shadowland

by Radclyffe

  “Perhaps.” Kyle nodded once, then followed in Caroline and Anne’s wake toward the exit.

  Brad sipped her drink slowly and watched Kyle leave, smiling to herself in satisfaction.

  Chapter Eight

  “Do you ever let anyone top you?”

  “What’s the matter, Dane? Lost your competitive spirit?”

  Dane drove rapidly through the city, her mind careening from image to image—Kyle, her eyes tender and warm, awakening by her side; Brad, arrogant and cool, a possessive hand on Kyle’s shoulder, taunting her as only Brad could. It had been so good to see Kyle, better than she’d remembered, and she’d let down her guard. When they’d danced, she’d allowed herself to imagine not just the hot flood of passion when their bodies joined, but the peace that would follow in the aftermath. A serenity she’d felt with Kyle and no one else—not in years. And then Brad had appeared, and she’d put her hands on Kyle.

  Swearing under her breath, Dane switched on the radio, hoping the music would drown out her thoughts and block the images she couldn’t forget. It had been months since she had last seen Brad, but the response Brad provoked was undiminished by time. She had only to see her cool black eyes, to hear her smooth, seductive voice, and she was flooded with impotence and rage, and beneath that, fear. Brad was always so damn sure she could have anything she wanted, and in her heart, Dane still believed that she probably could. Hating herself for her inability to control her emotions at these moments, faced with her own undeniable weakness, she wanted only to escape. Anger and self-loathing simmered close to the surface, eroding her hard-won sense of balance.

  Why can she still do this to me?

  Abruptly, she swerved into an empty space at the curb, realizing for the first time that she had driven unconsciously to a familiar neighborhood she hadn’t visited in almost half a year. She sat for a second staring at the three-story Victorian set back from the street. A single light, almost a beacon, flickered in a window tucked high under the eaves. Dane saw the light, but she was thinking of a place without windows, without sound, without thought.

  Even as she hesitated, she knew what she would do. There were too many emotions tearing at her—anger, helplessness, despair—memories so painful it hurt to breathe. She couldn’t stop the images pounding in her head, and there was only one sure way she knew to push them away. She carefully locked her car and tucked the keys into her front pocket. With a determined stride, she crossed the darkened street, climbed the steps to the front door, and knocked firmly.

  A moment passed, a moment when Dane could have changed her mind, but she had already stopped thinking. Had already surrendered. A large woman, her broad features accentuated by short, close-cropped hair, opened the door. Her sharp dark eyes searched Dane’s face, undoubtedly noting the agitation Dane tried to hide. Wordlessly, she stepped back, motioning Dane in with a barely perceptible nod of her head. Her smile was of satisfaction, not welcome.

  ”It’s been a long time, Dane. Things must be going well for you these days.” Her voice held a bite of sarcasm, because she knew that Dane visited her only when in the throes of some intolerable emotional turmoil. Dane came to her only when driven to it—only when she could no longer endure her own vulnerability. Dane came to exorcise her demons.

  Dane had nothing to say. In a bleak, dispassionate way, she hated this woman whose power over her, willingly given, embodied the essence of her own failure. When she could not obliterate her own desperate needs, she sought physical escape. When she could not deny her own weakness, she sought physical punishment.

  “What’s your safe word?” the woman asked sharply, having no desire for conversation. Already she felt the excitement that Dane’s presence always aroused in her. Dane was so cool, so controlled, so perfect in everyone’s eyes. But she knew; she knew Dane as no one else would ever know her, for she had seen the depths of her despair. And before long, she would witness Dane’s surrender to it.

  “The same.” Dane’s voice was low, tight, curt. Just do it. God, don’t make me wait. I can’t stand the way it hurts.

  She suppressed a sigh of relief when the woman turned and headed for the staircase at the rear of the house. She followed without needing to be told. She’d done this before. They climbed to the third floor where a single door faced them at the end of a short, narrow hall. With the sense of being an observer, eerily removed from the events, Dane watched the familiar figure sort through a ring of keys, unlock the door, and gesture for Dane to precede her inside.

