Marriage Games (The Games Duet #1) Page 12

  Sometimes I went the entire thirty days without picking up a crop or a lock. Sometimes, if the sub was right and I was on my game, all I needed was time and well-intoned words.

  But if I wanted to shackle Serena’s wrists to the wall so she was bent over, legs wide, ass up, I had to use the studio.

  “She’s stunning,” Stefan said from behind the one-way mirror.

  I was making her wait. She hated waiting, but the anticipation kept her on the knife’s edge. “She is.”

  I picked a soft paddle from the wall. I didn’t want to welt her. Then I’d have to wait until she healed to touch her, and taking Serena too far wasn’t as much fun as keeping her close to the line. She was too eager to rush over her own boundaries.

  “You sharing?” he asked, sitting on a chair facing the mirror/window, legs stretched out and rubbing his chin. He was six-four. Nordic. Dark blue eyes, large nose he played to his advantage, and a bright smile that belied a devilish and unrelenting sadism.

  I was glad she didn’t want to be shared. I didn’t want him to touch her. I didn’t have a reason. I just wanted her to myself for thirty days.

  “She redlined it.”

  He waved his hand. He’d come out for a few days to meet an architect about changing the studio into a separate stand-alone with a kitchen so he could live there and paint in the off months. “You have to push the limits, Adam. They’re here to be pushed. You can’t let them run the show.”

  “Thanks for the advice.” I ended up with a riding crop. A blunt tool compared to my hands, but a little variety was good for everyone.

  “She still a popper?”

  “As intact as the day she was born.” I went for the door.

  “You know what I would have done?”

  “You?”

  “That first day—”

  “You would have stripped her in front of a few of your friends, put a dildo on the floor, and made her sit on it so they could all watch her bleed onto it. Then each of them would have fucked her cunt. You’d take her ass that night during aftercare.”

  He looked back at me with that big Swedish smile. “Something like that.”

  “That’s not how I do it.”

  “She would have loved it.” He turned back to the mirror. “She’d remember it forever. But she wanted you. Two weeks and still a virgin. Too bad.”

  I pulled a lever on the side of the window, flipping the shades closed. “Jerk off on your own dime.”

  I shut the door behind me and went around back. Five steps through fallen leaves to the studio door. Five steps in the cold September air. The sound of the ocean behind me, a broken record of rising and falling breaks and whooshes.

  Stefan, Charlie, and I had bought this house together, and we used it cooperatively. We joked and got along. Stefan and I had had some differences we worked out. Mostly. He’d found the property and I got roped in, but I didn’t trust him.

  If he took a sub’s virginity the way he described, or enacted any scene in his repertoire for any reason, he talked with the sub first. If he pushed limits outside the sub’s comfort zone, he told her he was pushing limits during the scene. He obeyed the rules.

  But still, he’d pissed me off.

  “Good evening,” I said when I walked into the studio.

  “Good evening, Master,” Serena replied, hair covering her face.

  “How are you doing?” I could see the wet sheen between her legs.

  “Fine, Master.”

  “Do you like waiting?”

  “No, Master.”

  “Wrong.” I thwacked her with the crop. “You like whatever pleases me.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  There was something rote about her answer. Something a little too rehearsed. That wouldn’t do. Maybe Stefan was right. Maybe I’d let her have her virginity for too long. I’d let myself become infatuated with her looks and her purity. It wasn’t about her anymore; it had become about me. It was never supposed to be about me.

  I tossed the crop aside. I didn’t want to be Stefan, which in a way, was also about me. I brutalized her that night while I made plans to shock her the following day.

  Chapter 41

  PRESENT TENSE

  Diana’s redlines came back while I waited for Charlie. He owned a small store that took up half a floor of an old garment factory on 38th Street. It had no name. Just a thick wooden door, a male receptionist, and rooms of every kinky accouterment a deviant could imagine. Every piece was hand chosen. Everything was expensive as fuck. And if you had the money, it was all worth it.

  Her redlines came in an email.

  You only hit me with your hands.

  I will not crawl or call you sir. I will not be humiliated.

  No gagging with anything. I always need to speak.

  Too broad. A clear case of submissive overreach.

  One. It wasn’t the sub’s place to redline such an enormous number of tools. She could say “no paddling” or even “no wood,” but asking me to use only my hands was unacceptable.

  Two. Humiliation was too subjective, as well as unpredictable. Sticking my fingers in her mouth was part of the deal, but if she was humiliated by it, that was now on me. Crawling and using respectful names for the Dominant were two totally different things, but they both illustrated the truth of submission. Crossing that much off kept me from achieving the dominance I needed to make this worthwhile.

  Three. No gagging was acceptable. But making sure she could always speak? What if my dick was down her throat?

  I’d negotiated contracts with her before. This list shouldn’t have surprised me. Then I realized what was missing.

  Anal. Sharing. Videotaping. Fisting. The dozens of pain-delivery systems that were on the list but I didn’t use because they bored me. What about actual sex? I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d crossed that off entirely, but she hadn’t.

