French Kiss (Decadence Nights Book 2)

by Maddie Taylor

  “Come on, Mari,” the manager continued, although she turned down the condescension minutely. “It’s inventory time. You know that’s your least favorite thing to do. You pay us well to manage the scutwork for you. Take advantage of us.”

  “Actually, I don’t mind it.”

  Adri’s laughter rolled light and airy through the phone. “Last time, you said you’d rather have hot needles jammed under your fingernails. And, might I add, you bailed two hours in with a migraine.”

  Mari blew out a breath. Put that way, she sounded like a prima donna owner who did exactly what Adri was accusing her of doing, breezing in disturbing the flow out of boredom. Her friend was right. Inventory was tedious and she hated it worse than anything at the shop, but lately staying home alone without anything to do except dwell on the pathetic turn her life had taken was worse.

  Convinced now that she shouldn’t inflict herself on her staff solely because of that, she relented. “Fine, but I want to come along on the next buying trip. I’ve missed that.”

  “Of course, sweetie. That is your area of expertise, after all. Fall fashion week is next month. Do you want to make reservations, or should I?”

  “I will. It will make me feel useful.”

  “Aw, sugar, don’t talk that way. You know if you really want to help with inventory, we’ll make it happen.”

  “No, you’re right, I’ll only muck up your well-oiled machine.”

  They hung up after making plans to meet for brunch on Sunday before the shop opened for its half day. As soon as she disconnected, another call came through. The name on the caller ID brightened her day instantly.

  “Jordy,” she said excitedly.

  “Hi, Mom. I’ve only got a minute before class and can’t talk. Can you deposit my monthly funds a few days early? I’m a little short.”

  “Of course, honey, but—”

  “Gotta run. Professor Sherman is a real stickler with stragglers. Talk soon. And thanks.”

  Then there was nothing except disappointment as she stared at the display as the call disconnected. It had been weeks since she’d seen him. A few short texts and calls were all she’d had in between. She missed him and Beth, both.

  A minute couldn’t have passed before her phone was vibrating again.

  “Beth! Honey, are you coming home this weekend? I’ve got tickets for that art exhibit—”

  “That’s why I was calling. I’m in between classes so I can’t go into it now, but I need to cancel. That cute guy in my biology class finally asked me out. I couldn’t say no. I know we had plans, but can I take a rain check for next weekend?”

  “Sure, but don’t you have a concert then?”

  “Rats! You’re right. We’ll make it the next one for sure. Hey, I’ve gotta go. Class starts in two minutes.”

  “Okay, baby. Call me and let me know how the date goes.”

  “Sure thing. Oh, can you shoot me about two hundred bucks so I can get a killer outfit? You’re the greatest. Bye, Mom!”

  Feeling like an ATM, who was out of sight and out of mind except when one of them was in dire need of cold hard cash, she sank down on the couch. Listening to the quiet of her big empty house, she grabbed the cashmere afghan draped over the armrest and curled up under it, feeling sorry for herself. As she stared at the cornflower blue and white wallpaper that she was beginning to hate, she contemplated another lonely weekend. All too quickly, the realization followed that she had nothing to occupy her time during the week either. She closed her eyes against the loneliness only to see a pair of haunting green eyes when she did. It didn’t take much to decide another trip to San Antonio would occupy a few of the monotonous hours that had become her life. But the whip master was out of the question.

  Abruptly, she sat up, determined to do something this weekend. She’d call Reyn, nice safe good-looking Master Reyn. He’d gotten her closer than any of them and after their last session, he’d given her his number. It wasn’t that he sent her pulse racing or that she was ready to prostrate herself on the floor and swear undying love and loyalty to him, but he seemed perfect for her—perfectly safe. He was looking to play and had no problem adhering to her restrictions without the head games, unlike most of the other doms were inclined to play, seeing it somehow as their ‘job’ to push her limits and expand her BDSM horizons. Nuts to that! She wasn’t interested in being expanded and Reyn didn’t want more than she was willing to give, unlike so many others.

