Authors: Maren Smith
She couldn’t stop looking at his lips. Wetting her own, she shook her head.
He smiled. “Do you honestly not know the difference between a spanking and a swat, or did you just lie to me? I am seriously interested in discovering the answer to that.”
In that strangely unsettling moment, in the smallest, traitorous corner of her mind, Chelsea found herself wondering if Kade’s hand on her bottom would feel the same way that Master Marshall’s had. Just the thought of it made the tingling inside her shift wildly, focusing in in key places—her nipples, her clit, her entire pussy all the way up to her burning, tightening womb.
He really was dangerous. She had to get out of here before she did something really, really stupid…like lean in and kiss him. Or volunteer to find out what a spanking from him would feel like. Just the thought of his hand on her bottom was enough to make her squiggle—a little orgasmic thrill that raced up her spine and shivered her in her seat.
He noticed it too. Smiling, he tipped his head, as if he could see the next shiver building up inside her.
She jumped up from her chair so fast she crashed into someone just behind her and nearly knocked them both down.
“Oh my goodness!” Selena laughed, grabbing Chelsea’s arm. “Are you all right?”
“I’m sorry!” Chelsea dropped to the ground to gather the newspaper she’d dropped. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to do that!”
“I’m fine,” Selena assured. “You didn’t hurt me at all, I promise.” No longer in her civilian clothes, the bouncy blonde was now entirely garbed in a revealing little girl dress. It was princess pink and cut so low at the neckline and so high in the skirt that glimpses of pink areolae could be seen at one end and frilly pink and white panties at the other. Her hair was done up in pigtails and tied with white ribbons with long tips that caressed her shoulders. Her beaming smile bounced from Chelsea to the man beside her. In a singsong voice, she cooed, “Hello, Master Kade.”
“No greeting kiss?” Although he retained his smile, it seemed a little diminished now that Selena was here. If the “little” girl noticed, she didn’t let it bother her.
“Not for you,” she said cheerfully. “Not if I value my hiney. All my kisses belong to Daddy now.”
“Marriage will do that,” Kade said wryly.
“Wait until it happens to you.”
“Bite your tongue, young lady. I’m a free spirit.”
“You’re something, all right.”
“I’d spank you for that, but I happen to know you like it too much.”
“Lucky for me, Daddy knows it too.” Weaving her arm through Chelsea’s, Selena turned to her. “Some of us girls are going skinny dipping in the south pond tonight. Wanna come?”
Leaning back in his seat, Master Kade’s immediate tsk dissolved into a rueful chuckle.
Selena ignored him. “Come on,” she cajoled. “It’ll be fun and it’s only for us girls. No one else is allowed, I promise. What’s your room number? I’ll swing by about nine tonight and we can all go out together.”
Chelsea looked at Kade.
“Oh don’t worry about him.” Selena waved a hand in his general direction. “By nine, that old horn dog will be tongue deep in his third or fourth floozy of the night. He won’t even spare us a thought.”
Kade laughed again, although with significantly less amusement. “This old horn dog is one more insult away from teaching you a very sound lesson across my knee.”
“This isn’t a scene,” Selena replied, still sweet. “It’s the dining room.”
“It’s whatever I say it is,” he corrected, but stopped abruptly when Selena began quacking her fingers.
“He’s so cute when he gets all threatening,” she said to Chelsea, and not once did she ever look concerned, not even when he stood up.
Chelsea flushed, feeling the sudden sternness of his expression in every quivering inch of her. Liquid warmth tickled unexpectedly along the folds of her sex, feeling for all the world like the flicking lick of an experienced tongue. His tongue…She flushed even hotter.
“Say you’ll come,” Selena begged, catching Chelsea’s arm and hugging it close when all Chelsea wanted in that moment was to flee.
Tongue deep…floozy of the night…third or fourth…Seriously? Why was she this turned on? Her stomach twisted and churned.
“Sure,” she heard herself say. “Why not?”
She had no desire to go skinny dipping—
Third or fourth…
—but at this point, for all that she had résumés to draft (did the Castle even have mail service?), if she went back to her room right now, she knew she’d end up spending the night thinking about wolfish smiles, spiced cologne and Kade’s deep purring voice asking over and over again about her spanking preferences.
