“I don’t know.”
She was lying to him. Mephisto stood abruptly, feeling rage which he could not, could not give voice to. “Help me clean up the kitchen, please. It’s almost time for the club to open.” It took everything he had to keep the words calm and casual.
“Yes, sir.”
They cleaned up in silence. Mephisto was glad. He didn’t want to think of chatty things to say when he was all tied in knots. He should be happy for her. If she met some vanilla delivery guy who bought her pie, and that kind of stuff made her happy now, that’s what Mephisto wanted for her. It just wasn’t what he wanted for himself. Why did relationships have to be about two people? Why couldn’t he just force Molly to be his slave? Make her kneel at his feet, serve him, suck his cock and do whatever other perverse sexual acts he desired? The necessity of consent made everything so goddamn complicated. He chuckled softly at that thought.
“What?” Molly asked, turning to him. “What are you laughing about?”
“Nothing,” Mephisto said. “What kind of pie was it?”
Molly gave him a look. “Cherry.”
Cherry. Of course.
*** *** ***
Molly tried to put Eliot out of her mind, but he crept back in at the least opportune moments. She was being so stupid. It was so stupid to get obsessed over someone just because she liked his looks. Because he was nice to her. Still, she took twice as long to get dressed and ready on Friday as she usually did, to the point where the other volunteers at the Family Center noticed and asked if she had a hot date. They were teasing her, sweet natured teasing, but she felt mortified. If they noticed, then Eliot would, and he would know...
Know what? That she was interested in him? Why was that so bad? Why was she so scared?
She dragged her feet all the way down the street to the diner, thinking every moment that she still had time to turn around and flee. She also thought he might not show up at all. That would be embarrassing after the way she’d built this up in her head. It wasn’t like they’d set up an official date. She thought back to their parting conversation. I’m usually here on Fridays. Around noon.
Cool. Maybe I’ll see you then.
Oh God, maybe he’d be there but not actually talk to her. He’d nudge his work buddies. “Look, she actually came back.” All of them would give her the side eye and snicker and she’d feel that shame again, kicking her, punching her. She stopped on the sidewalk a few steps from the door, her hands in fists. She couldn’t bear something like that. She was too afraid to even try this, this friendly, nice relationship, because a betrayal from a nice person was so much worse than a betrayal from someone you knew you couldn’t trust.
Molly spun and fled headfirst into a brick wall. No, not a brick wall. A solid, smiling man in a brown UPS uniform. He steadied her with his hands.
“Good golly, Miss Molly. How are you?”
She ducked her head, trying to pull herself together. Act normal. She stepped back and forced a laugh. “I’m fine. Sorry. I thought maybe I forgot something back at—where I work—but now I remember I didn’t.”
“Oh, you got a job!” He looked overjoyed for her. “Where?”
“The Family Center around the corner. I work there part time.” It wasn’t a total lie. She pointed at his uniform. “I guess you still work for UPS.”
“Packages gotta get delivered. You know how it is.” There was the smile, radiant and miraculously free of judgment. “You want to get some lunch? Do you have time?”
She nodded and walked with him into the diner. “So, where are your friends?”
He made a face. “They’re not my friends, exactly. I work with them. They didn’t want to come here today and I didn’t argue. It’s nice to have a break from them, not that they aren’t great guys. They just... When you’re around the same people all the time, they start to grate on you.”
They sat at a table in the corner, amidst the usual mixed crowd. He leaned close as she stared down at her menu. “You look nice.”
They were just casual words, a polite comment, but she felt ridiculously pleased.
“So what do you do at the Family Center? Are you a counselor? A nurse?”
“Oh, God, no. I just help with filing and talk to the people who come in. A lot of them are...nervous.” A lot of them were desperate and borderline hysterical, but it seemed too dramatic to tell him that. Just that morning, she’d sat with a bruised and battered woman while the people at the Center helped her get a restraining order against her husband. What was the most dramatic thing that happened down at the UPS hub? A misdirected package? Molly shrugged and made little rips in the edges of her napkin. “Actually, I’m only volunteering there for now. I’ve been volunteering at a lot of different places, trying to figure out where I belong. What I want to do now.” God, why did she keep repeating that like an idiot?
