“You do lovely work,” she told Glenda. She got a gratified smile in response, although not as big as she’d probably get if she’d backed up her compliment with her wallet. She resolved to come back sometime.
She nodded over at the empty table. There was a big bag stowed beneath it, not unlike the one Brett had brought to Darren, but it was right next to Malcolm’s table, and she presumed it belonged to him. “Someone didn’t show?”
Brett smiled, amused by something. Glenda chuckled. Now why was that funny? “Most of the vendors like to play too. Whosever it is is probably on the floor somewhere,” Brett said. “Maybe you can check back later.”
Malcolm and Glenda exchanged amused glances. Whatever. Kat nodded. It wasn’t like she’d be buying anything right now anyway.
He steered her away from the oblong vendor tables and toward a bunch of round tables at one end of the room. People were talking there. One male sub knelt at his Mistress’s feet, but most of the people were sitting on chairs. They could be anywhere. Okay, there was more leather, and one woman’s breasts were bared, but other than that, they could be sitting in a perfectly vanilla café. As Kat got closer, she realized some of the people were arguing basketball, and the others were discussing online role-playing games. There was a community here. People belonged. And she most definitely didn’t. She was there to have some fun. Maybe she’d be back, and maybe she wouldn’t. For a moment, she wished she was part of the community.
But to belong, she had to be herself. And she wasn’t, not really. She thought that Kat was an act, and maybe she was, but this nice-girl blouse wasn’t her either. Maybe Kat wasn’t a front so much as a facet. If she got a beer, walked over there, twirled a chair around and straddled it backward, and jumped in, she wouldn’t look like an attractive sub. She’d look like a tomboy, which she totally was.
“I could introduce you, if you’d like.”
“No, thank you.” Well, that was awkward, but she didn’t want to meet everyone. Not now, anyway. She sensed things weren’t going entirely well with Brett. There had been a few moments where it felt like he could see right through her. But she knew already she wouldn’t be satisfied with some other man at this point. Brett was a challenge. She was going to conquer him. “How about you and I play instead?” That didn’t sound like a BDSM virgin. “I mean you could show me what this bondage stuff is all about.” She tried an eye flutter that she’d probably vomit at if she saw any other woman do it. “I’ve been fascinated ever since I read those books that everyone’s reading.”
His eyes narrowed, as she’d expected. People in the scene didn’t always appreciate the things writers got wrong about what they did. She waited for his mouth to open and then said quickly, “I think there’s got to be something else to it, you know? I want the real thing. Can you show me what it’s really like?”
“What it’s really like? Well, the first thing to understand is that a dom likes his sub to tell him the truth. And the second is that this Dom will punish you if you don’t. If you don’t agree to that, there’s no point in playing.” He locked his gaze with hers, and her heart sped up. Could he tell if she told the truth or not? She’d been assuming it didn’t make much difference, that he’d rather have a fantasy to reality anyway. But now she was almost certain that if she lied while looking him in the eye, he’d know it instantly. And that scared the hell out of her. The stories she weaved about herself were her armor in a place like this, and without them she was naked.
“I agree,” she said, trying to sound casual. It came out a breathless whisper. Punishment sounded good. There was nothing like a hand smacking her butt or even a flogger to set her mind free and take it away from her troubles.
“Well, then, since you’re new to this, we’ll play very lightly.” Was that a smirk on his face? “I’ve got all evening.”
Very lightly? She had to steer him away from that thought. She wasn’t an edge player, but she wasn’t here to be babied. Telling him it was her first time didn’t seem like such a great idea anymore, but it was too late now. “We don’t have to play lightly. I’m generally a jump-into-the-pool-with-both-feet kinda girl. Dipping my toe in makes it take longer to acclimate.”
“Rule three. Trust your Dom, and don’t try to top from below. Especially if you’re new. I’ve been doing this for years, and I’ve played with everything from experienced submissives to women who are just dipping their toe in, as you said. I know what’s best for a new submissive. And I know what’s best for you.”
She couldn’t tell if those last two were meant to be a contrast or if one built on the other. If he already had her figured out, the best thing she could do was come clean. But if he didn’t, she’d better stick with her lie. She said nothing.
“What part of the scene makes you the most curious?” Brett asked. He took her hand and walked her toward an empty St. Andrew’s cross. It was plain and had obviously seen a lot of use. She liked the ones with padding, but this one didn’t have any. It was just a big X of black-painted wood with a few struts supporting it at an angle with the floor and eyebolts at the ends.
“Bondage,” she said. “And spanking. And fl—whips.” Very few new subs called them floggers. To an experienced practitioner, a whip was something like a single-tail, nasty enough to cause real injury and not to be played with unless you knew what you were doing. Floggers were the ones with the multiple tails that helped slow them down and spread out the force of the impact.
The silence stretched, and she wondered if he had caught her slip. At last he said, “I think you’re too much of a novice for a whip, and in any case that’s not my style. But I have a few floggers back in my bag. We can try those later.”
“Later?” She tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice. Besides, she didn’t see his bag anywhere.
“We’ll start with a spanking. Lean against the frame there. Hands on the upper reaches of the X, legs spread so that your ankles are near the eyebolts next to the floor.”
