by Solace Ames
He settled on an outfit that offered a decadent ease of access. A simple black microskirt, not much more than a strip of fabric. A black balconette bra with little white roses embroidered along the top. Strappy high-heeled sandals—black as well, of course.
“No panties,” he said, coming toward her. He stopped short of embracing her, touched her hips, and angled them in accord with some private vision. “They’ll just be coming off anyway.”
This is not a game, she thought. Leaving the safety of her home exposed like this, parading herself...
No. It was still a game. A strange, tantalizing game, a game that only worked if you pretended it wasn’t a game, and Paul would guide her through it.
“I’ll be ready for you,” she promised.
“You’re ready now, I think. Turn around and put your elbows on the dresser.”
She did exactly that. It was so easy. The sensation between her legs as the skirt rode up—tickling, tingling, untangling—made her feel like she was centered there, a beautiful pattern unfolding from its source. He can’t keep his hands off me. Or maybe it was just the opposite, and he’d show how much control he had, oh, but she liked that too. Either way, you’ll get what you want tonight.
His hands traced the hem of the skirt hiked halfway up her ass. This halfway state shook her harder than full nakedness, somehow. Maybe because Paul held all the control over the lines on her body. Pull it up and fuck me, she almost begged.
“We’ll talk about the party in the car,” he said, his voice characteristically even, that crazy trick that got her every damn time. “But first of all, I’m not going to punish you. I don’t think you particularly like discipline and punishment, which is...interesting. So everything I have you do, you’ll either do it perfectly, or I’ll make you do it perfectly. Or we won’t do it at all. Very simple.”
He shifted behind her, gripped her left cheek with one hand and shoved his other hand between her legs, spreading her roughly. Her pussy was wet enough that there was barely any friction, just sheer slippery sensation and a moment of coldness and her heart beating like a jackhammer and a moan wrenched from her lungs.
More. More.
She tried to buck against his hand, driving herself onto him. He shoved her forward against the dresser.
“Like this,” he said. “Just like this. When I hurt you, it won’t be for punishment. No marks, of course. Are you good with slapping? Spitting?” He drew his hand back suddenly; the cool feeling remained.
“Y-yes. I like that. I mean, I think I’d like that.”
Paul would never do that to her in front of Jay, she knew. In porn, it turned her on like lightning. Paul had only tapped her face, the last time. More.
“If you don’t, tell me, or safeword out.”
She nodded.
“Turn around.”
She straightened and turned, experiencing her motion as dreamlike and slow, as if she was a music-box dancer with the key half-turned. Everything about this moment was unfinished, incomplete, still marvelous.
He straightaway slipped two fingers into her mouth. She tasted herself on them, recognition following the shock, and knew what she had to do. She licked and sucked them clean the way she’d lick and suck his cock, swirling her tongue around and between them until she could almost trace the whorls of his fingerprints.
“You see what I mean? You did that perfectly.” He looked down into her eyes, distant and so terrifyingly composed that she was afraid all over again, not of Paul but of this thing between them, how this past month had drawn them so close that Paul could make such an intimate offer—he won’t have far to fall—and she’d accept it in the next breath.
There was one last, ice-cold fear she’d barely admitted, even to herself. Paul cared about her and Jay, in a beautiful, utterly unique way, passionate and analytical all at once. Once he’d solved the puzzle, mastered the game, what was to keep him from losing interest and drifting away? Oh, he’d fill every twisted fantasy she had and leave her deliriously happy, the key word being leave.
She’d still have Jay, then. They’d always be together. Paul would hurt them both when he left, but yes, he was worth the price of the pain.
“What are you thinking, Adriana?” Paul asked. Not rushing her. God, she loved him for that, even though she didn’t want to.
“It’s hard to explain,” she murmured, words forming strangely through the thick taste of sex. “But I’m not having second thoughts about the party. I want to lose myself tonight.”
