Submission

SUBMISSION

An
Erotic Novella

First
in the Plume Series

By

Ella
Ardent

Digital
Edition

©2011 Ella Ardent

All Rights Reserved.

Without limiting the rights
under copyright preserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored
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This is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely
coincidental.

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SUBMISSION

By

Ella Ardent

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

* *
*

Chapter One

It was a black velvet night, the
streets glistening in the rain. The shadows seemed to be deeper and darker than
usual, filled with shadows and secrets. Joanna walked from the subway station,
the gusting autumn wind tugging at her umbrella. She fought a battle of wills
with the elements as the rain pounded on her umbrella. Just when she thought it
couldn’t get worse, the rain changed to ice pellets.

Joanna shivered. Only a masochist
would willingly go out on a night like this.

The thought made her smile, seeing
that she was going to be interviewed for admission to a private BDSM club.
She’d volunteered for the assignment, fed up with being stuck with lifestyle
articles. It was her chance to do something bigger, to turn in a story that
could advance her career into hard news.

It was her chance to prove
herself.

The fact that Joanna had to pose
as an applicant to a kinky sex club to get the story was almost funny. She had
to be the most vanilla, straight-up, conservative, goody-two-shoes heterosexual
on the planet – but when Joanna wanted something as badly as she wanted
this story, she could do anything.

Even pretend to be a woman aching
to join the Plume.

The Plume was the phenomenon of
the year. A club that was private beyond the usual definition of the word, the
Plume had only a single page website. The purple background was embellished
with a photo of a peacock feather, with the name of the club and its slogan in
gold script.

“Where members are bound by
desire and fantasies come true.”

There was a contact link and no
other clues. The website url was privately registered, its owners hidden, its
hosting similarly protected. The Plume’s member list was completely secret. The
club’s location was unknown.

Despite this lack of information
(or maybe because of it) the Plume was the word on everyone’s tongue this year.
Everywhere you looked in the city, there was Plume merchandise for sale, mostly
black, all embroidered with the gold peacock feather of their logo. Handbags,
wallets, jackets, vests, jeans, lingerie were everywhere, as well as the
ubiquitous black domino mask with the feather embroidered along the lower edge.
Everyone insisted they had been inside. Everyone smiled that they knew the
secret location.

Nearly everyone, Joanna suspected,
was lying.

Her editor thought so, too. He was
convinced that this would be the perfect story for the launch of the Lifestyles
section in their paper.
My Night at the Plume
would be a confessional piece. Reality journalism. Every other
journalist in their group had averted his or her gaze, but Joanna had
volunteered.

It was her chance to show that she
could do more.

She just had to make it work.

Unfortunately, the mysterious people
behind the Plume did their homework. From one reply, she realized they knew she
was a journalist. She suspected that they doubted her cover story. She’d been
summoned to this appointment to prove that her supposedly secret desires were
genuine. She knew she’d be tested.

She gripped her umbrella handle
even more tightly, scanning the numbers on the buildings as she got closer to
the address.

She could still hear the woman’s
voice.

A sexy voice.

The kind of voice Joanna would
never have.

The call had come for her at the
office, the number ‘unknown’. The woman’s voice was low and sultry. She hadn’t
bothered with formalities, just given the address, date and time as soon as
Joanna had answered the phone.

Then she’d half-laughed. “After
all,” she’d added. “We don’t want any weirdoes.”

Joanna had to think that anyone
who joined a private BDSM club, hoping to be tied up and spanked and whatever,
had to be weird on some level. She hadn’t argued, though.

She had played along.

Joanna had allowed extra time, given
that her destination was in a part of town she didn’t know well, but arrived
just five minutes early. She might have stepped into another town completely.
An abandoned one. The entire block was so dark that the power might have gone
out.

There was no one on the street.

The hair prickled on the back of
Joanna’s neck. Was she being set up? Suddenly it seemed stupid, not
independent, to have come alone.

The streetlights flickered once,
then stayed on. She shook off her misgivings and considered her destination. It
looked like a restaurant, but the windows were dark. Maybe the power
was
out. Joanna double-checked the address, huddling
under the navy awning to escape the pouring rain. She was in the right place.
Supposedly.

Was this what the Plume did to journalists
and ‘weirdoes’?

She had raised her fist to knock
when the door abruptly opened. A waft of light and heat and aroma swept out of
the interior, surrounding Joanna like a cloud.

A man stood there in the halo of
golden light from the interior, an older man with a deferential manner.
“Joanna?” he asked as if he would have been astonished to be wrong.

