Chasing Chelsea (Masters of the Castle)

by Maren Smith

  Selena grinned at her, casting her two thumbs up. She was the only one. The plump blonde behind her was positively glaring.

  “Don’t look at them.” Catching her arm, Kade turned her, putting her back to the audience and himself squarely in her sight. “Look at me,” he commanded, soft, still smiling, but a command nonetheless. “How does your partner spank you? Or rather, how have you enjoyed being spanked in the past?”

  Confession, they say, is good for the soul. But what, oh what was written in that file of Beth’s on Master Marshall’s desk? Should she tell the truth? Should she lie through her teeth?

  “I haven’t been spanked before,” she finally quavered. “Coming here…this was my first time.”

  The door far down the aisle behind her suddenly opened and Chelsea jumped. She turned, but instead of seeing Master Marshall storming out, intent on retrieving Beth’s file and exposing her for the imposter she was, two latecomers ducked into the room. They were edging into the packed rows, trying to find two chairs so they could sit together. No longer in front of the door, Master Marshall had moved to one side. Arms folded across his chest, his eyes were closed and his head slightly bowed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He seemed to be muttering under his breath. What, she had no idea.

  Catching her chin, Kade turned her back to him. “Look at me,” he reminded.

  “I don’t think I want to do this,” she whispered, somewhat desperately, and not all together honestly. She was nervous. She didn’t want to be in front of an audience, but she did want to be with Kade. A tiny traitorous part of her did want this so long as he was the one doing it. She wanted to know what it would feel like to have him take a seat on that chair, and pull her down to lie across his lap. She wanted to know what his open hand would feel like, resting upon the upturned swells of her bottom—with her dress little more than a thin barrier between them or…or maybe he’d bare her…in front of all these people…

  She couldn’t breathe. Her chest felt tight; her sex, slick and hot. She was crazy! What was she doing up here? She shook her head, not knowing if she was stubborn enough to continue being with him when already her legs were starting to pull her away.

  “I’ll make a deal with you,” Kade said, drawing her back to him even as she tried to lean away.

  A shiver that was only part fear danced up her back. “What kind of deal?”

  “You take the spanking.” He held up a finger, staying the protest that rose straight into the back of her throat but then refused to come out any further. “Ten spanks. Just ten. I’ll bet I can make you like it, but if I can’t, I’ll let you go. However—” He tilted his head, that burning look in his dark eyes matching his smile. “—if I can make you like it, then you owe me. You have to pay a price—a penalty, so to speak.”

  She really, really couldn’t breathe, although she knew she was. She could feel, in some vaguely abstract way, the shivery rise and fall of her own chest as she drew one strangely steady breath after another. Her heart was pounding, the thundering pulse felt deafening. She felt lightheaded. “What kind of price?”

  “Tomorrow.” He was relentless, taking a step back toward that waiting chair, drawing her along with him via the light touch he held on her fingers. His hand wasn’t even wrapped around hers anymore. She could have pulled away at any time, but she just kept following him, letting him draw her in, matching his pace step for shaky step. “From sun-up to sun-down, all day long, I get to lead and you promise to follow, that’s the bet. You’ll still have your safeword and you can use it at any time, but that’s all right. I promise you won’t need to.”

  “If I like it,” she clarified, her stomach so tight now she almost felt sick. Strangely, not in a bad way. In a tense, anticipatory way—knots on top of knots on top of ever-tightening knots until it felt like every inch inside her was tangled in them. The friction was warming. She was actually starting to sweat.

  His gaze never left hers. That entirely too kissable mouth curled at the corners, his smile growing. “That’s right.”

  “If I don’t like it—”

  “You go back to your seat. Your bottom tingling a little, but none the worse for it and someone else can take your place upon my knee.”

  The idea of anyone else bending themselves across his knee sent a fizzling zap of discontent arcing through the knots, tangling them even hotter, tighter.

  “Okay,” she heard herself say. It was the single most terrifying word she’d ever uttered and yet also the most exhilarating.

