by Maren Smith
The old proverb was right: the eyes really were the windows to the soul, and in Sara’s, he saw a wanting so deep and primal that it pulled at him. His groin grew hot and tight. His cock stirred. He held out his hand and she came to him, her soft lips parting as he slid his fingers back along her cheek, combing them past her ear and into her long blonde hair. He loved the feel of wrapping those soft tresses around his palm and wrist. He loved the way her eyes closed and her whole body seemed to mold against him, softening submissively when he closed his fist in the tangles at her scalp and brought her mouth to his.
He kissed her, partly because he wanted to rob her of her awareness of all the people around them, both the voyeurs and those already deep in scenes of their own, and partly because he just couldn’t help himself.
“You are for me,” he breathed into her. “No one else matters. For as long as we are in this space, it’s just you and me. Take off your clothes, Sara. I want you to take your position on the frame and wait for me. You’ve been a very good girl, baby. This is going to be nothing but fun for both of us.”
He kissed her, letting his passion reaffirm that last thought. He could feel her trembling now, soft in his arms, with a smattering of goosebumps breaking out over her skin, though he knew she couldn’t be cold. The dungeon was always kept just a little warm, specifically so naked submissives would not be uncomfortable. Still, Jackson stroked his hands up and down her arms, but one look in her eyes told him cold wasn’t what she was feeling.
Good. Her senses were heightening, her eyes just a little unfocused. She was getting her head where it needed to be to submit to his whip. A soft-tailed flogger—that's what he would use. This was all about pleasure and reward.
Leaving her to prepare herself, he walked off into the crowd. The dungeon proper was fairly long, a series of adjoined rooms with multiple exits, a hidden elevator, several secret passages, an oubliette for the serious game players, nine private rooms plus two more anything-goes aftercare rooms, three sets of men and women’s bathrooms and one clearly-marked implement-return station lined up along the wall. After use, each implement had to be checked to make sure it was sanitary to return to public use. If not, it was sent home with the user as a memento and replaced with something brand new. The station itself was manned twenty-four hours a day by an employee (never a client) whose sole job it was to inspect every item as it was returned. It was a bottom-of-the-ladder job—the sort of thing usually assigned to new hires and Little Maids while they were still learning the ropes and the rules. If there were a more tedious and boring position in the Castle, Jackson couldn’t for the life of him think what it was. And it was for that reason that some truly sadistic Masters sometimes used it as a punishment. As Jackson approached the counter, he suspected that might be the case here.
He smiled one of his rare and genuine smiles and folded his arms to lean against the counter. “Hi, Hannah.”
The petite brunette on the other side pretended to be too busy inspecting her way through a short stack of paddles to look up at him. “Hi,” she said, sulking.
Unlike previous attendants, she was not dressed as a Little Maid. Rather, her sheer white garment was that of a pampered Gorean slave, little more than a drape of silk that covered her breasts in front and another draped in back to cover her bottom. Sam must have been in a mood. She was even wearing the locking steel slave bands around her neck, wrists and ankles.
“Having a hard day?” He tried to hide his amusement with sympathy, but Hannah saw right through it.
She flashed him a mutinous glare and, just as quickly, averted her eyes back to the paddle she was wiping down. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she grumbled. “You’ll take his side.”
“Probably. Sam usually has a pretty level grip on what he deems appropriate.” He wondered if Sam ever felt shaken out of perspective when it came to Hannah.
Hannah’s frown deepened. She jumped up from where she was sitting and snapped away from him on the pretense of putting the paddle away on its hook. She stood there, facing the wall for a time, but when she finally turned back to him, some of her irritation had faded into despair. She came back to her chair and slumped down into the seat, picking up the next implement, a heavy flogger, without interest. She picked at the long tails.
“What happened?” Jackson coaxed.
“I told him no.” She gave him a sidelong look and then sniffled. “Apparently, I don’t get to do that, except under certain circumstances of which this morning was not one.”
