by L. DuBois
L is for...
L. DuBois
Farm Boy Press
Copyright
Published by:
Farm Boy Press,
Sacramento, California, United States of America.
First electronic edition: October 2020
Copyright © 2020 by Lila Dubois, all rights reserved.
Cover design by Lila Dubois
Copyedits by Fedora Chen
Book formatted by Farm Boy Press
ISBN: 978-1-941641-57-6
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owners and the above publisher of this book, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Publisher’s note:
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold 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. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Contents
L is for…
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Epilogue
About the Author
The Orchid Club Series
Also by L. DuBois
L is for…
Chapter 1
“Sub Victoria to the library.”
The announcement came over the speaker the instant that Victoria’s butt hit the seat of the padded lounger. She looked at her fresh glass of sparkling water and watermelon juice and sighed.
“Here,” she passed the untouched glass to the woman next to her, who was perched on the edge of her own chair, looking quietly nervous.
Victoria should probably feel more nervous than she did, but, quite frankly, she was more annoyed than nervous. She’d had a perfectly lovely weekend of rope bondage scheduled with Master Morton, but that had been preempted by the newly announced checklist game.
Victoria dusted the back of her black boy cut underwear and adjusted her simple zip-up hoodie. She’d dressed for rope play—the soft cotton underwear easily adjusted, but offered some protection for her vulva if the rope went between her legs. The hoodie was easily removed, but would keep her warm during the meditative tying process.
“You’re lucky you got called right away,” one of the subs seated near her said.
“I had a nice weekend planned,” Victoria countered.
“Better fix that attitude,” Sarah, a lean athletic blond, warned.
Victoria checked her terse reply. Sarah was right. Going to meet a top with a bad attitude was a terrible idea.
She closed her eyes and held her hands out at her sides, middle fingers touching thumbs and hummed as if meditating, eliciting a few chuckles. That was enough to help her push the irritation to an emotional back burner. In its place she focused on curiosity over who, and what, might be waiting for her.
Victoria nodded at a few Doms and Masters she knew as she passed them on her way to the library.
Post checklist-game-announcement the subs had headed for the Subs’ Garden—an area of Las Palmas Obscuras where no tops were allowed. It served as a lounge, locker room, and decompression space.
The Doms, Masters, and Owners, in contrast, were probably all running around trying to book scene space, gather toys and implements, and generally doing the planning and pre-scene work that was their responsibility.
Victoria paused in the doorway of the library taking a moment to look around and for those already in the room to notice her.
The library was one of several indoor public areas within the club, which was itself housed in a vast Spanish-style estate in the Malibu hills. It had been a horse property at some point, and the converted barn, which was now called the conclave, was where the club’s three overseers—Masters Mikel, Leo, and Mistress Faith—had gathered everyone to announce the start of this new game.
There were a dozen people already in the library, not all of them Doms. A few sat on the tufted leather couches clustered around the tiled fireplace. The small round stage, which was one of the spaces tops could book, though it wasn’t large enough to be used for a scene, instead usually sported a sub who was on display for either pleasure or punishment. The bookshelves, with their elegant lighting, featured carefully displayed BDSM equipment, some of it antique, some new. The collection of clear glass plugs looked particularly festive in the light.
A second glance around the space and she saw a few people she recognized, but no one seemed to be paying any particular attention to her.
That meant one of two things. She’d beat her checklist game partner to the room, or he was one of the people already in the room. She took another glance around, cataloguing the men she didn’t know, since it was most likely one of them.
Again, no one looked at her, waved her over, or seemed particularly interested in her arrival. So he was watching her, seeing what she’d do. Maybe it was some sort of test, or part of one of their checklist items. She’d been a member for years and honestly didn’t remember how she’d filled the checklist out. That had been a source of much angst among the other subs, but she wasn’t worried.
She wasn’t the most submissive submissive, and could handle anything a Dom would throw at her short of real physical or emotional abuse, which she knew wouldn’t happen here. Members were vetted by the club overseers, and many of the playrooms had observation rooms connected to them for added safety.
If this was a test, or some sort of game, she wasn’t going to spend too long worrying about it. If her top, whomever he (or she) may be—though the club was primarily for straight individuals, as most fetish clubs were geared towards a particular sexual orientation, making “he” a more likely pronoun—would figure out very fast that she didn’t play head games.
Victoria headed for the L-shaped bar in the corner. Rather than take a seat on the patron side, she slid around behind the bar so she could pour herself a drink and play bartender.