“Well, what did you do before he died?” Eliot asked.
“I stayed at home. I guess I really didn’t do anything.” Except wear his collar for eight years, and try to be perfect for him.
“So, you were one of those trophy wives, huh?” Eliot raised a brow and smiled at her over his menu.
Molly coughed. “Uh. Not exactly. Sort of. My M— My husband was older, yes.” She’d come so close to slipping up and calling him her Master in front of Eliot. “He was older, but I didn’t marry him for money or security or anything. I loved him. I didn’t just shop and soak in the tub and eat bon bons.”
“You just described my dream life.”
Molly burst out laughing as the waitress came by to take their orders. They both ordered BLTs, and Eliot asked for extra tomato, winking at Molly, so she laughed again as the waitress bustled away. He ran a hand through his chestnut mop of hair and flashed her another of his wonderful smiles.
“I would make a great trophy husband for some rich woman. What do you think? Know any rich old ladies looking for some young lovin’?”
Molly almost choked on her sandwich. “If I meet any rich old ladies I’ll be sure to put in a word for you. But we don’t get a lot of them at the Family Center.”
They talked and laughed for almost an hour over BLTs and sodas and cherry pie. Eliot kept her in stitches telling stories about his oddball co-workers and his large, hilariously dysfunctional family. She found out he was twenty-four, and that he was working to earn money to finish a law degree he’d started a couple years back. She could see him as a lawyer. He had the charisma for it, and he seemed really sharp.
“I have an Environmental Studies degree,” she blurted out. “A lot of my friends moved into Environmental Law in college.”
“Oh yeah, that’s a big area now. Where’d you go to school?”
“Indiana University. They have some great programs.”
Eliot folded his arms and leaned on the table, looking confused. “So why don’t you get back into that? If that’s what you have a degree in?”
“That was another lifetime. It feels like it anyway. I’m not that person anymore.”
“Well, what person are you?”
Molly paused, then shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know...” She looked up at Eliot with a shy smile. “I just know the pie here is really good. And the conversation.”
His gaze met hers and held it. “Next Friday then? Or...maybe I could call you sometime this week. Maybe we could do something else. Dinner and a movie?”
Molly blinked. “I— Well—”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to freak you out. We get along though, don’t we?” His voice dropped a half-octave. “And I am getting kind of addicted to your laughter.”
“It’s just that I’m not an old, rich sugar mama.”
Eliot chuckled. “See? I must really like you then.”
Molly gave him her number, feeling excitement but surprise too. Dinner and a movie? It had only been a few months since Clayton died, since she thought her life was over. In a thousand years, she wouldn’t have foreseen this. A chance meeting at a diner, and now dinner and a movie.
But Mephisto...
Why did it feel like she was cheating on two men? Her late Master, and Mephisto too? She could tell Mephisto had been less than thrilled to learn about Eliot. She wondered what her Master would have made of him. Was Eliot someone he would have chosen for Molly to be with next?
No, your Master would have chosen Mephisto. Mephisto, who wasn’t at all the dinner-and-a-movie type.
Molly pushed that thought out of her brain, but it constantly returned, bringing guilt and confusion over the long weekend. Mephisto left her alone and she hid out in her room. Hid from him, hid from the club activities that still compelled her. The truth was, Molly did still feel an enduring draw to Mephisto. She was just afraid to take any step that would solidify it, because she knew, somehow, that if she gave herself to Mephisto it would be for life. Irreversible. The power they created together was just too strong. A forest fire, rather than a nice fireplace glow. She wanted the fireplace. Calm, normalcy. Maybe even...kids.