  Unhesitatingly, Dane entered.

  The room was surprisingly warm. Dane stood in total blackness for a moment, knowing that the darkness was enhanced by the absence of windows. Suddenly a dim red glow suffused the room as a switch was flipped on behind her. Reflexively, sweat broke out on the entire surface of her body, and her pulse quickened. She did not turn around when she heard the door close resoundingly. The lights were arranged in recessed ceiling tracks in such a way that much of the space around her was in shadow. There was a deep carpet on the floor and thick insulation on the walls, a combination that absorbed all sound. No one would hear her cries, only the one person who would not care. No one would witness her defeat; only she would know.

  Left alone with her thoughts in the womb-like atmosphere, Dane quickly lost track of time. She waited, breathing shallowly, eyes nearly closed.

  “Take off your clothes.”

  Dane jerked infinitesimally at the voice that cut through the silence from somewhere in the shadows. She reached toward her vest.

  “Slowly.”

  With trembling hands, Dane worked each snap open on the damp leather. She pulled it off and dropped it behind her. Bare-chested, she raised first one slender leg and then the other to remove her boots. Next she released the buckle at her waist and freed the buttons on her fly to reveal her naked flesh. The heat, the soft red light, and the stillness closed around her as she pushed the smooth leather down her legs to bare herself completely.

  The woman in the shadows smiled triumphantly. Dane stood physically exposed, helpless and without protection. Soon she would be emotionally naked as well.

  “Close your eyes.”

  Moments passed and still Dane stood unmoving in the center of the room. Her mind slowly emptied of all thought as the sound of her own heart beat louder and louder in her ears. She tensed slightly at the touch of a hand on her back, but she did not turn. The darkness became total as a soft, close-fitting leather hood was pulled over her head and fastened snugly around her neck. Her eyes were completely covered, but there were ample spaces for her nose and mouth, making it warm inside but allowing for easy breathing. Something was pressed to her nose.

  “Inhale,” the voice directed.

  For the first time, Dane resisted, but a firm hand at the back of her neck squeezed until she gasped involuntarily and breathed in the acrid scent. Almost immediately, a wave of heat washed through her, and the red that had been the room was now inside her. Her head pounded and her skin tingled. Nausea surged and then passed, leaving an uneasy arousal in the pit of her stomach. She was aware of being pushed roughly forward, her body seeming to move without her guidance. The hood blocked her keenest senses, her sight and hearing, and isolated her from her surroundings. She was forced now to experience events through her skin—to open the natural barrier of her body and to feel through it—beyond it to her core.

  She was jerked to a stop, and thick, soft straps were buckled around her wrists and ankles. Her body was pulled off balance, first one way and then another, as her limbs were secured to a scaffold. Once she was suspended, her feet barely touched the floor, and the leather restraints stretched her arms taut over her head, the tension just verging on painful. She floated in the silent void while pain and fear and desperate anticipation coalesced in her depths.

  Her master walked softly to the side of the room, sat on a stool at a small bar, and studied her handiwork with satisfaction. Dane’s finely muscled back and small, firm buttocks looked tant
alizing in the muted red light. She imagined those tight muscles clenching at the first strike of the lash, and lust surged in her loins. Forcing herself to wait, knowing this would enhance Dane’s sense of disembodiment, she poured brandy into a glass and sipped it slowly. The anticipation would make her own pleasure all the more acute as well. She resisted the urge to press a hand between her thighs. There would be time for that later, when she was alone, remembering.

  Finally, she opened a small cabinet set into the wall and removed the largest of her braided cats, a treacherous whip when wielded by someone less practiced than she. When her hand closed around the heavy, leather-wrapped handle, she felt a thrill of excitement course from her center. Then she took a deep breath and focused her entire being on the pale, naked figure before her.

