Charlotte's Dilemma

by Diane Leyne

  She could hear the ambulance coming. Soon, soon she could leave.

  “Charlotte, how can I thank you?”

  “It was my pleasure, Kristoff. I only wish you could have been here.”

  “I do, too, but I think maybe Sandy was a bit relieved.” He grinned.

  “No, I’m sure…”

  “He cried like a baby, Charlotte. The doctor almost threw him out. And then he passed out and needed three stitches in his head, which distracted the doctor while I was trying to push out Andre.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Did JJ do better?”

  “He lasted until the baby crowned. Then I shoved him into a chair. I’m not sure if he passed out, though. I was kind of busy.”

  “Do you love him?”

  “Yes.” She couldn’t pretend any more. “But he doesn’t love me, Sandy. He might have, but I killed it when I rejected him.”

  “He thinks you think of him as a boy, someone not to be taken seriously.”

  “I guess I did, too, at first. But, Sandy, I know he’s a man. A good man. The man I love. But he doesn’t want me anymore.”

  “If you think that you’re blind!”

  “Cy!”

  “No, let me speak my piece. You women, trying to suss out what a man wants or means, but never approaching the problem directly. We men, on the other hand, have no time or understanding of subtly. We may not talk about our feelings the way women do, but when we do, we cut to the chase.”

  “Cyrus T. Cunningham, you didn’t!” Lydia’s tone was half-amused and half-outraged.

  “I did, if you mean did I ask that young man what his feelings were for Dr. Charlotte, here. I want to do right by her. If there’s no chance, then we could help her move on. If there was a chance, then we could help that along.”

  Lydia leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Well?”

  “He loves her but is convinced that she’ll never see him as an equal. He’s just the young guy who drives the boats. A boy toy to have fun with, but not the kind you marry.”

  “Oh, Cy. I totally messed up. I don’t know how to fix things. Maybe over time…”

  “Oh, Charlotte, you don’t have time. JJ’s leaving in a few days.”

  She felt her go cold and then hot and then cold again, and then she seemed to stay that way. Of course he was leaving. She’d driven him away.

  “Maybe it’s for the best. I don’t know if I could have stuck around, seeing him every day, even if it meant walking out on a contract. Hell, it was killing me watching him play with you, Lydia, even though I knew you and knew that he was just teaching Cy. I couldn’t stay and watch him with all the pretty young subs throwing themselves at him in a very un-sublike manner.”

  “It’s not too late, Charlotte. Not if you really love him.”

  “I do. I love the man. I love the Dom. I don’t want to change him. I just want another chance to be with him, Cy.”

  “Okay, then. Here’s what we are going to do…”

  Chapter 15

  JJ headed toward the club. He was wearing his leathers and carrying his favorite flogger attached to his belt. Cy had asked him to work with him and Lydia one more time. JJ had resisted, but, in the end, he couldn’t really say no. He liked them, and he was going to miss them. His only condition was that Charlotte not be allowed to watch. He wanted to leave without seeing her again. Otherwise, he might not be able to go, and he had to go to protect his heart.

  Cy met him at the door and guided him to the main stage. Hell, Cy was serious about this. Whenever JJ had worked with them, it was always on out-of-the-way equipment in an out-of-the-way corner. Good for Cy and Lydia. They were ready to step it up and proclaim their relationship in public.

  Damn it. If Charlotte didn’t want to do the same with him, he was better off without her. She’d loved it when they played back in St. Maarten. She’d let him spank her, restrain her, and she’d loved every second of it. He’d been dying to introduce her to the playroom, to show her off in public to proclaim his love for her in front of everyone. He wasn’t a hardcore Dom. He didn’t expect her to kneel for him or even wear a collar. He just wanted to be loved and not have to hide his feelings. Was that so much to ask?

