by Maren Smith
The ledge hugged the cave wall, growing so narrow that the men were forced into single-file, particularly when it took them through a shadowed tunnel in the wall. No more than twenty feet in length, it was shocking how dark it became. All four flashlights came on within steps and, though presumably he knew this cave better than anyone, still Emil whacked his head on a low-hanging bump of rock.
"Whose bright idea was it to make this part of the damn resort?" Dominick muttered.
"It's not." Emil shot the two officers bringing up the rear a sour glare. "At least, not technically."
The tunnel emptied them out again into a well-lit grotto that overlooked the ocean and sand on the other side and, in the very center of a relatively calm tidal pool, Dominick finally spotted her.
"Maddy!" He waved both arms, trying to catch her attention, but she didn't look up. Chained to a pillar of stone, her bare feet balanced on a tiny ledge mere inches above the rising water, she hugged the pillar, alternately yanking at her chains and seeming almost to be trying to climb them. Dominick yelled again but her gaze never left the water. She shrieked and heaved on her bonds, jerking her feet up. Trying to get higher, he suddenly realized, and then he saw it: a dark shadow wandering lazy circles around the base of the pillar to which she was bound. Only the tip of its dorsal fin cut the surface as it dipped in toward her feet. She screamed, heaving on her chains in yet another attempt to climb the rock.
"Wait!" Emil shouted, but Dominick had already reacted. For the first time in his life, he responded without thinking. He leapt into the water.
It was nothing short of a miracle that he missed the shallow breaks of rocks that peppered the cave walls. It was nothing short of a miracle that the shark was too preoccupied with Maddy to pay him any attention. It continued to wander its lazy circles, tipping slightly along the surface of the water as if to keep one black eye upon her, and completely ignored Dominick's mad swim out to them. He came in behind the shark and tried to get up on the pillar, but there was no ladder, no steps, and no handholds to grip onto.
"Get out of the water!" Maddy screamed, offering her legs for him to grab. "It's coming! It's coming!"
Horror turned her next scream wordless and all Dominick saw was the gray-black shadow of the shark, mouth agape and lined with row upon row of jagged white teeth coming straight at him.
The incoming tide slammed his back against the rock pillar and sheer fury, fear and adrenaline seized him—his thrashing, kicking legs; his balled up fist; his arm as he drew back and swung. With all the strength that he could muster, he punched that shark.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"I tried to tell you it was a mechanical shark." Careful to keep his tone painstakingly neutral, Emil drove the fully loaded golf cart back up the winding dirt road from the beach to the high security walls of Fleetwood town.
Dripping on the front passenger seat, Dominick said nothing.
All that painstaking neutrality got left in the dirt behind them as Emil, thin-lipped and seemingly unable to stop himself, added, "But no, you just had to play the Tarzan card and leap in to save the girl."
Sitting on Dominick's lap, Maddy worried at her hands. She wished she could see Dominick's face. She wanted to know how angry he was, but she couldn't steal even the softest peek at him without making it obvious.
"What," Dominick asked, drumming his fingers once upon the side of her hip, "are you doing with a fucking mechanical shark?"
"It's not mine," Emil snorted. "Martin brought it."
"Who's Martin?"
"One of our sissy boys. He once told me his dad used to work in Hollywood, building shit like that for movie sets. Which is where that thing came from. Right off the set of Jaws, or so he claims." Emil sniffed, adjusting his hands on the steering wheel. "Personally, I think he's full of it. That thing never looked like a Jaws shark to me. More like Jaws 3-D. Which doesn't mean he's not still going to be pissed that you broke its snout."
"What," Dominick bit out, "are you doing with a mechanical shark?"
"It's called consensual non-consent," Emil shot back, also through gritted teeth. "I'm sure you have something similar at the Castle."
"We have dungeons," Dominick snapped. "Carefully choreographed gangbangs, fantasy rape scenarios, 'involuntary' harems, bondage, stocks, private cabins where uncounted Little Red Riding Hoods have been screamingly devoured by whole packs of Big Bad Wolves but, I assure you, nowhere on any of our fifty acres of property have any of our guests been pretend-fed to the local wildlife!"
