“We can just stay in the truck, Conall. As you said”—Tom gave a quick tilt of his head toward Keihl—”no induction yet.”
Conall frowned, the dark lines of his face deepening. “Get in the house.”
Tom shrugged his shoulders and flashed a sheepish glance at Keihl. “After you, my friend.”
* * *
“H
ow long have you had all this rigged up?” Tom asked, fingering the rim of his glass. “I don’t remember seeing this the last time I was here.”
“Finished it up last week. Next time, I’m hiring a contractor for something like this. Too much hassle.”
Katrin’s arms soared straight overhead, her cuffed hands clasped around a varnished wooden bar. Her leather cuffs were affixed to the bar. Lengths of chain rose from each end of the bar, to form a triangle above the bound woman. The bar was affixed to a chain running up to small block and tackle, itself bolted into the dark wood of the open joists that spanned the high ceiling of the room.
“I wonder if a contractor might question why you wanted that rig built into your ceiling,” Tom said, waving a hand upward. “Not exactly the usual options in here.”
“Not exactly,” Conall said with a quirk of his lips before sipping from his glass. He’d taken off the sunglasses, revealing piercing, hard eyes of a deep blue.
Nathan cleared his throat, setting his own glass (the amber liquid contained within not touched) down on the low cherry table in front of the men. “Sir, maybe I should be moving on.”
“Nathan, stay. “ Conall said, waving a finger at the driver. “Unless of course, you have other duties to perform.”
Nathan glanced at Tom and Keihl. “I need to get Tom and Mr. Warren home, sir.”
“Oh?” Conall crossed a long leg over the other, the light shining off the polished leather of his shoes. “If they were to agree to stay a while, I could use your help with this one.” Conall’s thumb crooked in the bound woman’s direction.
Keihl took a drag of the whiskey, the pleasant burn easing down his throat. He needed to go. But he also needed to know more about the Trust. Maybe this strange man might provide some insight? With a flush of self-conscious guilt, his gaze traveled over the neat, trembling buttocks of Katrin.
Bastard. You need to tell Kirsten about this, before this goes any further.
“Well then.” The ice in Conall’s glass clinked as he drained the last of his whiskey. His gaze alternated between Tom and Keihl. “If you gentlemen agree to allow Nathan to stay a bit, I can promise some light entertainment in exchange. Or not so light, if the urge strikes you.”
Tom moved his hand over his mouth, attempting to hide his smile. Keihl wanted to punch him. Hiding something from him once more. The last man to get the joke.
“I think we can stay a while, Conall,” Tom said, his eyes moving to Keihl.
Keihl tried to look nonplussed, sipping from his glass and dipping his head toward Tom.
“Good,” Conall said, standing with a creak of his leg. He grimaced, rubbing one knee. “Old basketball injury. Paying for the indiscretions of my youth.”
The chains holding Katrin’s arms high stirred as she shifted her legs beneath her. She was trussed up in front of an inset gas fireplace, her tall heels barely touching the dark gray tile of the hearthstone before it. Indiscretions of his youth indeed.
Conall moved to her, setting his glass on the pale oak of the mantelpiece. He fingered something that lay there, but from Keihl’s seat he couldn’t make out what it was.
“Sir, will you be needing anything?”
Keihl turned his head at the soft, hesitant voice. A pretty, blonde-haired woman stood in the doorway of the room. Her small hands were clasped in front of her, her gaze downcast. She was dressed in a black Victorian-era maid’s uniform that seemed more than a little out of place there in modern suburbia. Keihl was quickly learning though that there was much hidden beneath the comfortable, if bland, façade of the city.
“Danielle, yes.” Conall held up his glass, waving it toward the seated men. “Refresh our drinks, please — and fetch me the rattan from your room.”
“Sir.” Her face suffused with color, her eyes not leaving the floor. “The rattan is… “
“Oh yes, I’d nearly forgotten.” Conall winked at the men. “Cracked my good cane over Danielle’s big bottom a few days ago. She does have a stout pair, that one. My replacement rod is likely still in the mail as we speak.”