Hugging the newspaper tight across her stomach, Chelsea squeezed, but that fluttering deep inside refused to still. Especially when she thought about Kade and tongues and his tongue in particular, because it wasn’t some faceless floozy that she kept imaging,
lying on her back with legs splayed apart. Oh no, it was she, moaning and writhing, arching up while his perfect lips worked their way down her body to where the tickling heat of her own arousal kept licking at her labia.
“Yeah,” Chelsea said weakly. “Yeah, I’ll be there.”
Selena beamed.
She had no idea what Kade did. Afraid of what she might do or say next—he was so damned dangerous—it was all she could do to walk away without looking like she was running.
T
rying to stop Selena was like trying to stop the wind from blowing, the sun from setting and nine o’clock from coming. Chelsea was organizing the meager contents of her Wal-Mart bag (all of which had been relocated from the hallway where she’d spilled them, into a fancy, new Castle souvenir bag and left for her on the foot of her bed) when Selena’s knock rapped out ‘Shave and a Haircut’ at ten minutes ahead of the hour. When Chelsea opened the door, she found herself staring first at the minuscule slave-girl outfit Selena held stretched out to her and then at the irrepressible blonde herself, dressed in an identical costume.
“You’re joking, right?”
“Oh, you know you want to wear it.” Selena breezed in past Chelsea, bringing both costume and conversation out of the public hallway into the privacy of her resort room. She went straight to the single window, pushing the curtains wide open to look outside. “Wow, look at the view!”
“It’s a giant marble ass,” Chelsea said dryly and closed the door.
“True, but if you look past the statue, you can almost see the garden. See the lights out there? It’s hard to tell at night, but I think that’s the hedge maze.”
Joining her at the window, Chelsea obligingly looked for the maze. In order to see anything, however, one had to duck low enough to see between the statue’s legs and she had a good idea what she looked like while doing it. “All I see is the giant ass.”
“It’s a very manly ass.”
“With a very big strap-on right behind it.”
“Ooo,” Selena giggled, craning to see to the left. “Kinky.”
“To be honest, I’ve seen worse.” Since she’d been here, in fact. Some of it in the last hour, like the man in the fox costume having very public and furry sex with a girl dressed only in striped body paint. She’d never seen—hell, she’d never heard of anything like that before. Shaking her head, Chelsea closed the curtain only to have that skimpy slave outfit thrust out at her again. She took a step back, holding up both hands. “No, thank you.”
“It’s easier to get in and out of this than what you’re currently wearing. Trust me, I’ve tried.” Selena held up her arms, pivoting to show off her own costume. “See? Everything stays covered and you have to admit, I’m sexy as hell.”
Little more than twin bibs covered her hips in front and back. Both were tied together at the sides.
A single sash barely wide enough to cover her nipples wrapped up her body from the front bib, around her neck and back to the bib again. Her nearly nude breasts spilled out on both sides of that sash and her minuscule skirt flared out when she spun, flashing glimpses of the fleshy curves of her buttocks.
“Maybe I shouldn’t go,” Chelsea hedged.
“Oh come on, you’ll thank me later.” Catching her shoulders, Selena turned her around to get at the laces that ran up her back. “I’ve been coming here for years and have tried just about everything. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s this: you’re not going to discover anything about your secret-most desires by sitting in your room. I get it, you know. I do. This boyfriend of yours—”
“Ex, I think now.”
“Whatever. He messed up. Whether he realizes it or not, he definitely messed up. You’re here; he’s not. It wasn’t fair of him to set up all this and then leave you to come alone when it’s obviously not your thing. You were sort of along for the ride, but I’ll bet you never would have come at all if some part of you didn’t find something intriguing about the Castle.”
Chelsea didn’t think she’d moved, but she must have stiffened because Selena stopped tugging and jerking at her laces and paused long enough to rest her chin on Chelsea’s shoulder.
“It’s okay. I know what it feels like to have all that confusion deep down inside of you that just…just
needs
. But, as awkward as you feel right now, here without him, you’re not going to find your
something
hiding in this room. You’ve got to get out. Talk to people. Explore your feelings, mingle and experience the things you see. That’s how I met my Daddy.” Smiling, Selena resumed tugging at the laces until she got the dress loose enough to pull it up over Chelsea’s head. “You’ll find someone too, eventually. And trust me, you’ve got a special someone out there who would never let you come to a place like this all by yourself.”
