This was the clearest explanation of the qualification process. “When does the qualification process end?”
“When we are secure that you do know your own limits and you can play safely without intense supervision.”
“Intense supervision?”
He waved a languid hand to a corner of the ceiling, and I noticed a blinking light. Cameras then. I wasn’t surprised. “There are cameras, of course, and club security is always keeping an eye on proceedings,” he said. “But we prefer that the intervention from club security is the exception, not the rule.”
I had one more question. “And the Watcher?”
He smiled. “Ah, yes. Your Watcher. It sometimes intimidates applicants that someone is watching every single scene from such close quarters.”
I hadn’t thought about that particular issue until that moment. Sigh. Another thing to be nervous about. Being watched so intimately by a total stranger while another stranger systematically probed my walls, testing each and every dark crevice in my soul.
“You have so little experience that the Watcher is a must for you.” He rubbed his chin. “However it might make you feel better to know that we rarely forgo the Watcher for any new recruit. It is too easy to neglect safety. The Watcher is your lifeline. He does not speak to you during your scene but he monitors your emotional and physical well-being.”
Anna had been so convinced the Watcher was necessary and so had Miles. Now Rafael was swearing by them too. And he’d used the same words Anna had. The Watcher was my lifeline.
If the Watcher was my lifeline, would I be drowning? Would I be suffocating in fear or overwhelmed with pain? Another twinge of unease settled between my shoulder blades. But in tandem, there was a heavy ache in my cunt. My body was clear about the path ahead; it was only my mind that was conflicted.
“Until you get your medical tests done, everyone will use protection for vaginal, anal and oral penetration.”
I barely heard his safety warning. The road was forking. There were two paths. One through the door in front of me; another through the door behind me. A step forward or a step back.
But the step back would be motivated by fear and I was determined not to be afraid. I just wanted to be eager and excited and ready for what lay ahead.
“I’m ready.” My voice was clear. None of the turmoil I felt was audible in my voice.
“In that case, Kelly Mitchell,” he said, pointing to the door in front of me, the one I hadn’t yet walked through, “your pathway lies through that door. Your Watcher will be waiting for you.”
My Watcher. Every time someone spoke those words my heart started to race. I rose from my armchair. “Thank you,” I said to him.
He smiled automatically and politely. “If everything works out, I’ll see you at the end of the qualification period,” he responded. “Good luck, Ms. Mitchell.”
I smoothed my palms on my dress and reached for the handle, turning it and pushing the door outward.
Chapter 5
I hadn’t articulated it to Anna or to Rafael or even to Miles, but in the back of my mind I’d kept wondering what the point of the Watcher was. If the person who was doing a scene with me couldn’t be trusted to read my emotional state correctly, what use was there really in adding the Watcher?
Mentally I’d assumed that the purpose was to just add a set of eyes for extra safety and I’d dismissed the measure as a meaningless antidote to pointless worrying.
But when I stepped through that door and I saw the familiar bottle-green eyes of the man watching me in silence, I understood. A flash of pure electricity jolted through my body at the idea of the Watcher’s intent gaze on me as another man took my body for his pleasure.
The Watcher was going to watch me have sex with strangers. He was going to stay silent as I was whipped and slapped, as I was tested by the mysterious Club Phoenix. He would serve as a witness as I immersed myself in darkness and let my hidden desires rise to the fore.
He was my Watcher, and watching him, I was almost painfully aroused.
There was another man. I had barely noticed him as I walked in, but he now moved towards me. “Kelly? My name is Adam. This is your first time?”
I nodded. It was difficult to tear my gaze away from the Watcher’s gaze, but I forced myself to do it and I turned to the man who had introduced himself. He smiled at me. “Nervous?” he asked.
“A little,” I replied. I couldn’t help looking at my Watcher when I said those words but he didn’t betray any emotion.
“Normally, we use a traffic light system here at Phoenix,” Adam said to me. “Red — stop. Yellow, slow down; green — keep going. Does that work for you?”
