He appeared with a thick pillar candle which he set beneath my splayed-open pussy. “This should warm you up.” His thumb flicked a cigarette lighter and a sliver of flame jumped up in response.
My gaze couldn’t tear away from that little tear-shaped drop of fire as it touched the wick of the candle and flared to life. He snapped his fingers and my eyes flew to his face. “Tell me if it gets too hot,” he instructed.
Ah, the safety reminder. With an open flame dancing under my pussy, I was grateful that he was being careful.
Still, my Watcher didn’t speak and he didn’t protest. He didn’t call the proceedings to a halt. I could see him better from this position. His gaze was attentive, but emotionless, and my heart sank a little before I caught myself. Stay in the moment, Kelly, I scolded myself.
Adam was sliding a leather glove over his right hand. I saw metal tips glint in the light as he smoothed them over his fingers. “See these?” he came over to me, positioning himself so I couldn’t see my Watcher.
I saw that the surface of the gloves were etched with tiny metal spikes. They didn’t look sharp enough to tear my flesh, but there was no doubt I’d feel them against my skin. I gave him the tiniest of nods. He knelt next to me. “This is going to be an exercise in obedience Kelly,” he said into my ear. “Let’s start with the first rule. Stay still.”
His gloved hand ran over my tender breasts, cupping them and caressing them, while his fingers set the chain between my nipples swinging. A storm of sensation assailed me. The prickling of the glove on skin already made sensitive by the paddle; the aching tug of the chain on my nipples as it swung back and forth; the heat of the candle’s flames warming a different part of my exposed pussy as I squirmed under his ministrations.
Smack. His left hand swatted my ass hard. “Stay still.”
My gaze flew to the Watcher who once again didn’t interject on my behalf. This time though, his eyes glittered with an emotion I couldn’t quite make out. Arousal? Amusement? Something else? I wished he was closer; I wished I could read his thoughts. It was frustrating having him watch in silence.
Adam’s fingers snapped in my face. “With molten wax between your legs, and clamps at your nipples, I would have thought you wouldn’t need convincing to pay attention slut,” he said icily. “But perhaps I’ll have to teach you this lesson in a different way.”
His gloved hand hovered over the flame and I winced, knowing that he was heating each and every metal spike. Sure enough, when the glove closed over my mound cruelly, I danced and squirmed and threw my head back and whimpered as hot metal pressed into my bare pussy. “I’m sorry Sir,” I gasped out as the chain connecting my nipples was tugged at the same time, elongating my nipples painfully.
At any time, I could have said Stop. Or No. Adam would stop instantly. In the extremely unlikely scenario that he didn’t, my Watcher was there for my safety and I had no doubt that somewhere on the premises of this castle, there was a control room where this scene was being monitored as well.
No one would take safety lightly.
But I was the linchpin of the entire process. I had to feel threatened. I had to feel unsafe. I had to reach my limits.
The glove drew back to smack my pussy. I watched it. Time had slowed down in that room. My awareness had tunnelled. At the forefront were the feelings that the man with the leather glove was causing in my body, but in the innermost sanctum of my mind, there was room only for the Watcher.
There was more. There was punishment when I flinched away from the glove. The flickering candle made me stay still. Once, I’d squirmed a bit too close to the open flame and the shock of heat against my skin reminded me to remain aware of it. I hadn’t burned myself though — Adam checked and I imagined that I even heard the chair scrape against the stone of the floor as the Watcher moved in concern. Or maybe I was just being fanciful.
At that point I was floating. A jumble of disparate images flashed in front of me. Adam with a paddle in his hands. The clamps being eased off my nipples leaving searing pain in their wake. The green eyes of the Watcher. The dripping red wax, causing me to groan as molten heat splashed on my skin, each drop a concentrated pinpoint of extremely painful pleasure. The tails of a flogger being dragged over the curve of my ass. A powerful vibrator buzzing against my core and scratchy, fist-clenching lust running through me. The way the Watcher’s fingers gripped the arms of the chair.
