by Dae, Harlem
I sensed there was more. Waited for her to go on.
“He bought it for me, said I had to read it before we had sex.” She cast her gaze downwards, nibbled on her bottom lip. “Wouldn’t touch me until I had.”
“Jesus.” The glossy cover suddenly hot on my fingertips, I threw the book into the box. “He bought it for her, didn’t he?” A wave of nausea washed over me. There was my absolute proof that she had known him before we’d split—more than known him, he was…fucking hell, he’d been grooming her to be what he wanted in the bedroom. My Helen, quiet, prudish Helen, was now a whip-wielding, arse-buggering Domme, or whatever the hell Zara had called it.
Zara shrugged. “Yes, I expect he did buy it for her. Amongst many other things, Geoffrey is a creature of habit.”
“Fucking hell. She really was living here with me and seeing him.” My head spun. “Not only that, he was priming her for this fucked-up kinky stuff.”
Zara laughed, but not with humour. The noise had held a dry, bitter quality. “Fucked-up kinky stuff, yes, I suppose that is one way to look at it.” She tugged the jumper over her head and settled it down her torso. It was tight on her tits, much tighter there than it had been on Helen. It looked good. “But then maybe that’s why fucked-up people like it so much.”
Fucked-up people? Was I fucked up? Was Zara, Helen and Geoffrey? I didn’t think I was, nor Helen, in the past, and what I knew of Geoffrey he was perfectly normal to deal with in the business sense at least. Zara? Well, she had issues, was certainly different, but fucked up? I didn’t think so.
“It’s okay,” she said, pulling on a pair of socks. “To feel confused. Everyone is at some point about their sexuality, their desires, their needs. But that’s what we’re doing, isn’t it. Working yours out. So you’re not confused anymore.”
I stared at her. She looked like some super-sexy cat-woman, dressed in body-hugging black and navy. Cat-woman was my teacher, a vicious, sexy, crazy cat-woman. Not only that, she wanted to show me what she was going to do to me by sneaking us into the grounds of an ex-client’s house and spying on him with my ex-girlfriend.
Lord help me.
Geoffrey’s luxury barn conversion was only forty minutes out of London when the roads were clear and the traffic light. Which tonight, luckily or unluckily, depending on which way I looked at it, they were, it was.
Zara put on some fast, beaty radio station and bobbed her head as she drove, singing occasionally when she knew the words to a chorus.
I stared out of the window at the amber lights sliding past, and then the shadows of trees and hills as the urban landscape dwindled.
Eventually Zara took the exit, and I recognised the village on the outskirts of St Albans as being the nearest to Long Acre Barn.
Reaching forwards, I turned off the radio.
“Hey,” she said, taking her attention from the road to look at me.
I pushed my tongue against the inside of my cheek. Over the grazed, swollen patch of pulpy skin. “Why do you hit me?”
“Why not?” She turned back to the road, her lips pressed tight.
“It hurts. I think you made me bleed earlier.”
“It’s supposed to hurt, but I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you bleed.” She removed her hand from the gear stick and wound her fingers with mine. “You’re nowhere near ready for that type of play.”
I stared down and marvelled at the smallness of her. “Why do I have to feel pain at all?”
“So that you know to obey me, your Mistress, and that if you’re insolent or disobedient I’ll punish you.”
“Disobedient?” I paused. “To be honest, even my parents didn’t hit me when I was a naughty kid. They preferred taking a treat away, or a favourite toy. You’re the only person to have ever hit me.”
She grinned. “Ah, you’re even more of a virgin that I thought.”
Words backed up in my mouth. I was sick of this virgin thing. But I kept my lips sealed. I’d pick my battles. “So why do I have to obey you?”
She sighed. “Because I’m in charge. I’m in control of you. You’re mine.”
Mmm, I liked the mine part, and I had to admit, the control thing was okay, but there was a time and a place. “So if I’m yours, does that make you mine?”
“Do you want me to be?”