  “Hey, mate.” Charlie came into the waiting room with two short glasses of scotch.

  He sat on the sage-green brocade chair that matched the couch I was on. A long, low slate-topped table stretched the length of the sofa. The two windowless walls were covered with black-and-white art photos of men and women in the throes of bondage and ecstasy.

  He handed me one of the glasses of scotch, and we clicked them together. “What brings you?”

  I let the searing heat burn my throat as the scotch went down. “I have nothing at the Montauk house, and I’m taking it until mid Feb. I gave Silver the list.”

  “Good for you. Main house, right? Stefan’s in the studio.”

  He’d succeeded in converting the small house into his personal painting studio and punishment ward with a kitchen and its own power. I was out of the life and Charlie was fine in the main house, so we allowed it.

  “Main house is fine. He alone?”

  Charlie laughed to himself and moved to the chair next to me, propping his cane against the arm. “He needs them more than they need him.”

  “Someone should tell him that.”

  “What would be the point?”

  I took a swig of whiskey. “So it’s Serena or another one?”

  “I think they’re trying to rekindle the old fire.”

  The Silver Domme came in carrying a wooden box. She balanced perfectly on platform heels in her tight black pants.

  “Adam!” she said when she saw me. “I didn’t even believe it when I saw your name on the list.” She put the box on the table, hugged me, and kissed each cheek. We sat, and Silver put her hands on the box. “I wasn’t sure if it was you, but I got your favorite things.”

  Her smile was lascivious yet not flirtatious. She and I played the same field position. It was a smile of understanding.

  Charlie leaned back and sipped his drink. “Mind if I stay for this stroll down memory lane?”

  “Stay,” I said.

  Silver opened the box. “Now, we have another few things I gathered in the back room, but I wanted to bring these out first.”

  Sh
e laid out a birch paddle with three holes in it. A braided brown riding crop. A set of adjustable nipple clamps I couldn’t imagine using on Diana, yet—

  “The paddle comes narrower, and we have one with no holes and SLUT carved backward—”

  “No.”

  “I remembered.” She smiled again, taking out a black stick. “Not your thing. We also have rubber crops. This one’s single mold so to prevent breakage, and the handle side also leaves a nice mark.”

  I leaned forward, tapping my fingertips together as she brought out rattan canes and more paddles in different sizes and colors. I said nothing. Silver was unfazed.

  But would Diana be fazed? I had to look at these through her eyes. She’d done internet searches and seen plenty, but if I brought these out to use on her, I was sure she’d be frightened. More than anything, I didn’t want to scare her.

  “Should I bring out the bindings?” Silver asked.

  “Please.”

  She left the tools on the table and went through the door to the back. I knew how to use everything she’d presented. I knew how to welt skin without opening it. I struck hard, with accuracy, safely. I made them beg for more, because I made sure that the more pain they experienced, the more pleasure it was paired with. In the end, it was about pleasure and freedom. But everything on the table was redlined. Was I going to accept her line in the sand? Or was I going to rub it out and draw my own?

  “Who are you bringing?” Charlie asked. “If I know her, I can pick for you.”

  “Diana.” I said it so softly I barely heard myself.

  When Charlie didn’t answer, I looked at him. His eyes were slightly wider and his mouth was just open enough for shock.

  “Diana,” I said with my full throat. “My wife.”

  “You’ve got to be fucking with me. The same woman who left you a note on the counter?”

  “She’s agreed. Saw the contract.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. The contract. The boilerplate? The one with gangbangs and electroshock?”

  “Yes.”

  He fingered his cane, twisting it half clockwise, then counterclockwise, as if he were drilling a hole in the floor. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

  “I’ve done it before, Charlie.”

  “Oh. Done it before, have you? And how did you get her to agree to do this with a husband she wants to divorce?”

  I put my glass on the table. “Can we fill that up?”

  He looked at me suspiciously. Tapped his phone. A second later, a man swooped my glass away and replaced it with a new drink. Before he’d even closed the door behind him, I downed it and clicked the glass back on the table.

  Silver wasn’t coming back. Charlie ran the entire operation from that phone. He could have a dozen dancing girls strut in by tapping it.

  I picked up the three-holed paddle. The empty circles cut down air resistance so the paddle moved faster, hit harder, pushed the sub’s capacity for pain and her ability to submit to the limit. The first time you paddled them, it hurt. If you gave them emotional comfort and a fifteen-minute orgasm, they brought it to you in their teeth the second time and bent willingly for its hard kiss.

  I leaned back, feeling its balance in my palm. This tool of domination. Built to help me release the winding knot of a world I couldn’t control. Those slices of time in safe spaces where a woman gave herself to me, and I gave myself to her. I missed the emotional connection. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t ever love, but it was deep and thick, nearly psychic the way a Dom and a sub could click together.

  “I own most of her company,” I said. “I rescued it. If she wants it back—”

  “No,” Charlie interrupted. “Absolutely not.”

  He snapped me away from the memory of that feeling of control. Brought me back to the world where I had to answer to society for my actions.

  “Absolutely not, what?”

