by CD Reiss
—You owe us, big time—
Chapter 27
PRESENT TENSE
I didn’t ask who “us” was. I assumed it was Viktor or another lifer. Another body. Someone who lived by rules and codes. Someone willing to run off to the Cellar on my behalf on tryout night.
I had too much to do in the meantime.
Sweaty gym suits wouldn’t get me far in the club, and I was at the northwestern tip of a very crowded island. I wanted to be at the southwestern edge.
—Diana, what are you doing?—
I had two hundreds in my wallet and I gave one to the cabbie. “Get me to TriBeCa in five minutes and you get the other hundred.”
He took off like a shot.
—Don’t talk to anyone—
She didn’t answer. The signal in the bottom floor—the actual cellar—was notoriously hard core. So was the view. Latex bodysuits and slapping leather. Nipple clamps and tit torture. Scat had a separate room, but some nights you could smell it down there.
That’s what I imagined seeing through her eyes. She’d see chaos where I saw control. When I saw it through my eyes, it looked like contented people satisfying their needs. It looked like a place without judgment.
She wouldn’t see it that way. She didn’t know every stroke was part of negotiation, consent, and contracts. She didn’t know there was a board of people who settled disputes with excommunication and fines.
I checked for her phone’s location, and no new signal came through. Just the old location.
Tryout nights were tame by normal standards because anyone could show up, but for some in the community, the extra people was the appeal. The increased risk of exposure was a turn-on, and the acts downstairs could get incredibly outrageous just for the sake of it.
She was fine. No one would hurt her or touch her. She was protected by the rules, and she very well might have gone with a friend or two. Maybe she went with a date.
I had to put that out of my mind before I broke something.
The cabbie earned the extra hundred. I promised another hundred if he waited.
I scrubbed down in record time and got into a suit, barely looking at myself in the mirror before grabbing the jacket and running out.
There was a crowd outside the velvet ropes. Rob and Carol were checking people against a list and letting others in just because they looked as though they’d be scared. Fear was great entertainment. They opened the rope for me.
“It’s tryout,” Rob said.
“I know.” I slapped him on the shoulder and walked in.
My phone dinged.
—I see her—
—On six—
I went to my phone locator. Found her. New signal. Same place. She was out of the dungeon.
I got into the elevator with a woman in latex pants and a collar and her Dom, who wore ripped jeans and a leather jacket. He held her leash loosely, and when the brass doors closed, I saw the three of us in the reflection. Scenes were not permitted in elevators or halls, so we all stood, facing front, on the way to male domination. The Dom to my right quietly yanked the leash, and the sub smiled subtly.
I fixed my tie in the reflection in the brass.
My ring was still on.
I was about to see her, in the club, on the sixth floor.
Relief-plus-elation-plus-dread.
My lungs weren’t big enough for the size of the breath I had to take.
The doors slid open to the red hallway.
Chapter 28
PRESENT TENSE
My space. My room. My world.
Five steps to the door, ten to the bar, and that’s how long it took to get my shit together. Diana was under my protection in my domain. Nothing and no one would touch her but me.
I saw Charlie first, and he pointed at the bar. Fucker was just watching.
She sat at the bar between two men. Viktor and Braden. I knew them, and I knew why they were talking to her. She was beautiful and inexperienced. Their intentions were crystal clear to me, and I fought the urge to take their faces off with my bare hands.
I had to hold my breath and mitigate my expectations against the reality.
I expected her to be meek and scared. Kittenish. Overwhelmed. Wide-eyed.
The reality was that she was the woman I’d married. I married a boss. I married a sharp, creative mind. Not that any of those traits kept her from glancing nervously at the nearly naked woman curled at Viktor’s feet, but Diana was engaged in a conversation as if everything around her was completely normal.
And she was everything. I couldn’t hear her when she spoke, but I knew she sounded clear and confident from the way she made eye contact. Nodded when Viktor answered. Put her drink to her lips.
Her blouse was buttoned all the way, but I could see the heave of her chest, knew the shape of her tits, how to make the nipples hard. The things I could do to her in that club, half a room away.
Open your cunt. Bend over. Count with me. Beg for my cock.
I couldn’t put them all in order.
She touched her necklace, one of her tells for arousal, but the knowledge that she was wet was pushed away by the wedding ring on her finger. She’d put it back on. Probably to keep men away. That didn’t work in the Cellar. If you were there, you were there to play or learn how to play.
Calmly. I walked toward her. She saw me a few steps away, and her chin went up a few millimeters. Brazen, like a teenager caught with a cigarette and not putting it out. Viktor, a Dominant who couldn’t stand the thought of losing a woman’s attention, reached for her face.
I took the last step and grabbed his wrist hard.
Viktor was a Russian oligarch who’d escaped the KGB in a cargo ship, but if he’d touched her, I would have broken that wrist.
“Let go, friend.” He elongated friend as if it was a temporary condition.
“She’s mine.” I let go. “And I don’t share this one. Friend.”
Viktor picked up his drink. “Shame you feel that way. It’s what they need.”
He looked down at his sub, who rested her head peacefully on his leg. He stroked her cheek. Her smile widened.