  He wasn’t going to settle for half measures. Seeing Cy and Lydia together had just reinforced that. He was going to go sailing by himself for a while and get his head on straight, and then he was going to figure out where he was going to live and he was going to find a woman who would love him as JJ, a Dom in the bedroom who was perfectly happy to stay home with the kids while his wife worked, if she wanted to.

  Cy had him wait while he went to get Lydia, so JJ took a seat at the bar, hoping everyone would leave him alone. He just wanted to help Cy and Lydia with their scene, and then he was gone.

  Of course, Duncan was manning the bar tonight and would want to talk. He’d been a part-time bartender back at the original Club Libertine, and he was also one of the six original partners. He enjoyed bartending and still did it at the odd time. He poured JJ a beer, the one and only he would be allowed to have. BDSM clubs would never get rich off booze sales.

  “What’s up, JJ? I never see you looking so formal. You usually look more like a beach bum than a Dom.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s my last night. It seemed like a good idea to go out on a formal note.”

  “You know, you can always change your mind. Hell, we can always use an extra hand with the boats. It’s not like we ever actually paid you or anything.”

  “Shhh. I don’t want anyone to know!”

  “I don’t get what your deal is.” Duncan lowered his voice and leaned in. “Why don’t you want anyone to know you are one of the partners? Or what JJ stands for?”

  “I want a woman who will love me for me, not for the Jesperson family money and not because I sold my own company for fifty million dollars. I’ll leave trading in on the family name to my brother Cole.”

  “I presume you are playing tonight?”

  “Not exactly. Cy wants one more lesson. He’s getting Lydia ready, and then I’m going to watch him restrain her and then take her through the scene on his own. I’m just here to watch.”

  “Then why the…” Duncan inclined his head toward the flogger that JJ was playing with.

  “I don’t know. Force of habit. It’s my favorite.” He sighed. “I never even got to show Charlotte…” He stopped and took a sip of his beer.

  “Is Cy going to collar Lydia?”

  “No, he says he’s not ready for that. And he wants to do the formal ceremony back in Chicago. I think he’s just nervous. He’s still pretty new at this. They are heading home in a few days, but can you keep an eye on them if they decide to play again before they leave?”

  “Sure, man. I’ll keep an eye on Charlotte for you, too.”

  JJ squinted at Duncan. “If I didn’t know you were happily married and that Andie would have your balls if you tried anything with Charlotte, I might have to castrate you myself.”

  “You know, JJ, once you go, there’s going to be a lineup of Doms waiting to take your place. They’ve all been keeping their distance because Charlotte’s made it clear that she doesn’t want to play and everyone has put two and two together and gotten five and figured that it was because of you, but once you are gone, she’ll be fair game for both visitors and staff.”

  “Nice try, Duncan. She’s a free agent and can fuck or play with anyone she wants. It’s not up to me. She’s not my sub. Hell, I’ve never even played with her in a club.” He swallowed the rest of his beer. “Well, time to see how Cy’s doing. Look, man. I’m going to miss you and Andie. Hug her for me. I’ve decided to leave at first light. Karl will do just fine.” He reached across the bar and shook Duncan’s hand. “Let me know if she renews her contact next year. If she moves on, maybe I’ll be back.”

  Then he turned and walked toward the stage, bounding the steps in two strides. Cy was standing in front of Lydia, who appeared to be kneeling behind
him. They’d chosen a mahogany spanking bench. It was a nice one with a padded leather spot for the sub to lay over and some nice wide supports for the knees. It was narrow enough for the breasts to dangle free and clips that could be attached to nipple clips to help hold the sub in place.

  And of course it was covered in hooks and eyes and leather straps that could be used to hold a sub securely while their Dom played with then from behind, while keeping their head at the right so their mouth could be fucked with ease. He’d dreamed of strapping Charlotte down to one of these and teasing her with his hand and his flogger and, one day, a cane while teasing her with a vibrator or maybe a dildo until she was literally screaming with pleasure while he fucked her over and over and over and…

  He turned to Cy. “You guys ready?”