The two men fell silent, each casting the other dark looks until, seemingly unable to help himself, Emil muttered, "You would if Ohio were full of carnivores instead of cows."
Fingers drumming on Maddy's hip again, Dominick glared at him.
The rest of the drive to the wrought iron gate was made in terse silence. Emil paused long enough for the soldiers to hop off the backseat and circle the cart to open it for them. They waved Emil on, but did not get back in the vehicle.
Clothes and hair both dripping, Maddy envied them. She wouldn't have minded walking right now, herself. Anything to get away from the tension she could feel brewing all around her. She was to blame for, perhaps not all, but certainly for some of it. She kept her head bowed and her gaze aimed at her hands. Sometimes she looked at Dominick's. They were such big, relaxed hands. Ostensibly so at ease. His looked like the hands of a man who was calm as calm could be.
His hands lied, because in every other part of his body—and she could feel them, all of them, through her thighs, buttocks, hips, the whole of her left side as she sat sideways on his lap—all she felt was tension, locked and waiting just under the surface of him. Dominick was a time bomb. He was ticking. In absolute silence, with every drum of his fingers upon her hip, he was ticking. Her only hope was to make it back to her room where she might find some privacy before he went off.
Was he going to spank her for her part in this? An awful wave of prickling anxiety swept up the backs of her legs, crawling her skin everywhere she couldn't help but touch him. Was he going to use his belt again? She didn't know if she still had welts, but there were two distinctly tender spots left from his spanking at breakfast that morning. He'd only given her five strokes then. How many more than five was she going to get for having been so… stupid?
Why had she gone with them? She'd known better. Right from the very start, she had known. Whether instinct or woman's intuition, something had been whispering warnings at her practically from the moment that giggling trio of serving wenches had sidled up to her in the streets of Fleetwood. She'd been snapping pictures then, and when they told her the Mermaid's Grotto would provide her with some truly exceptional shots for her article, the temptation had pulled at her. It would be a treat, they'd said, one that most guests would never get to see. And who would have thought anyplace named after mermaids could be dangerous?
Then they'd met up with Tessa and another wench at the rear gate, and that little voice in the back of Maddy's head began to get louder. Something felt amiss, but yet the temptation had been too great. So she brushed it off. She and Tessa were two out of less than thirty guests taking this practice tour. It wasn't reasonable to think they could both be here and never run into one another. Pull up your big girl panties, she'd told herself. Deal with it.
So she had. She'd dealt with it like a champ, ignoring Tessa for the entire walk down to the beach. While snapping pictures at the mouth of the Grotto, she and Tessa had even exchanged extremely civil remarks. Neither woman had been inclined to pretend they were friends, but they had been courteous… right up until they got inside the cave and suddenly Maddy found herself in the center of a five-on-one wrestling match, with all of them yanking, pulling and dragging her out into all that water to the lonely pillar planted dead in the center of it. Because they'd all been laughing, Maddy hadn't really taken it seriously until she saw the chains. After that, the fight turned real, but still they managed to get her on that rock.
She hadn't
known it was a mechanical shark, either. She sniffled, and the hand on her knee offered its first comforting squeeze.
She ought to apologize, right now, before he asked for it. He'd risked his life for her. Fake shark or not, he could have been hurt on those rocks. The tide could have caught him. He could have been killed. Saying she was sorry became such an insignificant thing compared to all that, that she just couldn't bring herself to say anything at all. They continued on, riding in that cart all the way through town to the garrison and a small side building that hosted a small plaque that read, 'Security'.
"Do you want a chance to calm down before you deal with the… aftermath?" Emil asked as he parked the cart behind the building, tucking it well out of sight from anyone passing on the streets out front.
"Nope." Dominick kept a hand on the small of her back while Maddy got out. Her legs felt shaky still. She held on to the side of the cart until he got out. It made her feel both better and worse when he took her arm again.