  Mari reached for her phone, daring to send him a text. It wasn’t like her to be so forward and make arrangements for a scene, but it was better than trolling and sitting in her house for another weekend alone.

  Within the hour, they had plans to meet and Mari was facing back to back weekends in San Antonio. It was a first, once a month as frequent as she’d ever visited. But this would be different, with someone waiting for her. No trolling, or negotiating, and hopefully, without the stress of all those parts she didn’t enjoy, she could get past the barrier and finally get some satisfaction from the parts that she did, or used to.

  Chapter Three

  Lowering his long frame onto one of the plush couches, Arturo Durand suppressed a sigh, a telling sign of his fatigue. Rather than head home alone for a few hours of much needed sleep, he came to Club Decadence, a little jewel of a kink club tucked quietly away amidst the hills just north of San Antonio. Never would he have expected to find in Texas a club that surpassed the most elite and acclaimed clubs in Europe. What was more surprising: the fact that his old friend Tony was part owner.

  The club was the perfect mix of all things he looked for: private and exclusive, the atmosphere rich and lavish, yet welcoming. They also had a diverse membership made up of experienced players, both daring and edgy, and a good influx of young, adventurous new members who were eager to learn. All were carefully screened to keep out the gawkers and occasional predators posing as dominants. Not an easy task for the managing partners, he’d give them that, but they’d invested in top-notch security, something else he approved of wholeheartedly, which made it a safe, discrete place to play. Best of all, he felt warmly accepted and respected for his two decades plus experience as a master. In the three weeks he’d been granted membership, he’d already provided two demonstrations on the main floor.

  Tonight, however, was for himself. He was looking to the club, a veritable oasis in the desert, to find a bit of companionship and a lot of distraction, because the case that had brought him thousands of miles away from his London home was not going as he’d expected. In fact, it had turned into a right smart pain in his French derriere. But tonight wasn’t about the case, and he forced himself to put it from his mind.

  Leaning back, he stretched his arms atop the cushions as he let the strident and stirring sounds of BDSM play surround him. Like a balm to his soul, the crack of leather and the subsequent thwap against skin that preceded the breathless cries of erotic pain always helped him relax at the end of a long stressful day. He closed his eyes and soaked it in. A few minutes of this and he’d have a second wind, enough to find a submissive for the night, preferably a masochist who would enjoy his special brand of torment.

  The sensual cries of a woman in the throes of what sounded to be one hell of an orgasm broke into his thoughts. His glance followed it to the bondage table across the way and watched as the dom tilted a flaming candle and let loose a ribbon of flowing red wax on his submissive’s bound body. All right, not quite in climax, but close to it. If he could draw that kind of reaction as a preliminary, the scene bore watching to see what she did when she actually did come.

  As the master’s hand moved steadily downward, over her full breasts, her flat, quivering belly, then further to her bare pussy, splayed wide as it was in her restraints, her body bowed off the table as more heated wax splashed a scant few centimeters from her clit. A glimpse of purple as she writhed drew his eyes lower, to the end of the violet colored vibe that was embedded between her now artfully decorated lips. Beautiful.

>   Entertained by the scene, he tilted his head with interest as the dom’s broad fingers parted his writhing sub’s cunt. She cried out, pleading with her master to spare her intimate flesh but her efforts were ignored as the next instant he proceeded to anoint her clit. But instead of the hot stream of wax her anxiety laden cries told him she clearly expected—Arturo smiled at her master’s sleight of hand—the lit candle was quickly set aside in exchange for a dripping wet cube of ice which he promptly ran over her quivering flesh. Her buttocks lifted inches off the table and she shuddered with unquestionable pleasure while her ecstatic cries permeated the air.

  “Fire and ice.” The comment was accompanied by a deep male chuckle.

  He turned as cushions next to him shifted and Dex settled at the opposite end of the couch, Elena, his elfin subbie wife in his arms. A striking couple, the Master Dom was tall and powerfully built, with fair hair and light blue eyes, while his sub was tiny, with dark hair and golden skin, of obvious Latin heritage. He was clean cut, known to be strict and a stickler for order with his military background clear in his bearing and demeanor. She, by contrast, was the headlining act in the lounge most nights, artistic, more of a free spirit if her tattooed wrists and throat told the tale.

