50_shades_ultimate

by user

  I followed Mr. Richter wordlessly into the adjoining room.

  An enormous concrete pen was set up. It had skylights and a strong, double barrier of iron bars between the cats and any visitors in the room. The pen itself was carefully designed to resemble a natural habitat, including sand and leaf litter, branches, stunted trees and even a small lagoon for the cats to bathe in. The ligers were shockingly big, heavy cats, larger than either lions or tigers, and sandy-colored, with ruffs like lions and very faint tiger-like markings. Richter was famous for his ligers, as I recalled. He was one of the few keepers of the species who had ever had success in training what was naturally a very aggressive and potentially dangerous animal.

  There were four ligers, each as big as small Shetland ponies. Three lounged at the side of the lagoon, panting and grooming, while a third immediately paced up to the door of the cage and started making a burring noise deep in its throat that I had to assume was a purr in response to Richter’s presence. He boldly reached through the bars and patted the liger’s ruff. “This is Goliath, normally my house liger,” he said. “He holds the record for being the largest exotic cat in captivity.”

  Goliath watched me with sharp little amber eyes. I believed Richter’s claim; standing up, Goliath and I practically saw eye to eye. I looked the rest over. They smelled musky and alive, but not unpleasant. The smell of them immediately brought back memories of visiting the zoo with my dad.

  “Why are you smiling?” Richter asked in an accusing way.

  Jesus, I thought. How could he live with such beautiful beasts and not smile? “They’re amazing animals. Sorry if I’m a little starry-eyed,” I told the prick. “I’ll attempt to act jaded just like their master in the future.”

  Richter smiled a little as if that amused him. “I’ll get your sample.” He reached for some gloves and sample containers on a shelf, then boldly unlocked the double gate and stepped inside the liger’s enclosure. Goliath and another of the ligers immediately moved alongside him like escorts, rubbing themselves against him, and I felt a little spike of fear. I knew he probably knew what he was doing, but the cats were so huge they managed to dwarf what was a very large man. I kept thinking about the beast that had tried to tear his face off…

  He collected some vomit and feces samples, then returned to me with the containers. As I packed them away in my bag, I said, “What exactly is wrong with the cats? I mean, in your own opinion?”

  “I don’t know,” he said as he secured the double gate, then leaned between the bars to rub Goliath’s shaggy head. The cat glared at me suspiciously. “They’re off their food. They aren’t themselves. Our training sessions have been a mess.”

  “You mean they’ve been acting overly aggressive?”

  Richter thought about that before answering, “Yes. Dr. Fields thinks it may be environmental.” He looked over at me with concern imprinted on the good side of his face while the opposite side remained scarred and paralyzed. “I suppose we won’t know until the lab analyzes the samples.”

  I marked down some of my observations of the ligers so I could phone the info into Dr. Fields. I thought about what he’d said about their training. “Were you planning on re-starting your show?”

  “I’ve been thinking about it, yes. The Mirage offered me a sizeable contract, and the cats like doing the shows. They’re very theatrical animals.”

  I packed my memo pad away in my bag. By then, the ligers were becoming agitated by the wind that was blowing debris against the skylights and the constant drumming of rain on the roof. I watched one of the huge males as he took a mean swipe at one of the females and had to suppress a shudder. I turned to find Mr. Richter standing near the door to the clinic, looking me over carefully not unlike his ligers had.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked, feeling defensive now too.

  “I’m just surprised someone so young and obviously attractive should be working in your particular field, Dr. Bellerose. You remind me of some of the younger performers I’ve worked with in Las Vegas.”

  “I’m not really the Las Vegas type,” I admitted. “I did do a little modeling to get through college, but nothing serious.”

  “What happened?” Mr. Richter asked, sounding genuinely interested.

  I shook my bag. “I like working with animals too much.”

  That got me a little smirk of approval from dour Mr. Richter.

