by Ella James
I have a moment of panic where I wonder if it’s really him. How could it be? He wouldn’t do something like this. And yet—this place.
That set.
The body I saw on the stage.
I know him. It was Hansel.
I try to calm my racing mind; I exhale slowly. “What happened to his old sub? Did he fire her?”
The girl in front of me rifles through her bag again. “I don’t know. That man is seriously private. It’s hard to get a face to face with him.” She pulls out a lipstick tube and glances at me. “One of my friends got harassed at work here and wanted to talk to him. She tried to get a face to face with him for four months before she went to someone else, down lower on the ladder. He found out after that and got the situation taken care of very quick. It was a…well, a sort of harassment thing. He was very sympathetic. Surprising, for a man with so much money.”
My chest aches. It aches so much, and the pain is so sharp, I rise to my feet to try and get away from it.
The girl looks up at me. “You leaving?” she asks simply.
“Yes.” My voice is ragged—like the rest of me. “I hope you have a good show,” I say as I head toward the door.
With my hand around the knob, I look over my shoulder—then say fuck it and turn all the way around. “When are the try outs?” I ask. My heart throbs sickly. “Is it club girls only?”
A coy smile tilts the corners of her lips. “I shouldn’t tell you, but they’re Monday. Applications are due tomorrow by five o’clock. So they can go over everything, I guess. Run background checks. Oh, and if you’re going to ask, you can get them from the entry desk. At the front, where you came in, you know? In that boxy little foyer-not-a-foyer thing?”
I nod. “Thank you so much.”
She smiles. “No problem, and good luck. They say he likes ’em blonde.”
I walk slowly to the amphitheater doors. I try to think but can’t. I only move—toward him.
I can’t breathe as I push the door open. A guard stops me mid-push with a hand on my back, and I have to turn around and tell him how I left the show to go to the restroom; my sisters are there, and I need to go back in.
“There are restrooms in the theater,” he says, looking suspicious. “Interruptions are something we avoid.”
He steps away from me, and I can hear him speaking in low tones into his Bluetooth. A second later, he turns back around.
“You’re cleared,” he says tersely. “Hurry to your seat.”
I nod, and I intend to, but I…don’t.
I walk into the darkened room, and I see a spotlight moving in gentle circles on the right side of the stage.
As I take the stairs down toward the bottom, I can feel his hands on my arms. On my cheeks. In my hair. I can feel his fingers, softly stroking my skin.
On the stage below, there are two women on the green bed. I can hear the smacking of his hand on one of their backsides.
Why two, I wonder. Isn’t one enough?
Eight rows away.
Now five.
Four.
Three.
I pause in the aisle, looking at his ripped back, sweat-slick and shining in the spotlight. I watch him move, and I confirm it’s him. I don’t need to see his arm. I’m still an expert on the rhythm of his movements.
I watch him in a stupor for a moment, stunned by how depraved this is. Trying to reconcile the violent-seeming man before me with the boy who stroked my arm. I’m surprised to find that what makes me turn away is not revulsion. I can’t stand to see him touch the other women.
CHAPTER THREE
Lucas
I should have stopped this shit a long damn time ago.
When I arrived in Vegas nine years ago, I didn’t know any better than what I was. Than what I did. I needed things I haven’t needed in a fuck long time now. Dominating women…it was the air in my lungs.
Now it’s goddamned boring.
I’ve cut back—way back; maybe two or three times a year, like tonight, when we have some new investors in town, and my submissives are Luna Trois and French Kitten, a famous porn star and a celebutant bitch who, combined with me, draw a pretty decent crowd.
But this shit is all for show. We don’t do real-time domination at The Forest. Not when most of my submissives are notable in one way or another, and there’s always a full house behind the Plexiglas stage wall.
Luna and Frenchy had to sign off on the cat I’m palming. On the thick plugs in their puckered holes. On the tight cuffs around their wrists, and the spreaders I’ll use when both their asses are good and welted.