  “Good girl,” he praised, and some of those knots inside her melted just a little when he turned back to the audience. “Were you watching what we just did? I hope you were paying attention, because we’re going to come back to that in just a minute.”

  All too soon, Kade seated himself upon that chair and the next thing Chelsea knew, she was staring down at his very capable lap. He patted his knee and, hardly believing what she was doing, her stomach flip-flopping the entire way, Chelsea put herself into an age-old position, facedown across his thighs. They felt steady and hard beneath her, and yet it felt so good when his hand came to rest lightly on the small of her back.

  “Let me ask again,” Master Kade said, addressing the watching audience. “Setting aside punishment and play, what is spanking?”

  When a hand went up, Kade pointed at him.

  “Communication,” the man said.

  Kade snapped his fingers. “Yes, it is. It’s also connection. This right here—” He wrapped his left arm around her waist and suddenly Chelsea was heaved. She muffled an impromptu yelp, trying her best not to kick or grab at him as he adjusted her to his liking, centering her bottom across his knees and dropping her nose straight toward the floor. Tall as she was, her toes lost touch with stage, leaving her an awkward teeter-totter of torso and legs hampered by the flow and ruffles of her long dress. “This,” Kade explained, his open hand moving from her back to the seat of her skirt, “is the most intimate connection a dominant and submissive could ever have. It’s an exchange of vulnerability and trust, power and acquiescence, control and surrender.” He patted her bottom, leaning slightly sideways as he addressed her, “How vulnerable do you feel right now?”

  “Very,” she grudgingly admitted.

  He patted her bottom again, making the tingles in her skin leap like electricity. “Who’s in control?” he asked the room and pointed to a woman, the plump blonde sitting directly behind Selena.

  “You are,” she purred.

  “Not even remotely.”

  Chelsea felt his jostling movements but didn’t realize Kade was pointing down at her until she twisted to look back at him over her shoulder.

  “The submissive controls the scene. He or she has the power to stop everything you do. If you are careless, or inconsiderate, or hasty in your warm-up, or brutal in your delivery, or not brutal enough—if you don’t give her what she needs as she needs it, then all she has to do is say one little word and it’s all over. Every dominant’s goal is to keep his submissive in the scene so he or she can continue to have fun. How do you do that?”

  Another point and another answer.

  “Negotiation?”

  “Right.”

  Behind her, Chelsea felt Kade’s hand begin to caress her, circling her bottom in slow figure-eights, first one cheek and then the other, back and forth, until the tingling wasn’t just in her bottom now, but directly between her tight tense legs. Her face flamed. Her hands were twin fists, gripping hard at the legs of the chair he sat in.

  “Negotiate each and every scene, even if it’s only a spanking. Most of you probably couldn’t hear it, but my lovely assistant and I were deep in scene negotiation with every step we took up onto this stage. I told her what to expect. She told me what she needed, perhaps not in words even she understands, but we bargained for our mutual enjoyment. So, let’s see if I can deliver, hm?” Leaning down to her, he asked, “Are you ready for your spanking, Red?”

  His hand had stopped its fi
gure-eights. Now it was just rubbing, soft back and forth caresses that glided over her curves, amplifying the wanton need that filled her aching sex until she could feel the liquid effects overflowing just under his hand.

  “Ready,” she lied. The faster they got started, the sooner it would be over and the sooner she could flee back to her seat. Yeah, sure. That’s what she wanted. For it to be over. She buried her burning cheeks between her arms and hoped the audience couldn’t see her blushing.

  His hand caught her right bottom cheek squarely centered, an impact she could feel like a static jolt leaping through every nerve. She caught her breath. It wasn’t hard, but it hadn’t been soft either. It was a lot like Master Marshall’s single spank, except that this wasn’t Master Marshall. It was her Greek god in the guise of a man and his hand was doing things to her bottom that Marshall’s definitely hadn’t.