He smiled. “All right, then. I’m going to the car to get my harness and your collar. Bring any toys you’d like, by the way.” He kissed her lightly on the lips and left her alone.
She finished getting ready, resisting the impulse to look at herself too closely in the bathroom mirror. The spell Paul had cast was already fading without his touch, and she didn’t want to get self-conscious again, didn’t want to think of people at the party looking at her and judging her, women mostly, going all the way back to her mother. You’d have a shot at acting if you lost thirty pounds and got a nose job. “Stop,” she told herself out loud. “Just fucking stop.”
She fled to the living room. Paul was waiting for her in his leather harness and black jeans. Everything felt right again. No past, no future. He’d teach her how to be timeless, like him.
“Gorgeous girl. Come and get your collar,” he said, holding it stretched between his hands. She came to him, mincing a little unsteadily in her heels, bared her throat to him and received it. The leather was smooth and supple against her skin; a metal D-ring rested against the back of her neck, cool and heavy.
“It doesn’t get any tighter?” she asked.
“It shouldn’t be much tighter anyway, but this is a man’s collar. I’ve only used it on clients before. Depending on how tonight goes, how much you like the symbolism, I might get you one of your own.”
She touched the leather at her throat, imagining the men who’d worn it before her. She didn’t mind. It even made her feel special, the one to break the mold.
The party was all the way up in Los Feliz, a long drive, and they had to plan the route and decide what clothes to throw on top of what Paul charmingly called their slutwear. By the time he walked out the front door and held it open for her, the tension had gone subsurface. Paul wasn’t an otherworldly guide, wasn’t a time-warped avatar of Marlon Brando in The Wild One, he was...himself. One of his eyebrows was a perfect Chinese brushstroke, and the other was a little mussed in the middle; she reached up and smoothed it with her forefinger, making him symmetrical again.
He smiled approvingly.
In the car, he put on salsa music at a low volume. Adriana had never really gotten into salsa, but she recognized the good stuff—it sounded like a Celia Cruz compilation. “Jay loved dancing with you,” she said. “I was happy for him. We’ve done it together a few times, but I really only like dancing when I’m in my own space.” She found the lever to lean the seat back—Paul’s car was familiar to her by now—and settled in, feeling comfortable and warm.
“I’ve been watching timing videos on the internet. Counting the beats, practicing. Let me know if you’d ever like to try again.”
“It’s okay. That can be your thing. You and Jay. And this is ours.”
“This is ours. Yes.”
They turned onto the 110 Freeway and headed north, toward the hills. They passed through the center of the city along the way, where the streets were ribbons of light tangled into towers, and the shining towers bit upward at the black sky.
“I went to an art exhibit about the brutality of surfaces,” Paul said after a long period of easy silence. “This—” he waved at the windshield, at the city, “—is what I thought of. It’s beautiful and inhuman.”
“It feels like living in the belly of the beast. But I’m used to it. It’s where
my heart is now.”
“I’m glad you didn’t join the Marines.”
She laughed and shook her head. “I came pretty close. My father had a long talk with me and told me not to do it. It was how he got his citizenship, and he didn’t regret it, but he didn’t think it was the right path for me. I listened. I ended up in another stupid hard job, but I don’t regret that, either.”
They talked about life and the city for a long time, then spiraled back to relationships as the towers shrank behind them.
“Do you mind talking about your ex?” she asked. “I don’t mind talking about mine. There’s really not that much to say, because I never had anything close to what I have with Jay.” She even felt comfortable enough to talk about the man who stuck a gun in her face, although thinking of him as an ex was disconcerting. She tried to keep him filed as enemy in her mind; things were simpler that way.
“I met her at a BDSM event. I decided I’d give the master/slave thing a try—she was very vocal about wanting it. She’s a tattoo artist and I’ve never been inked, so we looked a little odd together, but we had quite a few interests in common. She was into more extreme submission than most of the men I’d been with. I had fun keeping pace with her.”
