He pressed and touched all over her, urging her higher, higher. Her pussy throbbed, aching for release. He grabbed her mons and slid a finger between the slick lips of her sex. He started tapping her clit in a steady rhythm. The focused stimulation was too much—he was torturing her. Her pussy flared each time he touched her clit, and his ass-pounding strokes were pushing her closer and closer to orgasm. When she drew up taut like a bowstring, determined not to come without permission again, he leaned close to her, right next to her ear, and whispered, “Go ahead, come.”
Seconds later she came hard and long, but she didn’t make a sound or any outward sign. All the arousal from her center broke wide, drowning her, and her ass clamped down on the hot fullness of his cock. The secrecy of it seemed to intensify her climax. Daniel came after her, pounding against her, and she let out a soft moan under cover of his cry. He fell over her, breathless, and nipped her on the back of her neck, just as she’d nipped his thigh. As if he was telling her,
It will be our secret.
Or maybe,
Remember me
, was what he’d actually meant.
As if she could she ever forget him. Thanks to him she’d lapsed hopelessly from how she’d been trained. She’d felt too much, wanted too much, lusted too much, lost control of herself. She stayed where she was, trying to collect herself. After Daniel pulled away, Vincent yanked her up by her collar.
“Wednesday, thank our guest.”
She murmured quick, breathless thanks to the floor at Daniel’s feet. Then Vincent dragged her to the corner and hooked her cuffs to a bolt in the wall. She hung her head and laid her hot forehead against the wall’s cool surface. He and Daniel talked for a few more moments, perhaps even a quarter hour, about professional matters: each other’s art, upcoming plans. Vincent gave no suggestion of a future meeting, and Daniel eventually bid him good-bye. She wondered if he’d looked over at her one last time before he left.
If he had, he would have seen a pitiful creature, beaten, tethered, with her head bowed. A guilty girl bracing, resigned, for more pain. She had wild visions of Daniel rescuing her, whisking her away like some romantic hero.
She’s mine now. Only I can hurt her, not you
. Silly visions. She was tearful but also buzzing with the strange euphoria Daniel had triggered within her. She was so confused.
Vincent returned and sat across the room for a long while in utter silence. The only sound was her shallow breathing and her heartbeat pounding in her ears. It was punishment enough, his deep disapproval washing over her in waves. He finally walked over and stood right behind her.
“You’re a little slut, you know.”
She let out a sob.
“Tears. Save it. Are you thinking of him now?”
“I’m sorry, Sir,” she said in a voice that sounded like a plea.
“I’m sorry too. I didn’t ask him here for your pleasure. I asked him here to use you like the sex toy you are. And he did, although he seemed to think you belong to him now. Who do you belong to, Wednesday?”
“I belong to you, Sir. Only you!”
“Do you?” He said the words quietly, but he might as well have screamed them.
“Yes, Sir. Yes!” She gathered the courage to turn and look at him. “Please, Sir, I belong only to you.”
“Turn back around. I know you do.”
He left her and came back with a whippy crop. He used it to mark her buttocks, her legs and her back, and while she moved from him a little when the biting blows fell, she mostly stood and took them. She let him beat her, because she felt she deserved punishment. She needed expiation. By the time he finished with the crop, she ached. She hurt. When he released her cuffs, she stumbled and almost fell forward. He yanked her up again, and it scared her that still,
still
he seemed angry.
“Happy birthday, Wednesday,” he said tightly as he unhooked her collar and cuffs. He dragged her upstairs and sent her to sleep in another room for the night. She wanted to die. She wanted to plead for forgiveness. She wanted to return to before she’d laid eyes on Daniel. But there was no way to go back.
Daniel needed a damn map. It had been some years since he’d navigated the hallowed halls of UCLA’s Fine Arts building. He turned a corner, then another. Fuck, he had to backtrack. He was completely lost.
He’d been feeling lost frequently of late.
He blamed Vincent, the man who had more or less summoned him to his office. Vincent had been cryptic about the reason, but Daniel had a good enough idea what—or who—he wanted to talk about. Otherwise Daniel wouldn’t be here, wandering around feeling like a fool.
Daniel was not generally a foolish person. Playful sometimes, silly, yes, but never a fool, and certainly never over a woman, but well…people change. He thought he’d had his head on pretty straight when he got into this life—the BDSM clubs, the meet-ups, the organized underworld where people exchanged accepted social rules for a dance of their own, a sometimes erotic, sometimes bizarre dance of power and submission.
Hurt me. Own me. Take me. Want me. Be my master. Be my slave.
He had always been attracted to this dance. He could remember being nine or ten years old, chasing girls on the playground just to hold them down, just to see that spark of rebellion in their eyes and feel them struggle to get away. The best ones only pretended to struggle, looking at him as if they shared a secret.
I understand you, and you understand me
. He chased those rare girls again and again. In time he became friends with them, and by the end of his college years he’d found the D/s scene, where those girls were everywhere.
He was never completely at home in the fetish clubs, though. He thought if he stuck it out he would run into the girl he needed, who needed him and what he wanted to give. But he found the clubs were mostly posturing and falseness, the playing of roles that ended on a word.
