by Debra Hyde
The Story of L
Debra Hyde
A Ravenous Romance® Original Publication
A Ravenous Romance® Original Publication
www.ravenousromance.com
Copyright © 2011 by Debra Hyde
Ravenous Romance®
100 Cummings Center
Suite 123A
Beverly, MA 01915
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review.
ISBN-13: 978-1-60777-430-3
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Dedication
To Lori Perkins,
who told me I could do this
and then kept the faith that I would.
Don't miss Debra Hyde's other great books:
Training Desire
Ten Lords A Leaping
Blind Seduction
Table of Contents
Dedication
Don't miss Debra Hyde's other great books:
Chapter One: The Club
Chapter Two: Home
Chapter Three: Hoops
Chapter Four: Thresholds
Chapter Five: Reward
Chapter Six: She Decides
Chapter Seven: Transition
Chapter Eight: Sunderland
Chapter Nine: Cassandra, At Last
Chapter Ten: Asunder
Chapter Eleven: Retreat
Chapter Twelve: Public Claim
Chapter Thirteen: Discoveries
Chapter Fourteen: Trust Achieved
Chapter One: The Club
Dusk on a Saturday night brings many things to people. Dinner and a movie or cocooning at home with the television, a fine meal or snacks and sports, meeting friends for drinks, or hitting the local music scene. But to Liv Alderman, single and unattached, those things represented the satisfying solitude of couplehood or loneliness amid the throng. Her options were different. For her, dusk on a Saturday night brought her elsewhere, to Hippolyte's.
Some would shrink at the notion of Hippolyte's. With its notoriety for whips and chains and women only, rigid moralists would certainly stiffen at the thought of such deviance. But they were few and far between in the college towns surrounding Hippolyte's. Minding your own New England business was custom here and it allowed everyone a quiet live-and-let-live existence.
And living here freed Liv to seek what felt innate to her—innate and necessary. With daylight waning, she grabbed a weathered leather backpack from the backseat of her car. A rubbery orange wristband fell against her hand, as if to escape the competing band of stiff leather she wore there.
Her right wrist.
I'm going to make a few people angry tonight, she thought as she locked her car.
Around her, women arrived, converging at Hippolyte's by first laying claim to parking spaces out on the street. Liv decided she was lucky to get a spot so close to the club, especially since she'd arrived late enough to avoid the dull chitchat in those tentative hours before people got naked and got busy. Instead, she'd help shape the emerging mood that would define the night.
Hope I'm as lucky, getting a play station.
The last thing Liv wanted was to wait for a station to open up. Her hunger wouldn't stand for it.
She called that hunger the void, an inner beast that had seized her midweek. Born of a wet dream, one in which a woman unfamiliar to Liv had pinned her down and deliciously plied her with rough kisses, fierce caresses, and absolutely torturous bites, it had come upon her like a vengeful angel. Its dream had been a vision so vicarious that she woke, coming, her orgasm so strong that its throbbing cadence almost hurt. In its wake stood the void, demanding and all consuming.
Sating the Void was no easy task, but Liv had no choice but to try. She'd do no topping tonight, not even for the best of her bottom-and-bosom buddies.
They'll understand. Everybody knows I get this way.
But few liked it. Greedy bottoms rarely saw beyond their own rampant urges, herself included. The void saw to that.
Halfway across the parking lot, Liv heard a lilting, enthusiastic voice call her. Fiona, a sweet high femme of a woman, the click of her heels scampering toward Liv. Or as close to scampering as one could get in heels. Liv turned to face this whirlwind of joy.
“Liv! Hello!” Bubbly was an understatement when applied to Fiona.
Fiona threw her arms around Liv's neck and gregariously planted a kiss on her, leaving Liv licking the taste of Fiona's thick lipstick. Pulling back from her vivacious greeting, Fiona eyed the backpack on Liv's shoulder and chirped, “Your toy bag! Wonderful! Is there something in there for me?”
