Blue Desire (3 page)

She
couldn’t tell if those last two were meant to be a contrast or if one built on
the other. If he already had her figured out, the best thing she could do was
come clean. But if he didn’t, she’d better stick with her lie. She said
nothing.

“What
part of the scene makes you the most curious?” Brett asked. He took her hand
and walked her toward an empty St. Andrew’s cross. It was plain and had
obviously seen a lot of use. She liked the ones with padding, but this one
didn’t have any. It was just a big X of black-painted wood with a few struts
supporting it at an angle with the floor and eyebolts at the ends.

“Bondage,”
she said.
“And spanking.
And
fl
—whips.”
Very few new subs called them floggers. To an experienced practitioner, a whip
was something like a single-tail, nasty enough to cause real injury and not to
be played with unless you knew what you were doing. Floggers were the ones with
the multiple tails that helped slow them down and spread out the force of the
impact.

The
silence stretched, and she wondered if he had caught her slip. At last he said,
“I think you’re too much of a novice for a whip, and in any case that’s not my
style. But I have a few floggers back in my bag. We can try those later.”

“Later?”
She tried to keep the annoyance out of her voice. Besides, she didn’t see his
bag anywhere.

“We’ll
start with a spanking. Lean against the frame there. Hands on the upper reaches
of the X, legs spread so that your ankles are near the eyebolts next to the
floor.”

Kat
smiled. That sounded more like what she came there for. She stretched out as
requested. The cross was slightly off vertical. It was enough to give her
something to lean on, but she still had a sense of standing. If she let her
knees relax completely, she’d slide right down. “Are you going to tie me up,
Sir?”

“No.”

“Why
not, Sir?” she asked without thinking. Fortunately the Sir was also habit, or
she’d probably really tick him off. And she didn’t want to do that until after
he was committed to spanking her. She had the sense that he could still decide
to let her go. An experienced
dom
with those kinds of muscles wouldn’t have any trouble finding partners, even if
he was a complete ass. And it was clear that Brett was as careful as he was
well built.

“There’s
a lot going on in a scene,” Brett told her evenly. “And when you’re starting
out, it’s hard to know which part
you’re liking
and
which part you’re hating. You might like the bondage and hate the spanking, or
vice versa, and come out of it thinking the whole thing was a negative
experience.
Best to focus on one thing.
In this case,
that’s going to be my hand on your ass.” He cupped the lower curve of her
bottom and lifted. Then he moved to the other side and did the same.

“Yes, Sir.”
Darn it. She liked being bound. She
liked not being able to move and not having to think about shifting or
fidgeting because she couldn’t. But his hand felt good, and she definitely
didn’t want him to stop, so she said nothing.

He
slid his other hand around to her stomach. She imagined it touching her breasts
or her pussy. But he moved it to below her belt and stopped.
Just
enough to brace her.
“Now then.
Are you ready
for your
first
spanking?”

“Yes, Sir.”
Was it her imagination, or did she
detect sarcasm in his voice?

He
swatted her, right in the middle, his hand coming from below, cupping her cheek
and then pressing it into her body. He had her braced with his other hand. It
was sensual, without a trace of pain. If her pants were down, there might have
been a sting. If he’d struck harder, there would have been a delicious thud.

She
waited. He picked up the pace but not very much.
Used a bit
more strength.
Maybe it would have been enough, if she’d been the new
player she’d pretended to be.

“You
want to pull my pants down?” she asked. She wore a thong under, and she’d
wanted to keep that on.

He
leaned forward so he could speak softly. “Oh, being stripped in public is a
powerful experience.
Probably more so than being spanked.
Stronger for some, even, than being tied up. Not for your first time, little
sub.”

She
really regretted lying to him.

BRETT
KNEW HE ought to walk away. He’d given her enough chances to tell him the
truth, and she hadn’t. He’d give hundred-to-one odds she’d played before,
probably even in public. He’d seen her when she’d come in. She wasn’t as
shocked or overwhelmed as most people were their first time. But he was nothing
if not stubborn.

His
friends teased him about his tendency to take in the wounded, the hurt,
the
damaged. The subs who couldn’t ask for what they wanted.
The brats.
The ones who tried to top
from below.
All the people he thought he could fix or heal. And here he
was, doing it again, although he ought to have learned his lesson by now. Liars
usually stayed liars. The hurt sometimes didn’t want to be healed. And he was
wasting his time.

If
he wasn’t so absolutely sure he’d seen Katrina before somewhere, he’d have
stopped. But that fact nagged at him. He assumed she was telling the truth
about not having been to Le Petit Mort before, at least. He knew all the
regulars. So he knew her from somewhere else. Not from one of Darren’s play
parties. Had he arrested her, back when he was on the force, before he’d become
a lawyer? Maybe, but he thought he had a pretty good memory for that too. It
was too easy to think of a criminal as a rap sheet and a crime rather than as a
real human being, and he made an effort to memorize their faces and come to
grips with the real person. It didn’t change the results, as far as he knew,
and it didn’t always help him sleep at night, but it stopped him from being
cold inside.

The
victims were easier to sympathize with. Had she been one of them?
Or a witness?
He didn’t think so, but maybe.

Maybe
that wasn’t why he was staying. Maybe it was because she was cute. Her butt had
some extra padding, and so did her belly, but her body was all womanly curves.
Her short-cropped black hair seemed to go with her attitude—the one underneath,
not the compliant one she was feigning. He liked curves, and he liked spunk.
But he didn’t care for lying or disobedience in a sub. Something was going to
have to go.