I focused my attention on Adam but I was painfully aware of my Watcher. “Normally?” I asked quizzically and he rewarded me with a quick grin.
“Paying attention, that’s good. Yes. Since this is your first time, we aren’t going to bother with safe words. Any variation of No or Stop and I’ll stop and check in with you.”
“Okay.”
“All you have to do is obey. Do you understand, Kelly?”
All I had to do was obey. Intellectually, I’d known that, but as Adam’s deep measured voice spoke those words, I felt the weights I carried on my shoulders slough off one by one. The stress brought about by my mother’s illness. The sense of responsibility I felt for Nina Germain’s business, though the heiress was rich enough to afford it to go bankrupt. The feeling that I should be getting on with my life and applying for better jobs. My low-level panic about making ends meet every month, my finances constantly drained by the monthly flights home and by the high cost of living in New York. My worry that there was something wrong with me because I didn’t want to settle down and get married. The cloud that was always over my head — the fear that I too carried the genetic markers for early onset Alzheimer’s.
I left all of that angst and anxiety at the door and directed my attention at Adam and it was the most liberating thing I’d ever done.
This could get addictive.
“I understand,” I whispered.
The Watcher got to his feet and moved in front of me. “Do you submit?” he asked, his voice devoid of emotion. I would later learn that these were ritualistic words at Phoenix, heralding the start of a scene and marking a submissive’s freely given consent.
The top starts spinning.
I looked into his eyes. When I spoke, my voice was free of nervousness and doubt. I knew that I needed to do this. I needed to feel what came next; I had to be true to every facet of myself. Not just the parts of me that were deemed appropriate by polite society. And I needed the oblivion. I needed to forget so badly. “I submit.”
“Take off your dress.” Adam’s voice was even.
I’d barely paid any attention to my surroundings as I’d walked in, my eyes automatically going to the Watcher. Now, I sneaked a peek at the room I was in as my hands unzipped my black dress and I wiggled it down my hips.
It was a large space and most of it was shrouded in darkness. A small area was lit and that was the area I stood in with a spotlight shining down on me. The Watcher had withdrawn just to the edge of the bright space, so he was partly in the shadows. His positioning was almost a metaphor. He straddled the line that separated darkness from light and he balanced at the knife’s edge with seeming ease.
Would I be able to do the same?
I bent to pick up my dress from the cold stone floor and Adam reached forward to take it from me. “Take off your bra as well,” he ordered, and my hands reached behind my back to unclasp the catch. He pushed the straps off my shoulders, and pulled the flimsy lace garment off my body, taking a sharp inward breath as my breasts swung into view. “Oh, very nice Kelly. I think I’m going to have some fun with these creamy tits.”
The words were so crude that I felt my entire body flush with mingled shame and desire. He noticed, because his eyes glinted. “What am I going to do?” he demanded.
I bit my lip. I couldn
’t say tits. I just couldn’t.
“Do you have some difficulty understanding the meaning of the word obey, Kelly?” Adam’s voice was harsh and I automatically lowered my gaze to the floor, shaking my head silently.
“Then what am I going to do?”
“You are going to have some fun with my creamy tits,” I whispered, my cheeks hot with embarrassment. I couldn’t forget that the Watcher’s keen gaze was taking all of this in. He could see my humiliation and my arousal.
“Titties,” Adam smirked. He came up behind me and put his arms around my chest, palming my breasts in his hands. He set the flesh jiggling. “Nice weight,” he remarked to the Watcher. “Ask me to punish your titties, Kelly.”
He was going to push all my buttons. He’d noticed my discomfort with calling them tits, and he was going to chip away at that, bit by bit.
I could have asked him to stop. But staying in my zone of comfort wasn’t what I wanted to do. “Punish my titties Sir,” I said quietly, pushing aside my mortification.