Joanna could see past him into the
restaurant, could see the glow of lamps on tables and the quiet murmur of
voices. The restaurant looked cozy and welcoming, particularly in contrast to
the night.

It looked reassuringly normal.

They just had drapes on the
windows.

She smiled. “Yes. I’m supposed to
meet…”

“The Countess,” he said, smoothly
interrupting her. “Of course.” He stood back and gestured. There was something
courtly about his manners, old world maybe, something that made her believe
that nothing odd could happen in this place.

The Plume might be run by paranoid
people with a fondness for kinky sex, but this guy was okay. Joanna had good
instincts about people. No matter how strange the Countess might be, Joanna was
glad to be meeting her in a place where there were other, normal people.

“The Countess requested some
privacy,” the man said, shutting the door behind her. Joanna shook out her
umbrella before he whisked it out of her hands, handing it off to a young man
who must have been in charge of the coatroom. The older man lifted off Joanna’s
coat, and the boy gave her a ticket after her wet belongings were put away. She
dug in her purse, but the older gentleman made a dismissive wave. “The Countess
is most generous.”

So this was all expenses paid.
Interesting.

He headed toward the back of the
restaurant, his footfalls silent on the thick rug underfoot. Joanna looked
around. The restaurant was filled with booths, all of which were curtained. She
heard the low laughter of conversation and the clinking of dishes and cutlery,
but she couldn’t actually see anyone dining there. It appeared that the
Countess wasn’t the only one who liked her privacy.

Was this the Plume itself?

Waiters in black and white slid
through the space, working with efficient impassivity. She could smell the
food and guessed that the cuisine was Italian. Garlic. Basil. Tomato. Her
stomach rumbled just as the older man waved her into a small private room in
the back corner.

Why anyone needed a private room
when the whole place was filled with curtained booths was a mystery to Joanna.

No sooner had she stepped into the
space than curtains were shut behind her. She felt it then, the sound buffeting
against her ears as if she’d entered a soundproofed space.

She was alone. What exactly did
the Countess have planned for this interview? Joanna told herself not to be
nervous, that her cover story was excellent, that everything would be fine.

The private room felt contained,
cozy, and luxurious. The walls were upholstered in black velvet and Joanna
touched one, feeling the padding beneath the upholstery. There was a luxurious
Persian rug thrown over the thick carpet and she felt like she’d sink up to her
ankles in the plush pile. A round table took up a third of the room, and it was
set with a white cloth and a vase of peacock feathers.

Joanna smiled. She was in the
right place.

The table was nestled into a
half-circle booth set into the far wall, a curved bench seat upholstered in
that same velvet. Three chairs, lush with thick matching upholstery, stood with
their backs to Joanna. The table would easily seat six, and she wondered about
the Plume’s interview technique.

Would she be interrogated by a
panel?

She moved to the table, more
nervous at the prospect than she might have expected, and fingered the peacock
feathers. They were real, their blue and green and gold vivid against all the
black.

Why was their logo a peacock
feather?

Joanna reminded herself that she’d
survived many interviews and lived to tell about them, that her nerves were
perfectly normal. Even so, she swallowed and gripped her purse. Her heart was
beating more quickly than usual.

There was a sudden swish of cloth
against cloth, a breath of air that smelled of warm bread. Joanna spun to find
a woman standing behind her.

She stared in surprise at the new
arrival. This woman looked as if she had stepped off the stage or out of a
Renaissance fair. She’d thrown back the hood on the navy velvet cloak that
enveloped her, a cape cut full with a swirling hem. Her hair was so long and
thick and such a glorious auburn hue that Joanna assumed it was a wig.

The woman wore a voluminous white
blouse made of fabric so sheer that Joanna could see her nipples through the
cloth. The rosy hue of the aureoles was unmistakable. The woman smiled
slightly, her ripe red lips curving with amusement as she followed Joanna’s
glance.

The white blouse was nipped into a
black satin corset, one that cupped her full breasts, as if presenting them
for admiration, and cinched an already-slender waist. She wore dark jodhpurs
and high black leather boots, as well as black velvet gloves and thick gold
slave bracelets. At her throat was a pendant, one shaped like a peacock feather
with a dark gleaming eye. Joanna assumed it was an opal set in the gold.

Most remarkable of all, the woman
wore a black velvet domino, one embroidered with a gold peacock feather in one
corner. She tapped a black riding crop against one gloved palm, her eyes
glinting through the holes in the mask, and her smile broadened as if she was
genuinely amused by Joanna’s surprise.

If the administrators of the Plume
wanted to shock her, their first attempt had been a success. Joanna resolved to
not be surprised again.