Daniel didn’t want a scene. He wanted a relationship, but it seemed everyone around him preferred finite games and empty sex. The submissives wanted you to do what they wanted, what they liked, what they preferred, and the dominants played along, only pretending to have control. He played along too, out of necessity, and inevitably each scene ended, and he returned, unsatisfied, to real life. He had grown discouraged and cynical, thinking that was all there could ever be to it. That was, until Vincent invited him to his house on a cold, rainy March night, and Daniel learned there was a place for deeper love in this strange world after all.
As much as sharing went on in the scene, for him, sharing Wednesday had been a first. He’d expected some brassy pseudoslut, but instead he got Wednesday Carson. Quiet, mysterious, utterly submissive. If she had balked even a little, Daniel would have turned on his heel and left, no matter how much he ached to put his hands on her. But she came to him with absolute trust and openness and no shame at all. At the end he’d held her lovely clenching hands and kept her still while Vincent caned her, and he’d thought, suddenly, of those secret, shared looks on the schoolyard ground.
I understand you, and you understand me. We understand each other. Your secret is mine.
Here was the girl for him, serious and complicated, smart and beautiful. She worked as an editor at a specialty publishing company. She was obviously intelligent, but besides that, she was just perfect in every way. She was petite but not skinny, pale and delicate but not sickly, and attractive to the point he couldn’t look away. She had black hair in a mass of curls falling to her shoulders, and crazy, pale blue eyes that made him want to stare.
Too bad she was already in service to another.
Damn
. He could have sworn Vincent’s office was in the east wing. He realized he was on the wrong floor altogether and found the stairwell. He took the steps two at a time and finally arrived at Vincent’s corner office, late and slightly breathless. The door was ajar, so Daniel knocked and pushed it open. He looked around the pristine, organized space, kind of hoping Wednesday might be there, although he was 95 percent sure she wouldn’t be.
Vincent gave a small, almost imperceptible laugh, and Daniel flushed. Jesus, he hated the man. He was a great teacher, but he could be a nasty human being.
“She’s not here. I’m sorry if that’s why you came.”
Daniel entered and shut the door behind him before taking the chair in front of Vincent’s desk. “I came because you asked me to come. But I hope she’s well.” He added the last trying to make it sound offhand, like an afterthought. Vincent looked at him over his laptop with a ruthlessly dissecting gaze.
“She’s fine. She seems to have survived your rousing stint as our third partner, what was it, a couple weeks ago?”
One week, three days, and about…oh, eight hours, Daniel thought. “That’s great, Vincent. So what’s up?”
Vincent was quiet another moment, slowly closing his laptop. “I lied. She’s not exactly fine. How did you think the scene went?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve done a ton of threesomes.” He shrugged. “I certainly enjoyed myself. She seemed to enjoy herself too.”
Vincent steepled his fingers and leaned back in his leather chair. He curled his lip slightly. “She did. Perhaps too much. She’s been…wavering in her service to me.”
Daniel watched Vincent closely, but as usual the older man cloaked any deeper emotions he might be feeling. Daniel was left to connect his own dots, and he felt a sudden, selfish hope. He stayed silent, knowing any words he uttered might give away his excitement at Vincent’s news.
Vincent stared over Daniel’s shoulder. He leaned forward on his elbows, rubbing his forehead. He looked old, his true age, for the first time Daniel could recall.
“I want you to take over with Wednesday.”
Daniel broke into a fit of surprised coughing. “I’m sorry. You want me to—what?”
“Be with Wednesday. I want you and her to be together. I want her to have a life, a life she can’t have with me.”
Daniel sat there, stunned.
Vincent sighed heavily at his silence. “I’ve been with her for five years, and I’m the
only
one who’s been with her. She’s never had any other relationships.”
God, really? The
only
one?
“I need to let go of her, but I can’t let go. Not unless…”
“Unless what?”
“Unless I know she’ll be okay. She came to me a baby, an innocent. I feel…protective of her.” He paused, staring off again. He compressed his lips in a tight line. “She’s very special to me.”
Daniel watched him, watched the internal struggle. “If she’s so special to you, why don’t you try to make things work? Why pass her off? How does she feel about this?”
“She doesn’t know what to feel right now. And I can’t bear to watch her struggle much longer. She likes you, Daniel. I can sense she’s thinking about you when she’s with me. I want you to be with her, because you’re a good guy.”
“But—”
“But what? Don’t you want her?”
“You know I want her. But what about you?”
“Oh, I’ll be fine. I’ve already got some new subs lined up. Good girls. Girls in need of discipline. Wednesday has reached a point in her life where she needs something more, something I can’t give her. Something besides…training.” He raised an eyebrow at Daniel. “Something I think you can give her. In return, all I ask is that you keep me apprised of how she is, so that in some small way I can still be part of her life. Not that you could tell her that obviously.”
“Keep you apprised? What do you mean? Spy on her for you? Feed you reports?”
“Reports? No, I would just want you to tell me, generally, how she’s doing. If she’s happy. How her life is. That she’s safe.” Vincent leaned closer and looked him in the eyes. “I want you to love her and baby her and discipline her and marry her and get her pregnant with little Daniels and Wednesdays—”
“Wait, stop.” Daniel’s head spun. “You can’t…you can’t just
give
her to me like she’s some
thing
, some
property
of yours to pass on.”
“Can’t I? Daniel, I already have. I brought you to her, and as I suspected, she fell for you. And you like her. In fact, you want her desperately, don’t you?”
Daniel sat in stony silence. Of course he did.
“Well then. She’s yours. I give her to you.”