  “She’s not in a position to consent, mate.”

  “Believe me, she’s capable of reading and understanding a contract.”

  He put his elbows on his knees, leaning more right than left. I knew it hurt when he bent like that.

  “She doesn’t know you. You’re going to trap her on the tip of Long Island in storm season, with you and a few dozen paddles while you get back in practice? What are you trying to do? Get revenge?”

  “It’s not revenge.”

  “You can really hurt her.” Charlie stamped his cane. “It’s too much. If she’s not trained slowly and fully consenting, you can break her mind. Is that what you want?”

  “I’m not going to do anything she can’t handle.”

  “Have you ever spent more than a few hours with a sub who wasn’t trained and willing?”

  “She’s willing.”

  “She. Is. Not. She can’t consent cleanly.”

  “She has the contract.”

  “You’re holding her life’s work hostage.”

  “Hostage? She’s holding me hostage. She has my guts in her hands. I don’t care about the company, I care about her. She’s my life, do you understand? Have you ever loved a woman? Have you ever held her at night so tight because you couldn’t sleep thinking something might happen to her? Have you ever built a future around a woman? Ever thought of every tomorrow, every year, every decade with her? Dreamed of your old age holding her hand? I can only function with her in my life. I can only breathe if I know she’s there. I gave her my fucking soul and she threw it away. Months ago, maybe years ago. She made a decision to throw me away. She’s prepared for this divorce, and I’m swinging in the wind. Raw. With nothing. No defenses. Now what am I supposed to do?” I stood and threw my coat over my shoulders. “This is not about money. It’s not about some publishing company. Not for me. If I don’t do this, I have no chance of recovery. I’m as good as dead.”

  He didn’t stand, but looked up at me from below, still twisting his cane. “No, you’re not. Don’t do this. You’ll get over it. You will.”

  “Yes, I will. I’ll be in Montauk starting Saturday.” I went for the door and was almost out before Charlie spoke up.

  “You might want to hold off until Serena’s gone,” Charlie said. “Avoid unnecessary emotional complications.”

  “I don’t have any complications about Serena.”

  “But Diana might. Seeing your last sub on the property? She’s going to be vulnerable as it is.”

  He was right, but his solution was shit. Everything would change in a week, or days. I had to take Diana now. This moment.

  “Thank Silver for me. I’ll send a list of what I want delivered.”

  Before he could answer, I left, striding past the receptionist, into the hall where, thank God, an elevator waited.

  What I was doing was wrong. I was treating the love of my life like a device. I was using her against her. I was holding her hostage until she freed my heart.

  I knew it. Charlie knew it. Maybe Diana knew it.

  The hope that she’d accept my offer and the planning that went into it kept me from breaking down. I feared that breakdown more than I feared a life alone. The inner chaos, the loss of any sense of self outside pain, I wouldn’t stand it. I couldn’t see through it. Becoming fully saturated in the pain that roiled inside me had to be avoided at all costs. The abyss was too deep. I needed to jump over it.

  It was raining ice when I got to the street. I put my back against the building and tapped the cold glass of my phone.

  —I accept your redlines—

  She came back right away.

  —I want one more—

  Of course she did.

  —You only get three—

  —No scat or whatever

  you call it. I don’t want

  any poop or pee—

  I smiled. God, I loved her. But she was a pain in the ass.

  —Not my thing—

  —You have no idea

  what a relief that is—

  —Let’s meet with Lloyd. We

  can put McN-B i
n his hands

  for a month while it’s in a

  holding pattern. If we have to,

  we work mornings from

  out there—

  I fell into the comfort of everyday thoughts, everyday talk, business as usual. To have that again. For it to be a month ago…

  It took her too long to answer.

  —Diana?—

  —We run it as equals.

  If we’re working you’re

  not the boss of me—

  What was obvious to me wasn’t to her. I didn’t know if she’d be able to separate work time from play time, and if I was being honest with myself, I didn’t know if I’d be able to either.

  —I wouldn’t have it any other way—

  That was the most honest thing I’d ever said to a woman or myself. I wanted her at my side as a partner. That was the abyss I couldn’t see past.

  I hailed a cab up to R+D before I had to look so far into that vacuum that I fell in.

  Chapter 42

  PAST PERFECT

  The real estate agent had excused herself so Diana and I could talk.

  We stood in the space a few feet from each other. The wood floors shone with new gloss, the white walls reflected the blasting summer sun through the huge windows. Crosby Street passed by, twenty stories below with tires rattling against the cobblestone street. A voice from the sidewalk. Another returning the greeting. An undulating rustle of white noise from blocks away.

  “What do you think?” she asked, voice echoing off the emptiness.

  “It’s pretty big.”

  “Do you think we can fill it?”

  With our stuff. With our life. With our memories. With our children.

  “Yes.”

  She smiled and looked at the high ceiling. “I’m so happy.”

  “Why’s that?” I took her by the waist and pulled her close.

  Her eyes were pale and clear in the bright room. Her mouth held all her warmth and expressiveness. She was incapable of lying through it.