“Ah.”
She slid him another disgruntled look. She also sniffled again, but if she was looking for sympathy, she was crying to the wrong Dom. “He’s going to cane me.”
Jackson tsked. Hannah was his friend, but then, so was Sam. No way was he about to get into the middle of this.
“I hate the cane,” she said, more to herself than to him.
“Sounds like an effective punishment then.”
“Oh, I knew it! I knew you were going to side with him!”
Pushing back off the counter, Jackson came around to her side. He dropped a kiss onto her bowed head, selected two floggers off the wall—one a soft suede and the other only slightly more serious—and then patted her shoulder. “You can always say your safeword.”
The look she shot him couldn’t have been any more incredulous if he’d instead suggested she cane Sam. “Are you serious? I can’t do that!”
“Why not?” he challenged.
“Because!” she snapped, throwing the flogger on the desk in disgust. “I screwed up, so I deserve it, right?”
“Wrong,” Jackson snapped right back, “and you know better than that, too. So try again.”
She withstood his censuring frown for only a few seconds before the defiance she was trying so hard to rally withered into, for Hannah, a rare show of defeat and bewilderment. Although quick with a smile, she almost never let her real feelings show. Now however, as he stood looking down at her, he saw a measure of fragility steal over her. She tried to pretend preoccupation with the tails of the flogger again, but gave up after combing her fingers through it only once.
“Look around,” she finally said, her shoulders sagging. “Look at all the women here.”
Jackson didn’t need to look around; he saw them all the time. He kept his gaze locked where it needed to be—on Hannah, while in the back of his mind, for some strange reason he found himself back in that hospital in California, sitting at the edge of Sara’s bed, holding her good hand in his while he promised to take care of her. He saw, too, the way she had looked back at him. Though she’d nodded and tried to hide it with a smile, underneath it was the same look Hannah was giving him now.
“I know Sam wants me, Jackson,” Hannah said sadly, “but what if he doesn’t want want me? There’s so many beautiful women here—big, skinny, curvy, plain, pretty, gorgeous…sub-frenzied brats, scene hogs and pain sluts…Master Marshall sends one to see him at least once a day.” She turned her head, trying to hide now the way she swiped at one cheek but not before he saw the glitter of a tear. “And he plays with all of them,” she admitted. “He’s a great admirer of pretty things. He told me that once. It doesn’t matter what they look like, he finds something pretty in all of them.”
“Do you think that somehow detracts from what he finds in you?”
“No, of course not.” But her eyes betrayed that for a lie. She faked a smile—amazing how alike they were—she even laughed a little, but those high, tinkling notes couldn’t hide how she really felt. “But…but how can I compete with that? Last night, he had a girl in a private room and I was helping him. I saw his face as he played with her. I saw his eyes. He went into a deep, deep place with her and he did things he never does with me. I don’t think I could do those things! So if I can’t do that for him, Jackson…how can I compete?”
There it was again, that same exact look that Sara had once given him. No, not once, he suddenly realized. It wasn’t just in the hospital. She had lo
oked at him that way back at the Shadowbrook Den, not just the night they’d played together but every time afterward when he would approach her and she would claim her dance card already full. And it was this same exact look that she’d given him two days ago, crumpled on the men’s room floor with tears on her face and urine soaked into her torn dress.
Struck, Jackson turned around, searching across the crowded room until he found Sara, standing at the cross just as he’d told her to be, still fully clothed (definitely not as he’d told her to be), staring back at him…and Hannah. She quickly looked away fixing on something else, but not before he recognized that exact same look and the understanding that followed that recognition hit Jackson like a fist to the gut.
“Do you want more than just those?” Hannah asked, gesturing at the twin floggers hanging forgotten from his hand. His talk obviously hadn’t helped her. She wasn’t crying, but she still looked depressed.
Jackson shook his head. He started to walk away but came back after only a few steps and reached across the counter to catch the back of her neck. He pulled her close enough to kiss the top of her head.
