Shadow Haven

by AJ Schippers

  “Maybe. I have to think about it. Just because they like to be watched doesn’t mean I want to see them in action. I am curious, though.”

  “Okay. Is there anything you’d really like to eat? I can ask my client to bring some supplies with her. In fact, I’ll put up a list on the fridge later, and you can add whatever you want to it.”

  “Awesome. I’ll add all the chocolate in the world,” Julia said with a grin before moving to the kitchen to make her breakfast. Alexandra obviously wasn’t going to do it for her today.

  Their afternoon was spent playing card games, and Julia grew increasingly more frustrated when Alexandra beat her, time after time. “You must be cheating,” she hissed.

  Alexandra laughed. “If I were, I would definitely be changing the rules of this game.”

  “Oh?”

  “Absolutely,” she said as she shot Julia a wink. “I think we would be playing strip poker instead.”

  Julia’s cheeks grew hot. “Yeah, that’s so not happening.”

  “Such a shame,” Alexandra murmured as she dealt the cards once more. “If you think I’m cheating, you should probably never play with Samuel. He actually does cheat, and he’s very skilled at it. You’d be bare within one game.”

  “Your brother sounds like a fun guy.” Julia smiled as she looked her cards over. Truth be told, she had no idea how to play the game, which probably didn’t help her chances of winning, but she wasn’t going to tell Alexandra that. She would learn by playing, and once she figured out how it all worked, it would be time for a revenge match.

  “He is. I miss him. He likes to pretend he’s older than me and tries to boss me around.” She laughed. “It never ends well.”

  “I can only imagine. I’m sure he’s no match to your royal bossiness.”

  “See, you’re learning already.”

  “I wonder how well that would work out for you, though, if he had some help. Surely two against one would overpower you?” Julia said with a cheeky grin.

  “Are you offering to duo-top me with my brother?”

  Julia choked and coughed. “Heavens, no. I’m just saying if he had some help, I’m sure you’d have to give in at some point.”

  “It’s cute that you think so, but no.”

  Julia pouted.

  “Perhaps I’ll introduce you to him one day,” she said casually.

  “Already meeting the family? My, how our relationship progresses!” She grinned when Alexandra blushed this time. She was beyond proud of herself for finally being able to make Alexandra blush. It was endearing and cute, and honestly…she wanted to see more of it. “Julia one, Alexandra zero,” she said as she placed the winning card on the table. “Oh, see. You’re going down!”

  “Oh no, Ms. Quinn,” Alexandra said with a smirk. “I will do a lot of things, but going down is never one of them. Although I do suppose there are…exceptions. But only for those who are worthy.”

  Julia wanted to hide her face behind her cards, but her hands were empty. Alexandra had scooped up all the cards and was now shuffling them. They were blatantly flirting, and while Julia didn’t want to think about that too much, she was also enjoying it immensely. She felt…free.

  “I suppose I’ll be sleeping in my own bed again when your clients get here,” Julia said suddenly. She had been enjoying sleeping next to Alexandra, and she wasn’t looking forward to giving that up, no matter how inappropriate it might be for them to sleep in the same bed.

  “You had a concussion,” Alexandra said. “I would like to keep you close and keep an eye on you.”

  “This is true. Won’t it cause problems with your clients, though? I mean, we’re just sleeping and stuff, but I don’t know…” Julia let the rest of that sentence hang in the air.

  “My clients will be too busy doting over each other to pay attention to our sleeping arrangements. Besides, it is also none of their damn business. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  Julia rearranged the cards in her hand as she gave Alexandra a wicked grin. “Well, Miss Alexandra, I’m afraid that you’re going down again.” She placed the cards on the table and Alexandra groaned loudly.

  “Well played, dear. I may actually have to lay down some ground rules while playing with you.”

  “Like what?” Julia asked.

  “Let’s see. Perhaps we could start with a little wager. If I win, you will do as I say for an hour. If you win, I’ll bring you breakfast in bed tomorrow.”