My wife touched her necklace as if frozen. I couldn’t gauge her emotions. Mine were muddled as fuck. I didn’t want her to be there, but my dick thought it was a terrific idea.
You don’t want her getting any good ideas.
“Vick!” Charlie’s voice cut through the noise.
“You Aussie fuck!” Viktor replied jovially.
Charlie glanced at me and nodded as he shook hands with the man, letting me know he’d saved me and I owed him plenty.
“Diana,” I said, “what are you doing?”
She looked at me, lips tight. “I have the right to be here.”
“I didn’t say you didn’t. And you don’t have to be defensive. Let’s talk about this separate from everything else. Without all the baggage or the divorce. Just talk to me.” I put my arm on the bar and motioned for Norton. “What are you drinking?”
“Ginger ale,” she said.
“Good choice.”
“I felt like I needed my wits about me.”
“You do. Do you want to stay or go?”
I wanted her to stay because if she left, I might not see her again. This chance to show her the world I’d left for her wouldn’t come again. I didn’t know if I wanted to attract her to it or scare her away, but I wanted to know what was possible.
She didn’t think about it long, but deep, checking my face, the room, her own breath before answering. “Stay.”
I ordered two ginger ales.
She eyeballed Charlie. “Was he at our wedding? The Australian guy with the cane?”
“Yes. And a few other things. Events. Whatnot.”
She’d had no idea who he was to me. She’d shaken his hand and made small talk knowing nothing. Of course she looked as if I’d betrayed her.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming,” I said.
“Neither did you. For five years.”
“I stopped when you came along.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It’s true.”
“Oh, I believe you didn’t set foot in this club. But you were here.” She scanned the room, with its ambient music and soft lighting. Men in suits and women doing their bidding. Her gaze landed on Viktor the Russian chatting with Charlie, then moved down to his sub curled at his feet like a contented kitten.
“I knew it was something,” she said. “All that time you were phoning it in.”
“That’s not true—”
“You think I couldn’t tell?” She looked right through me, breaking my defenses to bits.
“I love you, Diana.” I growled it, taking her arm. “You’re not for this. Did you want me to drag you down here? For what? I’d hate myself for ruining you.”
“I loved you too. Past. Tense.” She yanked her arm away. “And I’ve been blaming myself for a year now. But it wasn’t me. It was you.”
She snapped her bag off the bar and walked away, twisting on her high heel and speeding off.
Fuck this.
This was my world, and I could do shit here I couldn’t do anywhere else.
I took a single step, picked her up, and threw her over my shoulder.
The air went out of her. She beat my back and cried my name as I carried her to the back and around a corner to a bank of doors with leather numbers. One was ajar. I kicked it open with a slap. The black room was lit by a single red bulb.
I slammed the door closed with my foot, clicked the occupied sign, and dropped her. Her lips were parted and her mouth was twisted into a snarl. She punched my chest so hard the air went out of me. I grabbed her wrists with one hand and pushed her against the wall.
“Don’t you fucking touch me!”
I kept my hands where they were and pushed into her.
Her eyelids fluttered. She’d be touching her pearls if her hands were free.
“What did you say?” I whispered. I smelled the arousal on her.
Breathy, without aggression or a struggle to get away, she said, “Don’t you fucking touch me.”
“You came here to see something? You came here to learn about me? The guy you don’t love anymore? Why? What’s the fucking difference?”
In the silence that followed, a thwack could be heard through the walls. And a long female cry that was a cross between pain and orgasm. And another thwack.
“I need to know where I went wrong.” Tears glistened on the edges of her red eyes. “And fuck you for lying. You let me think I wasn’t good enough.”
I let her wrists go and punched the red shade button behind her.
The wall opposite the door opened to a window, and yellow light flooded the room, washing her face in pale yellow. I didn’t turn to the window but kept my attention on her as she did.
“You tell me where you went wrong,” I said. “Were you not good enough? Or was this just not what I wanted for you?”
I gave her room to face the window. I hadn’t known what would be there when I kicked the door in. Could have been any number of kinks, but as it turned out, it was mine.
Diana faced the window. I saw her in the dim reflection, her eyes wide, cheeks slack.
And through it, a sub was bent over a bench, bare feet dirty on the bottoms. Her wrists were tied to a vertical pole on each side of her, and her shoulder blades nearly kissed. Her straight blond hair was tied into a knot out of the way of the tears streaming down her face and dropping onto her parted lips.
Her Dom was in grey slacks, clean shoes, and a crisp white button-front shirt open at the neck and rolled up at the sleeves. I didn’t know him, but he was in his late twenties and handled the wooden paddle as if it were an extension of his arm.
She was at an angle to the window so we could see her painfully raw ass and her face. He spoke to her, and she squeaked a response, nodding.
“He’s asking her if she’s all right, but he’s not actually asking. If he said ‘how are you,’ he’d break the scene. It’s a trigger question. He’s asking what color the sky is, and if she says ‘blue,’ it means she’s fine.”
“Why can’t he just ask?”
“He’s playing the part of a man who might go to any length to hurt her, and it’s her job to trust he won’t.”