“Thank you, Hannah,” he said, and ruffled her hair. He headed back to Sara then, but as he walked away he snapped his finger back at her and called out, “He loves you to pieces, you know. Whether he’ll say it or not.”
Blushing furiously, Hannah glanced around at everyone close enough to hear that and interested enough to turn and look at her, quickly ducking back down behind her counter to hide until her wave of embarrassment passed. For Jackson, nothing and no one else mattered in that moment but getting back to Sara.
He wrapped his arms around her, letting his embrace reassure her as to whom in this place he wanted. The tails of the suede flogger trailed her stomach and brushed her mons as he pressed a tender kiss upon the soft bare skin of her neck. Her body melted against him. When she turned to gaze up at him, he took a rogue’s advantage of her availability and kissed her like he owned her, like he couldn’t get enough of her, like a man who’d been in love for a very long time without any way to express it.
He loved her. He’d never thought of it in those terms before, but that revelation was hardly a surprise. He’d loved her long before she waltzed back into his life, and he suspected now he always would. She was inside him, an aphrodisiac he hadn’t been able to shake for three long and lonely years. He thought he’d moved past it, but she’d only been back for two days, and she was so deep inside him now that he knew there could be no moving past this. He was a big man, a powerful man. As humbling and as corny as it was to admit, he could more easily move mountains with a teaspoon and a bucket than get over her a second time.
He touched her face, letting her feel his fingers and smell the leather, and knew when she left tomorrow, as all clients had to, there was no way he’d be able to let her go without some way to keep contact between them. He could get her address and phone number from Marshall’s office. He could get her email address from her online application. He’d message her every day, call when he could, and do whatever he had to do to find a way to allay whatever stupid little fears she was harboring in that beautiful head of hers. And eventually, somehow, he’d bring her back again. She’d be a lady of the Castle, just like Hannah and Kaylee were. Only Sara would be his, the beacon that would draw him home every night, the soft welcoming flesh that he would pour his needs into until they were both too exhausted and sated to move.
He stroked her cheek, first with his hand and then with the soft flogger. Leather had always held a special place for Sara, and so he took her into the zone. He let the smell of worn leather fill her with every breath, and he let the touch of the tails glide down her body—first, the suede, and then the kangaroo hide. Both held their own seductive appeal and she was already responding, standing so silent and still under the slithering caress of the tails while her small hands touched him, grounding herself in the moment simply by laying her hands upon his chest.
He brought the softer suede flogger up her body, letting her feel the tails stroking up through the valley between her breasts until he cupped her throat. He held her, rocking her, letting her absorb the textural seduction of each flogger whispering their individual strands across her skin, while her breathing slowly changed and her nipples grew taut against the stiff fabric of her corset. Her hands on his arms had fallen still. They gripped him now, tense and tight, the way she would grip the wrist straps on the A-frame. Her body against his felt finely attuned, ready, supple, moving as he moved, as he wrapped his arm around her. One flogger lightly tapped her sex and between her legs. His other hand still cupped around her throat, he walked her into place against the frame.
The padding here was leather, too. The scent was inescapable now, tainting every breath she took and filling her with the subtle scent she loved. He saw her close her eyes and lean in to press her forehead, and then her cheek, to the cool cushioning.
“Where shall I take you, baby?” he murmured in her ear, his voice as smooth as silk. “Are you aching for heaven or hell?”
Her eyes closed. She arched, sinuous against him “Either. Anywhere you please, Master.”
The tremble that shivered her, rippled through him next. She’d just called him Master. Not Master Jackson or Jackson, but Master.
“That’s my girl,” he breathed, the touch of her, the smell of the leather, the pulse and beat of the dungeon music and that one little word, they all dug into him, pulling him into a powerful and energizing place. “Yeah, that’s my good, good girl.”