She’d been thinking a lot lately about children. She interacted with a lot of children at the Center, at the Women’s Clinic, at the homeless shelters and schools, all the places she volunteered her time. There were children everywhere and more and more they touched her heart and made her long for one of her own. It didn’t matter. Her Master had her tubes tied after she begged him to, after she’d lost a baby and been in the hospital, unable to serve him. The loss of herself, the loss of control had terrified her. Back then she’d been haunted by the idea that she might have another baby, one that grew heavy in her womb and was actually born. She’d worried about what that might do to her and her Master’s dynamic. She’d cried and pleaded and petitioned to be sterilized, even though she knew it was selfish. If Master had wanted a baby, she would have given him one, but he’d claimed not to want one either.
But she grieved now for the baby she lost, the baby that was her and her Master united in one being, gone now, all gone. She grieved for the future babies she might have had. It was silly, but she did. She looked around online and learned that certain types of tubal ligation could be reversed, but it wasn’t a sure thing. There was in vitro fertilization. Adoption. She decided she deserved to be childless and put it out of her mind, but like her thoughts of Mephisto, the thoughts of children kept coming back.
If only she could numb all the thoughts and confusion crowding her brain. She wanted Mephisto’s reassurance, his strength. It was Saturday night, though, and he was busy with the club. She could go out there into the play dungeon. Just to see him...
Against her better judgment, Molly dressed in some black jeans and a tee, put on some lipstick. No one would mistake her for someone who’d come to play, but she could at least move through the club unobtrusively and see what Mephisto was up to. He often encouraged her to visit the club. She hadn’t because...because...
Because she didn’t want to see him playing with someone else. Silly, when she refused to have him.
She inched in through the side door, feeling scared, vulnerable, and excited all at once. She was over in the farthest corner of the club, by Mephisto’s office, beside the bar, but the sounds and smells reached her there as well as anywhere in the club. Moans, sighs, screams and laughter. A rhythmic sound of impact that echoed in pulse beats right between her legs. It had been so long since she played, since she’d been around anyone doing BDSM, but her body remembered like it was yesterday.
She searched for Mephisto and saw him across the room, his tall stature, muscular body, and wild dreadlocks unmistakable. He was shirtless, his tight dark jeans hugging his taut hips and accentuating his powerful thighs. He was playing with two girls and another guy. One of the girls was in bondage, legs spread, arms outstretched, on a sex swing. The other girl and the guy were playing with her, teasing her, hurting her with a tawse and molesting her as she writhed in her bonds.
She looked ecstatic.
Subspace. Mephisto was watching, enjoying the scene. He assisted the players and seemed to be offering suggestions to the restrained girl’s partners—Molly could tell by that familiar gleam in his eyes. She’d been the victim of his clever, brutal sadism many times, and enjoyed every second of it. She buried her face in her hands, too jealous to watch any more. No matter what she told herself, no matter how she avoided the issue, she wanted him so badly. He was the perfect combination of nurturing, cruel, and sexy, that rare, heady mixture that drove her wild. Very few men had it. Her Master had it. Mephisto had it in spades.
“What’s the matter?” Molly looked up into the dark, concerned gaze of her protector. She couldn’t answer, could only stare at him and think how much he aroused her and scared her at the same time. “I looked over and saw you with your head in your hands,” he said. “I thought you were crying.”
She shook her head and tried to think of something, anything to reply. “No, I was just watching.”
His face softened. “You don’t have to hide in the corner. Come out into the play space.”
“No, I can’t. I don’t... I don’t belong here anymore. People will...”
“What? Grab you? Force you to play when you don’t want to?”
“They’ll know I don’t belong here.”
Mephisto rolled his eyes. “You came here for years. Everybody knows you. Everyone would be thrilled to see you.”
“That’s just it. They know the old me.”
Mephisto took her elbow and led her into the shadows behind the bar. “The old you? The disgusting, slavey you? These are your people, Molly.”