  Julia laughed and mulled over the proposal. She wanted to give in to her curiosity, but she was scared too. “What exactly are the details of this ‘doing as you say’?”

  “Are you scared I’ll take you to my playroom?” Alexandra had been smiling, but that smile was instantly wiped from her face when Julia nodded. “I promise you this. I will not do anything that you are not comfortable with. I don’t want to say what it is, though. You may still win the game. It would hardly be any fun to give away all my secrets.” She leaned in closer and whispered. “What do you say, Ms. Quinn?”

  Julia closed her eyes briefly and took a deep breath. “Let’s play.” She had never seen Alexandra smile as deviously as she did now, and it both scared and excited her.

  “Get ready for the game of a lifetime, Julia. If I win…” Alexandra gently shook her head and tutted.

  “If you get caught cheating, I automatically win,” Julia said.

  Alexandra laughed. “Fine, but I wasn’t cheating before. You’re still going down.”

  Julia narrowed her eyes at Alexandra and tapped a finger on the table. “Hit me, please.”

  “What an odd request coming from your mouth.”

  As soon as she realized what she had actually said, Julia felt the heat rise up in her neck again. She murmured under her breath, “Shut up.”

  Alexandra’s lip caught between her teeth as she dealt Julia her card and waited patiently for her to make the next move. “You should never play poker.” Alexandra grinned. “Or if you do, your poker face will need some serious work.”

  “Stop trying to distract me, or I will consider it cheating,” Julia said as she placed two cards on the table and gave Alexandra a smug look.

  “Well, it’s adorable that you think you can make the rules up as you go,” Alexandra said with an arched brow as she grabbed a card. “Tell me, Julia. Are you hoping to win or lose?”

  Julia stayed silent, not wanting to indulge her with an answer. She honestly wasn’t quite sure what she wanted. If she won, she’d get breakfast in bed, but something about Alexandra’s mood made her want to find out what exactly she had in store for Julia.

  “Oh, Julia?” Alexandra singsonged as she placed three cards on the table and showed Julia her teeth-baring grin.

  “I positively want to win.” Julia held out her hand for another card. “So, about my breakfast tomorrow.” She added the card to her hand. “I don’t want cereal.”

  Alexandra gave her a smile.

  “I do want coffee, though. Maybe some bacon and”—she paused for dramatic effect before she grinned broadly—“sunny-side-up eggs.”

  “Anything else, your Highness?”

  Julia nodded. “I want my coffee scalding hot.”

  Alexandra rolled her eyes. “You must still be concussed if you think you’re in a position to make demands.”

  “Hey,” Julia scolded playfully. “Don’t you mock my very serious condition. I could sue you, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Oh, yes,” Julia said. “I won’t, though, because you’d probably lose all your money, and I know how attached you are to it.”

  “Keep on fantasizing, and while you’re at it, how about you play your cards?”

  “Oh, right.” Julia looked at her cards. “Queen beats king, right?”

  “Mhm.”

  Julia chewed on her lip before looking up. “Do you have any queens?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Does that mean yes?”

  “It means maybe.”

  �
��So,” Julia drawled, “it’s not a no?”

  “Play your cards, Julia.”

  “Fine,” Julia huffed as she placed three kings on the table and looked at Alexandra expectantly.

  “Well, well,” Alexandra said with an amused smile. “It looks like you’ll be having breakfast tomorrow morning. But you’ll be making it yourself.”

  “Motherfu—” she stopped herself when she realized what was about to come out of her mouth. For some reason, she didn’t want to let Alexandra down by swearing. Well, swearing would definitely result in displeasing Alexandra. “How did you do that?”

  “What can I say? A queen never reveals her secrets.”

  “Ugh. Congratulations.”

  “You sound so sincere!”

  Silence surrounded them.

  “I don’t like not knowing what’s going to happen next.”

  “For all you know, I’m going to make you clean the house.”

  Julia grimaced. “I’m allergic to cleaning products.”

  “Sure you are,” Alexandra grinned. “So, before we start this hour, tell me about your limits. Tell me what you absolutely do not want to happen.”

