“No,” said the bartender. “How do you make a boilermaker?”
“Never mind,” said Ian. “A gin tonic is fine. I’m supposed to be your escort.”
Felicity turned to face Ian directly. “According to who?”
“Your sister Sasha. She thought it would be nice since neither of us knows anyone here.” Ian faced the bartender, talking to her sideways as though they were being spied on. “But I don’t want you to agree because you’re lonely or bored. I want you to agree because I want you to tie me up and whip me.”
The bartender handed Felicity her martini and coolly pretended not to hear. But it was as though Ian had doused her with alcohol and lit her on fire. Felicity was shocked to the core to hear this proper, elegant man speaking dirty like that. And she was chagrined because she’d vowed to herself not to get anywhere close to kink while visiting in the States. Yet Ian had read her mind. She had been envisioning spanking his rounded ass since she’d first laid eyes on him. She could practice all kinds of kink on this sweet man.
But she said primly, “You really don’t know what you’re asking for, do you? Everyone in the vanilla world thinks it involves tying up and whipping. But the majority of people probably don’t want permanent scars left, so I do very little single-tails work.”
That seemed to give Ian pause for thought. He didn’t respond right away. “I want to be submissive to you, to be tied up. I want you give me a forced orgasm.”
Felicity was stunned that this innocent-seeming man knew about forced orgasm. But she’d been around long enough to know that you couldn’t judge anyone by their appearance. The most vanilla-seeming people could be kinkier than a pig’s tail. And she pretty much had a yen for tying this man up anyway. She sipped her martini and said in a sultry voice, “You need to bring your A game, sonny.”
“I’m older than you.” He still looked straight ahead, one hand jammed deep in his trouser pocket. “I’m not about to have a nerdgasm because some woman spanks me.”
“I can see you’ve been around the block. But I have to tell you, Ian. At my club it wasn’t customary for me to satisfy my customers. Very little of my interaction involved anyone coming. I’d give men hand jobs once in awhile if I knew them and liked them, but that was about it. I never fucked anyone.”
“Then you can learn.” He turned his head and looked down at her for the first time, a devilish grin on his face. “There’s a first time for everything. You can sit on my face. I’ll make you come, how does that sound?”
Felicity nearly fainted from shock. She had planned to put away her kink during her time in the States, and she wasn’t prepared for anyone to ask her for some. But this offer was just too good to turn down. Nobody other than her trusty vibrator and showerhead had made her come in years. Of course she routinely sat on men’s faces to show her dominance, but she’d never forced anyone to lick her. Her labia began to plump with arousal just hearing Ian talk like that.
But she had lost Brad because she had no control over the disease that wracked him, and that was the prime reason she longed for control now. She didn’t want to get close to this Briton who so enticed her. Intimacy usually turned into emotional anguish of some kind. At the very least, rejection, insults, or betrayal.
Yet she was an expert at maintaining control. She was a sensual sadist. If the men weren’t excited, she wasn’t enjoying it either. She could play with this angelic man and keep her control. What did she have to lose? She was going back home after the wedding.
But as she thought the word “home” and pictured Stockholm, for the first time in years it didn’t feel exactly like home. Did she even have a home?
“That would be delightful,” she cooed smoothly. “But we must make sure no one finds out. No bragging rights, you hear? And you adhere to my rules. I am Mistress.” She almost said “Mistress Klara.” “Mistress Felicity. And if I force an orgasm on you, it’s because I want to. Not when you want it.”
Ian’s baby blues sparkled with intrigue. Felicity imagined she could smell men’s aroused pheromones, and now was no exception. This conservative, vanilla, delicious man was about to have his mind blown. “I’ll draw up a contract if you wish.”
She was glad he had said “if you wish.” He was going to be a blast to toy with. “No need. I’ll trust your verbal since you’re so close to my brother-in-law. By any chance are you partnered with him as well as that Perry Donovan fellow?”
Clouds flitted across his insanely blue eyes. He had his gin and tonic in hand but hadn’t even sipped from it. “I hate that bastard. Sorry. I was never intimate with Rowan sexually, if that’s what you mean, but I hate that Perry bastard for stealing him away.”