  Dane had drifted so far into her own inner world that at first she did not recognize the odd sensation on her thigh. When the second blow, harder than the first, landed across her buttock, her head snapped up in response. She forced herself not to tense her back muscles, knowing from experience it would make the cutting strokes more painful. She tried to focus on the way her skin felt after the blow had landed and the immediate flash of pain had passed. There was a tingling heat left behind that resembled a bright, sharp light in the night. Soon she lost count of the strokes that fell more rapidly and harder across her upper back and shoulders. Her consciousness, devoid of ordinary sensation, became subsumed with the cumulative agony of the blows. There were no barriers to the surfacing of her deeply buried terror and remorse. As she opened herself to the physical anguish and absorbed the manifestation of her emotional torment into the fiber of her being, the pain seared through her mind with a cleansing flame and flickered out.

  Gasping with the effort not to cry out, Dane clung to consciousness by a thread, still aware enough to know that the woman would not stop the blows until bidden. Only someone as experienced as Dane would dare to go so far, or to ask so much of her body. Still, she pushed herself, taking more punishment than she ever had before. She held on until at last she felt purged of all feeling except absolution. One single sensation—pure and without regret. Only then did she utter the safe word, agreed upon by both of them long ago.

  Hearing that word, barely audible since Dane’s voice was so hoarse, the woman wielding the torturous whip pulled herself up short. Heart pounding, she was stunned to realize how close she had been to losing control. She’d been delivering her blows in a near-frenzy, and now, looking at Dane slumped within the confines of her restraints, she was forced to acknowledge a grudging respect for her. It was only her own practiced discipline that had guided her during the last few minutes, and her considerable skill with the cat that had prevented the whip from flaying open Dane’s back. Still, she knew that the deeper, delicate blood vessels had burst. Dane’s back was a mass of welts already beginning to darken from the blood pooling in the wounded tissue beneath the skin. Nevertheless, Dane had been silent throughout, as she always was, and her master could not help but admire her.

  Her head clear once more, the woman dropped the whip and strode quickly across the room. She released the restraints and caught Dane as she fell, then laid her on her side on the floor. She removed the hood, checked Dane’s pulse, and found it steady and strong. She left Dane curled on the floor, naked, to find her own way out whenever she regained consciousness.

  *

  The highway flashed beneath Kyle’s bike as the headlights cut a swath through the darkness. She raced along the treacherous, twisting road by instinct, fleeing from her disquiet and disappointment without thought to her destination. When she swerved abruptly from the road into a steep driveway, gravel flew behind her rear tire, and the bike only stayed upright as a result of its own momentum. She nearly skidded out and got a leg down at the last second, barely managing to avoid crashing into the last car in a line of pricey vehicles parked along both sides of the long drive. Visible through the trees, the elegant house on the hilltop was ablaze with light. Sweating, guts churning, Kyle ground the bike to a halt and took a long, shuddering breath.

  She hesitated. The party was in full swing. What in hell am I doing here? But she knew, or her unconscious did. She was hurt, and she wanted comfort. Or at the very least, not to be alone with her pain.

  Avoiding the brightly lit front entrance, she made her way along the winding flagstone path between well-tended shrubs to the rear deck, seeking the relative privacy of the shadows there. It wasn’t until she reached the top step that she saw two figures in the midst of a frenzied embrace in the semidarkness of the nearby corner. A woman pulled away from her partner at the sound of Kyle’s step.

  “Jesus,” Nancy cried. “Kyle! Is that you?”

  “Yes.” Kyle halted quickly. “I’m sorry...I’ll just go back dow—”

  Pushing the young man with her toward the house, Nancy whispered, “Go inside.” Then she took Kyle’s arm and pulled her across the deck, away from the view of the people just inside. “What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know.” Kyle slumped against the railing. “Fuck, I’m sorry—I just ended up here.”

  “That’s okay. Never mind.” Nancy brushed her fingers through Kyle’s hair. “Are you all right? What happened?”

  “Everything is crazy, Nance. I started out the night at a discussion group and ended up in the club. Just for a bit of fun.” Kyle rubbed her face vigorously, trying to clear her head. Trying to erase the memory of Dane’s face, furious and cold. “Is there anything to drink?”