More than fucking anything else in the world. “Yes.” Damn, my heart rate was clocking up a pace. I let go of her hand and folded my arms over my chest. “For the next three weeks.”
She took hold of the steering wheel with both hands again. I heard her swallow. “Good. A few weeks suits me just fine.”
“But you still haven’t answered my question, not properly. Why do you hit me?”
“I did answer.”
“No, well, yes, but like back there, in my kitchen, we were discussing something—this, doing this—and because I wasn’t sure, you whacked me. How the hell would you feel if I’d done that to you?”
She suddenly slowed the car, and before I knew it, she’d pulled into a layby and yanked on the handbrake. “So do it.”
I stared at her pretty face, shocked that my words had prompted such a reaction. “Do what?”
“Hit me.”
“No!”
“Why not?” Her eyes flashed. She tilted her face, as if offering me her cheek to slap.
“Because I don’t want to.”
“Why don’t you want to?”
“Because I don’t hit women, it’s wrong.”
“Say’s who?”
“Society.”
“Society also says its wrong to have anal sex, to allow a group of others to see you fucking, to take more than one person to your bed, but people still do all those things.” She reached for my hand, unfurled my fingers and gripped my wrist. “Hit me, Victor, hard, across my cheek. Don’t hold back. Go for a real stinging slap that will bring tears to my eyes. Hurt me, make me feel the pain.”
“No.”
“Yes.” She shook my hand, frowned. “Do it, I order you to. Release all that anger you’ve been storing up each time I’ve hit you. Let it all go in one, furious slap. You’ll love it. You’ll see your handprint on my skin, even through the shadows. Do it, Victor, do it.”
“No.” I yanked my hand from hers. “I won’t hit you. That isn’t the type of man I am.”
She pushed her hair behind her ears, shifted the gears and pulled onto the road. “Damn shame that, Victor.”
“Why is it?” I was breathing fast; sweat popped on my brow.
“Because did you ever think that perhaps I’d enjoy it?”
“Enjoy it? What, being hit by a man?” I hadn’t been able to keep the incredulity out of my voice. “Don’t women dial nine-nine-nine for that?”
“Ah, ah, no you don’t, that’s domestic abuse, entirely different from what this is.” She flicked her hand between us. “I’m talking about pain and submission as a tool for heightening the sexual experience, for turning the power around in a relationship and burdening one person with responsibility and removing the other’s. It’s all about pleasure, Victor, not about abuse. That’s just nasty.”
“Well yes, but—”
“In the Eden Street room, when I was paddling your cute little arse, how did you feel?”
“You know how I felt.” I crossed my arms again, feeling unaccountably grumpy all of a sudden.
“Say it.”
I tutted. “Horny.”
“Yes, horny, hard, about to combust. You were on fire, Victor, and would you have felt like that if you didn’t have all that delicious pain on your backside, that heat, that sting, those Heaven-sent endorphins rushing around your body?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course you bloody wouldn’t have. I took you there. I made you become that beast who fucked me against the wall with a wildness that had never seen the light of day before. I took you there, but pain was your mode of transport, pain released you, then it was me who brought you back, stopped you becoming a quiveri
ng wreck in the corner muttering about the police.” She glanced at me, earnestness in her eyes. “Which makes me your Mistress, Victor. I’ve earned that now. I’m your Mistress and pain is your friend.”
She was my Mistress, I accepted that. Pain my friend—that would take a little more adjusting to.
I stared straight ahead at an approaching pub, The Red Lion, and tried to sort through the thoughts bombarding me like bolts of lightning. “Two questions.” I nibbled on my bottom lip, pressed my fingers into my biceps.
“Okay.” She drew the word out, like she wasn’t really okay with okay.
“One, can we just have pain in the bedroom, or cupboard or at Eden Street? These slaps around the face when we’re mid-conversation really don’t work for me.” Again I poked at the sore patch on the inside of my cheek with my tongue.
“In that case they won’t ever happen again.” She shrugged.
