ChapterSeven
They wound their way deeper into the subterranean level club and the shop talk dried up as the naughty delights of all kinds of kink filled their vision and stole all those mundane thoughts.
Weaving through the crowds with experienced ease, Jed led her to a comfortable couch which had just freed up and pulled her down next to him. “We’re in luck,” he whisper-shouted over the babble of the crowd. “Dallas and Cree are doing a double shibari and suspension demonstration. This should be good.”
Beth peered at the staging area which was spotlighted with a bright white light. “Is that Dallas Johnson, the golf pro?” she asked in surprise. She wasn’t much of a golf fan, but she recognized him from his sponsorship advertising. And more still from the scandal that had surrounded him a couple of years ago when his kink lifestyle had been outed by someone trying to blackmail him. It had been twisted into something tawdry and objectionable and left the golfer trying to fight against being tagged as an abusive pervert. He’d disappeared from the public eye soon after. The whole thing had made Beth sad, but it also brought home how careful she needed to be with her own job.
“That’s him,” Jed agreed. “He works here as a golf coach now, but he’s also one of the original investors in the project.”
“You mean he’s one of the owners?” she queried, looking from the stage to her companion.
Jed nodded and Beth smiled. She was glad the guy found a happy ending to the shit storm which had gone down. She hoped he found more of one while he was here. He was a fair bit older than her, but she could appreciate his universal good looks and the kind of lean, muscled body that could still put younger men to shame.
“And Cree is kinda my boss. He’s the head chef at the Tartarean.” Jed nodded back at the stage to a fit looking local guy with killer dreadlocks and that beautiful shade of golden mocha skin that highlighted the definition of some of the most awesome biceps, abs and six pack she had ever laid eyes on. Wow!
“He’s a chef?” she repeated absently. “He looks more like a fitness instructor or body builder!”
Jed laughed. “Yeah, he is a bit of a fitness buff. He always says if you want to eat all the good food, you have to make it work for you.”
Beth pursed her lips and looked down at her own lumps and bumps. The majority of the time she was body positive and thought of her ample extra as curves, but in the presence of this Adonis of a man who created gastronomic delights but still managed to look like a Greek god, she felt every bulge and roll of fat like it was mocking her.
She opened her mouth, a self-ridiculing comment on the tip of her tongue, but to her surprise Jed’s finger was there, right up against her lips and the look on his face was dark and domineering. A far cry from the cheerful, easy-going guy whose company she’d enjoyed until now.
“Don’t!” he warned before she could say a word. “Don’t even think about it.”
Beth’s eyes widened, and while she was taken aback by the abrupt change in his manner, at the same time a shiver of something sharp and arousing skittered down her spine, making her nipples tighten and her panties dampen.
“You don’t know what I was going to say,” she whispered, her mouth moving against his hand and making her lips tingle.
His eyes, so clear and blue, darkened to indigo and bored into her. God, this side of him was hot. His easy going, friendly side was appealing, but this… well, this was something else entirely. Something that gave him a whole other dimension which she really wouldn’t mind exploring.
“Yes, I do,” he argued. “I know exactly what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours, and if I hear those words come out of your mouth, I’ll pull you over my knee right here and spank you for them.”
There were a lot of things packed into those few words and they all fell over themselves in their rush to take first place at the forefront of her thoughts.
He’d called her beautiful.
How did he know what she was going to say? Yet she had no doubt he did.
And the biggie. Would it be worth saying them anyway, in order to get that spanking?
Jed shook his head almost imperceptibly as he closed the distance between them, his icy, blue stare never leaving hers.
For a moment she hoped he might kiss her. Her lips parted in anticipation, and his eyes dropped from hers for the barest moment to rest on them as she swiped her tongue over their parched surface.
But instead, much to her profound disappointment, his mouth detoured to her ear instead. “It would not be a sexy spanking,” he murmured. Proving for a second time that he seemed to have the uncanny ability to read her mind.
Beth’s body didn’t care. Her ovaries had bypassed the happy dance and launched straight into the cha-cha slide, and she was pretty sure her pulse had started to mimic all the rapid hand clapping that went with it.
“But I can tell you now, I would enjoy covering every inch of that fabulous ass with my handprints until there wasn’t a single millimeter left untouched.”
Beth tried to keep her breathing under control, but she was in danger of panting so hard she might start hyperventilating if she wasn’t careful. Hot damn! It might even be worth a punishment spanking.
Jed chuckled into her ear, the feel of his warm breath sending goosebumps down her neck. “But just so there’s no mistaking it for fun, I’d then edge you until you were a pleading, babbling wreck and afterwards I’d send you on your way with no release.”
Beth shuddered and knew he must have felt it. She turned her face towards his, so their lips were just a hair's breadth apart. “But you’d make it up to me the next day, right?” she whispered. The words rasped out a little hoarsely, even though her voice was low.
Jed just laughed again and pressed a light, almost chaste kiss to her shoulder before he pulled away and sat back against the comfortable cushions of the couch and turned his head towards the unfolding scene on the stage.