  Wrapped in a soft blanket, she was dutifully sipping from a water bottle at her master’s insistence while cuddled close against his chest. Fresh from a very satisfying scene of their own, if he read her faraway, dreamy-eyed post-orgasm haziness correctly, it filled him with a sense of longing for something similar. Weariness descended over him, as well as the bitter taste of dissatisfaction that with his constant world traveling, something special was missing from his life. And as often happened lately, he began to wonder if it wasn’t time to settle down.

  “T has really brought Angie out of her shell, even while he encases her in another.” Dex’s joke, which obviously referred to the wax play, snapped Arturo out of his deep thoughts, drawing his attention back to the scene.

  T was Antonio Minnelli, another of the owners and one of the Rossi partners, also known as Lil T, which was an amusing misnomer as the man was at least two-hundred sixty pounds and six and a half feet tall, towering over most of the other men at the club. He was also powerful, having easily dragged his sub’s body down to the edge of the table as he proceeded to give her something else to scream about, taking her with a passion that said he was just as aroused by the scene as she was.

  Arturo inclined his head. “His submissive doesn’t seem to be shy about public scening, if that’s what you mean by bringing her out of her shell.”

  “Not now, but up until a few months ago, that sub wasn’t a sub at all, or so she said, claiming to be pure vanilla.”

  Curiosity brought his eyes to her face, his brows arching as he heard her say in a voice equal parts plea and demand. “Fuck me harder, dammit. I mean, please, sir.”

  This prompted a chuckle from the large man pumping into her, who complied, but not before his palm came down twice with a resounding slap on each inner thigh in correction.

  “I’ll remind you who is the dominant in charge here, darlin’,” came his grumbled response in a slow Texas drawl. When he got the gushing apology he expected, he proceeded to give them both what they plainly wanted and drove into her with enough force to drive her up the table a good two or three inches.

  “Still a newbie, so it seems, with things to learn like not making demands of her dom,” Arturo observed, as their scene culminated in more feminine cries and a guttural roar of male satisfaction. A shaft of envy stabbed at him, both for the rousing scene and for the obvious connection between the couple. His schedule, which took him abroad frequently, hadn’t allowed time for him to establish any sort of relationship beyond a night or two here or there. He was up front with his partners, believing it unfair to leave a woman waiting and wondering while he went off on missions at the drop of the hat, unable to leave word of where he’d be, how to be reached, or when he’d be back. That made for a lonely bachelor life.

  Since coming to Club Decadence, and witnessing the satisfaction to be had in such a connection, by men who had finished out careers similar to his own, he began to wonder if it wasn’t time to make some changes in his life. His forty-second birthday was rapidly approaching, and he didn’t relish spending his later years living out of a duffel bag and a hotel room. Not to mention, being alone.

  Turning from the concluded scene, a flash of milky white skin caught his eye in the station immediately to the right. Instant recognition had him leaning forward as he observed the submissive who paced the confines of the velvet ropes.

  She was a beauty. Thick dark auburn hair in long loose curls bounced around her bare softly, rounded shoulders and fell down to the middle of her back. The color was a dramatic contrast to her creamy complexion and berry red lips. She was a palette of vivid colors and had drawn his avid attention the moment he’d first seen her several weeks prior. His gaze scanned the rest of her as she turned to pace back the other way, taking in the mounds of her full breasts barely contained within the cups of her sapphire blue and black trimmed corset, the short black ruffled skirt that kicked out as she whipped around again, revealing the tops of her thighs, and her shapely legs encased in sheer black garters and stockings.

  “Someone doesn’t seem to be having as good a night as Angie.”

  At his comment, Dex redirected his focus to where Arturo nodded. “Ah, yes, Marilee,” the Master Dom murmured, his tone becoming pensive. “The lovely widow is indeed a problem.”