  “Mm.” She locked her lips to keep from moaning—actually moaning—but the sound that escaped in spite of that was mortifyingly loud in the sudden quiet that befell the conference room.

  “How did that feel?” Kade asked. She could hear the smugness of his smile.

  “It was okay.” Chelsea shifted over his knees and tried to find some semblance of comfort in this awkward position. It was hard. She wasn’t used to her toes not finding the floor.

  “Just okay?” He sounded amused. “How about this?”

  Another slap, no harder or lighter than the first. This time, it caught the other half of her bottom, but a little lower down. His long fingers followed the descending curve of her nether cheek into the divide of her buttocks. She could have sworn she felt the very tips press briefly in upon the folds of her sex.

  She stiffened, grabbing his leg now instead of the leg of the chair. She would have vaulted right up off his knees, but her back struck his arm, which tightened around her and suddenly he spread his knees, widening his lap to sweep her legs straight out into the air behind her.

  She was practically hugging his leg now. Her senses were spinning, dancing; her heart was pounding at her ribs like a cannon and all she could feel was the volcanic heat of his palm caressing across the whole of her quivering bottom

  “How did that feel?” he asked, squeezing now, first one cheek and then the other, stroking all the way down the backs of both thighs to her knees and then back up again. “Was that just ‘okay’ as well? I can feel you trembling on my lap, Red. I don’t think you’re half as unaffected as you’d like me to believe.”

  “Can’t you just do this without all the talking?” she muttered. No, she wasn’t unaffected. It took everything she had not to arch up into his caressing hand, as if begging without words for him not to stop doing that, but she’d much rather chew through her own tongue than have to admit this.

  Someone in the back of the room chuckled. So did Kade.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he addressed the room. “What does it mean when a submissive becomes sassy in the middle of a spanking?”

  “She wants more,” several people, mostly men, answered at once.

  “Yes, she does,” Kade agreed. He bent, grabbing the hem of Chelsea’s skirt and tossing it up over her back.

  Cool air swept up the backs of her legs. She still had her panties on, thank goodness, but that thin slip of modesty didn’t last the few seconds it took that thought to flitter through her mind. His fingers hooked into the elastic of both leggings and the next thing she knew, she was receiving the most thorough wedgy of her adult life. Stitches popped and fabric strained as he flossed her underwear into her butt crack, baring both cheeks at once to his broad hand. His broad, bare hand which came raining down on her vulnerable bare skin.

  Three sharp smacks, each falling quickly after the other and infusing her flesh with the most unbelievable sting—erotic and yet vaguely painful, but not unbearably so. A fourth smack might have pushed it over that thin edge, but Kade stopped and rubbed again.

  “Do I have your attention now?” he asked. “Or have you some other smart-alek thing you’d like to say?”

  Chelsea lifted her face up out of her hands where, unaware, she had buried them. It took effort not to pant and to keep her tone even and smooth. “H-has it started yet? I honestly can’t tell.”

  Half the room chuckled at that.

  Three more spanks, just as brisk as before and perhaps just a little harder, although maybe it only felt that way because her bottom was growing sensitive to it now. Chelsea grabbed his leg with both hands, her knee kicking up involuntarily against his thigh. She gasped, grunted, then quickly cried out, pushing stiffly up against his arm, but none of it was because she wanted to escape. Not really. Yet, how could she be expected to hold still when each slap of his hand felt as hot as a brand, and when the cupping, squeezing friction of the caresses that followed only served to kick up that heat into bonfire-like proportions?

  “Can you feel me now?” he asked, still chuckling.

  “Oh yeah,” she breathed. She was in her mid-twenties, and never once in all her life had Chelsea known that she had a kinky bone. Never would she have guessed that she liked the rough feel of having her panties ripped up between her buttocks, catching her pussy in the tight folds of cloth, mashing at her clit until it felt as if he were pinching her there. Never would she have guessed that she liked the feel of a man’s hand striking sharply across her naked—or nearly naked—buttocks. But here she was, not just liking it but liking it in front of a dense audience of people. It felt surreal, awkward, sexy and wonderful all at the same time.