I exploded as the vibrator and the flogger and the candle wax all worked their magic. My skin was drenched in sweat and I shivered uncontrollably, but it wasn’t over. Again, the vibrator pressed against my clitoris drawing out another climax from me. I shuddered through that orgasm and through another one. It was only when he showed no sign of ceasing, when I’d come more times than I could count that I groaned ‘stop, please.’
The top stops spinning.
Adam folded me into his arms. He wrapped a blanket around me and positioned me on his lap. I leaned against his shoulder, naked and sated, until my emotions levelled off.
If there was a portion of me that wished that it was the Watcher’s arms I was engulfed in, I buried that portion into a crevice much, much deeper than any today’s session had reached.
Chapter 6
Sunlight was streaming into the room when I woke up.
I looked around at my surroundings. I was in a large, comfortable hotel bedroom. The decor was modern yet luxurious. My palms caressed the sheets over me. One hundred percent cotton and insanely high thread count. I was among billionaires after all.
Apart from the king-size bed, there was a small sitting area in the room with a couple of loveseats arranged in an L-shaped configuration. There were three doors as well. One of them had to be the door to the hotel corridor and I speculated that the other led to the bathroom.
Which left the third, which seemed to be a connecting door between my room and another room. Miles St. Clair's room no doubt.
I got up and inched towards that door, pressing my ear against the wood. Was he awake? As I listened I tried to suppress the trickle of irritation that ran through me. I knew I’d come with Miles; I knew he had vouchsafed for me at the club, but we weren’t together. Surely I should have been consulted before he’d been given access to my room.
Straightening my shoulders, I turned the handle to go through only to find the door locked on my side. My anger evaporated as quickly as it had sprung.
Oh, who was I kidding? My outrage had everything to do with my genuine confusion about Miles and nothing to do with being placed in adjoining rooms. It had been easy to dismiss him as hopelessly bland, but here at Club Phoenix I had definite proof that he was anything but.
I couldn’t stop remembering the way his gaze had lingered on me. About the way I’d felt nestled in his arms when he’d eventually carried me to a bed last night and pulled the covers over my body.
What would happen, I wondered, if I unlocked my door and pushed it open? It was quite early and I couldn’t hear any signs of him moving around in his room. Perhaps he’d be in the shower. Perhaps I’d surprise him.
Those green eyes would darken with passion at the sight of my naked body. He would gesture to me and I’d join him. Water would sluice down both our bodies and drops would cling to his hard muscles. My gaze would fall to his dick and he’d smile at my obvious need. His hand would curve around the back of my neck and he’d push me to my knees.
My mouth would fall open and I’d suck him off, but he wouldn’t let me come. My body would ache in need and he’d look at me. “Is this what you want? To be left unfulfilled? To be used as I see fit?” He’d push me against the cold tile wall. One hand would close around my throat. He’d shove two fingers harshly into my cunt and I’d whimper in helpless lust as his fingers thrust in and out of me.
My cunt would ache to be filled but my body would also thrill to be used merely for his pleasure, as a receptacle for him and nothing more. “I don’t know what I want,” I’d tell him. It would be a lie. I’d want ever
ything.
“Ask for what you want,” he’d command, seeing through my subterfuge.
“I want you to take me hard,” I’d whisper. Outside the castle I wouldn’t dream of uttering those words to Miles. But inside the castle we were two different people and the normal rules didn’t apply in this place.
He’d pull out his fingers and he’d lift me up and drop me back down on his cock. With each thrust, I’d be slammed against the shower tiles. My body would ache but I’d want it to hurt. I would embrace the pain.
Pull your head out of your ass Kelly, I whispered to myself harshly. I had a hundred reasons why my fantasy had to remain just that. My mother didn’t remember my name. She didn’t remember who I was; she didn’t even remember my existence. I had no desire to pass on that kind of pain to anyone.
My hand lingered at the door handle but before I could weaken and press down on it, I pulled it away.
