At Your Service: Tammer (5 page)

It was a few miles into their northwesterly trek out of town that Nina’s anger ebbed and curiosity got the best of her. “What is your day job anyway?” she asked, turning sideways in the seat and tucking one leg under the other.

“I’m a small arms adviser and instructor for LariMont Consulting,” Tammer said as they rolled through one of a string of
blink and you’ll miss it
small towns up the highway.

“I knew it,” Nina said, snapping her fingers. “You are a sniper.”

“That’s a matter of definition,” he explained, signaling and turning left. “I’m a teacher of sorts. The Yoda of the trigger if you will.” Tammer looked totally serious then spoke in a deep warbly voice. “Targets are many therefore I show.”

“Dear Lord.” Nina giggled. “Tell me you’re not a Star Wars geek.”

“Define geek.”

“How many times have you watched all six in order in one sitting?”

Tammer scratched his chin and twisted his nose up as if contemplating just how many times to admit to. “A few…dozen?”

“Oh, God,” Nina moaned. “You don’t have a light saber, do you?”

“A light saber?” He laughed as he came to a stop in front of an antiques store. “Are we negotiating again by chance? No, sorry to disappoint but it’s not three feet long and it doesn’t light up, but I like where you’re thinking. You can put your hair up in big buns on the sides of your head when we get back…”

“I’m not acting out your screwball Princess Leah fantasies,” Nina said, rolling her eyes. “That’s a bit out there even for me.”

“Well, damn,” Tammer said, slapping the wheel. “Then why don’t I just put you over my lap and act out your fantasy, my dirty little school girl.”

Heat crept all over Nina and she nearly choked on her own spit. “Joel really did tell you everything you needed to know, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he really did.”

“I should probably tell you. It’s been a while. I’m a little…a lot…rusty.”

“How about you let me oil your hinges when we go back tonight?” he asked, reaching out to pull her hair over her ear and trace the edge of it with his fingertip.

A shudder flew out across Nina and she closed her eyes, nodding and biting her lower lip. “Yes, please.” Her breath hitched and her pulse skipped a beat. “Sir?”

“Now that sounded very pretty without any hint of an ass attached.” Tammer pulled back and Nina cringed at the loss of his touch. “First things first, though. What exactly are we doing here?”

“How the hell should I know?” Nina opened her eyes and stared aimlessly at the little red building he’d stopped in front of. “What are we doing here?”

“Looking for antiques. One of your hobbies?” He opened his door and hopped out. “The question is what is it you collect?” He slammed his door and was around the truck and had hers open before she even managed to unbuckle. “I don’t recall an overabundance of anything around the house. No fancy colored glass, primitive baskets, chairs. What it is you can’t live without and where are you hiding your stash, defiance?”

Once she was on the ground, she held her bag up and waved it under her nose. “Girly things. They’re all in my closet. Vintage purses, hat boxes and hats, and some vintage clothing, corsets. Although those are usually more likely to be found at online auctions. Little towns like this would probably torch a shop for carrying such bawdy items as women’s antique underclothes.”

“You actually have an antique corset collection?” Tammer said, his eyes growing wide. “What kind of clothing?”

“All kinds. I like to play dress up. Name an era and I probably have a costume,” Nina said, moving toward the entrance.

“American Revolution?”

“Yes.”

“Poodle skirts and saddle oxfords?”

“Yes.”

“Regency period?”

 “Oh, hell to the yes. One of my favorites.” She stopped short when Tammer reached out and kept her from pushing the door open, doing it himself then guiding her inside with his palm at the small of her back. “I love to play nasty scullery maid to the Lord of the manor. And playing Scottish rebellious laird’s daughter is how Joel came about being My Liege.”

“Interesting,” Tammer said, following her as she honed in on a rack of vintage hats and made a B-line for them. “Any chance I might graduate from Sir to Lord in the future?”