“Well then, Kelly,” he drawled, “push them out for me. I’d like you to cup them and hold them out while I hurt them.” He walked away, not waiting to confirm my obedience. I obeyed anyway. My palms slid under my breasts, fingers curled up the sides and I squeezed them slightly so that they’d jut out.
I was very aware of the fact that the Watcher sat on a chair somewhere in front of me and without Adam in the way, it looked like I was offering the Watcher my breasts to punish. Would he punish me? I imagined the sound of the chair scraping back as the Watcher rose towards me. I fantasized about the gleam in those emerald eyes as he’d rub a nipple between his thumb and forefinger, then his fingers would close cruelly around my orbs until they left marks. He’d order me to beg him to continue to hurt me and I would. The tears would trickle down my cheeks as my entire body ached from the pain in my breasts, but my voice would be compliant as I pleaded for more punishment.
Footsteps moved in front of me, but it wasn’t the Watcher who was still sitting on his chair in the half-light. This was Adam and he held a leather paddle in his hand. He eyed me for a few seconds, before seemingly reaching a decision. “Although this is a lovely pose, link your hands behind your back.”
I did as he ordered.
“Remember,” he said. “If you need this to stop, all you have to do is ask.” And with those words echoing in my ear, the paddle swung down on my defenceless breasts.
Three quick strokes on each breast, and they flushed in response. I yelped and danced where I stood, but even though pain wound through me, I didn’t utter the words that would cause the scene to stop.
I didn’t ask for mercy because I didn’t want any. Along with the pain winding through me at each contact of the paddle against my skin came desire, fierce and forbidden. When Adam’s fingers gestured to my legs, ordering them spread wide, my panties drenched as a surge of pleasure pulsed through my body. When he turned to the Watcher and crudely asked him if he could smell my juicy cunt where he sat, my knees almost buckled in arousal. When he peeled off my panties, made me open my mouth and gagged me with them, making me taste myself on the scrap of lace, I moaned out aloud.
Each act made me walk further and further down a path, but my destination was still unknown.
Every single time the paddle slapped against my breasts, I cried out. I watched my skin turn pink, then an angry shade of red.
I felt the Watcher’s eyes on my face. His gaze never wavered. His green eyes seemed to read into my soul and I was defenceless, unable to shield myself from his examination. Adam’s fingers wound through my hair, pulling it back, forcing my eyes to meet the Watcher’s and a renewed wave of lust swept over me.
“Beg,” Adam hissed in my ear. “Beg for more.” His fingers pulled the panties out of my mouth and a thin stream of drool trickled to the floor. His grip tightened painfully in my hair. “You dirty slut. Drooling on the floor like a filthy pig.”
Fuck. The words he was speaking, those harsh, demeaning words, should have caused me to yell at him to stop. I should have stormed out of there. I should have made Miles take me home immediately and I should have never ever come back. Instead, I dropped my gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry Sir,” I whispered my apology.
“You should be.” His hand made stinging contact with my ass. “Did I not tell you to beg, slut?”
“Please, please punish my titties some more, Sir.”
In response, the paddle tapped at the fleshy underside of my breasts. The sound of the slaps, sharp and distinct, filled the quiet room.
Through all of this, the Watcher stayed silent. Neither of us spoke the words that would end this.
The top keeps spinning.
An especially hard smack, right on the tip of my nipple had me yelping and twisting away from Adam. His eyes immediately swung to my face. When the word stop didn’t escape my lips, his gaze hardened. “What did you just do, Kelly?” His voice was low and dangerous.
I felt a pair of green eyes watching my degradation.
“I moved, Sir.”
Thwack. The paddle came down, hard, on the same exact spot, and pain engulfed me. It took a few seconds for my head to clear. And still, I didn’t say No and the Watcher stayed mute as well.
“And what do you say?” Adam growled.
“I’m sorry, Sir.” Thwack. The same exact stroke at the same exact spot for the third time. I bit my lip to keep from screaming out aloud but his mouth bent down over that nipple, and he sucked it into his mouth to ease the painful stinging.