“Oi, get me a beer, woman.” The Dom at the end of the bar snarled the words, a hint of British accent in his voice nearly muffled by the overblown menace.
Victoria’s lips twitched, but she pretended to rummage behind the bar for a beer, then slowly held up her hands, flipping the speaker the double bird.
Master Cain laughed, his eyes—which had been crinkled with a smile when he spoke—closing as he threw his head back and laughed. He looked intimidating, but that laugh was warm and inviting, the sort of laugh that helped put people alarmed by his physical presence at ease.
“Do you actually want a beer?” she asked.
“No, I’m not drinking.” He pointed at his short glass of very pale amber liquid and ice. “This is mostly water. Only a little whiskey.” He had just a trace of a British accent, which she knew was thanks to his having spent some of his child
hood there with relatives.
“Ah...you’re going to play your letter tonight?” Victoria poured herself a glass of sparkling water and added a lime wedge. She set the glass near where Cain was sitting, then quickly checked on the other people sitting at the bar to make sure no one needed anything.
“You can’t just relax, can you?” Cain asked when she slid down to him and took up her glass.
A stranger might have thought she was playing bartender because that was something a submissive would do, or should do—serve the Doms, Masters, and Owners. Cain, however, knew her well enough to know that wasn’t it.
“I can.” She took a sip of her drink. “When I’m flying.”
Flying didn’t mean on an airplane. Flying meant suspension rope bondage.
“And you do look very lovely hanging from the ceiling like a side of beef.”
“The subtleties really are lost on you.” Victoria shook her head. “Don’t have the patience for rope, do you?”
“Insulting me, a bold choice.”
“Mad that I’m not intimidated?” Victoria raised a brow as she took a sip.
“I don’t intimidate people.” He paused, pursed his lips, and winked. “On purpose.”
“Because you just woke up one morning looking like that.” Victoria resisted the urge to roll her eyes.
“I give you permission to look,” he declared magnanimously.
She’d just taken a sip of water and choked on it as his words surprised a laugh out of her. Several people looked her way as she sputtered, then coughed. Victoria grabbed a cocktail napkin and wiped her mouth, eyeing Cain.
She’d struck up a friendship with Cain about a year ago, though it was a friendship built on barbs, subtle insults, and snide comments. In fact she didn’t ever think of him as a friend, more of a frenemy, though she was a grown up, which made the word ridiculous, if accurate.
An unusual relationship in a BDSM club, where very few submissives would speak to a Dom the way she spoke to Cain, either out of respect, or because they were mentally embedded in the power-shift of D/s. Even when not in an active scene there was an expectation of deference to the Doms.
“Need me to order you to swallow rather than inhale?” Cain asked with mocking sadness. “If you need me to do that, I’d be willing.”
Victoria tossed the napkin, considered flipping him off again, then decided it would lose its impact because of the repetition.
“I was just so awed by your modesty that I briefly forgot how to breathe.” She affected a breathy tone and clasped her hands together between her breasts.
He laughed again, that same wonderful laugh, his head thrown back. She took advantage of the moment to look at him, at least what she could see above the bar.
Muscles. Cain was all muscles. His pecs were hard and well defined, his arms thick and meaty. Arms that made a woman think about being carried off. He was shirtless—he usually was, though she’d seen him in a leather vest—and she knew that he’d be wearing the lace up leather pants that were de rigeur in some BDSM circles.
He wore leather outside the club too—she’d seen him driving out of the parking lot one Sunday afternoon wearing leather pants and a leather jacket that must have been custom made to accommodate his biceps. He had, of course, been astride a beautiful motorcycle, the chrome gleaming in the golden light of afternoon.
He was incredibly masculine. The muscles, the dusting of hair on his chest, his low, deep voice. Everything about him screamed masculinity. The hints of British accent—an accent that normally made her think of slim, dapper men—stopped him from seeming like a brainless meat-head, which he might otherwise have appeared.
The overt masculinity was both appealing and irritating. Or maybe she found the fact that he was so appealing irking.
His presence as a Dominant was a nearly physical force. She’d seen subs sink deeper into a posture—kneel, humble, ready to please, or any of the other commonly used sub posture—and lower their eyes just that little bit more, because Cain looked at, or spoke to, them.