The maid dipped her chin, her hands working together before her. Keihl thought she looked ready to flee.
“Let’s have the strap then, my dear, and be quick, please. These men have places to be this evening.”
“Yes, sir,” Danielle said, exiting the room with alacrity, her long skirts swirling about her legs.
“Nathan,” Conall said, with a movement of his head. “Care to assist?”
“Gladly,” the driver said, rising and moving to Katrin’s other side.
Nathan’s hand stroked the woman’s lower back, thick fingers just whispering over the rise of her buttocks. She leaned toward him as much as her bonds allowed, the chain creaking overhead.
Conall stepped back, his gaze traveling up and down the nude woman’s body. “This is a nice specimen. I shall have to thank procurement for selecting her. Very nice.”
“Thank you, sir,” Nathan said, with an incline of his head. “I’ll pass along your compliments.”
Conall’s hands caressed Katrin’s waist, then moved lower. “A little narrower in the hips than I usually prefer, but she’s a fit girl, no doubting that.” He glanced at Nathan. “Eligible for surrogacy?”
Nathan shook his head, murmuring something in Katrin’s ear as she tensed.
“Too bad,” Conall said with a small frown. “Victoria’s considering another. Perhaps it is the hips; she’s certainly young and strong enough”
Keihl flashed a look at Tom. His friend gave him a small negative movement of his head, his lips mouthing: “Not now.”
“Ah yes, thank you, Danielle,” Conall said as the maid returned, handing him a length of soft leather the color of sand. “Go about your duties, my dear. I’ll call you when I have need of you.”
She curtsied, something Keihl had never actually seen a woman do outside of a play or a movie. He tried not to watch her round buttocks move under the snug skirt as she walked from the room, but like everything else lately, he failed at that too.
Conall’s fingers pinched the pale flesh of Katrin’s buttocks. “Her hips may not be as broad as I’d like, but these are well fleshed.”
Nathan’s hand drifted lower, clasping one of her buttocks in a firm grip. She shuddered, one heel coming off the floor a moment.
“Care to have a go with this?” Conall offered the leather to Nathan.
“No, thank you, sir. I”—Nathan’s voice cracked slightly—”I’ll watch.”
“Feeling guilty? You’ve no need, you know. I can already see she’s comfortable with you.”
“It’s not that, sir,” Nathan said, stepping away from the girl, his hand reluctantly relinquishing possession of the girl’s flesh.
“I see,” Conall said with a grin. “The wife, is it?”
Nathan nodded, crossing his arms behind his back.
“You’ll get over that, lad — just as she will. You’ll see.”
Conall stepped to the side, swishing the leather through the air. The girl flinched at the sound.
“Well then, since both you and our unexpected guest are for various reasons indisposed, I suppose it’s ‘look but not touch’, eh?”
Nathan’s lips curved, a slight tensing of his broad shoulders. Keihl wondered if the driver was a former football player. Or perhaps a mob goon.
The strap whistled down, wrapping around Katrin’s naked ass. The sound was like a pistol shot, and she yelled at the smart, the winsome cheeks squeezing together. She tensed, holding her breath as the second strike snapped down lower across the fuller swells of her buttocks.
“Good shot,” Tom said, his gaze glinting. Conall grinned back at him before taking aim once more.
The girl had two bands of deep pink banding her fetching buttocks, the color of the wheals rapidly darkening to red. The shaven purse of her vulva winked back at them from between clenching cheeks, and Keihl shifted his leg to give his hardening cock some room. He’d have to feel guilty about this later. Right now, he was imagining his own Kirsten up there, in chains, receiving the kiss of that strap.
The harness above the girl shook as the third stroke, even harder than the two before it, whipped into her vulnerable ass. She keened behind her gag. Conall placed a light hand on her hip, and she stilled as he laid the lethal strap against her skin, carefully aiming.