They were happy to agree to the nipple clamps I like: the metal ones that can do real damage if left on too long—though, of course, they won’t be.
Neither woman objected to the dual blow job they’ll give me after I spread them wide and push my fingers up their cunts. Luna will deep-throat me and Frenchy will tea-bag my balls. Luna is thrilled that, after she stuffs her throat full of my cock, she’ll spread her legs for Luna’s tongue while Luna lets me fuck her from behind. I’ve got a nine-inch cock, and she told me she’s shallow, but Luna likes the pain. They all do.
I can’t lie: I like to give it.
I made my name dominating sick showgirls. A lot of it is my body and my face, my XL cock and the absurd length of time that I can wield it. But it’s the showmanship, too.
The rough, whispered words the mics can always pick up.
The heavy-handed spanking—also okay’d by my partners, although it looks and sounds spontaneous.
The way I give it to them, invading mouth, pussy, and ass, often in quick succession.
People like to think of me as some sort of grand fucking conquestor.
Unbreakable.
Unyielding.
In the year after I left rural Colorado and hitchhiked my way to Vegas, where my miserable life began, I made such a name for myself as “Edgar,” my shows at Vixxx would sometimes draw a bigger crowd than the Saturday night fights at the Mirage.
With a little leg work, it wasn’t difficult to sweet-talk investors into fronting a club. I’m good with money—good at betting, I guess—so they were happy to invest again and again, each time lowering my interest rates and increasing the amount of dollars. Now that The Forest is what it is, even the most prudish among them are pleased to have their names up on the donors’ wall here at my primary location.
In the last five years, I’ve opened four locations. Financed one sixth of a casino. Built five apartment buildings, invested in one planned community, and bought out three luxury car lots. And those are just my tangible investments.
I’m interviewed regularly by the Nevada Business Times, consulted occasionally by Hollywood, still sporadically beset by huge financial offers from porn studios, discreetly phoned by Wall Street deviants interested in “the lifestyle.”
They all know me as Edgar.
Not my birth name, Lucas Lenore, nor any other name I’ve had.
I’ve made a new life. Become almost famous for my stamina and temper, for my keen eye for submissives and my talent with a crop.
I stay hard all the way through every show, no matter how long. It’s not Viagra. Just lust and unfulfilled longing.
No one ever guesses my secret.
At what my private submissives’ gag orders keep hidden.
That after every show, there must be blood.
Mine.
Because I’m not a sadist—not just.
Inside, I’m still Hansel. And Hansel is a masochist.
*
Backstage after the show, Luna and Frenchy thank me emphatically for a good time. I smile tightly and thank them for participating.
Then I hurry off into a hidden hallway.
I keep a fully stocked apartment at my main location just for nights like this. Nights when I see her in the audience. When I hear her voice like a foggy evening drifting thorough my head, and I feel her hands on me like warm echoes.
This set is new, and p
robably part of the problem. I had it made when the anniversary of that date passed this year. It’s a strange set, one that probably seems random to everyone in the audience, but I don’t give a shit; I made it just for me.
It’s fucked up, I know, but I still lust for Leah. My dick throbs, rolling a dull ache down the inside of my thighs.
I think about how ironic it is: I perform the most pleasurable acts, am known for giving my submissives an almost painful number of orgasms, yet I leave every show without finding release of my own.
I’m able to make business calculations—at least about The Forest—by studying the behavior of people with fringe tastes. People who are compelled to visit a sex show are not Regular Joes. They’re outside the mainstream. In Vegas, their numbers are larger than elsewhere, but still—they’re the minority. The ones who are interested in working for me are even rarer. And even among the sexually adventurous—deviants, some might call them—I’m an outsider. Requiring pain for pleasure… That’s not normal. Not in any light.
If I were to showcase what I do in my own bedroom, I’d lose business. So I keep it private. Partner with subs who can stomach my proclivity, who know on the front end what they’re getting into. Women like the one who made me what I am, who don’t mind hurting a man. Some even enjoy it.