She didn’t really fault those women—academically, she understood the appeal of that type of submissive. She just wasn’t that kind of sub. If being a submissive was, like sexuality itself, a spectrum, she was fairly certain she wasn’t all that submissive. If pushed she probably could have been a switch, not that she’d tried it.
She was very happy with what she had, which is why she was so irritated her plans with Master Morton had been killed by this odd new game.
She liked, and needed, the subtle delicacy of ropes, and loved the feeling of secure helplessness—something anyone who hadn’t experienced the joy of shibari and suspension—would call an oxymoron.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw a Dom seated on one of the couches open an envelope and pull out a sheaf of papers. From here she could just make out the colored square of a photograph in one corner. That must be one of the packets the Doms had stayed to pick up after the submissives were dismissed from the Conclave.
She glanced back at Cain, who was looking at her.
She blinked, because the look he was giving her was unexpectedly intense.
That look made her feel—
She refused to finish that thought, so instead started searching for some iced tea. He had a strange hatred of it, apparently picked up while he was in England, so she planned to pretend it was whiskey and pour him some. Damn it, there wasn’t any, so with a sigh she grabbed a chilled bottle of water and the very expensive whiskey. When she brought the bottles over and poured—half a finger of whiskey, then a splash of water—she asked, “What’s your letter?”
“L. Yours?”
She shot him a baleful look. “You know I don’t know yet.”
That reminded her that she had been called here, which meant her Dom was someone in this room. In all the time she’d been here, no one new had come in.
“What letter are you hoping for?” Cain shook his head. “Wait, stupid question. Either R for rope or S for Shibari. I guess S for suspension works too”
That comment stung because it was dead-on correct. She was hoping that the Overseers would have taken into consideration her preferences when they assigned her the letter, if not the Dom. Not that she wanted to be the test dummy for a novice rope player, but safety would mean that if the Dom she got wasn’t good with any of the items on the list they’d have to seek advice and coaching from a more experienced player.
Either way, she’d get what she wanted.
What she needed.
Assuming her Dom stopped playing with her and actually talked to her. None of the other people at the bar had seemed to pay any particular attention to her when she’d asked them if they needed drinks, and none of the people seated elsewhere had so much as glanced her way.
So far the only one to start a conversation with her had been Cain.
Her arm froze halfway through the motion of bringing her glass to her mouth. She looked at Cain.
He grinned, the smile slowly working its way across his face until he was showing teeth.
“Oh shit.” Victoria’s glass thunked down onto the bar.
“Oh yes.”
“You? Me?”
“Mmmm hmm.”
“But...”
Cain looked at his wrist. He wasn’t wearing a watch. “You have two minutes, so get it out of your system.”
“Two minutes until what?”
“Until I’ll expect you on your knees.”
A totally inappropriate thrill ran through her. Damn it, she wasn’t one of those women who would fall at Cain’s feet just because his voice had deepened a little.
He leaned forward, elbows on the bar. “You know what, Vic?”
“What?” she wheezed.
“You’re going to look good in leather.”
Shit.
“Unfortunately I don’t have a playroom reserved for this weekend.” Cain tapped his fingers on the side of his glass, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth.
> Perched on a bar stool across the small cocktail table from him, Victoria curled the hand on her lap into a fist. Her free, visible hand leisurely moved ice around her glass with the cocktail straw.
“So we’re not playing this weekend?”
“Not privately.” Cain leaned forward. “We could find space. You don’t need privacy, do you?”
Victoria resisted the urge to roll her eyes, and quirked her lips. “I must not since suspension play is usually very public.”
Cain frowned. “That wasn’t an answer.”
Since the announcement of the game she hadn’t let herself think too much about what she was going to be doing, at least not specifics. Her confidence in her own ability to handle almost anything, plus a surety that the overseers would give her a letter that had something to do with her preferred method of play, meant she hadn’t really thought about what they’d said.
They’d claimed the purpose of the game was to eliminate the complacency among the members, to push everyone to try new things, with new people. That would have been all well and good, but there were some people, and Victoria included herself in that group, who needed very specific things. Without a good flying session on the weekend Victoria was more irritable during the week, less able to calm down and focus when needed.
Now she was being forced to face a reality she’d been ignoring while maintaining witty banter with Cain.
“It was, in every technical sense of the word,” she said in response to his insistence that it wasn’t an answer.
“Let me guess. Lawyer?”
She arched a brow, inwardly irked that it was so obvious. “You know that’s not really something you’re supposed to ask your partner.”
