As I thought how much I loved Devin for bringing me here, he reached from behind to slide fingers between my legs. When he found my clit, my whole body shuddered. Until he touched me there, I hadn’t realized how unbearably swollen and sensitive my sex was. I squealed against Milo’s cock as Devin’s fingertips skimmed across the slick flesh.
Both of them laughed. I didn’t care. I sucked Milo with renewed eagerness, and arched my back to take more of Devin’s cock. His fingers worked at my clit, stroking, pinching, torturing me until I was crying for release.
“When Milo comes, you can come,” he said. “Not before.”
I rolled my eyes up to Milo with such a desperate look of longing that he laughed again, but less than a minute later, his fingers tightened against my scalp and he drove hard in my throat, groaning in release. I hardly remember what happened then, except that I came in a sudden rush, with Devin’s fingers on my clit and in my pussy, as he buried himself in my ass. My tears had ebbed, but they exploded again, soaking my cheeks. The orgasm was so strong, so shattering, that it left me breathless.
Milo knelt in front of me in the midst of it, taking my hands from my nipples and holding them. “Open your mouth,” he ordered, pinning me with his dark eyes. “Show me that you’ll take more.”
I didn’t think I could take any more, but I obeyed him, gasping through Devin’s growling climax with my lips ajar. No other Doms came to force themselves into my mouth. Instead, Milo kissed me. “Good girl,” he said, patting my cheek. “You’re done with your first scene. Welcome to The Gallery.”
Devin pulled out, leaving me limp and empty. There was a soft smattering of applause, but neither man acknowledged it as Milo unbound my ankles and Devin helped me stand up. Someone brought a blanket and Devin wrapped it around me. When my legs proved trembly and useless, he leaned down and lifted me in his arms, holding me against his chest.
I zoned out as he carried me to another set of stairs. Next I knew, I was sitting on his lap in the upper room, and Milo was sitting across from us, cleaning my glasses. He handed them to me with a smile.
“Welcome back to reality,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Mmm.” That was all I could think of to say.
“I’m not sure she’s completely back.” Devin’s voice rumbled in his chest, against my ear. He turned me in his arms. “How are you, Ella? Okay? Hurting? Still in subspace?”
He looked concerned, and I didn’t want him to worry, so I forced myself to speak. “I’m fine. I’m not hurt. Well…” My lips spread in a happy grin. “I hurt in the best way. But now I feel…tired.”
“Tired in a good way?” Devin asked.
Why did he still look worried? I stroked my fingertips down his cheek. “A very good way. Can I lie here…against you…?”
I didn’t wait for an answer, just took off my glasses and drifted, warm and supported in his arms. After a few moments I heard Milo’s voice, and saw the blur of his dark hair. “She’s pretty cool, Dev. You’re right. Definitely a maso.”
“I told you.”
“Where’s she been all this time?”
Devin paused a moment, then said, “In a science lab, measuring gravitational waves in an attempt to control time and the universe.”
“Not control them.” I shook my head. “My job is to explore the possibilities.”
“Fine. I’ll do the controlling, then,” he said, nudging my head back to give me a kiss.
“What are gravitational waves?” Milo asked.
His tone was so polite and conversational, it was hard to believe a few minutes ago he’d been working hard to bruise my throat. I took a longer look at him. Dark eyes, prominent nose, expressive lips. Not classically handsome, not like Devin, but he was hard to look away from.
“Gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of space-time caused by galactic interactions,” I said quietly. At Milo’s puzzled look, I elaborated. “The waves provide a method of measuring the universe and quantifying time.”
He gestured toward me, muttering to Devin. “What the hell? You let me throat fuck Stephen Hawking?”
Devin laughed. “Fort calls her the ‘archgenius.’”
“I’m not a genius,” I said. “And I’ll never be as smart as Steve.”
“Steve. She calls him Steve.” Milo threw up his hands, but he was smiling. Devin’s heart beat slow and steady in my ear.