  “Well,” she said as she thought it over, “I don’t want to masturbate in your playroom.”

  Alexandra gasped. “That’s quite the explicit image… I promise nothing of the sort will happen.”

  “I don’t want to kneel.”

  Alexandra’s lips curled up in a small smile as she nodded.

  Julia took that as a cue to continue. “I don’t want to be humiliated.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’m not going to address you by any titles.”

  “You’ve mentioned that before.”

  “I’m not going to strip naked.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I don’t want to clean your house.”

  Alexandra quirked a brow. “You don’t want to, or it’s a limit?”

  “It’s a limit!”

  “One day, we’re going to have a talk about what limits actually are, what it means to not want to do something and what that all entails,” Alexandra said gently. “But for now, I will accept you not wanting to clean.”

  Julia gulped at the implication that this would definitely be happening again. “I think that’s it.”

  “Good,” Alexandra said as she folded her hands. “I want to take this opportunity to talk about your safe word. We have talked about it before, but I would like you to get used to the idea of having one.”

  “That sounds…fair.”

  “What would you like your word to be?”

  “Magic.”

  Alexandra smiled. “Can you tell me when you use it?”

  “When I want everything to stop.”

  “Indeed. There’s something else, though. It’s called the traffic light system. We use the colors red, yellow, and green. Red would be the equivalent of your safe word. You would say ‘yellow’ when you want things to slow down and ‘green’ to indicate that you’re okay for things to continue as they are. Would you be okay using this system for the next hour?”

  Julia took a deep breath before she slowly nodded. “Yes.”

  Reaching out her hand, Alexandra smiled when Julia took it with a trembling hand. “Relax,” she whispered softly and gave her an encouraging smile. “So, you mentioned that you didn’t want to masturbate in my playroom, and I promise nothing sexual will happen. My question for you is this though: do you dare set foot in the playroom again?”

  Julia bit her lip as she nodded. “Nothing sexual, right?”

  “Nothing sexual,” Alexandra repeated.

  Alexandra leaned casually against the door of the playroom. “One hour,” she said. “You can stop everything by saying your safe word. Nothing sexual is going to happen. I won’t make you touch yourself, nor will I make you touch me.”

  “Does that mean you will touch me?”

  “Not intimately,” Alexandra said. “I want you to look around and tell me if there’s anything that you are curious about. It doesn’t mean we will be using it. For now, I just want to talk.”

  Julia inspected all the devices and furniture in the room. Her nerve endings tingled. She couldn’t believe she’d agreed to come in here. In the corner, stood a walnut-colored chest. On top of it lay brightly colored ropes. She felt the excitement in the pit of her stomach. “Those,” she said and pointed to them.

  “Grab the red ones,” Alexandra said.

  Her hands trembled as she reached for them. She held them out to Alexandra, but to her surprise, Alexandra shook her head. “Tell me, why did you choose the ropes?”

  “I-I don’t know. I’m curious about them.” Her heart was pounding in her chest. It was one thing to admit to herself that she was curious, but admitting it to Alexandra made her nervous and excited.

  Alexandra nodded. “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” Julia breathed out.

  “Good girl.” She smiled, possibly at Julia’s flustered expression, and held out her hand for Julia to place the ropes in. She tangled them in her fingers as she looked at Julia. “How are you feeling?”

  “Nervous,” Julia said. Was Alexandra actually going to use these on her? Was she ready for it?

  Alexandra slipped behind her and pressed the front of her body against Julia’s back. She brushed Julia’s hair to one side as she leaned in closer to whisper in her ear. “You are safe here. I will take care of you.”

  Julia shivered against her and inhaled sharply as Alexandra grabbed her hair and murmured against her ear, “I’m going to do something very scary.”

  “W-wait,” Julia said. She needed Alexandra to slow down.

  “I’m just going to put your hair in a ponytail,” Alexandra added quickly.

  “Oh, Jesus, Alexandra!”