Tonight, her job will be easy, I think as I take long strides through the darkness of my private hall. I’m so hard from the last hour and a half, my dick has its own heartbeat. My balls are tight and swollen, demanding release I just can’t find unless I’m in the privacy of my own quarters, with a woman I’ve got on lockdown via NDA.
For the last ten months, that woman has been Breeanna Benson. Not that I ever call her that. I call them all her. It’s just easier.
I picture her spread-eagled on my bed, her metallic fingertips shining in the dim light. Sharpness down my back as I’m buried in her hot, soft cunt.
My breaths begin to grow shallower. I pick up my pace. Each step makes my heavy balls swing, makes my pulsing dick swell just a little more. I try to get a deep breath to calm my racing heart. Stars dance in my eyes, and I’m grateful for the impeccable sense of direction that makes it easy for me to find my door in the dark hall.
I punch the code into the keypad with trembling fingers. I shoulder my way through the door, drop my leather pants, and palm my throbbing cock, biting down on my lips to keep from moaning—not in pleasure, but in pain.
Every time I get hard, the anxiety begins. I feel the need not for release but for pain. Pain and pleasure go together; when you’re taught this, it’s impossible to forget or move past it.
It’s probably part of what makes me such a good dom in a show. Out there on the stage, my anxiety focuses me. Causes a rush of adrenaline that keeps my spankings hard, my orders sharp.
Being reliant on my submissives to provide my pain makes me beholden to them. I know that. There’s no other choice, and I loathe that. I hate giving any amount of control to anyone.
Still, I make sure I’m the one in charge. I say when and how. My current sub enjoys inflicting pain—she’s confessed that much—but she also enjoys taking my orders, being submissive to me in every other way.
I find her waiting for me on her knees in the center of my king-sized bed, her body bent into a bow, her wrists still tethered to the bedposts the way I left them two hours ago.
When she sees me, she touches her masked face the mattress.
The mask is a necessity. Every sub wears one. So I can see their pale blonde hair and blue eyes, but not their faces.
“Get on your back,” I say in a low voice.
She complies quickly, moving into the spread-eagle position she knows I like. I hoist myself onto the bed and loosen the restraints around her wrists. Then I reach into the small brown box on the table pushed beside the bed, take out a small, velvet bag, and dump ten small, metal triangles into my palm. Just the sight of them makes my dick twitch. I grit my teeth and fit them over her fingertips. It’s been almost two weeks since we used these. Had to keep my back smooth for the show I just performed.
“Wrap your hands around my biceps,” I say as I move atop her.
She complies, applying a little pressure from the metal claws’ pointy tips as I palm my rock-hard dick.
Before I get a chance to shove myself inside her, I say, “Squeeze me.”
The order is unnecessary. After so many months spent in my bed, she knows what I like. With her fingers stretched out straight, so that her claws are nowhere near my dick, she catches me in between her thumb and forefinger, pressing and capturing my cock just below my head; tugging first, then squeezing. It wouldn’t normally hurt, but I’ve been hard the entire show. All the blood in my throbbing head is caught there for a moment, the pressure building.
“Hold,” I hiss.
She holds her grip. As I see spots behind my closed eyelids, the tightness in my chest begins to ebb.
If arousal brings on fear, the arrival of expected pain alleviates it.
“Down,” I groan.
She slides her hand down my shaft and bounces the palm of her other hand beneath my balls. They throb from heightened pleasure, but when she squeezes from the top down, as if she’s milking a cow, I cry out.
She lets me go, and then repeats. I see stars, moan “fuck.”
She repeats the agonizing ritual a few more times, until I’m so tender there, I know an orgasm will bring pain.
“Rest,” I tell her.