  Kade laughed, soft and deep, a throaty rumble that coursed through her on the most delicious waves. She could feel each and every one of them lapping between her legs. “Good girl.”

  And with that, he began to spank. No longer restricting himself to intermittent sets of three, he settled into a brisk rhythm of swats, some softer, some harder, some so fantastically brisk that they made her buck and shout, and all of them fell over and over without ending—catching first one side and then the other, higher, then lower, then so low that she could feel the sharpness of the impacting sting in the very tops of her thighs and his fingertips were once more catching the full, swollen lips of her pussy.

  They passed ten swats. Then they passed so much more than ten, and all she did was cling to his leg, squirming helplessly, dancing on his lap the way bad girls had been dancing since the very first one was upended and spanked. Chelsea didn’t say a word. She could have stopped this at any time and yet it felt too good to stop. The sting dissolved into a deep, warm tingling pulse. The pulse became a raw and throbbing war of incessant needs—the need to stop versus the need to see if she could take however much he was willing to give. The need to hold herself silent and still versus the overwhelming need to give vent to the chorus of wanton shouts erupting inside her—lust, fear, comfort, pain, and pleasure upon pleasure upon ever building pleasure.

  “Have you had enough, little subbie?” he asked above her.

  “Has your arm grown tired?” Those words were out of her like a shot and his response was equally volatile. The smack of his hand became like gunfire. She barely heard the laughter from the crowd. She was too in tuned with him to hear anything but the flesh of his hand cracking down on hers. Nobody else was there. He was all that mattered. Kade and the fabulous burn of his untiring hand.

  “Oh!” She mewed. Writhed. Died, the most exquisite little death when his hand under her belly suddenly shifted further down, skimming her mons to touch her. He pressed in, parting her labia, seeking and finding her clit and her whole body seized. She stiffened, gasping shrilly, throwing her head and hair back in her desperation to touch him back—his knee, his hip, his side—and hold on to him until the earth-shattering vibrations had stopped.

  The silence that followed was so loud and so temporary. It ended in an explosion of applause and the most sinful caresses as Kade both soothed and amplified the glorious fire that raged in the near naked flesh of her mostly exposed bottom.

  “Well done,” he
whispered, for her and her alone.

  She tried to get up off his lap, but her legs refused to support her and instead of standing she found herself flopping right back down again, his hands guiding her to perch upon the knees she’d just been spanked over.

  She touched her bottom, her hand brushing against his as he continued to caress while she sat there, breathing heavily, floating on the languid ripples of her orgasm.

  Kade held her, rocked her—a small forever that was filled with heat and throbbing, gentle kisses to her forehead and the touch of his hand as he fondled her bottom, then played with her hair, and finally, when she had drifted back down into herself, pulled the tangles back from her face to better see her. His smile was nothing but smug. “Be ready for me tomorrow at sun-up. All day long, Red. You’re mine.”

  Out in the audience, Selena was grinning, clapping wildly with all the others. All but one.

  Behind her, the plump blonde woman in the slave-girl outfit sat with arms folded tight across her chest. Her face was a mask of stone, but her eyes burned with a resentment so seething that it bordered on hate.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Chelsea was sitting on the foot of her bed, fully dressed, worrying at her fingers when the dreaded knock finally came. She answered it to find Kade leaning one broad shoulder against the frame.

  “You look beautiful,” he said. “Beautiful but overdressed. Here.” He handed her a white box, neatly wrapped with a silver ribbon and topped with a handcuff charm. “I’ll wait while you get changed.”

  She took the box as if it were a rattlesnake, but she had agreed to this so let it not be said she ever reneged on an agreement. Retreating back into her room, she closed the door and went to the bed to change. It took her twenty minutes and at least half of that was spent just staring at the minuscule slave outfit that opening the box revealed.

  “You’re a cad,” she said flatly when she finally opened the door and glared at Kade, but she was wearing the new dress.