“Extreme?” Adriana wasn’t sure if she wanted to know. Wait. She checked her pounding heartbeat, the growing warmth between her legs. Yes, she did want to know.
“Licking my come off the floor, being shared, sleeping in a cage.” He listed them as dispassionately as menu items. Which Adriana supposed they were, in a way. “After a few months, the time constraints were wearing on me. One day we were having lunch at a food court, and she went to...well, serve me. I only wanted the tabbouleh if it was whole wheat, and if it wasn’t, then I wanted extra grape leaves, as long as they were vegetarian, and by the time I finished explaining all the details, I realized I could have gotten it myself.” He shrugged and smiled wryly while keeping his eyes on the road. “I told her that night I wanted to end our contract and do a new one without so much service. She wasn’t happy. She felt I was abandoning her, that I’d misrepresented myself.”
“Wow. So that kind of slavery—I guess it’s hard to do in the modern world. With, um, food courts.”
“The breakup was disappointing, but it taught me some important things about myself. I like to fuck hard, and I like to do it a lot, but I don’t get anything out of nonsexual service. It’s not unpleasant to me, but it becomes a chore very quickly. I don’t mind it for small periods of time, or if I’m paid for it, of course.”
She’d guessed that already, but it was still a relief to hear him say it out loud. She liked her bedroom with its sky-blue quilt and plum-colored walls and no space for a cage whatsoever. “Well, you can pay me for cooking your dinner, and then I’ll pay you for making me bring it to you.”
“Perfect,” he said, and laughed along with her. “I’m not sure who would owe who, afterward. We’d have to factor in who buys the groceries and who washes the dishes.”
She thought of how they’d keep accounts. Little slips of paper that got lost in the bottom of purses, perhaps, the evanescent receipts of a shared history with her two strange, beautiful men.
He told her more about the party after they pulled off the freeway and onto a series of winding roads. They’d watch. Get ideas. If she was ready to give herself over, she’d touch her collar.
“We might not do anything tonight,” Paul said as the GPS directed them down a shadowy driveway. “Don’t feel obligated.” He parked, turned to look at her and smiled. “And don’t do what Jay did at that bathhouse.”
So Paul knew that story. Another piece of shared history, this one funny enough to make her laugh. “Oh my God, I’d never.”
He held her hand and led her to the front door. Walking in heels over pebbles would have been intimidating, otherwise. She could only wear them for a few hours, anyway, before they hurt her feet. They made her feel delicate, hobbled, weak. Yet still right and fitting, just in a different way from the sturdy, high-arched, unbreakable clogs that armored her feet for work on the line.
The sprawling Mission-style mansion had walls so white they seemed to gleam with their own light and tiled roof peaks the color of oxblood. An ancient house, or at least built to look like one. The architecture struck a chord. “My great-grandparents used to live in a house like this,” she told Paul. “Practically a hacienda. They were old money California landowners. By the time my mother was born, it was all gone, and the house was burned down. There was a lot of madness in the family. She used to tell me stories that sounded like Faulkner.”
“Do you have any pictures of the house?” Paul asked.
“You only think about one thing,” she said playfully, squeezing his hand. “Sure. I’ll show you an album sometime.”
He rang the doorbell. “My two obsessions mix well, sometimes. Like tonight.”
“I’m glad, Paul. I want you to enjoy yourself.” Part of that want tied into submission—she already felt its force drawing her downward, like a penny’s first slow circles into a spiral wishing well. She wanted for Paul’s sake, too, because he’d been so good for them, so very good.
“My sweet girl.”
God, he set her heart on fire.
The door opened.
A female form completely encased in black latex beckoned them in. She was faceless, voiceless, mouthless—only the slight impression of lips under nose slits. Adriana nodded at her, following Paul’s lead, quashing the flight reflex instilled by countless horror movies.