She lowers her hands to the mattress, and I part her legs. I slide my hand up her thigh and find her soft, warm folds. She’s already slick—probably turned on from what she just did to me—but after just a few thrusts of my fingers in her pussy, she’s writhing below me. Her nipples harden into pebbles. Her mouth “o”s, letting a low groan move out her lips.
“Spread your legs wider for me, and grab onto my shoulders.”
Her blue eyes flutter, peeking up at me, then closing.
“Yes, Master,” she whispers.
For just a moment as I push myself into her, I see a face that brings me peace. I hold onto the memory as I feel her stretch around me. She whimpers just a little, spreads her legs a little more. She pants as I work my way even deeper into her, then give a few taps on the buttplug she’s been wearing since this morning.
“Master,” she cries.
I start thrusting. Leah. Leah, Leah. Fuck.
I push in as deep as I can go and pull out slowly. My hips are shaking as my cock swells and pulses. My heart is beating hard; the air feels thin. I can’t wait much longer, and for a moment I’m so worried I’ll come before she grabs my shoulders, I fear I might pass out.
“Now,” I mange.
She cinches my shoulders like a hungry animal, gripping tight and clenching her fingers. The metal tips she’s wearing pierce my skin. My cock throbs. Pleasure has me grunting as I thrust. And when perfect pain lights up my deltoids, I allow myself to come.
We repeat this twice more—each time more painful, and therefore more satisfying—before I order her into the bath. I never help her bathe. I wait outside the door, reading the Wall Street Journal on my cell phone and shooting off an email to my assistant, Raymond.
When she turns the water off, I join her in the bathroom, bend her over the sink, and gently remove her buttplug. I rub cooling gel over her and carry her to bed, instructing her to sleep only on her side.
No mention is made that tomorrow when the sun comes up, she’s leaving. The only goodbye I give her is a stroke of my fingers over her wrists. Unlike mine, they’re smooth and unmarred. Tonight, for the first time since she’s been my sub, they won’t be bound by rope.
She’s free, and I can’t seem to care about the loss.
I dream of snowfall in a dark alley. I watch it through the tiny, cut-out square in front of me, and when it’s falling fast and I can feel the cardboard over my head dip in, touching my hair with its cold wetness, I draw my knees up to my chest. The slashes on my back pull with the motion,
rousing me a little. In my sleep, I think of her—the first, nameless her who made me what I am—and start to breathe too fast.
I wake up and swipe twice at the space beside me on the mattress. Finally I hear a crumpling sound, feel the cool paper bag in my fingers. I snatch it to my face and roll over on my side. As I shut my eyes again, I wish that I could knock for Leah.
CHAPTER FOUR
Leah
The wedding is bad.
Okay, well that’s not really true.
I’m bad at the wedding.
Superficially, I think I play it off okay…at first. I spend the morning with my sisters, who both treat me like porcelain after my weirdness at the show last night.
After I found out for sure it was him, I re-joined them on our couch, and did nothing out of character for the rest of the night as I let the feels rock through me. I slept in the room with Laura, because Todd wasn’t able to fly in until a few hours before the wedding. I knew I couldn’t hide my exhausted, over-emotional self completely, so I told Laura that being at the show, where the décor reminded me of The House, had triggered some anxiety. She gave me a hug and that was that.
I went to sleep hoping I would dream of him and didn’t. So I awoke feeling wrenched and disappointed—and so many other things I didn’t have the words for.
Manis, pedis, fruit-topped waffles in bed in Lana’s hotel room. Then her other bridesmaids joined us in the bridal suite downstairs, and I managed to keep myself normal while everyone rushed around getting ready.
Lana told me about two hours before the wedding that Laura had told her what I said about my anxiety. She hugged me, and we talked about how weird it is, the way life unfolds and sometimes you have choices and other times you don’t.
“That was a time that you didn’t, Leah. You couldn’t help it that she took you. You can’t help it that you have leftover anxiety. I think you handle it so well. You should be proud of how far you’ve come.”
I nodded, and almost cried but didn’t, and I told Lana I was proud of her, too.