“I’m just saying, I’m not like them anymore.” She peered out into the dungeon. It was familiar and yet so scary to her. Sinister. With a start, she realized it was the pull to participate that scared her the most. Mephisto touched her face, stroked a finger down her cheek.
“Come play? Just a little? With me?”
She shook her head, but she knew he could see the war in her face, in her mind. He wouldn’t have asked otherwise. “No,” she said loudly, like she could convince herself. “No, I don’t want to.”
“I think you do.”
He stepped closer, one hand a feather touch at her waist. “Nothing sexual. You wouldn’t even have to take off your clothes.”
She stared at his broad, bronze chest, at the tense set of his jaw. “No,” she lied. “I don’t want it.”
“Molly...”
“I don’t.”
“Look at me.”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t possibly. Screams and moans from the play space resonated in the tips of her breasts and her pelvis, taunting her. “I have to go.” He caught her arm and held it. “Let me go,” she repeated, pulling away.
“Go. Run then. Why did you even come out here?”
To see you. She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I did.” She looked up at him, her eyes pleading, saying what her voice could not.
He inclined his head to hers and brushed his lips against her temple. His hands sought hers, cool and enveloping. “I don’t know how to help you. I don’t understand what’s going on in your mind. Talk to me.”
“I can’t. I can’t!” She pushed him away and ran, just as he’d told her to, ran back to her room and shut the door. It flew open a moment later.
“What?” he yelled. He spread his arms wide, his features pinched in frustration. “What do you need?”
“Just go,” she spat back. “Go back to one of your many slaves. Don’t let me keep you.”
“Oh, my ‘many slaves.’ You sound jealous, kitten.”
His old nickname for her hit her like a slap upside the head. “I’m not jealous.”
“Tell me what you need. Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”
I don’t want to have what I want. I don’t want the things I need. Because I really think I need you. Mephisto knew. He was trying to get her to admit it to herself, but that would mean confessing that she hadn’t changed at all since her Master’s death, that she was still the wanton, subm
issive sex doll her Master had enjoyed so much. She buried her hands in her hair and covered her ears. “Please just leave me alone.”
He crossed to her, taking her arms in a firm grip that came really close to hurting. But not quite.
“Don’t act like nothing’s going on here,” he said in a low, accusing voice. “Jesus. It makes me furious.”
She pulled away from him, using the last reserves of her assertiveness. “What are you going to do? Punish me? Spank me? Put me into chastity until I tell you what you want to hear?”
“I think it would help you if I did.” He released her and stepped back. “Is all of this because I keep other slaves? Because you think I don’t want you? That they’re more important to me than you are?”
Molly sucked in a deep breath. “You can do what you want with whoever you want. I don’t care.”
“Why don’t we keep it real, Molly? You want me. You want us. You’re fighting it and I don’t understand why. Because of this new guy you met? What’s his name again? Idiot?”
“Eliot!” she cried. “Don’t mock him. He’s nice. He’s a nice, normal guy, not like you, with your slaves and sex club and all your partners who’ll come on a dime and do whatever you want at a word from you—”
“Yes, that’s my lifestyle. That’s been my lifestyle since long before I met you.”
“I don’t want that. I wouldn’t want that. When I was with my Master, I was...” Her voice broke. She turned away from him, clasping her hands to her chest. “I was special to him.” God, it hurt. Molly wanted Mephisto so badly, but not as one of his harem, his umpteen service slaves to be called upon when he wanted her, or ignored when he wanted another flavor for the day. “I wouldn’t want to be yours if I couldn’t be special to you. If I couldn’t be your only one. I know that doesn’t sound very submissive, but there you go.” She finished with an undignified sniffle.
Mephisto sighed. “Maybe you haven’t noticed that I haven’t been with anyone since you moved into my guest room. This is the room where my slaves used to stay.”
“I’m sorry I’m interfering in your sex life,” she said bitterly. “Sorry I’m getting in the way of your little slave girlies. Or slave boys. Whatever you’re currently into fucking—”
Burn For You Page 7