"I'll take her to her room," Emil offered.
"Nope," Dominick repeated. Heading inside, he dragged Maddy with him.
Great. Now he didn't want her out of his sight. Worse. She definitely felt worse.
Emil frowned. "I'm not going to leave her tied up somewhere stupid, I promise," he said.
"I'm not worried about you," Dominick shot back, opening the door and pushing Maddy through it ahead of him. "It's the rest of your employees I can't trust."
Wanting nothing but a quiet place to cry, Maddy walked beside him, head down and hands tightly clasped. Dominick headed for the first office, but stopped when he peeked through the narrow window in the door. Sitting on a plush maroon chair in the designated waiting area, Tessa picked at her fingernails and looked bored.
A slight tightening of his grip on Maddy's arm was the only hint of aggravation Dominick let slip as he hauled her to the next office. A peek through that window showed Sally and her three no longer giggling companions. No doubt wondering if any of them might make it through the next hour with their jobs intact, they waited silently for fate to befall them. They looked scared.
Tsking, Dominick dragged Maddy further down the hall. They were twin Goldilockses, searching for a quiet place to deem just right. They found it in the small monitoring station at the end of the hall. Two vacant chairs crowned a bank of security monitors. A lack of speakers and sound gave it an eerie quality as remote cameras scrolled through section after section of the park. Because there were no guests, no security guards had been assigned to watch them.
"Can I get you anything?" Emil drawled from near the head of the hallway, where he'd stopped in front of the office where Tessa sat waiting. His hand rested on the doorknob. "Coffee?" he asked. "Tea and biscuits? Rita on speed dial?"
"Towels," Dominick told him, "and a change of clothes. For both of us."
Pushing Maddy in ahead of him, he shut the door and hit the lock. Drawing the blinds, he shut out the potential of spying curiosity. Breathing heavily, his thoughts his own, he stood staring at the blind until Maddy couldn't bear the silence not one scrolling click of the cameras more.
"Are you very mad?"
His head tipped and the frowning line of his mouth deepened. "Yes, I am."
Her hands worried, twisting and plucking at her fingers. Her bottom clenched so hard she swore she could already feel the hugging snap of his belt wrapping around her. Her voice more like a little girl's, she asked, "Are you very mad at me, Dominick?"
He turned, the lines of his mouth turning perplexed an instant before his confusion melted away. It left him looking very tired. "No." He came to her, his big hands settling on her shoulders and gently squeezing. "I'm not mad at you. This wasn't your fault."
Maddy shook her head, not understanding.
"What are you talking about?" she blurted, suddenly desperate for him to judge her guilty just so she could get it over with. "I shouldn't have gone with them. I should have known better than to leave the resort. I knew the second Tessa joined us that I was in trouble. I should have gone back right then!"
"You had no way of knowing you were in trouble until it happened," he assured her, his hands gliding up from her shoulders to her throat.
Maddy turned her face away, nowhere near ready enough to accept tenderness. Nowhere near ready to be forgiven. "I almost got you killed." She covered her mouth, as if saying such a thing might make it more true.
"Okay, look at me." He tried to force her eyes back to his, but she pushed his hands away and then tried to pull out of his reach. Dominick let her go, but he didn't look happy about it. He breathed in, a deep steadying breath, and then his eyes narrowed. When she backed away, he followed her. "You keep beating yourself up over this, and I might just get it into my head that you need help getting past it."
She swung back to him. "What does that mean?"
A corner of his mouth curled and then he touched his belt, tapping a finger against the buckle. "You know what I mean."
Maddy stumbled back when he advanced on her, but only the one step. After that, she stiffened her legs and her resolve. She fought back the hordes of nervous butterflies swarming through her stomach, making her chest ache from the tension of holding herself so tightly. Worse than that, though, was the urge she had to reach back and touch her clenching bottom, because he knew that she had it. He knew what he was doing to her as he chased her, one slow step at a time, backing her up against that bank of black and white monitors. The other side of his mouth turned up now too as he moved in, stopping much closer to her than she was prepared for him to be.
