unmoved. “No, they don’t wear green jackets.”

  God, this guy needed to lighten up. Was everyone that was into this stuff so serious? I placed my hands in my lap. “Okay, so how do you know if someone is one of those elite masters?”

  “Experience. And you can’t see that unless you know what to look for. Spotting a Dom is another story.”

  “How is that?”

  “In some clubs you can tell by the way members wear a handkerchief. A certain color worn to the left indicates a dominant, to the right a submissive. I can tell by the control they have over their sub.” His eyes took a turn of the room. “You see the older gentleman, at the table by the door, with the pretty young brunette?”

  I eased to the side in my chair and caught a glimpse of the couple he was alluding to. The older man had gray hair and was dressed in a very nice blue suit with a fastidiously knotted yellow tie. His hair was neatly combed to the side, and everything about him, from the cut of his suit to the gold watch on his wrist, screamed money. The young woman was very slender, with pale, almost gaunt features, perfectly applied makeup, and not a brown hair out of place in her swept up coif. I noticed her diamond necklace and matching teardrop earrings, and figured that was just compensation for what she had to endure.

  “What am I looking for?”

  He reached over and pushed me back in my chair. “First, don’t be so obvious. Next, watch the way he hands her things, the way she is seated perfectly erect in the chair and never moves. He speaks to her as an aside, never directly. When he does say anything to her, then and only then, do you see her move.”
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br />   I tried to get an unencumbered view over his wide shoulder by raising my butt a little in my chair. The woman did seem awfully stiff, and then a waiter brought a basket of bread to their table. I watched, fascinated, as the man retrieved a roll from the basket, buttered it while the woman never moved, and then placed it on her bread plate. He said something to her, and then her hand reached for the roll.

  “That’s sick!” I spat out.

  “That’s a Dom at work. The total control he has over her defines him as a Dom.”

  I pointed back to the older man’s table. “That turns you on? Buttering someone’s bread for them, telling them when to eat it?”

  He shook his head, snickering at my display. “Every Dom is different; some require absolute obedience in all things, and some only require it in a few things.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “Where do you fall in that range?”

  Tim returned to our table, carrying a bread basket in his hands along with a plate of butter slices. “Here you go, guys, fresh out of the oven.”

  I waited for Tim to walk away, and then my eyes went instantly to Garrett. He was grinning at me, daring me with his gaze. That was enough for me. I grabbed a roll from the basket and banged it down on my bread plate.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I grumbled. “The last time anyone buttered anything for me I was three.”

  He reached for a roll. “As far as I can tell, you’re still three.”

  “Oh, ha-ha.” I knifed a pat of butter.

  “Look, Lexie.” He placed his roll on his bread plate. “We’re going to have to work together if you want to be convincing.” He sat back, adjusting the sleeve of his jacket. “Being a Dom isn’t about being turned on by having some sort of slave. It’s about having a person surrender their desire to me. Giving me the treasure of absolute trust. That’s what turns me on. Trust, not power.”

  I put my knife down and plopped my roll on my bread plate. “So in other words, you want me to trust you.”

  “To be convincing as my sub, yes, you must trust me.” He picked up his roll. “Have you ever trusted anyone implicitly?”

  I wanted to shout out, “Hell no,” but I stopped and sat back in my chair, thinking. Had I ever really trusted anyone before? Let someone have the kind of control over me that Garrett alluded to? Maybe that was what came from spending so much time on my own as a kid. I learned early on that people could not be trusted. If you could not trust your parent to be there for you, who could you trust?

  “I gave up trusting a long time ago. But I promise to make a better effort at this.” Snatching up my bread, I took a bite.

  I was chewing ferociously, swallowing back my disgust with every mouthful. I knew that he was observing me, but I didn’t care. I sat in silence, brooding and chewing. After I had finished the entire roll, he reached into the breadbasket and placed another on my plate.

  “Perhaps you might actually taste this one. They’re very good.”

  Snapped out of my trance by his voice, I glanced over to see him enjoying a bite from his bread. Maybe I was making too much of this. I should just shut my mouth and play along with his game. Hopefully, after tonight I would have enough to come up with some ideas for a story. Nodding to the roll, I smiled for him.

  “Wanna butter it for me?”

  His hearty chuckle instantly made me feel better. Funny how the man had that effect on me.

  * * *

  The club Garrett took me to was nothing more than seedy bar in a square, gray-bricked building on Prytania Street. One of the less popular bars that I had never been to before, The Edge had a reputation of luring a rough crowd. I had always believed that kind of crowd to be made up of bikers and gang members. Garrett insisted otherwise.

  “It’s well known as a place for recruiting willing subs,” he explained, motioning to the red neon sign above a plain wooden door.

  “Recruiting? That’s rather a strange way to put it.”

  He glimpsed the full parking lot around us. “Not really. If you think about it, that is what we do, recruit individuals to join in our play.”

  “Were you dropped on your head a lot as a kid? I just can’t get around the fact that a man like you, successful, intelligent, and…aren’t normal women enough?”