  I admit I was relieved to say goodbye to the ligers, and I wanted to get home before the storm got any worse, but as I made a mad dash for my truck, the sky opened up with buckets of cold rain. I was soaked by the time I made it into the cab. I turned the key over and over, but it was pretty obvious that the engine was stalled out by the rain—not that I was terribly surprised by that. I’d had the truck since college, and the Ford’s wiring was ancient and unreliable. I’d been meaning to get rid of the piece of shit for months, but things kept coming up and I kept putting it off.

  I finally called my secretary Kira at the clinic, hoping for a ride, but she wasn’t picking up her cell. Then I remembered her kid had a basketball game at the local high school. She’d probably turned it off.

  Someone knocked on the glass of the window. I looked up and was a little surprised to find Mr. Richter standing by my truck, holding an umbrella that was getting battered by the rain.

  I rolled down the window. “Would you mind giving me a lift back to town?” I said over the roar of the rain. “My truck isn’t going to start until it stops raining, and I don’t think it’s going to quit anytime tonight.” Then I thought about how no one ever saw Karl Richter in town and added, “Or maybe you have an employee who can take me?”

  “I don’t go into town, Dr. Bellerose, and I don’t employ anyone, so there’s no one to take you.” He looked me over again, stealthily, like one of his big cats, and I felt a little trill down my back—it was either nerves or the rain from the old roof leaking down the back of my sports jacket. “You’d better come inside before you drown like a rat.”

  * * *

  I knew long before I stepped into Mr. Richter’s home that he wanted sex from me. He was a lonely man. He’d been out of the social loop for so long he didn’t know how to be cordial anymore. But as I followed him inside his house, through a series of sumptuous and yet cold and lonely rooms, I could tell what he wanted. I could tell by the way he held doors open for me and by the way he brushed against me that he was seeking some form of intimacy.

  It didn’t bother me. I was even a little flattered.

  In the beginning his face had been a little off-putting, but now that I was used to his injuries, they didn’t bother me so much. I thought about touching that side of his face, comparing it to the uninjured side. He smelled good too, like leather and one of those fine imported colognes that doesn’t overpower the natural scent of a man. After Beau left me, I’d dated a little locally, but most of the guys I’d gone out with had doused themselves in fragrance almost like they were ashamed of being men. I liked that I could smell Mr. Richter through his cologne, a light, musky scent not entirely unlike his cats. I liked that he was interested in me and not ashamed of it.

  “Let me get you a towel,” he said. “If you want to change out of those wet clothes, I have a dressing gown lying around here as well.”

  “Thanks,” I said, hovering in something I could only call the modern equivalent of a drawing room. It was filled with antique furnishings, a big-screen television, leather and glass everything, and I was nervous about dripping on his Persian carpet. I noted a wet bar in one corner and said, “Would it be all right if I tried some of that bourbon? That rain left me freezing.”

  Mr. Richter blinked as if it were silly that I should have to ask. “Of course. Make me one as well. Dry.”

  I poured us both a drink but left them on the wet bar. I found the dressing gown, as he had called it, draped over the leather settee, and stripped and put it on. It felt good against my skin, sensual. He returned with my towel and I gave him my clothes to be laun
dered. “You don’t have to do that,” I told him.

  He smirked as he looked me over, the way my tightly belted dressing gown hugged me. “You can’t wear them wet.” But he looked at me like maybe he wouldn’t mind too much.

  Feeling a little bit underdressed and a whole lot self-conscious, I lost my nerve and tried Kira’s number again, but there was no answer. I wondered if the storm was interfering with my cell reception.

  With Mr. Richter gone to launder my clothes and nothing else to do, I checked out the shadow boxes and framed lithographs scattered around the room. The shadow boxes contained whips, crops, gaudy belts and other pieces of memorabilia from his show in Las Vegas. The lithographs and posters showed Mr. Richter lying between the ligers, or running them through their paces in the cage during a show. One showed him directing a liger to jump through a flaming hoop while the audience looking on in awe, while another showed him and another man standing in the middle of a circle of ligers all sitting up on command with the words RICHTER & MEYER in a shining arc across the poster. I wondered what had happened to his partner Meyer. Richter seemed pretty isolated here.