  Without a word, Cy stepped aside. It wasn’t Lydia who was kneeling. It was Charlotte. And she was naked except for a pair of wrist cuffs. He tried to process what he was seeing, but his cock knew what it wanted. It was trying to stand to attention even if it had to burst through his tight leathers.

  He took a deep breath. He was master of his own cock. He was not going to come in his pants. He walked up to Charlotte. She was in a perfect submissive pose. She was naked, her knees spread wide and her hands behind her back in the position he preferred a sub to take, which thrust her tits forward as if they were begging for his touch.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Please, Master JJ.”

  “I’m not your Master. Hell, you’ve never let me be your anything except your sex toy.”

  “That’s not fair! Please, JJ, I made a terrible mistake and I want to make it up to you.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want a second chance or, maybe it’s a third chance…”

  “No. I mean right here, right now. What do you want?”

  “I want to show everyone that I am yours and you are mine. I want to try to recapture what we had back on St. Maarten, and I want to erase the last month and start again. I like JJ the easygoing man, not boy, man, but I also miss JJ the Dom in the bedroom who takes charge and knows exactly what he wants. I miss him. I crave him.”

  “You know that I will never be like that outside the bedroom and playroom. I only have a need to dominate in those two places. Outside, I’m a laid-back kind of guy. I meant it when I said that I’d be happy as a house husband raising our kids while you brought home the bacon.”

  “As long as I don’t have go cook the bacon, that sounds good to me. I hate cooking.”

  “That’s okay. I love it.”

  “I want at least two kids. Maybe three.”

  “I can handle that.”

  “I’m thirty-five and…”

  “Not again,” JJ interjected forcefully.

  “No, it’s not that. But it is a fact that we’d have to start having kids right away.”

  “Would I have to be in the delivery room?”

  “Hell yes. But I’d make sure that they have you in a bed beside mine so you can hold my hand but not have to worry about falling and hitting your head if you pass out.”

  “You’ve really thought about this, haven’t you?”

  “I’ve thought of little else.”

  “You made love with me on the island and then you just left me standing there. We made love, and you walked out. You walked out.” His voice dropped, and he tried to hide the pain in it.

  “I didn’t mean to. I just wanted to use the bathroom on the boat rather than go behind a bush. And then they were leaving and I let them and I shouldn’t have and I’m sorry. They told me you were staying behind to look after the boat, and I thought you were happy for me to go with them. I didn’t plan it. I didn’t want to leave you. I enjoyed being there, just the two of us and no baggage between us.”

  He watched her face. She seemed sincere. He reached down to help her up.

  “You don’t have to do this for me. I know you aren’t really a sub.”

  She pulled away and knelt again. “I felt something I hadn’t with any man before when I was with you on St. Maarten, and it scared me, but not because of the BDSM. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but when you took charge, when you spanked me, I was more turned on than I’ve ever been. And after spending a month at a BDSM resort, I know how things work, and I think that, in the bedroom, I am a sub. I think that was what was missing afterward. You backed off, and I thought you might want to move on to someone younger and hotter and didn’t know how to drop me gracefully considering we worked at the same place.”

  “I was trying to be more sensitive and not frighten you off. You had no experience with BDSM, and I figured once you got a good look at what went on here, you might be a little freaked out, so I backed off so you wouldn’t feel like I was pushing you too hard or too fast.

  “I guess we didn’t communicate very well. Some Dom I am. I didn’t pay any attention to your needs or desires. You liked what I did to you in private. I should have asked if you wanted to take it further.”

  “How could you? I couldn’t articulate them myself. All I knew in St. Maarten was that what you did to me was hot and turned me on, and that confused me, and it was easier to concentrate on the BDSM aspects of our relationship rather than the growing love.”

  "It was that first night that I saw you playing with Lydia and Cy that it started to crystallize for me. I so desperately wanted to be the one you tied down and flogged but I refused to let myself believe it was anything more than arousal I was feeling at the thought. And then there were so many young and beautiful subs here. I thought you would prefer them since they were closer to your age.” She frowned. “But then I only saw you play with Lydia and I was really confused.”