The Dom pressed his sub’s lower back down so her ass was high and tight, then he pulled all the way back and paddled her three times, fast on the already wounded skin.
Diana went rigid. I stood behind her.
“Breathe,” I said.
She didn’t. The sub’s face was beet red and wet. He leaned and kissed it, speaking softly. She nodded, and I read her lips. Please. Yes, please, sir.
Unexpectedly, and with sadistic relish, the young Dom took one last swipe. The surprise made the sub scream, and I had to reach around and cover Diana’s mouth before she did too.
“Hush,” I said in her ear.
That perfume. The oranges. Her hair on my cheek. Her mouth on my palm, breaths hard. I put my other arm around her waist and pulled her to me, pushing my hard cock against her.
The Dom touched his sub’s raw bottom. She squirmed as he worked his waistband.
“He’s going to fuck her now. It’s her reward for being a good girl.”
I slid my hand down my wife’s body, putting my hand between her legs. I’d lost my mind. Everything about this scene was not what I wanted for Diana, but my cock was raging and the heat through her pants was undeniable.
The Dom fucked the sub as the vertical poles shook.
“Every time he enters her, he pushes on her sore ass.” I nipped her ear. “I hear it hurts like hell. But look at her. Look at her face. She loves it. She was built for it.”
I moved my hand off her mouth and pulled her closer, my hand circling between her legs, mercilessly pushing the shape of my cock against her.
“You want to do that to me?” she asked.
I curved my fingers, getting the tips across her clit, hard and fast. “I love you.”
She pushed against my dick, and we moved together. I groaned into the back of her neck, and she spun around, putting her back to the window. Her hair hung in front of her eyes and her shoulders jutted forward.
Behind Diana, the sub came with a cry we heard through the walls and her Dom slapped her ass gently to mix pain with her pleasure. He was good.
Diana put her hands behind her. “Are you this guy? You do what he does?”
“Why are you asking?”
“I want to know what you’ve been fantasizing about every time we made love.”
I didn’t want to do this. Every wall I’d built around this life was broken. If I told her what had been in my mind, the very foundation I’d built our sexual relationship on would shatter. “A lot of things.”
“Like what?” She stuck her t as punctuation. Petulant little girl needed a spanking, and she wasn’t taking “nothing” for an answer.
I could salvage this with something mild. Then I could try to get her back under the old rules. Promise the life we had with a little extra. Play the middle.
Or I could draw a line in the sand she’d never cross, effectively pushing her away.
Play the middle. Play the middle. Play the middle.
“Like this.” I put my hands on the glass and whispered in her ear. “You are on your back. You are tied to the headboard by your elbows and your ankles. Your knees are around your ears, and I see your cunt is already wet. I slap your ass. The backs of your thighs. Sometimes with my hand. Sometimes I use my belt. When your skin is red, I hit harder, until it welts. I put my fingers in your hole, then your ass. You’re screaming and squirming as I bring you so close to orgasm, but I don’t let you finish. You’re begging for an orgasm. Begging for my cock. Then I slap your cunt. Right on it. You scream, but it’s not in pain. It feels good. I slap again and again, until your clit is swollen. So when I finally fuck you, my cock gives you pleasure and pain until you can’t tell the difference. I own
that. I gave you that. Everything you feel is mine and you give it to me. We’re connected by your submission.”
That wasn’t the middle. That was me shredding the foundation of the last five years.
I had an erection that was so sensitive, I was going to explode at the slightest touch. Behind my wife, in the whipping room, the Dom sat on the couch with the sub over his lap as he rubbed lotion on her red bottom.
“You’re sick,” Diana whispered.
The sub on the other side of the room said something, and she and the Dom laughed together. He kissed her lower back. Her arm flopped over his knee. She looked wiped out and happy. I couldn’t give my wife that connection. I loved her.
I pulled back from Diana’s ear to look in her face. “I am. And I tried to protect you from that. But you had me followed, then you showed up here. And now that I’ve told you, your nipples are hard and you’re flushed. You’re swallowing every half a second.”
“So? Just because I’m turned on, you think I’m going to love you again? It takes more than that.”
“What will it take?”
“A miracle.” She shoved me away. “I felt bad about leaving you. I really thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t love you. But I don’t feel bad anymore. I was in love with someone who didn’t even exist.”
She swung past me and headed for the door. I put my hand on it. Through the window, the sound of the Dom and sub laughing together. I knew the tension release of a good beating and the hours of laughter that followed. If I ever paddled a woman again, I’d bust my gut laughing. Fuck, I wanted that relief with my wife, but I didn’t think I could bear everything leading up to it, or losing her after it.
“What?” Diana asked. More of a demand than a question.
I moved my hand. “Let me walk you out.”
“I can find my way.”
“Not without being a target for every Dominant on the floor.”
“Fine.”
She swung the door open. The shades on the window behind us slapped shut, and the hallway light stung my eyes. A few people were exiting rooms, and the hall was moderately crowded. I put my hand on Diana’s back and walked her past a security guy who remembered me and out through another wide hallway with a red carpet decorated with white flowers that, if you looked closely, were actually abstractions of bodies twisting around each other in hundreds of sex positions.
