“Wait, let me get this straight. You kept the sobbing Underworld refugee at your apartment all night? She slept there and everything?”
“Yes, in my guest room. She passed out.” I didn’t mention that I’d slept beside her after cuffing her wrists to the headboard. Dev was the type who’d never let something like that go. I changed the subject. “You and Milo had fun with Allie?”
He picked up the new topic of conversation with gusto. “You missed out, my friend. She was in high spirits. Nothing we did to her was too much. All she wanted was pain, and for us to hurt her pussy.” Dev’s eyes sparked with perverse pleasure. “Milo got out that thin cane she likes and used it on her fucking clit.”
“No way.”
“I know. She was screaming and coming like crazy, with the tears, and the black lines running down her cheeks…”
He made a guttural sound, miming mascara trails. I didn’t get off on smeared makeup as much as Dev, but yeah, I could see it in my mind.
“We had her in clamps and restraints, the whole deal. Then I fucked her ass while Milo jammed his cock down her throat, and every time she gagged, she clenched around my dick. You know how they do that? And every time he let her up for air, she’s crying more, more, more…”
I gave an appreciative nod, but the story made me uncomfortable more than it turned me on, and here’s why: I didn’t want my partners to be begging for more, more, more. That killed it for me. I preferred a woman crying stop, stop, stop, and truly wanting me to stop, but letting me have my way anyway. I knew that was edgy and fucked up. That was why it was hard for me to find someone compatible at The Gallery—because all these women were thrilled to be in the company of sadists. They were all hardcore humiliation freaks and pain sluts.
But women who weren’t humiliation freaks and pain sluts were hard to entice into the fold.
“So after all that,” said Dev, “Allie wanted us to put hot sauce on her caned-up clit. And Milo’s like, ‘no, because I don’t feel like listening to you squeal for the next two hours.’ But in the end I did it for her, and tied her face down on the bed so she couldn’t rub the pain away. We both fucked her ass while she screamed like a banshee, trying to buck the heat from her clit onto the sheets.” He shook his head with an evil grin. “Too bad you weren’t there, man. You could have stopped up her mouth with your cock, and we could have had some peace and quiet.”
I could picture all this, including Allie begging for them to be rougher, to fuck her ass harder. “I’m sorry I missed it.” But not that sorry. I’d gotten a pretty deep thrill from carrying Juliet’s unresponsive body to my guest room and cuffing her to the bed. I didn’t want to think about why.
“When we finally untied Allie, she freaked about the hot sauce and started clawing at her clit,” Dev continued, “so Milo made her sit in an ice cold bath until the hot sauce wore off, but he wouldn’t let her wash it off herself. It had to soak off while she shivered in the water. She came twice more from Milo twisting her nipples and yelling at her not to touch her pussy.”
“What were you doing through all this?”
He rubbed his crotch. “Dude, I was beating off. You know how I get when girls lose their shit.”
“I’m surprised no one called the cops.” Allie was a screamer, and being a professional vocalist, she had an ear-splitting voice.
“Her neighbors are used to it by now, I think.”
“She’s not here tonight,” I said, looking around.
“No, we told her she wasn’t allowed to show up tonight. Her pussy needs time to heal. Hot sauce sounds fun and kinky until it’s burning into your mucous membranes.”
“Ugh.” I shuddered, giving him a look. “How do you know what hot sauce feels like?”
“I never do anything to my girls that I haven’t done to myself first, for experimental purposes. Well, more or less. Actually, there’s a ton of shit girls ask me for that I’d never do to myself, but the hot sauce, yeah, I tried it once. Put it on my balls. It doesn’t feel good.” He shuddered, stroking his cock through his pants. “Anyway, sorry you missed out on Allie. You should go upstairs and find someone to play with.” He indicated the second-floor play space, which sounded even more active than the first. “Make it up to yourself. There’s a good crowd here tonight.”
“I’m not sure I’m going to play tonight.” There was plenty going on, but none of the women made me want to hurt them. “I’m in a weird mood.”
“What, you going soft on us?” Dev asked.
No. I think I’m going too hard to the other side. I want something harder and more authentic than The Gallery, and that worries me. I was notorious for getting involved with the wrong women, but maybe the crux of the problem was me.
“I should just go home,” I said.
Dev looked down at his slave, who’d been pretending not to follow our conversation.
“Hanna, why don’t you try to relax my friend here with your whore mouth? He’s had a trying weekend.”