  I studied his posters and pictures, how gorgeous and confident-looking he’d been before his accident, both with the cats as well as his fans and adoring audiences. The pictures were only about a decade old, but he didn’t look like the same man anymore—and not for the obvious reasons. In them, he was grinning at his audience, his startling blue eyes twinkling with excitement and triumph. He hugged liger cubs against his chest and smiled winningly as he let children pet them.

  Now there was a lean hardness to the remnants of Karl Richter’s face, and a chill in his blue eyes that had nothing to do with his scars. He looked angry with the world, or just at the hand that fate had dealt him. I supposed I couldn’t really blame him. I wondered how much pain and humiliation he’d experienced since his accident. I wondered if people looked at him and gawked, but now for all the wrong reasons.

  “That was Mark Meyer, my protégé,” Richter said, coming up behind me. “And Caesar, the cat we raised together.”

  I flinched and turned. Richter walked as softly as one of his big cats. “I didn’t know you had a protégé.”

  Richter looked at the picture with hard, sad eyes. “Mark was much more than that to me, but it didn’t last long. We had a falling out.”

  “Was it over Caesar?” I joked. Or, I’d meant it that way, anyway. Like Caesar had come between them—humor had never been my strong suit.

  “Yes, actually,” Richter answered in that voice that dripped ice. “Mark was in charge of training Caesar, but Caesar turned on me. We stopped being friends and lovers that day, Mark and I.”

  “Jesus,” I answered, staring at his scars. “I’m sorry.”

  A darkness shifted behind Richter’s eyes and he took a long swig of bourbon. “That was the day I stopped trusting human beings. They’re far more trouble than they’re worth.”

  “Yet you invited me into your home.”

  He looked directly at me as he swirled the remaining bourbon in his tumbler. “I’m still human, Dr. Bellerose. And it’s been a good long while since I’ve had a good fuck.”

  I felt a spike of insult. “So that’s all I am? Some fuckthing?”

  He shrugged, not insulted. “It’s obvious you want something too, or you wouldn’t have taken me up on my invitation.”

  “Maybe I’m attracted to you but want something more, like a relationship.”

  “Really, Dr. Bellerose?” Richter laughed, making his scars twitch uncomfortably. “That’s amusing.”

  “You are one cynical bastard, you know that?”

  “I prefer to think of myself as realistic.” He studied me with a fierceness that set off my heart again. “Bellerose…that’s a French name that means ‘beautiful rose.’” He cupped the back of my head and held me in place as he kissed me. He kissed me hard, hungrily, growling softly like one of his cats, his tongue battering into my mouth, his teeth biting fiercely at my lips.

  “I know what my name means,” I said irritably when we finally came up for air. My lips were swollen and tingling from the assault of his mouth. I wanted to be with him, and I thought he was very sexy, but he was rougher than I was used to in a lover.

  Richter’s steely eyes narrowed and he licked the saliva from his lips. “Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? You’re handsome and horny. I’m lonely and desperate. Let’s retire to my playroom, beautiful rose, so we can satisfy our baser needs.”

  “Playroom?” I said as he took me by the wrist and led me upstairs. “Aren’t you a little old for that, Richter?”

  “Now who’s the cynical bastard?”

  * * *

  “I don’t normally do kink…or casual sex,” I told Richter as he led me into his “playroom”. It was a huge suite made up of all antique furniture. There was a gorgeous antebellum, four-poster bed with satin sheets and a goosedown comforter, an old, all-wood spanking bench and some kind of rack that looked like it had come straight out of the Spanish Inquisition. The room was filled with racks of crops, martinets, whips of various lengths and styles, and some things I simply had no name for. The smell of good wood and oiled leather made my stomach quiver with fear and excitement.

  He moved to the bed and sat down. It was then I realized he’d chosen one of the riding crops from off a rack on a wall. “I don’t honestly care,” he answered.

  “You should,” I said as I approached him, but he raised the crop and the length of well-oiled rawhide slapped across my belly, stopping me before I could reach the bed or touch him. “It’s a good idea to know where your lovers have been.”