“It wasn’t his fault.” Chelsea felt a little silly trying to defend someone she didn’t even know. She tried to turn around, but Selena wasn’t done stripping her. She gave the dress an irreverent toss onto the bed, and followed it a few minutes later with the corset.
“Funny, isn’t it?” Selena said. “How some people seem to think they have the right to tell someone else how they should or shouldn’t feel. You’re the only one who can do that, honey. Not your ex. Not your family or friends. And certainly not anyone else you might meet in the scene, although some of them will try. People tend to have this attitude that if it doesn’t fit in with what they know, then it’s wrong. But this thing we do, it has so many different levels and flavors to it. Most don’t realize just how varied BDSM can be, including those of us who have played in the scene for years. We tend to specialize, you see. We gravitate toward the things that attract us and then we think we’ve seen everything, so we stop looking. I don’t think it’s possible to ever really see everything, and I’ve been coming here for years, like I said. Still, every single time I’m here, I see something new. Today for instance, I saw this woman in body paints being the zebra-kitty filling in a Fox and Hound sandwich.”
“There was a hound, too?”
“Disney would be appalled,” Selena said, laughing along with her. “She had this whole line of furries waiting to take their turn. One of them was dressed up like a Minotaur. Oh. My. God.” Selena fanned her face. “That man was longer than his loincloth.”
“What’s a furry?”
“Someone who likes to pretend they’re an anthropomorphized real or fantasy creature, and sometimes both. It’s all very strange. And there! Did you see what I just did?” Selena gave herself a light slap on the lips. “Shame on me. I’m a Little who has married the Daddy of my dreams and who, in less than twelve hours, will cement myself to him in ceremony dedicated to dominance and submission. Who am I to pass judgment on someone else’s sexuality?”
It was a rhetorical question if ever she’d heard one, but Chelsea couldn’t help herself. “Human?” she guessed, looking back at Selena over her shoulder.
Selena smiled. “You know, I had a feeling about you right from the very start. I just knew we were destined to be the best of friends.” She threw her arms around Chelsea from behind, giving her a loud kiss on the check. It was the strangest feeling: being half naked and hugged like this by a woman she barely knew. And yet, not only did they feel like the best of friends, but it felt like they had been for years.
* * * * *
The designated skinny-dipping pond was actually quite secluded. Feeling every bit like the runaway slave she was dressed to be, Chelsea followed Selena through the Castle, out a back door, across two gardens, past horse stables filled with human “ponies,” across a wide field hip-high in golden grass, and into the woods beyond. They wandered in a wide-arching circle from the back of the Castle, all the way around to the far left where they climbed a three-rung wooden fence and finally ended up at a massive koi-fish pond just behind the hedge maze.
“I think I see my room from here,” Chelsea said, looking up at the frolicking statues. That was a very buxom woman wearing the strap-on.
“We had to go the long way around,” Selena laughed back, already bending down to wrestle off her knee-high sandals. “I wanted to make sure no one was following us.” She grinned, wrinkling her nose. “If they want to find us tonight, they’re going to have to work at it.”
“They?” Chelsea jumped when she heard the snap of a not-so-distant twig.
“The guys,” Selena said, shielding her eyes from the lights of the garden to better see out into the night. She breathed another soft laugh at the sound of feminine giggling coming from beyond the fence. “I told everyone, starting with Kade, so they’re sure to find us eventually.” She threw a wink back at Chelsea, and then waved as the women of the Castle emerged from the darkness—Kaylee, the diminutive Hannah, a woman Chelsea didn’t yet know, and even the newly-pregnant Sara, who was smiling, but sporting dark circles under her eyes. She looked thin, too thin, and tired. But, at least she was smiling. Obviously, a little mischievous relaxation was something she needed.
Maybe it was something Chelsea needed too.
They were all dressed the same, white slave outfits and sandals that laced to the knee, and together they ran the gamut from blonde to brunette. Chelsea wasn’t the only redhead, but she was the tallest by at least four inches and she felt every inch the gangly clumsy teenager amongst these four elegant ladies.
They were taking off their sandals.
“Come on,” Selena laughed at her. “You can’t go swimming dressed like that.”