  “Of course. When isn’t there?” Nancy searched Kyle’s face with concern. “Come inside.”

  “No,” Kyle said quickly. “I didn’t mean to crash your party.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Nancy said in exasperation. “It’s a bore, anyway.”

  Kyle laughed despite her discomfort. “I could tell you couldn’t find anything to do with yourself.”

  “Oh, him. Just a diversion. Roger is deep in some heavy conversation somewhere.” Nancy shrugged dismissively. “Sit down. I’ll be right back.”

  Kyle sighed and sank gratefully into one of the deck chairs. The moon was out and the surf pounded somewhere far below, but the vision that should have been beautiful only left her feeling empty. She closed her eyes, too weary to think any longer.

  “Here,” Nancy said, settling herself at the foot of Kyle’s chair. “Drink.”

  Kyle reached for the glass and moved her legs to make room for Nancy. “Thanks.”

  They sat close together for a while in the moonlight. Finally, Nancy placed her hand on Kyle’s arm.

  “So, what happened? Did your discussion group turn into a free-for-all?”

  “No. It was fine.” Kyle spoke softly, her head tilted back as she watched clouds drift across the face of the moon. “I went to the club afterwards and that’s when it turned into—I’m not sure what. Dane was there, and at first it was...great. We danced...” She took another gulp of wine, her throat tight, but not from thirst. It was so good. For a few minutes it was perfect.

  “And then?” Nancy refilled Kyle’s glass and her own, then shifted closer to Kyle on the chair. The night looked gorgeous, but the air was rapidly turning cold.

  “But then Brad turned up and everyone started acting really strange. Brad came onto me...sort of, I think...and Dane got pissed and stormed off.”

  “My, my. Sounds like fun.” Nancy’s voice held the merest trace of envy. “Who’s Dane? And who is Brad? I thought you’d quit men.”

  Kyle laughed, drinking without really tasting it. “Dane is the woman I told you about—the one I met last month. And Brad is a woman, too.”

  “Clearly, I missed the real party.” Nancy picked up the bottle and leaned back against Kyle’s side, her head against Kyle’s shoulder. “So why did you dash madly out here?”

  “Because everything went to hell. Something seriously bad was going on and I didn’t know what. Dane turned to ice as soon as Brad showed up, and Brad was...”

  “W
hat?”

  “Insistent.”

  “And you weren’t interested,” Nancy finished for her. “Was she crude and unattractive, or what?”

  “Oh, she’s attractive. It was more than just the way she looked—which was great. She was so damned confident. The way she came on to me—like how could I possibly resist?” She remembered the hand on her shoulder. There had been more than a hint of ownership in Brad’s touch. “She got my attention, at least.”

  Nancy looked intrigued. “She was really something, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Kyle sighed. “Something.”

  “So, why are you here, instead of somewhere with her? You’re not getting all moral, are you? After all, you never minded one-nighters before.”

  Kyle thought about it seriously and had to acknowledge her involuntary attraction to Brad. That kind of physical aggressiveness and confidence was exciting.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I would have, if it hadn’t been for seeing Dane first.” If I’d never been with Dane. “But it was Dane I wanted,” she admitted as she drained her glass and automatically refilled it. “And I never got a chance to really connect with her before Brad showed up. Then everything changed. Christ, Dane acted like I would automatically want Brad, just because Brad wanted me.” Suddenly angry, she started to sit up and found that Nancy had curled up so close to her she couldn’t move. With a sigh, she slumped back. “The two of them acted like I was some prize to be taken by the strongest. Like I couldn’t choose for myself. Fuck them.”

  “Oh well. Who needs any of them anyway?” Nancy smiled and snuggled under Kyle’s arm, happier than she’d been all evening. “Men or women—it’s all the same. One pain in the ass after another.”

  “Things aren’t going so well for you either tonight, huh?” Kyle stroked Nancy’s shoulder absently.

  Nancy’s laugh was tinged with bitterness. “Oh, you know. Typical party. The men are all getting quietly drunk and eyeing every female in sight. And the wives are sitting off by themselves bitching about their husbands.”