“Is
that the hardest you can spank me?” Katrina asked. “Sir,” she added, as if it
was an afterthought.

He
gritted his teeth. “No.” He caressed her bottom. She reacted to soft touches,
he’d noticed, with an intake of breath and a lovely swirl of the hips he
suspected she wasn’t even aware was happening. After a moment, he swatted her
again, no harder than he had before.
Tell
me. Tell me the truth, tell me what you need, and then we can play. And stop
trying to manipulate me.

But
if she didn’t come to that conclusion herself, it was pointless. He’d dragged
things out of women before, and he’d learned. They had to be willing to meet
him partway, or it never worked out. Part of the reason he kept taking on the
difficult ones was that he’d developed some skill at it.

“I’m
beginning to wonder if you’re a real
dom
at all,” she said. And this time she left off the Sir.

He
didn’t give a damn whether she thought he was a real
dom
or not. He’d watched enough
doms
manipulate their subs with similar words.
“A
real submissive would…”
It generally made him want to put a fist in their
face. And she was trying to manipulate him too. Trying to make him hit her
harder, he suspected. He took a step back and let the silence linger.

“Are
you a sub, really? ’
Cause
I’m not going to turn around
and let you lick my boots.”

Well,
fine. At least the pretense of submission was gone now. It was possible that
was progress. He didn’t respond. There was absolutely no reason he couldn’t
walk away and let her think about what had gone wrong. She didn’t need to be
untied or anything
like
that. Maybe he could sell a
few corsets that evening still. Instead, he waited.

“Maybe
you’re gay,” she tried.

Some
of the best tops he knew were, and he’d learned a lot from watching them. One
thing he’d learned was that he was terminally straight. He could appreciate the
technique, but if one of the people involved in a scene didn’t have womanly
curves, it wasn’t erotic for him. It annoyed him that she was using it as if it
were an insult, however. But he let that go. He knew what she was doing; she
was trying to get him to hit her, and grasping at straws. And that’s what it
would be, if he did it in anger.
Hitting.
He didn’t
hit women. Flog, spank, cane even. But not hit.

Finally,
she pushed herself off the cross and turned around to glare at him.

“I
told you to face the cross,” he said. “Stay.”

And
to his surprise, she did. Not without one more venomous look, but she turned
and obeyed. Maybe they were getting somewhere.

“How
many times have you done this, Katrina?” he asked.

He
saw her body tense, and he expected another lie. If he got one, he’d walk away.

“Dozens,”
she said.

“And
do you always get what you want?”

“So far.
Sir.”

Ah,
the Sir was back. “I’m guessing that you’re normally more skillful in how you
manipulate your men.”

She
started to turn around at that. “I don’t—” she began. And then she turned back
to the cross.
“Yes, Sir.”

He
moved closer, resting his hand on her denim-covered butt again. “What is it you
like to have happen?”

“I
liked to be flogged, Sir.
Or spanked.
Sometimes even a
riding crop.”

“Just that?”

She
hesitated.

“No
more lies,” Brett said. “No more evasions. I might give you what you want, but
you have to tell me. Maybe what you want is something I want too. I’ll decide
what happens, Katrina. Not you. There will be no topping from below here. I’m in
charge.”

She
gulped.
“Usually, then, after, I get to come.
As a reward.
For suffering.”

“For
suffering through what you wanted all along?”

“Yes, Sir.”

He
chuckled. “Now that seems a bit fucked up,
don’t
it?”

Maybe
his laugh was contagious, or she was startled by his swearing, but she laughed.
“Yes, Sir, it does.”

“Maybe
you should reward me instead for being nice and spanking you.”

She
opened her mouth, but he touched his finger to her lips, and they closed again.
“Hush,” he told her. “It wasn’t a question. I’ll decide what happens, in what
order. Or you can find someone else to play with. Maybe you can make someone
follow your little scenario. Where are you from?”

“Excuse
me?”

“Simple question.
You’ve been to clubs like this before.
Where? Maybe I saw you in one somewhere.” He’d been to some clubs up and down
the East Coast. New York, Philly, Baltimore. Mostly to sell the corsets he made
as a hobby.

“Maybe.
LA and San Fran.”

So much for that
thought
.
“And they fall for all this there?”

“I’m
usually on top of my game.”

He
knew from her sharp intake of breath she hadn’t meant to say that much. “What’s
got you thrown off?”

“You, Sir.”

He
gave that partial credit. They had just met, and he wasn’t going to push harder
for personal details, although he was curious. One of the things most people
wanted when they went to a club was anonymity and separation from their regular
lives. Some even used different names in the scene than out. Sometimes they
were in danger of losing their jobs or their other relationships. He frowned.
“Are you married?”

She
lifted her hand in response. No ring. No mark on her finger where a ring had
been recently either. “Hmm?” he prompted. Not that she seemed to have any
issues with making stuff up.

“No,
Sir, I’m not.”

He
fancied he could tell she was telling the truth. He knew he wasn’t infallible,
but he’d gotten pretty good at spotting evasions, as much from his years as a
cop as his time as a dom. “Good. Why don’t you get my bag, and when you come
back, we’ll get started.”

She
smiled. He supposed she thought she was getting what she wanted after all, and
she was mostly right. He had every intention of giving her the ride of her
life, as long as she behaved herself. That, however, was a fifty-fifty
proposition at best. He waited for her to ask.