"Do you need me to punish you," he asked with such manufactured kindness, "so that you can forgive yourself for something that was in no way your fault?"
Maddy opened her mouth. She stared up at him, nervousness growing like wildfire into something that felt almost like real fear. Not of him; his belt maybe, but she didn't think she could ever really be afraid of Dominick himself. Still, what would he do if she said yes? Did she even want to know? Her knees began to tremble, dipping weakly in and out. Without realizing, she looked at his belt again.
"Y-yes," she whispered. "I-I think I do." She promptly covered her mouth with both hands, terrified by what she had just committed herself to.
"Fine," he agreed, and with such a mix of authority and acceptance that for one crazy moment—suddenly bereft of all choice—all Maddy could feel was relief now that he was in charge. It was so strong; it stole the breath right out of her chest, leaving her shaken all the way down to her toes, and yet…
And yet, her nipples tightened. Thorny trepidation crawled up her back and down her legs, moving with seductive fingers into the shadowy space between. She shivered again as it infiltrated her, phantom caresses playing along her slit at complete odds with the dread tightening in her belly.
She jumped a little when he moved, but it wasn't to take her arm or turn her around or even to remove his wide black leather belt. Instead, he held out his hand.
"Panties," he said. "Take them off, Maddy. From now until I say differently, you've lost the right to wear them."
Lost the right?
That tickle between her legs became centered, unbelievably focused within her now pulsing clit. She looked at his waiting hand, her gaze slipping past it to his belt buckle. Her scattered thoughts regrouped just enough for her to put two and two together. She'd have to take off her shorts in order to remove her underwear. He would be standing right here, watching while she bared herself to him, becoming every bit as vulnerable to his sight as she would be to his touch.
"I'm not going to count to three," he warned. "I won't even count to one." Snapping his fingers, he pointed from her shorts to the floor. "Right now."
Looking at his belt, Maddy untied the wet sleeves of her sweater from around her waist. With shaking hands, she looked around for a place to put it. It seemed so disrespectful to just drop it, a wet heap of dirty white yarn on the security room floor. Right now, disrespectful was the last thing
she wanted to be.
Taking it from her, Dominick solved the problem by tossing her sweater over the back of the nearest chair. Robbed of any further delay and afraid things might get worse if he had to snap his fingers at her again, Maddy unfastened her shorts and stepped out of them. The bottom hem of her tank top barely came down as far as the elastic of her lacy pink underwear. A woefully inadequate shield; she held her removed clothing to her front. It didn't hide her very well. She'd never felt so exposed in front of a man in her life.
Not allowing her to keep them, either, he took her shorts and tossed them on top of her sweater. Holding out his hand again, he waited without another word for her obedience.
The way her face was burning as she hooked her thumbs into the waistband, she knew her cheeks had to be the same shade of hot pink as her underwear. Like a band-aid, she told herself. Hoping it might hurt less if done fast, Maddy stripped and stepped. Snatching her panties off the floor, her shaking hands wadded the lace into the smallest ball she could manage before surrendering them into his waiting hand. She looked at the floor, the garbage can in the corner, anywhere but at him.
"Turn around."
Here it came. On wobbly legs, Maddy turned. She pressed on her stomach. Butterflies no longer, that awful swarming inside her now felt more like angry bees.
"Bend over."
Horribly aware of the view she was presenting him, Maddy bent. She wished she were thinner. She wished she had a smaller ass. Women with smaller asses looked better showing all like this. She locked her lips to keep back any inadvertent sounds when his hand settled on her back. It smoothed upward, following the curve of her spine up past her shoulders. She didn't realize he was gathering the folds of her shirt, all the way from hem to neckline, until he'd twisted the cloth around his fist, turning it into the anchor by which he held her steady before him. She jumped as, ignoring the quivering mounds of her bottom, he cupped her sex, taking bold ownership with a grip that caught both her labia and clit, and squeezed.