“Does this Lord you speak of wear riding gear and carry a crop?” Nina asked, taking a blue and yellow silk creation down, the rim of which was well over a foot in diameter. It sported a spray of peacock plumes on one side. With a smile growing, she plopped it on her head and turned to find Tammer standing and gaping at her. “What’s wrong?” When he didn’t answer right away, she laughed, took the hat off, and looked at the price tag deciding at under twenty bucks, she had to have it. “Guess maybe he didn’t tell you absolutely everything then, huh? Yes, I’m a fantasy fetish player, not just a naughty schoolgirl wannabe. I mean I like everything about the lifestyle and do all the normal, you know, submissive stuff. I’ll lick your boots if that’s what you want, but I’m really into role-playing. Want to tie up the helpless pioneer woman on the prairie and scare the hell out of her with a knife? Kidnap the baron’s daughter and take her virtue by force so no other man will have her? Find the town widow guilty of witchcraft and dunk her in the local pond until she begs for mercy? I’m your girl.”

“Well, it does appear Joel may have left out a detail or three.”

“Still want to wait until after dinner to oil my hinges?” Nina goaded, wiggling her hips.

“Yes, defiance,” Tammer said, quirking up one side of his mouth and whipping out his iPhone. “We’ll wait, but I think we’ve just had a change of plans. This vintage shopping seems like a hell of a lot more fun than sipping wine all afternoon.”

Nina’s mouth fell open and her eyebrows shot up. “You’ll take me shopping? Really? How the hell much is Joel paying you, anyway?”

“Of course I’ll take you shopping,” he said, scrolling through several listings on his screen. “But you’ll damn well wear what I choose later. Maybe we can find something Victorian to match that thing.” He waved at the headdress she’d put back on her head and which sat cock-eyed as she peered into a cracked antique mirror. “I’m thinking blue corset, silk stockings. I think I have some blue rope in my bag to match it…You say knives don’t bother you?”

“Holster your phone,” she said, snatching the hat off and heading for the counter. “I know all the good places as long as you don’t mind driving all the way to the Triangle.”

“Will you call me Lord Weston if I do?”

Nina spun, curtsied in a deep bow and peered up from a bent head, fluttering her lashes. “But o’ course, m’ Lord. If it so pleases, ye,” she said in her best English peasant.

“Holy shit.”

Chapter Six

Tammer thought he’d seen it all and done it all until he spent several hours traversing back alley shops in search of what Nina described as the perfect whalebone corset in some rare shade known as ultramarine. At exactly four-nineteen, mission accomplished.

At seven-nineteen, he waited somewhat patiently with his legs crossed in a chair in the corner of Nina’s room as she cussed like a sailor behind her dressing screen with each pull of the strings that would cinch her neatly into the contraption. The woman was brilliant, for that he’d give her credit. Where most would need four hands to manage the feat he hoped she was conquering, she was managing on her own with an invention she’d assembled on the wall. What resembled a meat hook hung low beside an erotic painting from the renaissance as if it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. After allowing him to watch her use it once, she’d shooed him back behind the screen and told him he had no more endurance than her Liege did when it came to waiting for her to get rigged up.

It was really quite fascinating to watch her first tug all the laces then stand on tiptoes and drape the lowest crisscross over the hook leaning back and using her own body weight to tighten them.

“Have you shown anyone else your little device?” Tammer asked, tapping the tip of the crop he’d chosen from her toy closet against his now leather clad leg, musing at how it hadn’t taken him nearly as long to change from jeans and a fleece pullover as it was taking Nina to morph.

“One of My Liege’s friends said I should patent it,” she said with a grunt. “There.” She’d obviously accomplished her task and she blew out a breath. “Is there a division for naughty gear at the patent office?”

Nina stepped out from behind the screen and Tammer’s breath stalled, his mouth watering.

“You know, I don’t think part of your job is paying for my play clothes,” she said, coming fully into the room and standing beside one of the bed posts, wrapping an arm around it, leaning against it. “That probably falls into the incidental expenditures or something or other. Right? I mean, that’s sort of more than a hired…you…” Glancing away and curling her stocking clad toes under, she worked her bottom lip and toyed with the brim of her hat. “I’m nervous. This is the first time, um, you know?”

Tammer’s heart hurt for her. He’d been right. Underneath all that bad ass
I am woman
exterior there was a very unsure and needy, soft as cotton sub.

