Red Hot Obsessions (165 page)

“For this next part of the interview, I need to see you in a scene. You’ll be paid standard rates.”

Here came the casting couch part. Rae had prepared herself for it. She thought she should steel herself but instead she stood with anticipation.

Wulf stood and held out his open hand, gesturing toward the door that went back to the reception area. “After you, Madam.”

~~~~~

Rae’s First Scene

Wulf held the office door open for Rae. She followed him back to the reception area.

Lush plants flanked blue couches. The blazing front windows must provide them with plenty of sunlight. The magazines on the coffee table were the only clue to the nature of The Devilhouse:
BDSM Aficionado, Submission Weekly,
and
Whips & Bondage.

The receptionist, the girl in the silver short-short skirt who had let Rae into Wulf’s office, was typing on a computer with her back toward them.

Rae stopped. Above the back rest of the office chair, angry welts crisscrossed the girl’s dark brown skin. Rae hadn’t noticed the marks when the receptionist had walked beside her, leading her to Wulf’s office. Even though the girl’s skin was chocolate brown, darkening around the welts suggested bruising.

“Glenda?” Wulf asked, and the girl turned to face him. “I assume our three o’clock guests have arrived?” He leaned over her desk and selected a file folder.

“Yes, Sir,” Glenda said. Her head sank, almost a flinch, but her movement seemed more like a bow.

He nodded and walked down an office hallway, not even remarking on the wounds on that poor girl.

“Wulf!” Rae called out and trotted to keep up with him.

He turned and seemed three inches taller than a moment ago. “Don’t use my given name in here.”

“That girl, Glenda, the receptionist. Didn’t you see her back? She’s been beaten to a pulp. We need to call the police,
now
.”

“Knowing Glenda, I’m sure it was consensual and that she enjoyed it.”

“She has welts and
bruises
!”

“Considering the very precise lattice pattern on her back, she must have held quite still while it was being applied. I’m concerned about your level of Dom play if you are so disturbed by a few welts.”

Rae could not believe that the poor girl had wanted to be beaten so violently. “I’ll be right back.”

Rae strode back to the receptionist and leaned over the low desk.

Glenda looked up at her, her bright green eyes wide, surprised to see Rae again so soon. “Yes, ma’am?”

“How did you get the welts on your back?”

Glenda smiled. “Can you still see them? My Master used a four-foot signal whip on me last night, here at the club.” Her smile turned into a mischievous grin. “It was my first time on
the main stage
.”

Rae rubbed her forehead, feeling foolish. Of course, people at a sex club—for that is what The Devilhouse was, a sex club—would have welts. Rae should have known that Glenda was displaying those welts by wearing that low-backed, silver-spangled tube top. She sure as heck wasn’t hiding them with a turtleneck. “Okay,” she said. “I was just making sure you were okay.”

Glenda smiled. “That’s so sweet. If you think my back is marked up, you should see my ass.” She caressed her hips and thighs. “I can barely sit on this chair.”

“That’s okay, thanks. I’ve got to catch up with,” she remembered Wulf’s unease with her saying his name even in the hallway, “him.”

“Oh, hell, yes. The Dom does
not
like to be kept waiting.”

This time, Rae heard that Glenda had called him
The
Dom, not
Dom
like short for Dominic, and she realized that Lizzy and Georgie had been calling him
The
Dom, too.

Rae fought down her increasing uneasiness with this whole thing. She was supposed to be an adult. She had been in college for over two years. She had broken out of all that small-town stuff.

Yet, her abnormal psychology class had covered, in detail, the psychological havoc that a psychopath can wreak on a normal person. Psychopaths use people for their own purposes, or gratification, or just because they were there. Being a psychopath was probably part of the job description to be a sex club manager.

But Rae wanted to stay in college, desperately.

She looked down the hallway, where Wulf was waiting for her, leaning against the wall, his long legs crossed at his ankles. His broad shoulders formed a muscular triangle above his slim waist.

Her little dream of helping autistic kids like her cousin Daniel seemed far away, and Wulf held the money that she needed to do it.

He had buttoned his suit jacket. From this far away, Rae could see that his suit fit him far too well to have been bought off of a rack somewhere.

Rae trotted back to him and decided to not mention that she had confirmed that Glenda did indeed like to be whipped. “I’m back.”

