Molly almost choked on her sandwich. “If I meet any rich old ladies I’ll be sure to put in a word for you. But we don’t get a lot of them at the Family Center.”
They talked and laughed for almost an hour over BLTs and sodas and cherry pie. Eliot kept her in stitches telling stories about his oddball co-workers and his large, hilariously dysfunctional family. She found out he was twenty-four, and that he was working to earn money to finish a law degree he’d started a couple years back. She could see him as a lawyer. He had the charisma for it, and he seemed really sharp.
“I have an Environmental Studies degree,” she blurted out. “A lot of my friends moved into Environmental Law in college.”
“Oh yeah, that’s a big area now. Where’d you go to school?”
“Indiana University. They have some great programs.”
Eliot folded his arms and leaned on the table, looking confused. “So why don’t you get back into that? If that’s what you have a degree in?”
“That was another lifetime. It feels like it anyway. I’m not that person anymore.”
“Well, what person are you?”
Molly paused, then shook her head. “I don’t know. I just know...” She looked up at Eliot with a shy smile. “I just know the pie here is really good. And the conversation.”
His gaze met hers and held it. “Next Friday then? Or...maybe I could call you sometime this week. Maybe we could do something else. Dinner and a movie?”
Molly blinked. “I— Well—”
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to freak you out. We get along though, don’t we?” His voice dropped a half-octave. “And I am getting kind of addicted to your laughter.”
“It’s just that I’m not an old, rich sugar mama.”
Eliot chuckled. “See? I must really like you then.”
Molly gave him her number, feeling excitement but surprise too. Dinner and a movie? It had only been a few months since Clayton died, since she thought her life was over. In a thousand years, she wouldn’t have foreseen this. A chance meeting at a diner, and now dinner and a movie.
But Mephisto...
Why did it feel like she was cheating on two men? Her late Master, and Mephisto too? She could tell Mephisto had been less than thrilled to learn about Eliot. She wondered what her Master would have made of him. Was Eliot someone he would have chosen for Molly to be with next?
No, your Master would have chosen Mephisto.
Mephisto, who wasn’t at all the dinner-and-a-movie type.
Molly pushed that thought out of her brain, but it constantly returned, bringing guilt and confusion over the long weekend. Mephisto left her alone and she hid out in her room. Hid from him, hid from the club activities that still compelled her. The truth was, Molly did still feel an enduring draw to Mephisto. She was just afraid to take any step that would solidify it, because she knew, somehow, that if she gave herself to Mephisto it would be for life. Irreversible. The power they created together was just too strong. A forest fire, rather than a nice fireplace glow. She wanted the fireplace. Calm, normalcy. Maybe even...kids.
She’d been thinking a lot lately about children. She interacted with a lot of children at the Center, at the Women’s Clinic, at the homeless shelters and schools, all the places she volunteered her time. There were children everywhere and more and more they touched her heart and made her long for one of her own. It didn’t matter. Her Master had her tubes tied after she begged him to, after she’d lost a baby and been in the hospital, unable to serve him. The loss of herself, the loss of control had terrified her. Back then she’d been haunted by the idea that she might have another baby, one that grew heavy in her womb and was actually born. She’d worried about what that might do to her and her Master’s dynamic. She’d cried and pleaded and petitioned to be sterilized, even though she knew it was selfish. If Master had wanted a baby, she would have given him one, but he’d claimed not to want one either.
But she grieved now for the baby she lost, the baby that was her and her Master united in one being, gone now, all gone. She grieved for the future babies she might have had. It was silly, but she did. She looked around online and learned that certain types of tubal ligation could be reversed, but it wasn’t a sure thing. There was in vitro fertilization. Adoption. She decided she deserved to be childless and put it out of her mind, but like her thoughts of Mephisto, the thoughts of children kept coming back.
If only she could numb all the thoughts and confusion crowding her brain. She wanted Mephisto’s reassurance, his strength. It was Saturday night, though, and he was busy with the club. She could go out there into the play dungeon. Just to see him...