“Then you must hate my sister Sasha as well. Rowan is legally marrying her.”
“No. For some reason I hold nothing against Sasha. I guess I view Perry as my main competitor. DC just isn’t going to be the same without Rowan around, though I rarely see him at work. He’s usually out of town on assignment, but we spend a lot of free time together.”
“Throwing sticks.”
“That, and playing embarrassing violent video games. I’m an excellent cook as well.”
“The British generally aren’t known for that.”
He cocked his head. “I’ve been in the States sixteen years. Mistress Felicity.”
She looked around. One of Sasha’s bridesmaids was standing right behind them. Felicity moved off to one side to let the bridesmaid order her drink. “I’ve promised Sasha I won’t let anyone in Utah know my secret career. Don’t call me that in public. Don’t even call me ma’am.”
“Oh, I especially won’t call you ma’am. Women hate that. Ages them. You’re just a sultry, steamy Dominatrix.”
“Don’t even say ‘Domme’ in public. Let’s go sit down, not talk to each other, and then I’ll go to my lodge suite. You wait fifteen minutes then follow.”
“All right. Just one thing. Do you really have a pierced nipple?”
Felicity surprised herself by blushing. Maybe practicing her kink was easier in Stockholm, with everyone speaking Swedish. Or was Ian shaming her because he was so damned attractive and desirable? “It was a nipple clamp, if you’re referring to that photo I sent Sasha.”
He had a smile that wouldn’t quit. He looked directly at her boob. “Ah. I would like to see it.”
“I’ll let you see what I want you to see,” she whispered, and turned to go back to her seat. She had to stop by the lodge’s kitchen for supplies because she hadn’t exactly traveled prepared for this event. She could text her club manager and ask him to express her fetish outfit, though. She had a waist cinching leather bustier that fit her like a tin can and had been specially made for her stacked bustline. And her thigh-high spiked boots with five inch heels—she couldn’t be without those.
What was happening? Suddenly a surge of people went running to the front door, yelling something about an ostrich. Then Felicity remembered. Dr. Someone was arriving from Blanding, helping the asswad Ian hated to bust some lion cub smuggler. Did he bring the ostrich?
“Let’s go see the ostrich!” she cried to Ian, like a little girl. They went charging for the front door. Felicity had no clue her entire life—and lifestyle—was about to change, and all due to an ostrich crossing the road.
Chapter Three
The ostrich was ornery.
It kicked at the bars of the strongest cage Victor had in the back of his company truck. Made him worry for a few minutes if it would succeed in bending the steel bars far enough to escape again. This ostrich wasn’t going down for the count. He finally had to pull over to the side of the road and give it a sedative during which it nearly tore his hand off. It had taken him and a few neighbors in Blanding hours to capture it in a net. A coworker was taking a state chopper to the Triple Play Lodge to bring the critter back to HQ in Salt Lake.
“Gary can have you,” Victor grumbled, leaping out of the truck.
People were already flowing out the front doo
r, evidently having seen the ostrich. A path of slushy crud that had been the most recent snowfall was now filled with excited well-wishers—the people of Perry’s wedding party, Victor presumed. He had been shocked when Perry had told him the nature of his unusual ménage relationship, that he wasn’t legally marrying the stunning doctor Sasha, but was allowing another guy to have that honor. They would still live together as husband and wife. Or, rather, husband, husband, and wife. Coming from a guy who had never had any gay leanings, this was a shocking thing to lay on Victor. The gay part didn’t bother him so much as the part where Perry would seem to be the submissive partner in the liaison. Victor would be damned before he’d be submissive to anyone.
Perry clapped Victor on the back, and Victor recognized Julian Longtree, now a big Assistant Director muckety-muck in their Division of Wildlife Resources. Victor was pretty well acquainted with Gabriel Verona too, now a sergeant, but Perry had the best lowdown on the exotic animal smuggler, and he drew Victor aside while people clamored around the freaked-out ostrich.
“There’s this hog-and-dog guy who is our main suspect.”
“Where’s he live?”