  “I told you from day one that I was a relationship kind of guy.”

  “I should have listened.”

  * * * *

  “Yes you should have. You should also have listened when I told you that I didn’t care about your age. Eight years is nothing. My dad is twenty years older than my mom. What’s the big deal?” His eyes narrowed, and he grinned in a way that had Charlotte’s stomach filling with butterflies. “I should punish you for that. Maybe a nice flogging to make sure you really are sorry for what you said.”

  Charlotte thought she’d come on the spot when he detached the flogger from his belt and starting running his fingers through the falls. “Yes I can put you over the spanking bench and secure you nicely in place. And then you can take your punishment. Would you like that, Charlotte? Would you like me to flog you? Maybe I’ll use a riding crop, too. It’ll sting, especially when I use it on your swollen little clit.”

  “Yes, JJ. Please, I deserve to be punished. I’ll take whatever you want to give me if it means we can start over.”

  “I’m not interested in starting over, Charlotte.” He was moving now, circling behind her.

  It was like a knife to her heart. She dropped her head and raised her hand to her face as the tears started falling.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll go now. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  “There you go again, subbie. Jumping to conclusions. I wonder if I can beat that tendency out of you. Or maybe I should try to fuck it out of you. Hmmm. What do you think?”

  “I, JJ…”

  She felt the fire burst over her ass. He’d hit her on the ass with the flogger, and it hurt.

  “What do you call your Dom? Have you learned nothing, subbie?”

  “I, um, JJ.” Another burst of fire. “Master, I mean Master.”

  He snapped the flogger against her ass again. “No. I am not your Master, not yet. For now, you’ll call me Sir. We are going to take this one day at a time, one play session at a time. If the day comes that you are ready to wear my collar and my ring, then, and only then, will you call me Master, but you’ll also have to be ready to call me husband. If you can’t see both those things in your future, then we need to stop right now.

  “I have the boat loaded up and planned to leave in the morning. He
ll, my replacement’s already trained. If you decide to continue this relationship, then instead of getting involved with the guy who looks after the boats and ferries tourists around, you’ll have an unemployed boy toy living with you. Can you handle that?”

  “You were going to leave?” She had seen the new guy around, but she thought he was replacing Fred, who’d let her take out a boat with a faulty gas gauge. “Tomorrow?”

  “I couldn’t bear to see you every day if you didn’t want me anymore.”

  The simplicity of his words and the sincerity touched her.

  “Please, Sir. I want to make this all right, get rid of the past and start fresh. I don’t care if you have a job. You can be a househusband if that’s what you prefer. And I deserve any punishment you want to give me. You can, even, uh, like with Lydia the other night…” She couldn’t say it. Even though one part of her was dripping wet at the thought of him caning her, her brain wouldn’t let her get the words out.

  “You want me to punish you while Cy torments you with the vibrator?” he teased.

  “The cane, Sir. You can cane me if you want. I will do whatever it takes to prove to you that I am serious about starting over.”

  “Does that mean you don’t want to be friends-with-benefits anymore?”

  Charlotte couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. She’d been an idiot.

  “I never wanted that, Sir, not really. I said it to push you away. I was wrong. I was afraid of being rejected, so I made that stupid request. I want too much more. I want a real relationship, Sir, JJ, that is, if you still want it, too.”

  * * * *

  JJ had to squat down to hear her last words. She looked so beautiful. He wanted to kiss away her tears and just hold her in his arms, but he knew now that first he had to make sure that she felt like she’d paid a proper forfeit for her lack of trust. He knew that it would eat away at her if he didn’t.

  “You do realize that we have an audience and that your kneeling position sucks, subbie. You started off well, but why aren’t your hands behind you back and your tits thrust out for my viewing enjoyment? I expect my sub to have perfect form, whether we are alone or we have an audience like we do today.”