Against her better judgment, Molly dressed in some black jeans and a tee, put on some lipstick. No one would mistake her for someone who’d come to play, but she could at least move through the club unobtrusively and see what Mephisto was up to. He often encouraged her to visit the club. She hadn’t because...because...
Because she didn’t want to see him playing with someone else. Silly, when she refused to have him.
She inched in through the side door, feeling scared, vulnerable, and excited all at once. She was over in the farthest corner of the club, by Mephisto’s office, beside the bar, but the sounds and smells reached her there as well as anywhere in the club. Moans, sighs, screams and laughter. A rhythmic sound of impact that echoed in pulse beats right between her legs. It had been so long since she played, since she’d been around anyone doing BDSM, but her body remembered like it was yesterday.
She searched for Mephisto and saw him across the room, his tall stature, muscular body, and wild dreadlocks unmistakable. He was shirtless, his tight dark jeans hugging his taut hips and accentuating his powerful thighs. He was playing with two girls and another guy. One of the girls was in bondage, legs spread, arms outstretched, on a sex swing. The other girl and the guy were playing with her, teasing her, hurting her with a tawse and molesting her as she writhed in her bonds.
She looked ecstatic.
Subspace. Mephisto was watching, enjoying the scene. He assisted the players and seemed to be offering suggestions to the restrained girl’s partners—Molly could tell by that familiar gleam in his eyes. She’d been the victim of his clever, brutal sadism many times, and enjoyed every second of it. She buried her face in her hands, too jealous to watch any more. No matter what she told herself, no matter how she avoided the issue, she wanted him so badly. He was the perfect combination of nurturing, cruel, and sexy, that rare, heady mixture that drove her wild. Very few men had it. Her Master had it. Mephisto had it in spades.
“What’s the matter?” Molly looked up into the dark, concerned gaze of her protector. She couldn’t answer, could only stare at him and think how much he aroused her and scared her at the same time. “I looked over and saw you with your head in your hands,” he said. “I thought you were crying.”
She shook her head and tried to think of something, anything to reply. “No, I was just watching.”
His face softened. “You don’t have to hide in the corner. Come out into the play space.”
“No, I can’t. I don’t... I don’t belong here anymore. People will...”
“What? Grab you? Force you to play when you don’t want to?”
“They’ll know I don’t belong here.”
Mephisto rolled his eyes. “You came here for years. Everybody knows you. Everyone would be thrilled to see you.”
“That’s just it. They know the old me.”
Mephisto took her elbow and led her into the shadows behind the bar. “The old you? The disgusting, slavey you? These are your people, Molly.”
“I’m just saying, I’m not like them anymore.” She peered out into the dungeon. It was familiar and yet so scary to her. Sinister. With a start, she realized it was the pull to participate that scared her the most. Mephisto touched her face, stroked a finger down her cheek.
“Come play? Just a little? With me?”
She shook her head, but she knew he could see the war in her face, in her mind. He wouldn’t have asked otherwise. “No,” she said loudly, like she could convince herself. “No, I don’t want to.”
“I think you do.”
He stepped closer, one hand a feather touch at her waist. “Nothing sexual. You wouldn’t even have to take off your clothes.”
She stared at his broad, bronze chest, at the tense set of his jaw. “No,” she lied. “I don’t want it.”
“Molly...”
“I don’t.”
“Look at me.”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t possibly. Screams and moans from the play space resonated in the tips of her breasts and her pelvis, taunting her. “I have to go.” He caught her arm and held it. “Let me go,” she repeated, pulling away.
“Go. Run then. Why did you even come out here?”
To see you.
She rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know. I don’t know why I did.” She looked up at him, her eyes pleading, saying what her voice could not.
He inclined his head to hers and brushed his lips against her temple. His hands sought hers, cool and enveloping. “I don’t know how to help you. I don’t understand what’s going on in your mind. Talk to me.”
“I can’t. I can’t!” She pushed him away and ran, just as he’d told her to, ran back to her room and shut the door. It flew open a moment later.
“What?” he yelled. He spread his arms wide, his features pinched in frustration. “What do you need?”
“Just go,” she spat back. “Go back to one of your many slaves. Don’t let me keep you.”
“Oh, my ‘many slaves.’ You sound jealous, kitten.”