My fingers dug into my palms. So much pain, contrasted with so much pleasure. The warm, flat feel of his tongue flicking at my hard nub. The dull, throbbing ache in my breasts. The clenching sensation in my pussy.
This was overwhelming and it was intense, and it was my first lesson. I shivered. Suddenly my dark desires seemed very tame and I had the feeling that I was entirely out of my depth. I felt the Watcher’s eyes on me; I imagined that I saw a trace of mockery in them.
No.
I wasn’t going to run away. I was going to stay and face this, head on. I wasn’t going to let anyone convince me otherwise. This singular intensity was exactly what I needed.
Adam’s hot mouth ceased its exploration of my areola and he walked away. “Look straight ahead,” he ordered over his shoulder.
I gazed into the darkness. What was he thinking, the Watcher? Was his dick hard? Was he touching himself as he saw me teeter between pleasure and pain? Did he want to fist his cock in his hands and pump up and down on his steel shaft? Did he want to click his fingers so I would fall to my knees and crawl to him, looking for permission to lower my mouth on his length?
Did I want to do these things? In that moment I could have been given almost any order and I would have obeyed. My emotions were tangled and I didn’t know which was up and which way was down.
Adam returned with a pair of nipple clamps with a chain connecting them. “Beg,” he snapped again. At each stage it seemed that I was to plead so he would continue.
“Please Sir, would you punish me some more?” I asked him, though the words almost stuck in my throat.
“Punish what, Kelly?” His smile said that he knew exactly how much difficulty I was having articulating what I wanted.
“Punish my titties,” I said, my face flaming.
“Punish these pretty red titties, you mean?” he asked me. “Why yes, I suppose I can do that.” His fingers tweaked both nipples into erect nubs, then the clamps bit down on my tender skin. I yelped, and it took every bit of willpower not to dance away. Involuntary tears rose in my eyes, but I blinked them away fiercely. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want Adam to stop and I didn’t want the Watcher to intervene. I wanted to be pushed. I wanted more.
Adam’s fingers tugged at the chain that connected the clamps and I moaned out aloud as my nipples stretched painfully to accommodate his desire. “Hush,” he said disapprovingly. “Not a quiet one,” he said to the Watcher. “Sometimes you like
them noisy, but this one just seems to be squealing all the fucking time.”
My chest heaved in anger as I almost opened my mouth to tell him exactly where he could put it. But then I caught the Watcher’s amused gaze and my mouth closed. This was a game and my limits were being tested. And I wasn’t at breaking point; I wasn’t even close to it.
Yet I shivered again and Adam noticed. “Cold?” He sounded amused. “Let’s warm you up, Kelly.”
Somehow, I doubted that I was going to be draped with a blanket and my suspicion was confirmed when the lights came on in a different part of the large room. Adam buckled a thick leather collar around my neck and clipped a leash to the D-ring dangling from the front. “Heel,” he said with a glint in his eyes. “Get down on all fours.”
I kept my eyes on the floor as I crawled after Adam. My body was covered in goose bumps, and arousal was dancing in my veins. And I was very aware of the Watcher’s amused gaze as I was led like a pet to a different portion of the room, where a small pew-like table awaited me.
“Kneel on the mat,” Adam said, gesturing to a square of black carpet in front of the table. He bent down and kicked my legs open wider, until they gaped open and my ankles nudged against the front legs of the table. My arms were pulled straight out behind me and my fingers curled around the pew. “Keep them there,” I was told, and I nodded my acquiescence.
“Now, you were cold, weren’t you?” There was a trace of sympathy in Adam’s voice, but I didn’t trust the sentiment one little bit. I hoped he wasn’t going to turn nice on me. I didn’t want nice. I wanted dangerous and painful, hard and rough and just shy of terrifying.
The Watcher (A Dark Romance) Page 5