  “What is normal, Lexie?” He placed his hands behind his back, arching his shoulders slightly. “Is living cloistered away in your apartment writing novels about strong, sullen, and unhappy doctors falling in love with assertive and vivacious women normal?”

  I was floored by his comment. “You’ve read my books?”

  “All four of them.” He nodded. “You said if I was to get to know you as a writer, I should read your books. After our lunch yesterday, I purchased the e-books and spent the night studying you through your writing.”

  “You read all four of my books in one night?”

  “I’m a fast reader.”

  I had not expected this. Men didn’t read romance novels. Even if they attempted to, they usually never finished and wrote off the entire book as a woman’s fantasy.

  “Should I even ask what you thought of them?”

  His hand went to my back and gently nudged me toward the bar entrance. “You’re a very good writer, but your heart was not in those books. The woman I’ve been with is not the woman who wrote those novels.”

  Our feet crunched on the shell-covered parking lot beneath us. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, it’s not me?”

  “It’s not your voice,” he clarified, as we came to the wooden door. “You have a distinctive character, and if you put that in your books…well, I think you would be more successful.” When he reached for the large brass handle on the door, he stopped and glanced over at me. “Remember, you are my sub. Don’t talk unless I speak to you, and if anyone comes up to you and starts a conversation, you look to me for permission. Got it?”

  I tugged nervously at my black purse strap. “I got it. I don’t like it, but I got it.”

  He pulled the door open. “Just keep looking to me if you don’t know what to do.”

  The thump, thump, thump of the loud music coming from inside hit me, and I hesitated. “What if I have to go to the bathroom?” I asked, as he stood beside me.

  He lowered his head to my right ear. “You are never to leave my side. If you want to get out of here, tap on my arm.” He held the door open for me. “That will be our signal.”

  Smoke covered the entrance like a mist, and as we passed through it I coughed. The lights were dim, but at the far end of the rectangular room there was a brightly lit dance floor with flashing orbs and strobe lights, reminding me of a chintzy disco. I wondered if Doms and subs were allowed to dance together, or did the subs have to dance with subs, and Doms with Doms? I needed to remember to put a scene like that in my book. I could see it now, a bunch of masters dancing in green blazers.

  We were working our way toward the long wooden bar, with a mirrored back, that sat against the far wall. The bar was crowded with an interesting mix of women wearing slinky dresses, black leather, and a few in jeans and T-shirts. All the men were in business suits, every single one of them, which struck me as very odd. Halfway to the bar, I felt Garrett’s hand on my shoulder. I figured that was a gentle reminder to act more sub-like. I caught his angry scowl and quickly lowered my eyes, hunched my shoulders forward, and in general tried to look miserable.

  “Stop frowning,” he whispered to me. “You enjoy being with me, remember?”

  “What do you suggest? Do you want me to be a Stepford Wife like in the restaurant?”

  “Just avoid making eye contact with people, for Christ’s sake.” His hand squeezed my shoulder.

  When we made it to the bar, Garrett pulled out a red vinyl-covered stool for me that was ripped and had foam sticking out of it. I didn’t want to sit on that thing. When he saw me second-guessing the stool, he squeezed even harder on my shoulder.

  Wincing, I took the stool, placed my purse in my lap, and waited. He sto
od beside me, taking in the room.

  “You need to watch the interaction between people,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “Watch how they approach each other. Look for subtle signs. Remember the body language I saw in you in the park? Look for that in the subs. Doms will stand erect, tower over their sub, assert their dominance.”

  “Like you?” I mumbled.

  “Yes, like me.” His breath was against my cheek. “I’m your Dom, so act like it.”

  There was something about the way he said those words, and the feel of his breath, that ignited a tiny spark in a dormant part of my gut. I had thought myself immune to feeling anything remotely resembling desire since my days with Sid. But this tickle, this inkling was unmistakable. Closing my eyes against the sensation, I willed it away. Such thoughts about Garrett Hughes were not only irresponsible, they were dangerous.

  Searching for a distraction, I became intrigued by a couple not far from our spot next to the bar. She was a leggy blonde, decked out in a short beaded black dress and high black heels. He was an older gentleman in a suit with black hair, peppered gray. It was not so much their looks that aroused my curiosity, but the way they were interacting with each other. The blonde was not flirting, as I would have expected of an attractive woman with a man she had taken a fancy to. Instead, she was avoiding eye contact with the man, dipping her head to the ground. Her hands were at her sides, not playing with her hair or face like a woman trying to draw a man’s attention. She was listening intently to what the older gentleman had to say, almost mesmerized. When the man abruptly turned away, I was confused. I saw the blonde follow him, staying back a few feet, but definitely allowing him to walk ahead. He went to the dance floor and waited as she came up to him. Standing before the man, the blonde listened as he spoke to her, then raised her arms around his shoulders, and began seductively swaying her slim hips beneath her beaded black dress.

  I turned to Garrett, wanting to share my observation with him. Without thinking, I was about to open my mouth to speak when his angry voice was in my ear.