Miles had knocked on my room door just when the growling in my stomach was growing too insistent to bear. He escorted me downstairs to the full-service restaurant. My mouth fell open as I looked around and he grinned. “It’s a spa, remember?”
I gawked openly at the spacious space, with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, comfortable dove-grey couches and glass-topped tables. “So the wait staff doesn’t know it’s a sex club as well?”
He shook his head. “There’s less crossover than you’d think,” he replied.
We ate breakfast in silence. I was replaying last night’s scene in my head, trying to sort out how I’d felt about it. There were bits I’d liked. I’d liked being cropped and flogged. I’d liked the sternness in Adam’s voice when he told me to behave.
I hadn’t entirely liked the impersonal nature though. As much as my fantasies centred around being used as a sex toy, when it came down to it I’d been more offended than turned on when Adam had called me a filthy little pig.
It occurred to me that I should mention this to either Miles or Anna or even Rafael. They’d repeatedly told me that the purpose of my scenes was to figure out what turned me on and what didn’t. My realization was information that I should have shared with them.
But I didn’t speak. I was unwilling to give up on such a long-held fantasy so quickly. Perhaps I’d be more into it with a different guy.
On the drive back, I looked at Miles. I’d barely made eye-contact with him all morning. My memories of bottle-green eyes watching me were too startlingly vivid. But Miles had years of experience and I had questions so I pushed aside the thousands of prickling sensations I was feeling when I looked at him and I buried my little shower fantasy. “How do you compartmentalize?”
He gave me an intent look. Perhaps he’d expected the question from me. It was the obvious thing to ask after all. “More things matter in life than sexual desire,” he responded quietly. “I know that’s not the popular answer in this age of self-expression we live in, where every hedonistic urge is to be indulged at will. Nonetheless, my sexual desires are only one facet of my personality.”
“What does that even mean?”
“You can like ice cream and fabric, Kelly. Two different facets of you. You can hate putting your face under water and still hate spiders.”
I smiled a little at that. I’d been seven and an inexperienced swimming instructor at the community centre had thought the way to make me swim was to push me into the deep end of the pool. I’d been terrified and Miles had yelled at the guy before taking me home. It had been so long ago, but to this day I wouldn’t submerge my face in water. Even in the shower I stood with my face outside the stream of water so I didn’t recreate that panicked, out-of-control sensation that I’d felt so long ago in that swimming pool.
“Doesn’t it feel false to keep it hidden?” I didn’t necessarily want to go around shouting through the streets that I’d been in a sex club and a man had whipped me, but the experience still deserved recognition, not the indifference that Miles was displaying.
“Do you want to walk up to the grocery store and spill the details of your sex life?” he scoffed. “Of course not. Some things are private.”
“There’s a difference between privacy and keeping things hidden.”
He shrugged. “It seems pretty much the same to me,” he replied.
He did have a point but I was pretty intimidated at how well he could just box away his emotions in a tidy compartment. I didn’t think I could do that.
“Don’t let it bleed over,” he warned. A variation of the same warning as yesterday. Today though, after experiencing the vivid brushstrokes of last night’s session, I understood the warning a little better. Real life felt a little bit washed out.
I didn’t want to dwell on the same topic over and over again. “How come Adam didn’t orgasm?” I asked instead.
Miles laughed. “It’s because of what he does,” he replied. His tone was amused. “Adam is an infectious disease specialist. You haven’t cleared a medical test yet. It would have been incredibly ironic if the two of you had had sex.”
My mind flashed back to my daydream. As I heard the amused tone in his voice, I realized how out of place my fantasy was. Miles wasn’t interested in me. He sounded almost cavalier at the idea of me having sex with a stranger and I was not stupid about love. I didn’t spend my time in unfulfilled yearning.
There was a sex club that he’d given me access to and I had plenty of exploring to do of my own. Though I was terrified of forgetting, I had memories to forget. I had oblivion to chase. I didn’t need to pine after Miles St. Clair.