Liv half expected Fiona to play like a child quizzing Santa, but one glance at Liv's wrist, and Fiona's glee evaporated in a deflated “oh!” of recognition. Liv shrugged. “I'm sorry,” she lamented.
Fiona responded with a lopsided smile, its meaning clear. “Sorry. Haven't got a drop of top blood in me.” Catching sight of another possible opportunity—one far more butch than Liv could ever pretend to be—Fiona flitted away, heedless of any slight her thoughtless departure might cast. Any other night, Liv might have taken offense, but not tonight. Other prerogatives took precedence.
Inside Hippolyte's, Liv paid her cover charge, stowed her backpack, and made for its open space. Named for an Amazonian queen, Hippolyte's bore little resemblance to its long-ago tenure as the gay bar Roo's. Where men once danced in wild abandon, women now played in heated passion. Loud music and brash disco lights had given way to a subdued environment—Enya instead of Abba, and soft florescence instead of glare. But where the tenor had changed, the need to meet and hook up had not. Women came to Hippolyte's for the same reason men had once partied here: Sex. And, truth be told, all it took to get Hippolyte's as hot and noisy as Roo's was a whip, some bondage, and a woman willing to take whatever was dished out to her.
Running a hand through her hair, Liv surveyed the room. Play was just getting underway: a flogging at one of the upright St. Andrew's crosses, a hardy butch working a rope dress onto a slim femme, two tops sensually caressing a lucky and apparently ticklish bottom with the sharp ends of their knives. Yet these scenes were mere preliminaries, scenes typically of people just warming up to one another. The night had yet to reach out, pluck drama from the air, and make it real. Stuck in the tentative, no one dared to let loose and scream. At least not yet.
Liv felt the void roil, already impatient. Like a racehorse ready to bolt from the gate, it chafed at the bit. It wanted its head. Whoa, Liv cautioned, whoa.
The void heeded her and calmed, but however well she reined in that impulsive beast, Liv knew it would not remain in hand for long. She needed to get things in place, be ready for its next advance, but she couldn't do it alone. Liv scanned the room a second time but failed to see the women she needed to assist her.
They must be socializing.
Liv crossed the room, barely aware of the soft groans and heartier cries of play. She focused on one thing only: finding Quinn and Tara.
She spotted them sitting in the social area, Tara on Quinn's lap, giggling as one of Quinn's big butch hands squashed her close, the other hand tickling and groping. Liv chuckled. A hornier pair of lovers, she hadn't seen. And a pair that adored each other so ardently? Rarer still. If any couple would see each other into their old age, it would be Quinn and Tara.
Liv planted herself in front of them and cleared her throat in exaggeration. Looking up from her squirming captive, an already blithe Quinn brightened even more.
“Hey!”
“Hey, yourself.”
“You still need us?”
Tara straightened in Quinn's lap, tugging her tight girly t-shirt back into place—making pretty, she had once called it. Liv adored Tara's easy femininity. It was natural for her, something so easy to default to that she didn't even have to think about it. Likewise, Liv admired Quinn's confident butchness, a transgendered identity so strong that she never wavered in her manlike swagger. Her bulky female bio body, despite its chromosomal baseline, only seemed to reinforce her identity. By contrast, Liv fell somewhere in the nebula of androgyny. No doubt a woman in form and soul, and a lesbian in love and desire, but neither butch nor femme in either presentation or whom she found attractive. Yet she did not feel undefined; being queer was being enough, and she liked not having to fall into a strict dichotomy. It was like having your cake and eating it too.
Quinn pushed Tara from her lap and rose, one hand at Tara's waist. “Then let's make this happen.”
Liv smiled. She could always count on Quinn and Tara. Always. Quinn patted Tara's rump. “Fetch Liv's toy bag, girl.”
Tara grinned, happy to be put to service. “Still the leather backpack?” When Liv nodded, she added, “Still has the lucky cat key chain hanging from it?” A second nod sent Tara scurrying.
