As I thought how much I loved Devin for bringing me here, he reached from behind to slide fingers between my legs. When he found my clit, my whole body shuddered. Until he touched me there, I hadn’t realized how unbearably swollen and sensitive my sex was. I squealed against Milo’s cock as Devin’s fingertips skimmed across the slick flesh.
Both of them laughed. I didn’t care. I sucked Milo with renewed eagerness, and arched my back to take more of Devin’s cock. His fingers worked at my clit, stroking, pinching, torturing me until I was crying for release.
“When Milo comes, you can come,” he said. “Not before.”
I rolled my eyes up to Milo with such a desperate look of longing that he laughed again, but less than a minute later, his fingers tightened against my scalp and he drove hard in my throat, groaning in release. I hardly remember what happened then, except that I came in a sudden rush, with Devin’s fingers on my clit and in my pussy, as he buried himself in my ass. My tears had ebbed, but they exploded again, soaking my cheeks. The orgasm was so strong, so shattering, that it left me breathless.
Milo knelt in front of me in the midst of it, taking my hands from my nipples and holding them. “Open your mouth,” he ordered, pinning me with his dark eyes. “Show me that you’ll take more.”
I didn’t think I could take any more, but I obeyed him, gasping through Devin’s growling climax with my lips ajar. No other Doms came to force themselves into my mouth. Instead, Milo kissed me. “Good girl,” he said, patting my cheek. “You’re done with your first scene. Welcome to The Gallery.”
Devin pulled out, leaving me limp and empty. There was a soft smattering of applause, but neither man acknowledged it as Milo unbound my ankles and Devin helped me stand up. Someone brought a blanket and Devin wrapped it around me. When my legs proved trembly and useless, he leaned down and lifted me in his arms, holding me against his chest.
I zoned out as he carried me to another set of stairs. Next I knew, I was sitting on his lap in the upper room, and Milo was sitting across from us, cleaning my glasses. He handed them to me with a smile.
“Welcome back to reality,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Mmm.” That was all I could think of to say.
“I’m not sure she’s completely back.” Devin’s voice rumbled in his chest, against my ear. He turned me in his arms. “How are you, Ella? Okay? Hurting? Still in subspace?”
He looked concerned, and I didn’t want him to worry, so I forced myself to speak. “I’m fine. I’m not hurt. Well…” My lips spread in a happy grin. “I hurt in the best way. But now I feel…tired.”
“Tired in a good way?” Devin asked.
Why did he still look worried? I stroked my fingertips down his cheek. “A very good way. Can I lie here…against you…?”
I didn’t wait for an answer, just took off my glasses and drifted, warm and supported in his arms. After a few moments I heard Milo’s voice, and saw the blur of his dark hair. “She’s pretty cool, Dev. You’re right. Definitely a maso.”
“I told you.”
“Where’s she been all this time?”
Devin paused a moment, then said, “In a science lab, measuring gravitational waves in an attempt to control time and the universe.”
“Not control them.” I shook my head. “My job is to explore the possibilities.”
“Fine. I’ll do the controlling, then,” he said, nudging my head back to give me a kiss.
“What are gravitational waves?” Milo asked.
His tone was so polite and conversational, it was hard to believe a few minutes ago he’d been working hard to bruise my throat. I took a longer look at him. Dark eyes, prominent nose, expressive lips. Not classically handsome, not like Devin, but he was hard to look away from.
“Gravitational waves are ripples in the curvature of space-time caused by galactic interactions,” I said quietly. At Milo’s puzzled look, I elaborated. “The waves provide a method of measuring the universe and quantifying time.”
He gestured toward me, muttering to Devin. “What the hell? You let me throat fuck Stephen Hawking?”
Devin laughed. “Fort calls her the ‘archgenius.’”
“I’m not a genius,” I said. “And I’ll never be as smart as Steve.”
“Steve. She calls him Steve.” Milo threw up his hands, but he was smiling. Devin’s heart beat slow and steady in my ear.
“Are we going to play some more?” I asked. “How long is The Gallery open?”
“No more for you tonight,” said Devin, while Milo muttered, “Hardcore.”
Was I hardcore? I looked around at the other kinky people who’d drifted upstairs into the more comfortable space, and some of the subs looked to be in worse shape than me. Some of them were still crying, their eye makeup smeared down their cheeks—
Oh, my eye makeup. I imagined I looked awful, much more awful than I felt. I saw a submissive cross to a full-length mirror mounted in one of the corners and turn to inspect the lattice of welts covering her legs and ass. I lifted my head and noticed there was another mirror not far from where we sat. I eased out of Devin’s lap…ow, my ass…and went to stand before it, holding the blanket around me.