“Are we going to play some more?” I asked. “How long is The Gallery open?”
“No more for you tonight,” said Devin, while Milo muttered, “Hardcore.”
Was I hardcore? I looked around at the other kinky people who’d drifted upstairs into the more comfortable space, and some of the subs looked to be in worse shape than me. Some of them were still crying, their eye makeup smeared down their cheeks—
Oh, my eye makeup. I imagined I looked awful, much more awful than I felt. I saw a submissive cross to a full-length mirror mounted in one of the corners and turn to inspect the lattice of welts covering her legs and ass. I lifted my head and noticed there was another mirror not far from where we sat. I eased out of Devin’s lap…ow, my ass…and went to stand before it, holding the blanket around me.
In the shadow of the giant clock face, I looked at my own face and hardly recognized myself. My eyes were a mess, yes, a mass of mascara smudges and trails behind my glasses, but my mouth seemed changed too. My lips seemed fuller, more supple, and my cheekbones more prominent. I looked…badass. I dropped the blanket to see if my body looked changed, too.
My ass was certainly changed. Looking over my shoulder in the mirror, I could see the history of what had happened, the allover bruising from the straps and paddles, the line-shaped welts from the cane and/or whip, or whatever the hell had been used to mark me while I sucked off my Dom and hurt my own nipples.
But I felt changed in more ways than that.
I took off my glasses so I couldn’t see myself as clearly. I could have been any short, blonde woman staring in the mirror, but inside, I had a new, stronger sense of self. It was okay to wish for hurt and pain. It was okay to be bound and shared, and made to serve others without the option of safe wording, as long as I enjoyed it. As long as I trusted my partner.
I’d trusted Leo once upon a time, but I shouldn’t have. My poor judgment had resulted in coercion and manipulation, and the wrong kind of pain. But Devin…
I replaced my glasses and looked at him, to find him studying me too. His eyes were so deep, so reflective, like a mirror, like the one I’d just used to inspect myself. I realized then, with a start of discovery, what had changed about my body. It had stopped belonging fully to me. Some of me—a terrifying amount of me—was starting to belong to him.
Chapter Eighteen: Devin
I thought our first trip to The Gallery went well. Ella seemed like a new person on the way home, full of sexual confidence and energy, which was exactly what The Gallery was meant to do. We attended the following weekend too, and the weekend after that, and the more I challenged her pain tolerance, the more she bloomed.
During these sessions, a closeness developed between us, a give-and-take that sometimes involved others, most often Milo, who was willing to be more reckless than me. More reckless, because he cared less.
I cared more and more.
The more she trusted me, the more I wanted to be worthy of that trust. The harder she cried, the more I wanted to make her cry, so I could hold her afterward and feel worthy of the tears dripping against my neck. The harder she came, the harder I came, growling with the satisfaction of possessing her. I’d had plenty of subs, and I cared about all of them, but I’d never felt this level of involvement before.
It was mostly sexual involvement. I understood that. She didn’t have time for me during the week, and I didn’t have time for her either, with a full slate of flights on my schedule. Then Saturday would come and she was mine, a vision of eroticism, trimmed in black, finished with a silver collar. Property of The Gallery. As much a
s I lusted for her, she wasn’t mine alone. She didn’t want to be.
That should have made me happy. Low involvement meant low stress, but as I flew across the ocean, I’d picture her at work, in her science pow-wows with her astrophysics squad. She wasn’t only my sex toy, my plaything to fuck and hurt. She was also a genius, a goddess of gravitational waves and time-relativity. I started to ask for more of her time. I demanded more of her time. She agreed to let me meet her for lunch once a week.
Lunch? Fuck.
But it was better than nothing. Whenever I had days off through the summer, I went to the NSF Institute and signed in as a guest, and met her in the lobby. Sometimes we went out to a restaurant for lunch, but usually we stayed in and ate at the hushed, crowded cafeteria in the basement. Most of the people there had their noses buried in their devices, or scientific journals and models, but they usually took time to cast curious glances at the two of us. We weren’t dating, but I made it look like we were. I used the universal language of men—since most of them were men—and glared at anyone who looked at Ella too long.