Kat smiled. That sounded more like what she came there for. She stretched out as requested. The cross was slightly off vertical. It was enough to give her something to lean on, but she still had a sense of standing. If she let her knees relax completely, she’d slide right down. “Are you going to tie me up, Sir?”
“No.”
“Why not, Sir?” she asked without thinking. Fortunately the Sir was also habit, or she’d probably really tick him off. And she didn’t want to do that until after he was committed to spanking her. She had the sense that he could still decide to let her go. An experienced dom with those kinds of muscles wouldn’t have any trouble finding partners, even if he was a complete ass. And it was clear that Brett was as careful as he was well built.
“There’s a lot going on in a scene,” Brett told her evenly. “And when you’re starting out, it’s hard to know which part you’re liking and which part you’re hating. You might like the bondage and hate the spanking, or vice versa, and come out of it thinking the whole thing was a negative experience. Best to focus on one thing. In this case, that’s going to be my hand on your ass.” He cupped the lower curve of her bottom and lifted. Then he moved to the other side and did the same.
“Yes, Sir.” Darn it. She liked being bound. She liked not being able to move and not having to think about shifting or fidgeting because she couldn’t. But his hand felt good, and she definitely didn’t want him to stop, so she said nothing.
He slid his other hand around to her stomach. She imagined it touching her breasts or her pussy. But he moved it to below her belt and stopped. Just enough to brace her. “Now then. Are you ready for your first spanking?”
“Yes, Sir.” Was it her imagination, or did she detect sarcasm in his voice?
He swatted her, right in the middle, his hand coming from below, cupping her cheek and then pressing it into her body. He had her braced with his other hand. It was sensual, without a trace of pain. If her pants were down, there might have been a sting. If he’d struck harder, ther
e would have been a delicious thud.
She waited. He picked up the pace but not very much. Used a bit more strength. Maybe it would have been enough, if she’d been the new player she’d pretended to be.
“You want to pull my pants down?” she asked. She wore a thong under, and she’d wanted to keep that on.
He leaned forward so he could speak softly. “Oh, being stripped in public is a powerful experience. Probably more so than being spanked. Stronger for some, even, than being tied up. Not for your first time, little sub.”
She really regretted lying to him.
BRETT KNEW HE ought to walk away. He’d given her enough chances to tell him the truth, and she hadn’t. He’d give hundred-to-one odds she’d played before, probably even in public. He’d seen her when she’d come in. She wasn’t as shocked or overwhelmed as most people were their first time. But he was nothing if not stubborn.
His friends teased him about his tendency to take in the wounded, the hurt, the damaged. The subs who couldn’t ask for what they wanted. The brats. The ones who tried to top from below. All the people he thought he could fix or heal. And here he was, doing it again, although he ought to have learned his lesson by now. Liars usually stayed liars. The hurt sometimes didn’t want to be healed. And he was wasting his time.
If he wasn’t so absolutely sure he’d seen Katrina before somewhere, he’d have stopped. But that fact nagged at him. He assumed she was telling the truth about not having been to Le Petit Mort before, at least. He knew all the regulars. So he knew her from somewhere else. Not from one of Darren’s play parties. Had he arrested her, back when he was on the force, before he’d become a lawyer? Maybe, but he thought he had a pretty good memory for that too. It was too easy to think of a criminal as a rap sheet and a crime rather than as a real human being, and he made an effort to memorize their faces and come to grips with the real person. It didn’t change the results, as far as he knew, and it didn’t always help him sleep at night, but it stopped him from being cold inside.
The victims were easier to sympathize with. Had she been one of them? Or a witness? He didn’t think so, but maybe.
Maybe that wasn’t why he was staying. Maybe it was because she was cute. Her butt had some extra padding, and so did her belly, but her body was all womanly curves. Her short-cropped black hair seemed to go with her attitude—the one underneath, not the compliant one she was feigning. He liked curves, and he liked spunk. But he didn’t care for lying or disobedience in a sub. Something was going to have to go.
“Is that the hardest you can spank me?” Katrina asked. “Sir,” she added, as if it was an afterthought.
He gritted his teeth. “No.” He caressed her bottom. She reacted to soft touches, he’d noticed, with an intake of breath and a lovely swirl of the hips he suspected she wasn’t even aware was happening. After a moment, he swatted her again, no harder than he had before. Tell me. Tell me the truth, tell me what you need, and then we can play. And stop trying to manipulate me.
But if she didn’t come to that conclusion herself, it was pointless. He’d dragged things out of women before, and he’d learned. They had to be willing to meet him partway, or it never worked out. Part of the reason he kept taking on the difficult ones was that he’d developed some skill at it.
“I’m beginning to wonder if you’re a real dom at all,” she said. And this time she left off the Sir.
He didn’t give a damn whether she thought he was a real dom or not. He’d watched enough doms manipulate their subs with similar words. “A real submissive would…” It generally made him want to put a fist in their face. And she was trying to manipulate him too. Trying to make him hit her harder, he suspected. He took a step back and let the silence linger.