The hallway was floored in white tiles with dizzying blue designs, and lined with massive furniture made of dark wood and wrought iron. The overall effect was welcoming and menacing all at once. Stay on the path, the house seemed to warn.
Adriana reminded herself that Paul belonged here. She belonged here.
There was a massive oak wardrobe by a set of double doors, and Paul told her they could leave clothes there. She took off her slip dress and jacket; Paul tugged off his V-neck thermal. The metal ring in the center of his harness gleamed faintly, fascinating her.
“Your wedding ring,” Paul said, oddly tentative. “Did you want to do anything with it?”
“Why?” She was confused. Hard to think clearly anymore—too much naked skin, too much Paul in leather, too much music seeping between the cracks in the doors, throbbing music that almost matched her heartbeat.
“Never mind,” he said, and opened the doors and walked her in.
She flinched. She couldn’t help it. Bodies twined around each other, private flesh made public, boundaries dissolving. Accusing her, challenging her—you shouldn’t be here. The woman spread-eagled on her back in the middle of the room was crying, and Adriana hyperfocused on the liquid trails across her cheeks until someone dressed head to toe in red leather blocked the view, knelt over the woman—
“Paul! It’s been so long. Too long.”
Adriana blinked, took a deep breath, refocused. The woman who’d spoken was older, pale, with a cascade of curly hair dyed indigo. No collar. Did that mean she was a dominant?
“Annalise, this is Adriana. Adriana, this is Mistress Annalise. She’s our hostess, and I couldn’t imagine a better one.” Paul, while barely seeming to move, was now mediating the space between, first stroking Adriana’s shoulder, then gesturing to Annalise. Mistress Annalise. Adriana should remember. It went against the grain after the many years of training herself to be informal, after shouting quick and loud down the kitchen line. “Adriana’s new to the life, and I thought one of your parties would be the perfect introduction.”
“We play hard here,” Annalise said. “Harder than most. But I try to keep a good mix, and everyone is respectful.” Annalise looked her up and down with a kind of detached hunger, giving the word respectful new, rich, sinister layers of meaning. “How available are you tonight, Paul? And
how available is your darling Adriana?”
“I’m happy to help with any bondage setup. Otherwise, we’re mainly here to watch. I might use her at some point.”
The casual way he said it was sick, sick, sick fucking hot and Adriana melted. She would have fallen to her knees right then and there, but some hazy sense that the time wasn’t right froze her on her feet, her thighs clenched to keep from staggering.
“The machine room isn’t occupied, if you’d like some privacy,” Annalise said. “Let’s catch up later, Paul. And Adriana? You’re adorably shy, but I hope you’re not frightened.”
“I’m not,” Adriana choked out, her voice sounding strange and hoarse, still reeling from what Paul had said. I might use her at some point. Jesus, God, fuck. “This is very new. But I’m already enjoying myself. Thank you, Mistress Annalise.” Pride swelled in her, for remembering.
“Mmm, yes, I think you are.” Annalise smiled crookedly, turned, and floated away, her corset gown almost long enough to sweep the floor.
Adriana wanted to get her bearings. She had a sense the room was large, lined with couches along several walls—no sense of how many people. Paul blazed like a sun in her center of vision, making everything else dim, unimportant.
She couldn’t look away.
“Follow me,” he said, words falling along the razor-thin line between command and suggestion. He touched the back of her shoulder, gently guiding her.
They drifted toward the people clustered around the woman on the floor.
“More people here tonight than usual,” Paul remarked. “We can’t really get closer without being rude. They’re putting hot wax on her thighs, now.”
“I can’t see over their shoulders.” Her disappointment came as a surprise. The rush from Paul’s words was fading, but it would come back whenever he wanted, she knew. She people-watched, trying to find commonalities, orienting herself. Most of the people looked Anglo white, though thankfully not all of them, or she’d feel even more out of place. They were young to old, thin to fat, often heavily pierced and tattooed. As many women as men. “It does seem like a good mix.”