  “Pardon?” he asked, after observing her for another moment. She was impatiently searching the crowd, glanced down at her wrist as if to check the time, but upon finding it bare, she shook her head and resumed her pacing. She was clearly waiting for someone, her dom perhaps, who was late in arriving to strap the beauty to the traditional spanking bench in the background. Putain con! Or as his brusque American friends would call the man, fucking idiot. To keep such a morsel waiting, he had to be.

  As a dungeon monitor approached to speak with her, Arturo asked Dex to explain. “She appears to have poor judgment by selecting a rude, tardy partner, but I don’t understand how that makes her the problem, per se. Elle est très belle, very beautiful, n’est-ce pas?”

  Dex shifted his regard, eyeing Arturo with quirked brows and a half smile, clearly intrigued by his interest. “I agree, my friend, she is quite lovely, but the problem lies in that I can’t quite figure her out. A full member, she comes only once a month, plays with a different partner each time, but leaves frustrated and unfulfilled. She doesn’t seem to be getting what she needs out of her membership with us. A widow of some years—”

  “Three years, master.”

  He looked down at the sleepy-eyed woman who stretched in his lap, like a kitten waking from a nap. “Coming back to me, chiquita? Take another sip of water and tell us what you know.”

  After dutifully finishing her drink, she frowned up at him. “I don’t know much about her, although it’s not from lack of trying.”

  Her speaking voice was soft and melodic, although still husky from her play; it was as beautifully seductive as when he’d heard her perform before the huge crowds in the lounge. He eyed the pair; another happy couple, which seemed to be a trend amongst the owners of the club. She brushed her dark bangs out of her eyes as she sat up a bit straighter to answer her husband’s question in greater detail.

  “Several of us have tried to bring her into the fold, so to speak, but she comes so infrequently and when she does, goes directly to the dungeon when she arrives. After a scene, she’s out the front door in a flash, without lingering over a drink in the lounge, or to chat with friends, or find another conquest as some of the members do.”

  “Family obligations, perhaps?” Arturo suggested.

  “No,” Dex replied. “I pulled her membership application recently. Age thirty-eight, from Houston, she owns her own business, a high-end dress shop, but it doesn’t operate evening hours. She isn’t attached
as far as I know. As for family, as I mentioned, she’s a widow and her two children are both away at college.”

  “Hmm… shy, then?”

  “Maybe, except the other strange thing I’ve noticed is that she doesn’t select the right type of play partners, the polar opposite, as a matter of fact.”

  “How is that?”

  “She chooses doms that are up front about not wanting a relationship, doesn’t play with them more than once or twice, and makes it plain she isn’t looking for long term.”

  “Clearly not ready to move on. Not so unusual for a widow.”

  “Yes, but she stays away from the pain players and sadists, choosing instead partners who prefer bondage, mild play, and low key domination. I’ve never seen her participate in more than a light flogging or spanking.”

  “Not so unusual.”

  “It is for a masochist.”

  Arturo’s head snapped around, meeting Dex’s gaze directly. As a sadist who lived on the extremes himself, it went against the grain to see someone denying their true nature. He raised his brow in question. “Are you certain?”

  “She wrote it on her application, then crossed it out. I’ve found that first responses are the most honest. Maybe you can find out for certain. Perhaps get her to open up about the type of relationship she had with her late husband, it lasted for almost two decades.”

  “She must be lonely,” Elena interjected, her empathetic tone turning the course of the conversation. She snuggled closer to her master, her hand coming up to stroke his jaw. A shadow crossed her face. “I can’t imagine what I’d do if— Oh, it’s too awful to say out loud. I feel sad for her, Dex. Megan and I approached her in the locker room once and invited her to LBD night—”

  “LBD?” Arturo interrupted to inquire.

  “A tradition for well over a year now. Every Wednesday the subs come dressed in their finest, sexiest little black dresses. Those that can partake, enjoy my show in the lounge and free flowing margaritas. It’s kind of a girl’s, or rather, a submissive’s night out. Some of the male subs have joined us lately. A few come in drag, looking for a dom, but the others are there solely to let their hair down, have a few drinks with friends, and for the music and dancing.”