“Are you a sub, really? ’Cause I’m not going to turn around and let you lick my boots.”
Well, fine. At least the pretense of submission was gone now. It was possible that was progress. He didn’t respond. There was absolutely no reason he couldn’t walk away and let her think about what had gone wrong. She didn’t need to be untied or anything like that. Maybe he could sell a few corsets that evening still. Instead, he waited.
“Maybe you’re gay,” she tried.
Some of the best tops he knew were, and he’d learned a lot from watching them. One thing he’d learned was that he was terminally straight. He could appreciate the technique, but if one of the people involved in a scene didn’t have womanly curves, it wasn’t erotic for him. It annoyed him that she was using it as if it were an insult, however. But he let that go. He knew what she was doing; she was trying to get him to hit her, and grasping at straws. And that’s what it would be, if he did it in anger. Hitting. He didn’t hit women. Flog, spank, cane even. But not hit.
Finally, she pushed herself off the cross and turned around to glare at him.
“I told you to face the cross,” he said. “Stay.”
And to his surprise, she did. Not without one more venomous look, but she turned and obeyed. Maybe they were getting somewhere.
“How many times have you done this, Katrina?” he asked.
He saw her body tense, and he expected another lie. If he got one, he’d walk away.
“Dozens,” she said.
“And do you always get what you want?”
“So far.Sir.”
Ah, the Sir was back. “I’m guessing that you’re normally more skillful in how you manipulate your men.”
She started to turn around at that. “I don’t—” she began. And then she turned back to the cross. “Yes, Sir.”
He moved closer, resting his hand on her denim-covered butt again. “What is it you like to have happen?”
“I liked to be flogged, Sir. Or spanked. Sometimes even a riding crop.”
“Just that?”
She hesitated.
“No more lies,” Brett said. “No more evasions. I might give you what you want, but you have to tell me. Maybe what you want is something I want too. I’ll decide what happens, Katrina. Not you. There will be no topping from below here. I’m in charge.”
She gulped. “Usually, then, after, I get to come. As a reward. For suffering.”
“For suffering through what you wanted all along?”
“Yes, Sir.”
He chuckled. “Now that seems a bit fucked up, don’t it?”
Maybe his laugh was contagious, or she was startled by his swearing, but she laughed. “Yes, Sir, it does.”
“Maybe you should reward me instead for being nice and spanking you.”
She opened her mouth, but he touched his finger to her lips, and they closed again. “Hush,” he told her. “It wasn’t a question. I’ll decide what happens, in what order. Or you can find someone else to play with. Maybe you can make someone follow your little scenario. Where are you from?”
“Excuse me?”
“Simple question. You’ve been to clubs like this before. Where? Maybe I saw you in one somewhere.” He’d been to some clubs up and down the East Coast. New York, Philly, Baltimore. Mostly to sell the corsets he made as a hobby.
“Maybe. LA and San Fran.”
So much for that thought. “And they fall for all this there?”
“I’m usually on top of my game.”
He knew from her sharp intake of breath she hadn’t meant to say that much. “What’s got you thrown off?”
“You, Sir.”
He gave that partial credit. They had just met, and he wasn’t going to push harder for personal details, although he was curious. One of the things most people wanted when they went to a club was anonymity and separation from their regular lives. Some even used different names in the scene than out. Sometimes they were in danger of losing their jobs or their other relationships. He frowned. “Are you married?”
She lifted her hand in response. No ring. No mark on her finger where a ring had been recently either. “Hmm?” he prompted. Not that she seemed to have any issues with making stuff up.
“No, Sir, I’m
not.”
He fancied he could tell she was telling the truth. He knew he wasn’t infallible, but he’d gotten pretty good at spotting evasions, as much from his years as a cop as his time as a dom. “Good. Why don’t you get my bag, and when you come back, we’ll get started.”
She smiled. He supposed she thought she was getting what she wanted after all, and she was mostly right. He had every intention of giving her the ride of her life, as long as she behaved herself. That, however, was a fifty-fifty proposition at best. He waited for her to ask.
“Where’s your bag, Sir?”
“I put it under the empty table, with the vendors.”
She nodded and moved off for it. It was a heavy bag, and he rarely asked a sub to carry it, but two things made him do things differently this time. Katrina looked like she worked out and not just to get thin and reach some theoretical feminine ideal but to get fit. She had enough fat on her to give her some nice curves, but her arms had muscles too. She could handle it. And he wanted to see how she would handle a task that wasn’t particularly erotic. He didn’t mind playing with the occasional out-and-out masochist, but he enjoyed himself much more when a woman wanted to give something as well as take. Submission was a beautiful thing to him. Despite every hint that Katrina was a do-me girl, he suspected there was something else underneath all that, and he wanted to find out.
Besides, someone had to stay with the cross, or they’d lose the station. Already he saw Miss Carter looking around for a place to play with her latest boy toy. The moment Katrina left, she headed over toward him, the nicely coiffed, vaguely feminine man she was with walking two steps behind her. He shook his head at her. She raised a single eyebrow—which he’d always thought was slightly annoying, partly because he couldn’t do it —shrugged, and changed course.
Blue Desire Page 2