  “I don’t care where you’ve been. I have condoms. I’m not a fool. As for kink…you’ll get used to that.” He looked me up and down while a crafty smile hovered near his lips. “There are rules.”

  “Rules,” I said. I hadn’t been expecting rules.

  “My playroom. My rules,” he explained in that familiar, icy voice, and I wondered if he used that same voice when he trained his cats. “I tell you want I expect of you and you obey me. Are you agreed to that?”

  I almost told him to fuck off, but he’d started rubbing the crop against my sizeable hard-on, and I knew then I probably wouldn’t, I was that desperate for a piece of ass. “Fine…but nothing too weird or over the top, all right? I had a boyfriend in college I thought was pretty cool until I found out he was into golden showers. I don’t do really weird shit.”

  Richter nodded as he accepted that. “Do you understand the concept of a safeword?”

  “Sort of. Sure.”

  “We’ll use a very basic safeword like ‘red.’ I won’t make you do anything you feel uncomfortable about, but if I do, you’ll use that to stop our scene.”

  “Sounds fair.”

  “Kneel down.”

  I realized he was really serious about this stuff. Beau and I had done a little tie-me-up sex, but nothing too adventurous. Still, I didn’t think Richter’s request was unreasonable, so I knelt down.

  He brushed the end of the crop over my face and lips.

  “Do you use that on your cats?” I asked.

  He looked insulted. “I’ve never hit my cats. Every whip, crop or martinet you see downstairs was entirely for show.”

  “But you hit your lovers?”

  “I’m not going to hit you, Ben. I’m simply going to discipline you.” He moved the crop down my body, then back up to the level of my chin. I shivered. “Kiss it.”

  I kissed it for him.

  “Lick it.”

  I licked it.

  “Take it in your mouth.”

  Something about that last command made me uncomfortable, like I was crossing a point of no return, but I didn’t want to come off as some thin-skinned virgin, so I opened my mouth and he inserted the crop, not far, just brushing the roof of my mouth before removing it.

  He smirked. “You take orders well. We may have a future together.” He used the crop to push the dressi
ng gown off my shoulders so I was naked and shivering in the coolness of the room and kneeling before him like some slave. He looked me up and down, his eyes lingering on my erection pressed against my lower stomach. “You’re hard,” he said. “Do you want to continue?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not afraid?”

  “No.” I watched as he got up and went to the foot of the bed where an antique hope chest waited. From inside he took out a thick black leather collar with grommets and studs. It looked like one of the collars he’d used on his cats in his Las Vegas show, but I didn’t think this one was for his cats.

  He came up behind me and banded it around my neck, very tightly, but not so tight that I couldn’t breathe. The pressure against my Adam’s apple made me whimper deep in my throat but he ignored me as he secured it with several buckles and then attached a short, heavy chain to the collar.

  He stepped around me with the chain laced through his fingers, tugging on it slightly so I was forced to lean toward him as he sat down on the edge of the bed once more. He held the lead tight in his hand and gave me hooded eyes. “Undo me,” he told me. “Suck me.”

  I undid his trousers, working slowly because my hands were shaking so much, but when I didn’t move fast enough, he gave the lead a short, harsh tug and the collar jerked my head uncomfortably. I worked faster.

  He was smoothly shaved along his lower belly and groin, and his cock lay thickly swollen against his belly as mine was. He wasn’t much larger than I, but he was thicker, fatter. I knew it would take some work to blow him, but I diligently inclined my head and licked the bulbous, purplish head of his dick until I tasted his salty warm precum in my mouth.

  Holding my lead firmly in hand, and my head in place, he sucked in a deep breath and his stomach muscles contracted. I knew I was doing a good job, that I pleased him.

  I sucked at the little slit, drinking up the precum that wept for me. I ran my teeth around his swollen crown. He moaned and tugged the lead, yanking me closer and forcing more of himself deeper into my mouth. I choked as he hit the back of my throat, but he didn’t relent, didn’t let go of the chain, bucking his hips so most of his rock-hard dick went briefly down my throat, warm and spurting, wild and exotic.