This was going to be nothing but pure heaven for them both.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Sara shivered uncontrollably but not because she was cold. Her nose was mere centimeters from the black leather padding. It was all she could smell as she breathed, and all that she could feel was the touch of Jackson’s hands as he lifted each of her arms and bound her to the cross. She could have slipped her wrists into each of the straps and simply held on for whatever duration he chose to keep her here, but he wanted her to feel captive to him, and there was no denying how the sensation of those wide leather cuffs buckled securely around her wrists made her pussy clench. Moisture trickled down through the folds, liquid proof of the need that each fastening buckle only amplified.
Once her wrists were bound to the frame just above her head, Jackson paused to kiss her shoulder. His hands wandered her, touching all that he could reach, caressing up her arms and down to her ribs, curving around to cup her breasts and squeeze. He rolled her nipples between his fingers, plucking until she could hear echoes of the sensation catching in her own shaky breaths. Then down his fingers wandered, circling her navel once before venturing on to cup and squeeze her sex next. Her panties were already soaked. She could both feel it and hear it as he stroked her and then gripped.
“Whose pussy is this?” he asked.
“Yours.” No other answer felt half as honest as that one did. He did own her—her sex, her breasts and her breath, her lips…every part of her felt branded by his proprietary hold. She liked it. She liked it when he shoved his fingers up inside her, restricted as he was from penetrating too deeply because he didn’t bother to get his hand under her panties first. He rubbed her, palming and massaging her clit with the ball of his thumb even as he thrashed his fingers wildly back and forth until, even above the crowd, the talking, the music, the swish and crack of more than a dozen implements impacting bare flesh, the moans, the cries of orgasms and of pain, she could hear the wet, slick sounds of her own arousal.
He arched her onto her toes against the padded A-frame and brought her head crashing back against his shoulder as the first of many keening cries rushed from her trembling lips.
He ripped the corset in his haste to get the laces loose enough. He stripped her, pushed and shoved at her clothes until he got them down past her waist, then hips and finally, he dropped them into a puddle of forgotten cloth around her ankles. Corset first, then panties, followed quickly by the nobleman’s shir
t he wore, and now they were skin to skin. His pants were still a barrier between them, but his chest felt like a furnace at her back and his strong arms were bands of steel holding her against him. He gripped her pussy, his strong fingers alternately rubbing and invading and rubbing again.
He began to kiss his way down her back, pausing to nip here and there—at her shoulder blade, along her spine, the upper curve of each of her buttocks, and back up along her scarred side, leaving no inch of her uncaressed, unlicked, unkissed. He rubbed her back and then, in soft, rhythmic motions, began to pat it. Across her shoulders, back and forth; around and around. He kissed her constantly, now and then pausing to suckle, to raise flushed red marks, to decorate her body like rubies.
She lost herself in the pulsing pull of his mouth and the rhythmic pat of his hand. It fell in perfect time to the deep bass of the music. Led Zeppelin: music to be spanked to. Jackson fell right into the beat, letting it move them both. All the rest of the room just melted away, and they became a world unto themselves.
His hands fell from her back to grip her buttocks instead. Jackson squeezed, prying them apart as he laid one last kiss on the side of her neck, and then he let her go and stepped away.
A whisper of movement passed behind her. She braced herself, thinking at any second she would feel the first soft blow, but instead his hand returned to her bottom, caressing and tracing up and down along the valley between her cheeks. She sighed when his fingers pushed down between her legs to cover her molten sex from behind. His fingers dipped into slick heat and parted her folds, two thick digits invading inside her without a single word of warning. She clenched in tight around him, holding him, wanting to pull him deeper, but he withdrew almost immediately, and a second later the cool metallic sphere of a pleasure ball was pushing in deep in his place. Jackson used his fingers to shove the sphere as far up as he could reach and it wasn’t until he withdrew, leaving her to grip and hold it, that she realized the ball was weighted. A ball within a ball; when the inner one rocked, each tap sent a shock of pure pleasure vibrating all through her.