His old nickname for her hit her like a slap upside the head. “I’m not jealous.”
“Tell me what you need. Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”
I don’t want to have what I want. I don’t want the things I need. Because I really think I need you.
Mephisto knew. He was trying to get her to admit it to herself, but that would mean confessing that she hadn’t changed at all since her Master’s death, that she was still the wanton, submissive sex doll her Master had enjoyed so much. She buried her hands in her hair and covered her ears. “Please just leave me alone.”
He crossed to her, taking her arms in a firm grip that came really close to hurting. But not quite.
“Don’t act like nothing’s going on here,” he said in a low, accusing voice. “Jesus. It makes me furious.”
She pulled away from him, using the last reserves of her assertiveness. “What are you going to do? Punish me? Spank me? Put me into chastity until I tell you what you want to hear?”
“I think it would help you if I did.” He released her and stepped back. “Is all of this because I keep other slaves? Because you think I don’t want you? That they’re more important to me than you are?”
Molly sucked in a deep breath. “You can do what you want with whoever you want. I don’t care.”
“Why don’t we keep it real, Molly? You want me. You want
us
. You’re fighting it and I don’t understand why. Because of this new guy you met? What’s his name again? Idiot?”
“Eliot!” she cried. “Don’t mock him. He’s nice. He’s a nice, normal guy, not like you, with your slaves and sex club and all your partners who’ll come on a dime and do whatever you want at a word from you—”
“Yes, that’s my lifestyle. That’s been my lifestyle since long before I met you.”
“I don’t want that. I wouldn’t want that. When I was with my Master, I was...” Her voice broke. She turned away from him, clasping her hands to her chest. “I was special to him.” God, it hurt. Molly wanted Mephisto so badly, but not as one of his harem, his umpteen service slaves to be called upon when he wanted her, or ignored when he wanted another flavor for the day. “I wouldn’t want to be yours if I couldn’t be special to you. If I couldn’t be your only one. I know that doesn’t sound very submissive, but there you go.” She finished with an undignified sniffle.
Mephisto sighed. “Maybe you haven’t noticed that I haven’t been with anyone since you moved into my guest room. This is the room where my slaves used to stay.”
“I’m sorry I’m interfering in your sex life,” she said bitterly. “Sorry I’m getting in the way of your little slave girlies. Or slave boys. Whatever you’re currently into fucking—”
Her voice cut off in a gasp as he grabbed her hair from behind and yanked her head back. His cheek brushed hers, rough against her softness. “Stop right there.” His voice was ice, a warning she couldn’t ignore. “I’m telling you something, if you’d stop the childish jealousy and sniping long enough to hear my words.
I haven’t been with anyone.
Did you hear it that time?” His fingers tightened in her hair. She clamped her lips shut, afraid to move or make a sound. “You had a past, and you changed. You changed for your Master. I would change for you, Molly. But not for this. Not for these lies and ugly petty jealousies. Not for this hollow person you’ve become.”
He released her as abruptly as he’d grabbed her and stalked away. The solid wall at her back was gone, and she was left tottering on her feet. The door slammed with a clap of noise and Molly strained to hear a key turn in the lock. She wanted him to lock her in, to give at least that little sign that he still valued and cared for her, but cruelly, he left it open.
Like her Master, he knew exactly how to hurt her the most.
Mephisto lingered in the recessed sitting room of a dimly lit boutique as his friend Lorna helped a gay couple outfit their new slave in luxurious—and expensive—leather fetish wear. Lorna’s Boutique had been serving the Seattle community for over a decade, catering to the serious pervert who was willing to pay for the best fetish gear available. It helped that Lorna herself was deliciously twisted. Gay or straight, dom or sub, Mistress Lorna knew how to play along with people’s dynamics and have them even more riled up for one another when they left the shop than when they came in. It was probably the main reason her business was so good.
She’d asked Mephisto many times to become a business partner, but he preferred to remain her friend. Her staunch loyalty was too important to risk on the vagaries of business and work. He came to see Lorna when he was in the mood for fun, when he was in the mood to watch her play with customers, and times like now, when he was conflicted and confused.