“Out one of these canyons between here and Bird in Hand, which is why I suspect him of having transported this ostrich. Lately we’ve been seeing more and more escaped exotic animals. One guy voluntarily turned in a lion cub he found in his daughter’s room, but she wouldn’t say where she got it. The asshole’s name is Todd Beard and he’s plenty slimy. He does the hog-and-dog thing in his spare time when he’s not running African critters up to Moab. I’ve been dying to nab him on something, but he’s always squeaky clean.”
“Not even prior offenses? You could get him on a weapons charge if he’s on parole.”
“Nothing, if you can believe that.”
“All right. I’ll go have a knock-and-talk with this bastard, maybe tomorrow after Gary comes and picks up this dodo bird. I’ve got a few plans up my sleeve.”
“I’d like to come with you, but as you can see, I’m mighty busy—”
Victor held up a calming hand. “No worry. I can take Julian or Gabriel as backup. This guy been known to get trigger happy?”
“Just with the hogs. He riddles them with bullets, overkill, while his dogs tear the poor things to shreds. I put a request into Fish and Wildlife to send a guy down here, but as usual they’re understaffed.”
Victor was having a difficult time concentrating on the talk about the exotic animal smuggler. Over by the ostrich cage stood a woman who absolutely blew him away. She had the most exquisite blossoming hourglass figure, and tried to no avail to hide it under a prim cardigan and mom slacks. She was so stunning she was probably accustomed to being ogled, and Victor didn’t want to be that guy, but it was hard to look away from her upswept carrot-red hair, her radiant features. There was something indefinable about her that Victor finally pinpointed as kinky. Yes. She was probably a tigress in the bedroom.
But he assumed everyone at the rehearsal dinner was paired up in couples. “Come on,” he told Perry. “Gary won’t be here for another couple hours to get Big Bird. Since I’m here I may as well meet your macho commando boyfriend.”
“And soon to be wife, Sasha.”
It was funny he called Sasha his wife when Rowan was the only one allowed to legally marry her.
“Perry!” yelled a very tall girl, wildly waving an arm from the front stoop of the massive chalet. “Speech, speech!”
“All right.” Perry turned and headed back for the house, but Victor felt the redhead’s eyes on him. He boldly met her glance and took a few steps toward his truck. Most everyone else, having tired of the spectacle of the ostrich, returned inside to hear the wedding toast as well.
“I was wondering,” she said, her voice as girlish as he’d imagined, “if I could have one or two ostrich feathers. I use them for…fashion statements.”
She managed to imbue the words “fashion statements” with a sexy, kinky meaning. Victor squiggled his eyebrows as though he knew what she was talking about and reached into the truck’s bed to pluck three feathers that the ostrich had shed. “I hope you’ll forgive me for not getting closer,” he said. The ostrich punctuated his logic by kick-boxing the bent rails of the cage.
She accepted the feathers, even tickling her throat with their softness as if to tantalize him. It worked. “And you are Dr. Victor Reznik? A doctor of animal biology?”
“That’s right. I’m sort of the state’s official expert, although usually I don’t drive around wrestling kangaroos like Perry just had to do. Actually, wait. Last month I wrestled a Bengal tiger near Moab. So yeah, I guess I do do that.” His chest puffed, and he had hardly lied at all. True, he had two buffed workers waiting by with neck snares, and all Victor did was chase the tiger into their path. But it was Victor who had had to move in with the tranq gun in order to collar the beast.
“You look like Tony Stark,” said a new man, a Briton. “And you’ve got a Tony Stark sort of job.”
Victor had heard that before, about Tony Stark. He frankly didn’t follow childish action heroes, but he assumed it was a compliment. “I actually spend most of my time in the Salt Lake office managing programs, nothing dashing or romantic. Species mapping, sensitive species databases, writing environmental policies. Deathly dull stuff, I’m afraid. You guys, however, I keep hearing stories emanating from McQueen Valley. Quite the hotbed of intrigue. Perry caught some mad bomber and an endangered species smuggler all in the same day?”
The British guy rolled his eyes. “He’s not all that.”