In the shadow of the giant clock face, I looked at my own face and hardly recognized myself. My eyes were a mess, yes, a mass of mascara smudges and trails behind my glasses, but my mouth seemed changed too. My lips seemed fuller, more supple, and my cheekbones more prominent. I looked…badass. I dropped the blanket to see if my body looked changed, too.
My ass was certainly changed. Looking over my shoulder in the mirror, I could see the history of what had happened, the allover bruising from the straps and paddles, the line-shaped welts from the cane and/or whip, or whatever the hell had been used to mark me while I sucked off my Dom and hurt my own nipples.
But I felt changed in more ways than that.
I took off my glasses so I couldn’t see myself as clearly. I could have been any short, blonde woman staring in the mirror, but inside, I had a new, stronger sense of self. It was okay to wish for hurt and pain. It was okay to be bound and shared, and made to serve others without the option of safe wording, as long as I enjoyed it. As long as I trusted my partner.
I’d trusted Leo once upon a time, but I shouldn’t have. My poor judgment had resulted in coercion and manipulation, and the wrong kind of pain. But Devin…
I replaced my glasses and looked at him, to find him studying me too. His eyes were so deep, so reflective, like a mirror, like the one I’d just used to inspect myself. I realized then, with a start of discovery, what had changed about my body. It had stopped belonging fully to me. Some of me—a terrifying amount of me—was starting to belong to him.
Chapter Eighteen: Devin
I thought our first trip to The Gallery went well. Ella seemed like a new person on the way home, full of sexual confidence and energy, which was exactly what The Gallery was meant to do. We attended the following weekend too, and the weekend after that, and the more I challenged her pain tolerance, the more she bloomed.
During these sessions, a closeness developed between us, a give-and-take that sometimes involved others, most often Milo, who was willing to be more reckless than me. More reckless, because he cared less.
I cared more and more.
The more she trusted me, the more I wanted to be worthy of that trust. The harder she cried, the more I wanted to make her cry, so I could hold her afterward and feel worthy of the tears dripping against my neck. The harder she came, the harder I came, growling with the satisfaction of possessing her. I’d had plenty of subs, and I cared about all of them, but I’d never felt this level of involvement before.
It was mostly sexual involvement. I understood that. She didn’t have time for me during the week, and I didn’t have time for her either, with a full slate of flights on my schedule. Then Saturday would come and she was mine, a vision of eroticism, trimmed in black, finished with a silver collar. Property of The Gallery. As much a
s I lusted for her, she wasn’t mine alone. She didn’t want to be.
That should have made me happy. Low involvement meant low stress, but as I flew across the ocean, I’d picture her at work, in her science pow-wows with her astrophysics squad. She wasn’t only my sex toy, my plaything to fuck and hurt. She was also a genius, a goddess of gravitational waves and time-relativity. I started to ask for more of her time. I demanded more of her time. She agreed to let me meet her for lunch once a week.
Lunch? Fuck.
But it was better than nothing. Whenever I had days off through the summer, I went to the NSF Institute and signed in as a guest, and met her in the lobby. Sometimes we went out to a restaurant for lunch, but usually we stayed in and ate at the hushed, crowded cafeteria in the basement. Most of the people there had their noses buried in their devices, or scientific journals and models, but they usually took time to cast curious glances at the two of us. We weren’t dating, but I made it look like we were. I used the universal language of men—since most of them were men—and glared at anyone who looked at Ella too long.
She was oblivious to all this, her eyes obscured by her glasses, her mind a universe away even when she agreed to have lunch with me. It was during one of these lunches that I met Dr. Leopold Mann.
“Ellie,” he’d said, sweeping down on our table and sitting next to her on her bench. “Who’s your friend?”
She’d moved over with a glance of annoyance. “Devin, this is Leo, my boss.”
It didn’t escape me that she shrank away from him, and he still tried to crowd her. I subdued the urge to reach across the table, grab him by the neck, and shove him off the bench onto the floor.
I think he realized it, because he backed off a little. “Nice to meet you, Devin. How do you know Ellie?”
“Ella,” she muttered.
“We met in Pisa,” I finally said, when it became obvious she wasn’t going to answer.
“At Santo Stefano? Are you a scientist, too?”
“A pilot.”
I was giving him short answers because I didn’t care to know him. He was mid-fortyish, with dark, graying hair and an abrasive voice. I knew Ella didn’t like him, so I wanted him to go away.