“One more thing.” Wulf’s level gaze was serious. Rae again noticed how his dark blue suit brought out the bright blue in his eyes and the gold in his hair, even though she knew that she was supposed to be cowed by his intensity. He said, “You must not use my name.”

“Okay. It’s a dominance thing, right?” Wulf’s eyelashes looked like they were coated with gold.

“Yes. I can be called The Dom, or Sir, or Master.”

She remembered one more thing from his list of names last night, even though she had been distracted by him sucking her boob just before he reeled them off. “Not Mr. van Hanover?”

He smiled at her, a slow, small smile, but the smile touched his eyes this time, a real smile. “Not even that.”

Rae felt like her remembering at least part of his name had pleased him. “Okay, Sir.” She raised her eyebrows a little, just to show that she thought calling him
Sir
was silly.

His lips parted a little, like he had almost leaned in to kiss her. “Better.”

Her little defiance would have angered a psychopath. Maybe he wasn’t just a shiny, mirrored shell.

Wulf continued, “Also, even though Reagan may be the best name for a Domme that I have heard in years, you need a
nom de baise
for your work.”

A
nom de plume
was a pen name, like for writers. A
nom de guerre
was a rebel’s wartime code name.
Baise
is French for a kiss, but when it’s used as slang and as a verb, it means
to fuck
. Rae suspected that a
nom de baise
meant a
fuck name
, which made perfect sense, given that she was standing the office hallway of a fuck club.

A fuck name for a fuck club. Her stomach trembled. “I hadn’t thought of one.”

Wulf glanced at the ceiling, thinking. “You might consider Domme Juan?”

“That’s possible,” Rae said, thinking it was not very good. “How about Lady Macbeth?”

Wulf nodded, looking impressed. “Not bad. Indeed, quite good. I have selected a sub for your audition. His file,” he handed her a file folder, “includes his information. Would you like a moment?”

Rae flipped open the folder. A three-page list much like the one she had just filled out was stapled to right side of the folder. The name written at the top in block capitals was Curtis Cutter. She flipped through it, noting that this man had engaged in most of the activities on the list and that he would like to do more of all of them.

Rae pictured a depraved, salivating beast-man, all muscle and gristle and covered in black, goat-like hair.

The left side of the folder was a form with some other specifics, mostly billing information. “Okay. I’m good.”

“This is a twenty-five minute session. Because you haven’t passed the physical yet, there must be no blood play, no fluid exchange, even though our little sub here might enjoy both of those. I’ll watch your audition from the security booth.” Wulf opened a normal-looking office door beside him.

The room beyond the door was furnished with red leather couches and black wood tables, not standard office seats. The carved door on the opposite side of the room loomed large and black, like a door to Hell. Red velvet-flocked wallpaper covered the walls to the ceiling.

Rae resisted the urge to pun that, in The Devilhouse, even the wallpaper got flocked.

Wulf surveyed the five men assembled, all of whom sat up perfectly straight on red leather couches with their hands clasped on their tightly pressed knees. They all wore tight black pants and had bare chests. None of them looked like they had seen the inside of a gym in a while, but all were flabby in different ways.

Rae mentally tagged them as Grumpy, Bashful, Doc (who had glasses of course), Chubby, and Lumpy.

Five men.

Rae checked again, and there were indeed exactly five men in that room.

The number of men in that room, waiting to be whipped or whatever, was equal to the number of sexual partners that Rae had had in her whole life, including two one-night-stands and Wulf last night. She felt pathetically virginal and like a slut in the midst of a man-crowd.

Wulf slapped a riding crop against his knee. Rae had not seen him pick up the crop.

“You,” Wulf pointed to one of the men. “What is your same, sub?”

Bashful, who was red-headed, blushed rose-pink behind his freckles, fell to his knees, and sat on his heels with his head bowed. “Curtis, Sir.”

Bashful/Curtis looked like a computer help desk guy, not a depraved goat-man. She could imagine him sitting behind an IT desk eating a meat stick and vending machine chips, but she wouldn’t have thought this guy enjoyed being beaten with a cat o’nine-tails with a dildo shoved up his butt, yet he had starred both those items on his form.

Rae winced as Wulf whipped the riding crop backhand across Bashful’s bare back, leaving a welt.