“Of course I paid for them,” he said, standing and going to her, tossing his crop to the bed beside the blue lengths of rope and K-bar he’d laid there while he waited. He wasn’t about to admit the complete truth in why, however. The complete truth would involve admitting the longer he spent with her that afternoon the more he liked her and the more it felt like a real date vice a job. In his mind, a real date warranted the man paying for things. “When you see what I intend to do to this thing, you’ll understand why.” He grinned and looped a finger under the neat bow at the top of the laces and pulled her toward him. “I know you’re nervous. It’s not a natural thing for you to play with your Liege not here. But I, like him, want you to try.”

She swallowed hard as her pulse fluttered at the base of her throat. “Okay.”

“I’m sure you know to say no if you need to.” Tammer leaned in and licked a path up her throat ending at her ear lobe where he nipped before continuing. “I’ll listen.”

Nina squirmed and twisted under his touch and her breath hit his cheek in quick, warm puffs. “I have a safe word…” When he made his way back down, sank his teeth into her shoulder and ran his fingers between her legs, her words evaporated and she groaned before recovering, shaking her head at her reaction. “But no is good. Shit,” she whined as Tammer caressed her slickened pussy. “I haven’t…in a while…If you don’t stop.”

“Oh, I’m not going to stop,” Tammer assured her, running an arm around her waist and holding her aloft as he pushed inside her, never missing a beat as his thumb found her puffy clit and ran hard, lazy circles around it. “Go ahead. Come for me.”

“Yes, Sir,” Nina wailed, grabbing his biceps, her nails digging into his flesh as she flew apart before going limp.

“Pretty,” Tammer murmured as he held her up and spread kisses across her jaw, having to remind himself to stop short of her lips. Something in his chest pinched when he had to draw back and the thought crossed his mind if he didn’t stop thinking about kissing her, he might have to tell Joel he couldn’t do this anymore. When her grip loosened and her breathing slowed to near normal again, he took her hand and led her to the foot of the bed. “You okay?”

“Yes. Thank you for allowing me to have an orgasm, Lord Weston.” Nina stood perfectly still, centered between the bedposts and raised her arms over her head. “What else can I give you, Sir, that would please you?”

In that moment, as Nina’s glassy eyes offered him everything along with her words, Tammer had no doubt about what would please him. And as he gritted his teeth and snatched up a piece of rope, he stuffed the notion of owning her to the back of his mind. Yes, liking her too much was definitely going to become an issue. What the hell was wrong with him? He’d never had problems coloring inside the lines before, but Nina was tempting him to make a huge swipe of gray beyond the box and he wondered while he secured one of her wrists to a bed post if he’d regret it at all.

“I think it would rather please me to fuck you senseless, you little wench,” Tammer declared once she was bound. He retrieved his knife and ran the blunt edge of it along her breastbone, watching her cleavage heave as a thin white line erupted behind the contact. “But you really did overdress for the occasion.”

Starting at the bottom, he ran the tip of the blade beneath the first loops of her laces and with a violent jerk, they popped and the bottom of her corset gaped open.

“How many times have I told you never to show up in my chamber any other way except naked.” With another swipe the garment hung loose around her middle and Nina gasped as the knife grazed the bottoms of her breasts now peeking out from the edges of the bright blue material.

“And this hosiery?” Tammer cut the stay to one and it flew apart, the silky stocking easing down her thigh. “I afford you a healthy allowance, you little cunt, and yet you continue to purchase your things at the cheapest shop in town.” In mere seconds, the other stocking pooled around her knee.

“I’m sorry, Lord Weston,” Nina apologized, her eyes hooded and dark. “But I had to spend some of my allowance to feed the children.”

“Oh, yes, those filthy little street urchins forever running under your feet, begging,” Tammer mocked. “I’ve told you again and again to send them away.”

“But, Lord Weston, I’m all they have…”

“And I’m tired of sharing you with them,” he roared, crisscrossing her sides and bodice with wild sweeps of his blade, the corset falling to shreds and exposing every inch of Nina’s creamy flesh to him.

Clutching for air, Tammer set the knife to the side and picked up his crop, stepped back a bit and swatted both Nina’s nipples, watching them pucker as she drew a breath over a clenched jaw. Allowing that to settle over her, he ran the crop across one arm and beneath her chin, drawing her flushed face up to find her pupils were huge. No wonder Joel struggled with the demands of his job and the demands of his beloved kitten. He’d struggle, too.