Wow, that had been easy. But the next one? I wasn’t so sure. She didn’t seem like the type of girl who’d go for it. Sure, she was up for experimentation, pushing boundaries, but… I would just have to come out and say it. “How would you feel about calling me Master?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Master! Fucking hell. I hadn’t seen that coming. Victor was really upping the stakes tonight. But I couldn’t deny I felt a certain sense of pride that my student was coming on, learning. But me, be dominated? That just wasn’t part of my life plan. He had to be joking.
Didn’t he?
“We’ll stop here,” I said, pulling into the car park behind The Red Lion, in the overhang of a tree, out of the full moon’s light. “We’ll walk the last few hundred yards to his driveway.”
“Suits me.” His voice had been clipped.
He was pissed off that I hadn’t answered his last question. But that was tough. I was his Mistress and I would answer, or not answer, depending on whether I wanted to.
I yanked a black coat from the boot of my car. Shrugged into it, stepping away when Victor went to help. He followed me, caught the sleeve that was twisted, and, reluctantly, I allowed him to hold it straight.
Irritably, I whizzed the zipper up, stood the collar aloft, and then shoved my feet into flat black boots. Thank goodness I was the type of girl who kept a messy car—it meant I had things in it when I needed them.
“Come on, this way,” I said, but I needn’t have bothered.
Victor was already striding out of the car park. His thick, dark coat made him look broad and imposing, a man out on the hunt, his breaths huffing in plumes behind him and dissipating into the cold night. And here was me thinking he was reluctant about the whole reconnaissance mission.
Seemed he couldn’t wait.
I trotted to catch him up, and we continued side by side in the darkness, towards Geoffrey’s driveway. I shivered and my stomach clenched. I’d never walked this bit before, I’d always been in his Bentley.
Victor reached out and twined his fingers with mine. They were warm, gentle, welcoming. A little part of me sighed; he wasn’t angry with me then, or mad that I hadn’t answered his Master question. It would be okay. We were a team, a team out on the prowl.
We approached the wrought iron gates that kept the outside world away from Geoffrey when he was at home, relaxing, eating, indulging—coming.
Victor stopped, stared up at them. “Shit, I forgot he’d also employed a security company to install remote control gates. That means we’ve wasted our journey.” He shrugged and pulled a mock-disappointed face.
“Makes no difference.” I shrugged, too, strutted over to the keypad next to the gates and tapped in my birthday.
Instantly, the gates swung open, silently, like stern black sentries allowing entry.
So he still thought of me, did he? Every time he came home.
Of course he doesn’t; don’t be so ridiculous, Zara.
A sudden menacing barking rang from the blackness of the garden shrubbery, growing louder by the second and heading straight for us.
“Oh, shit,” Victor hissed. “Let’s get the hell out of here. Quick.”
“No, it’s okay.” Bloody hell, I hoped Roly remembered me. “Whatever you do, don’t run. Stand still.”
Another three barks, a snarl, and then a Rottweiler rocketed from the shadows. All teeth, gums and drool. Hackles raised on his black-and-tan coat. Strong chest taut with muscles.
“Roly. It’s me, Roly, remember?” I held out my hand, hoping it wouldn’t be the last time I saw it.
The barking stopped. In its place came heavy breathing, sniffing, and then my knuckles were being covered in wet licks and a whimper sung into the chill air. “It’s okay, Victor, he remembers me.”
“Bloody hell.” Victor pressed in behind me, then glanced at the gates, which, on a timer, were swinging shut. “Just as well, we’re trapped in here now. I didn’t fancy being his supper.”
“There’s another keypad on the inside.” I scratched Roly behind the ears, tickled his chin and fondled his head. He rubbed against my legs, his body touching as much of me as possible. Many an evening I’d petted him, had his warm weight on my feet as Geoffrey and I had let dinner go down and watched TV before we’d begin our games. Roly had been a big part of my life for a while. His bark was enough to scare away any burglar, but really he was a softie. Nothing more than a teddy bear wrapped in wolf’s clothing. “He won’t hurt you,” I said to Victor.