“But you said you told everyone. Aren’t you afraid we’ll get caught?”
“I wouldn’t call it fear,” the other redhead, Sinclair, said as she shucked out of her clothes, giving them a toss onto the grassy bank of the pond. “It’s more like acute anticipation.”
“Getting caught is the whole point,” Kaylee told her, stripping out of her own now as well. It was like high school gym class all over again. She’d been too tall, too skinny, and too awkward then, too. And good Lord, they were all beautiful. Kaylee was flippin’ gorgeous. So was Sara, if one didn’t look too closely at her burns. Sinclair was the plumpest, but what little extra weight she carried fit her frame, rounding out all her curves in all the right ways. And then there was Hannah, scarred in strange places, albeit nowhere near as bad as Sara, and with the most perfect grapefruit-sized breasts that Chelsea had ever seen. Compared to them, Chelsea was an ugly duckling among swans.
“Oh my God, the water’s cold!” Hannah gasped as she lowered herself to sit on the grassy edge and dangle her feet into the water.
“Where are the steps?” Sinclair circled the water’s edge. “I can never find them in the dark.”
“They do that on purpose, you know,” Kaylee laughed. “It makes it so much easier for them to catch us if we’re still fumbling to get out of the pond.”
“You do this on purpose, knowing you’ll get in trouble?” Chelsea asked incredulously.
“Aw, it’s the only fun they get,” Sinclair said, dipping her foot in the water. “They work too hard. Sometimes they forget they get to have fun here too. I’ve found the stairs, by the way.”
The other ladies gravitated around to her side of the pond, but Chelsea hesitated.
“Coming?” Selena asked, and reluctantly Chelsea lowered herself to sit in the grass and remove her sandals.
“So this is a game?” she asked, not so much dawdling now as trying to understand. “You like getting caught?”
“It’s a good kind of trouble,” Kaylee said, while Hannah and Sinclair exchanged quick grins. “The kind that makes your heart flutter and your insides melt, if you know what I mean.”
Actually, Chelsea didn’t, but as she sat watching the ladies submerge, gasping and laughing in the chilly water, she found herself thinking about Kade.
Tongue deep…
She shivered, and she wasn’t even in the water yet.
Squealing softly, Selena slid down off the steps, submerging right up to her shoulders. “Oh, that hits right in the nethers!”
Even Chelsea laughed at that, and when she did, Selena gave a push and swam to her side of the koi pond. Folding her arms over the grassy lip, she grinned. “Are you still coming to my commitment ceremony tomorrow?”
Hugging her knees to her chest, more content to watch than swim, Chelsea nodded. “Sure.”
“Are you still going to be my bridesmaid?”
She barked a soft laugh.
Selena flashed her teeth in a grin. “We are practically sisters, after all.”
“How long have you been friends?” Kaylee asked, lowering herself to sit on the steps. She dipped her legs in the water, gradually getting used to the cold.
“Ages and ages.” Selena threw Chelsea a wink.
Shaking her head, Chelsea was about to tell her she was crazy, that they were practically strangers, but that’s when they heard the first sharp snap of a stick out in the darkness beyond the dimly lit garden pond.
As one, the women froze, heads turning to the sound. They all listened, including Chelsea, who quickly scrambled to stand. A thin veil of excitement quickly grew up around them, but all she could hear and feel was her own quickening heartbeat.
“Was that them?” she whispered.
From out of the night came a man’s laughing sing-song reply, “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty. Daddy wants his sweetness.”
In a burst of splashing and laughing, Sinclair dove for the stairs. “They’ve found us!”
“Run!” Kaylee shrieked, and suddenly a volley of bright garden lights snapped on, lighting up the pond, the maze, a pair of romantically-involved statues that Chelsea hadn’t even known were there, and all the lawn of the surrounding grounds.
Chelsea nearly fell into the pond when a shadow dashed past her. Jackson didn’t even bother taking his shoes off. He leapt fully dressed into the water, coming up with a mighty splash and a roar with his arms thrown around Sara. He plucked her neatly off the underwater steps and rolled them both playfully back under water. They came up again sputtering and laughing seconds later, with Sara shrieking in mock dismay as his hand came smacking down twice across her wet bottom. Her legs were wrapped around his waist by the time he heaved them both up onto the grassy bank.