Victor continued, “And before that one of us, a Gabriel Verona, saved a litter of bobcats. I tell you, out in the field there’s never a dull moment. I think it’s time for me to get out of the office.” He breathed deeply of the wintry air. “Clear my head.”
“That’s a great idea,” agreed the Briton, reaching out his hand to shake. “Ian Lawson. I know exactly what you mean. I’m best mates with the groom Rowan, but he’s much too busy to talk to me. Especially since he’s also got his two brothers from Ireland and their wives visiting.”
The pretty gal said, “And Ian’s supposed to be squiring me around, but I have an emergency back in my suite. Felicity McQueen. Nice to meet you, Doctor.” After shaking his hand, she turned meaningfully to Ian Lawson and said over her shoulder, “Half an hour.”
“Sounds good.” Ian nodded as the front door swung open and a ferret-faced man came onto the portico.
The man called jovially, “All right, little lass. Your chariot awaits. Hey, and you. Yeah, you. Tony Stark. I want this frigging filthy bird off Triple Play property. First thing it’s an ostrich, the next thing you know, an emu. It’s just a never-ending procession of strange animals.”
“That’s what we’re trying to solve, sir,” said Victor courteously. “We don’t like the exotic animals stampeding through Utah any more than you do. I’ll be staying here to help solve the case, especially since Perry’s going to”—he looked blankly at Ian—”wherever it is he’s honeymooning.”
“Ireland,” said Ian bitterly, as though he wished he were going, too.
“All right,” said the man in charge, “but get that thing out of here. Like I always say. The day we start chasing ostriches around the property is the day I retire.”
“Oh, Sol,” sighed Felicity, getting into his car. “You’re an animal lover, you know you are.”
“They scare off the guests!” Sol proclaimed, waving an arm.
Victor called back, “I doubt that your lodge full of female impersonators is going to be very scared by an ostrich.” He had noticed that just now, when he’d stopped by the front desk to get a room.
Sol paused, his marsupial face scrunched up. “Is that what’s going on over there? I thought it was just a weird coincidence someone was dressed as Carol Channing and someone else was dressed as Cher. It’s a frigging convention? Good Lord! First the pet psychics, then the Furries! We’re going to be known as the California of Utah!”
Felicity rolled her eyes but cast Ian a low, knowing look before getting into Sol’s passenger seat. Victor knew that look anywhere, that come-hither glance that foretold of massive sex to come. Felicity was obviously a McQueen sister like the others who were shacking up with various departmental conservation officers. Ian, as BFF to the groom, was probably a newcomer here, so Victor knew it was a quick hookup. Ian seemed friendly enough, and Victor wanted to know how he’d done it. That woman was an experienced libertine, that much was obvious. She swiveled when she walked as though propelled on a little motor, and she was all woman.
“You have a date with her?” It didn’t feel too forward to ask this of a relative stranger. Victor could tell Ian liked him, too. Everyone liked Tony Stark, especially people who assumed he was noble like Tony Stark.
Ian buried his fists in his pants pockets and smiled sheepishly. “Yeah. Well, I’m following instructions, aren’t I? Her sister told me to escort her about, since neither one of us knows anyone.”
“Oh? She’s a McQueen sister yet doesn’t know anyone?”
“Right. She’s been living in Stockholm the past eight years.” Ian looked about in a spy-like manner. “Running a bondage club called The Fat Shaft.”
Oho! This tidbit filled Victor with glee. It backed up every first impression he’d received of the woman—that she was a sultry, experienced tigress. “A Dominatrix?”
“Yes,” said Ian with flashing eyes. “Only it’s not supposed to be common knowledge, which it is, so don’t go repeating that around.”
“So are you going to…You know.” Victor practically elbowed the younger man. Bottom line, he was highly intrigued. It was one thing to write all day about habitat restoration and fly around giving speeches like some famous scientist. It was another thing to hunt grouse and kayak. But once in awhile a man needed to bust out of his comfort zone and try new things.
And he’d just been thinking how he could never be submissive. Now the idea of cowering before a latex-suited Felicity McQueen was giving him a hard-on. He was jealous of this lucky bastard Ian.
Two Sirs, with Love [McQueen Was My Valley 4] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 3