I waved him off. “She doesn’t have to.”
“She doesn’t mind,” said Dev. “Look at her face. She’s been dying to give you a blowjob. She’s a hungry little slut.”
She did, in fact, look excited to be nudged over in front of me, so I made room for her between my knees and let her roll on the condom that Dev provided. A blowjob wasn’t what I’d come here for, but it would take the edge off.
I rested my head back against the couch and stroked Hanna’s hair while she took me in her mouth. Dev had been training her for a couple of years now, and she’d learned a lot about giving head. As she licked and sucked, my cock started to cooperate, but I wasn’t thinking about Hanna. I wasn’t thinking about Allie or rough sex, or pinning a struggling girl under me. I was thinking about Juliet.
Which was stupid, because she was emotionally sketchy, possibly alcoholic, and not kinky enough. Case in point about the kink: her amateur collar.
But what if you taught her about better collars, and showed her the pleasures of harder scening? What if she was the one kneeling in front of you, taking you in her mouth?
Hanna’s straight, glossy blonde hair was supermodel beautiful, but my fingers wanted to feel Juliet’s unkempt curls. I’d only touched them once last night. Why was I thinking of that now? Why had she left me with this heightened, almost violent, surge of sexual energy?
I couldn’t release that energy on Hanna, who was doing me a favor. I couldn’t push her back on the floor and jab into her throat while holding her down by the hair. She wasn’t my slave, so I had to let Devin be part of this scene, and in that sense, I could only go so far.
But I controlled the blowjob, varying my rhythm and the depths of my thrusts to throw her off whenever she got comfortable. She went along with whatever I did, but I wanted something less generous and more…dubiously consensual.
Like cuffing a passed-out woman to my guest room bed.
Chapter Four: Juliet
I sat up late in the Black Wall’s communal lobby, an art-filled dump of chairs and beanbags that covered the entire ground floor. My favorite chair was in the corner, set beneath an amber, recycled-glass chandelier. The cushy seat was round and bowl shaped, perfect for curling up in order to think or sleep.
But sleep eluded me, because Goodluck was sprawled beside me, talking quietly to himself about esoteric stuff. I tried to catch the strings of his thoughts, adding them to the maelstrom in my brain. I’d done way too much thinking in this chair, thinking about Keith and why I’d let him manipulate me, and wreck my self-esteem for his kinky pleasure. Then there was the Dom before that…and, sigh, the Dom before that. I also thought about Fort St. Clair, who’d come to my rescue on one of the darkest, most miserable nights of my life.
After our limited time together, I’d been intrigued enough to do an Internet search, and I’d gotten a barrage of results. Businessman, playboy, oldest son of the wealthy St. Clair family. I’d been about to start a folder for digital clippings and photos of him—God, he
was so photogenic—but then I remembered that I’d done the same thing with power-realtor Keith. I had a habit of mistaking money and prestige—and dominance—for redeeming qualities. Lots of guys in this city were rich, especially the kinky ones. I needed to get it through my skull that it didn’t make them worth my time.
So I forgot about Fort St. Clair as well as I could, and threw myself back into work. Goodluck was riding an inspirational high, and neither of us knew when he’d crash, so I scheduled gallery shows, tracked down prospective models, and sourced discontinued varieties of film and darkroom chemicals so he could achieve the grainy, overexposed prints his collectors liked.
On top of business and artistic needs, my job involved managing Goodluck’s personal craziness, his artistic ups and down. It was mentally exhausting work, but I didn’t mind too much, because my boss wasn’t a Dominant or a soul-crusher, or even a romantic prospect. He was a friend. At twenty-nine, Goodluck Boundless was three years younger than me, but pretty much timeless.
And often a little unhinged.
“Here’s the thing,” he said, turning to me mid-mumble. “What do eagles dream about? Why do they deserve our support?”
I thought a moment. “Why don’t they deserve our support? I like watching them fly.”
Goodluck’s eyes went hazy. He opened his mouth and closed it, then made some mysterious centering gesture with his hand. “In the beginning, the amoebas flew in a liquid dream of existence. Every day, all day, the waves in the ocean fly along the earth’s shores.” He sat up a little straighter, grabbing my knee. “Babies fly in their mothers’ wombs as they wait to be born, floating and weightless and full of promise.” He clapped his hands on either side of his head in awed discovery. “We are eagles in our hearts.”