Together, Liv and Quinn surveyed the play space. More women had gotten busy—play had finally accelerated, leaving fewer play stations unoccupied. Liv flinched as a whip cracked nearby and a shuddering cry followed. The void stirred, provoking a throb from between her legs.
Time was running out.
Panic threatened to rise, but Liv choked it down, unwilling to let the void get an upper hand too soon. Whether she'd be able to sate it tonight worried her enough. Don't get anxious, she told herself.
Across the room, a woman occupied one of Liv's favorite play stations: a Saint Andrew's cross, modified to seat its captive, legs spread. Spread low and wide, its saltire was closer to that of the Scottish flag than the extreme cross from which the saint himself had hanged. It held a captive's arm straight out instead of upward. And its ultimate feature? A wooden box that descended over one's head. Liv loved that box. It amplified the sound of her breath, made her every moan luscious and any scream terrible.
The last time the void had plagued her, Quinn had whipped Liv hard enough to abrade her skin. She had come away from the scene well welted and with marks hard enough to leave scabs for two weeks. She smiled, thankful for Quinn's proficiency with a single tail.
However, a woman already occupied the frame, suffering through clamps on her breasts and labia. Disappointed, Liv turned elsewhere.
A baby butch passed by, leashed and led. Clad only in leather bike shorts and sandals, she wore a wooden contraption that encompassed her head and wrists in what amounted to a portable pillory. Of an exquisite, exotic hardwood, its finish a polished sheen, the contraption was shaped like a stringed instrument. And if the butch's glazed eyes were any indication, its weighted, restrictive hold produced pure bottomy bliss.
Gorgeous, Liv thought as the butch walked away. Certainly head-turning. The void growled. It wanted some of that.
Quinn chuckled, amused by Liv's ogling. “Those things costs an arm and a leg, you know.”
“Looked more like a neck and two hands to me,” Liv shot back.
Her quip brought another chuckle and with it, a compliment.
“Well, you would look hot in a violin.”
That's what it's called? Liv filed the information away. Arm-and-a-leg or not, she wanted one.
Liv returned her attention to the room and scanned it again for an open play station. A spanking bench stood ignored, giving Liv pause. A vicious spanking—the mounting blows of a paddle against her ass, burning, stinging until it exhausted her—had its appeal. But no. That particular bench had a knee rest and required her to keep her legs together. The void wanted her spread and vulnerable.
An overhead winch likewise stood vacant, and a scene of shibari and suspension struck Liv with possibility. She imagined herself facedown, in a spread hogtie, gagged and blindfolded, two sturdy bamboo rods anchoring the rope—and one of them acting as a delicious spreader bar for her legs as well. Her arms would be tied behind her, their rope tautly joining the rest of the rigging at the rods.
Quinn could do it. She could rig the entire thing and hoist me into the air. Anyone and everyone could have at me!
But the very instant Liv latched on to the idea, a threesome approached the wench, the top grabbing one of its heavy duty chains, nixing her idea. More people were crowding into the room, some to play, others to watch. She had to decide and fast.
“What'll it be, Liv?”
Quinn, bordering on impatience, becoming vexed by the quickening pace around them. Again, Liv thought of being spread wide, available to all takers. Her eyes settled on the sex sling in the corner of the room. Wordlessly, she made for it, Quinn on her heels and chuckling yet again, this time at the obvious. Tara, returning with Liv's bag in hand, beelined for the sling, following Liv's lead.
There, Liv undressed as Tara held the bag open for Quinn. Item by item, Quinn went through the bag, hanging whips on a nearby utility rack, clothespins and clamps on an accompanying tray. But when she pulled a heavy leather hood from its depths—and found latex gloves and lube beneath it—she turned to Liv. Her expression was stern, implacable, not of a master about to punish his underling, but of a friend all too familiar with Liv's deep need and willing to accept its challenge.
“Tara, spread the word while I warm her up,” she said, his voice flat and determined. “You know, the usual suspects.”
Hood in hand, Quinn loosened its laces and, staring at Liv, steeled herself to see things through.