It was a busy week yet my mind kept returning to sex. To the sound of the paddle striking my skin. To the hard edge in Adam’s voice when he ordered me to obey. And always to the Watcher.
Do you submit? Such a simple question. A renouncing of cares, even if it was just for a little while. But the cares were still there. While I was swimming in the sea of sexual arousal and pleasure, real life ticked on.
At work, Nina was flitting in and out as usual, waffling about fabric choices and sending me on endless runs to the garment district. The sewing machine we used to make samples broke, and I had to call around to find a repair guy since my usual technician was on vacation.
I also had to get sketching. Nina’s father bankrolled her fashion business but she’d long dropped the pretence of doing any real designing for her label. I was her one-woman operation. I sketched the preliminary designs, sewed up the samples, arranged to have buyers visit her studio space during the various fashion weeks in spring, summer, fall and winter and worked with the sewing contractors. Early on in my career it had been fantastic experience. But now, I was just doing the same thing over and over. The right thing for my career was to take the experience I’d acquired and use it at a larger fashion house.
Besides, Nina was temperamental as all fuck and handling her was like walking on eggshells. As I listened to her rage about some fabric supplier who wasn’t meeting her needs on Tuesday, my mind flashed back to the absence of cares at Club Phoenix and I wished desperately to be whisked there in the blink of an eye.
“Call Zac Posen’s team,” my small circle of friends urged me. I nodded and promised I would, but I had too many balls in the air and I couldn’t seem to find the energy to change my situation.
Time speeds up when you least want it to.
Friday arrived far too soon. As I balanced on the subway with my backpack, heading towards JFK, I sighed. I hated visiting my mother.
Early onset Alzheimer’s was a horrible thing. My mom had started losing her memory in her thirties. By the time she was fifty two, she was in a nursing home. Her body was still young but the person she had been, had been erased, along with all memories of me. Week after week, I’d introduce myself as her daughter until I couldn’t take the distress in her eyes anymore. She had no memory of me and it terrified her when I told her who I was. So I’d stopped. I just pretended to be a friend. That caused her less anguish.
When it struck this early, Alzheimer’s was gen
etic. I knew I should drag myself to the doctor and get tested as thoroughly as possible so I’d be able to prepare myself. But I was afraid and I’d avoided my doctor. I’d lied to both Miles and his mother Sarah and told them the tests had been fine and I was unaffected.
Of course the uncertainty was never good. In many ways, not knowing was a black cloud hanging over my head. But I couldn’t force myself to go. I’d seen my mother disappear. I couldn’t face that again.
I was about to board the plane heading to Cleveland when my phone rang. It was Anna from Club Phoenix. “I’ve arranged a scene for you tomorrow,” she said.
“I can’t,” I replied instantly, a little surprised. I thought she’d know my flight schedule. Perhaps her detectives weren’t as thorough as they should have been. “I’m at JFK about to take a flight home. I’m out of commission this weekend.”
She exhaled in frustration. Even through the phone, I could make out the waves of irritation coming off her. “Damn it Kelly,” she ground out. “I wish you’d bothered to let me know your schedule. Now I’m going to have to rearrange everything.”
I didn’t know what to say to her. She’d mentioned private investigators; I thought they’d have access to my schedule. Besides, shouldn’t she have checked with me first? I did have other things going on in my life. Was this what happened when you worked in a sex club? You forgot other things mattered?
Miles had warned me.
“Anna,” I counted till ten before I spoke my next words. “I’m going to visit my mother. Every other weekend, I’m in Akron. I thought you guys knew that. But I’m free next weekend if you can move the session.”
She paused. Perhaps she too was counting till ten on her end, since we were both grown women and both unlikely to create a scene. “Okay,” she replied finally. “It’ll have to be Friday night though.”
Friday was a shitty night. There was a fashion industry mixer I had planned to attend, one where I could network with my peers and get an inside sense of what opportunities were available in the field.
The Watcher (A Dark Romance) Page 6