“I hope not.” He pointed to the roof of the barn, the only thing visible from this section of the driveway. “Let’s just hope they didn’t hear, if they’re even in, that is.”
“Oh, they’ll be in.” I was sure of that. “And they’ll be too engrossed to hear.”
I grabbed Victor’s hand again. He looked at Roly, frowned a little then seemed to make a decision to trust the dog, or trust me, one of the two. “Okay, let’s do this.”
“Mr Keen now. What happened to this is madness?”
“It is madness, but since you’re insisting on this crazy plan, we may as well get it over with.”
“I know what you’re thinking.”
He sighed. “What? Tell me. What am I thinking?”
“That we won’t be able to see in anyway, that the curtains will be shut.”
Victor hesitated, and I knew I’d been right in my assumption. He thought this was as risky as it was going to get, sneaking onto the grounds. But I knew Geoffrey too well, had been his lover, his Mistress, his Domme for too long, and I knew damn well that the back room of the house, facing west, had been designed as a sex room. Geoffrey liked the sunset, had always said it was his most favourite time of day, and having ‘a session’ at twilight really was his thing. Oh, it might be winter now, but that made no difference. He still wouldn’t have any curtains on the patio doors. Staring at the stars as he was on his back, or attached to his wall-mounted chains, would also appeal. Which made our main problem staying out of sight.
“This way,” I said, walking with Roly almost attached to my right leg, on a familiar pathway around the edge of the two-acre estate.
This section was wooded, blocking the barn from the other houses in the village. As we went past the last of the trees and around the top of the hill that swept into the farmland valley, the back of the barn came into view.
One yellow light burnt from a top-floor window—a bathroom if I remembered correctly—and then, as I suspected, the sex den, secret room, play arena, whatever the hell Geoffrey called it these days, was also lit. But not harshly. Instead, it was lined with candles, lots of them, on high shelves, in ceiling sconces and on tables.
The room was empty, but that was okay. The candles were a sure sign that they were in. Who the hell left candles alight when they went out?
“Over there,” I said to Victor, indicating a fancy octagonal summerhouse. New, I hadn’t seen it before. “We’ll watch from there.”
“There’s nothing to see.”
“Not yet, but there will be.”
“Fucking hell,” he mutter
ed.
“What?”
“You really haven’t got a problem with watching this, have you?”
I glanced back at the barn. The upstairs light flicked off. “Shit, come on, just move, will you.”
Victor must have noticed the light, too, because he needed no extra encouragement to make the dash with me, through the frosty grass to the summerhouse.
We went in and ducked low, side by side. Roly came in too; it seemed he’d become permanently glued to me. His warmth was welcome; his loyalty made my heart bleed for the fact that I’d left him without ever saying goodbye.
“That thing really likes you,” Victor said, shuffling onto his knees and curling his fingers over the small, pine sill.
“We were good friends.”
He looked at me, then Roly, and smiled. “I can tell. You probably miss him.”
“It smells funny in here,” I said. The scent of sawdust and stale air flicked a switch in my brain. A switch I quickly flicked off again. I wasn’t ready to go there, that far back in the past, not now, not ever.
“It’s brand-new, that’s the fresh wood and the preserver they use on sheds. I’d bet he only had it put in a few months ago, if that.”
“How very convenient for us.” I shivered and began to breathe through my mouth in an attempt to ignore the smell.
“Absolutely. Shit, look, that’s someone going into the room.” Victor hunched down, though there was no way we’d be seen in the darkness of the night and the screen of the summerhouse.
I pressed my shoulder into his, peered out, and as I did my entire world was tipped on its head. The last thing I’d expected to see appeared in the flickering candlelight of Geoffrey’s sex room.
It was Helen, crawling in on hands and knees, a black blindfold around her eyes and naked except for red suspenders and stockings. She reached the centre of the room, sat back on her heels and appeared to be waiting. I stared at her tits; they were small, too small for her curves. Some wayward part of my mind thought how unfair that was, to have a big arse, soft stomach but tiny tits.
“Fuck, that’s Helen,” Victor whispered.