The fourth strike, had her up on her toes, the gleaming black stilettos making a
tac-tac
sound on the tile as she jumped about.
‘Hold still, girl,” Conall muttered, standing with his hands on his hips, the deadly strap dangling from his fist. “You’ll learn not to move so much when being corrected in this house.”
Keihl downed the rest of his whiskey, not taking his eyes from the pleasing sight of the girl’s punished flesh flushing an ever deeper shade of red.
Conall strapped her freely then, carefully aiming some and pausing to listen to her muffled cries, while at other times punishing her bottom with a flurry of cracks that had her up on her toes once more, the toned muscles of her hamstrings taut with her pain.
“There, it’s all right, girl,” Conall soothed, pressing the back of his hand to reddened, trembling flesh. He turned his head to look at the seated men. “Tom, come have a feel of this. The strap does wonders.”
Tom sprang up, his fingers tracing martyred flesh with rather more than a doctor’s dispassionate purpose. “My God, Conall. It’s burning.”
Keihl could see the girl’s shoulders shaking as she wept quietly. He was ashamed of himself at how much her crying amplified his arousal. What kind of a sick fuck was he anyway?
“Sir,” Nathan held up his wrist, pointing at his watch. “We’ve got to get going.”
“Right, right, lad. Next time I hope you’ll stay longer. With Victoria away, the house gets quiet. Just a couple of slaves to keep an old man company.”
Keihl looked at Tom, his eyebrows raised.
Slaves? Where was the other one? Did he mean...?
But Tom ignored it, shaking Conall’s hand and patting Katrin on the hip.
“Hope to see you at the next Quorum, Keihl,” Conall said, shaking his hand with rather more warmth than when they’d first arrived.
“I… hope so too,” Keihl said.
What the fuck is a ‘Quorum’?
The three men made their way back to the garage, the sexy little maid curtseying to them as they passed. Tom brushed a hand across her cheek, and she gave him a shy smile, blushing prettily.
Truly surreal.
* * *
“T
om, this is some heavy shit. What the hell was all that?” Keihl felt fatigue in his shoulders, not realizing how tense the visit to Conall’s house had been. Every time he felt like he had a handle on things, a better picture of what he was dealing with, his friend would peel away another layer. More mystery, more questions.
“I know. This is my fault,” Tom said, putting a hand to his head. “I should have just had Nathan drop us off first. I just thought—”
They both braced as Nathan jammed on the brakes. He laid on the horn, a curse muttered under his breath. “Sorry, you guys. We’ve got some real idiots out on the road today.”
Keihl turned back to Tom. “What did you think? I mean
shit
man, she was trussed up like a side of beef in there.”
Keihl neglected to offer the fact that his cock was hard the moment he walked in to see Katrin’s lithe, bound form stretched toward the ceiling. Maybe a little projection was happening on his part?
Who cares? You need to know what the hell is going on here.
“I just — I didn’t know he was going to be quite that intense.”
“You mean strapping her ass red until she’s crying?”
Tom winced.
“Look, I can — I can deal with that later. I mean, I’m not a fucking prude. But I need some answers, man. This is getting weirder by the day. I feel like I’m an actor in some bizarre movie.”
“I’m sorry about Conall. He actually has a seat on the Board so I wanted you to at least meet him. He’s actually a great guy once he warms up to you. I think he may have been playing things up a bit, just for you.”
“Playing things up? You mean he’s not normally a sadistic prick?”
“No, he’s definitely a sadist. He’s just usually a little gentler with a new girl, that’s all.”
Nathan reached up to adjust his rear-view mirror. “Back to your place, sir?”
“That’s fine, Nathan,” Tom said.
The driver nodded, returning his attention to the road. He raised the tinted partition between the front and back seats, filtering out the low angle afternoon sunshine pouring in through the windshield.
“You’re staying tonight, right?”
Keihl was still most of the way to drunk. “Don’t think I have a choice.”
“I can have Nathan drop you if you’d rather… “