Naked, hooded, her hands above her head and cuffed to the sling, her feet in its stirrups, Liv waited for the void to unleash itself. Sensations washed over her, but they were small things, nothing more than a hyperawareness of the sling—her body stretched high and wide, its weight against the sling's leather, the slight motion of the sling itself. The hood accentuated everything, shrinking her world to an iota of place, of being. Within it, her breathing heaved loud and the very air seemed awake with sound. Into this strangely condensed here and now, she sank and gave herself over, her body quivering as tension anticipated the face of surrender. Already, endorphins coursed through her, promising the heights of pleasure if she dared reach for them.
But only prolonged play would push her in that direction, and when the lick of a whip stung her right breast, Liv gasped. A second swipe attacked her left breast so swiftly that she knew exactly what Quinn had chosen for the opening volley: two horsehair whips, one in each hand, wielded in overlapping figure eight patterns—Florentine flogging. Liv moaned; she was in expert hands.
It wasn't a perfect Florentine flogging; it couldn't be—the angle between her body in the swing and Quinn's upright stance was all wrong—but it was expedient. The whips traveled down Liv's body, from her breasts to her thighs, even to the soles of her feet, entreating her arousal. Their constant strikes gave no pause, stinging as hair met flesh in a teasing, tormenting cascade.
Sudden strikes between her legs—pain blazed—and all thought fled her. A raw, hungry throb answered the whips, her cunt, zealous and fiery. More, it cried.
Liv heard laughter—Quinn, beguiled by her hunger, renewed her assault. She showered the whips upon Liv, their strikes fiery and fierce. Yet she wasn't alone in her eagerness. Other hands joined in, grabbing her nipples, pinching and pulling. Together, they threw Liv into an intensity so sudden that she didn't know whether to squirm or buck. Tension balled tight and forced her hand. Liv bucked.
She drove her cunt against the whips, meeting their every strike in stride, taking all they had to give. Every impact threw her higher, drew her nearer. Tension's spark flared into a fireball, burning, its cataclysm close. Finally, it burst. A lurch, a shudder, a sudden cascade—orgasm struck. Long and glorious, it swept Liv up. Free and unfettered, she soared, a bird upon the wind. But h
er release was a wind amid a summer's heat, its updraft dissipating. Too soon, its triumph faded. Jubilation quieted.
Too soon, Liv returned to ground.
Others stepped up then and toyed with her. One caned her thighs, another slapped her mons, spanking it wet. Still others groped her, their touch rough and selfish. But none of it approached Quinn's whipping and none of it sent her toward oblivion. All of it was tepid, her tops backing off just as their efforts encouraged a new crescendo.
Was her hunger bottomless, outpacing her tops and exhausting them before she could counter the void? Or were they too easily satisfied, willing to take some of her but incapable of giving anything of substance?
That Liv had the wherewithal to question her surroundings was evidence enough that she was nowhere near the depth she needed. She growled angrily and flailed against new hands that squeezed her flesh.
Enough!
Quinn stepped in and halted the free-for-all. As hands vacated her, Liv sighed, relieved, but sensing Quinn at the foot of the sling, she slipped a foot from the stirrup and sought her out. When she found Quinn, she rested it on her, her way of apologizing for too often having to rely on her, on her friendship, for intervention.
Quinn patted her foot, returned it to the stirrup, then came alongside her and leaned down to her masked face. “I know,” she said soothingly. “I'll do what I can.”
Liv sighed a second time, thankful for a friend who always knew where she was during play. Quinn always knew what she needed and, more often than not, she knew how to give it to her as well.
“Tara, get my hogtie ring. Clips too. And cords, medium and long.”
Liv relaxed in the swing. Quinn was about to rig something up, something, she hoped, that would test her, push her. The edge—she wanted to go right to the edge.
She waited, anticipation eating at her as Quinn finagled overhead, Tara assisting like a nurse at a surgeon's side. But Quinn was adept and the procedure short, and when Liv heard Quinn say “clamp” she knew Quinn was ready to commence play.