  “Are you okay with that?” When Julia nodded, Alexandra gathered Julia’s hair into a ponytail. She then let the rope slide through her hands, grabbed the middle part, and wound it around Julia’s waist. “Arms up. Remember, at any time you can tell me to stop if you are uncomfortable. I will not be mad or disappointed. You are completely in control here.”

  Julia put her arms up, and her breathing became shallow as felt the rope slide up a little higher to sit right under her breasts. The urge to run was almost overwhelming, yet she stood there, grounded and safe, completely trusting Alexandra.

  Alexandra pulled the remaining rope through the gap she had created and tightened it. “How does that feel?”

  “Weird,” Julia breathed out.

  Holding the rope in place with one hand, Alexandra stepped around Julia and smiled. She used her other hand to cup Julia’s cheek. “How do you feel?”

  “Still okay,” Julia murmured, slightly leaning into Alexandra’s touch. Goosebumps appeared all over her skin as Alexandra’s thumb brushed over her cheekbone for the briefest moment. Julia ached for more.

  “Good.” She reached her hand over Julia’s shoulder, grabbed the rope from her other hand, and placed it over her shoulder like a strap before pulling it through the rope underneath Julia’s breasts. She repeated the action over the other shoulder and turned Julia around.

  Julia groaned softly as the rope tightened on her back.

  Alexandra turned her around again and moved the rope across the top of Julia’s breasts and underneath the straps. Julia inhaled sharply when Alexandra’s hand accidently brushed against her nipple as she adjusted the rope.

  “This is called a Rope Pentagram,” Alexandra said, loosely looping the rope behind Julia’s neck. Her fingers expertly moved the rope underneath the straps, then tied it up behind her back.

  She slid behind Julia once more and pulled her close as her fingers followed the path of the rope. “I’m making sure it’s not too tight around your chest. Tell me, was that as scary as you thought it would be?”

  “No.”

  Taking a step back, Alexandra looked Julia over and licked her lips. “You look beautiful. How does it feel?”
<
br />   Julia was quiet for a long time. She simply answered with the only word she could think of. “Nice.”

  “That’s good,” Alexandra said. “Anything else?”

  “Sorry,” Julia finally said with a slight tremor in her voice. “I just don’t really know what to say.”

  “Are you embarrassed?”

  “No, just getting used to it, I suppose.”

  “You can put your arms down now.” Alexandra turned Julia around.

  Julia glanced down at her breasts and grinned. “They have never been more perky.”

  “Rope will do that,” Alexandra said with a laugh as she tangled Julia’s hair in her fingers and gave it a light tug. She reached around and placed her hand on Julia’s chest as she pulled her back slightly by her hair. “I am so proud of you, Julia. You did really well.”

  “Thank you,” Julia murmured and rested her head on Alexandra’s shoulder. Her eyes closed as she breathed in Alexandra’s scent. It surprised her how completely relaxed she felt in the embrace.

  “Didn’t I tell you that I could peel away your layers?” Alexandra murmured huskily. “You are such a good girl, Julia, so obedient and silent when you choose to be. I admire that in you. Just like I admire your willingness to fight and to not give in so easily. Tell me,” she whispered as she tugged on her hair a little harder. “What do you want me to do now?”

  Julia gulped. Her legs wobbled. “I don’t know. You said nothing sexual.” She moaned softly. Alexandra’s low laugh had been mesmerizing.

  “I asked you what you wanted me to do. I never said I would actually do it. So, let’s try this again, what do you want me to do?” Alexandra fingered the rope and tugged on it, much like she was doing to Julia’s hair.

  “Touch me.” Julia felt her cheeks flush with desire.

  Alexandra smiled as she released Julia’s hair and gently steered her toward the cage. “Sit on top of it.”

  Doing as she was told, Julia swallowed visibly when Alexandra pushed her legs apart and stood in between them. She cupped Julia’s chin and looked her in the eyes. “I know how hard it must have been to say that, and you are so incredibly strong for having voiced it.” She brushed away a strand of hair that fell in Julia’s face. “I’m not touching you, though. Tying someone up, it gives them a high. It makes them ache for more. I made you a promise that nothing sexual would happen.”