She was oblivious to all this, her eyes obscured by her glasses, her mind a universe away even when she agreed to have lunch with me. It was during one of these lunches that I met Dr. Leopold Mann.
“Ellie,” he’d said, sweeping down on our table and sitting next to her on her bench. “Who’s your friend?”
She’d moved over with a glance of annoyance. “Devin, this is Leo, my boss.”
It didn’t escape me that she shrank away from him, and he still tried to crowd her. I subdued the urge to reach across the table, grab him by the neck, and shove him off the bench onto the floor.
I think he realized it, because he backed off a little. “Nice to meet you, Devin. How do you know Ellie?”
“Ella,” she muttered.
“We met in Pisa,” I finally said, when it became obvious she wasn’t going to answer.
“At Santo Stefano? Are you a scientist, too?”
“A pilot.”
I was giving him short answers because I didn’t care to know him. He was mid-fortyish, with dark, graying hair and an abrasive voice. I knew Ella didn’t like him, so I wanted him to go away.
“Well, I’m in the same field as Ellie, obviously,” he said. “We’re so happy to have her here. She’s an indispensable member of the team.”
She gave him a sideways look, like she might deck him if he called her Ellie one more time. I wondered if things were going badly here, if she would ditch her consortium at the first opportunity to get away from this Leo guy, and this dank underground cafeteria. I didn’t like the way that made me feel. Before I’d let her leave, I’d put her in a dungeon at my house, keep her in a cage for my amusement. It was a fun fantasy.
But this probably wasn’t the time or place to have that fantasy.
“Your boss seems like an asshole,” I said as I walked her back to her office.
“I’ve told you many times that he’s an asshole.”
“Everyone says that about their boss, but you’re right, he really is. What’s his deal? Why does he act that way toward you?”
“What way?” She said it defensively. That was the moment I realized something wasn’t right here. I pulled her to a quiet corner of the corridor and sat her next to me on an upholstered bench.
“You told me on the way over here from Pisa that you didn’t like him,” I said. “But you really don’t like him. Did something happen between the two of you? Something in your past?”
She made a face. “No. Well, yes.” She covered her eyes. “I hate to even say it. We had a…thing.”
“A thing? You had a thing with him?” Even as I said it, I realized that I’d sensed a physical history between them, which was why I’d hated him from the start. “Was he your boss then, too?” I held up my hands when she glared at me. “No judgment.”
“He wasn’t my boss. I was in college, years ago, another life.” She shook her head. “I regret it now.”
“So…you got kinky together?” As much as I hated to think about it, I wanted to know it all, especially if this “past” between them was making her unhappy.
“We got kinky for a while, yeah.” She pushed her glasses up and took a deep breath. “But it didn’t mean anything. I’d rather not talk about it.”
Bad enough that she didn’t want to talk about it? Hmm. What had they done together? How extreme had their scenes been?
“If you’re still attracted to him, you don’t have to hide it from me. I don’t care.” Total lie.
“Eww. I’m not attracted to him. I literally hate him. Seriously, don’t worry about that.”
She looked troubled, which troubled me. “What’s going on, Shorty? Is everything okay here? Is he causing problems for you?”
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
She put her head in her hands with an aggrieved sound. “Don’t be nice to me, and care about my problems. Don’t make me like you more than I already do.”
“I don’t care if you like me. I care if your boss is being an asshole to you.”
“It’s complicated, okay?” She lowered her voice, looking around to be sure we were still alone in the hallway. “Our thing ended a long time ago, but almost from the start, it was shitty. I wish it had never happened. I was young and stupid, but it is what it is, you know? I was old enough to know better. Everything just…sucks.”
Her lips pressed together. I knew all her tells of distress, like how her lips pressed into a line when she was trying not to cry. “Why’d you agree to work with him if you had this bad history together?” I asked.