Again, Rae considered running for the door but refrained because she wanted the job.

Wulf said to him, “No, your sub name.”

Bashful said, “Thank you, Sir, for correcting me.”

Rae
really
considered running for the door, but instead she struck a strong pose and stared down at Bashful like the haughty Lady Macbeth, whom she had played in The Scottish Play last year. Like Lady Macbeth, Rae didn’t want to let “‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would,’” meaning that she didn’t want her wussiness and phobias to keep her from doing what she needed to do. Lady Macbeth was not a passive shlump.

Rae wished that she had internalized a little more of the homicidally ambitious Lady Macbeth rather than the hippie dancer from
Hair
.

Bashful said, “I apologize, Master. I am called Irish Setter, Sir.”

Wulf said to Bashful, “This is Lady Macbeth, one of our newest Dommes. She would like to play with you for your session today. Do you submit?”

The wide-eyed redhead turned his moon face up to Rae and said, “If you deem it so.”

Wulf gestured toward the large, carved door. “My Lady, your sub awaits.”

Okay, Rae was going to have to ratchet her kink up a few notches. This weird situation was not going to rob her of her chance to stay in college.

In the play, Lady Macbeth said, “Screw your courage to the sticking place, and we’ll not fail.”

Rae could adopt that as her mantra in here, and thinking about screwing her courage in tight might help her figure out how to do this dominatrix thing.

“Let’s go,” she said to Bashful, who had not moved from his kneeling position on the floor.

“Yes, Mistress.” Bashful rocked up to his feet, swaying for a moment on his knobby legs. He held the huge door open for her.

Beyond the red and black waiting room, the decor got really weird.

Iron sconces cast dim light on the rough-hewn stone walls. Even though she hadn’t descended any stairs, Rae wouldn’t have been surprised to hear water dripping from basement cracks. A drain in the middle of the tiled floor suggested that this room sometimes needed to be hosed down. Instead of leather and sweat, the sharp scent of lemons filled the room. Rae spied a small air freshener plugged into a wall socket beside a black bookcase shelved with boxes of ball gags and blindfolds.

The door creaked behind her and thumped closed.

Rae and Bashful were alone in the dungeon.

Drat.

Iron bars were bolted to the walls at varying heights. Restraints were attached to the bars, ready and waiting: black leather, iron chains, shining steel handcuffs, red leather thongs, and pink silk strips. The whips—so many whips!—were stored in glassed-in cases like her father’s gun safes. Rae had never dreamed that so many kinds of whips even existed, not to mention the canes and straps and staves.

Lady Macbeth would have been overjoyed.

Rae was horrified.

But Rae was Lady Macbeth now.

Courage.

Rae glanced back at Bashful, who was standing beside the closed door, waiting. She couldn’t be the passive one here, not at all.

Rae opened the glass door of the cabinet. The door stuck for a second and vibrated when she pulled it free. She cringed, waiting for the sound of breaking glass, but the door stayed intact. The smell of clean leather and fresh wood wafted out and brushed Rae’s cheeks. From the cabinet, she selected a long, stout, single-tailed whip.

Rae tried to imagine what Bashful wanted her to do. Other than the obvious, like beating him and sticking things in his screwing places, she wasn’t sure what to do.

She turned, flinging the whip around in a circle for effect. “I don’t like the name Irish Setter.”

“Yes, Mistress?” He sounded confused.

She walked over and stood beside him. In her high heels, Rae stood at least six inches taller than the redheaded man. His head wasn’t even up to her shoulder. She looked down on his orange hair, thinning on his pink scalp.

She strutted around him, looking up and down his short, stout body. “I think I’ll call you Bashful.”

“Yes, Mistress.” He sounded pleased that she had stripped away even his sub name and given him one of her own. She should remember that little trick.

His feet were bare and turning blue on the uneven tile floor. She wished she had a bathmat for him to stand on.

She brought the whip handle up under his chin and lifted his head to meet her eyes. “Do you like that name?”

Bashful blinked twice, quickly. His pale eyelashes were almost invisible. “Um, yes? Mistress?”

“Good. What shall we do today?”

Bashful blinked rapid-fire. “I don’t know, Mistress.”

“Is there something in particular that you’d like?”

“Um, no, Ma’am.”

“Maybe we should start with you standing up. Should we do that?”