“Because I couldn’t say no.”
“What do you mean, you couldn’t say no? You can always say no. Even at The Gallery, there are ways to say no.”
She turned away from me. “You don’t understand. Just… Whatever. I don’t want to talk about this with you. I need to get back to work.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” I took her wrist when she stood, and manhandled her back down beside me. She was upset, and I wanted to know the reason. “Why couldn’t you say no to him?” I asked.
“He has stuff on me,” she said through her teeth.
“What stuff?”
She looked at me, then down at her hands. So sketchy. So secretive sometimes. I thought about how she shied away from face calls and sexy photos. “He has pictures of you,” I said slowly. “Pictures you don’t want him to have.”
I knew I was right by the beleaguered look on her face. “He has pictures I let him take, Devin. Like I said, I was young and stupid when we were together.”
I was so angry for a moment, so angry I couldn’t speak. She hadn’t wanted to come here to work. She’d told me that, but she’d come anyway, which had confused me. She’d gotten on a plane even though flying terrified her. “He used those pictures to get you here,” I said. “To bend you to his will.”
“He’s not bending me to anything. Those days between us are over.”
“Are they? Does he know that?”
“Shh.” She gestured for me to keep my voice down. “This is none of your business, okay? Let me deal with my own mistakes.”
“Does he still threaten you with these photos?” I persisted. “Does he sexually harass you? There are laws to protect people in your position.”
“Can we not argue about this?” Her eyes crackled, deep blue sparks behind her glasses. “I don’t want to argue about this here.”
“Where would you like to argue about it?” I shot back.
“I don’t want to argue at all. That’s not what you’re for, that’s not why I have you in my life.”
“What the fuck? I’m trying to help you.” What did she mean, that’s not why I have you in my life? What was I, her Dom-whore? Her gigolo-man? “I don’t understand why you’re giving your boss a pass on this. You could take him to court. I know lawyers—”
“I don’t want to endanger my standing in the field of astrophysics,�
�� she said, cutting me off. “I don’t want court cases and lawyers, I don’t want drama that’s going to expose everything to everyone.”
“Instead you’ll just do whatever your jerkoff boss says, yeah? Why not? You enjoy being hurt.”
As soon as I said those words, I knew the conversation was over. Her expression went cold.
“I have work to do,” she said.
“Ella—”
“No.” She stood and walked away, leaving so fast that I couldn’t grab her this time and make her stay. I was left on the bench, alone, frustrated.
Fuck, I’d wanted to help her, but maybe I’d acted like an asshole. In hindsight, I was pretty sure I’d acted like an asshole. I wished I could backtrack, and not snarl at her. You enjoy being hurt. Her masochism wasn’t a weakness or a bad habit that I should be shaming her for, especially in this situation.
As I watched, she disappeared around the corner that led to her office, into her scientific world I didn’t understand. I got out my phone and started composing a text.
Ella, I’m sorry that I…
But I stopped and deleted it. That wasn’t what I was here for, as she’d said. Apparently, I was strictly for lunch and sex dungeon scenes, not that I remembered agreeing to that. Maybe that was all I deserved, because I was an asshole, and said things like You enjoy being hurt when she was genuinely being hurt.
Ugh. Horrible. For the first time, I felt like I’d hurt her in a non-consensual way.
Chapter Nineteen: Ella
I went home after work and ate ice cream for dinner, then showered and crawled into bed in a soft cotton nightgown, trying to escape my thoughts. I didn’t understand why Devin had freaked out about Leo, why he made me feel guilty that I didn’t fight back. That hurt my feelings and made me feel small.
I knew through my research that everything was vast and temporary, and when you really thought about it, nothing existed at all. That would make anyone feel small. Somewhere in the universe, every moment, worlds were ending. Earth would end someday, turn into a frozen rock drifting through space, no rotation, no sun, no seasons, no days, no hours, no memories of people we knew. Why did we mark time, when it all came to nothing? Why did we care?
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